January 4th.—From Kippel to Egon von Steiger hut (Loetschen pass): 6,000 feet.
January 5th.—From Concordia Platz to Grünhornlücke (our fourth pass): 2,000 feet.
January 6th.—From Fieschfirn to Finsteraarhorn: 5,000 feet.
January 7th.—From Fieschfirn to Oberaarjoch (fifth pass): 2,000 feet.
Add 2,000 feet for unconsidered trifles. The total vertical displacement is thus brought out at a little under 24,000 feet.
We paid each of our men a pound a day. Other expenses brought the cost to thirty pounds. It is better to have plenty of men and plenty of food. Plenty of food because one is always liable to be detained some days in the huts by the bad weather—plenty of men, which does not necessarily mean guides, because a party that can be broken up into sections is infinitely safer and handier. A party of six may be expressed by 2 + 2 + 2, or by 3 + 3, or by 4 + 2, dispositions which may fit into almost every emergency.
There is no doubt that sealskins are extremely convenient and a great saving of labour in going uphill, because they annihilate back-slip, the bugbear of beginners and of loaded men. Serious trouble may be caused by wrinkled and puckered-up hard snow, or by those extremely slippery patches, either snow or ice, which now and then upset the balance of the High Alp runner.
The remedy to this I have found in a contrivance against side-slip which figures as a permanent fixture on the powerful pair of military ski which I used on all my big traverses. It consists of two blades of hardish steel, about 5 inches long, sharpened and shaped in the fashion of skates. Linked to each other across the upper surface of my ski, they adhere to the sides by lateral pressure only, which is applied by means of a top screw. The edge of each blade stands out beyond the flat of the ski by the merest fraction of an inch, in front of one, and behind the other, foot. This secures straight running on hard snow and ice by biting into it, preventing side-slip when the broadside of the ski slew’s round to the drop of the slope. The laws of mechanics teach that this contrivance, maintained against the ski by side-pressure only, should get pushed out of place when, the ski being edged, an unduly large portion of the weight of the runner falls to be borne by the ski edge. But, in practice, it is not so, provided you are careful to obtain the maximum of side-pressure that the horizontal binding screw can produce.
