Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/175

Rh attached to the establishment, and also to wake and interview a one-eyed guide, who was sleeping in the hotel, and who had been with M. Dunod on some of his unsuccessful attempts.

This guide, Gaspard Simond, proved willing, and with the herd-boy as second man we started gaily for the valley of stones. Each amateur member of the party was quite sure that the route taken along the detestable slopes of the stone man ridge was far inferior to the line that such amateur had worked out and was prepared to lead us on; but I noticed that none the less we carefully kept to the herd-boy's lead, and for the first time we reached the moraine of the Nantillon glacier without feeling the need of any seriously bad language. Concealing our lanterns beneath a stone, we struck up the glacier just as the soft lights of morning were silhouetting the rugged limestone ridges of Sixt.

At this point Gaspard indulged in some very depressing statements. He told us that he had recently been up the Charmoz, and with true prophetic insight had devoted his time whilst there to an examination of the particular slab up which our route lay. This slab, he had been able to see, was coated with "verglas," and most ingenious defences of