My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1895)/Chapter 03
CHAPTER III.
THE COL DU LION.
THE HIGH STREET
THE TRIFTBACH BRIGE.
On our arrival there, however, Burgener heard that one of two recent additions to his family had died, so our expedition had to be temporarily postponed. Meanwhile I gathered much unfavourable information concerning the couloir.
Mr. Whymper, looking at it from the Col above, describes it in these words:
"On one side a sheer wall overhung the Tiefenmatten glacier. . . . Throw a bottle down to the Tiefenmatten—no sound returns for more than a dozen seconds.
". . . . How fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!"
Whilst, in "Hours of Exercise," I came upon the following: "On the other side" of the Col du Lion "a scarped and seamed face drops sheer on the north, to what we know is the Zmutt glacier. Some hopes I had entertained of making a pass by this gap from Breuil to Zermatt vanish immediately." Happily my confidence in Burgener was equal to even these shocks, and I felt sure that if he were once fairly started on the expedition, he would bring it to a happy issue.
On Monday, the 6th of July, Burgener duly arrived, but he was tired with his hot walk, or possibly from the effects of the funeral festivities, which appeared to have been carried on with great vigour and persistence. We decided, therefore, to start from Zermatt at 10 p.m., instead of sleeping at the Stockje and taking the expedition from thence. After table d'hôte I thought a short nap would be advantageous, so, telling the hotel porter to call me at half-past nine, I went to sleep. When I was awakened by the dazzling blaze of a dip candle, I felt that it was after time, and a reference to my watch disclosed the painful fact that it was eleven o'clock! I swallowed the cup of tea brought me by the porter, and hurried down to the hall, where I found Burgener in that frame of mind which is suitable to a sleepy man who has been sitting in a straight-backed chair for an hour and a half. He at once gave it as his opinion that we were too late, and that I might as well return to my much loved bed. However, when I had expressed my contrition and explained that my late appearance was due to an error on the porter's part, he consented to overlook my delinquencies.
The knapsack was promptly adjusted and we were ready to set off, when each asked the other for the rope. Burgener averred that I must have it, while I was equally certain that it had been left in his possession. We sought diligently through the lower regions of the hotel, but it was nowhere to be found; indeed, if Burgener was to be trusted, our search should have been directed to certain other "lower regions." At length in desperation we sallied out and sought to beg, borrow, or buy a rope from one or other of the Zermatt guides. Though we succeeded in bringing various night-capped and indignant heads to various windows, no rope could we obtain; indeed, it was scarcely likely that a Zermatt guide would come to the aid of a Saas Thai trespasser. We returned disconsolately to the hotel, and the porter, horrified at the strength of our language and our furious mien, produced a rope which, he told us, some confiding monsieur had left in his charge for the night. Our consciences were fully equal to the occasion, no single qualm or quiver affected their serenity: we seized the rope and started.
By this time it was nearly one o'clock, and we walked up the valley as fast as we could. The night was very dark, and, as we tramped along the moraine-covered glacier, it was a matter of some difficulty to see the crevasses. Every now and then, a larger crack in the ice would necessitate the lighting of a lucifer match, and on the rare occasions when the wind did not blow it out, we crossed the obstruction triumphantly. At other time 8 J when the waste of lucifer matches was becoming excessive, we exercised the Christian virtue of faith and jumped, trusting that we should land on something. Getting through the moraine, on to the clear ice, we were able to see a little better, and made relatively good progress till we reached the small glacier coming from the direction of the snow ridge of the Matterhorn. At its base were one or two formidable crevasses, so my companion halted, urging as a reason that we should have such excellent opportunities of coming to grief later in the day, that it was quite needless to take advantage of those immediately at hand.
We found a convenient stone, and, taking off our loads, proceeded to breakfast. We chatted over old scrambles till the faint light in the east had intensified into a fiery glow, lighting up the mountains with a strange unearthly radiance, made doubly brilliant by contrast with the sombre night which still lingered in the deep valley below. Once more we began to ascend, when suddenly, with one consent, we leaned on our axes and gazed mutely at the "aged pinnacle" before us. The rising sun had just touched its summit, and the snowy Zmutt ridge was blazing with crimson light. We watched the red sun creeping ever down the slopes till, at length, it reached the broad glacier below, then Burgener struck his axe into the snow and we breasted the slope: the day had begun.
