Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 2.djvu/17

Rh by a perpendicular rock wall, the face of which was composed of loose, shaly rock, affording no secure foot-hold or hand-hold."

Having finally reached the top of the couloir we found ourselves on a narrow ridge which connected a gendarme to the body of the mountain. This ridge was so narrow that there was barely room for our party to sit down, while the rock was so disintegrated that we wondered why col and gendarme did not go crashing to the depths below We had been climbing five hours, and now halted for a breathing spell and a sandwich. Resuming the climb, we found ourselves confronted by a perpendicular wall several hundred feet in height, therefore turned south towards Eiffel Peak. Our first work was a very difficult descent of about fifty feet which landed us in a sort of funnel-shaped amphitheatre. Its walls were very steep and its outlet led to a perpendicular drop of 500 feet. We crossed safely by a narrow ledge and soon found ourselves on the col joining Pinnacle Mountain and Eiffel Tower.

Looking upwards (northerly) Pinnacle Mountain presented the appearance of a succession of cascades of honeycombed rock which seemed ready to crumble were any extra weight put upon them or the rain to saturate them. For an hour we scaled this succession of perpendicular faces and had little trouble except that the rottenness of the rock made more or less hazardous our every movement.

Finally about one o'clock we reached the base of the precipice-walled crown which surmounted the rest of the mountain, the "keep" as it were of the fortress. Its walls rose in a perpendicular face and seemed to defy us. We went to right and to left only to find that the same perpendicular face extended comlpetelycompletely [sic] around the mountain, guarding jealously its summit. There seemed but one chance: A huge crack cleft the face of the crown, reaching apparently to the summit, and it looked as