Stanislav Kutuzov felt the drillhead he was controlling smash into the rock more than 100 metres below him high on a glacier in the Pamir peaks of Tajikistan. The ice core samples it took could help solve one of climate science's great mysteries.

"This is the best feeling ever," declared the Russian-born glaciologist in the thin mountain air of Kon Chukurbashi.

Kutuzov is one of a team of 15 scientists which AFP was exclusively able to follow on their historic mission 5,810 metres (19,000 feet) up on a snowy ridge near the Chinese border.

The expedition to recover the deepest ice samples ever extracted from the Pamir, one of the world's highest and least-studied mountain ranges, aims to give scientists access to one of the planet's oldest climate archives.

These layers of ice holding d

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