Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/341

288 A long couloir, or the rocks at the side of it, obviously gave access to a great glacier region from which we considered the higher ridges of our mountain might be attained. On the whole we thought our prospects fairly good, and returned to our camp in the best of spirits.

Early the next morning the camp fire was lit, tea was brewed, and our frugal meal of brown bread duly consumed. Leaving the camp securely packed in the watertight knapsacks, we tramped and scrambled up the slopes towards the plateau we had marked as our first objectif.

The cliffs proved very easy, and our hopes rose as we saw the facility with which we were topping the neighbouring crests. Arrived at the plateau, we found ourselves below a huge wall of ice-bound rock that forms the ridge dividing the shelf we were on, from a vast glacier flowing almost from the summit of Shkara down to the glacier we had descended the previous day. Keeping along our shelf, we advanced merrily till a great buttress of black rock, projecting from the ridge, partially broke its continuity. Either we must round this buttress, a process involving a considerable descent, or we must climb on to the ridge and follow it. We appeared to have covered a great deal of ground, and were obviously at a great height; we concluded, therefore, that we must be somewhere in the neighbourhood of the summit. Acting on this, as it turned out, wholly erroneous