Kansas City daily journal. [volume] (Kansas City, Mo.) 1892-1897, 1895-06-17
AMONG HIGH HIMALAYAS.
MOUNTAINEERING TWENTY THOU.
SAND FEET ABOVE THE SEA.
Many Wonderful sights 20 lie Met with
Among the Snow Peaks-The Gurk-
has Are Queer but
Jolly People.

|
has climbed al the trees In the garden OF
his home. Why he wants TO climb them ne
cannot iell. and 1t is just as hard to ex-
| plain why men want TO climb mountains;
but for some reason or another mountain
Climbing Is very attractive. The Emperor
Irajan climbed Etna to see the sunrise.
see what being on top of hill felt like
II is only in recent years that people
embns % and whenere sPOI, man gi basins he
| senerally goes on. We learned to climb
amongst snow and Ice In the Alps and now
everywhere. Mount st. Elias and Ruwen-
zori and, Mount Cook and Eyerest-they
| climber wants TO be the first on the top.
In 1892 ] spent six months amongst the
| great mountatns of Asia. on the north edge
mountains together in that part of the
world than anywhere else, though the
highest Of ,i them Is not asa, as high as ;er.st ,,
| hard work of cutting steps In the ice. and
the Indian government lent me some Cur
'rhe gurkhas are the joiiiest people in
Asia they are all short and fat. and they
Laugh his % az @ the time; They come from the
are always great friends with Scotchmen.
At first they did not see the fun of climb
up, an avalanche of snow fell near us, and
Killed and carried down some Wild goats
| with big horns. called lbex. The Gurkhas
wanted to get the goats TO eat, so one Of
them started sliding down after them. 1t
looked so easy TO slide. but ne soon found
himself going through the air like a tum-
bling stone, and he could not stop.
After going about a quarter. of a mile he
was luckily thrown into a heap, Of soft
laughing, and he said 1t was because all
the ends OF his fingers were scraped off.
and the red tips looked so funny After
that the Gurkhas thought climbing was
worth while
The same day, when we were going along
great avalanche came down IL toward
n fiat ice level. at the foot of steep slope,
us and we had to run for our lives from it,
1t brought down cloud OF snow dust
about half mile wide and made a strong
wind We passed the body of the avalanche
safely but the wind blew us fiat onto our
faces. and the snow dust wetted us to the
skin. This made the Gurkhas laugh again,
so that they had to sit down and roll
Mount Blanc. In the Alps. is over i5,oco
feet high. and takes only two days to
climb; but in the Himalayas 1t takes per-
haps month 10 climb a big mountain,
and no one has yet climbed to more than
900 feet. Everest is 90 900 feet high, and
it will be. a long time before men climb so
The longest pass over the snow in
Switzerland can be crossed in a day, but
Pass, which is the longest glacier pass in
the world.
miles long, to the snow Held, and We then
found another which took us down the
other side. There was nothing living or
growing near 1t, and no one had been
there before. There were tremendous
snow mountains on both sides, and
great needles OF rock standing up out of
We hired a number OF natives to go with
us and carry our tents and food and
ened, as we got far into the snow that we
had to watch h., them day and night ,I lest
and we, had to hnd our way through
clouds; but when the sun shons 1t was SO
r6 hot hat the we ton were of IN.
on the other side. We looked over and
there was a large, fiat lake Of snow, with
rising through it like islands. There did
not seem to be any way out OF this lake,
but we had to go down to it,
. When we began to go down a heavy
snow storm came on, and for a time we
as far as the fiat snow and came TO the
corner of kind of cape, or headland. of
rock
Just then the storm lifted We looked
round the corner and saw glacier slop-
ing down the way we wanted to go, and
knew from this that we could get out.
The night and the storm came on together
again, SO we pitched our tents and slept
descend that glacier to a village called
Askole, where we could buy sheep and
Hour.
From Askole we started up another val
ley. and in five days reached the foot of
another great glacier, called the Baltoro
We had TO cross a river in this, valley
are very unpleasant things to cross. The
ropes are made of twisted birch twigs.
There is one rope to walk along and one
rope TO hold TO with each hand, Here
and there the ropes are tied together by
cross bars of wood, over which one has TO
The bridge sometimes is as high AS 4
church steepe above the swiftly running
river Such bridges are hundred yards
long or more, and they are very steep at
This ice river is about two miles wide
Il must be ascended straight UP. because
traverse, The surface is, not Nat, but
broken into mounds, each about a hundred
the other we walked over the loose seN stones tones
and rocks which are always slipping
Between the mounds there are on the ice
lakes of water, which must be carefully
M for ToS heY abe be, very deep ana freezing
as far as We could march up this terrible
road
we we mae IN 9a aeh n hs srea up Ihe
tains, over $1,000 feet high. one evening the
tower Of Masherbrum, with the sunset
flashing from its icy crest and its base all
giants appeared, most of them nameless
No one had ever seen these grand peaks
from from SO near before IT., The larg;e,s55 Of all,
the map. is believed to be the second high
est mountain in the the world, No one had
" Our impatience to see it led us to climb
posed it would he visible; but another
mountain, just big enough to cover 1t, still
hid IL from us, and we had to come down
A few days later we came close to the foot
of II in clouds and storm.
We pitched our tents at height greater
than that of the top of Mount Blanc, and
there We waited until fine day should
come. But the weather seemed to get
worse and worse; our camp was buried
deep in snow, which fell steadily. We could
not light fire. Everything was cold and
miserable.
After five days the clouds broke and
there the great peak was-a huge mass of
rock with snow patched all over 1.-THE
mghtest rock tower in the world, for
Everest is great snowy mound. and not
a tower.
We went farther up the Baltoro glacier,
till we found another great mountain that
flled the head of the valley. This We de
termined to climb None of the natives
could come here with, us except two of the
the Swiss guide and | made up the party.
we climbed for a week from where we
left the porters, We had to cut our way
first up a kind of frozen cascade. an ice
fall-where the ice river is hit by bit tum-
bled over a precipice, or rather down a
steep slope of rock, 1t might he called an
Above this we came to gentler snow
slopes which were cut across by huge
crevasses hundreds OF feet deep We had
TO find snow bridges over them and these
often roped, but we were rOped together,
so one pulled the other out
Thus we reached the foot of an icy ridge,
quite sharp at the edge and with steep