Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/286

280 and I held wedged across the chasm, and thus avoided the main difficulties of the passage.

Two years previously I had crossed the Col Triolet and passed this same Schrund almost without difficulty, but two snowless winters had altogether altered its character. Lower down, remembering splendid slopes of avalanche snow on the right bank of the glacier, I led our party across, but in place of a glissade of a thousand feet or more on hardest snow, we had to flounder down loose stones and rocks, the same exceptional winters having failed to make good the waste of the summer sun. As a consequence the bridge, which used to cross the torrent in the Val Ferret, had been allowed to disappear. Presumably no one now ever goes near this endless waste of desolation and hideousness. Having waded the stream we tramped down to Courmayeur, where we arrived amidst the deluge of a thunderstorm at 9.15 p.m.