The adze proved an excellent
instrument for this purpose, a blow sufficing to provide a foothold.
Anxiously but hopefully I cut the last few steps and stood upon the
razor-back, while the other men held the rope and waited for my news.
The outlook was disappointing. I looked down a sheer precipice to a
chaos of crumpled ice 1500 ft. below. There was no way down for us.
The country to the east was a great snow upland, sloping upwards for a
distance of seven or eight miles to a height of over 4000 ft. To the
north it fell away steeply in glaciers into the bays, and to the south
it was broken by huge outfalls from the inland ice-sheet. Our path lay
between the glaciers and the outfalls, but first we had to descend from
the ridge on which we stood. Cutting steps with the adze, we moved in
a lateral direction round the base of a dolomite, which blocked our
view to the north. The same precipice confronted us. Away to the
north-east there appeared to be a snow-slope that might give a path to
the lower country, and so we retraced our steps down the long slope
that had taken us three hours to climb. We were at the bottom in an
hour. We were now feeling the strain of the unaccustomed marching. We
had done little walking since January and our muscles were out of tune.
Skirting the base of the mountain above us, we came to a gigantic
bergschrund, a mile and a half long and 1000 ft.
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