Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/263

218 to be reached by a prolonged traverse, which, with a single axe in the party, was not exactly pleasant. So we decided for the invisible slope on the left. After cutting about two hundred steps, I reached a small crevasse intersecting the slope at right angles to the Bergschrund, and Burgener, who was close behind me, shouted, "Es geht."

We then proceeded to bury ourselves in this small crevasse, and having descended by steps cut on one side and our heads resting against the other as far as its ever narrowing walls would admit, we squeezed along, wedged between the icy walls, till we emerged on the face of the great cliff. At an inconvenient distance in front a great flake of ice had parted from the main mass, leaving a sharp knife-edge of weathered ice, parallel to the cliff but rather below our present position. Burgener promptly decided that the intervening space could be jumped, and that he could hold me even if I failed to effect a lodgment on the sérac. The method to be adopted was to jump in such a way as to land on the knife-edge with the hands, whilst the feet were to scrape down the inside of the sérac, trusting that its rotten and decayed surface would afford sufficient hold to the boots to materially reduce the strain on the hands.

Having, with grievous damage to my hands, accomplished this jump, I cut a big step for