About half a mile beyond the huts the path came to an abrupt end at the beginning of an open meadow, bounded on the far side by a wall of rock. Somewhere beyond that meadow the path began again and led up the rock wall into the Alpine wilderness above. But where? No scanning by the eye could reveal it. Each of us had a different theory as to likelihood. We crossed the meadow and skirted the base of the cliff looking for that vanished path.
At the extreme right, a stream tumbled down a gully in a series of cataracts. By the near bank there had been a slide of stones and loose earth, making a place several hundred feet in height, which, though terrifically steep, was not, like most of the wall, absolutely perpendicular. Above this we saw a horizontal line in the rock, which might be the path.
Somewhat dubiously we decided to try. I never encountered anything more discouraging than that slide of loose stones. With every step we took upward we slid back about nine-tenths of a step. Sometimes more. And we were never sure that we would be able to stop ourselves till we struck bottom. The higher we went, the more precarious and crumbly it became. We clambered on all fours. Belle Soeur and I could never have gotten up if the boys had not helped us. Antonio dubbed it the Gutter Spout of Heaven. I don’t know about the Heaven part, but the Gutter Spout was all right.
We kept encouraging each other with the nearer approach of that horizontal line in the rocks. When at last we got there, breathless and exhausted, we found it was not a path, but merely a natural ledge. How far it led, or whether it led anywhere, we did not know.
Belle Soeur’s heart was making itself felt just then, so we had to sit down to let her recover, and while doing so, we held a council of war. We were about half-way up the rock wall now, and none of us wanted to throw away all the time and labor we had put in getting there by going back. Also, since the waterfall marked the extreme right-hand boundary of the rock wall, the path, if it existed at all, must lie to the left. Therefore, by following our hard-won ledge to the left, we should cross the path,—unless indeed the ledge came to an end too soon. At all events we decided it was worth trying, so as soon as Belle Soeur’s heart had returned to the normal, we started. After edging our way along the ledge in a gingerly fashion for about fifteen minutes, our faith was rewarded, for we made out an unmistakable path zigzagging upward, and had no further difficulty in reaching it.
The joy of finding one’s path again is so great that I do not know but it makes worth while having lost it! With renewed vigor we climbed upward to the plateau-like region of snow drifts and rock ledges that awaited us, which some ironist has named the “Plain of Roses.” We should have had fine views of the Valais mountains but for the clouds which enveloped them. Our immediate foreground was wild and desolate enough, but as none of the peaks were more than two thousand feet higher than we were, our views lacked grandeur of outline. For pure bleak Alpine solitude, though, the walk of the next few hours was unrivaled.
We quenched our thirst with handfuls of snow from the virgin drifts around us. This is said to be a bad thing to do, but we experienced no ill effects either on this or other occasions. At noon we sat down on a rock and ate cheese and chocolate. This was the fourth meal we had made from this combination of foodstuffs, with the addition of milk at the second and third, bread at the first and hard-boiled eggs at the first and second. This time there were no accessories. None of us felt much of a craving for either cheese or chocolate for some time thereafter.
The summit of the pass (just under eight thousand feet) is marked by a shelter hut and a great wooden cross, whose bare arms, stretched out over the wilderness of rock and snow, have a singular impressiveness. The cross marks the boundary between the cantons of Valais and Berne.
Another hour’s walking, past a cold gray Alpine lake, brought us to the northern edge of the plateau, where the green and fertile Simmenthal lay spread out at our feet between the piled-up Bernese mountains.
Our path plunged down steeply now, and about three o’clock we reached the outpost of civilization, what Baedeker calls a rustic inn—at Iffigen Alp. We asked with lively interest what they had to eat and found they had neither meat nor eggs. What did they have, then? Coffee, milk, bread, butter, honey and cheese.