The day was a beautifully clear one up there, but down below there was much mist and many clouds, which took away a good deal from the beauty of the panorama. There were, however, a great many high snowy peaks towering above the mist like majestic white islands rising out of the sea of clouds. The view was soon almost entirely obscured by clouds, and with the exception of Api Mt., to the N.N.W., another peak, 20,280 feet, in Nepal, peeping through to the N.E. of us, one of the Lumpa group and other mountains close by, we could see very little. [[87]]
The peak on which we were was in a steep gradient on the side on which we had climbed, but was most precipitous on the other side. In fact, it was almost vertical right down to the glacier at its foot, some 6500 feet below. It looked as if one half of the mountain had at some remote period collapsed, leaving the sharp-edged peak standing. There was not as much snow on the top as lower down, as the wind blows a good deal of the surface snow away, some melts with the heat of the sun, and the slope of the mountain, even on the side we had climbed, being somewhat steep, whenever sufficient snow had accumulated on the top its weight caused it to slide down in avalanches. Even the day I went up we counted some five or six avalanches in various parts of the mountain, but none came quite so near as the first I described.
The rock was exposed in one or two places, and was so rotted that with our fingers we could remove large slabs. When we had taken a good rest, which restored us wonderfully—as soon as you sat down and did nothing you felt well and relatively happy, except the lungs, which seemed not to work quite so regularly—we took advantage of the rock at hand to construct a cairn on the [[88]]summit. After having inscribed the names of my men and my own on a stone and on a piece of paper, we placed them in a receptacle on the south side of the cairn and built them up all round and above, so that they might be preserved as long as possible.
I then proceeded to take all the necessary observations—not, however, before having devoured two whole pounds of chocolate, which I ate with some snow to allay my thirst as well as my appetite.
I had been consuming on that ascent a great many lozenges of highly concentrated meat,—each one was supposed to be as good as a meal,—and I ate at least fifty in the space of eight hours and a half. I suppose they were sustaining, but you had to eat lots of them for one lozenge to sustain the previous one, or they left an awful feeling of emptiness in one’s inside. An empty inside, I firmly believe, is a mistake for reaching high elevations, or at any other time, so I had started with my pockets full of chocolate, and what the lozenges could not do the huge chunks of chocolate I chewed all the way up the mountain certainly accomplished.
I think it was partly due to the constant [[89]]nourishment I took all the way up that I was able to break the world’s record in mountaineering, going several hundred feet higher than other mountaineers, with comparative ease. Had the peak which we climbed been higher, I could have gone even higher and reached a considerably greater elevation. But perhaps Nature gave me quite an abnormal constitution for work of that kind, as people who know me can testify.
It is interesting to note that the strongest and most athletic-looking man in my party on that particular expedition was the only one who broke down badly and died; and the weakest, smallest-framed—almost girlish in appearance, he looked so delicate—was the only one out of all the followers I had employed who throughout stood the hardships and sufferings without a flinch, showed the greatest endurance, and eventually returned home in excellent condition.
Perhaps I should also mention that neither myself nor any of the men who came up with me wore hobnailed boots in making the ascent, I wearing some comparatively light boots of medium weight such as I would wear in London on a wet day. In the way of clothing, too, I made no difference between going up on a world’s record-breaking [[90]]expedition and taking a stroll down Piccadilly. I mean that I wore my Piccadilly clothes up there—clothes of the thinnest tropical material, no underclothing to speak of, a straw hat, and a small bamboo stick in my hand.
It has always been my practice to simplify everything. One cannot get away from the fact that the simpler you are in everything you do the better, and with mountaineering particularly, the less you carry, the less muffled up you are, the freer in your movements, the more you will accomplish. That is to say, if your constitution is so made that you can stand it.
I cannot get away from the fact that one can do no better than wear such comfortable clothes as one is generally in the habit of wearing, and I could never understand the object of parading in clumsy tweeds strapped all over, when you need your movements as little impeded as possible.