Keeping well to our right, we reached a sort of col, which leads from this small glacier on to the broad basin of the Tiefenmatten glacier. The latter was rather below us, but, by traversing along the snow slopes heaped up against the Matterhorn, we were able to avoid losing much height, and gradually the glacier rose to our level. Keeping close to the tremendous cliffs on our left, we reached the Bergschrund, and were able to examine the first of the problems we had to solve. It was obvious that the upper lip was quite impregnable to direct assault. Even had it been possible, two great masses of rook broke through the slope about three hundred feet above, over which the ice bulged in great dirty green bosses that formed an obviously impregnable wall. To the right of these two masses of rock, but separated by a narrow slope and slightly above them, was a third mass, also surmounted by a bulging roof of ice. It appeared quite evident, that the only way to get into the couloir, was by the slope between the second and third bulge. Luckily a great sérac had kindly bridged the Bergschrund, not, indeed, exactly below this bulge, but still not unduly far to the right of it.
We put on the rope, and, Burgener having coached me over the bridge, I began cutting up the slope, bearing well to the left. The angle steadily increased, and, before reaching the base of the mass of rock for which we were aiming, Burgener took the lead. The traverse under this was very formidable. The right leg, which was next the slope, could no longer be passed between the left leg and the ice, a very unpleasant change of feet being thereby necessitated at each step. Happily this did not last very long, and we gained the ice slope between the second and third masses of protruding rock. Turning sharply, though still bearing a little to the left, we crept slowly up the bare, shiny slope, till the broad expanse of the couloir above the rocks and their overhanging roofs of ice was reached. To our left, under the shadow of the gaunt cliffs of the Matterhorn, great patches and streaks of snow still adhered to the ice. The snow was not of great thickness, nowhere exceeding four or five inches, but it was slightly frozen to the slope below, and we mounted rapidly on shallow notches chipped in this loose veneer. In places the snow had slipped away, and we had to cut across the intervening patches of ice, but, as we advanced, the snow became more continuous, and our spirits rose rapidly. It was, however, obvious that the aid of this thin covering of snow was only to be had at the cost of deliberately abandoning all possibility of retreat. So soon as the sun should touch this slope and the frost be relaxed, any attempt to meddle with it could only result in a swirling slide, a long bounce at the point where the rocks protrude, and a final drop into the Bergschrund. This consideration urged us forwards, and kept the steps at the smallest size compatible with standing on them. From time to time we paused a moment to gaze upwards at the sun-tipped ridge, towering at a tremendous height above us, and across which delicate films and streamers of mist were curling. Could we ever reach it? The grim cliffs of the Matterhorn and Tête du Lion shut us in to the couloir, and, far above, black overhanging rocks broke through the snow and seemed to bar further passage. It looked scarcely possible to get up, and there was more than a touch of anxiety in Burgener's "Wir mussen, Herr Mommerie, sonst sind wir beide caput."
Meanwhile my companion's knuckles were beginning to suffer severely from that occasional contact with the slope, which is unavoidable when cutting up steep snow. As he had evidently plenty of work before him, it was considered desirable that less valuable fingers should be sacrificed at this stage of the proceedings. I, accordingly, took the lead. Now and again the snow thinned out and heavy blows were required to cut into the ice, but ever, as we advanced, the labour became less, and at length a single chip with the axe, backed up with a few good blows from a hobnailed boot, sufficed to make a reliable step. We advanced, rapidly and easily, to the foot of the rocks to which reference has previously been made, and which constitute one of the most serious difficulties of the pass. These rocks, as we had noted on our preliminary survey of the mountain, were flanked on either hand by narrow ice-glazed gullies. That on our right looked the easier, but, unluckily, the sun was already blazing on the Tête du Lion, and its rays were loosening the frosty bonds that alone held the icicles and stones in their places, with the result that a ceaseless hail of fragments was whizzing and humming down it. We were forced, therefore, to take the gully on the Matterhorn side, which, so far, was quite free from the mountain musketry. Burgener took the lead again, and soon found that he had no ordinary work before him. The ice was bare and as hard as well-frozen ice can be; it was, moreover, excessively steep. So evil did it look above, that he halted and gazed anxiously at the rocks of the Matterhorn to see if we could escape in that direction. It was, however, obvious that we should encounter prolonged difficulty on them; besides which, it would leave the problem of the couloir unsolved. Once more he turned sullenly to the wall of ice, and. foot by foot hewed out a way. The projecting rocks on our right, ever tilting the slope outwards, forced us to the left into a sort of semicircular recess in the cliff. Suddenly the step-cutting ceases. "Der Teufel" is apostrophised in soul-curdling terms, and half the saints in the Romish calendar are charged, m the strongest language known to the German tongue, with the criminal neglect of their most obvious duties.
Burgener's axe had broken!
