The Blue Ice

by Innes Hammond

'I'll risk that,' she answered and started off up the slope towards the hut.

I followed her. My limbs had stiffened so that they felt like boards with rusted joints. But by the time I reached the top of the slope, they had loosened up a bit and I was feeling warm with the exertion. There was no sign of the hut. The marks of our descent were already obliterated. Jill had a compass in her hand. 'We shall never find the post in this snow,' she said. 'We must go by compass. Finse is just west of due south. Ready?'

I nodded.

She thrust her sticks into the snow and glided off along the ridge. 'Keep close to me,' she called. 'And go slowly. It may be dangerous.'

So began one of the craziest trips I have ever done. The snow was so thick that visibility was reduced to a few yards. The wind cut like a knife. There were no markers now. Jill was leading us by compass and intuition. And I'll say this, she led well. She had a feel for the lie of the country which was instinctive rather than reasoned. We kept to ridges where possible. But every now and then we dropped steeply only to have to climb again on the far side. But as we went on the proportion of downhill to uphill work increased and in consequence the going became easier. Several times we found ourselves faced with, drops into nothingness. Probably they were only a matter of twenty or thirty feet. But in the snow it was impossible to tell. Once we climbed a long, sloping snow-field only to find ourselves stopped by a sheer cliff of black rock splodged with patches of snow. We worked round this and then had a good run down a long cutting in the mountain.

On this run Jill disappeared completely. She was somewhere just ahead of me, for despite the snow, her ski tracks were still quite clear as I followed. But apart from the tracks, I might have been alone in the wilderness of falling and fallen snow. Then suddenly her figure loomed up at me out of the storm. She screamed something to me and waved her stick. I did a jump turn and fell with my face buried in the snow, A hand caught me under the arm and helped me to my feet. 'What's the trouble?' I asked, looking down into her face which was almost obliterated by snow.

She turned round and pointed. I shivered. It was one of the most terrifying sights I have ever seen. Just beyond the point where she had churned up the snow in a quick Christi, the ground fell away and the colour changed from white to ice-cold green. We were on the glacier itself, and this was a crevasse. It was a big one — about fifteen feet across; a great gap that disappeared deep down beyond our sight. I went as close as I dared, but I could not see the bottom. I was looking at a million years of ice packed hard and solid like green crystal. I looked at Jill and could see she was thinking the same thing. She had only just saved herself. Just a fraction faster and instead of looking down into the green depths of that giant crack, we should be down there looking our last at the narrow slit that marked the world above.

'Come on,' she said. 'We must go back and cross it higher up.' Her voice, though she endeavoured to control it, sounded shaky.

We turned then and began to trudge back, climbing parallel to the crevasse. Gradually it narrowed until at last it was bridged by snow. We climbed a little higher and then struck across the glacier. We found no more crevasses and were soon climbing a ridge on the far side studded with huge rocks, some of which outcropped from the snow. Beyond, was a long sloping run. We turned south again and began to glide down. But this time Jill kept the pace down.

We found no more crevasses. And shortly afterwards the snow slackened and the dismal grey seemed lessened by a strange iridescence. This iridescence strengthened gradually until it hurt the eyes to look at it. The snow suddenly ceased to fall. The iridescence was mist. A moment later it was agitated as though by some giant hand and then, in a flash, the obscuring veil was whisked away and the sun shone. The white of the snow was blinding. To the west the sky was blue. The snow-capped peaks smiled at us benignly. The driving snowstorm up at the hut seemed as unreal now as a nightmare. We were in a pleasant world of warmth and white snow and brown outcrops of rock. Jill turned and waved. She was smiling. The next moment I was crouched low on my skis and going like the wind. The ski points sizzled in the powdery, ice-crystal snow and the cold air whipped at my cheeks.