Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/214

Rh worth living if you have to sit on a rock sloping outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees, retaining your position by clinging to inconveniently placed knobs; nor are matters materially improved if you exchange that position for one in which you sit astride in a V shaped gap. These discomforts speedily brought us to the conclusion that we had no time to lose and had better see what could be done with the sharp ridge and the tower beyond.

The ridge proved easier than we had expected. With the fingers on one side and the palms of the hand on the other, and the grip that could be obtained by holding it between the knees, progress, if not exactly elegant, was fairly easy so far as the foot of the tower. Beyond this a bit of very awkward scrambling was necessary. Supported exclusively by the grip of the fingers on the by no means horizontal knife-edge, the right leg had to be stretched, till, at its utmost reach, a small outward sloping shelf afforded some sort of support for the foot. The right hand had then to leave its hold on this edge and, at its longest stretch, grope along a very inferior perpendicular wrinkle in the tower. When the most desirable point of this wrinkle had been found, the knife-edge, the only reliable grip within reach, had to be definitely abandoned and the weight swung over on to the right foot. The whole proceeding was of much delicacy, for the foothold was so