The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places (14 page)

(1863–1942)

As leader of the 1904–5 British military expedition to Lhasa and as promoter of the early assaults on Mount Everest, Younghusband came to epitomize Himalayan
endeavour. To the mountains he also owed his spiritual conversion from gung-ho soldier to founder of the World Congress of Faiths. His initiation came in 1887 when, as the climax to a journey from
Peking across the Gobi desert, he determined to reach India over the unexplored Mustagh Pass in the Karakorams – “the most difficult and dangerous achievement in these mountains so
far” (S. Hedin).

T
he Mustagh Pass, which we were now approaching, is on the main watershed, which both divides the rivers of India from the rivers of Turkestan, and
also the British from the Chinese dominions. Peaks along the watershed, in the vicinity of the pass, had been fixed by trigonometrical observations from the Indian side at 24,000, 26,000, and in
one case at over 28,000 feet in height, so I could scarcely doubt that the pass across the range must be lofty and difficult. It was, therefore, all the more worth conquering, and as it would be
the final and greatest obstacle on my long journey from Peking, I set out to tackle it with the determination to overcome it at almost any cost. Every other difficulty had been successfully
negotiated, and this last remaining obstacle, though the most severe of all, was not to be permitted at the climax of my journey to keep me from my goal.

These were my feelings as I advanced up the valley, at the head of which lay the Mustagh Pass. But I had little idea of the magnitude of the difficulties which in reality lay before me, and
these were soon to commence.

Scarcely a mile from our bivouac of the previous night we came to a point where the valley was blocked by what appeared to be enormous heaps of broken stones and fragments of rock. These heaps
were between two and three hundred feet in height, and stretched completely across the valley. I had gone on ahead by myself, and when I saw these mounds of
débris,
I thought we might
have trouble in taking ponies over such rough obstacles; but I was altogether taken aback when, on coming up to the heaps, I found that they were masses of solid ice, merely covered over on the
surface with a thin layer of this rocky
débris,
which served to conceal the surface of the ice immediately beneath. And my dismay can be imagined when, on ascending one of the highest
of the mounds, I found that they were but the end of a series which extended without interruption for many miles up the valley to the snows at the foot of the pass. We were, in fact, at the
extremity of an immense glacier. This was the first time I had actually stood on a glacier, and I had never realised till now how huge and continuous a mass of ice it is. Here and there, breaking
through the mounds of stone, I had seen cliffs of what I thought was black rock, but on coming close up to these found them to be nothing but solid dark green ice. I discovered caverns, too, with
transparent walls of clear, clean ice, and long, tapering icicles hanging in delicate fringes from the roof. It was an astonishing and wonderful sight; but I was destined to see yet more marvellous
scenes than this in the icy region upon which I was now entering.

To take a caravan of ponies up a glacier like this seemed to me an utter impossibility. The guides thought so too, and I decided upon sending the ponies round by the Karakoram Pass, 180 miles to
the eastward, to Leh, and going on myself over the Mustagh Pass with a couple of men. This would have been a risky proceeding, for if we did not find our way over the pass we should have scarcely
enough provisions with us to last us till we could return to an inhabited place again. Supplies altogether were running short, and the longer we took in reaching the pass, the harder we should fare
if we did not succeed in getting over. But while I was deciding upon sending the ponies back, the caravan men were making a gallant attempt to lead them up the glacier. I rejoined them, and we all
helped the ponies along as well as we could; hauling at them in front, pushing at them behind, and sometimes unloading and ourselves carrying the loads up the stone-covered mounds of ice. But it
was terribly hard and trying work for the animals. They could get no proper foothold, and as they kept climbing up the sides of a mound they would scratch away the thin layer of stones on the
surface, and then, coming on to the pure ice immediately below, would slip and fall and cut their knees and hocks about in a way which went directly to my heart. I did not see how this sort of
thing could last. We had only advanced a few hundred yards, and there were still from fifteen to twenty miles of glacier ahead. I therefore halted the ponies for the day, and went on with a couple
of men to reconnoitre. We fortunately found, in between the glacier and the mountainside, a narrow stretch of less impracticable ground, along which it would be possible to take the ponies. This we
marked out, and returned to our bivouac after dark.

That night we passed, as usual, in the open, thoroughly exhausted after the hard day’s work, for at the high altitudes we had now reached the rarefaction of the air makes one tired very
quickly, and the constant tumbling about on the slippery glacier in helping the ponies over it added to one’s troubles. My boots were cut through, my hands cut all over, and my elbows a mass
of bruises.

Lieutenant Francis Younghusband, photographed in December 1887, immediately after the expedition. From
The Heart of a Continent,
London, 1937.

At daybreak on the following morning we started again, leading the ponies up the route we had marked out; but a mile from the point where our previous exploration had ended we were confronted by
another great glacier flowing down from the left. We now had a glacier on one side of us, mountains on the other, and a second glacier right across our front. At this time my last remaining pair of
boots were completely worn out, and my feet so sore from the bruises they received on the glacier I could scarcely bear to put them to the ground. So I stayed behind with the ponies, while two men
went on to find a way through the obstacles before us. The men returned after a time, and said they could find no possible way for the ponies; but they begged me to have a look myself, saying that
perhaps by my good fortune I might be able to find one.

