The Muzart Glacier looks a little better in the sun than in the evening, but overall it is still gray. If it were not marked on the map, it would look more like a stone forest landscape that has been cut with knives and axes.

It's hard to see what it has to do with ice.

The reason is not that there is no ice, but that the ice is covered with a layer of silt, sand and stones. These things are definitely not blown up by the wind. You will understand if you look to the left and right. There are steep mountain walls on both sides of the glacier, and there are years of falling rocks.

All the water and sediment washed here, which is like covering the glacier with a quilt.

But no matter how much you cover it, it is still a glacier. In some places, the translucent ice layer is still exposed, and it is quite slippery to walk on. What is even more terrifying is that it is covered with large and small ice cracks, some are several meters wide and some are narrow.

I can't even put my hand in.

Some of these ice cracks are not bottom-heavy, but are just squeezed open by huge pressure. Some are unfathomable, 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, you might think

I'm afraid it won't be easy to climb up again. It requires the skills of a professional mountaineer.

Hong Tao definitely didn't have this kind of technical ability, so he walked very carefully, preferring to take a long detour rather than risk crossing a relatively wide ice crevice. In addition, he had to support a wounded person with one leg, so the traveling speed was even slower.

At this time, the impact of the earthquake became apparent. Originally, according to Kerim's instructions, this section of the road was not entirely on the glacier. As long as you walked two or three kilometers across the glacier, you could find a trail halfway up the opposite mountainside.

It is the correct Chateau Trail.

But Hong Tao searched for a long time and couldn't find it. It wasn't that he was lost, but that there was a landslide on the opposite side. Not only did the ancient road disappear, but a large number of rocks also made a big bulge on the glacier, making people want to continue along the ice.

Traveling south is difficult.

Fortunately, he was well prepared, including crampons and ice axes. If he got impatient, he could even nail pitons and hang a safety rope on the ice. Several times he was forced to have no choice but to find a way out, so he simply let go of the drone.

Come out and repeat the same trick, directly setting up the rope in the relatively wide ice crack.

It looks quite troublesome, but it actually saves you from taking the old route. If you take 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 not lucky, you may be trapped by another ice crevice, and you will not be able to find a suitable place to go.

Gotta go around.

In this way, we walked through the glacier for more than 20 kilometers for a whole day and a half. At night, we simply went into a crevice at the edge of the glacier to camp. Even though there was solid ice all around, it was much more comfortable than camping on Daban. Mainly

There is no wind.

"Look, we're halfway up the mountain. Let's take a break and have lunch first!"

It was around three o'clock in the afternoon the next day, and Hong Tao finally breathed a sigh of relief. Although he didn't follow the original route, he still found the important landmark at the southernmost point of the glacier. As long as he didn't get lost, today's mission was successfully completed. It was the most difficult section.

The journey has been over, so congratulations!

"Is that a house up there?" In fact, Zhuma's physical strength is almost exhausted, and the wound is still a little painful. I don't know if it was caused by falling twice before.

When I heard that I could rest, I immediately found a big rock and lay down on it. I turned around and looked up the hillside. Suddenly I sat up again and grabbed the binoculars to look hard.

"Don't worry, that house must be thousands of years old." Hong Tao opened the last generation of individual soldier rations, found 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 where the Qing Dynasty troops were stationed. In order to communicate between the north and the south, the Qing rulers forcibly settled dozens of families here. They only had one job, on the glacier.

Excavate and maintain ice ladders to facilitate people going up and down.

Based on the height of the house ruins, the glacier would have been tens of meters thick a hundred years ago, but now it has melted to the point where nothing remains, and those houses have become isolated miracles hanging on the mountainside.

There are two roads going south from here. The first is to climb halfway up the mountainside and go around the stone house ruins, then go down the side of the mountain to reach the Nanmuzart Valley. This walk is a bit long, and if there is too much melting snow from the glaciers,

Both sides of the river valley will also be flooded, making it difficult to cross the river without a bridge.

