Farther to the right (in the angle of the square) two more mountain-masses—knife-edged, jagged, and embattled along the crests—frown upon one another across a gorge rent through their very bowels. These two are the Alto del Casquerázo and the Cuchillar de las Navájas, while the interposed abyss—the Portilla de los Machos—cuts clean through the great cordillera, forming a natural gateway between its northern and its southern faces. As the name implies, this gorge is the main route of the ibex from their much-loved Riscos del Fraile to their second chief resort, the Riscos del Francés, which occupy the southern face of the sierra whose snowfields defy even the heats of August.
From our present standpoint the southern wall of the Circo—the Cuchillar de las Navájas—is not visible. This section of the quadrilateral is equally abrupt and intricate, dropping in massive bastions towards the level of the lake. Just beyond the Plaza de Almanzór a second deep gorge or “pass”—the Portilla Bermeja—unites the northern and the southern faces.
Behind where we sit lies yet another panorama of terrible wildness, again dominated by rock-walls of fantastic contour—the valley of Las Cinco Lagunas. But right here our rock-descriptive powers give out—we can only refer to the map.
CHAPTER XXI
SIERRA DE GRÉDOS (Continued)
IBEX-HUNTING
WHY try to describe the distress of that morning or the efforts it cost, during fourteen hours, to gain the summits of Grédos? Again and again what we had taken for our destination proved to be some intervening ridge with another desperate gorge beyond. Suffice it that it was an hour after dark ere we finally lifted the cargoes from the dead-beat beasts. Presently the moon arose, and against her pale effulgence towered the gnarled and pinnacled peaks of Almanzór, piercing the very skies—a lovely but to me an appalling scene. Their altitude is 8800 feet.
Our whole plan and ambitions in this expedition were to find and stalk the ibex—the very undertaking which had proved beyond our powers during two strenuous efforts in former years as readers of Wild Spain already know.
Now in all stalking it must be obvious even to non-technical readers that the first essential is to bring under survey of the binoculars a very considerable extent of game-country every day; but here, in the chaotic jumble of perpendicular or impending precipice or smooth rock-faces inclined at angles that we dare not traverse, any such extensive survey is a sheer impossibility. Alpine climbers or others in the fullest enjoyment of youth and activity might get forward at a reasonable speed. To us, already past that stage, the feat was impossible, i.e. by our own sole exertions. That we, of course, knew in advance; but our plan was to supplement our own powers by availing the splendid rock-climbing abilities of our friends, the goat-herds of Almanzór, on whom we relied for at least finding the game in the first instance.
