186 A Winter Journey amongst the Lutzu 
rarely sets a fertile one. Here and there, too, clumps of 
terrestrial orchids caught the eye. 
Towards mid-day the forest grew more open and the 
glare from the expanse of glittering snow became in- 
tolerable. Far away to the east, through the mouth of 
the valley we had ascended, we caught a glimpse of the 
Mekong-Yang-tze dividing range, but there was not much 
snow on it. 
At a broken-down shed we rested an hour for lunch and 
then entered the bamboo forest, at the head of which the 
steep climb to the pass commenced. The snow had by this 
time lost its crisp surface, and as it grew deeper, the going 
became very heavy. There were magnificent birch and fir 
trees scattered about here amongst the clumps of bamboo, 
as well as big rhododendron bushes. A steep ascent 
through the forest brought us to a narrow gently-rising 
gulley where the soft snow had drifted to a depth of several 
feet, and scarcely even a shrub showed itself. A biting 
wind whistled down from the broad saddle-shaped pass 
above, and the sun being now hidden behind the mountains 
the air was freezing. Sticking up through the snow, in 
which we floundered knee deep, were the dead haulms of 
a varied alpine flora, rattling their gaunt frames gloomily in 
the cutting wind, and here I found another species of 
Meconopsts, of which I secured a few seeds. 
The summit of the pass is dominated to the south-east 
by a magnificent rock pyramid, entirely snow-clad when we 
passed, rising about 500 feet directly above it; to the 
north-west it is continued as a low ridge gradually rising 
again as the Doker-la is approached. Except in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the pass this ridge is clothed 
with forests of fir which, at their limit, show clearly enough 
in their mutilated forms the force and severity of the winds 
which sweep over the narrow col. 
The Chun-tsung-la, as the Tibetans call it, is the easiest 
pass to the Salween in this region, being considerably lower 
than the Doker-la and considerably less steep than the Sie- 
la. On Major Davies’s map it is marked 12,900 feet, and 
judging by the vegetation and other comparative indications, 
I should put it down at about that, or slightly more. 
Nevertheless it is closed for two or three months in the 
