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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Friday, 13 June 1902
We had a most tedious and uninteresting march to-day, notably chiefly for the conclusion that I came to (and hope to test to-morrow) that either "Masherbrum" is quite a different mountain to the one that looks like it, or that the Baltoro here runs N.E. and S.W., and not E. and W. as on the maps. Considerations of my position really take up the whole of my time. I have never before been made so perfectly miserable. The responsibility of getting to K2 is on me, and one is so accustomed to trust to maps that it still seems possible that O.E. [Oscar Eckenstein] may arrive and say "The maps are all right. What the trouble is, is that you are such a mutton-headed idiot—!" This stage is very silly. It is at the foot of a side glacier, on sand which an hour's good hard rain would turn into mud. There is very little wood and no shelter at all. The view is cut off by moraine on the E., the weather looks like turning bad, and altogether I shall be glad of to-morrow—if it rains I shall use a bad word. The coolies were rather ingenious this afternoon. They got five flat stones and cemented them with flour and water so as to make a water-tight trough in which they proceeded to cook some queer stuff. Rather a clever notion—I hope I shall never be reduced to employing it. I have been suffering from a slight feeling of oppression in the head for three days—I think possible one symptom of the true mountain sickness—though I hold that, unless one gets indigestion or liver chill, the symptoms never amount to what may be called sickness. That is, up to any height I have been to so far (about 18,000 feet). I am now camping higher than I have ever climbed before; I am probably at about 15,000 feet. This diary must read very egotistical, but when a man is alone for more than a day or two there is no other person in the world. The unreality of material things becomes clear—assimilated by the consciousness almost—and in journeying this is especially the case. The scenery is always changing, and the thought (for want of object to occupy it) has its rate greatly reduced. The time-sense, however, remains pretty constant, and the result is that everything is rather dream-like. Absence of civilised intercourse heightens this effect still further. Consequently, everything centres round the Ego far more than usual. I have here no equal or superior (just as elsewhere some people seem to think I think) and it is, consequently, my kiltas, my coolies, my comfort, my journey that fill these pages. Now, this superb explanation ought to calm everybody down and make them all forgive me for saying "I" so often. I'm sure they would if they only knew how cold my fingers were, and that I am writing this drivel for their particular edification. Any person not edified and returning the article within a week, the money will be refunded. So much for Ghore—I have great hopes for the morrow.
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