There was a sinister turban of black clouds wrapped around the summit of the great peak, and before we were half-way up what had only been a cold rain in the lower valley was turning into driving sleet and snow. We ascended by the first _teleferica_--a double one--without difficulty, but the ominous swaying of the cables warned us that the next line, which was more exposed, might be quite another matter. This latter is the one I have mentioned as running from an Alpine meadow to the brow of a cliff towering three thousand feet above it. It was one of the longest--if not the longest--unsupported cable-spans on the whole Alpine front. It was also the steepest of which I had had any experience. The fact that it was exposed throughout its whole length to a strong wind which blew down from an upper valley was responsible for putting it “out of business” during bad weather and thus made it the weak link in the attenuated chain of the Adamello’s communications. As we had feared, we found this _teleferica_ “closed down” upon our arrival at the lower station, ample reason for which appeared in the fifteen or twenty-foot sway given to the parallel lines of cable by the powerful “side-on” wind gusts which assailed it every few moments from the direction of the glacier. Fortunately, as the storm was only coming in fitful squalls as yet and had not settled down to a steady blow, the _tenente_ in charge thought that it might be possible to send us up in one of the quieter intervals. “There’s no danger of the baskets blowing off the cable,” he said; “it’s only a matter of preventing them striking one another in passing, of which there is always risk when the wires are swaying too much.”