"At first we went rapidly down, and were soon cheered by the sight of M. Duhamel's cairn, looking about five minutes off. I was in front at the time, and was just getting on to a short snow-slope by which we had ascended the day before, when, doubting its safety, I asked the others to hold fast whilst I tried it. The moment I put my foot on the snow, all the top went away, slowly at first, then, taking to the left, went down the couloir with a rush. We tried again where the upper layer had gone away, but it was all unsafe; so we had to spend half an hour getting down the rocks, where we had ascended in ten minutes, and it was not until 2.30 that we reached the cairn.
"It was 3.30 before we continued the descent. The couloir was not in good order and required care. Gardiner, who was in front, did not get on as well as usual. At last, thinking we might get impatient, he showed us his fingers, which were bleeding in several places, and awfully raw and sore. He had pluckily kept it all to himself until the real difficulties were over; but the snow of the couloir had softened his hands, and these last rocks were weathered granite, and very sharp and cutting; so he had to go very gingerly.
"At the bottom of the buttress a surprise awaited us, for as we descended the last 20 feet, the weather-beaten face of old Lagier, our porter, appeared above the rocks. The faithful old fellow said he had traced our descent by the occasional flashing of the wine tin in the sun, and had come alone to meet us, bringing us provisions as he thought we might have run short. He had waited six hours for us, and had iced the bottle of champagne which had been left on the ascent. We opened it and then hurried down to the glacier, taking off the rope at the moraine, and ran all the rest of the way on the snow to our bivouac, like a lot of colts turned loose in a field, feeling it a great relief to get on to something on which we could tumble about as we liked without falling over a precipice."
That the Meije is a really difficult mountain may be assumed from the fact that for some years after its first ascent, no party succeeded in getting up and down it on the same day. When every step of the way became well known, of course much quicker times were possible, and when, on 16th September 1892, I went up it with the famous Dauphiné guide, Maximin Gaspard, and Roman Imboden (the latter aged twenty-three, and perhaps the finest rock climber in Switzerland), we had all in our favour. There was neither ice nor snow on the rocks, and no icicles hung from the Glacier Carré, while the weather was still and cloudless. We slept at the bottom of the buttress—just at the spot where Mr Pilkington met his porter—and from here were exactly four hours (including a halt of one hour) reaching the top of the Meije.
It is now the fashion to cross the Meije from La Bérarde to La Grave, the descent on the other side being also extremely hard. For a couple of hours after leaving the summit a narrow ridge is traversed with several formidable gaps in it.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PIZ SCERSCEN TWICE IN FOUR DAYS—THE FIRST ASCENT OF MONT BLANC BY A WOMAN.
It was a mad thing to do. I realised that when thinking of it afterwards; but this is how it happened.
I had arranged with a friend, Mr Edmund Garwood, to try a hitherto unattempted route on a mountain not far from Maloja. He was to bring his guide, young Roman Imboden; I was to furnish a second man, Wieland, of St Moritz.
