– CHAPTER NINE –
On June the 14th the Baltis and four of the Sherpas started at dawn and spent a long day bringing the rest of the loads down from the lower Sarpo Laggo glacier camp. Spender laid out a survey base on the gravel flats which stretched for miles around our camp, and fixed the position of all the distant peaks in view; Auden was busy with his geological work. Tilman, Angtharkay, Lhakpa Tensing and I set off down the valley taking the rifle with us. After an hour’s quick walking we reached the long stretch of meadow-land and willow groves referred to by Younghusband as Suget Jangal. It was a delightful place of clear springs, shade and soft green turf. It was deserted except for a few hares playing on the grass, which scuttled under cover as we approached, and some small birds singing in the willows. Everywhere there were tracks of wild asses (kyang), and a great number of bharal horns littered the ground.
We lay for a while on the grass and then climbed up the hillside for about 1,500 feet, until we stood on the crest of a ridge which divides the Sarpo Laggo valley from another big valley which descends from the north face of K2. Far away to the south-east we could see some of the great ice peaks of the main water-shed which cluster round the head of the Baltoro glacier. K2 itself was hidden by a corner of the valley. For want of a better name this valley had been called the K2 nullah. 1 Our position on the ridge commanded a fine view down the Shaksgam river and far up into the unknown ranges of the Crevasse glacier. We quite forgot to hunt for game and discussed excitedly the various aspects of the view. Suddenly a herd of about a dozen bharal ran out from a hollow below us, not fifty yards away. They hesitated for a moment, then plunged over a shoulder into the K2 nullah. Angtharkay and I followed, climbing gingerly over each section of rising ground and peering into the gully beyond. We stalked for nearly two hours before we found the animals again grazing peacefully on the hillside at a hundred yards’ range. It seemed criminal to kill them, and when it came to the point I felt very reluctant to shoot. But the chance of adding to our scanty rations outweighed my scruples and I shot two of the creatures. The Sherpas were in a great state of excitement. They shouldered the dead animals and trotted back along the steep hillside under the great weight of meat, laughing and shouting as they went.
While I was walking back across the flats, I saw something standing alone by the river. It was some way off, and the shimmer caused by the hot afternoon sun on the gravel made it difficult to distinguish what it was. I thought it must be Spender working with his plane-table. Then I saw that it was coming towards me. When it drew nearer, I realized that it was a wild ass. It came up to within fifteen yards of me and stood switching its tail about and staring at me. When I turned round to go on it followed me, stopping when I stopped and walking when I walked, rather like an obedient dog. However, it lagged behind as I approached the camp and kept a respectful distance away.
That night we had a feast of rice and meat, and then sat round the fire feeling bloatedly contented. The Baltis were Mohammedans, and would not join in the meal as their religion forbade them to eat meat that had been killed by someone of another faith. It was a beautiful starry night, and Spender made some astronomical observations to determine our latitude and the exact bearing to the peaks that he had fixed.
As I have explained in an earlier chapter, we had brought enough food down from Mone Brangsa to enable us to carry out our projects across the Shaksgam river, in the Aghil range. We had not allowed more than three weeks’ supplies, firstly, because we could not carry more without the tedious business of relaying, and secondly, because July 10th was the latest date on which we could be reasonably certain of being able to cross back over the Shaksgam before the summer floods, which are caused by the intensive melting of the glaciers. Even so, we would be running some risk of being cut off, and in order to save time, we had planned to take all seventeen Baltis up the Shaksgam as far as the foot of the Aghil pass, to avoid any relaying of loads.
While Spender and Auden were continuing their scientific work, Tilman and I spent a busy morning weighing and checking the food, and making detailed plans for our movements during the next three weeks. We had promised to give the men a day’s rest, and the Baltis slept peacefully during the morning. But, in the afternoon, they announced with determination that they did not propose to accompany us any farther. We argued with them, pleaded and bribed, pointing out that we were only asking them to come on for another two days over flat, easy country, But nothing would shake their determination to go back straight away. So we paid them their money, and they departed that evening. We sent Angtharkay and Nukku to escort them for part of their journey. Only four Baltis remained with us; these were the four who had undertaken, from the beginning, to stay with us as long as we required them. They were: Mancho, tall and gaunt, with a huge beak-like nose; Mahamad Hussain, elderly and philosophical, an amazingly daring climber on rotten rock, known always to us as Buddha; and Mahadi and Hussain, inseparable friends, who had followed us from Parkutta, a village in the Indus valley. These men greatly increased our carrying strength, and they served us well, particularly in the valley below the snow-line. While we were travelling over glaciers or crossing high passes, however, they became very depressed, and caused us a great deal of trouble.
