I
Was Eager, And Had Not Yet Felt The Awful Grip Of The Cold.
We left
the Nufenen on our left, a hopeless steep of new snow buried in fog,
and we attacked the Gries.
For half-an-hour we plunged on through snow
above our knees, and my thin cotton clothes were soaked. So far the
guide knew we were more or less on the path, and he went on and I
panted after him. Neither of us spoke, but occasionally he looked back
to make sure I had not dropped out.
The snow began to fall more thickly, and the wind had risen somewhat.
I was afraid of another protest from the guide, but he stuck to it
well, and I after him, continually plunging through soft snow and
making yard after yard upwards. The snow fell more thickly and the
wind still rose.
We came to a place which is, in the warm season, an alp; that is, a
slope of grass, very steep but not terrifying; having here and there
sharp little precipices of rock breaking it into steps, but by no
means (in summer) a matter to make one draw back. Now, however, when
everything was still Arctic it was a very different matter. A sheer
steep of snow whose downward plunge ran into the driving storm and was
lost, whose head was lost in the same mass of thick cloud above, a
slope somewhat hollowed and bent inwards, had to be crossed if we were
to go any farther; and I was terrified, for I knew nothing of
climbing. The guide said there was little danger, only if one slipped
one might slide down to safety, or one might (much less probably) get
over rocks and be killed. I was chattering a little with cold; but as
he did not propose a return, I followed him. The surface was
alternately slabs of frozen snow and patches of soft new snow. In the
first he cut steps, in the second we plunged, and once I went right in
and a mass of snow broke off beneath me and went careering down the
slope. He showed me how to hold my staff backwards as he did his
alpenstock, and use it as a kind of brake in case I slipped.
We had been about twenty minutes crawling over that wall of snow and
ice; and it was more and more apparent that we were in for danger.
Before we had quite reached the far side, the wind was blowing a very
full gale and roared past our ears. The surface snow was whirring
furiously like dust before it: past our faces and against them drove
the snow-flakes, cutting the air: not falling, but making straight
darts and streaks. They seemed like the form of the whistling wind;
they blinded us. The rocks on the far side of the slope, rocks which
had been our goal when we set out to cross it, had long ago
disappeared in the increasing rush of the blizzard.
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