MUZTAGH ATA¹

H. W. TILMAN

In a tent in the garden of the Hunza Postal Superintendent I found the Consul and his wife who had arrived the previous evening. They were on an extended tour. In this country and most others I associate consuls with climbs up long flights of stairs at the top of which is a locked door and a small printed card with the legend 'Office hours Saturdays only 10-12', and it struck me that in Kashgar a consul might be an even rarer bird of passage. However, the answer is that there the British Consul is not a parochial stamper of passports but is expected to travel about and, like the sun, shed his beneficent rays over the whole of Kashgaria. Tashkurghan, the capital of Sarikol, a receiving and dispatching centre on the mail route to India, necessarily deserved to be visited, and if the return journey were to lie in the direction of Muztagh Ata the Chinese of all people would be the last to demur; for did not Confucius say: 'The wise find pleasure in waters, the virtuous in mountains'; and again in the epigrams of Chang Ch'ao: 'If there are no famous hills then nothing need be said, but since there are they must be visited.'

In former days Tashkurghan must have been of more importance for it lay on one of the two ancient routes from China to Western Asia and the Persian Gulf. Two very great travellers, Marco Polo and the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsuan-tsang (c. a.d. 600) must have visited it. It is not very busy now, comprising only a lifeless bazaar, some serais usually empty, the modern Chinese fort and magistracy, and the ruins of the small walled town of earlier days. But its proximity to the Russian frontier, across which there is a pass less than 20 miles south-west of the town, make it a place of interest to the Chinese who maintain a number of troops there. In 1946 the local 'nationalists', assisted and perhaps instigated from over the border, took and held Tashkurghan for some time.

Before we could start for Muztagh Ata, the duties of hospitality had to be discharged. The Amban of Sarikol and the officers of the garrison invited us to lunch and, since we were in a hurry to go, we insisted that they should give us our revenge by dining with us the same day. The Chinese custom of multiplying the courses of a meal almost to infinity is well known, and though the resources of Tashkurghan did not give our hosts the scope they would have wished, they did their best and we had to deal seriatim with the following: by way of limbering up there was tea with brandy butter in it, cake and apples, then meat patties, meat balls, fried eggs and radishes, roast mutton, liver, duck, a local fish, soup and rice, the last being the accepted way of delivering the coup de grace at these feasts. Chopsticks, knives, spoons, forks, and fingers were all brought into play according to the toughness of the opposition, and the whole was eased down with 'kumiss', fermented mare's milk—a colourless, slightly alcoholic drink, sour, and reminiscent of cider. The uncivilized yahoo when he gives a feast—and I prefer it his way—merely increases the quantity of the ordinary meal. Instead of a few scraggy bones one or two sheep are dished up, instead of a bowl of rice or pilau, a hip-bath of it; but civilized people like the Romans, the Chinese, and to a lesser extent ourselves, like to measure their state of civilization by the number and variety of the courses-a barbaric habit, destructive to the stomach and inimical to good cooking.

One of the principal difficulties in entertaining a posse of Chinese officials (Mrs. Ship ton had fourteen to cope with) is to get them inside the room. Questions of precedence lead to what threatens to be an interminable contest of polite diffidence until it is cut short by the pressure from behind of those whose claims are too low to be worth disputing and whose hunger is too sharp to be any longer denied. The posse surges forward, and when the less nimble have picked themselves up from the floor the contest is renewed over the question of seating. It was a pretty motley assortment that eventually got themselves seated, difficult to weld into a convivial whole even with the copious aid of Russian brandy and Ship ton's manful sallies into the intricacies of Chinese of which he has a smattering. Most Chinese are abstemious to a fault. Only the Amban and a man who claimed to have accompanied Sir Aurel Stein on some of his journeys (in the capacity of coolie I judged from his appearance) would willingly submit themselves to the mellowing influence of brandy.

Next morning, 8th August, we got off at the surprisingly early hour of 9.30, accompanied by two camels carrying the baggage and a Mongolian Horde who were to speed us on our way—the Amban himself, all the officers, and Sir Aurel Stein's coolie whom I with difficulty recognized in Homburg hat, silver-rimmed sun goggles, and knickerbockers, looking now more like the great explorer himself. At the first village all dismounted, and after a long session of grinning and handshaking, the Lesser Horde took its departure and we headed for the north.

