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Chayne leaned back in his chair fairly startled by this confirmation. It was to the Brenva route that Garratt Skinner had continually harked back. The Aiguille Verte, the Grandes Jorasses, the Charmoz, the Blaitière yes, he had talked of them all, but ever he had come back, with an eager voice and a fire in his eyes, to the ice-arête of the Brenva route. Chayne searched on through the pages.
All this while we sit on a rock at the foot of the Mauvais Pas, looking out upon the green glacier, which here piles itself up finely, and above to the Aiguilles de Charmoz and the innumerable ice-pinnacles that run up to the clouds, while our muleteer is getting his breakfast. This is his third breakfast this morning.
Moreover, how in the world should he know that those slabs of black granite on the top of the Grépon were veined with red splashed with red as he described them? Unless he had ascended them, or the Aiguille des Charmoz opposite how should he know? The philosophy of his guide Michel Revailloud flashed across Chayne's mind. "One needs some one with whom to exchange one's memories."
Having passed the ice-fall, and when within two hours of the Montanvert, Lattery had turned to the left and had made for the great wall of precipitous rock which forms the western side of the valley through which the Glacier du Géant flows down, the wall from which spring the peaks of the Dent du Requin, the Aiguille du Plan, the Aiguille de Blaitière, the Grépon and the Charmoz.
"But he did more than give advice," Chayne continued, "for as he went away to his home in the little village of Les Praz-Conduits, just across the fields, he passed Couttet's Hotel and saw you under the lamp talking to a guide he knew. You were making your arrangements to ascend the Charmoz. But he dissuaded you." "Yes."
The day was all that could be desired. There were a few clouds, but these were light and feathery; clear blue predominated all over the sky. Over the masses of the Jorasses and the peaks of the Geant, the Aiguille du Dru, the slopes of Mont Mallet, the pinnacles of Charmoz, and the rounded white summit of Mont Blanc everywhere the heavens were serene and beautiful.
True, there were the séracs those great slabs and pinnacles of ice set up on end and tottering, high above, where the glacier curved over a brow of rock and broke one of them might have fallen. But Lattery and he had so often ascended and descended that glacier on the way to the Charmoz and the Grépon and the Plan. He could not believe his friend had come to harm that way.
All this while we sit on a rock at the foot of the Mauvais Pas, looking out upon the green glacier, which here piles itself up finely, and above to the Aiguilles de Charmoz and the innumerable ice-pinnacles that run up to the clouds, while our muleteer is getting his breakfast. This is his third breakfast this morning.
Here and there a slim rock spire, the Dru or the Charmoz, pointed a finger to the stars, here and there an ice-field glimmered like a white mist held in a fold of the hills. But to Michel Revailloud, the whole vast range was spread out as on a raised map, buttress and peak, and dome of snow from the Aiguille d'Argentière in the east to the summit of Mont Blanc in the west.
They talked of other peaks, such as the Charmoz, where the first lines of ascent had given place to others more recently discovered, of new variations, new ascents and pinnacles still unclimbed; and then Garratt Skinner said: "I saw that a man actually crossed the Col des Nantillons early this summer. It used to be called the Col de Blaitière.
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