Experience, of course, has laid down many rules for determining
whether snow of this sort is safe, but the best men--guides as well as
amateurs--may sometimes be misled. Professor Tyndall, for instance,
was always a cautious as well as a brilliant mountaineer; yet there
was a day when the professor's snow craft failed him, and he came very
near to paying for his blunder with his life.
The place was the Piz Morteratsch, in the Engadine, and the time the
month of July, 1864. Professor Tyndall's companions were Mr.
Hutchinson and Lee Warner, and the guides Jenni and Walter. Jenni was
at that time the dictator of Pontresina, and he seems to have set out
with the deliberate intention of showing his _Herren_ how great and
brave a man he was.
The ascent was accomplished without any incident of note. On the way
down the party reached a broad _couloir_, or gully, filled with snow,
which had been melted and refrozen, so as to expose a steeply sloping
wall of ice. The question arose whether it would be better to descend
this wall of ice, or to keep to the steep rocks by the side of it.
Professor Tyndall preferred the rocks; Jenni inclined towards the
slope, and started to lead the way upon it.
[Illustration: THE NEEDLE OF THE GIANTS AND MONT BLANC.]
There was a remonstrance from the professor:
"Jenni," he said, "do you know where you are going? The slope is pure
ice."
"I know it," the guide replied, "but the ice is quite bare for a few
rods only. Across this exposed portion I will cut steps, and then the
snow which covers the ice will give us a footing."
So they started, roped together, Jenni in front, Mr. Tyndall next,
followed by Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Lee Warner, the one inexperienced
member of the party, and, last of all, the guide Walter, ready to
check on the instant any false step that Mr. Lee Warner might make.
After a few steps Jenni began to see that the slope was less safe than
he had supposed. He stopped and turned round to speak a word of
warning to the three men above him.
"Keep carefully in the steps, gentlemen," he said; "a false step here
might start an avalanche."
And, even as he spoke, the false step was made. There was a sound of a
fall and a rush, and Professor Tyndall saw his friends and their
guide, all apparently entangled, whirled past him. He planted himself
to resist the shock, but it was irresistible; he, too, was torn from
his foothold, and Jenni followed him, and all five found themselves
riding downwards, with uncontrollable speed, on the back of an
avalanche, which a single slip had started.
"Turn on your face, and grind the point of your axe or baton through
the moving snow into the ice"--that is the golden rule for cases of
the kind, the only way in which the faller can do anything to arrest
his speed. But it seldom avails much, and in this instance it availed
nothing.
"No time," writes Professor Tyndall, "was allowed for the break's
action; for I had held it firmly thus for a few seconds only, when I
came into collision with some obstacle and was rudely tossed through
the air, Jenni at the same time being shot down upon me. Both of us
here lost our batons. We had been carried over a crevasse, had hit its
lower edge, and, instead of dropping into it, were pitched by our
great velocity beyond it. I was quite bewildered for a moment, but
immediately righted myself, and could see the men in front of me,
half-buried in the snow, and jolted from side to side by the ruts
among which we were passing."
Presently a second crevasse was reached. Jenni knew that it was there,
and did a brave thing. He deliberately threw himself into the chasm,
thinking that the strain thus put upon the rope would stop the motion.
But, though he was over a hundred and eighty pounds in weight, he was
violently jerked out of the fissure, and almost squeezed to death by
the pressure of the rope.
And so they continued to slide on. Below them was a long slope,
leading directly downwards to a brow where the glacier fell
precipitously; and at the base of the declivity the ice was cut by a
series of profound chasms, where they must fall, and where the tail of
the avalanche would cover them up forever.
The three foremost men rode upon the forehead of the avalanche, and
were at times almost wholly hidden by the snow; but behind, the
sliding layer was not so thick, and Jenni strove with desperate energy
to arrest his progress.
"Halt! Herr Jesus! halt!" he shouted, as again and again he drove his
heels into the firmer surface underneath.
[Illustration: THE MATTERHORN.]
And now let Professor Tyndall tell the rest:
"Looking in advance, I noticed that the slope, for a short distance,
became less steep, and then fell as before. Now or never we must be
brought to rest. The speed visibly slackened, and I thought we were
saved. But the momentum had been too great; the avalanche crossed the
brow and in part regained its motion. Here Hutchinson threw his arm
round his friend, all hope being extinguished, while I grasped my belt
and struggled to free myself. Finding this difficult, from the
tossing, I sullenly resumed the strain upon the rope. Destiny had so
related the downward impetus to Jenni's pull as to give the latter a
slight advantage, and the whole question was whether the opposing
force would have sufficient time to act. This was also arranged in our
favor, for we came to rest so near the brow that two or three seconds
of our average motion of descent must have carried us over. Had this
occurred, we should have fallen into the chasms and been covered up by
the tail of the avalanche. Hutchinson emerged from the snow with his
forehead bleeding, but the wound was superficial; Jenni had a bit of
flesh removed from his hand by collision against a stone; the
pressure of the rope had left black welts on my arms, and we all
experienced a tingling sensation over the hands, like that produced by
incipient frost-bite, which continued for several days. This was all.
I found a portion of my watch-chain hanging round my neck, another
portion in my pocket; the watch was gone."
Very similar in many respects was the famous accident of the Haut de
Cry, in which J. J. Bennen perished in February, 1864. So sure of foot
was Bennen that it used to be said of him, as it was said of Johann
Lauener, who died upon the Jungfrau, that nothing could bring him to
grief but an avalanche. And the hour came when the snowfield which he
was crossing with his _Herren_ split suddenly and the ground on which
they stood began to move, and Bennen solemnly called out the words,
"Wir sind alle verloren," and never spoke again.
