Doomsday rat

Chapter 548 Glacier
The Muzart Glacier in the sun looks a little bit better than in the evening, but it is still gray overall.If it is not marked on the map, it is more like a stone forest landform that has been hacked by knives and axes. It is difficult to feel any connection with ice.

The reason is not that there is no ice, but that the ice is covered with a layer of sand and stones.These things are definitely not blown up by the wind, just look around and you will understand.There are steep mountain walls on both sides of the glacier, and all the falling rocks and silt over the years have all rushed here, which is equivalent to covering the glacier with a quilt.

But no matter how you cover it, it is still a glacier, and some places are still exposed to the translucent ice layer, which is quite slippery when walking up.What's even more frightening is that it is covered with large and small ice crevices, some of which are several meters wide, and some of which are so narrow that you can't even insert your hands.

Some of these ice crevasses didn't go to the bottom, they were just squeezed open by the huge pressure.Some are unfathomably deep, so dark that only the sound of gurgling water can be heard. If you fall... Even if you don’t break your muscles and bones, it may not be easy to climb up again. You need some professional mountaineering skills.

Hong Tao definitely didn't have this kind of technical ability, so he walked very carefully, and would rather go around a long way than take the risk of crossing a relatively wide ice crevasse.Coupled with the fact that the wounded had to be supported by one leg, the speed of progress was even slower.

At this time, the impact of the earthquake was highlighted. Originally, according to the instructions of Crimea, this section of the road did not travel on the glacier. You only need to walk two or three kilometers across the glacier to find a small path on the opposite side of the mountain. It's right on the Shatter Trail.

But Hong Tao couldn’t find it after searching for a long time. It wasn’t that he lost his way, but the landslide on the opposite side. Not only did the ancient road disappear, but a large number of rocks also bulged the glacier, making people want to continue along the ice. Traveling south is difficult.

Fortunately, he was well-prepared, with crampons and ice axes, and he could nail pitons on the ice and hang safety ropes when he was in a hurry.A few times I was forced to be helpless and couldn't find the way, so I simply released the drone and repeated the same trick, directly putting ropes on the relatively wide ice crevasses.

It looks troublesome, but it actually saves the old way.If you make a detour, even a healthy person will have to wander around for an hour or two to find a suitable place to go. If you are unlucky, another ice crevasse may be trapped and you have to go around.

In this way, I walked more than 20 kilometers of the glacier for a whole day and a half, and at night I simply got into a crevice on the edge of the glacier and camped.Despite the solid ice all around, it is much more comfortable than camping on Daban, mainly because there is no wind.

"Look, we'll be there after climbing halfway up the mountain, take a break and have lunch first!"

It was past three o'clock in the afternoon the next day, and Hong Tao finally breathed a sigh of relief.Although we did not follow the original route, we still found an important punctuation point at the southernmost tip of the glacier.As long as you don't get lost, today's task will be considered a successful completion, and the most difficult part of the road has been passed. Congratulations!

"Is that a house up there?" In fact, Zhuma's physical strength was almost exhausted, and the wound still hurt a little. I don't know if it was because he fell and touched it twice before.

Hearing that he could rest, he immediately found a big rock and lay down on it, turned his head and looked up the hillside, then sat up suddenly, grabbed the binoculars and looked hard.

"Don't worry, that house must be thousands of years old." Hong Tao opened the last generation of individual soldier rations, found the chocolate and stuffed it into Zhuma's mouth.

There are indeed a few houses, or stone ruins, on the mountainside.Fang Wenlin once said that this was the place where troops were stationed in the Qing Dynasty.In order to communicate with the north and the south, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty forcibly settled dozens of families here.They have only one job, digging and maintaining ice ladders on the glacier for people to go up and down.

Calculated according to the height of the house ruins, the glacier would have been several tens of meters thick a hundred years ago, but now it has melted to the point that there are no more than ten of them, and those houses have become miracles hanging on the mountainside.

There are two roads to continue southward from here. The first is to climb up the mountainside, bypass the stone house ruins, and go down the side of the mountain to reach the Nanmuzarte River Valley.It’s a long way to go this way, and if there is too much snow melting from the glaciers, both sides of the valley will be flooded, and it will be difficult to cross the river without a bridge.

