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Dr. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod Diary Entry Monday, 4 September 1905
The coolies under Nanga's direction leave, equipped with the necessary instruments, to search for the corpses. Around 10 a.m. we see that a group is working on Pache's [Alexis Pache] body completely packed in a Tapolin. Before going down the coolies deposited in a crevasse their 3 comrades, arms crossed on their chest, preferring to leave them as high as possible in the hands of the God of Kangchinjunga. As soon as we see the men again escaping, we dig a pit that is ready when they arrive. Around noon Pache is wrapped in a Tapolin, wet clothes, right sleeve stained with blood; his face is bloated and looks like a drowned person; some blood also comes out through his nose; his hands also have some scratches; the rest of his body seems to have nothing; he is rigid cadaveric in the process to pass; we photograph him and then cover his face. We put him in the grave, his head to the north. All the coolies are eager to go to look for stones on all sides for a beautiful mausoleum. We engrave a stone with these words: ALEXIS. A. PACHE.+1.IX.1905+
We had to wait three days before discovering the remainders of our companions buried under several meters of a very painful snow to be searched. - The coolies left in the crevasse the corpses of their comrades; they placed them upright, side by side, arms folded and covered with a little snow:—The God of Kangchinjunga took them, they will be closer to him for eternity, they said, in their fatalism of Buddhists.—A lama they had with them made the prayers that their religion commands, then they took Pache back down to Camp V where we gave him the most moving funeral we had ever made.
On his grave, with our fifty coolies, we built him a stone mausoleum, and on a granite plaque, Reymond [Charles-Adolphe Reymond] spent two days engraving the name of our friend and the date of the accident. And now he rests in peace, in the heart of this Himalayas that he had so longed to see, that he had contemplated with such enthusiasm and where he had risen to almost 6,500 meters.
Fate had it that the first attempt to climb this high mountain was abruptly interrupted. The people of Sikhim and Nepal will repeat, for many years to come, that the God of Kangchinjunga did not allow a closer approach to his sacred throne. In fact, we could have climbed even higher. Reymond and Pache had precisely arrived, without suspecting it, in the vicinity of a flat area that would have allowed us to establish an VIIIth camp that could easily have been set up as a supply base.
Our porters, once released from Crowley, spontaneously offered to continue the march forward. But supposing that local circumstances and conditions had been favorable, our enthusiasm was not the same. The victorious ascent of this mountain seemed to us a desecration of the memory of the one who would have had the same rights as us to this conquest. By mutual agreement we decided to limit ourselves to this attempt and to return to Darjeeling, following however a different route than the outward journey.
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