Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/314

Rh retreat, I followed Zurfluh languidly up the cliff to see whether a second and easier traverse could be found. There proved to be no such possibility, and about 9 a.m, we abandoned the ascent.

On the way back we glissaded the couloir, spinning down a thousand feet or more in a single slide. A few weeks later when Messrs. Woolley, Holder, and Cockin reached the Misses kosh, the Caucasian sun had stripped almost every atom of snow from this gully.

We found to our sorrow that the camp had not yet arrived, and a second cold and comfortless night ensued. The next morning, as a consequence, Zurfluh was too unwell to start, so with the energy of an amateur I explored the approaches to the southern face of the mountain. In the course of my solitary wander I scared a herd of seventeen Tur, and subsequently reached the extreme south-western buttress of the peak, a point almost worthy of a distinctive title, as it is separated from the mass of the mountain by a broad col, and is only to be reached by a long and not wholly easy ridge. Its height is about 13,500 feet, or possibly more, and one looks over the Zanner pass into Suanetia and across the Shkara pass to the mountains on the further side of the Dych Su glacier. The face of Dych Tau, however, had all my attention. The peak seen from this side has two summits, and I found it quite impossible to