Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/33

16 on a sheltered ledge found the débris of Penhall's camp. Here we halted for breakfast and deposited the blankets, which, thinking it just possible we might have to spend another night on the mountain, we had brought with us to this point. After half an hour's halt we put on the rope and began to ascend the snow ridge. Beaching the rocky teeth, which, when seen from Zermatt, stand out conspicuously against the sky, we scrambled over the rickety piles of frost-riven rock. Beyond the third tooth we were pulled up by a deep cleft. Burgener and Petrus soon scrambled down the face of the rocks to our right and succeeded in getting into it. Further direct progress was, however, impossible, as the ridge rose perpendicularly above them, and a great rib supporting it bulged out in front and precluded all chance of traversing. Of itself this would not have stopped either of the men, as a narrow gully between this rib and the fangs of the tooth on which Gentinetta and I were sitting, offered an obvious means of descending below the obstruction; further in front and to the left, however, rose a slope with the unpleasant look that tells of a basis of rotten rock, glazed with ice and masked with powdery snow. Higher up it steepened till it seemed almost perpendicular. Up this slope we knew we must go or abandon the ascent, and, startled by its appearance, the men recoiled to the rocks where I was still posted.

For another three-quarters of an hour we examined it without being able to see a