great believer in this mode of spending the night;
but~thenjie never feels either cold or fatigue. I tried
to help, but found the work was too heavy for me at that
altitude, which in our opinion was over 23,000 ft.
I t is interesting to note that this is in any case the
highest spot at which any one has ever attempted
to pass the night, and that none of us suffered from
the old orthodox symptoms of mountain sickness,
such as bleeding from the nose and ears—or gums, as
one ingenious writer has recently put it. In this respect
our experiences entirely agree with those of W. W.
Graham during his record ascent of Kabru.
Our food was nearly finished, so dinner had to be
dispensed with. I wrapped my putties round my feet,
coiled down the rope on the cold floor, and hoped that
the roof would not fall in upon us. I dreamt that
Sherring had sent a square khaki-coloured water-cart
full of warm wraps up the glacier to us. However,
when it arrived it contained only stockings, and the
driver, in spite of my violent abuse, insisted that we were
only entitled to one pair each. Hence I was so cold
that I roused up the men about 2 a.m. on the 25th.
There was very little breakfast to have, so we started
off by lantern-light in half an hour, threading our way
up an icefall among big crevasses. After about an
hour’s climbing we were stopped by a crevasse with a
veritable wall of ice on the far side. We tried to get
across in two places, but it was soon evident that we
must wait for daylight to find some way round it. I
got colder and colder and indeed felt quite incapable
of climbing another step. Want of sleep and food, I
think, were more responsible for my condition than the
altitude; which may have been over 24,000 f t ; but as
my barometer had been smashed a month earlier in
Nepal on the glaciers of Nampa I had no means of
accurately estimating the height we had attained.
The summit seemed to be within easy reach. The guides
both insisted that we were only 300 metres from the
summit. Personally ! think that we were about 1500 ft.
SNOUT OF GURLA MANDHATA GLACIER S MAIN WESTERN
GORGE OF GURLA MANDHATA, JULY 25, 1905
from the top, but as I have already mentioned, my
barometer was broken and my attempts at boiling the
thermometer were a fiasco, so that all we had to go upon
was a comparison of the triangulated peaks around us.
Henri urged me to persevere. “ If you turn back now,
and do not finish the ascent, you will regret it very
much when you get down into the valley,” said he.
The natural retort was that, if I did not turn back at
once, I never should get down into the valley, i