The day that Bruce left, Mummery and I with the Gurkhas started to explore the upper end of the Diamirai glacier. We camped at the head of the valley on the last grass on the northern side. Mummery and Ragobir started at midnight for the western face of Nanga Parbat. During the day they managed to reach the top of the second rib of rocks that lie directly under the summit, a height of about 17,000 to 18,000 feet. In the meantime I went to look at the Diama glacier between the Ganalo peak, 21,650 feet, and Nanga Parbat, taking with me Goman Singh and our Kashmir shikari. We climbed up the ridge that comes down from the Ganalo peak to about 17,000 feet, but unfortunately the day was cloudy, so I was unable satisfactorily to see the whole of the Diama valley, and ascertain what chances we should have if we were to attack Nanga Parbat from that side. However, on returning in the afternoon, I met Mummery on the glacier. He was delighted with his exploration, for there was, he said, magnificent climbing, and he had found a place on the top of the second rib of rock where a tent might be pitched.
From July 13, the day we left the Kishnganga valley, it had been gloriously fine; but next day, August 7, the weather broke with heavy rain. Of course all our energies now were concentrated on the ascent of Nanga Parbat. Mummery decided that we should push provisions and supplies up the route that he and Ragobir had prospected; and he was confident that once beyond the rock ribs and on the upper snow-fields with some provisions and a silk tent, it would be very hard luck indeed should we be driven back before we reached the summit.
During August 8 and 9, Mummery, Ragobir, Lor Khan (a Chilas shikari, who had come up from Gashut in the Bunar valley, and insisted on stopping with us), and I spent the time in carrying a waterproof bag of provisions and some odds and ends up the second rib of rock to a height of 17,150 feet. Here we left it in a safe place on the rocks. We also had considerable quantities of fuel taken up by coolies, to a camp 15,000 feet, at the bottom of the rocks under Nanga Parbat.
Mummery was not wrong when he said it was magnificent climbing. The only climbing in the Alps I can compare it to is that on the Chamounix Aiguilles. In many places it was similar to that on the west side of the Aiguille du Plan from the Pèlerin glacier.
Between the first and second ribs of rock the glacier was broken up into the wildest confusion, and it was only by passing a somewhat nasty couloir, down which occasional ice avalanches came, that the rocks of the second rib could be reached; thence to the top of the rib was difficult rock climbing over great slabs and towers of rock set at a very steep angle. I was extremely surprised that Lor Khan would go, but he did not seem in the least frightened, and with a little help from the rope climbed splendidly.
As we returned that night to our camp the rains descended, and we arrived wet through; the weather was getting worse, and no serious attempt could be made for the present on Nanga Parbat.
CHAPTER VI
ASCENT OF THE DIAMIRAI PEAK
'Nothing that is mountainous is alien to us; we are addicted to all high places from Gaurisankar to Primrose Hill, wherever man has not forked out Nature. No doubt we find a particular fascination in the greatest and boldest inequalities of the earth's surface and the strange scenery of the ice and snow world; but we are attracted by any inequality, so long as it has not a railroad station or a restaurant on the top of it.'