“The traveller was not satisfied, but he was too wise a man to spend time in arguing and disputing, while a desired summit was still some distance above him. They went on their way, gained the top, and the traveller’s equanimity was restored by a splendid view. When, on the descent, the scene of the morning’s incident was reached, the guide pointed to the little crack in the névé, which had grown perceptibly wider. ‘This marks,’ he said, ‘the place where the true snow-field ends. I feel certain that the ice from here to the edge is nothing but an unsupported cornice hanging over the tremendous precipice beneath. It might possibly have borne your weight in the early morning, though I don’t think it would. As to what it will bear now that a powerful sun has been on it for some time—why, let us see.’ Therewith he struck the névé on the further side of the ice sharply with his axe. A huge mass, some 20 or 30 feet long, immediately broke away, and went roaring down the cliff in angry avalanche. Whereat the traveller was full of amazement and admiration, and thought how there, on an easy mountain and in smiling weather, he had not been very far from making himself into an avalanche, to his own great discomfort and to the infinite tribulation of the Alpine Club.”
A fatal accident was only narrowly averted by the skill of the famous guide Zurbriggen when making an ascent in the New Zealand Alps with Mr Edward Fitzgerald. I am indebted to this gentleman for permission to quote the account from his article in The Alpine Journal.
The party were making the ascent of Mount Sefton, and were much troubled by the looseness of the rock on the almost vertical face which they had to climb. However, at last they reached a ridge, “along which,” writes Mr Fitzgerald, “we proceeded between two precipices, descending to the Copland and to the Mueller valleys—some 6000 feet sheer drop on either hand.