At this point the Tashkurghan river is deflected eastwards, and a low ridge, cut through by the narrow gorge of the Tagharma river, separates its wide valley from the even more extensive Tagharma plain. This continues to the north for about 12 miles until it meets another ridge beyond which an almost equally wide valley runs north, shut in between the Sarikol range on the west and the Muztagh Ata and Kungur groups on the east. The Tagharma plain abounds in villages and cultivation while the higher valley beyond is the happy home of many Kirghiz, their herds, and their flocks.

Emerging from the bare yellow rock gorge we were delighted by the sight of the green Tagharma vale, its scattered villages, high poplars, browsing herds, and waving wheat-fields. Our guides, vaguely aware that the consular mind was intent on mountains, took us too far to the east in the direction of the most southerly foothills of the Muztagh Ata group and we finally camped in a village close to a nallah which undoubtedly led direct to the heart of the mountains. With some difficulty we resisted the insistent invitation of this nallah, but next morning we sheered away to the north-west in the direction of the pass which crossed the low ridge north of the Tagharma plain. This erratic course involved us in a long day. By lunch time we were many miles short of the pass. The transport—ponies now instead of camels—went by, and Naiad Shah was instructed to tell the men to halt for the night at a grazing- ground this side of the pass. But he had apparently failed to select from his repertoire the right language in which to give the order, so that when we reached the place—all of us fully ripe for stopping— there was no sign of the ponies. Ship ton, the two mounted infantrymen whom we had been obliged to accept as guards, and anyone else whose beast was capable of it, all galloped off in pursuit but without success. By 7 p.m. we were on top of the Ulugh Rabat pass (14,000 feet) and in extremely bad tempers. There was a noble prospect to the dark plain below and the white dome of Muztagh above, rapidly dissolving in the dusk, but the noblest prospect is improved by the sight of an inn and though our inn was in sight on the plain below, it was rapidly receding across it. How we reviled that man of many tongues. Water arrested the march of the flying column and by 8 p.m., we and our transport were united by some muddy pools. Stragglers were still coming in an hour later. An unpleasant characteristic of most high uplands is their windiness, but that night we were spared the usual gale which makes cooking in the open impossible. While supper was preparing, we had leisure to reflect on the truth of Cromwell's remark that ‘No man goes further than he who does not know where he is going'.

We were now fairly under the western slopes of Muztagh Ata, though not yet within striking distance, and were able to appreciate its enormous bulk. The south side of this so-called 'Father of Ice Mountains' is defended by two outlying peaks each over 22,000 feet; the north side is steep and broken, and the east side is unexplored. (On my return journey I passed round by the east side but bad weather precluded any view of the mountain.) The west side is a huge gently curving arc of snow, the lower part split by three almost parallel glaciers. Originating at about 20,000 feet in deep narrow clefts these glaciers, when they reach the snow line at about 17,000 feet, spill and spread over the slopes of brown scree like streams of white lava, descending in a cascade of pinnacles to as low as 14,000 feet. That one aspect alone of a mountain can contain three such glaciers is an indication of its breadth, for the lower parts of the glaciers are separated by 2 or even 3 miles of scree slope.

Two names famous in Central Asian exploration are connected with Muztagh Ata. In 1894 Sven Hedin, besides a rough survey of the mountain, made four attempts to climb it. Rough survey is the word, for he ascribed to it a height of 25,600 feet and 'the unchallenged pre-eminence of it over the peaks which cluster round, which is proved by its name "Father of Ice Mountains'". The Kungur group, less than 25 miles north-east, he seems either not to have seen or to have ignored, for the eye unaided by instruments can appreciate that they are higher than Muztagh Ata. With regard to the name, the story goes that the reply to the question about its name was simply 'Muztagh, Ata' or Tee Mountain, O Father'. In 1900 the late Sir Aurel Stein made a survey of the Sarikol valley and his surveyor, Ram Singh of the Indian Survey, carried out the triangulation of the Muztagh Ata and Kungur groups, discovering that the highest peak of Kungur is 25,146 feet against 24,388 feet for Muztagh Ata.

