An Oberland Châlet

by Edith Elmer Wood

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.