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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 31 August 1905
On the 31st the men whom I had sent down to try to get some food returned, having partially succeeded, and I immediately took some of them to make a way up the slopes of the ridge of the little Subyichany peak (which I may call for the moment Peak Y), under which I am sitting. From this ridge I hope to force a passage to the ridge of Kinchinjunga, or to the column visible from Darjeeling. These slopes proved excessively bad after a while, the snow lying thin or hard blue ice at an angle of 50 degrees or more. Easy enough for me with my claws; difficult or impossible for the men. The leader in fact who was unroped, fell but, supporting him, I caught and held him safely. But the shock of the fall shook his nerves, and he began to untie himself from the rope. A sharp tap brought him to his senses, and probably saved his life; the only occasion on which I have had to strike a man. I insisted on continuing the ascent for the sake of moral; but, finding things grew worse, went back before nightfall. The men, however, all went down during the night, with wonderful stories of how they had all been swept away by an avalanche, and how the “Bara Sahib” had beaten them with axes and long sticks, and was going to shoot them, and how—But is there any limit to the Tibetan imagination?
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