Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/191

154 hypothesis to regard everything as loose. After a time the process of raking out the snow and testing the stones became so intolerably chilling to our fingers, that Slingsby and I agreed we had better traverse directly to the lowest of the gaps dividing the Charmoz and Grépon. It was tolerably easy to get along a big slab of rock, but the ascent of a vertical crack, perhaps fifteen feet high, required prolonged and severe effort. I ought, however, to add that my companions appeared to scramble up without difficulty, Slingsby even bringing my axe, which I had left forlorn, wedged in a crack, in addition to his own.

The Mer de Glace face was in full sunshine, and was delightfully warm after the bitter cold of the shaded western rocks. We traversed by easy ledges, amongst the slush of melting snow, to a broad-topped crag, that projected far over a precipitous gully, plunging down towards the Glacier de Trélaporte. On the top of this rock we unpacked our provisions, and made our first long halt. We excused our laziness, for it was getting late, by saying the "crack" cannot be ascended till the day is further advanced and the shadows less bitterly cold. Our ledge was of the most sensational character. The cliff above overhung, and the tiny streams from the melting snow on the ridge fell far outside us in sheets of sunlit rain. Below, the cliff still receded, so that the stones dislodged by us fell four or five hundred feet