The departure of the rest of the Baltis and the temporary absence of two of the Sherpas weakened our position considerably. We cut down the weight of our equipment loads still farther, and also left some of the survey instruments and all the money at our base. Even so, and with all the men carrying seventy or eighty pounds each, we could not move everything that was necessary. On June 16th, Tilman and Auden went to the junction, with the four Sherpas and the four Baltis, carrying as much as they could manage. Spender, Angtensing and I spent the day relaying to Suget Jangal all the loads that were left. The other four Sherpas returned there from the junction in the evening. Sen Tensing was very ill with a recurrence of his fever, and the next day we had to leave him behind in this delightful spot to recover, and to await the return of Angtharkay and Nukku. We left a small dump of food for him, and while the others were carrying the rest of the loads to the junction, Spender and I spent the day doing a series of high survey stations on the ridge above the entrance of the K2 nullah. It was fascinating work getting to know the features of the country and speculating how the individual pieces would fit into the whole intriguing puzzle which new country always presents. We crossed the mouth of the K2 nullah and marched to the junction in the late afternoon. We found Tilman in his tent, down with fever. He had been ill since the previous evening. Auden had taken the Baltis with a relay of loads seven miles up the Shaksgam. He had sent the men back, and was camping there alone, in order to have a clear day for his geological work. Near our camp, at the junction of the two rivers, there was a number of old huts and some oval-shaped rings which looked like graves. These puzzling relics of former habitation seemed to accentuate the isolation of the country.
The next morning Tilman’s temperature was down, and though he felt very shaky, he was able to come with us. The Shaksgam valley was a weird place, shut in on both sides by gaunt limestone cliffs, slashed across with twisted streaks of yellow, red and black strata, which gave them the strange, bizarre appearance of a camouflaged ship. The bottom of the valley was composed of sand and gravel flats, often half a mile wide. Over these the river flowed; sometimes concentrated into one great body of water as it swirled round a bend in the valley; sometimes split up into a dozen streams which sprawled their independent courses across the flats, for ever changing their pattern. As long as it was possible to keep to the valley floor our progress was easy and quick. But every now and again the river hurled itself against the cliffs on our side of the valley, and forced us, either to attempt a fording, which would have been very difficult in most places, or to look for a route along the face of the crags. Spread out at long intervals along the valley we found curious clumps of tall vegetation which grew, for no apparent reason, out of the sand. The main river was turbid, but at each side of it clear streams flowed through a chain of deep green and blue pools, close under the crags. Steep glacier-filled corries split the sides of the valley, and we looked up them to a profusion of Dolomite spires.
Angtharkay and Nukku caught us up on the evening of the 18th. They had come all the way from the Sarpo Laggo glacier, and had brought with them Sen Tensing, who had now recovered
Beyond our camp of June 18th-19th, the river flowed for a long way against the cliffs. A narrow ledge, a few feet above the water, helped us to overcome this obstacle, though in places its continuity was interrupted, and we had to negotiate some awkward steps. After this, for the next few miles, we were able to walk along the gravel flats.
Our problem now was how to find the valley which led to the Aghil pass. We had Younghusband’s description of it to guide us, but as there were a great many narrow side valleys, all with much the same characteristics, it was not an easy task to choose the right one. The only important tributary coming down from the Aghil range was wide and open, and we could see up it for many miles. It seemed to be the obvious valley to choose as an approach to the interior of the range, and Desio had shown it on his map as descending from the Aghil pass, but it did not resemble in any way the one described by Younghusband. The difficulties of the cliffs on the southern side of the main valley prevented us from climbing high enough to get a view that was of any use to us.
Farther up, the valley became more open, and the river, spread over the whole of its width, offered a good fording-place. Angtensing and I led the way across the stream, holding on to each other for mutual support. We very nearly came to grief. Angtensing was swept off his feet, and I had great difficulty in holding him up until he had recovered enough to struggle ashore. He and his load of survey instruments escaped with nothing more serious than a wetting. After this we humbly followed the lead of the Baltis, who knew far more about this hazardous business than any of us, and faced the torrents with surprising nonchalance. But the experience was quite unpleasant enough to serve as a warning to us to keep a very close watch on the increase of the rivers of the Aghil range, and not to prolong our stay on the northern side of the Shaksgam until it became quite unfordable.
