Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/218

212 long couloir—a more than perpendicular wall of ice, as ugly a place as aught ere chronicled in Alpine history—"It certainly is a glorious climb." And I can still listen to the joyful jodels and shouts, the popping of champagne corks and the riot of tumultuous pleasure with which our friends received us at the Montenvers Hotel. But these are memories amongst which I must not dally. A more skilful pen has recorded the various details, and as a wholly undue meed of praise has been allotted to me, it would be the rankest folly on my part to dispel the pleasing myths that Carr has woven round my deeds. I therefore pass over twelve months, more or less, of inglorious ease to a day when Slingsby, Hastings, Collie, and myself were once more making ready for the assault.

On the morning of the 6th of August, 1893, we sent two porters up to our Grépon gîte, charged with the labour of bringing down the tent, sleeping bags, and other belongings, left there after an ascent of that peak. We bid them, on their descent, go to the extreme left moraine of the Blaitière glacier—as the glacier that descends almost exclusively from the Plan is most confusingly called—and wait for our arrival. Meanwhile, in company with a large party of friends, we strolled to the woods beyond Blaitière dessus, and had a festive lunch in