The other road is closer, continuing southward along the glacier, and crossing the river safely through the ice bridge formed by the natural glacier. However, after crossing the river, the glacier will have a very steep slope.

How steep is it? In Crimean terms, it means straight up and down, two ice cliffs that are almost 300 meters long, and the altitude has dropped by almost 300 meters.

Gu/span> If Hong Tao is alone, he may choose a steep slope. The ice layer of the glacier is very thick and strong, almost like a stone. It is not very dangerous to nail pitons and hang a safety rope, and with the help of crampons and ice axes

, it just looks a bit suspenseful.

According to Kerim, 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 down a steep slope, and it takes twice as long to go around. The difference is just a fall.

If you fall down, you will basically die. If you fall down, you will have to freeze for several minutes before dying.

But now the only option is to take a detour, as Zhuma, who is lame, cannot climb down the glacier, and then find a way to find a place on the other side where the rope can be fixed to cross the river.

When we get down to the valley tomorrow, the altitude will drop directly to below 3,000, 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 campsite tonight is the ruins of houses on the mountainside. After setting up the tent, Hong Tao hung up his gear and prepared to go down the mountain with his ice ax and crampons.

"I'll go check out the other side of the glacier. You can go to sleep first. I'll definitely be back before dark."

Hong Tao is still not willing to take such a long detour. He can't take a shortcut this time, and he may not be able to take it next time. There is a high chance that he will have to return to Northern Xinjiang through this road to pick up Camilla and Yu Jia.

To come here, you will have to walk at least one and a half round trips.

"Bring this with you...you are a cautious shepherd, right?" Zhuma did not ask the man why he wanted to go to the other side of the glacier, but just took out the walkie-talkie from his backpack.

"Well, it is indeed necessary. Get your shotgun ready. If there are wild animals here, it will be more useful than an automatic rifle." Hong Tao agreed, took the walkie-talkie and put it into his cold-weather suit.

"So that's it..." A person walked much faster. In less than half an hour, Hong Tao had arrived at the end of the glacier, and most of his worries were relieved.

The southern end of the glacier is indeed very steep, but it is by no means a vertical ice wall of several hundred meters. Instead, it is layered like a staircase. The highest layer is only sixty or seventy meters long, so the difficulty of climbing down is obviously much smaller.

What he wants is just an escape route, or an emergency passage. I don't know if it can be used, but it must be there. Since ancient times, he has tried his best to avoid the matter of a road in Huashan.

The next work is relatively simple. Dice pitons to fix the safety rope and descend along the rope. Dice pitons every ten meters and nail them all the way to the valley at the bottom of the glacier. Then climb up along the rope and secure the safety rope.

Once it is put away, a backup channel will be completed.

In the future, when he picks up Camila and Yu Jia, if he can go from here, he can descend at any time with a climbing rope. If not, he can go to the hillside over the ancient house ruins. Another earthquake will destroy the hillside.

Even if it collapses, we still have a way out.

As for whether the pitons will disappear after a few years, it probably won’t. Glaciers don’t melt that fast, and the ice on the glaciers is very strong. As long as no one deliberately damages them, they won’t fall off for ten years.

"What a wonderful workmanship..." After finishing working on the pitons, Hong Tao sat at the bottom of the valley to rest, smoke, and enjoy the beautiful scenery under the sunset. He finally said some words 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 Mulzat River, and the farther section is on the south bank of the river. A huge ice cave was washed out by the river below, making the upper glacier form a natural bridge.

, the curvature is also very regular, and it looks like a rainbow bridge under the sunset.

The rushing Mulzat River roared under the ice cave, then suddenly turned a 90-degree turn and headed south along the rugged valley. The valley was filled with huge rocks, some as tall as

We almost caught up with the houses, but they all had no edges and corners. It looked like they had been washed away by the river for at least hundreds or thousands of years.
Chapter completed!