The Chongra Peaks from the Red Pass.
The first night we slept in an old and disused shepherd's encampment high up, just at the limits of the pines. Next day we had to descend by most precipitous slopes to the bottom of the Buldar nullah. Our second night was spent high up on the eastern slopes of the nullah and short of the pass which was called the Liskom pass by the natives.
On the next day we crossed this pass (about 16,000 feet). The view of the Chongra peaks from here is most striking, backed as it is by the great upper snow-field of the Rakiot glacier and Nanga Parbat behind. Just across the Astor valley to the east rises the Dichil peak, a terrific, double-headed rock pinnacle that is certainly over 20,000 feet high.
These obliging Gor shepherds had accompanied us thus far, but no amount of persuasion could induce them to go one step further. At last, becoming frightened, they put the bags down on the snow and fled down the hill-side back to the Buldar nullah, and I was unable to give them anything for all their kindness. That afternoon, 1st September, I reached Dashkin on the Gilgit road, and was back again in civilised country. From there I made my way to Astor.
It was on the 5th of September that I received a telegram from Hastings. He had returned to the Diamirai nullah without finding Mummery. The camp there was just as we had left it. Next day, 1st September, he made his way up the glacier to the high camp under Nanga Parbat with Rosamir and Lor Khan; there he found the extra provisions and some other things exactly as they had been placed by Mummery on the morning of the 24th There was only one conclusion to draw—Mummery, Ragobir, and Goman Singh had been killed somewhere up the glacier that lies between the Ganalo peak and Nanga Parbat. For there was absolutely no way out, except the way they had gone in. The Diama pass over to the Rakiot nullah we knew to be impossible on the eastern face, on the south lay Nanga Parbat, whilst on the north was the Ganalo peak, 21,500 feet high. If, therefore, they never returned for the provisions, some catastrophe must have overtaken them during their attempt to climb over the pass.
From what I have seen of the valley, an avalanche falling from the north face of Nanga Parbat seems the most probable explanation; but in that vast ice world the hidden dangers are so many that any suggestion must necessarily be the merest guessing, and what happened we shall never know.