|
Dr. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod Diary Entry Friday, 25 August 1905
The next day we had a delicious morning; for the first time, we were able to fully enjoy the grandiose spectacle that surrounded us. The western ridge of Kangchinjunga stands out against a cloudless, intense blue sky. Precipices, swept away incessantly by avalanches, leave us no hope for the possibility of direct access to this ridge which itself does not seem as forbidding as its approaches. Not the slightest somewhat horizontal snowfield, no place, even a square meter, to raise the smallest of our tents; the rocks themselves, supposing that human forces still allow rock climbing at such a height, nowhere offer a somewhat engaging point of attack.
The western end of the ridge rises the Jannu to nearly 8,000 meters above sea level. This summit overlooks a massif whose surroundings have, to say the least, as off-putting as the rest of the chain. From whatever side you look at it, it only offers steep walls, cut by vertical corridors or so sloping that the glaciers cannot even hang on them. We reach, during the day, the top of our rocky outcrop and establish the Camp V in the middle of a jumble of boulders where the coolies quickly set up a series of small dry stone shelters which protected them as best they could. a new fall of snow which lasted all evening and much of the night.
|