Having studied both the ground and Sven Hedin's account of his attempts we decided that the best line was that between the two largest of these western glaciers, the Yam Bulak and the Tergem Bulak. Some Kirghiz yurts were reported in a valley north of the Yam Bulak glacier about two hours away and there we thought we would have our base. In these parts of Sinkiang yurts have a powerful attraction which the wise traveller should on no account attempt to resist. The thought of doing so never for a moment occurred to us— we merely crawled from one yurt to the next, drinking tea, eating yoghourt, and studying nomadic life, though we ourselves were much more nomadic than our hosts whose life seemed remarkably static or even sedentary. Since travellers are rare they are usually welcome, and food, fire, and a bed are automatically put at their disposal by the kindly Kirghiz. When we reached the little valley under the slopes of the mountain where we proposed harbouring, we were disturbed to find there only one yurt, the other families having just moved down to Subashi a few miles away, the principal place of the Sarikol plain. This family, too, were about to go, but readily postponed their move when they heard that Mrs. Shipton would be alone there for a day or two while we were on the mountain. In the afternoon we sorted out food for our expedition and in the evening we walked up towards the Yam Bulak glacier to reconnoitre a route for the morrow. On the moraine two herds which looked like wild goats were playing about.

Sven Hedin was a great explorer, but he made no claims to be a mountaineer. He therefore had no false pride and in his attempts on the mountain he made full use of the local aids to progress. Of his four attempts the most successful was the second, when, carried on the back of a yak, he claimed to have reached a height of 20,600 feet. As he justly observes, the secret of freedom from the troubles of altitude (a secret which so far has eluded research) ‘is the avoidance of bodily exertion'.

From his free use of yaks on the mountain we may deduce several things; the absence of any technical difficulties on the west side of the mountain, at any rate for a great way up; the absence of man power in Sinkiang, where no Turki who can afford an ass and no Kirghiz who owns a yak or a pony ever walks, much less carries anything; and finally, the all-round supremacy of the yak over donkeys, mules, horses, camels, or even elephants, though Hannibal might dispute the last. As a load carrier, the yak's powers are well known, but his virtues as a hack arc unrecognized. Although Central Asia is the home of the horse one may travel there a long time without being aware of it, or if aware of it one may conclude that he has remained at home too long. No doubt there are good horses, but the locals very wisely keep them for themselves, mounting the innocent stranger on their sorriest screws, so that if he should happen to fall down with them no harm is clone except, perhaps, to the stranger.

A good riding yak is much preferable to the sort of beast one is commonly invited to put one's leg over. He will do his 3 miles per hour without the incessant kicking and Hogging which is essential in order to keep the local jade up to the bit (the yak, by the way, has no bit, only a rope through the nose), and his short legs and quick step give the rider the comfortable if illusory impression that he is covering the ground at a great rate. On him the rider has not to dismount when going uphill in order to spare his mount, or when going downhill in order to spare his own neck, for the yak takes everything as it comes, uphill or downhill, rough or smooth. In fording rivers, despite those short legs, he is as steady as a rock, for his great weight keeps him well anchored to the bottom. And, of course, at heights of 16,000 feet or more, when the horse like the rest of us is beginning to suffer from the effects of 'alt', the yak is beginning to feel at home; he may blow like a grampus, but his tremendous girth ensures that there is plenty of air in the bellows. And, finally, when the snow is reached, he is sent ahead to break a trail for the floundering men and horses behind him, and his fortunate rider has merely to turn round and yank a length of hair from his copious tail in order to provide himself with an adequate pair of snow-glasses.

Profiting by Sven Hedin's example, Shipton and I determined that though we ourselves might condescend to walk, we should have a yak to carry our camp to the snow line at about 17,000 feet. Not wishing to have to retract much of what I have just written, I must presume that our yak was the exception that proves the rule, or that like most other mountaineers, yaks have their off-days. He was, indeed, a total failure.

