Explorations in the Karakoram

Abstract

MR. W. M. CONWAY gave an account of his recent exploring expedition in the Karakoram mountains at the last meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. The paper was illustrated by lantern slides, and a series of paintings by Mr. McCormick, who accompanied the expedition, was also exhibited. Mr. Conway said:—We left Srinagar on April 13, 1892, and came to Gilgit. Arrived at Gilgit we found the condition of the mountains, from a climber's point of view, too backward for our purposes. We therefore spent a month in mapping and exploring the fine Bagrot Valley, which slopes southwards from Rakipushi and its immediate neighbours along the main ridge. We hoped to be able to force a passage over this ridge into Nagyr; but the persistent bad weather baulked our efforts when they were on the point of succeeding. When the traveller has emerged from the inhospitable defiles which sunder the valley of Hunza Nagyr from Gilgit, and has climbed the vast ancient moraines near Tashot, which form the final rampart of the fertile basin (fertile, of course, only by reason of artificial irrigation of admirable complexity and completeness), he stands surrounded by an astonishing view. The bottom of the valley is, as usual, deeply filled by débris, whose surface is covered by terraced fields, faced with cyclopean masonry, and rich with growing crops and countless fruit trees. The mountains fling themselves aloft on either hand, with astounding precipitancy, as it were into the uttermost heights of heaven; so steeply, in fact, that a spring avalanche falling from the summit of Rakipushi on the south must almost reach the bottom of the valley. Rakipushi is 25,500feet high; the Hunza peak is about 24,000 feet high. Their summits are separated by a distance of 19 miles. Both mountains are visible from base to summit at one and the same time from the level floor of the valley between them, which is not more than 7000 feet above the sea. No mountain view that I saw in the Karakorams surpasses this for grim wonder of colossal scale, combined with savage grandeur of form and contrast of smiling foreground.