The only hope was to come down again and work round to the right. Some exciting climbing and much hard work brought us at length to the foot of the cliffs and on the right side. The performance had taken us two and a half hours and it was now nearly ten o'clock. Clouds had already come up to obscure the mountains, and from the point of view of a prolonged exploration the day was clearly lost. Our course now was to make the best of it and yet get back so early to camp that we could set forth again on the following day. We had the interest, after following the moraine to the corner where the glacier bends Southwards, of making our way into the middle of the ice and finding out how unpleasant it can be to walk on a glacier melted everywhere into little valleys and ridges and covered with fresh snow. We got back at 3 p.m. [Illustration: SUMMIT OF MOUNT EVEREST AND NORTH PEAK from the Island, West Rongbuk Glacier.] On July 13, determined to make good, we started at 4.15 a.m. With the knowledge gained on the previous day and the use of 250 feet of spare rope we were able to find our way through the ice pinnacles and reached the far moraine in less than an hour and a half; and we had the further good fortune when we took to the snow to find it now in such good condition that we were able to walk on the surface without using our snow-shoes. As we proceeded up the slopes where the snow steepened the weather began to thicken and we halted at 8 a.m. in a thick mist with a nasty wind and some snow falling. It was a cold halt. We were already somewhat disillusioned about our glacier, which seemed to be much more narrow than was to be expected if it were really a high-road to the Western cwm, and as we went on with the wind blowing the snow into our faces so that nothing could be clearly distinguished we had the sense of a narrowing place and a perception of the even surface being broken up into large crevasses on one side and the other. At 9.30 we could go no further. For a few hundred yards we had been traversing a slope which rose above us on our left, and now coming out on to a little spur we stood peering down through the mist and knew ourselves to be on the edge of a considerable precipice. Not a single feature of the landscape around us was even faintly visible in the cloud. For a time we stayed on with the dim hope of better things and then reluctantly retired, baffled and bewildered. Where had we been? It was impossible to know; but at least it was certain there was no clear way to the West side of Everest. We could only suppose that we had reached a col on the frontier of Nepal. A further disappointment awaited us when we reached camp at 1 p.m. I had made a simple plan to ensure our supply of gobar[10] and rations from the base camp. The supplies had not come up and it was not the sort of weather to be without a fire for cooking. [10] In the Rongbuk Valley there was no wood and our supply of yak dung had to come up from Choebuk.