Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/300

294 still plastered in places by half-melted masses of snow. One of these, smitten by Zurfiuh's axe, broke away bodily, striking me very severely on head, knee, and hand. Luckily I was almost close to him, but even so, for a minute or two, I scarcely knew what had happened. Had there been three or four of us on the rope the results could scarcely have failed to be serious. I am aware that two men are usually regarded as constituting too small a party for serious mountain work. None the less, on rotten rocks, or where much frozen snow loosely adheres to the ledges and projecting crags, it has advantages which, so far as I am able to judge, make it almost an ideal number.

Happily, five minutes' rest restored my scattered senses, and we quitted this ill-behaved gully, bearing still further to the right over disintegrated rocks and loose stones. Going fairly fast, we reached the great mass of red rock, referred to by Mr. Donkin as marking the limit of his and Mr. Dent's attempt, at 7 a.m. Without halting we still pushed on, bearing ever to the right in order to reach the smaller of two long couloirs that had been very conspicuous from our camp. This couloir runs up the face of the peak towards the south-western ridge in the near neighbourhood of the summit. Zurfluh had, the previous evening, diagnosed its contents as snow, and the rocks being mostly ice-glazed and distinctly difficult, we thought it desirable to reach it