The ascent from the Riffel hotel occupied us about seven hours, nearly two of which were spent upon the kamm and crest. Neither of us felt in the least degree fatigued; I, indeed, felt so fresh, that had another Monte Rosa been planted on the first, I should have continued the climb without hesitation, and with strong hopes of reaching the top. I experienced no trace of mountain sickness, lassitude, shortness of breath, heart-beat, or headache; nevertheless the summit of Monte Rosa is 15,284 feet high, being less than 500 feet lower than Mont Blanc. It is, I think, perfectly certain, that the rarefaction of the air at this height is not sufficient of itself to produce the symptoms referred to; physical exertion must be superadded.
"FROZEN FLOWERS." 1858.
After a few fitful efforts to dispel the gloom, the sun resigned the dominion to the dense fog and the descending snow, which now prevented our seeing more than 15 or 20 paces in any direction. The temperature of the crags at the summit, which had been shone upon by the unclouded sun during the earlier portion of the day, was 60° Fahr.; hence the snow melted instantly wherever it came in contact with the rock. But some of it fell upon my felt hat, which had been placed to shelter the boiling-water apparatus, and this presented the most remarkable and beautiful appearance. The fall of snow was in fact a shower of frozen flowers. All of them were six-leaved; some of the leaves threw out lateral ribs like ferns, some were rounded, others arrowy and serrated, some were close, others reticulated, but there was no deviation from the six-leaved type. Nature seemed determined to make us some compensation for the loss of all prospect, and thus showered down upon us those lovely blossoms of the frost; and had a spirit of the mountain inquired my choice, the view, or the frozen flowers, I should have hesitated before giving up that exquisite vegetation. It was wonderful to think of, as well as beautiful to behold. Let us imagine the eye gifted with a microscopic power sufficient to enable it to see the molecules which composed these starry crystals; to observe the solid nucleus formed and floating in the air; to see it drawing towards it its allied atoms, and these arranging themselves as if they moved to music, and ended by rendering that music concrete. Surely such an exhibition of power, such an apparent demonstration of a resident intelligence in what we are accustomed to call "brute matter," would appear perfectly miraculous. And yet the reality would, if we could see it, transcend the fancy. If the Houses of Parliament were built up by the forces resident in their own bricks and lithologic blocks, and without the aid of hodman or mason, there would be nothing intrinsically more wonderful in the process than in the molecular architecture which delighted us upon the summit of Monte Rosa.
STARTLING AVALANCHE. 1858.
Twice or thrice had my guide warned me that we must think of descending, for the snow continued to fall heavily, and the loss of our track would be attended with imminent peril. We therefore packed up, and clambered downward among the crags of the summit. We soon left these behind us, and as we stood once more upon the kamm, looking into the gloom beneath, an avalanche let loose from the side of an adjacent mountain shook the air with its thunder. We could not see it, could form no estimate of its distance, could only hear its roar, which coming to us through the darkness, had an undefinable element of horror in it. Lauener remarked, "I never hear those things without a shudder; the memory of my brother comes back to me at the same time." His brother, who was the best climber in the Oberland, had been literally broken to fragments by an avalanche on the slopes of the Jungfrau.
We had been separate coming up, each having trusted to himself, but the descent was more perilous, because it is more difficult to fix the heel of the boot than the toe securely in the ice. Lauener was furnished with a rope, which he now tied round my waist, and forming a noose at the other end, he slipped it over his arm. This to me was a new mode of attachment. Hitherto my guides in dangerous places had tied the ropes round their waists also. Simond had done it on Mont Blanc, and Bennen on the Finsteraarhorn, proving thus their willingness to share my fate whatever that might be. But here Lauener had the power of sending me adrift at any moment, should his own life be imperilled. I told him that his mode of attachment was new to me, but he assured me that it would give him more power in case of accident. I did not see this at the time; but neither did I insist on his attaching himself in the usual way. It could neither be called anger nor pride, but a warm flush ran through me as I remarked, that I should take good care not to test his power of holding me. I believe I wronged my guide by the supposition that he made the arrangement with reference to his own safety, for all I saw of him afterwards proved that he would at any time have risked his life to save mine. The flush however did me good, by displacing every trace of anxiety, and the rope, I confess, was also a source of some comfort to me. We descended the kamm, I going first. "Secure your footing before you move," was my guide's constant exhortation, "and make your staff firm at each step." We were sometimes quite close upon the rim of the kamm on the Lyskamm side, and we also followed the depressions which marked our track along the cornice. This I now tried intentionally, and drove the handle of my axe through it once or twice. At two places in descending we were upon the solid ice, and these were some of the steepest portions of the kamm. They were undoubtedly perilous, and the utmost caution was necessary in fixing the staff and securing the footing. These however once past, we felt that the chief danger was over. We reached the termination of the edge, and although the snow continued to fall heavily, and obscure everything, we knew that our progress afterwards was secure. There was pleasure in this feeling; it was an agreeable variation of that grim mental tension to which I had been previously wound up, but which in itself was by no means disagreeable.
SPLENDID BLUE OF THE SNOW. 1858.
I have already noticed the colour of the fresh snow upon the summit of the Stelvio pass. Since I observed it there it has been my custom to pay some attention to this point at all great elevations. This morning, as I ascended Monte Rosa, I often examined the holes made in the snow by our bâtons, but the light which issued from them was scarcely perceptibly blue. Now, however, a deep layer of fresh snow overspread the mountain, and the effect was magnificent. Along the kamm I was continually surprised and delighted by the blue gleams which issued from the broken or perforated stratum of new snow; each hole made by the staff was filled with a light as pure, and nearly as deep, as that of the unclouded firmament. When we reached the bottom of the kamm, Lauener came to the front, and tramped before me. As his feet rose out of the snow, and shook the latter off in fragments, sudden and wonderful gleams of blue light flashed from them. Doubtless the blue of the sky has much to do with mountain colouring, but in the present instance not only was there no blue sky, but the air was so thick with fog and descending snow-flakes, that we could not see twenty yards in advance of us. A thick fog, which wrapped the mountain quite closely, now added its gloom to the obscurity caused by the falling snow. Before we reached the base of the mountain the fog became thin, and the sun shone through it. STIFLING HEAT. 1858. There was not a breath of air stirring, and, though we stood ankle-deep in snow, the heat surpassed anything of the kind I had ever felt: it was the dead suffocating warmth of the interior of an oven, which encompassed us on all sides, and from which there seemed no escape. Our own motion through the air, however, cooled us considerably. We found the snow-bridges softer than in the morning, and consequently needing more caution; but we encountered no real difficulty among them. Indeed it is amusing to observe the indifference with which a snow-roof is often broken through, and a traveller immersed to the waist in the jaws of a fissure. The effort at recovery is instantaneous; half instinctively hands and knees are driven into the snow, and rescue is immediate. Fair glacier work was now before us; after which we reached the opposite mountain-slope, which we ascended, and then went down the flank of the Riffelberg to our hotel. The excursion occupied us eleven and a half hours.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] My staff was always the handle of an axe an inch or two longer than an ordinary walking-stick.