A remarkable feature of the country through which we were travelling was the ancient river terraces that lined the sides of the valleys. These terraces were roughly level on top and cut vertically at their outer edges as if by a sharp knife. Sometimes the cliff so formed was only twenty feet high, sometimes it stood as much as a thousand feet above the present level of the river. In some places the terraces were no more than inconspicuous fringes clinging to the sides of a valley; in others they covered almost its entire floor, leaving only a narrow canyon for the river. They were composed of a mass of boulders and pebbles in a matrix of sand, and, being uncemented, were very friable – a structure known to geologists as conglomerate, it is difficult to visualize the conditions in which these deposits were laid down, and to understand the extraordinary changes that must have taken place to produce the present phenomenon. A rejuvenation of the whole mountain mass seems to be the only way to account for the rivers having suddenly cut into the wide beds of gravel which they have built for themselves.
The river terraces and their conglomerate cliffs play a most important part in travel through this country. The cliffs are absolutely perpendicular, and it is impossible to climb them if they are high. It is possible to go for many miles along a valley without finding a place where one can climb out. Similarly, though a terrace will make an excellent highway, comfortably remote from interference from the river, it is often difficult to descend from it. Often, too, terraces are slashed across by ravines, cut by side streams to such a depth that they are quite impassable. When an unfordable river runs through a narrow canyon of high conglomerate cliffs it is generally an insuperable obstacle. Although the tops of these terraces occasionally provide a path, their cliffs confront the traveller with difficulties second only to the problem of crossing the swift, quickly-flooding rivers.
Soon after we had crossed the Shaksgam to its northern side, we were stopped by the river running against a conglomerate cliff, three hundred feet high. In order to avoid recrossing the river we climbed a steep gully. We had a good deal of difficulty, and it took us nearly two hours to get the party on to the terrace. We soon regretted this move, for the terrace was cut by a number of ravines, and progress was slow. We could not get down to the valley floor again, and when at last we reached the valley, which we had chosen to ascend in our search for the Aghil pass, we found ourselves stopped by a chasm cut by the very stream that we wanted to reach. Tilman and I tried to get round the end of the cut-off by climbing along the cliffs above the terrace. We got on to an old glacial till, in which we chipped steps, but became involved in horrible difficulties, and had to give up our attempt. We then joined the Sherpas, who were engaged in trying an even more desperate-looking manoeuvre. Eventually we succeeded in lowering our loads into the ravine and climbing down ourselves, on rounded boulders jutting out of the face of the cliff. Several great chunks of the wall fell away as we were doing this and crashed with an alarming roar. We climbed up the bottom of the ravine for a few hundred yards, and emerged on to a terrace at the mouth of our valley. Here we pitched camp. All this trouble had been caused by our choosing the wrong place to cross the Shaksgam.
Near the camp we found some more remains of stone buildings, which gave us a comforting clue that we were still on the ancient route, and that we had been lucky in our somewhat blind choice of the valley. Even with this evidence we were far from sure of the way to the pass, and debated whether we should send parties to reconnoitre some of the other valleys as well. But as we had such a very short time at our disposal for our various jobs, we decided to put all our eggs into one basket and rely on our first choice being the right one. Our plan was to find the pass and, using it as a central dump and meeting-place, to disperse the party in various directions with all the food that was available. The view from our camp was very fine. We were on the northern side of a sweeping curve of the Shaksgam river. To the south-west we looked down the desolate gorge up which we had come. To the south-south-east, upstream, we could see twenty miles of the river’s course, interrupted here and there by the mighty, pinnacled glaciers coming down from the Teram Kangri and Gasherbrum ranges. Farther to the east was a range of magnificent peaks, which, we supposed, lay between us and Mason’s Zug Shaksgam. Opposite us, to the south, towering Dolomite peaks formed a barrier to the unexplored northern glaciers of K2.
We started on the morning of June 20th in a great state of excitement. So much depended on whether we would find the pass at the head of the inconspicuous valley on which we were pinning our faith. We had left dumps of food along our route for the return journey, so we were no longer so heavily laden. We passed through a narrow defile into an open rocky basin. Beyond, the valley divided; the eastern section seemed to be surrounded by great granite precipices; the western branch, descending from the north, held out promise of better things and we started up it, encouraged by the discovery of more traces of human occupation; we even found a nail. The going was very easy, and, a great deal sooner than we expected, we stepped on to the crest of the divide. It was, unquestionably, the Aghil pass. To the north the ground fell away in a gentle slope to a placid tarn. Beyond, across a deep valley, was a range of gently rounded, snow-capped peaks, so typical of the mountains of Central Asia. This was the valley of the Surukwat river, by which Younghusband had approached the pass, and the peaks were those of the northern part of the Aghil range. West of us were the limestone peaks of the Shaksgam, standing like sentinels above this remarkable pass. A keen wind blew from the north, driving sleet into our faces, and snow was falling on the neighbouring peaks. It was too cold to sit for long on the pass, but neither the wind nor the bleakness of the scene could spoil our first experience of the view which Younghusband had seen with the same excitement fifty years before.