The Muzart Glacier in the sun is a little more beautiful than in the evening, but overall it is still gray. If it weren't marked on the map, it would look like a stone forest that had been cut down with a knife and axe, and it would be hard to see any connection with ice.

The reason for this is not the lack of ice, but the fact that the ice is covered with a layer of sediment and stones. These things are certainly not blown up by the wind, just look left and right. The glacier is flanked by steep mountain walls, and the rockfalls and sediment that have been falling for many years have all washed here, which is equivalent to covering the glacier with a blanket.

But no matter how much you cover the quilt, it is still a glacier, and in some places there is still a translucent ice layer, and it is still quite slippery to walk on. What's even more terrifying is that it is covered with large and small ice crevices, several meters wide, and so narrow that you can't even insert your hand into it.

Some of these ice crevices are not to the end, but they are just squeezed open by the tremendous pressure. Some are unfathomable, so dark that you can only hear the sound of gurgling water, and fall...... Even if you don't break your bones, it's not easy to climb up again, and you have to have some skills as a professional mountaineer.

Hong Tao definitely didn't have this kind of technical ability, so he walked very carefully, preferring to go far away than risk crossing a relatively wide ice crevasse. Add to that the wounded who had to hold one leg on their feet, and the speed of movement was even slower.

At this time, the impact of the earthquake was highlighted, originally according to the guidance of the Crimea, this section of the road is not all on the glacier, as long as you walk two or three kilometers across the glacier, you can find a sheep's intestine path halfway up the opposite mountainside, that is the correct Chartreadt Road.

But Hong Tao searched for a long time and didn't find it, not that he was lost, but that the landslide on the opposite side was gone, not only did the ancient road disappear, but a large number of rocks also lifted up the glacier to a big bulge, making it difficult for people to continue to travel south along the ice.

Fortunately, he is relatively well prepared, crampons, ice axes are readily available, and he can also nail pitons on the ice and hang safety ropes when he is in a hurry. A few times I was forced to be helpless, and I really couldn't find a way, so I simply released the drone and repeated the old trick, directly setting up a rope on a relatively wide ice crevice.

It looks like it's a lot of trouble, but it's actually a lot of fun. If you go around, even a healthy person will have to wander around for an hour or two to find a suitable place to pass, and if you are unlucky, you may be trapped by another crack in the ice, and you will have to go around.

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

"Look, climb halfway up the mountain and you'll be there, rest and have lunch first!"

The next day, it was more than three o'clock in the afternoon, and Hong Tao finally breathed a sigh of relief. Although it was not taken the same way, an important punctuation point was found at the southernmost point of the glacier. As long as you don't get lost, even if today's task is successfully completed, the most difficult part of the road has been over, congratulations!

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

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

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

There are indeed a few houses, or stone ruins, on the mountainside. Fang Wenlin once said that this was the place where the Qing Dynasty garrisoned. In order to communicate between the north and the south, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty forcibly settled dozens of families here. They only have one job, digging and maintaining ice ladders on the glacier so that people can get on and off them.

According to the height of the ruins, the glacier was probably tens of meters thick a hundred years ago, but now it has melted to the point that there are no tenths left, and those houses have become a miracle hanging on the mountainside.

From here there are two ways to further south, the first is to climb halfway up the hill to bypass the ruins of stone houses and down the side of the hill to the South Muzart Valley. In addition, if there is too much snow melt on the glacier, the banks of the valley will be flooded, and it will be difficult to cross the river without a bridge.

The other road is closer, continuing south along the glacier, where the river can be safely crossed by an ice bridge formed by a natural glacier. However, after crossing the river, the glacier has a very steep slope.

How steep it is, in the words of the Crimea, it is straight up and down, almost 300 meters long with two ice cliffs, and the altitude has dropped almost 300 meters.

If it's just Hong Tao alone, you may choose a steep slope, the ice of the glacier is very thick and strong, similar to a stone, nail the pitons and hang the safety rope, and then there are crampons and ice axes to assist it is not very dangerous, but it looks more hanging.

According to Krimu, the bridge behind the hill had long since been broken, and by any means, crossing the raging Muzart River was no easier than descending down a steep slope, and it was twice as long as the detour. The difference is that one falls and basically dies, and the other falls and freezes for a few minutes before dying.

But now there is no choice but to take a detour, and the lame Juma can't climb down the glacier, and then find a way to cross the river on the opposite bank where he can fix the rope.

When you go down the river valley tomorrow, the altitude will go directly down to below 3000, the slope will be slowed down a lot, the temperature should be much higher, and you can walk slowly if you don't have to worry about eating and drinking.

"What are you going to do?" The best camp tonight is the remains of houses on the mountainside, and after setting up the tent, Hong Tao is full of fragments, carrying an ice axe and crampons ready to descend the mountain.

"I'll go to the other side of the glacier and take a look, you can sleep first, and I'll be back before dark."

Hong Tao is still not willing to take such a long detour, this time he can't take a shortcut, and he may not be able to take it next time. There is a high probability that he will have to return to Northern Xinjiang from this road to pick up Camila and Yu Jiadu, and at least he will have to walk another one and a half round-trips.

"Take this with you...... You're a prudent shepherd, aren't you? Juma didn't ask the man why he wanted to go to the other side of the glacier, but just took the walkie-talkie out of his backpack.

"Well, it's really necessary. You get your shotgun ready, if there's a beast here, it's better than an automatic rifle. Hong Tao thought so, took the walkie-talkie and put it into the cold-proof suit.

"I see...... "Walking speed alone is much faster, and in less than half an hour, Hong Tao has come to the end of the glacier, and most of the worries in his heart have been relieved.

The southern end of the glacier is indeed steep, but it is by no means an ice wall of a few hundred meters vertical, but is layered like a staircase. The highest floor is only sixty or seventy meters, and the difficulty of climbing down is obviously much smaller.

What he wants is just a way out, or an emergency channel, I don't know if I can use it, but there must be, and he will try to avoid it from the bottom of his bones when he has a road in Huashan since ancient times.

The next work is relatively simple, nail the pitons to fix the safety rope, and descend along the rope. Nail a pid every 10 meters, nail it all the way to the valley at the bottom of the glacier and climb up the rope, put the safety rope away, and a backup passage is completed.

In the future, when he picks up Camilla and Yu Jia to go back and forth, if he has the conditions to walk from here, he can descend at any time with a climbing rope, and if he doesn't have the conditions, he will take the hillside of the ancient house ruins, and if the next earthquake collapses the hillside, we are not afraid, we still have a way back.

As for whether the pitons will be left for a few years, it should not be. The glacier does not melt so quickly, and the ice on the glacier is so strong that it will not fall for ten years as long as no one deliberately destroys it.

......After finishing the pitons, Hong Tao sat at the bottom of the valley to rest, smoking and enjoying the beautiful scenery of the sunset, and finally said a word of praise.

The end of the glacier is actually an inclined plane, where the flood climbed down on the north bank of the Murzat River, and the farther section is on the south bank of the river, and a huge ice cave is washed out by the river below, so that the upper glacier forms a natural bridge, and the arc is particularly regular, like a rainbow bridge in the sunset.

The rushing waters of the Murzat roared past the ice cave before making a 90-degree bend and heading south along the rugged valley. The valley is covered with huge rocks, some of which are close to the size of the houses, but all of them have no edges and corners, and they look like they have been washed by the river for at least hundreds of years.