To climb the Blümlis-Alphorn, the highest point of the range, we slept out at a hut, which was unluckily occupied by workmen, who were building another hut close by. Our night in dirty straw was not so pleasant in dirty company, and the early morning was dark and threatening; we started however at 4.30, led by Joseph Hari, a local man. After crossing the glacier he took us over some smooth slabs of rock arranged like a slated roof and coated with ice to make us careful. These safely crossed, Truffer took the lead, and up the final steep everything was ice wherein steps had to be laboriously cut to the summit. We stood on the top at 10 o’clock, but saw little of our surrounding glories, except occasionally a brief glance round through the mists while standing perched in an ice step. The weather ended up in snow, which shut us in on the glacier below, and made us thankful to be well off the ice, and safely quit of a mountain which, though usually an easy climb, could assert itself seriously in a storm.
Taking Truffer with us, A. B. and I travelled to Dauphiné; we spent a few hours at Grenoble to see the old church and the Bayard statue. While at lunch at the Hotel Monnet I admired the oak wine jugs, which are called there “Brocs.” There is a charming old chateau at Vizille, with a lovely trout stream in the grounds full of big fish. The tennis court no longer stands in which in 1788 a memorable meeting took place to protest against the tax. The late President Carnot unveiled a statue in 1888 in memory of this Revolutionary event and slept at the chateau as the guest of Madame Casimir-Périer. The old soldier who took us round showed an oubliette in the old part of the building—beneath its horrible shaft he had seen armour-coated skeletons dug up.
LES ECRINS FROM THE GLACIER BLANC.
We walked up to La Bérarde, a mule carrying our baggage. Immediately on my arrival I was told of an awkward accident which had just happened. Two parties were ascending a slope of ice when the last man of the first caravan slipped out of his step and sent his iron-shod heel into the jaw of the leader of the second caravan, who was too near. Poor Maximin Gaspard got a bad torn wound of his tongue, cut by his teeth, which I had to stitch up with silk and horse-hair. As he was in fine health the wound healed well, and in a few days, in fact, as soon as ever he could feed, he was climbing again. Maximin’s father, Pierre Gaspard, is the fine old fellow who has made so many first ascents in these districts, and still makes the great climbs.
The highest mountain in the Dauphiné, is the Pointe des Ecrins, 13,462 feet, its summit is a ridge of several beautiful points of snow and rock. With Hippolyte Rodier to assist Truffer we started to traverse this peak. We met on the way to the Challeret hut, a native with a dead sheep on his shoulders; it had been killed by a stone falling from the height above, and no doubt was to be made into “precipice mutton.” After sleeping a few hours at the hut we got off at 1.30 in the morning, over the glacier to the Col des Avalanches. Rodier led us to the couloir on the south face, and we began to crawl up; this was a rock couloir, which at a steep part was iced and caused some delay. Our leader, however, got up to a firm position and I followed, but no one else came, and looking down I saw Truffer wringing his hands and in distress. He explained that his right hand was frost-bitten and he could not proceed; nevertheless, he was pulled up by the help of the rope, and finding from the appearance of the hand and from the pain, which is really a good sign of reaction, that recovery was sufficient, we decided to proceed, with some misgiving on my part. We gained the highest part of the Ecrins about 10 o’clock. There was a great deal of fresh snow on the arête, and in coming down to the glacier Blanc on the north side we worked hard for five hours without a halt to reach the Col des Ecrins. Here we rested and then descended a couloir of 1,000 feet to the glacier de la Bonne Pierre, with its long and dreary moraine. There is a measurement station on this moraine to register the movements of the glacier, and here we found a marmot recently killed, its flesh almost entirely eaten, the entrails strewn around. An eagle’s feather on the body suggested the mode of death. The sight of the sheep killed by a stone, and still more the beautiful furry marmot killed by an eagle, added in a strange way to the savagery of the scene. In this wild region stern Nature seems to cry, “I care for nothing, all shall go.” We had a long walk home, the last half-hour by lantern light, having been eighteen hours over our expedition.
We wished next to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde to La Grave, which neither of our guides had ever done, so it seemed best to let Truffer go back to Switzerland, lest on a serious expedition his hand should fail him again and its recovery be delayed. His helpless condition in the iced couloir was explained by the fact that months before he had been ill with a bad hand, and its vitality had been impaired by what was probably a previous attack of frost-bite. Before his departure we had a lovely day on the Grande Aiguille; on the top we basked and slept in the sun after a lunch of tinned fruits and bread and butter. There is a little ice and snow requiring care on this beautiful peak, but we climbed it up and down without a rope, and here we passed over the slope where the tongue accident occurred.
One evening I was aware of a pain in my chest, especially when I laughed, and I was reminded that at Easter I had broken a rib—in climbing to the top of a cromlech on Dartmoor called “The Spinster’s Rock,” but the bone seemed to have mended in spite of some neglect, and was forgotten until my compass box in the breast pocket jammed against the hurt in some scramble and found out the weak point. I was warned by pains in certain movements of the arms against any attempt to traverse the Meije, and very sadly I had to see my friend take off our guides for a successful expedition; for though with a suitable bandage on my chest I was quite active, yet could not pull myself up by my arms in climbing.