Shipton's Lost Valley

by Martin Moran

Part 7: Down the Ganharpongi Gad

Pondering the likelihood that glacier retreat in the last 64 year could not have made the undertaking any easier, we retreated into the tent during a brief but intense snowstorm. As soon as visibility improved Ben and I went out to probe the options. Ben had already inspected the long gully which dropped down the left side of the ice. This was undoubtely the gully into which Shipton and Tilman escaped when their blind descent of the glacier ended in impossible seracs, but we could see that any ice avalanche breaking from a hanging glacier up above would be channelled straight down this chute. A long detour to a rock rognon bounding the ridge edge of the icefall brought an emphatic rebuff. The third option was to cross the head of the gully on the left, traverse close under the hanging seracs and then abseil some rock steps to gain snow slopes well left of the risk zone. It was this route which finally gained our favour.

To our good fortune the sky at dawn was once more clear. After packing with the more than usual urgency we commenced the traverse while the splintered ice cliff above was still in the shade. Remarkably, a sizeable stream had burst forth from the base of the seracs since the previous afternoon as if to confirm the transience of the mass that hung above. Knowing that a slip would be disastrous, we skated nervously across the icy terrace and gained the reassurance of a rock spur. Here a large block offered the perfect anchor for a long abseil down to the snowfields below.

At 10.45 a.m. we stopped at the lower glacier and made a celebratory brew of tea from fresh meltwater. The icefall was over and the great forest beckoned. Straight as a die, the valley, which is named on the Garhwal West map as the Gandharpongi Gad, dropped below us into Shiptons optimism at so pleasant a sight after the tribulations of the col, and even spotted his

patches of light green on the far side of the valley which gave false promise of grazing and shepherds huts within a two-day walk.

Dry ice and boulder fields led us quickly down to the glacier snout at around 3650m where we floundered straight into dense birch wood, much of which has been bent or flattened by avalanches. There was no transitional belt of open meadow of grasslands. We made the bound from high mountain untamed forest in a single step. Camp that night was a clearing beside a running brook quilted with yellow corydalis and wild rhubarb. Great scrolls of white bark hung from aged birch trunks, fuelling Johns volcano stove which brewed a constant supply of drinks. Lammergeiers swept imperiously up and down the valley between its soaring walls of vegetated granite. We spread out in the open and breathed that happiness with life that thinks not of the trials to come but only of the wonder of the moment.