Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/91

Rh next eighty feet without its moral support, and, which was worse, without an axe. Rejoining Burgener, the broken weapon was made over to me. We were now on a level with the top of the projecting rocks, and could see that, supported by their topmost crag, a long ribbon of snow led upwards. Once on this snow it seemed as if our progress would be comparatively easy, though, as Burgener showed, by the simple expedient of chucking a knob of ice across, it was of that evil, powdery sort that the guides call "pulverischen." Since, moreover, it was lying at the very steepest angle consistent with remaining at rest, it was evident that greater reliance would have to be placed in Providence than is usually considered desirable in these degenerate days. The difficulty, however, was to reach it. I have already explained that the projecting rocks had forced us to the left into a sort of blind, semicircular hollow. A few feet above, the ice, up which we had been cutting, thinned out against overhanging rock ; while to cross to the snow involved the passage of an almost perpendicular wall, thickly glazed with ice. This traverse of fifteen feet or more looked scarcely possible. For once in his life Burgener suggested retreat, and we should have both returned incontinently down the couloir, running the gauntlet of falling stones, and facing even the horrors of that hideous ice slope, with its thin surface of snow already relaxed by the warm rays of