Their over-night celebration did not prevent our fellow-travelers
from getting up about four o’clock so as to get a good start over the
pass. We told Biner we would arise later and that he need not serve
our breakfast till after the others had gone. They finished their
breakfast, but still did not start. At last it dawned upon us that they
were waiting for _us_.
We called Biner and expressed our sentiments. We thought we had been
sufficiently emphatic before, but we left no doubt in his mind this
time that no earthly consideration would induce us to make the trip
in such company and that if he felt unable to take us over the pass
in safety alone as he had agreed to do, we would give up the trip and
return to the Grimsel.
He started to tell us that the men were entirely sober this morning,
and were excellent mountaineers, but I cut him off with a “_Ganz und
gar unmöglich_.” We added that the weather was more than doubtful and
that last night’s fall of snow would make the trip more dangerous and
more difficult. In that case, we said, we would wait over till the
next day and see if conditions improved. Biner sighed and returned
to the next room, where he made known our decision, and the trio of
objectionables started, the irrepressible barber being the only one who
had the nerve to bid us farewell.
We now emerged and had our breakfast. We had pretty much decided to
stay at the Pavilion till next day, sending Biner back to the Grimsel
for firewood and provisions. It had stopped snowing, but the sky
was black and the clouds hung low. However, about eight o’clock it
lightened up a bit, and Biner said he thought it would do to start. It
was late, but there was always the Schwarzegg hut in case we could not
make Grindelwald.
We were glad enough to escape a day of inaction. So we bundled
ourselves up and started. My costume included winter flannels, heavy
shoes, high gaiters, corduroy jacket and skirt, a flannel shirtwaist,
a jersey of Frater’s, buckskin gloves, and my broad-brimmed felt hat
tied down over my ears with a veil. This had the double advantage of
keeping it from blowing away in some precarious spot where I could
not use my hands and of keeping my ears from freezing. My costume,
however, was inadequate. I should have had woolen or fur-lined gloves
and fleece-lined shoes. My fingers, toes, cheeks, and nose were all
frost-bitten before the day was over, and the suffering caused by the
cold was intense.
Biner was the only one who had woolen gloves, and he shared them
with us, keeping one hand gloved in order to have the use of it, the
other glove circulating among us three. I do not think we could have
kept the use of our hands through the day had it not been for this
periodical thawing out of one hand at a time. But how it did hurt!
Biner should of course have seen that we were provided with these
things before starting, but I fancy he credited us with more knowledge
of mountaineering than we had.
A short distance from the hut we were roped, Biner first, I next, as
interpreter, Frater next and Belle Soeur bringing up the rear. We
walked up the Unteraar Glacier to its origin, where the Lauteraar
Glacier and Finsteraar Glacier come together, then followed this latter
to the outlet of the Strahlegg Firn, up which we turned.
The snowfall of the night before made it necessary for Biner to sound
each step ahead of him with his ice-pick. It happened several times
that the pick encountered no resistance, and Biner, kicking aside the
loose snow would uncover a fissure or air-hole in the ice which had
been completely covered. This delayed us somewhat, but the air was so
cold and thin, and we were in such poor condition, comparatively, after
our almost sleepless night, that I doubt if we could have gone much
faster had the surface of the ice been clear.
The Strahlegg Firn is a great snow pile, very steep of surface, flowing
between huge walls of rock, on the right the Lauteraarhörner, on the
left the Finsteraarhorn and Fiescherhorn. Down this gully, as we turned
up it, swept a bitter icy wind that almost took our breath away. We
had been ascending rapidly since leaving the Dollfus Pavilion and were
now not far from the ten-thousand foot level. The thinness of the air
made it seem almost impossible to get enough oxygen to walk with. Each
breath was a labor, each step forward a triumph of mind over matter.
And it seemed each minute as if that terrible wind would blow our
flickering life-force out like a candle flame.
It would have been sensible, of course, to turn around and go back. But
who likes to accept defeat? And we kept hoping, with baseless optimism,
that we had done the worst and would soon strike something easier.
At noon we had climbed nearly to the top of the firn and stopped in the
shelter of a big bowlder for lunch. Ahead of us loomed a perpendicular
rock wall eight hundred feet high, as we subsequently learned from one
of Tyndall’s Alpine books. It looked higher. At its summit was the
alleged Strahlegg Pass, which we knew lacked just five feet of eleven
thousand. There was no sign of a path or any way of getting up, but we
knew human beings went over there quite frequently, and we supposed
that on nearer approach some sort of a trail would disclose itself.
We did not question the guide about it. The atmosphere did not lend
itself to extended conversation. We kept our breath for the serious
business of life.
It was a great relief to get out of the wind, but the snowdrift we
sat down in was by no means warm, and our feet were by now extremely
painful. Just here Belle Soeur had an attack of mountain sickness and
had to lie down flat in the snow and couldn’t eat her share of the
bread and cheese. If she was going to do it, though, it was mighty
fortunate she chose lunch-time rather than a little later. The luxury
of this meal did not tempt us to linger long, and we were soon under
way again. We had not even unroped.
In the midst of this primeval solitude we suddenly saw a human being.
