ABSTRACT
June 9Th was a beautiful day. I decided to climb the snow gully which watered our meadow, this being the most direct route to the alpine region. It was extraordinarily steep, but not otherwise difficult to begin with; the snow was soft, so that I could kick steps in it as I ascended. Coming down, I thought, would be easy — perhaps too easy. Presently matters became more difficult. The slope grew steeper, the snow more compact and slippery. Looking down the gully, I began to have qualms. If I slipped, I would shoot down the slope, gathering speed as I went. Moreover the gully was not straight; it twisted, and if I slid down out of control, I would probably bump up against the cliff at the first turn, or what was just as bad, disappear into the deep crevasse between the snow and the rock wall. I did not much like it, but the walls of the gully were almost sheer, and I saw no place where I could climb up. So I continued up the snow cone, rapidly approaching its apex as the gully narrowed and steepened. In this wise I ascended a thousand feet. Eventually I found a place where I could step off the snow cone and scramble up the steep wall on the sheltered side, which though almost sheer, was covered with scrub: the opposite wall, being exposed, was naked. The scrub consisted chiefly of Rhododendron; and Rhododendron scrub, growing on a precipitous rock face, forms quite one of the most impenetrable barriers in the vegetable kingdom. I had a hard tussle to get through. Here grew Rhododendron cerasinum (crimson-scarlet flowers), R. cinnabarinum (flame flowers), R. pruniflorum (plum-purple flowers) and R. trichocladum, a bare shrub, flecked with pale yellow flowers before the leaf buds had burst. In a cleanly scoured couloir, from which the snow had disappeared, clumps of pigmy violet Iris encrusted the rocks, and a small form of Primida sikkimensis was striving to flower. At last I was on the threshold of the alpine region. Returning to camp, I found that a pig, ordered from the village, had arrived. We built a large fire in our shack, which we used as a mess room, ordered a big dinner, and spent a pleasant evening. It was a tranquil night, the stars radiant overhead: a cold wind off the snow blew through the shack, but we kept some of it off by hanging up a couple of waterproof canvas sheets. At ten o’clock we retired to our tents, which we found infested with earwigs.
