Among other dangers that the mountaineer has to reckon with are ice
avalanches and cornices.
A cornice is a mass of snow projecting over the edge of a precipice,
and resting upon empty space. Occasionally it will bear the weight of
one, or even several, men; but more often it gives way when trodden
on, carrying a whole party to destruction. This was the case in the
famous accident on the Lyskamm--a mountain where the cornices are
particularly treacherous--when Messrs. William Arnold Lewis and Noel
H. Paterson, with the guides Niklaus, Johann, and Peter Joseph Knubel,
met their deaths in the year 1877. "The cornice," writes Mr. Hartley,
who visited the scene of the accident immediately afterwards, "had
broken away in two places, leaving some ten feet in the middle still
adhering to the mountain. The length of the parts which broke away
was, perhaps, forty feet on each side of the remaining portion. The
distance of the fall we estimated at from twelve hundred to fifteen
hundred feet. The bodies, from the nature of the injuries they had
received, had evidently fallen upon their heads on the rocks, and
then, in one great bound, had reached almost the spot where they were
found."
A typical instance of the ice-avalanche accident happened to, and has
been recorded by, Mr. Whymper. Accompanied by A. W. Moore and the
guides Croz and Almer, he was trying to discover a shorter route than
those usually taken between Zinal and Zermatt. After spending the
night in a _chalet_ on the Arpitetta Alp, they started, and struck
directly up the centre of the Moming glacier. The route proved
impracticable, and it became necessary to cut steps across an
ice-slope immediately below the great pillars and buttresses of the
ice-fall, which were liable to break away and descend upon them at any
moment.
"I am not ashamed to confess," wrote Mr. Moore in his journal, "that
during the whole time we were crossing the slope my heart was in my
mouth, and I never felt so relieved from such a load of care as when,
after, I suppose, a passage of about twenty minutes, we got on to the
rocks and were in safety. I have never heard a positive oath come from
Almer's mouth, but the language in which he kept up a running
commentary, more to himself than to me, as we went along, was stronger
than I should have given him credit for using. His prominent feeling
seemed to be one of indignation that we should be in such a position,
and self-reproach at being a party to the proceeding; while the
emphatic way in which, at intervals, he exclaimed, 'Quick; be quick,'
sufficiently betokened his alarm."
And now, let the rest of the story be told in Mr. Whymper's graphic
words. Croz, it should be remembered, was leading, and had advised the
perilous route.
"It was not necessary," Mr. Whymper says, "to admonish Croz to be
quick. He was fully as alive to the risk as any of the others. He told
me afterwards that the place was not only the most dangerous he had
ever crossed, but that no consideration whatever would tempt him to
cross it again. Manfully did he exert himself to escape from the
impending destruction. His head, bent down to his work, never turned
to the right or to the left. One, two, three, went his axe, and then
he stepped on to the spot where he had been cutting. How painfully
insecure should we have considered those steps at any other time! But
now we thought of nothing but the rocks in front, and of the hideous
'_seracs_' lurching over above us, apparently in the very act of
falling."
[Illustration: PASSAGE OF A CREVASSE, MONT BLANC.]
At last they reached the rocks in safety, and, says Mr. Whymper, "If
they had been doubly as difficult as they were, we should still have
been well content. We sat down and refreshed the inner man; keeping
our eyes on the towering pinnacles of ice which we had passed, but
which now were almost beneath us. Without a preliminary warning sound,
one of the largest--as high as the Monument, at London Bridge--fell
upon the slope below. The stately mass heeled over as if upon a hinge
(holding together until it bent thirty degrees forward), then it
crushed out its base, and, rent into a thousand fragments, plunged
vertically down upon the slope that we had crossed. Every atom of our
track that was in its course was obliterated; all the new snow was
swept away, and a broad sheet of smooth, glassy ice showed the
resistless force with which it had fallen."