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THE ADAI KtlOKll GROUP 137
which the sun's last rays rested longest. Clouds spoilt my panorama
from the summit of Shoda, but this short glimpse had been enough
to suggest a solution of the problem.
In 1889, before undertaking the search for traces of our friends
lost in the previous year on Koshtantau, we gave our Swiss guides
a training walk in the Adai Khokh Group. We forced the glacier
pass I had planned in 18G8, between the Zea Valley and the
Mamison Pass. We left the half- ruined refuge on the south side
of the Mamison at 2 a.m., and knocked up the Cossacks at St.
Nikolai at 9 p.m. The ascent was by the glacier which gives
birth to the Ardon. We had a very extensive view over Ossetia
to the south, a region of isolated mountains and high grass-passes,
where the main chain changes its character, as the Alps do
beyond the Simplon. What we saw on the farther side was
more limited and less agreeable. Four hours were spent in
descending a very difficult rock-wall, only 400 feet high, on to
the Zea snowfields. There was seldom foothold and handhold at
the same time ; and, as all the grooves and hollows Avere sheeted
with ice, there was much of that interminable w^ork known to
climbers as step-cutting. We were a party of eight, on two
ropes it is true, but still more than twice too many. Our Oberlanders
were somewhat out of condition and heart ; they had not yet
taken the measure of life in the Caucasus. We on the last rope
were hampered by the terror of sending down stones on those
in front. Wherever it was possible to find a perch we halted till
they were out of range, and I succeeded in utilising such leisure
moments in making rough outlines and notes of the peaks and
ridges that encompassed us. Opposite was the Mamison Peak,
or Khamkhaki Khokh. From this side it loses its symmetry
and exhibits a long rib of rock and ice, running down to sepa-
rate the two basins of the Zea. The northern snowfield is by
far the more extensive. Over this appeared the double peak of
the Piion Valley, masking the summits beyond it. To its right,'
hemming in the head of the invisible Songuta Glacier, rose a
' I doubt if there be any direct pass from the Zea nSve to the Songuta Glacier.