THE GUMSALI GLACIER. 385 



vants and baggage to Joshimutt, and merely took two loads 

 with me one bedding and clothes, the other a basket contain- 

 ing a few cooking-pots and eatables for five days and with 

 seven or eight Bhootiahs, picked men, started to cross this 

 pass. My two loads were divided equally among the men. 

 I could only find one man in Gumsali who had ever been 

 across this pass to Badrinath (' Beea,' pudhan of Gumsali). 

 I took him as a guide. 



" I started about noon of 30th October : the Bhootiahs were, 

 of course, all drunk, as they always are on starting on any 

 expedition. "We went about ten miles up the Gumsali valley, 

 and bivouacked in the open at an elevation of 14,000 feet. The 

 night was clear, and my thermometer next morning showed 

 about twelve degrees of frost. There was no firewood procur- 

 able beyond this place, so we took on a small supply, enough 

 for breakfast, intending to cross the pass and encamp about 

 3000 feet down on the other side. Three miles up the valley 

 took us to the foot of the Gumsali glacier. We then went 

 three or four miles over the surface of the glacier to where it 

 is joined by another from the right, and we breakfasted on a 

 moraine between the two. There is a large lake two or three 

 miles from this spot, up the glacier to the right, which I had 

 not time to go and see, as it lay entirely off my road. By all 

 accounts it must be about half a mile in length. After break- 

 fast we went about eight miles farther over the glacier, when 

 we came within sight of the top of the pass about two miles 

 above us. 



" Up to this point there had been no difficulty. The ascent 

 had been easy, though here and there there had been a little 

 hindrance in the masses of rock and stones that lay piled on 

 the glacier. From this point, however, to the top of the 

 glacier, was very steep and very much crevassed. We had to 

 cut footsteps with axes nearly the whole way. This delayed 

 us very much, and it was nearly sunset when we reached the 

 top. Here our guide was at fault. He had only crossed the 



2 B 



