The two greatest enemies of the _teleferica_ are the avalanche and the wind--the latter because it may blow the baskets off the cable, and the former because it may carry the whole thing away. As the tracks of snow-slides--the points at which they are most likely to occur--are fairly well defined, it is usually possible to make a wide span across the danger-zone with the cable and thus minimise the chance of disaster on this score. It is only when the dread _valanga_--as occasionally happens--is launched at some unexpected point that damage may be done to an aerial tramway. A great slide--perhaps the worst which has occurred on the Italian side of the lines during the war--which came down, a mile wide, from the summit of the Tofana _massif_ to the Dolomite road in the valley five miles below, carried away a block of barracks and a battery of mountain guns, in addition to burying a considerable length of _teleferica_ a hundred feet deep in snow and _débris_. Visiting this slide in December, 1916, a few days after it happened, I saw--at a point where a cut had been run in an endeavour to save some of the several hundred Alpini who had been buried--the twisted tower of the _teleferica_, inextricably mixed up with the body of a mule and a gun-carriage and overlaid with a solid stratum of forest trees, two miles below the point at which it had formerly stood. Though the number of disasters of this kind from avalanches may be counted upon one’s fingers, trouble from high wind is always an imminent possibility. In the early days of the _teleferica_ accidents traceable to the blowing off of the baskets were fairly common; in fact, it was feared for a time that the difficulty from this source might be so great as materially to limit the usefulness of the cableway system. The use of more deeply-grooved wheels, however, did away with this trouble almost entirely, so that now the only menace from the wind is when it comes from “abeam” and blows hard enough to swing the baskets into collision when passing each other in mid-air. Though I have had many a _teleferica_ journey that was distinctly thrilling--what ride through the air on a swaying wire, with a torrent or an avalanche below, and perhaps shells hurtling through the clouds above, would not be thrilling? --I have never figured in anything approaching an accident, and only once in an experience which might even be described as “ticklish.” This latter occurred through my insistence on making an ascent in a _teleferica_ on a day when there was too much wind to allow it to operate in safety. It was on the Adamello in the course of an ascent which I endeavoured to make toward the end of last July.