My other connection with the Rawyl pass is less gloomy, since I owe to the eccentricities of that pass one of my best young friends in England.
I was, a few years ago, standing on the platform of the railway station at Gstaad, when an English vicar, whom I took pleasure in instructing in ski, brought me a copy of the Daily Mail, in which a whole column was literally flaming with the exploits of two English runners who had crossed the Rawyl a few days before. That sort of description we generally call “Journalese,” and let it pass without correction. It would be an ungracious act on the part of climbers, who seek out deliberately so many hardships, to wince at the touch of the voluntary kindness that almost kills.
The true account of what then took place appeared in the columns of the Isis, the Oxford undergraduates’ organ, on January 23, 1909. There Arnold Lunn expresses himself as follows:—
“I spent five winters in climbing from various centres, before—in the winter of 1907-8—I first tried cross-country work. With three ladies and my brother, I visited the Great St. Bernard and spent New Year’s Eve in the Hospice. Next day I was thoroughly walked out by two plucky Irish ladies, and had just enough energy left to reach Montana on the following afternoon. I had previously arranged with a friend to cross the mountains to Villars, a four-day trip, but on arriving found that he was unable to go.
“I was introduced to Mr. W., who had only been on ski three afternoons, but volunteered to come. We left next morning at 4 a.m., climbed for eight hours up to the glacier of the Plaine Morte, and then separated. Mr. W. went on to the hut and I climbed the Wildstrubel alone, from the summit of which I saw a beautiful sunset. The solitary trudge back over the glacier at night thoroughly exhausted me, and I narrowly escaped frost-bite in one of my feet. At Lenk that night, 6,000 feet lower down, they had 40 degrees of frost, and the cold in the hut was almost unbearable. We did manage to get a fire alight, which proved a doubtful blessing, as it thawed the snow in the top bunk, forming a lake which trickled down on our faces during the night in intermittent showers. The next morning our blankets were frozen as stiff as boards. Even the iron stove was sticky with frost.
DESCENT INTO THE TELLITHAL, LOETSCHENTHAL.
To face p. 70.
“Our natural course led over the Wildhorn, a delightful ski-run, but though Mr. W. throughout displayed wonderful pluck and perseverance, his limited experience prevented our tackling the long but safe Wildhorn. So we took a short and dangerous cut down to Lenk, following a track which crossed several avalanche runs. We raced the darkness through a long hour of unpleasant suspense, and won our race by a head, getting off the cliff as the last rays of light disappeared. A night on the Rawyl would probably have ended disastrously.