Adventures on the Roof of the World

by Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond

“Mr Hill’s immediate task was to regain the ridge and reach the summit. At the moment of the accident he was some 60 feet from the fatal buttress, and now wisely made no attempt to get near it. Instead, he moved to circumvent the glazed gully from its other side. After long and tedious efforts, lasting for a period of time which he cannot now even approximately estimate, he succeeded in his flanking movement, and finally, with great labour and peril, climbed back to the ridge by a slope of frozen snow and ice broken with rocks. It would be difficult to imagine anything more terrible than this lonely climb over ice-covered rocks, the painful cutting of steps up an almost precipitous wall, with a precipice many thousand feet deep at his back, down which the smallest slip would send him to certain death. But at last he regained the ridge, and the difficulties of ascent were now mainly overcome. In about another hour he found himself on the summit—a solitary, mournful victor. It was there he heard the shout from the other party. But he could not see them or make them hear, and so he made his way down with all reasonable speed, hoping to overtake them.

“Hill had climbed the Dent Blanche in the previous year with a guided party, and therefore, to some extent, knew the route. Without much difficulty he was able to follow the ridge as far as possible down to the lowest gendarme, a pile of rock with a deep, narrow fissure. Then a sudden mist hid everything from view, and it was impossible to see the way off the gendarme. He tried several routes downward in the mist, but at last wisely resolved to wait till it lifted. While he was searching, a snow-storm and a cold wind came up. ‘They drove me,’ says Mr Hill in his plain way, ‘to seek shelter in the lee of the rocks.’ There he tied himself with his rope, and, to avoid the danger of falling off in a moment of sleep, still further secured himself by an ice-axe wedged firmly in front of him—poor protections to a man absolutely without food or wraps, clinging to the side of an abyss in the searching cold and stormy darkness of mist and snow, wedged under the eave of an overhanging rock, and only able to sit in a cramped posture. But Mr Hill was no ordinary man. If the Fates were asking for his life he determined to sell it dearly, sustained in his resolve by the thought of that waiting wife, unconscious of ill, below in Zermatt.

“It must have been, at this time, past mid-day on Monday, 28th August.

“The storm lasted all that Monday, and Monday night, and Tuesday morning. All through those dreadful hours of darkness Hill sat in the cleft of rock, sleeping most of the time, but always half-frozen with the cold, and whenever he awoke obliged to beat himself to regain his natural warmth. Happily, he was well protected against the falling snow by the eave of the overhanging rock, but it covered his knees and boots, causing him intense cold in the feet.

“At last, at mid-day on Tuesday, the mist cleared and the sun shone again in a sky of perfect blue. He could now resume his descent. To climb over snow-covered rocks in a roped party is difficult enough, but to do it alone is to risk your life many times over. But there was no alternative.

“At last the rocks ended and the worst of the peril was over. He had reached the snow arête, where not even the heavy fall of snow had quite obliterated the tracks of those who had gone in front of him. These helped him to find his way. But the steps had mostly to be recut, and that must have been very fatiguing after his previous experiences. The next difficulty was the lower part of the Wandfluh, a bold wall of rock which leads down first to the Schonbuhl and then to the Zmutt Glaciers, and which, at its base, ends in a steep precipice that can be descended only by one gully. Here Mr Hill’s memory failed him. He could not remember which was the right gully. This was, perhaps, the most terrible trial of all. If he could find that gully his task was almost accomplished. The rest of the descent to Zermatt is little more than a walk. But hour after hour passed; he descended gully after gully, only to find himself blocked below by one precipice after another. In one of these attempts he dropped his ice-axe, without which he could never hope to return alive. Unless he could recover it he was a dead man. But, no, it was not quite lost. There it lay, far below him, on the rocks. Slowly and painfully he descended the gully to fetch it. At last he reached it. In this quest he wasted a whole hour!

“At last he discovered a series of chimneys to the extreme right of the Wandfluh and leading down to the glacier. Letting himself down these steep chimneys, he found himself at last, on Tuesday evening, on the high moraines of the Zmutt Glacier. He must have reached the glacier about six o’clock, but he had only the sun to reckon by. Here the steep descent ends, and there is but a stony walk of two and a half hours down the glacier by a path which leads to the Staffel Alp Inn. The sun set while he was still on the moraine, and he has a vivid recollection of seeing the red ‘Alpengluh’ on Monte Rosa. But as the darkness grew it became more and more difficult to keep to the path.

“Here at last his marvellous strength began to fail him. He had no snow-glasses, and his eyes were suffering from the prolonged glare of the snow. A sort of waking trance fell on him. As he stumbled forward, over the stones of that horrible moraine, he imagined that his companions were still alive and with him. He kept calling to them to ‘come along.’ ‘It is getting late, you fellows,’ he shouted; ‘come along.’

“At last he was brought up by a great rock. In the darkness he had wandered below the path. The rock entirely barred his way. He had a vague illusion that it was a châlet, and wandered round it searching for a door. At last he settled down by it in a semi-conscious condition. Then he must have fallen asleep, probably about ten o’clock. The sleep lasted about twelve hours, and was better than meat and drink. To most men it would have ended in death.

“When he woke up at ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, in broad daylight, he soon saw that he had been sleeping quite near the path. A few minutes’ scramble brought him back to it, and he soon came to a little wooden refreshment-house, about an hour below the Staffel Inn, which he had passed in the darkness. He went up to the woman at the hut and asked for some beer! He had only fifty centimes in his pocket; one of his dead companions had held the purse. He volunteered no complaint; but the woman was sympathetic, and soon found out whence he came. She then gave him a little milk and some dry bread—all she had. After a short rest he resumed his way to Zermatt, distant about half an hour, and reached the village at 11.30. As he was walking down the main street past the church he met his wife.