A WOMAN’S. CLIMBS IN THE HIGH ALPS 663 
snow made it much longer 
and more anxious. 
We were 19% hours from 
hotel to summit and_ back, 
and 16 of them meant con- 
tinuous hard muscular effort. 
From 4 a. m. to 8 p. m. I 
was pulling myself up or let- 
ting myself down the rocks 
by sheer force of muscle, 
never stopping except a few 
times for a few moments to 
take a hasty meal or a hasty 
snapshot. Starting at 2 a.m. 
and going as fast as caution 
and breath would permit, it 
was I p.m. when we reached 
the summit and 8 p. m. when 
we got off the rocks. There 
were no easy bits and never 
a place to make time by 
“olissering’’; that is, sliding 
erect down snow. It was a 
constant reach and tug, on 
holds that often seemed 1m- 
possible for me to reach. 
There is no shelter after 
the base hut, and this was a 
miserable shanty only two 
hours above the hotel, still 
4,000 feet below the summit. 
An old hut two hours up ons, 
the rocks is ice-filled. On -f§ 
the Italian side there is an * 
Italian Alpine Club Refuge 
Hee ee Os tees, Only 2,000 
feet below the top. By this 
harder side I had wished 
to descend; but as on the 
Weisshorn, conditions now 
made this “traverse” impossible. 
From Zermatt the ascent is right up 
the northeast ridge, the one that is near- 
est in the familiar view of the mountain. 
One point is named for a man who lost 
his life there. Two-thirds of the way 
up is a break that appears as a white 
patch at the right in the pictures. This 
is “the shoulder,” and this we reached at 
Io a. m., eight hours going and all the 
worst still ahead (see picture, page 659). 
Here ropes have been attached to stanch- 
ions 40 feet apart, for this slope is usually 
Ad 
WHAT I TOOK TO BE THE SUMMIT OF MONT BLANC 
It proved to be another 40 minutes to the real summit, 
and the altitude was beginning to make me go more slowly. 
My guide stands sure. 
of making the steps. 
He never slips, and he has the work 
Photo by Dora Keen. 
glare ice on which “crampons,” or climb- 
ing irons, are useful. But now, for half 
the three-quarters of an hour across this 
part, the ropes were out of reach, buried 
under two feet of snow. It was steep 
and every step had to be cut; but at 
least it was not glare ice. This brought 
us to the worst part of all, the almost 
perpendicular ascent of an hour and a 
half, where ropes only help a panting 
struggle. 
“Are you tired?’ my leader constantly 
asked, as I had to gasp for breath a mo- 
