190 ON THE OTRUGHUL GLACIER CH. XVI
ice-axe that Naik Ram Singh had prepared at Kök-yar from a design I had given him, wherever small ridges of ice required step-cutting. Already from a distance I had viewed with misgivings the mighty ice - falls which stretched across the whole breadth of the glacier a little above the point where the spur just mentioned projected into its bed, probably forming a hidden ledge below it. As we got nearer I saw that these torn masses of dark ice would leave us no possible passage. They seemed to be piled up in still wilder confusion against the barring rock - spur on the west. But just as we cautiously approached this, I noticed that a little higher up the lateral moraine reappeared and that we could make our way to this without serious difficulty or risk. Once on the crest of this moraine, progress was easy in spite of its narrowness, and for nearly two miles we moved along it upwards, impeded by nothing but the increased difficulty of breathing. I estimated that we had ascended to an elevation of over i 6,000 feet when, after a total climb of four hours, the lateness of the day warned me that it was time to come to a halt.
A series of well-defined snowy peaks previously sighted, rising precipitously above the glacier on the east and north-east, made it easy to fix our position on the plane-table. For a round of photographic views, too (Figs. 59, 6o), the point we had gained was excellent. But, alas ! a great bend of the glacier to the south-west, about three-quarters of a mile ahead, shut off the view of our guiding star, the great triangulated peak, and of the névé beds by its side where the glacier must take its start. The extremely precipitous rock slopes of the peaks to the east and southeast, and the equally steep hanging glaciers scouring them lower down, were a deeply impressive sight.
As this panorama of silent Alpine grandeur, which no human foot is ever likely to have disturbed before, crowded upon me, I scarcely had time to give much attention to the curious fact that due south, where our previous mapping would have made me look for an array of high peaks of the main range, there extended a flat-topped, snow-covered spur rising only two or three thousand feet above my
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