From the archive record
Peeling onions within a kitchen tent at the Base Camp of a Himalayan peak in the western Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. Tea mugs sit outside the tent, as the camp prepares dinner and digs in for the night. The view from the tent is stunning - a range of deep snow-pack peaks of the Gangotri range, Auden's Col, and the Chirbas Parbat along the Nelang axis. What a corniced top the summit of Rudragaira is, with a saddle of ice to reach it. And what a massive Himalayan glacier lies to the north of Rudragaira peak, fed by the Gangotri range peaks, with fields of wrinkled crevasses across the glacial snow field. A fabulous view on a clear winter day, from nearly 19, 000 feet on Rudragaira, looking across the deadly Gangotri peaks - those of the frequent avalanches and deeply crevassed glaciers,