We followed the sides of this torrent, climbing by steep sheep-paths, until we were almost on a level with the base of the surrounding peaks. A rocky bluff cut off the view of what lay beyond. The head of the glen was evidently a broad basin, but how was it filled? Suddenly we saw before us a sheet of ice at least two miles long by one broad—the glacier of Val Seriana.
The broken pinnacles of the Corno dei Tre Confini shot up opposite us on the right, and between two broad snowy depressions rose the comb of Monte Gleno. To reach it we must ascend the glacier. The ice, though in places steep, was not rent by any wide fissures, and an hour's quick walking brought us to the gap at the north-east base of the mountain. Below us, as we had hoped, lay Val Belviso.
Fifteen minutes of rapid scrambling finished the peak, the highest between the Barbellino and Aprica Passes.[36] There was no sign on the summit of any earlier visitor.
The distance was for the most part in cloud, but the Adamello group was excellently seen, and the rock-wall above Val Miller, by which I had once descended, appeared as impossible as any easy climb well could. Val di Scalve was at our feet, and looked inviting, as did the carriage-road winding away from it towards Clusone over the spurs of the fortress-like Presolana.
Two clefts or chimneys offered themselves for the descent. We were I think right in choosing the northernmost or furthest from the peak. The other, as seen afterwards from below, seemed steep for a greater distance. The first few hundred feet required considerable care. The centre of the cleft was swept bare and smooth by spring avalanches, and cut in many places by low cliffs. We made therefore frequent use of the more broken crags on our right, where there was plenty of hold both for legs and arms. We did not meet with any serious difficulties, although we suffered now and then from a momentary embarrassment consequent on having put the wrong foot foremost, a mistake which the practised climber is always ready to retract.
Had it not been for the course of action pursued by one of my companions we might perhaps have got down in shorter time. Having some old grudge, as what Alpine Clubman has not, against a loose stone, he had this year constituted himself the foe of the race, and the chief adjutant of Time in his attack on the mountains. Did an unlucky rock show the smallest tendency to looseness, down it went. Resistance was useless, for my friend's perseverance and patience are proverbial; the rock might retain roots which would have held it for a century, but an ice-axe will serve also as a crowbar, and sooner or later,—down it went.
The process was necessarily sometimes tedious, and those behind watching it from a constrained perch, even if not susceptible enough to see in the downward roar and shiver of the released rock what might happen to themselves if they did not hold on, were liable to become impatient and to protest against the violence of the attack on a peak which had really done nothing to provoke such treatment, and might possibly take to reprisals. A volley from the upper ledges would have been anything but pleasant.
After creeping round the edges of some snow-beds, too short and steep to glissade, the angle of the slope diminished and banks of loose stones fell away to a brow overlooking the highest pasturage. This consists of two shelves, divided by a low cliff and cut off by a much deeper one from the valley. At the châlets on the lower shelf the herdsmen recommended us a long circuit round the head of the glen. With some hesitation we decided to trust the map, and took to the left, keeping at a level for twenty minutes as far as another group of huts. Thence we descended rapidly a trackless hillside, until on drawing near the forest we found a shady path to take us to the bottom.
The upper half of Val Belviso is smooth, green, and pleasant, with fine backward views of Monte Gleno and its gullies, and near at hand a clear, copious stream always dashing in and out of still, deep-coloured pools. Lower down the path becomes steep, stony, and tiresome, and everyone was glad when the last bridge—a bold arch near some ruined mills—seemed to put us within a definite distance of the end. I have seldom known a warmer or more beautiful half hour's walk than the climb of a thousand feet round a projecting hillside to the village of Aprica.
But the high-road to the Adamello marks the close of the Bergamasque valleys.