Midway in an ice couloir two thousand feet high, a single axe alone stood between us and utter helplessness. I untied and carefully lashed my axe to the rope and sent it up to Burgener. The rope then declined to come back anywhere within my reach, and I had the pleasure of ascending the next eighty feet without its moral support, and, which was worse, without an axe. Rejoining Burgener, the broken weapon was made over to me. We were now on a level with the top of the projecting rocks, and could see that, supported by their topmost crag, a long ribbon of snow led upwards. Once on this snow it seemed as if our progress would be comparatively easy, though, as Burgener showed, by the simple expedient of chucking a knob of ice across, it was of that evil, powdery sort .that the guides call "pulverischen." Since, moreover, it was lying at the very steepest angle consistent with remaining at rest, it was evident that greater reliance would have to be placed in Providence than is usually considered desirable in these degenerate days. The difficulty, however, was to reach it. I have already explained that the projecting rocks had forced us to the left into a sort of blind, semicircular hollow. A few feet above, the ice, up which we had been cutting, thinned out against overhanging rock; while to cross to the snow involved the passage of an almost perpendicular wall, thickly glazed with ice. This traverse of fifteen feet or more looked scarcely possible. For once in his life Burgener suggested retreat, and we should have both returned incontinently down the couloir, running the gauntlet of falling stones, and facing even the horrors of that hideous ice slope, with its thin surface of snow already relaxed by the warm rays of the mid-day sun, had it not been for the absolute belief I reposed in certain previous utterances of my brave companion, to the effect that retreat was impossible, and to attempt it certain destruction. Confident in this belief, I thought the best thing to do was to keep up the spirits of the party, to scout the idea of turning back, and to shout "vorwärts," strengthened by such allusions to the supernatural powers, as my limited knowledge of Saas Thal patois would render effective. The aid of other, spirits, called from the "vasty deep" of my pocket, was also invoked, and then the attack was begun.
The ice was too thin to allow steps of such depth to be cut as would enable us to change our feet in them. Burgener therefore adopted the expedient of cutting a continuous ledge along which, by the aid of handholds cut in the ice above, one could just manage to shuffle. This involved an extraordinary amount of labour. One hand had always to be clinging to the hold above, whilst the other wielded the axe. Before the traverse was half completed Burgener had to retreat, both to rest and to rub some warmth and feeling into his left hand, chilled by constantly clinging to the ice. After a short halt he returned to the attack, but another five minutes again forced him to recoil, and, with a melancholy air, he showed me his right wrist, badly swollen with the strain of one-handed step cutting. Happily the shelf was nearly completed, and, advancing once more, he was able to reach the snow ribbon with his axe. It afforded, however, no support, being loose and incoherent to its very core; so the weary cutting had to go on till he could set his foot on the treacherously piled mass. Very cautiously he tried to tread it down, and then slowly swung his weight on to it. Needless to say, I watched eagerly the behaviour of the snow. If it slithered away bodily, as it seemed much inclined to do, nothing could prevent our making a short and rapid descent to the Bergschrund.
Happily, though a good deal streamed down in incipient avalanches, the core stood firm, and a hoarse shout of triumph relieved the pent-up feelings of the party. Burgener immediately began to force his way up the knife-edge which formed the upper surface of the ribbon, one leg on one side and one on the other. Our whole length of rope being paid out I shuffled along the shelf, past the corner, and up to my companion. Before us was a long open ice slope, through which occasional rocks projected. The slight support so afforded had sufficed to hold long ribbons of dust-like snow in position above them, and we perceived with joy that the final wall, surmounted by a broken cornice, was the only serious obstruction now before us. The cliffs on the Matterhorn side here recede considerably, greatly adding to the width of the couloir, and giving a sense of freedom and daylight that is lacking lower down. Our chief delight, however, was the snow, of the worst and most powdery description it is true, but still snow. I am aware that all authorities agree in preferring ice to incoherent snow, but when the ice slope is measured by hundreds of feet, and when the northern couloir of the "Lion," swept by the afternoon avalanches, is below, I will frankly confess that any snow, however bad, is a delight, and its treacherous aid most thankfully accepted.
We made our way upwards on ribbon after ribbon, cutting across the intervening stretches of ice, and in this way mounted rapidly till we reached a continuous slope of snow that led us to the foot of a low rocky wall, surmounted by a projecting, square-cut cornice from which the flimsier portions had broken away. The face of this final cliff consists of loose, disintegrated rock. It appeared, indeed, to be only held together by the snow and ice with which it was plastered. However, it had to be ascended, so we once more rubbed a little life and warmth into chilled fingers, and then Burgener set to work. Inch by inch and yard by yard, I paid out the rope till he reached the base of the cornice. It was soon evident that a direct assault would not be successful, so he made his way to the right, to a point where the outer fringes and icicles had torn a mass of the more solid cornice away with them in their fall. Once in this gap, he soon gets one hand on to the hard-frozen Col, the other waves his hat, and with a triumphant though breathless jodel, he draws himself over the edge of the grimmest wall it has ever been my luck to scale. Owing to the traverse Burgener had made, the rope did not afford that sense of security and comfort which is so pleasing to the amateur, and it was with no little delight that, on reaching the gap in the cornice, I saw a red hand appear, and a moment later was hauled bodily on to the pass.
