SPORT AND TRAVEL 137 



it upwards again in fine powder. In all my life I 

 have never seen a fouler day. Hoping for an im- 

 provement, we remained in the village till after 

 breakfast, but finding that the storm was growing 

 worse, I resolved to push on and get out of the 

 mountain whilst it was still possible to do so, so we 

 packed up and started at 10.30; but the storm grew 

 worse and worse until the wind had increased to a 

 veritable hurricane. Luckily it blew from directly 

 behind us, otherwise it would have been impossible to 

 face it. The whole atmosphere became a snow fog, 

 composed, not only of the flakes coming down from 

 the clouds, but also of the finer particles torn up from 

 the ground by the violence of the wind. 



Had we remained at our camping place on the 

 mountain, our tents would inevitably have been blown 

 down, and we should have had to abandon our bag- 

 gage and get out of the mountain the best way we 

 could. I am not at all sure that we should have been 

 successful in doing so, for in such a snowstorm, and 

 with such a wind blowing, one could well imagine that 

 it would be easy enough to lose one's way and perish 

 amongst the deep snowdrifts of the higher moun- 

 tains. It was bad enough getting along on the lower 

 level where we were. In some places we had to 

 plough through snowdrifts four feet deep, but luckily 

 these were never of great length, as for the most part 

 the snow lay but thinly on the bare track we were 

 following, having been torn off it by the wind, and 