Nothing could have surprised us more. It was a little black speck of a
man appearing on the upper brink of the rock wall and starting to climb
down. Was it one of the party who had gone on ahead of us, turning back
to seek help after an accident? Biner said not. Biner also said that
unless he was a professional guide, it was very foolhardy of him to
try to get over alone, and that no guide who knew the route would ever
try to come down where he was starting to make the descent. Presently
his interest increased to the point of saying that the man would
infallibly be killed if he didn’t turn around and go back. We were
horrified. But it was impossible to warn the man at such a distance,
even by gesture.
It shows how absorbing our own peril soon became that we presently
forgot all about him, and when we thought of him some hours later could
only _hope_ he got through all right. As we heard nothing subsequently
of a fatal accident or of anybody’s disappearing, though we made
numerous inquiries, I suppose he escaped.
He made things unpleasant for us for a time by detaching stones and
rock fragments in his climbing which hurtled downwards with destructive
force. We made quite a detour to the right to get out of the danger
zone.
We were now at the foot of our rock wall, and there was no path, no
trail, no ledge, no deviation from the vertical. Still we might have
turned back, but we did not. The very preposterousness of the thing
held us. It was _impossible_ that there shouldn’t be some way of
getting up this cliff, which was not yet apparent!
We started. Biner felt above his head with the point of his ice-pick
till he found a crack which held it firm. Then, with surprising agility
for a man of his age and build, he drew himself up till he could reach
it with his fingers, having previously located some little protuberance
or incision where he could rest his toe. Keeping his grip with one
hand, he leaned over and helped me up with the other. Frater climbed
to the place I had just vacated and pulled Belle Soeur up as Biner had
pulled me. By the time we realized the horror of it, we went on because
it seemed on the whole easier than to go back.
All the way up that eight hundred feet of rock wall, there was never
a ledge large enough to rest on with the entire two feet at once! I
had read of such things in mountaineering books, but had cheerfully
supposed the descriptions exaggerated. And we had believed the
Strahlegg Pass was hardly full-fledged mountaineering anyhow—just
something a little more strenuous than the Gries or Rawyl.
I don’t know what thoughts passed through the minds of the others, but
mine beat a sort of tattoo in my head like this: “You fool—_fool_—Fool!
You’ve got two little children in Grindelwald and a husband in the
Philippines. And you are going to break your neck within the next ten
minutes. And you aren’t accomplishing anything under heaven by it. It’s
just sheer futile idiocy.”
The numbness of my hands was so great that my control over them was
most uncertain. My life and that of my companions depended on the
grip I should keep with those cramped, aching fingers, but though I
concentrated my will-power on them I felt no certainty that the next
minute they would not become rigid and refuse to obey me.
Every once in a while the distance from ledge to ledge would be too
great for me to reach, and Biner would lift me by the rope around my
waist. During those instants, when I had loosened my own hold of hand
and foot and swung clear into space with nothing but an inch of manila
hemp and a man’s grip on it between me and a horrible death, I thought
of the daily Alpine accidents I had been reading about in the papers,
I thought of the frequency with which the rope parts at the critical
moment, I thought of my children in Grindelwald—and I called myself
names. The faculty to do a very extensive amount of thinking seemed to
be concentrated in those instants, the phenomenon probably being akin
to that so often chronicled of the last moment of consciousness by
those resuscitated from apparent drowning.
I am more particularly relating here my own sensations because I
am most familiar with them. Those of the others, with the possible
exception of Biner, were undoubtedly equally vivid. Each of us was
perfectly conscious that if any one of us slipped, all four would go
down. In the nature of things, we had none of us a grip or foothold
sufficiently secure to resist a sudden jerk such as would come if one
were to fall.
After the first few minutes, I never looked downward. I was not
inclined to dizziness, but the drop was too appalling. The others
told me afterwards that they also abstained from looking down. We
concentrated eyes and thoughts on the few feet of rock immediately
around and above us.
Several times on the way up, puffs of biting wind would come down the
face of the cliff which it seemed must surely blow us loose. At such
moments we stopped climbing and flattened ourselves against the rock,
clinging as we loved our lives.
Once we got all four on a little ledge not as wide as the length of
our feet, but solid enough to stand on without balancing. We paused
there to take breath, and somebody said “Cognac.” Now our experience
in the Alpine hut the night before had nearly made teetotalers of us.
But at this moment we decided that stimulants _might_ have a legitimate
use. Frater produced his silver pocket flask and handed it around. We
took a swallow in turn, and it was like liquid life running down our
throats. I never experienced anything so magical. (Here I am describing
my own sensations again!) I was at the very last point of endurance.
I had lost faith in ever reaching the summit of the cliff. I had no
more physical force with which to lift my sagging weight upward. I had
lost the will-power that lashes on an exhausted body. My numb hands
were stiffening. My lungs were choked and laboring. I could neither go
on nor go back. Then those two teaspoonfuls, or thereabouts, of fiery
cognac that burned down my throat sufficed to give me back my grip
on myself, physical and mental. I moved my cramped fingers, and they
answered. I took a deep, long breath and felt strengthened. A hope,
almost a confidence, crept into my heart, that with God’s help we might
reach the top alive.
Then we went on and on and on. The same thing, with our eyes always
upward, but not far ahead. At last Biner clambered on to what was
evidently a broad ledge, for he knelt on it and, leaning over, gave me
his hand to help me up. It was a long reach, and as I got one knee on
the ledge and started wearily to lift the rest of my weight, he gave
me a pull and push that rolled me lengthwise over the brink, and to my
wonderment I found a resting-place for my whole body.
“This is the summit,” said Biner. I had not known we were within five
hundred feet of it.