“THROUGH SNOW AND ICE”
I TOOK the road to the Krestovy Pass. The clouds lowered, and there was
the promise of much snow. It was bitterly cold, and the mountains in
front were dressed from head to foot in white robes. Two versts from
Kobi an avalanche had fallen recently, so that the road would have been
impossible but for an emergency tunnel that had providently been
constructed at that point. Fifty men were at work shovelling snow into
the river-valley, which was itself piled up in bergs of snow. I wondered
what was in store for me at the higher points of the road.
The snow came thick and fast, and the wind blew the tops of the drifts
in my face. The snowy mountain sides seemed to faint as the clouds came
over them. The river below me was absolutely hidden from view, but it
rushed rapidly under the snow. They say the snow never completely melts
from this river-bed, even in the hottest seasons.
I fastened my waterproof sleeping-sack about my person, for it was so
cold. The road had now on each side of it an eight-foot wall of piled-up
and drifted snow, and in this wall little snow caves had been dug out to
allow the traveller or workman to take shelter in storms. I was among
the elements, high up among the snowy peaks, with snow above and below.
To the horizon ran curve after curve of undulating snow. Yet as I stood
and listened I heard larks singing. There must be sheltered valleys
somewhere.
Five miles from Kobi the road was completely closed to vehicular traffic
by an immense heap of avalanche snow, fifty yards across. Over the chaos
was a track fairly secure for pedestrians. Now and then one went up to
the knee in loose snow. It was a grand pile which an English schoolboy
would revel in.
I marvelled at the new world I had so suddenly entered. As the road grew
higher all became whiter, till earth and sky were one and there was no
dividing line. I felt among the clouds themselves. At Krestovy Pass
there was no view to be seen—the hurrying storm closed in everything
about my eyes. I looked downward into an abyss of snow and cloud. Then
for a moment the storm seemed to be hurrying away from me. The snow
ceased to fall on the road where I stood, but in front of me rushed in
the gale. I saw the lines of distant precipices, and beyond, the
peculiar greyness of the storm. Then the snow returned, and the wind was
like to take one’s ears off. The snow rushed past with extraordinary
velocity. Often now the road was banked up fifteen feet with snow, so
that one was in a sheltered passage. Coming once more into the open, I
found the storm had slackened. A beam of the sun shot through, and
showed behind the flakes tall, ghostly mountains with seams of awful
blackness, where from their steep sides the snow had fallen away.
From the overtopping snow banks on the road hung icicles a yard long,
and the walls of the dark emergency tunnels were sheeted with ice. In
one of these near Gudaour the ice against the rock wall was fifteen feet
high and three to eight feet thick. Huge icicles ten feet long hung from
the roof. The tunnel was a fairy grotto. At the foot of the icicles were
piles of little ice marbles where the frozen walls had thawed; the
fanciful person might call them jewels. The whole was lovely to look at,
for the outside surface of the ice was glittering lacework.
I was now going lower and I noticed that it was milder—the snow was not
so dry, and the roadway was wet and muddy. I witnessed an extraordinary
phenomenon, the road steaming from the heat of the sun shining through
the clouds, and yet the snow falling heavily all the time.
[Illustration: AKHTSAURI GLACIER, KAZBEK]
The descending road has a sheer precipice on one side, and the abyss
might tempt the will of some people if they ventured near the edge. It
was a strange sight to see the snow-flakes being blown upward out of the
valley of the River Aragva. I looked down three thousand feet and saw
the pleasant green of the south country. I looked up to the north and
saw the mountains cloaked and grim, like sentinels sitting at their
posts.
Gudaour looked like the outskirts of Moscow in midwinter. The snow was
piled up on each side of the road and on the cottage roofs. One would
have said it was the month of January for certain.
I had two glasses of milk at one of the inns, and still felt in very
good form for continuing on the road. It was an immediate descent, at
first through slush of snow, and then over mud, and finally along a dry,
hard highway. A thousand feet below the village it was raining; the
weather was decidedly mild. At one spot it seemed to me I had located a
type of English weather. But for the mountains it might have been a wet
February day in Essex.
Then I found again wild snowdrops and violets, and the blackthorn was in
bud. Two thousand feet below there were cowslips and lilies, and there,
to my joy, the hot sun came out and clothed the spring in sparkles. I
slipped down to Mleti and found the summer there.
------------------------------------------------------------------------