The climbing began almost at once, for in five minutes from the foot the gully walls were close together and were encrusted with thawing ice. The narrow bed was broken up into easy pitches, but to avoid the stream of water that came down beneath the soft covering of snow it was necessary to use small ledges on either side, and span the gully like diminutive colossi--here I am referring only to myself and the little one. Now and again we would plunge up the gully for a short distance in loose snow. Occasionally the crystals became more compact, and two of us could manage to creep over its surface without slipping through. Rarely was this the case with our middle man--a sixteen-stone Teuton with a scientific training. If snow could be crushed he crushed it. He became so indifferent in the matter after awhile, that he made no attempt to distribute his weight evenly over the surface according to the rules laid down by Badminton. The little one, coming last, naturally suffered by this indifference, and was plaintive over what he called the ‘fallacy of the undistributed middle.’ The first pitch of any size occurred within 200 feet of the foot of the gully, a perfectly vertical rise of twenty feet in the bed level with a slender waterfall interfering with our direct progress. The retaining walls were the least bit too far apart for the utilization of both simultaneously, and the right side commended itself to us as the easier to attack. Our only trouble again was the glaze on the rocks, a black, shiny veneer too thin for axe operations, too thick to be trifled with. Such ice always interferes more with the hands than with the feet, for sharp boot nails can roughen the surface of an ice ledge enough for a foothold, whereas the hands can make no impression. If the ice is very cold, gloves must be worn as a protection against the frost. They have the merit of adhering slightly to the ice when pressed, and often in that way give the climber a safe-enough grip. With wet ice such regelation will not occur, and if the work is hazardous I prefer to climb with free hands, trusting to friction to restore circulation wherever an ‘easy’ may be called.