With a few steps we had left the ridge upon which the hut stands and were proceeding through the icefall of the Guggi Glacier. Max and I had an easy time of it here. We could not risk wounding the feelings of such splendid guides as the Almers by offering to take our share in finding the way, and therefore had to content ourselves by following in our best style, always paying attention to the correct handling of the rope. Once, while making our way round the corner of an ice pinnacle below which yawned the black depths of an appalling crevasse, Dr. Fischer expressed anxiety for our safety. But Hans, watching us coming along, reassured him: “They are sure-footed like cats; they know how to use the rope; they are quite safe”: ample reward for the self-restraint we had imposed upon ourselves in not attempting to take the lead. Young Ulrich, who went ahead, had plenty to do. The icefall is very broken up. Clambering over or round, or even under enormous séracs, towering all about us like the suddenly frozen waves of a storm-tossed sea, we gradually made our way upwards, amidst a brooding, gloomy silence that was rendered more vast and impressive by the occasional chipping of Ulrich’s axe, the tinkling of fragments of falling ice and the crunching sound of the climbing irons as their sharp points bit at each step into the ice.
The icefall of the Guggi Glacier.
Facing page 56.
Almost at the head of this first icefall we encountered the most serious of its defensive barriers. A huge crevasse, a great open gash, stretched across our path and was lost in the darkness, its bottom far beyond the reach of the dim light of the lanterns. Hans having paid us the compliment of asking us to explore out to the left while his party reconnoitred to the right, we were fortunate in soon discovering a solution to the problem in the shape of a slender flake of ice forming a fragile bridge. After some judicious step-cutting, the flake being too frail to endure much belabouring, we were across and shouting the news of our success to the others, already returning from a fruitless search.
All now lay clear before us up to the foot of the second icefall, where the Kühlauenen Glacier tumbles down on to the Guggi in a mighty mass of séracs. Uncrevassed slopes, gentle at first but rising up more steeply as we mounted higher, brought us rapidly to the foot of the icefall where we foregathered and studied the outlook while waiting for the pale light of dawn to enable us to stow away the lanterns. Beyond the frozen torrent of séracs merging into the Guggi Glacier stretched a great vertical wall of ice, a gaunt, lofty rampart forty to sixty feet high, which gleamed clear and unbroken in the cold, grey light from under the cliffs of the Mönch right round to the rocks of the Schneehorn. It was plain that the obstacle could not be turned; the flanks were too well guarded by steep ice-glazed and avalanche-swept rocks. Yet nowhere was there apparent a flaw which would aid the besieger. In Hans Almer, however, there was no lack of decision. He seemed to act on the principle of poking his nose right into a difficulty in searching for its key. Presently, with a cheery “Come along!” he cut ahead and, with amazing speed, worked his way through a steep tangle of crevasses and séracs, never at fault for a means of negotiating the many obstructions met with, until we arrived on a débris-strewn ledge at the base of the great ice cliff. Haste had been imperative, for almost throughout this passage we had been endangered by lurching monsters of séracs. It is true we were still in the shade, and according to the best authorities séracs do not fall until the warmth of the sun’s rays or the hot breath of the föhn wind strikes upon them. Later in the day Hans emphatically characterised such beliefs as “Unsinn,” and told me that, in his experience, séracs fell just when they thought fit and often displayed the greatest activity on cold and frosty nights when it behoved them to be asleep. My later observations tend to show that the falling of séracs is most likely to occur just before sunrise, during the coldest hours of the night. On the east face of Monte Rosa I once counted sixteen falls of ice and séracs between 3 and 4.30 a.m., eleven between 6 and 8 a.m. and two between 3 and 4 p.m.
The swift scramble up the séracs had somewhat robbed us of our breath, and we welcomed the brief halt which a search for a possible breach in the great ice wall before us demanded. Immediately above, the wall showed sure signs of disintegration; several great sheets of ice were in process of detaching themselves. One monster, fully fifty feet in height, leaned forward in an ominous manner. As its fall would have strewn with blocks the ledge where we stood, Hans moved over to the right where a great square-cut bastion of undoubted firmness afforded security from the perils of falling ice. From here we sighted the one and only weak spot we were ever able to detect in the great barrier. A huge crevasse in the glacier above cleft the wall in twain, and were it but possible to gain the floor of this crevasse, the problem of surmounting the wall itself would no more exist. But the approach to the chasm was defended by an immense archway of rickety séracs which looked ready to collapse at any moment. The presence of masses of very broken ice under the archway promised slow and, therefore, unsafe progress, and Hans decided that we must look round for another way out of our trouble. Max and I were told to climb to the top of the bastion now shielding us and to report on the prospects as seen from up there. The others, bent on a similar mission, moved along the ledge towards the Schneehorn rocks. But neither party had any luck; there remained nothing but to risk the archway passage or retire, beaten. We were on the point of leaving the issue to chance by tossing a coin, when nature stepped in and providentially staged a thrill. Suddenly a loud crashing as of thunder was heard, and the ground upon which we stood trembled and shook under the impact of tons of ice blocks; dense clouds of ice dust filled the air and, enveloping us, hid everything from view. As the mists slowly thinned we saw that the giant archway had fallen in. The ruins, choking up the floor of the crevasse, furnished us with a causeway giving egress to the glacier above. The god had indeed descended from his chariot. Without the necessity of cutting a single step, we arrived a few minutes later on the almost level plateau of the Kühlauenen Glacier, the second of the five glacier plateaux characteristic of the north face of the Jungfrau.
Meanwhile, the weather had not improved. By now we ought to have been able to bask in the warm rays of the rising sun, but fish-shaped clouds filled the morning sky, and great masses of clammy mist floated up the Guggi Glacier and rolled down upon us from the Jungfraujoch. A snowstorm was brewing. We sat down in the snow for a rest and, while eating a few biscuits, noted the best point for crossing the bergschrund which defends the approach to the rocks of the Schneehorn. The mists had closed in ere we began the final stage of the day’s work. Largely filled up with masses of snow and fallen stones, the schrund was easily crossed, and, walking up a short slope of good snow, we soon gained the rocks which were dry and firm and nowhere actually difficult. Knowing our dislike for merely following in the footsteps of others, Dr. Fischer tactfully encouraged us to choose our own line of ascent. So henceforward we climbed on a level with, and some distance out to the left of, his party.