Then began the labours of Hercules. The snow in the pot melted very properly, but that which walled in the stove would do likewise. It either fell in and smothered the lantern below, or else fell from above and put out the taper.
All night long the cunning of the young engineer was kept devising means of meeting every fresh emergency. Anyhow, at every watch in the night I was kept supplied with a few mouthfuls of hot coffee.
So well did this suffice that, on striking our tents at eight o’clock—façon de parler, for we had between us but one dressing-gown to take off before revealing to an astonished world the effectiveness of our Burberrys—we gave no thought to the Rohrbachhaus, but made our way straight to the Wildstrubel, between the Raezli and Lämmern glaciers.
Once more the popular notion that to allow one’s self to fall asleep on an open glacier is to court an awakening in the other world, had been effectually dispelled. Provided one is clad to perfection in weather-proof material, with chamois leather underwear over the usual woollen undergarments, one need have no fear as long as the air is still and free from falling snow.
On the contrary, in a violent snowstorm and with a heavy wind, nothing but an actual place of shelter can afford sufficient protection. For all that some people will push their dread to the most ridiculous extremes. I met, not very long ago, a young German, an otherwise doughty lad, who, rather than spend the night in one of the extremely comfortable Concordia huts on the Aletsch glacier, preferred, after coming up on ski the whole way from the Loetschenthal, to reach Rieder Alp in an exhausted condition, at much greater risk than if he had stopped on the way.
It is reported by de Saussure that the dread with which the men hired by him in Chamounix to ascend Mont Blanc looked forward to the night which must unavoidably be spent on the glacier des Bossons, was the main difficulty he had to contend with in keeping up their morale. No sooner had they reached the spot marked out for pitching the tents, than they dug for themselves an underground recess and buried themselves therein, as though they expected a hail of bullets to pepper them all night. Yet, they had hardly been herded together for half an hour, when such a terrible epidemic of heat broke out among the huddled pack that they dribbled out one after another, saying they preferred a fair battle with the elements to such a process of extinction.
The history of the construction of Alpine huts enables us to trace the progress which public opinion has made since. The first huts were simply caves, walled in on the open side with a rough stone dyke, and on the floor of which was strewn some straw, while a few utensils and a stove lay about, all higgledy-piggledy, with some logs of fir or pine wood. They were dirty, damp dens.
Now, such ill-conditioned refuges have been given up as an absurd and rudimentary conception of our forefathers. They sought a well hidden away nook. We choose the most exposed spur of hill that is near our route. We build on high, preferring places exposed to the full fury of the blast, and we erect wooden houses that appear too fragile to resist the violent onset of the storm fiends. But such refuges as these are dry and airy, the snow has but little chance of choking them up. The light shining through the windows when a party is gathered therein after dark, is as a mast light on ships anchored at sea.
The stored-up wood keeps dry. The emergency provisions that a party may leave for the next—a party perhaps less favoured—do not rot away. And when the sun shining upon those lofty mansions lights up the yellow or brown pine wood, a sense of near comfort and of coming security pervades the weary traveller’s breast and warms the cockles of his heart.