Walk up the side of the glacier!

The track seems to head towards the edge of the lateral moraine on the left hand side.

Too good an opportunity to miss.

Then it sort of stopped.

But beyond that the walking looked easy.

Most glaciers we've seen recede a bit, then advance a bit less, then recede some more.

Leaving a series of terminal moraines. Which then become vegetated.

They recede either because they melt faster or there's less snow fall.

Not sure what's happened here but the glacier seems to have receded very rapidly in recent years and forgotten to advance a bit.

The implications for the two rivers feeding the Aral Sea are probably quite profound.

Truck is still just visible.

There's a surface flow of water down the middle of the glacier.

It seems to be melting from the top rather than the end tumbling into a terminal lake.

We almost turned back a few times before reaching here, after a couple of hours.

Nearly at the end (or beginning as its the top) of the moraine was this pimple which we chose to occupy.

The source of the glacier.

These are young mountains. The cwms are still being formed.

There's a small pile of three stones, a short length of sawn wood on the ground, and a length of 19mm steel reinforcing rod sticking upright out of the ground.

On the ridge of the moraine. Some goat tracks around.

???

The rocks have been mostly granite. Very coarse grained (slow cooling).

A bit of sedimentary higher up along our side.

We set out for a short stroll. We are nearly back after more than four hours.

The kettle doesn't boil at high enough temperature for good tea.

Our short walk took us to the corner of the glacier in the distance.

We also realised it was clouding over with a hint of rain.

We really have no idea of how to read the weather here.

And the little red light on the dashboard came on again, but went out a while after changing to the fuller tank again.

This is a small river crossing which has been little used. Its the river from our glacier and would probably have less water first thing in the morning.

The tracks of the last vehicle through looked like those of a large Kamaz truck.

Probably OK but we haven't seen another vehicle in the last 24 hours. Its 4pm. 

We have no idea what's in the 30km on the far side of the crossing. Insufficient local knowledge and poor maps.

All manageable individually. Add it all together and we are a bit uncomfortable!

We remind ourselves that, for us, 4wd is to get us out of trouble, not into it.

So we headed back towards the sunny bit.

Though the clouds are very high we can see rain falling in places. Much like at Song-Kol.

We've lost count of the number of glaciers.

A bit tight to get into, used 4wd on grass incline, and only just level.

We'd earlier noticed a mini bus with possibly tourists heading off up a track so thought we might investigate.

Cooker low volts light came on .... change the fuse, the old one was half melted and a bit of a neck.