KANDERSTEG—FINSTERAARHORN—GRIMSEL.
(Reproduction made with authorisation of the Swiss Topographic Service. 26.8.12.)
To face p. 114.
Can there be a more noble spectacle than the sight of one, who having met young with an extremely serious accident in climbing, which to all appearance, and according to cool reason, should confine him to the part of an armchair propagandist and pen-wielding missionary, yields again to the irresistible call of the Alps, and ascends the Dent Blanche in spite of the lameness consequent upon the accident in North Wales in which his right leg was broken in two places, under such conditions that it has continued ever since to be a source of daily suffering?
Last winter, on the Eiger, battling with a terrifying snow and wind storm, my lame friend was three times thrown out of his steps. He had with him Maurice Crettex, one of the most powerful rock and snow men, I believe, of the present day among Swiss guides. The situation would have been frantically impossible but for him. But what a picture! Two men, side by side, one, all physical strength and professional devotion to duty, the other, all spiritual energy and moral force.
It is particularly gratifying that a Swiss and an Englishman should have been united in showing to ski-runners that the way across the Bernese Oberland was open from end to end and that the most magnificent mountain scenery that ever wasted its sweetness upon the desert air was awaiting them. These were spectacles for which I was quite prepared, having already moved, like many of my country men, amid the glories of High Alp winter scenery, ever since some of the sections of the Swiss Alpine Club (that of Geneva leading the way), had instituted for their members and friends, the expeditions known under the name of Grandes Courses d’hiver.
It is, however, one thing that the Swiss should favour such expeditions, and quite another thing that strangers to Switzerland should entertain the idea. I understand that when the first accounts of my winter ascents of the Aiguille du Chardonnet and the Grand Combin were read, in London, in the pages of the Alpine Ski Club Annual, there came upon the lips of many competent readers a smile which partly betokened admiration—which I certainly did not deserve—and, partly, incredulity—which I certainly expected in some measure.
Even in Geneva I had at first some hesitation in making known my Bagnes-Entremonts-Ferret circuit. When I did make up my mind to send an extremely short and compendious notice to the Journal de Genève, the editors let my scrap of paper lie six weeks before they printed it. It was unkind of me to laugh in my sleeve while this long pause lasted. I did not fare much better after my ascent of the Dent Blanche. I slipped a word about it into a local but widely read halfpenny paper, to whose information people “in the know” are wont not to attach much importance. In fact, some busybodies had already forestalled my note with a few warning lines to the effect that any attempt to cross in a consecutive trip the Pennine Alps, in January, from Mont Blanc to the Simplon pass, would be too hazardous to prove anything but fatal. And here was a gentleman who not only had got from Bourg St. Pierre to Zermatt, but asseverated he had ascended the Dent Blanche.