The Last Blue Mountain by Ralph Barker

Author:Ralph Barker [Barker, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

– CHAPTER 8 –

Emery and the Crevasse

Streather, Jillott and Hamilton had made their last carry from Camp III up to Camp IV on 7 September. For the next seven days, Culbert and Emery were isolated at Camp IV. At first the weather was so bad that they were unable to move more than a few yards from the tent, and then only for the purpose of digging away the fresh snow. Sometimes this operation alone took them several hours. Soon their daily digging left them sheltered in a hollow, with high banks of snow all round the tent, which was completely hidden from view at five yards distance. Visibility was no more than ten yards or so for days on end, and they didn’t even have to consider the possibility of the others trying to get through from Camp III.

These two men, thrown into protracted and comfortless proximity, with nothing to divert their minds except talking and reading, found a great companionship and thoroughly enjoyed their enforced isolation. Culbert always found it easy to relax. Emery, during the past few weeks, had come to acquire something of Culbert’s and Streather’s view of mountains, and his temperament had never been altogether unsuited to enforced idleness.

Culbert, outwardly shy and reserved, found that he could talk without embarrassment to Emery about Greta, of his memories of the past and hopes for the future. Emery recognised the sensitivity and warmth that lay beneath Culbert’s tough exterior, and he in turn found himself able to talk easily about his own emotional attachments. But for the most part their talk was of superficial things, of matters concerned with their own personal comfort and survival at high altitude in bad weather. They were too near the eternal things to talk much about them, and such things as philosophies and attitudes to life were taken on trust.

On 11 September, four days after Streather, Jillott and Hamilton had made their carry, the mist and cloud that had enveloped Camp IV ever since then began to clear a little towards afternoon. Remembering the lesson they had learnt last time, Culbert and Emery decided that they had better make the track down to the ice cliffs. Having done that, they would be able to look down the slope to Camp III to see if there were any signs of movement. It was extremely unlikely that anyone would get up to them, but after the last occasion they felt that they could hardly be certain. In any case, although conditions were bad, they were only too glad of an opportunity to regain the initiative and do something constructive.

They quickly covered the short distance across the snow plateau between the camp and the blade of snow that led past the crevasse. From the plateau they looked down into the crevasse, noting its cavernous depths, fascinated by a sharp ice pinnacle that seemed to grow out of the depths and force its way up into the jaws of the crevasse in the form of a shark’s tooth, a single, impressive tusk in the mouth of a monster.

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