Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/267

Rh descend a short distance on the Talêfre face. Climbing back, we were met by a great cornice fringed with a long row of icicles. We crept along between the snow wall and the icicles, fearing to touch the latter lest the whole structure should come down bodily on our heads. A small gap was at length reached, and after a few remaining tufts and tassels of ice had been hacked away, it was possible to crawl through. Good anchorage for the rest of the party being here available, I scrambled on to the cornice, and from that point of vantage was able to effect a lodgment on the next rocky tower. These various traverses and scrambles, interspersed with halts whenever the ingenuity of laziness could invent a tolerable excuse, consumed much time, and we were still without any very definite sign of the top.

Suddenly we stepped out of the cloud into brilliant sunshine, below us stretched an unbroken sea of billowy mist, from which Mont Blanc and the Grandes Jorasses alone emerged. Pressed for time as we were, we could not resist yet another halt to gaze at this extraordinary and most beautiful spectacle. Before us a short snow ridge led to what was obviously the top, and setting resolutely to work, a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes of step-cutting placed us on the summit (2 p.m.).

A biting northerly wind swept across the ridge, and kept the huge expanse of cloud below us in constant movement. At moments vast masses would