Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/257

212 shallow steps, but we were able to make fairly rapid progress, and soon scrambled out of the gully on to a shelf of rook overlooking the great snow couloir.

I was glad to take off the two knapsacks I had been carrying, and, as an excuse for a halt, we both pretended to eat. Possibly the extraordinary appetite climbers appear to exhibit on mountains is in no small degree due to their desire for the halt involved. Food on the higher ridges and "the view" on the lower slopes appear to be much enjoyed by individuals short in wind and flabby in muscle.

After half an hour's halt we tied up again, and I paid out the rope whilst Burgener traversed to the left, in part along some big slabby rocks, and in part on the upper edge of a more or less treacherous crust of ice abutting on them. Eventually we had both to be on the traverse together. Burgener, however, succeeded in hitching the rope over a big splinter above us. As this operation seemed to afford him great pleasure, I thought it would be cruel to object, though, as the splinter wobbled most ominously with the slightest pressure, I prudently unhitched the rope before venturing below it.

Beaching the snow couloir, we began to go at a tremendous pace. Burgener's axe hewed out huge frozen lumps that acquired great velocity before they reached me, and one or two heavy blows from