Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/105

84 mountain and the many difficulties we had surmounted, I concluded that the summit must be nearly won. The lead was again made over to my husband, and Burgener having resumed his old place on the rope, the traverse continued.

"Oh! vain hope and frivolous conclusion!" The crucial test was yet to come. Snow, rocks and ice had astonished us in the past by their forbidding nature; now, in addition to these, we were handicapped by the lateness of the hour (1.30 p.m.), a driving mist, and, worst of all, by fatigue, cold and hunger.

The snow once more began to thin out, leaving nothing but a huge sheet of ice. To cut across would have taken days. There was clearly nothing for it but once more to regain the ridge. Burgener was of opinion that we were past the more serious towers and pinnacles, and that, if we could only reach the crest, a sure and not too lengthy road to the summit would be ours. He therefore directed our leader to make straight up the slope towards some great slabs of rock that projected through the ice. These, however, soon became too precipitous and smooth, and we were reduced, as our last chance, to cutting up a hideous ice-gully that flanked the rocks. In places snow covered the ice, and, the gully being bent and narrow, it afforded more or less precarious footing. Burgener's injunctions were constant, "Keep where the snow is thickest."