I threw off the knapsack, and we set to work to thaw our fingers, or rather those portions of them that still remained. The process proved excessively painful, one or two of them having got badly frozen on the last rocks. Then Burgener's wrist, still suffering from the work on the great shelf traverse, had to be bound up in all the handkerchiefs we could muster. These various operations were, each and all, much delayed by the derisive jodels which it was necessary to hurl at intervals down the couloir. We next made ourselves comfortable, at the very edge of the great cliff, quaffing our wine, and warming ourselves in the glints of hot sunshine, which burst through wind-torn rents in the surging mists. Now and again Burgener would slap me on the back and bid me lean over to note one or other of the more startling obstructions we had had to surmount. After an hour's halt, we turned our attention Breuilwards. The couloir on that side was filled with impenetrable mist, but the few feet we could see did not look very formidable. Burgener suggested a standing glissade, and the next minute we had quitted the sun and blue sky, and were spinning through fog, surrounded by a seething avalanche of snow. From time to time we jumped sideways out of the gathering torrent, fearing lest its growing mass might involve us in danger. Suddenly through the fog I caught sight of the Bergschrund, and with a warning shout to Burgener, who was eighty feet above me, the brakes were applied, regardless of skin and knuckles, and we pulled up on the very brink of the chasm. Traversing to the left we found a bridge, and, as it was much too rotten to crawl over, we trusted to luck and a sitting glissade. We then dodged a few crevasses and glissaded a few slopes, and, turning sharply to the right, got off the glacier. We were now almost below the clouds, and a sun-warmed rock suggested to devout worshippers of the goddess Nicotine the observance of certain solemn rites. Half an hour soon passed, and then the rope was squeezed into the knapsack and we ran, helter-skelter, down to Breuil, where we arrived in one hour and a quarter of actual going, or one hour and three-quarters including halts, from the Col.
My second guide, Venetz, had been sent across the Théodule, partly because the knapsack was too heavy for the Col du Lion, but mainly because Burgener thought that two were a better party than three on ground of that sort. We had strictly enjoined hini not to give way to his prevailing weakness, a love of sleep, but to watch for our arrival in the Col. So soon as he saw us we had bidden him to pursue and slay sundry of the bony fowls which, in those remote days, constituted the only form of nutriment attainable at the head of Val Tournanche. We arrived, therefore, with the fond anticipation of. a hot lunch. But on reaching the inn we found the silence of death reigning. We battered at the door with our axes, or more correctly with my axe, and such parts of Burgener's as still survived; we even attempted to force the window-shutters off their hinges. But all was of no avail; the Val Tournanche carpenters had done their work too well, and I was just on the point of tracking down the valley when Burgener emerged from the cow-shed, dragging a sleepy native from its pestilential interior. So soon as this native, by dint of much shaking on Burgener's part, and much rubbing of eyes, coughing, and other sleep-destroying processes on his own, had fairly recovered consciousness, he directed us to one particular window, and, regardless of paint and woodwork, we battered on the shutters with such fury that Venetz's slumbers were abruptly terminated. He soon unlocked the door and expressed the utmost surprise at our arrival. He excused his failure to wring the necks of the fowls on the ground that he fully expected that the mountain would have broken ours. He had also considered it a wise precaution, with the fatigues of a "search party" before his eyes, to put in a good sleep as a preliminary!
The lady of the house was, it appeared, some distance away, so we despatched Venetz in quest, and soon saw the pair of them in full chase down the valley with the afore-mentioned bony fowls well in front. Later in the day we tramped down to Val Tournanche, and ended the day in feasting and comparative luxury.
Note.—The subsequent history of the pass is soon told. The next year Dr. Güssfeldt, with Alex. Burgener as sole guide, crossed it in the opposite direction (Breuil to Zermatt). By the simple expedient of driving a stake into the snow above, and looping two hundred leet of rope round it, the difficulties near the Col were easily evaded. Owing to the exceptionally fine weather of 1881, the snow on the upper part of the couloir was in much better condition, and no very serious difficulty appears to have been encountered till the party were half-way down. The same cause which had rendered the upper half easier, greatly increased the difficulty of the lower. The fine weather had stripped the snow from the ice and left nothing but a bleak, stone-swept slope. Luckily they were able to take refuge on a small shelf of rock, where they were protected to some extent from the hail of shot and shell discharged by the mountain, and, after a terrible night, reached the Tiefenmatten glacier safely the next morning.
One other passage, and one only, has been effected. On this occasion, Herr Kuffner, with Alex. Burgener and Kalbermatten, crossed the pass from Zermatt to Breuil, but of this passage I have heard no details. Possibly the experience gained by Burgener enabled him to avoid some of the difficulties we encountered. I do not, however, think that in any conditions it is likely to be easy.