Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/264

258 waste valuable energy in climbing to the top of the "Sugar Loaf"; it being, in the dense fog, quite impossible to tell just where this pinnacle was. Collie, it is true, was quite sure that we were on the Verte side of it, but the blight of a sceptical age was upon me and we kept to the right. Just as we scrambled on to the crest of the buttress, an eddy of wind swept the arête bare of cloud, and we halted a few minutes to inspect our mountain. Swinging back to our left, a short diagonal ascent landed us on the main ridge at 8.20 a.m., and we were able to look down on to the Charpoua glacier and across to the great south-western face of our peak. With a weakness which is not, perhaps, altogether unusual amongst mountaineers, I pointed out to my companions the various crags and gullies, ice slopes and slabs, by which Burgener and I had made our way to the summit thirteen years before.

A rush of cloud, bearing with it more than a suspicion of snow, hurried us from our seats, and we scrambled merrily along the ridge. As we advanced, however, a few jagged towers began to give us some trouble. Whilst turning one of these on the Talêfre side, we were surprised to see a broken bottle. Soon after we discovered the remains of a broken stick wedged into a cleft of the rocks, and made immovable by a mass of ice frozen round it. Its ancient appearance led us to suppose that