Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/267

222 more exposed to avalanches and stones, and, so far, no one has ventured to repeat it.

Under these circumstances it obviously behoved climbers to discover a safe and convenient way on to the summit. It might, of course, be argued that where so many and various parties had each and all been forced into stone-swept couloirs, no safe method of reaching the top could exist. But Collie, with resistless logic, demonstrated the falsity of such a conclusion. "Is it not," he said, "universally admitted, is it not written in the Badminton and All England series—and if it isn't it ought to be—that every peak can be ascended by a properly constituted party in absolute safety? Now, since the known routes are all dangerous, it necessarily follows that a fourth, the strait and narrow path, must exist." Converted by this teaching, we determined to elucidate the problem at the earliest opportunity.

During the summer of 1893 we had, more than once, examined the mountain, and the result of these observations, backed up by the study of many photographs, purchased with reckless extravagance during the autumn of that year, had led us to the belief that the true path would be found to lie along the Moine 'ridge. It appeared that this ridge could be safely and conveniently reached from the Talêfre by means of a secondary ridge dividing two couloirs in the near neighbourhood of the great rocky buttress which projects