“First Day.—From Bourg St. Pierre to the Cabane de Valsorey on the Sex du Meiten (3,100 m.).
“Second Day.—Col du Sonadon (3,389 m.), Glacier du Mt. Durand, Cabane de Chanrion (2,460 m.).
“Third Day.—Col de l’Evêque (3,393 m.), Col de Collon (3,130 m.), Col and Cabane de Bertol (3,421 m.).
“Fourth Day.—Ascent of Dent Blanche and a second night in the Cabane de Bertol.
“Fifth Day.—Col d’Hérens (3,380 m.), Glacier de Zmutt, Zermatt.
“Mr. Roget was lucky in being able to carry out this programme from point to point, with the exception of a delay of one day in the Valsorey hut, where the atmospheric conditions compelled him to spend two nights. This disturbance in the weather was in itself an additional piece of luck, as a fall of snow, driven by a violent north wind, laid a fresh carpet of dry stuff over the old, making the run, the whole way to Zermatt, a perpetual delight.
“Mr. Roget had asked Mr. Marcel Kurz, of Neuchâtel, to be his companion, and had engaged four guides, all of whom did duty as porters, namely: Maurice Crettex, Jules Crettex, Louis Theytaz (of Zinal), Léonce Murisier (of Praz de Fort). The two Crettex are natives of Orsières, and form probably the strongest pair of ski-ing guides that the Canton du Valais can now produce.”
Marcel Kurz had been my companion on the Aiguille du Chardonnet and on the Grand Combin. He is the youth of eighteen alluded to in a preceding chapter. He began his career as an Alpinist in 1898 and, since, he spent every summer in improving himself, Praz de Fort being the usual summer quarters of his family. In 1906 he became acquainted with the Grisons ranges and particularly with the Bernina peaks. The following summer finds him in the Mont Blanc range, in 1908 he was in the Pennines. His first Alpine expedition on ski was when I took him up the Chardonnet.
From that time he fell into my way of preferring winter tours to summer climbing, and intends, in the end, to publish the skiers’ way up and down every mountain in Switzerland to the top of which he may be able to get on ski. For two years he presided over that extremely distinguished society of young climbers, the Akademischer Alpen Club, at Zürich. Next spring, on leaving the Polytechnic University of Switzerland, he will enter the Federal Topographic Bureau in Berne as surveying engineer.
As a soldier, he was first a private—like every able-bodied young Swiss—in the corps of machine gunners attached to our mountain infantry. He served his term as non-commissioned officer and is now doing his officers’ training course at Lausanne. I would not in this way offend Kurz’s modesty and tax my reader’s patience by giving here so many particulars about a life career which after all is only at its inception, and is not so very different from that of many young fellows of the same age, did I think it out of place that a sample should appear here of the manner in which mountaineering sport, professional studies or occupations, and military obligations are crowded together in the Switzer’s youth.