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Dr. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod Diary Entry Saturday, 26 August 1905
The next day, Reymond [Charles-Adolphe Reymond], who had gone in search of a passable road for the coolies, avoiding if possible the ice which now surrounds us on all sides, soon returns, saying that the glacier is our only way, and we here is carving huge steps for the porters. Only then did I see, with amazement, that these men had scarcely suitable shoes in very few numbers. So far they had walked barefoot, and Crowley always told me that everyone should have shoes in perfect condition and hidden in their belongings. What a disappointment! I already now foresee the futility of so much effort and expense, the failure of the whole expedition, for having blindly trusted a careless and unconscious individual. Reymond, however, courageously attacks the edge of the glacier roughly steep and waist-high, and as we go up the snow quickly increases in quantity and quality. We are moving very slowly and very painfully. We are astonished, however, that the coolies, in spite of their heavy loads, stand so well on the steps, cut widely, it is true, but which fill with snow as a man has passed, and which must always be cleared. again. Left at 8 am, we had not done 500 meters by 4 pm! At one point we had a fairly heated discussion about which way to go, so I categorically refused to go in the direction Crowley indicated. Reymond also did not want to expose the troops to new dangers. Crowley then took, for a few moments, the direction of the column, cut half a dozen steps, then soon tired, asked Reymond again to replace him; the few steps which had just been cut were so badly made that I thought, on several occasions, that the coolies were going to lose their footing, and it was a great relief when I passed in my turn, the last. We reached, after much more effort, and with the perpetual threat of a fatal slide or an avalanche, a small rocky ridge, very inclined. We are breathing now, but we are no further ahead and night is approaching. We decide to stay where we are and establish our VI Camp. In the most uncomfortable site, but also the most grandiose that it is possible to contemplate, straddling a thin ridge of snow that must be clipped to put up the tents that can slide on both sides with equal and terrible ease, We stay there for two days, both to rest and to wait for a convoy of food. I did not leave my tent during those two days, except when Pache [Alexis Pache] arrived a little unexpectedly, before the coolies. Several of the latter had stopped on the way, especially the one carrying Pache's bunk; he waited for her in vain for three days, and so spent some rather unpleasant nights.
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