On May 10 Somervell and I started from the Base Camp for Camp I. The way already customary among the porters led us at first over the flat waste of stones, intersected occasionally by dry stream-beds, which lies below the black, humpy snout of the Rongbuk Glacier; we then followed the deep trough below the glacier’s right (west) bank, an obvious line, but rough with great boulders. It is not before reaching the head of this trough, where one must turn up towards the East Rongbuk Glacier, that a problem arises as to how best to proceed; here we found that an adequate path had already been stamped on the loose moraine, and after ascending steeply we contoured the hillside at an easy gradient—a little forethought and energy had devised so good a way that we could walk comfortably from one camp to the other in two hours and a half. Moreover we were highly pleased by Camp I. The draught perpetually blowing down the main glacier was scarcely noticed in this side-valley; the afternoon sun was shining to cheer the stony scene, and away to the West some noble peaks were well placed for our delight. But beyond æsthetic satisfaction we were soon aware of a civilized habitation. We had been in camp only a few minutes when a cook brought us tea and sweet biscuits and demanded to know what we would like for dinner; we ordered a good dinner and proceeded to examine our apartments. Geoffrey Bruce, we knew, had been busy here with certain constructional works to obviate the difficulty of carrying up heavy tents which were required in any case at the Base Camp. We found a little house reserved for Europeans, one of four solidly built with stones and roofed, with the outer flies of Whymper tents. I never measured up this chamber; I suppose the floor must have been 8 feet × 10 feet and the roof 4 feet high. It is true the tent-poles bridging across from side to side in support of the roof were in dangerously unstable equilibrium, and there were windy moments when valetudinously minded persons might have pronounced it a draughty room. But we were far from hypercritical on this first night, particularly as no wind blew, and a wonderful and pleasant change it was, after living in tents, to sit, eat, and sleep in a house once more.
The greater part of our alpine stores, with which I was especially concerned, had already reached Camp I, and there I found the various bundles of tents, ropes, sleeping-bags, crampons, paraffin, petrol, primus stoves, cooking-sets, etc., which I had carefully labelled for their respective destinations. The great majority were labelled for III—no higher destination had yet been assigned, and I speculated, not altogether optimistically, as to the probable rates of their arrival. As the general order of transport was interrupted for the present, we had to decide what we should take on with us both of food and alpine stores. Somervell, who by now was an expert in the numbers and contents of food-boxes, vigorously selected all that we preferred, and we went to bed with very good hopes for the future, at least in one respect. In consequence of these puzzling problems it took us some little time in the morning to make up our loads; it was past ten o’clock when we started on our way to Camp II.
View from Ice Cavern.
I was surprised, after we had proceeded some distance along the stones on the left bank of the East Rongbuk Glacier, to observe a conspicuous cairn, evidently intended to mark our way over the glacier itself. But the glacier in this lower end is so completely covered with stones that in choosing the easiest way one is only concerned to find the flattest surfaces, and as we mildly followed where the route had been laid out by Colonel Strutt and his party we found the glacier far less broken than was to be expected. Ultimately we walked along a conspicuous medial moraine, avoiding by that means some complicated ice, and descended it abruptly, to find ourselves on the flat space where Camp II was situated.
By this time we had seen a good deal of the East Rongbuk Glacier. As we came up the moraine near its left bank we looked northwards on a remarkable scene. From the stony surface of the glacier fantastic pinnacles arose, a strange, gigantic company, gleaming white as they stood in some sort of order, divided by the definite lines of the moraines. Beyond and above them was a vast mountain of reddish rock known to us only by the triangulated height of its sharp summit, marked in Wheeler’s map as 23,180. The pinnacles became more thickly crowded together as we mounted, until, as we followed the bend southwards, individuals were lost in the crowd and finally the crowd was merged in the great tumbled sea of the glacier, now no longer dark with stones, but exhibiting everywhere the bright surfaces of its steep and angry waves. At Camp II we were surrounded on three sides by this amazing world of ice. We lay in the shelter of a vertical cliff not less than 60 feet high, sombrely cold in the evening shadow, dazzlingly white in the morning sun, and perfectly set off by the frozen pool at its foot. Nothing, of course, was to be seen of Mount Everest; the whole bulk of the North Peak stood in front of it. But by mounting a few steps up some stony slopes above us we could see to the south-east, over the surface of the ice, the slopes coming down from the Lhapka La, from which high pass we had looked down the East Rongbuk Glacier in September, 1921, and observed the special whiteness of the broken stream, at our own level now, and puzzled over its curious course. We had yet another sight to cheer us as we lay in our tents. On the range between us and the main Rongbuk Glacier stood, in the one direction of uninterrupted vision, a peak of slender beauty, and as the moon rose its crests were silver cords.
Next morning, May 12, according to Colonel Strutt’s directions, we worked our way along the true left edge of the glacier and the stones of its left bank. The problem here is to avoid that tumbled sea of ice where no moraine can be continuously followed. Probably it would be possible to get through this ice almost anywhere, for it is not an ice-fall, the gradient is not steep, the pinnacles are not seracs, and there are few crevasses: but much time and labour would be wasted in attempting such a course. Further up the surface becomes more even, and the reconnaissance party had reached this better surface by only a short and simple crossing of the rougher ice. We easily found the place, marked by a conspicuous cairn, where they had turned away from the bank. Their tracks on the glacier, though snow was lying in the hollows, were not easy to follow, and we quickly lost them; but presently we found another cairn built upon a single large stone, and here proceeded with confidence to cross a deep and wide trough of which we had been warned; and once this obstacle was overcome we knew no difficulty could impede our progress to Camp III. The laden porters, however, did not get along very easily. Their nails, for the most part, were worn smooth, and they found the ice too slippery. As I had never seen in the Alps a glacier-surface like this one I was greatly surprised by the nature of the bare ice. In a sense it was often extremely rough, with holes and minute watercourses having vertical sides 6 inches to 13 inches high; but the upper surfaces of the little knobs and plateaus intervening were extraordinarily hard and smooth and the colour was very much bluer than the usual granular surface of a dry glacier. It was also surprising to find at most a thin coating of fine snow as high as 20,500 feet; for in 1921 we had found, even before the first heavy snowfall, plenty of snow on the glaciers above 19,000 feet. For my part, with new nails in my boots, I was not troubled by the slippery surfaces. But we decided to supply the porters with crampons, which they subsequently found very useful on this stage of the journey.