Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/297

248 the Schrund. The top of this cliff, which forms the upper lip of the Schrund, still towered high above our heads, but the piled-up séracs gave us a means of circumventing the obstruction, and we could see that the first serious obstacle was overcome. With ever lessening difficulty, though not without much hewing of steps and an occasional wrestle with loose snow, we gained the well-swept avalanche groove, and were able to cut really reliable foothold in its icy floor.

The hum of one or two small fragments which spun merrily over our heads soon directed our thoughts and aspirations toward some rocks shutting in the ice slope a short distance on our right. A first effort to cross was, however, foiled by the layer of dangerous new snow lying on all the slope outside our well-brushed avalanche slide. Fifty feet higher up the snow seemed slightly more compact, besides which we were not so terribly near the edge of the great overhanging ice cliff, Though the actual peril may not be affected by the nearness of such a cliff, none the less the human mind is so constructed—at least mine is—that one feels much happier when a reasonably long slide would precede the final and concluding drop.

By much careful anchoring, and by treating the new snow as Isaac Walton advises the angler to treat the frog he is impaling, "use him as though you loved him," we got across without material risk. A sharp scramble up and round a precipitous corner