I accordingly, with a couple of men, retraced my steps down the edge of the main glacier for some little distance, till we came to a point where it was possible to get ponies on to the glacier
itself and take them right out into the middle. We then ascended a prominent spot on the glacier, from which we could obtain a good view all round. We were in a sea of ice. There was now little of
the rocky moraine stuff with which the ice of the glacier had been covered in its lower part, and we looked out on a vast river of pure white ice, broken up into myriads of sharp needle-like
points. Snowy mountains rose above us on either hand, and down their sides rolled the lesser glaciers, like clotted cream pouring over the lip of a cream-jug; and rising forbiddingly before us was
the cold icy range we should have to cross.

This, marvellous as it was to look upon, was scarcely the country through which to take a caravan of ponies, but I made out a line of moraine extending right up the main glacier. We got on to
this, and, following it up for some distance, found, to our great relief, that it would be quite possible to bring ponies up it on to the smooth snow of the
névé
at the head of
the glacier. Having ascertained this beyond a doubt, we returned late in the afternoon towards the spot where we had left our ponies. Darkness, however, overtook us before we reached it. We
wandered about on the glacier for some time, and nearly lost our way; but at last, quite worn out, reached our little caravan once more.

That night we held a council of war as to which of the two Mustagh Passes we should attack. There are two passes, known as the Mustagh, which cross the range. One, to the east, that is to our
left as we were ascending the glacier, is known as the Old Mustagh Pass, and was in use in former days, till the advance of ice upon it made it so difficult that a new one was sought for, and what
is known as the New Mustagh Pass, some ten miles farther west along the range, had been discovered. It was over this latter pass that the guides hoped to conduct our party. They said that even
ponies had in former times been taken across it by means of ropes and by making rough bridges across the crevasses. No European had crossed either of them, but Colonel Godwin-Austen, in 1862,
reached the southern foot of the new pass in the course of his survey of Baltistan. This New Mustagh Pass seemed the more promising of the two, and I therefore decided upon sending two men on the
following morning to reconnoitre it and report upon its practicability.

At the first streak of daylight the reconnoiterers set out, and the remainder of us afterwards followed with the ponies along the route which we had explored on the previous day. We took the
ponies up the glacier without any serious difficulty, and in the evening halted close up to the head of the glacier where snowy mountains of stupendous height shut us in on every hand. At dusk the
two men who had been sent out to reconnoitre the new pass returned, to say that the ice had so accumulated on it that it would be now quite impossible to take ponies over, and that it would be
difficult even for men to cross it. The plan which they therefore suggested was to leave the ponies behind, and cross the range by the Old Mustagh Pass, push on to Askoli, the first village on the
south side of the range, and from there send back men with supplies for the ponies and the men with them sufficient to enable the caravan to reach Shahidula, on the usual trade route beteen Yarkand
and Kashmir. This was evidently all we could do. We could not take the ponies any farther, and we could not send them back as they were, for we had nearly run out of supplies, and Shahidula the
nearest point at which fresh supplies could be obtained, was one hundred and eighty miles distant. All now depended upon our being able to cross the pass. If we were not able to, we should have to
march this one hundred and eighty miles back through the mountains with only three or four days’ supplies to support us. We might certainly have eaten the ponies, so would not actually have
starved; but we should have had a hard struggle for it, and there would still have been the range to cross at another point.

Matters were therefore approaching a critical stage, and that was an anxious night for me. I often recall it, and think of our little bivouac in the snow at the foot of the range we had to
overcome. The sun sank behind the icy mountains, the bright glow gently disappeared, and they became steely hard while the grey cold of night settled shimmering down upon them. All around was pure
white snow and ice, breathing out cold upon us. The little pools and streamlets of water which the heat of the sun had poured off the glacier during the day were now gripped by the frost, which
seemed to creep around ourselves too, and huddle us up together. We had no tent to shelter us from the biting streams of air flowing down from the mountain summits, and we had not sufficient fuel
to light a fire round which we might lie. We had, indeed, barely enough brushwood to keep up a fire for cooking; but my Chinese servant cooked a simple meal of rice and mutton for us all. We
gathered round the fire to eat it hot out of the bowl, and then rolled ourselves up in our sheepskins and went to sleep, with the stars twinkling brightly above, and the frost gripping closer and
closer upon us.

Next morning, while it was yet dark, Wali, the guide, awoke us. We each had a drink of tea and some bread, and then we started off to attack the pass. The ponies, with nearly all the baggage,
were left behind under the charge of Liu-san, the Chinaman, and some of the older men. All we took with us was a roll of bedding for myself, a sheepskin coat for each man, some native biscuits, tea
and a large tea-kettle, and a bottle of brandy. The ascent to the pass was easy but trying, for we were now not far from nineteen thousand feet above sea-level, and at that height, walking uphill
through deep snow, we quickly became exhausted. We could only take a dozen or twenty steps at a time, and we would then bend over on our sticks and pant as if we had been running hard uphill. We
were tantalised, too, by the apparent nearness of the pass. Everything here was on a gigantic scale, and what seemed to be not more than an hour’s walk from the bivouac was in fact a six
hours’ climb.

It was nearly midday when we reached the top of the pass, and what we saw there makes me shudder even now to think upon. There was nothing but a sheer precipice before us, and those first few
moments on the summit of the Mustagh Pass were full of intensest anxiety to me. If we could but get over, the crowning success of my expedition would be gained. But the thing seemed to me simply an
impossibility. I had had no experience of Alpine climbing, and I had no ice-axes or other mountaineering appliances with me. I had not even proper boots. All I had for foot-gear were some native
boots of soft leather, without nails and without heels – mere leather stockings, in fact – which gave no sort of grip upon an icy surface. How, then, I should ever be able to get down
the icy slopes and rocky precipices I now saw before me I could not by any possibility imagine; and if it had rested with me alone, the probability is we never should have got over the pass at
all.