[Illustration: THE DENT BLANCHE.]
The avalanche was deeper than the one which swept Professor Tyndall
down the glacier of the Piz Morteratsch. "Before long," writes Mr.
Gossett, one of the survivors of the accident, "I was covered up with
snow and in utter darkness. I was suffocating, when, with a jerk, I
suddenly came to the surface again. To prevent myself sinking again I
made use of my arms much in the same way as when swimming in a
standing position. At last I noticed that I was moving slower; then I
saw the pieces of snow in front of me stop at some yards distance;
then the snow straight before me stopped, and I heard on a large scale
the same creaking sound that is produced when a heavy cart passes over
hard, frozen snow in winter."
But the snow behind pressed on and buried Mr. Gossett. So intense was
the pressure that he could not move, and he began to fear that it
would be impossible to extricate himself. Then, while trying vainly to
move his arms, he suddenly became aware that his hands, as far as the
wrist, had the faculty of motion. The cheering conclusion was that
they must be above the snow. So Mr. Gossett struggled on. At last he
saw a faint glimmer of light. The crust above his head was getting
thinner, and let a little air pass; but he could no longer reach it
with his hands. The idea struck him that he might pierce it with his
breath. He tried, and after several efforts he succeeded. Then he
shouted for help, and one of his guides, who had escaped uninjured,
came and extricated him. The snow had to be cut with the axe down to
his feet before he could be pulled out. Then he found that his
travelling companion, M. Boissonnet, was dead, and that no trace of
Bennen could be seen. His body, however, was afterwards recovered. The
story is told in a letter from Mr. Gossett to Professor Tyndall.
"Bennen's body," he writes, "was found with great difficulty the day
after Boissonnet was found. The cord end had been covered up with
snow. The Cure d'Ardon informed me that poor Bennen was found eight
feet under the snow, in a horizontal position, the head facing the
valley of the Luzerne. His watch had been wrenched from the chain,
probably when the cord broke; the chain, however, remained attached to
his waist-coat. This reminds me of your fall on the Morteratsch
glacier."
It may be said that the principal danger of climbing rock-mountains is
the danger of falling off them. For the art consists largely in
traversing the faces of precipices by means of narrow and imperfect
ledges, which afford more facilities for falling off than will readily
be believed by any one who has not tried to stand on them. The
climbers, of course, are always securely roped together in such
places, and the theory is that two of them shall always be so firmly
anchored that they can instantly check any slip that the third may
make. But that is not always feasible. It is not feasible, for
instance, at the difficult corner on the Dent Blanche, where Mr.
Gabbett and the two Lochmatters came to grief.
As all three climbers were killed on that occasion, no details of the
accident are known. But the elder Lochmatter was known to be an
exceptionally heavy man, and the presumption is that it was he who
fell, and dragged the rest of the party after him. How he came to fall
may be understood from the following description of the "Mauvais Pas,"
given by a traveller who traversed it a little afterwards:
"Here," he writes, "we must get round past a perpendicular ledge by
creeping out on an overhanging rock, and then turning sharp round,
with head and arms on one side of the rock, while the legs are still
on the other; then we must at once cling to a hardly visible fissure,
and draw round the rest of the body, gently, cautiously, little by
little, and hang there by the points of our fingers until our toes
find their way to a second fissure lower down. I made this passage,"
he adds, "like a bale of goods at the end of a rope, without being
conscious of the danger, and I really do not know how I escaped in
safety."
The description gives some idea of what stiff rock-climbing is really
like; and it should be remembered that in the Dolomites more awkward
places even than the Lochmatters' corner have often to be passed, and
that when, as often happens, the rocks are glazed with ice, the danger
of climbing them is more than doubled.
It is always assumed that the Dent Blanche is inaccessible in such a
case. Yet the story is told of an inexperienced climber who managed to
get to the summit in spite of the ice.
He was on his first visit to Switzerland; and as soon as he got to
Zermatt he engaged the best available guide.
"What are considered the hardest mountains here?" he asked.
The guide told him: "The Dent Blanche, the Weisshorn, and the Ober
Gabelhorn."
"Very well," said the novice; "we'll begin with the Dent Blanche."
The guide protested. Did not his _Herr_ think it would be better to
begin with something easier--with the Rothhorn, for instance, or the
Strahlhorn, or the Unter Gabelhorn?
"No," was the reply; "you've got to take me up the Dent Blanche. I've
climbed in Wales, and I'll undertake to climb any rock you show me."
So the guide yielded, and the two started, with a porter, and for a
certain distance got on very well. But at last they came to a point
where all the hand-holds within reach were frozen up; the nearest
practicable hand-hold could only just be found by stretching out the
ice-axe. The guide explained the situation, and insisted that they
must turn back. But his employer had been roused to such a pitch of
excitement that he would not hear of it.
[Illustration: THE RHONE GLACIER.]
"Look here," he said, "you're a bachelor; I'm a married man with a
family. If I can afford to risk my life you can afford to risk yours.
You've got to go on up this mountain. Otherwise I'll throw myself over
the precipice, and as you're roped to me you'll have to come, too."
The man was absolutely mad. There was no question that, in his
excitement, he would do what he threatened if he were not obeyed. So
the guide sullenly struck his ice-axe into the fissure, and climbed up
it hand over hand, and took his lunatic up and down the Dent Blanche
at a time when its ascent ought by all the laws of ice-craft to have
been impossible.