With stores for six days the three of us started on nth August, accompanied by the Sherpa Gyalgen, a Turki lad, a yak, and his driver. The weather since we left Tashkurghan had been cloudy and unsettled but to-day it was fine, calm, and sunny. Having passed round the snout of the Yam Bulak glacier, 3 or 4 miles from our yurt, we took the long easy scree slope lying between that glacier and the Tergem Bulak to the south of it. Unencumbered ourselves, confident in our yak's prowess, we climbed comfortably to about 16,000 feet, where we sat down to await the arrival of the yak and the rest of the party. Time passed, confidence waned, Nothing could be heard, nothing seen, for the slope from bottom almost to top is as regularly and convexly spherical as a schoolroom globe, presenting a horizon limited to less than 100 yards. Reluctantly, we started down to investigate and presently came upon Gyalgen, the Turki, and the yak driver, staggering up under heavy loads. Of the yak there was no sign, he having very sensibly struck and sat down at the first hint of what was expected of him. The driver, too, was no keener on mountaineering than his charge. Groaning and moaning on account of a splitting head and the certain death that awaited us if we persisted, he had to be sent down immediately, pursued by sounds of desultory ill will, while the rest of us struggled on with the loads, marvelling how much better these things were done in Sven Hedin's time.

Shipton, his belief in the principle of the economy of force overcoming his chivalry, allowed his wife to relieve him of a sleeping-bag and a cork mattress. There was apparently more in marriage than I had yet realized, but it was too late then to do anything about it— I must bear my own burden. We plodded on for another thousand feet and camped at 3 p.m. just below the first of the snow at about 17,000 feet. From here Mrs. Shipton and the Turki lad went down, leaving Gyalgen, myself, and her grateful but unfeeling husband to finish the job.

That evening we did a short reconnaissance. Just above the camp, scree gave place to snow, or rather ice, for the snow had melted from the lowest 200 or 300 feet of underlying ice. The slope, however, was gentle enough so that one could walk without nicking steps. Higher up was an ice-fall which could be turned, beyond that a long stretch of crevassed snow slope, and higher still, unbroken slopes extended to the summit dome. Most of this, except for the actual summit, the exact whereabouts of which we could not locate, we had already seen from below. Our safe and methodical plan was to have a camp at about 20,000 feet and another at 22,000 feet, from which, however moderately we rated ourselves, we ought to have no difficulty in crawling to the top.

Next day we started, we two carrying very modest loads, Gyalgen rather an immodest one. The ice-fall was soon overcome by an outflanking movement, and having threaded our way through the worst of the crevassed section we camped at 3 p.m. in a snow hollow, crediting ourselves with a rise of 3,000 feet. The snow was in really excellent condition, everything was going to be too easy. This gratuitous supposition and Gyalgen's faltering under his too heavy load had already caused an alteration in a perfectly sound plan. Assuming that the snow, so good here, could be no worse higher up and might well be better, we agreed to cut out the intermediate camp at 22,000 feet and to take only one bite at the cherry—an agreement which I, aware of advancing years and limited high climbing powers, had no reason to make. This pregnant decision was come to during a halt on the way up from Camp I while we were pondering over ways of easing Gyalgen's burden, neither of us having the indelicacy to suggest taking some of it upon ourselves. Since this new plan meant that we should if all went well spend only one night on the mountain, some of the food (we had four days' supply) could be dumped. But Shipton's liberal ideas of dumping and his ruthless whittling down to a bare one day's supply led to a sharp debate. Though I may have had private misgivings about our only needing one day's food, since I had already agreed to the change of plan there was little I could urge against this wholesale jettisoning beyond the desirability of having an ample reserve; and possibly the fact that none of it happened to come from my own load made me the more reluctant to see so much left behind.

Through having been on Rakaposhi only two months ago I expected to be better acclimatized than I proved to be, but there, though we had been twice to 20,000 feet, we had never slept higher than 17,000 feet. That night I had a violent headache and in the morning felt as little like climbing 4 feet as the 4,000 which we had cheerfully set ourselves. Still it had to be done—one day being our self-allotted span—so at 6 a.m. we got under way.

Though not a breath of wind stirred in our hollow, it was noticeably cold in the bleak and pallid dawn. Merely by fumbling with buttons after some necessary business outside my thumbs and forefingers were so chilled that they never felt right for the rest of the day. Well down as we were on the western side of this great protuberance on the earth's sphere—almost another sphere in itself—the sun would be long in reaching us. The more reason therefore for pressing rapidly onwards and upwards to meet it, so off we went over the good hard snow. For 1,000 feet we climbed rapidly and hopefully, then a deterioration set in, the snow assuming that vile consistency which necessitates one's stamping with all one's might first time, or even two or three times, to ensure that the step will not give way the moment it is stood upon. Worse still a wind started to blow. Its force seemed negligible. One had not to lean against it, for example, and had we been wearing straw hats and carrying umbrellas I doubt if we should have been inconvenienced by it. Nevertheless, it went through us to the marrow. The exertion of stamping steps contributed nothing to our warmth, nor did the sun when he at length reached us, and even at this early stage the effects of these conditions began to show. Shipton was overcome with a fit of rigor and lay shaking in the snow while we sat by shivering in sympathy with only a little less violence.

