IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Southern Tibet : vol.7 |
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Citation Information
GLACIER WANDERINGS.
465
In the autumn the natives take their goats up the valley one march beyond the snout of the glacier.
Beyond that, they said natives had penetrated two more marches, and that there was a connection with the Remo glacier, at the head of the Shayok. This Remo has yet to be explored.
Then they turned up the Saser to examine the glacier Murgisthang, or rather Monstong, a long straight glacier leading due north. There were no signs of any recent retreat. The glacier had extensive transverse ice streams pouring in on each side, those on the east coming from precipitous splintered peaks, pales ozoic and gneiss; those on the west flowing down from wide snow-fields, leading back to a range of no great height, perhaps 2 1,000 feet, the water-parting of the Upper Nubra.
In 2 miles' distance he saw K 32 24,600 feet high. The névé basin was at a height of i 8,000 feet. The great peak rises with a sheer cliff of 4,000 feet of pale-grey, pink granite. To the N. E. and N. W. high peaks were seen, the latter about 23,000 feet. From another ridge in the neighbourhood he again had a superb view to K 32. »An hour's scramble would have put us on its sharp steep western arrête. To the north we overlooked the col and saw a great glacier stretching far away, apparently flowing north and then east to join the Remo glacier. Beyond this were many serrated peaks along the line of the Karakorum watershed , which we estimated by the eye as from 22,000 to 23,000 feet. One rather higher mountain stood out to the north-west; but shining in the far distance we saw some great giants which I felt sure must be Gasherbrum and Bride Peak, 65 miles away.
When Neve the following year returned from the Siachen Glacier he looked up the photographs taken from the Murgisthang ridge and identified Teram Kangri, which he had seen to the N. W.
A terra incognita stretched north to the Aghil Mountains, and N. E. to the source of the Yarkand River, explored by HAYWARD.
They' went up to Kharmang Kuru and Khapallu. Their plan was to cross the Saltoro Pass. The natives did not know anything about such a pass. »They were unwilling to commit themselves to saying that the mountains either at the head of the Kondus or the Bilaphond were impassable, but said that in the days of their forefathers men went that way to Yarkand and also to Nubra.»
They went 8 miles upstream from Khapallu where the whole valley seemed to have been filled with ice, and where in post-glacial times an immense amount of re-excavation has been done. They also found evidence of former lakes, I ,000 feet above the present river level. At Mandi and Palit extensive fragments of old lateral moraines were clinging to both sides of the valley, I ,000 feet above the river. Dr. Neve is of the opinion that here, as in many of the higher Himalayan and
I This is the expedition on which Neve travelled with Longstaff and Slingsby, and of which Longstaff has given a description quoted above.
59. VII.
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