9 o SPITSBERGEN chap, vi 



up Fox Valley, following at first our old tracks. A quarter 

 of a mile had not been passed before a reindeer was over- 

 taken, a noble fellow with a grand pair of horns, not in 

 velvet. He could have been stalked easily, and as it was, 

 we almost came within range of him. Continuing along 

 the west bank, we gained the foot of the glacier at the 

 head of the valley in about an hour of bog-walking and 

 debris-stumbling. 



This, the Fox Glacier, is fed by a considerable cirque 

 of neve, which stretches back to the west as far as the 

 arete by which we mounted Fox Peak. It divides into 

 two branches, and there is a col at the head of each, one 

 adjacent to Fox Peak, the other and lower more to the 

 east, and visible from Cairn Camp at the apparent head of 

 the valley. We chose the higher col as more direct, and 

 named it Fox Pass. The route led up what seemed to be 

 neve, but proper glacier ice presently emerged. We had 

 not yet learnt that there are no true neves in Spitsbergen. 

 A batch of ice-crevasses smothered in snow gave some 

 trouble. We turned most of them by bearing up the slope 

 of the peak between the two cols. It was a steep slope, 

 but all the new snow had fallen in avalanches off the lower 

 part, leaving a brown edge above, which looked like a 

 bergschrund. The true bergschrund was, however, still 

 higher up. Keeping round the slope we reached our cold 

 and windy col (2550 feet) about a quarter to eight p.m. 

 Fox Peak to the west was covered with cloud ; the mound 

 to the east seemed a mere heap of fine debris which the 

 wind blew on to the snow, thereby forming dust-pyramids, 

 in their turn snowed over. Thus a peculiar area of mounded 

 and dirty snow was produced, the like of which we found 

 in other places. The view ahead was meagre in the extreme. 

 There was a glacier (Plough Glacier), trending down in a 

 WSW. direction, and there were snow mountains beyond, 