On we plodded up that vast tilted snow-field seeing nothing either to north or south by which to measure our progress. Though we moved slowly we moved continuously, for it was too cold to sit and rest and eat. As early as one o'clock we had the impression of arriving somewhere and two hours later all that we could say was that that impression was no weaker. Still we thought the end must be very near. We reckoned we had climbed 1,000 feet in the first hour when the snow was good, and having been climbing steadily since then for eight hours we argued that most of the remaining 3,000 feet had been accounted for. Whenever we dared to look up our eyes met the same unbroken horizon of snow apparently less than 100 feet above, and now long hours of cold, fatigue, and hope deferred began to tell.

Some time before this my contribution to step-kicking had become of small account and now Gyalgen, too, found himself unable to take his turn. Shipton still had a little left in him so that we agreed to struggle on until 3.30 p.m. when if there were still no firm indication of the summit we would give up and try again another day. Quite early in the afternoon I had suggested going down so that next day we would have the advantage of a great many ready-made steps; but this had been overruled on the ground that the steps might no longer be there; which was true enough because when we did go down we had trouble even to find the steps, so completely had the driving snow filled them.

After a generous half-hour's extra play in this game between the mountain and ourselves a decision in our favour seemed as far off as ever. For me the delusion of the summit being at hand had long become stale, stimulating despair rather than hope. I feared that even if we reached a point from which the summit could be seen we should find it at the wrong end of a long fiat ridge, for the perversity of inanimate objects is always a factor to be reckoned with. By this lime we were all pretty much on our knees. Had the summit been in sight and our remaining task measurable some hidden reserves of strength might have been found, but there was still nothing to be seen beyond the next 100 feet or so of snow. To persevere one must have hope, and this, which had been pretty severely tried, was now extinguished by too long deferment.

Allowing only two hours to get down we might still have struggled on for another hour could we but force our bodies to do so, and to give in before the decision was imposed on us by the clock may seem weak-minded—in fact we damned ourselves heartily later. But our wisest actions are often those for which we are not really responsible and the sequel showed that we did well to go down. Exclusive of halts for vomiting by Ship ton the descent did take about two hours. Our outgoing tracks were obliterated so that the finding of the way through the crevassed section was less easy than it had been coming up. After dark we should not have found it.

Back in the tent an unpleasant discovery awaited us. Shipton found all the toes of one foot were frostbitten—dead white that evening and black in the morning. The tips of my big toes were slightly touched and went black but came painfully back to life forty-eight hours later. I was wearing the 'expedition’ boots with the heavy moulded rubber soles and Shipton a pair of the heavily nailed porter's boots which I had brought out for Rakaposhi which he maintained had got wet the previous day so that they had ice inside them before we started. Gyalgen who was wearing lightly nailed boots came to no harm. As a purely speculative consolation it may not amount to much, but it seems likely that had we persevered for another hour the damage might have been much more serious. Success would have been a very considerable consolation, whereas here we had failure with frostbite thrown in. The condition of Shipton's foot was, of course, decisive—we must go down—but apart from that not one of us was fit to try again next day or for several days. The effort had taken more out of us than we realized. A week later I still found it more than usually difficult to walk uphill at all.

Whether the top of the mountain is a long flat ridge or whether, as seems more likely, it is a flattish dome we still do not know. Shipton is of the opinion that we were on the summit dome and not more than 100 feet below the top. An inexcusable assumption of probable snow conditions, over-confidence in our powers, and unexpected cold, had proved our undoing, and of the last alone had we any right to complain. In early June on the North Col of Mount Everest one would not experience such cold. Here it was mid-August, and though Muztagh Ata is in Latitude 38 degrees while Everest is 10 degrees farther south one would not expect that to make so much difference. We live and learn, and big mountains are stern teachers.

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