The other road is relatively short, continue south along the glacier, and cross the river safely through the ice bridge formed by the natural glacier.But after crossing the river, the glacier will have a very steep slope.

How steep is it? In the words of the Crimea, it goes straight up and down. The two ice cliffs are almost 300 meters long, and the altitude drops by almost 300 meters.

If Hong Tao is alone, he may choose a steep slope. The ice layer of the glacier is very thick and strong, similar to a rock. It is not very dangerous to nail a piton and hang a safety rope, and there are crampons and ice axes to assist. Just look at it. Relatively hanging.

According to Crimea, the bridge behind the mountain has long been broken. No matter what method is used, crossing the turbulent Muzart River is no easier than descending the steep slope, and it takes twice as many detours.The difference is that one is basically dead when it falls, and the other has to freeze for a few minutes before it dies.

But now he can only choose a detour. Juma, who is lame, cannot climb down from the glacier, and then find a way to find a place where the rope can be fixed on the other side to cross the river.

When we go down the river valley tomorrow, the altitude will drop directly below 3000, the slope will slow down a lot, and the temperature should be much higher. If you don’t have to worry about eating and drinking, you can walk slowly, and you can pass this hurdle comfortably.

"What are you going to do?" The best camping place tonight is the house ruins on the mountainside. After setting up the tent, Hong Tao is covered with odds and ends again, and is ready to go down the mountain with his ice ax and crampons.

"I'll go to the other side of the glacier to have a look, you go to bed first, and you'll definitely be back before dark."

Hong Tao was still not reconciled to taking such a long detour. He couldn't take a shortcut this time, and it might not be possible to take a shortcut next time.There is a high chance that I will return to northern Xinjiang by this road to pick up both Camilla and Yu Jia, and at the very least, I will have to walk another half and a half round trip.

"Take this... You are a cautious shepherd, right?" Juma didn't ask why the man went to the other side of the glacier, but just took out the walkie-talkie from his backpack.

"Well, it's really necessary. Get your shotgun ready. If there are wild beasts here, it's better than an automatic rifle." Hong Tao took it for granted, took the walkie-talkie and stuffed it into his winter clothes.

"So that's how it is..." The walking speed of a person was much faster. In less than half an hour, Hong Tao had reached the end of the glacier, and most of the worries in his heart were relieved.

The southern end of the glacier is indeed steep, but it is by no means a vertical ice wall of hundreds of meters, but layered like steps.The highest floor is only 70 meters, and the difficulty of climbing down is obviously much smaller.

What I want is just a retreat, or an emergency passage. I don't know if it can be used, but there must be one. Since ancient times, he will try his best to avoid the thing of a road in Huashan.

The next work is relatively simple, nail the piton to fix the safety rope, and descend along the rope.A piton is nailed every ten meters, all the way to the valley at the bottom of the glacier, and then climbed up along the rope, and the safety rope is put away, and a backup passage is completed.

In the future, when he picks up Camilla and Yu Jia, if he can walk from here, he can descend at any time with a climbing rope. If not, he can walk on the hillside over the ancient house ruins. Another earthquake will destroy the hillside. Don't be afraid if the earthquake collapses, we still have a way out.

As for whether the piton will disappear after a few years, it should not be.The glacier is not melting so fast, and the ice on the glacier is so strong that it will not fall off for ten years as long as no one deliberately destroys it.

"Awesome workmanship..." After finishing his work on the piton, Hong Tao sat at the bottom of the valley to rest, smoke and enjoy the beautiful scenery under the sunset, and finally said a word of praise.

The end of the glacier is actually a slope. The place where Hong Tao climbed down is on the north bank of the Murzat River, and the farther part is on the south bank of the river. A huge ice cave was washed out by the river below, making the upper glacier a natural bridge. , the arc is also very regular, like a rainbow bridge under the setting sun.

The mighty Murzat River roared under the ice cave, then made a sudden 90-degree turn and headed south along the rugged valley.The river valley is full of huge rocks, some of which are almost as tall as the house, but all of them have no edges and corners. It seems that they have been washed by the river for at least hundreds of thousands of years.

(End of this chapter)