My end of the rope was anchored to the adze and I had settled myself in the hole braced for a strain in case they slipped.

When we all stood in the second hole I went down again to make more steps, and in this laborious fashion we spent two hours descending about 500 ft.

Halfway down we had to strike away diagonally to the left, for we noticed that the fragments of ice loosened by the adze were taking a leap into space at the bottom of the slope.

Eventually we got off the steep ice, very gratefully, at a point where some rocks protruded, and we could see then that there was a perilous precipice directly below the point where we had started to cut steps.

A slide down a slippery slope, with the adze and our cooker going ahead, completed this descent, and incidentally did considerable damage to our much-tried trousers.
When we picked ourselves up at the bottom we were not more than 1500 ft.