It was not possible to find two leading guides who worked together more harmoniously than Croz and Almer. Biener’s part was subordinate to theirs, and he was added as a convenience rather than as a necessity. Croz spoke French alone, Almer little else than German. Biener spoke both languages, and was useful on that account; but he seldom went to the front, excepting during the early part of the day, when the work was easy, and he acted throughout more as a porter than as a guide.
The importance of having a reserve of power on mountain expeditions cannot be too strongly insisted upon. We always had some in hand, and were never pressed or overworked so long as we were together. Come what might, we were ready for it. But by a series of chances, which I shall never cease to regret, I was first obliged to part with Croz, and then to dismiss the others;[[41]] and so, deviating from the course that I had deliberately adopted, which was successful in practice because it was sound in principle, became fortuitously a member of an expedition that ended with the catastrophe which brought my scrambles amongst the Alps to a close.
[41] See Chapter xx.
On June 15 we went from Turtman to Z’meiden, and thence over the Forcletta pass to Zinal. We diverged from the summit of the pass up some neighboring heights to inspect the Grand Cornier, and I decided to have nothing to do with its northern side. The mountain was more than seven miles away, but it was quite safe to pronounce it inaccessible from our direction.
On the 16th we left Zinal at 2.05 A.M. having been for a moment greatly surprised by an entry in the hotel-book,[[42]] and ascending by the Zinal glacier, and giving the base of our mountain a wide berth in order that it might the better be examined, passed gradually right round to its south before a way up it was seen. At 8.30 we arrived upon the plateau of the glacier that descends toward the east, between the Grand Cornier and the Dent Blanche, and from this place a route was readily traced. We steered to the north over the glacier, toward the ridge that descends to the east, gained it by mounting snow-slopes, and followed it to the summit, which was arrived at before half-past twelve. From first to last the route was almost entirely over snow. The ridges leading to the north and to the south from the summit of the Grand Cornier exhibited in a most striking manner the extraordinary effects that may be produced by violent alternations of heat and cold. The southern one was hacked and split into the wildest forms, and the northern one was not less cleft and impracticable, and offered the droll piece of rock-carving which is represented upon. Some small blocks actually tottered and fell before our eyes, and starting others in their downward course, grew into a perfect avalanche, which descended with a solemn roar on the glaciers beneath.
[42] It was an entry describing an ascent of the Grand Cornier (which we supposed had never been ascended) from the very direction which we had just pronounced to be hopeless! It was especially startling, because Franz Biener was spoken of in it as having been concerned in the ascent. On examining Biener it was found that he had made the excursion, and had supposed at the time he was upon his summit that it was the Grand Cornier. He saw afterwards that they had only ascended one of the several points upon the ridge running northwards from the Grand Cornier—I believe, the Pigne de l’Allée (11,168 feet)!
PART OF THE SOUTHERN RIDGE OF THE GRAND CORNIER.
It is natural that the great ridges should present the wildest forms—not on account of their dimensions, but by reason of their positions. They are exposed to the fiercest heat of the sun, and are seldom in shadow as long as it is above the horizon. They are entirely unprotected, and are attacked by the strongest blasts and by the most intense cold. The most durable rocks are not proof against such assaults. These grand, apparently solid, eternal mountains, seeming so firm, so immutable, are yet ever changing and crumbling into dust. These shattered ridges are evidence of their sufferings. Let me repeat that every principal ridge of every great peak in the Alps amongst those I have seen has been shattered in this way, and that every summit amongst the rock-summits upon which I have stood has been nothing but a piled-up heap of fragments.