PANGONG: A GLACIAL LAKE 



607 



and the moraine is smoothed and terraced, but the typical structure 

 remains. Above Tanktse, in the mouth of the outlet valley, finely 

 pohshed knobs of schist and gneiss {A, Fig. 7) show that a glacier came 

 down the valley from Pangong and doubtless deposited part of the 

 moraine, though more may have come from the broader Chumik valley 

 on the south. The knobs and the smoothly glaciated valley bottom 

 are covered in part by a deposit of cobbles and huge bowlders, 

 apparently a moraine laid down in the presence of running water. 

 From analogy with other regions, it is probable that the deposit 

 represents a second advance of the ice, but it may represent merely 

 a stage in the retreat of the first glacier. Farther up the valley, 

 at the tiny lake of 

 Tso Tsear, other 

 glacial knobs appear, 

 and the irregularities 

 in the valley floor 

 shown in the cross- 

 sections of the divide 

 and of the rock-lip 

 in Fig. 6 are of the 

 same sort. It is clear 

 that for 30 miles from 

 Pangong to Dugrukh 

 the outlet valley has 

 been occupied once 

 or twice by glaciers 

 descending below the 

 level of the lake. 



Around the lake itself there are further evidences of glacial action. 

 In the Lukung valley, at the west end of Pangong, a large moraine 

 lies 2 or 3 miles north of the mouth of the outlet valley. Along 

 the southwest shore of the lake something like twenty small glaciers 

 peep out from the tops of the mountains (Figs. 2 and 8), and formerly 

 at times of greater extension deposited moraines well down toward 

 the lake. All these, however, belong to comparatively recent times 

 when, apparently, no moraines reached the basin floor and it was 

 .occupied by a lake. The proof of an earlier, more extensive glacia- 





Fig. 8. — A deep re-entrant at the northwest end of 

 Lake Pangong. View from an elevation of i,ooo feet 

 looking southeast across the lake at the line of glaciers 

 and moraines on the farther side. 



