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Looking Back
at The Mera La, A Climbing Party Winds It's Way to the
Summit |
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Crossing over the pass has put me in a whole new world,
one of hard rock and hostility. What little vegetation
there is consists of shriveled husks, like so many dried
flower arrangements, a barren land where one cannot live
for long, where the colors are a variation of grays and
creams and jut straight up into the sky. Large boulders
strewn hither and thither across the valley floor.
The refuse of a long ago glacierial retreat, choreograph the
white cold flow of the Hongu.
Monday 11/9
We are resting, looking down on Urpo, up at Mt. Mera. Urpo is just a name on the map. We will spend the
remainder of the day and the night here.
I went for a little day hike, letting the wildness of the
Hongu sink in.
There is a lot of iron ore, quartz, and granite in
this ultimate rock garden.
Two different expeditions are climbing
today and through my long lens I can watch them snake up
the glacier. |
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Negotiating a Large
Scree Slope |
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| Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad, news. I am mad at myself for letting it happen
and disappointed. Just carelessness. But the bad news is that I went
to change the film to an ASA 400, the camera was already set at 400
from an earlier time. Which means I shot, who knows how many rolls
of 50 ASA film at 400. It isn’t as if I can just come back and do it
all over again: bad, bad, bad, bad, news.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that we have cameras. They take the place
of good descriptive writing!
Yesterday, coming off the Mera glacier, we came down the most
dangerous scree slope I have ever seen. Many of the rocks weighed
hundreds of pounds and it seemed the whole slope was on ball
bearings. It was nerve rattling. Barely touching a boulder weighing,
perhaps, a thousand pounds and it |
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