The Hidden Shrine BOOKS OF THE DAY
By MICHAEL ROBERTS
" How are we going to get down ? " is a question far more characteristic of mountaineering than the simple, " How are we going to get up ? " For the mountaineer, as for the politician, the art of climbing down is of the first importance, and it is a merit of Mr. Shipton's excellent and admirably illustrated hook that he maintains our • interest, from start to finish, on a proper mountaineering basis. -It is no mere series of hair's-breadth escapes, but a narrative in which the effect is cumulative, so that our first mild interest in how they are going to get up grows into an overwhelming anxiety as to how on earth they are going to get down. Even on the last page but one " Three thousand feet of precipice still remained to be descended . . ." The credit for their escape is due not only to the skill of Mr. Shipton and his companion Mr. Tilman, but also to the devotion and endurance of their three Sherpa porters, Angtharkay, Passang and Kusang;
The problem which they had tackled was particularly difficult : in Garhwal, near the Tibetan border, some forty miles south-east of Kamet, there- is a curious mountain form- ation shaped something like a letter E, of which the two long arms almost meet, being separated only by a deep gorge, the Rishi Nala. At the extremity- of the short arm stands Nanda Devi (25,660 feet), which is thus one of the most inaccessible of Himalayan peaks, for the outer walls are everywhere very steep, and nowhere less than 17,000 feet high, and the gorge is all but impassable. Several parties have tried to enter this enclosed glacier basin. In 1883 Mr. W. W. Graham's party had made their way some distance up the Rishi Nala, and in 1905 Dr. T. G. Longstaff reached a point on the eastern rim of the outer wall and was able to look down into the basin, though he could not descend on that side. In 1907, the year in which he climbed Trisul (23,406 feet), Dr. Longstaff carried out further exploration in the district, and in 1925 he returned to the attack with Mr. Hugh Ruttledge, but neither that party nor the expedi- tions of 1926 and 1932 succeeded in entering the basin.
It remained for Mr.: Shipton and his four companions, profit- ing by the experience and advice of their predecessors, to force their way up the Rishi Nala (avoiding the still unpenetrated lower section) and explore the huge glacier system at the foot of Nanda Devi itself. The upper part of the gorge is composed of " tier upon tier of gigantic steeply inclined slabs, • which culminated 10,000 feet above the river in a multitude of sharp rocky peaks set at a rakish angle." Along these slabs, high up above the Rishi Gangs, a series of faults and terraces (sometimes overhanging the river) offered the only practicable route. Some sections were very " thin," and at any time a landslide or rockfall might make them wholly impassable. Above the gorge, where the shepherds cannot penetrate with their flocks, they found shrubs of juniper for firewood, and edible wild rhubarb, and wide pastures with thousands of wild mountain sheep. Here, beside the moraine, near gentle grassy slopes with birds, flowers and lakes, they established their base camp and -started their surveying in a world of vivid and surprising beauty : " In spite of the heavy load I was carrying, I fre- quently had difficulty in refraining from running in my eagerness to see round the next corner, or to get a better view of some fresh and slender spire which had just made its appearance."
Sometimes the weather was bad, and at all times work was difficult among the intricate crevasses of the glaciers: For thirty-six hours, too, Mr. Shipton was laid up with fever : " I had a curious impression that I was lying there
Nanda -Devi. By _Eric Shipton. (Hodder and 8toughtmi: in the open for several days, during the whole -of which time I was either trying to escape from a fierce tropical sun or from a dead arctic cold, while the ever-changing face of Nanda Devi writhed itself into hideous grimaces." But the work of the party went steadily forward, the complicated topography of the northern half of the Basin was mastered, and between the storms and the work there were moments of exhilaration when " the mountain summit - appeared as something detached from the earth, floating in the air at a fantastic height above our heads ; and moving along swiftly in a direction opposite to that of the drifting mist." : At the approach of the monsoon, they descended by the way they had come, and the next six weeks were spent in 'exploring- the- Badrinath-Gangotri and Badrinath-Kedarnath watersheds which separate the two chief sources of the Ganges. In this region, a few- miles south-west of the Nanda Devi ridges; they hoped to avoid the worst of the monsoon weather, • but they found that the results were about the same as if they- had gone Ad the English Lakes to escape a wet summer in the south. Conditions were uniformly bad, the snow was soft and- mushy at all hours of the day and snowstorms often reduced the visibility to a -few yards. Climbing- in such conditions must- always be a severe test of leadership and endurance, but to live for weeks in such weather, existing on a dwindling supply of scam (native flour) whilst looking for, and finding, a legendary lost pass " in unexplored country, is an amazing achievement, and the story is ably told in -Mr. ShiptoWs straightforward, unpre- tentious style. Only an occasional entry from his diary reveals their growing anxiety : " . . . Passang is no better. The job is becoming very tedious ; always wet, not enough food, and can't see where the — we are going. . . ." But they made their way down at last, only a few days behind schedule, and Mr. Shipton's eager curiosity about the history, customs, and mythology of the district and his sympathetic observation of his Sherpa companions enlivens his description of days spent in the valleys.
After the monsoon, they returned to the attack, again passed up the Rishi Nala, and explored the southern half of the " Hidden Shrine," finally escaping by a piece of brilliant ice-work over the outer rim among the hanging glaciers of the southern wall, and so down into the Sunder- dhunga Valley.
This was a very remarkable season's work for an expeditiOn which lacked the help of supporting parties and relays of stores. (The total cost was under 23004 To some extent their success was due, of course, to the smallness of the party, which "helped them, and indeed forced them,. to be mobile and adaptable. (For a week, descending the Itedarnath Valley through hideously difficult country, they liVed on bamboo - shoots.) Mr. Shipton is not a sensational writer, and even in talking of the nastiest places he does not try to make the reader's flesh creep, but nasty some of "the places are, and the Nanda Devi Basin, for all its charm, must have been nerve-racking when at any moment a change - in the weather might have swelled the glacier-stream and made the gorge impassable, imprisoning the explorers within the four mountain walls.
In recent years, the growth' of expeditions like shall armies with ambitious climbing programmes has attracted a good deal of publicity, but work less' spectacular, though equally difficult and courageous, has long been done by small parties. Messrs. Shipton and Tifinan and their three "Sheri:gm have done a fine piece of work of the old kind, and M. Shipton has produced ad excellent record of the expedition. -
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