It is possible to go up on horseback (though I think it much pleasanter to trust to one’s own feet), but the authorities have not allowed the descent to be made on horseback, since some fatal accidents occurred. These incidents are commemorated by little tablets and monuments whose inscriptions we read in passing.
It was a very interesting climb, and to our intense surprise, though we did not hurry at all, and gave ourselves frequent brief rests, we made it virtually in the Baedeker time. The ever-expanding view as we mounted upward led us to expect a great treat when we reached the summit, but as ill luck would have it, clouds closed in around us just before we got there and we had to make a run for the hotel to avoid a drenching.
We ordered tea, for it was cold up there, 7640 feet in the air, and wrote letters and waited for it to clear off. We had intended to spend the night at this hotel, but a restless spirit was upon us, the hotel struck us as dreary, and it was still only the middle of the afternoon. So when it stopped raining we pushed on.
Our route lay over an almost level plateau, very slightly down grade, through a desolate region of bare rock with snow peaks on either hand, past a bleak Alpine lake. We came in about an hour to another inn, which we knew was the last shelter we should find till we reached Kandersteg on the other side of the pass. But it was still early, and we were in the mood for walking, so we kept on.
We passed through what Baedeker aptly calls “a stony chaos,” thence to a “pasture strewn with stones and débris, which was entirely devastated in September, 1895, by a burst of the glacier covering the slopes of the Attels (11,930’) to the left. A tablet commemorates the six persons who lost their lives on this occasion.”
Many glaciers were hanging above us here, all presumably liable to do the same sort of thing at any moment. I do not imagine this was any likelier to happen because of the absence of the boys, but I think Belle Soeur and I felt the somber and menacing character of the scenery more keenly than if we had been in their enlivening company.
When we reached tree level, all this desolation vanished. The path ran through a forest along a ledge cut in the side of a gorge, and through the foliage we had very lovely views of the leafy ravine and the mountain slopes on the other side. The colors were especially beautiful in the sunset glow, and we regretted that we could not linger to enjoy it; but we had no very clear idea how much farther we had to walk, and there was evidently not much daylight left.
We quickened our pace, and it was well we did so. The down grade was now very steep and we could keep up a tremendous gait, though at some risk of “toppling down from the sky.” At last we came to a place where the gorge we had been following opened out into the Kander valley, and we could see the village we were aiming for still a thousand feet at least below us.
We thought we had been walking as fast as we could before. But we now began a race with the oncoming darkness, under the stimulus of our strong objection to spending the night in the very chilly atmosphere of this high Alpine mountain-side, which quite outdid our previous performances.
This path was not quite so steep as the one by which we had climbed from Leuk Baden to the summit, nor was the rock wall as absolutely perpendicular, but they were close seconds. We used our alpenstocks practically as vaulting poles and came down in long kangaroo-like leaps. We had still a remnant of twilight, as indeed was absolutely essential to walking on this path. Darkness and the safe road at the bottom arrived simultaneously, and we fairly groped our way the last half mile to the first hotel, guided only by its lights.