'Monte Cristallo,' I told him. 'Mayne says he can show me a glacier and some fine avalanche slopes. I thought they might produce some good shots. It would be grander stuff than you can get down here.'
Joe laughed. 'Shows how little you know about camera work,' he said. 'It's all a matter of angles and light. I haven't been more than a thousand yards from this hut, but I've got everything. I don't need to go traipsing all over the Dolomites to get my background.'
'I wish I had your sublime self-confidence,' I said.
I suppose I had spoken with a shade of bitterness, for he looked up and patted my arm. 'It'll come,' he said. 'It'll come. A couple of successes and you'll never listen to advice again — until it's too late. I'm at the top now. Nobody can teach me anything about cameras. But it won't last. In a few. years' time younger men will come along with new ideas which I shan't be able to see, and that'll be that. It's the way it goes in this racket. Engles will tell you the same.'
I left him then and went out on to the belvedere. Mayne was waiting for me there. Just a couple of successes! It was so easy to talk about it. And I hadn't even begun a script. The wood of my skis was actually warm to the touch as they stood propped against the balustrade in the sun. But though the sun was warm, it made little or no impression on the snow, which remained hard and frozen.
We started up across virgin snow until we hit the track to the Passo del Cristallo. It was not really a track — just a few ski marks lightly dusted over with a powder of snow that had drifted across them during the night. The run looked as though it was little used. 'You know the way, I suppose?' I asked Mayne.
He stopped and turned his head. 'Yes. I haven't done it this year. But I've done it often before. You don't need to worry about having no guide. It's quite straightforward until we get up near the top of the pass. There's a nasty bit of climbing to do to get to the top of it. We'll be just on ten thousand feet up there. We may have to do the last bit without skis. Then there's the glacier. That's about a kilometre. There should be plenty of snow on it. After that it's quite a simple run down to Carbonin.' He turned and plodded on ahead of me again, thrusting steadily with his sticks.
I think if I had had the sense to look at the map before we started out, I should never have gone on that particular run. It is not a beginner's run. And it looks a bit frightening even on the map. There's at least a kilometre on the way up to the glacier marked with interrupted lines, denoting 'difficult itinerary'. Then there is the glacier itself. And both on the way up from Col da Varda and on the way down to Carbonin, the red hachures of avalanche slopes are shown falling down towards the track on every side.
As we climbed steadily upwards, zig-zagging in places because of the steepness of the entrance to the pass, I had a glimpse of what was to come. The outer bastions of Monte Cristallo towered above us to the left, a solid wall of jagged edges. To our right, a great field of snow swept precipitously down towards us, like a colossal sheet pinned to the blue sky by a single jagged peak. It was across the lower slopes of this that we were steadily climbing. There was no track at all now. The wind whistling up the pass had completely obliterated the marks of the previous day's skiers. We were alone in a white world and ahead of us the pass rose in rolling downs of snow to the sharp rock teeth that marked the top of the pass. The sunlight had a brittle quality and the bare rock outcrops above us had no warmth in their colouring. They looked cold and black.
I could, I suppose, have turned back then. But Mayne had a confident air. He was never at a loss for direction. And I was feeling quite at ease now on my skis. The stiffness had worn off and, though the going was hard and I was out of training, I felt quite capable of making it. It was only the solitude and the lurking belief that we should have had a guide on a run of this sort that worried me.