[33] The Col de Zinal or Triftjoch, between the Trifthorn and the Ober Gabelhorn; and the Col Durand between the last-mentioned mountain and the Dent Blanche.
For our route from Zinal to Zermatt, see the map of the valley of Zermatt.
He was awaiting us, and we immediately proceeded up the valley and across the foot of the Zinal glacier to the Arpitetta Alp, where a châlet was supposed to exist in which we might pass the night. We found it at length[[34]], but it was not equal to our expectations. It was not one of those fine timbered châlets with huge overhanging eaves, covered with pious sentences carved in unintelligible characters. It was a hovel, growing, as it were, out of the hillside, roofed with rough slabs of slaty stone, without door or window, surrounded by quagmires of ordure and dirt of every description.
[34] High above the Glacier de Moming at the foot of the Crête de Milton.
A foul native invited us to enter. The interior was dark, but when our eyes became accustomed to the gloom we saw that our palace was in plan about fifteen by twenty feet: on one side it was scarcely five feet high, but on the other was nearly seven. On this side there was a raised platform about six feet wide, littered with dirty straw and still dirtier sheepskins. This was the bed-room. The remainder of the width of the apartment was the parlor. The rest was the factory. Cheese was the article which was being fabricated, and the foul native was engaged in its manufacture. He was garnished behind with a regular cowherd’s one-legged stool, which gave him a queer, uncanny look when it was elevated in the air as he bent over into his tub, for the making of his cheese required him to blow into a tub for ten minutes at a time. He then squatted on his stool to gain breath, and took a few whiffs at a short pipe, after which he blew away more vigorously than before. We were told that this procedure was necessary: it appeared to us to be nasty. It accounts, perhaps, for the flavor possessed by certain Swiss cheeses.
Big black and leaden-colored clouds rolled up from Zinal, and met in combat on the Morning glacier with others which descended from the Rothhorn. Down came the rain in torrents and crash went the thunder. The herd-boys hurried under shelter, for the frightened cattle needed no driving, and tore spontaneously down the Alp as if running a steeple-chase: Men, cows, pigs, sheep and goats forgot their mutual animosities, and rushed to the only refuge on the mountain. The spell was broken which had bound the elements for some weeks past, and the cirque from the Weisshorn to Lo Besso was the theatre in which they spent their fury.
A sullen morning succeeded an angry night. We were undecided in our council whether to advance or to return down the valley. Good seemed likely to overpower bad; so, at 5.40, we left the châlet en route for our pass [amidst the most encouraging assurances from all the people on the Alp that we need not distress ourselves about the weather, as it was not possible to get to the point at which we were aiming].[[35]]
[35] Moore’s Journal.
Our course led us at first over ordinary mountain-slopes, and then over a flat expanse of glacier. Before this was quitted it was needful to determine the exact line which was to be taken. We were divided betwixt two opinions. I advocated that a course should be steered due south, and that the upper plateau of the Moming glacier should be attained by making a great detour to our right. This was negatived without a division. Almer declared in favor of making for some rocks to the south-west of the Schallhorn, and attaining the upper plateau of the glacier by mounting them. Croz advised a middle course, up some very steep and broken glacier. Croz’s route seemed likely to turn out to be impracticable, because much step-cutting would be required upon it. Almer’s rocks did not look good: they were, possibly, unassailable. I thought both routes were bad, and declined to vote for either of them. Moore hesitated, Almer gave way, and Croz’s route was adopted.
He did not go very far, however, before he found that he had undertaken too much, and after [glancing occasionally round at us, to see what we thought about it, suggested that it might, after all, be wiser to take to the rocks of the Schallhorn]. That is to say, he suggested the abandonment of his own and the adoption of Almer’s route. No one opposed the change of plan, and in the absence of instructions to the contrary he proceeded to cut steps across an ice-slope toward the rocks.
When we quitted the slopes of the Arpitetta Alp we took a south-easterly course over the Morning glacier. We halted to settle the plan of attack shortly after we got upon the ice. The rocks of the Schallhorn, whose ascent Almer recommended, were then to our southeast. Croz’s proposed route was to the south-west of the rocks, and led up the southern side of a very steep and broken glacier.[[36]] The part he intended to traverse was, in a sense, undoubtedly practicable. He gave it up because it would have involved too much step-cutting. But the part of this glacier which intervened between his route and Almer’s rocks was, in the most complete sense of the word, impracticable. It passed over a continuation of the rocks, and was broken in half by them. The upper portion was separated from the lower portion by a long slope of ice that had been built up from the débris of the glacier which had fallen from above. The foot of this slope was surrounded by immense quantities of the larger avalanche blocks. These we cautiously skirted, and when Croz halted they had been left far below, and we were halfway up the side of the great slope which led to the base of the ice-wall above.