Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/124

Rh of cheese, ten inches of loaf, and a big bag of raisins were all the provisions the hotel porter had thought necessary. Luckily, Burgener had been left in charge of the commissariat, and, as I prefer raisins on the side of a mountain to any other food, I was able to look on the porter's conduct with philosophy, a state of mind by no means shared by my companions.

We very injudiciously turned the lower ice fall by keeping to the right and ascending a couloir between the cliffs of the Blaitiére and the precipitous rocks over which the glacier falls. The couloir proved very easy, but a rock buttress on our left being still easier we took to it and rattled to the top at a great pace. Immediately over our heads towered an endless succession of séracs, huge sky-cleaving monsters, threatening us with instant destruction. The spot was not a desirable one for a halt, so we turned to the left to see how we were to get on to the glacier. At one point, and one only, was it possible to do so. A sérac lurching over the cliff, and apparently much inclined to add to the pile of broken ice-blocks some hundreds of feet below, was the only available bridge. We scrambled along it, crossed a crevasse on avalanche débris, and dashed up a short ice slope to the open glacier. Ten minutes sufficed to take us into comparative safety, and we traversed to the island of rock, by which the ice fall is usually turned.