Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/58

Rh peak. Standing in the gap between this tower and the mass of the mountain, we looked down a couloir of most appalling steepness. Far beneath us, amongst its lower crags and ridges, mists were curling and seething, seeming in their restless activity to be the half-awakened "Geister" hungering for their victims. So strange and mysterious did that deep chasm seem, that I half expected to see the writhing vapour take form and substance, and sweep to their doom those rash mortals who had surprised the dead amid their nightly revels.

Far above, the great ridges armed with fantastic icicles, at one moment would stand out hard and sharp against a blue-black sky, and the next be lost in a blurred cloud of driving snow, the roar of each furious gust being followed by the ominous clatter of broken icicles, and the crash of great stones torn from the summit rocks.

The final peak looked very formidable, and, in such weather, could not have been assailed with any reasonable approach to safety. We resolved, in consequence, to traverse on to the ordinary Hörnli route. Scrambling up to a second tower, just above that already mentioned (also visible from Zermatt), we halted for a few minutes and made ready for a rapid traverse. So far, we had not been in the line of fire, but we were now compelled to break cover, and run the gauntlet of the hail of broken ice and stones that the gale