The descent into the “Scharte” (or cleft in the arête) proved simple enough, with the knowledge that until I reached the bottom Schocher was bestriding the ridge above, and was “ganz fest.” He followed with ease and rapidity, and turning the party the other way on, began to cut steps round the great rocky tower which here bars the ridge. The couloir was ice throughout, and we spent a lot of time before we were clear of it at the foot of the final peak of the Bernina. Climbing up this without difficulty, though delayed somewhat by the fresh snow overlying the rocks, we reached the top at 10.30, the other party following immediately in our wake.
The weather, which had behaved better than we had dared to hope, now gave up the paths of virtue, and a thick mist, with lightly falling snow, hid everything at more than a few yards’ distance from our view. However, we had reached our goal, and the clouds could now do their worst without endangering our return. So after half an hour’s halt, we started off in a cheerful frame of mind for Boval. How we scrambled down the arête, glissaded over the snow-fields, and raced through the Labyrinth, need not be told. We got to Boval early in the afternoon in steady and soaking rain, and astonished the people at the restaurant by dropping down upon them out of the clouds from Piz Bernina. So ended our day’s excursion.
CHAPTER XII. IN PRAISE OF AUTUMN.
I am one of those eccentric persons who consider autumn better than summer for climbing. “One of those,” did I say? Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that I have often been the sole representative of the scrambling fraternity haunting mountain centres from choice at that season. You suppose I have a reason for my partiality for that time of year? Yes; in fact, I have several. First, I am a coward, and to encounter a thunderstorm on a peak, and have my axe go ziz-ziz-ziz, while my hair stands straight up on my head, would terrify me into fits. Now, in autumn one seldom has thunderstorms. Then I have an aversion to tourists. In autumn there are few tourists; again, I hate to be roasted for thirteen or fourteen hours and to wade through deep snow. In autumn the days are short, the air is fresh, the snow is usually in first-rate order. Once more, I do not love sleeping in huts which, being built for eight persons, have to supply shelter—it is little more—for perhaps twenty-four. In autumn one has the huts to oneself.
Now, have I not made out a pretty strong case? Can you wonder that I have prowled round the Pennine Alps and the Oberland in September and October rather than in July and August?
To prove that one can climb as well in autumn as in summer, I will give a short account of some excursions made in past years at that season. They will be, alas! unexciting reading, like most things “written for a purpose.” Many climbers are fully aware of the truth of what I urge, but numerous beginners in mountain-craft lose heart when a heavy fall of snow occurs at the end of August or the beginning of September, and, packing up their traps, leave the Alps in disgust. In addition to the expeditions described below, I have been up the Dent Blanche, Zinal-Rothhorn, Ober-Gabelhorn, Trifthorn from Triftjoch, Mont Collon, Rimpfischhorn, Eiger, Wetterhorn, and other peaks, and (herein lies the gist of the whole matter) found most of them in first-class order at that season.
One evening in September, I found myself, with Ulrich Kaufmann and “Caucasus” Jossi, the sole occupants of that very comfortable hut, the Schwarzegg. For some time this hut has been in Jossi’s charge, and consequently neatness reigns supreme. We were a cheery party. The sky was cloudless, the moon would be full for our start, the great, solid crags of the Schreckhorn, ruddy in the glow of sunset, hung invitingly over us. We had slept out for the same peak a week earlier, but bad weather had driven us down to the valley without our having taken one step beyond the hut. Now all was changed, and we felt no doubt as to the success of our coming excursion.
At 2 A.M., in moonlight clear as the light of the sun, we were off. The Schreckhorn, it seems to me, has not received its due measure of praise. It has much to recommend it. There is no moraine. An easy path leads in ten minutes or so to the snow. Then a steady ascent, varied by rocks, brings the traveller by breakfast-time to the base of the upper glacier. It was at some distance below this place, in the snow couloir, that Mr. Munz was killed by falling ice.[6] I could not at all understand this accident, for on no part of our route was there danger from this source.[7] But the guides explained that that season, and for some years before, the top of the couloir had been filled up by a small hanging glacier. Peter Baumann, shrewd old man, had always urged the knocking down of this glacier, which would have been a simple piece of work. But the matter was allowed to slide, till one fine day the whole mass of ice broke away and dashed down the slope. The death of Herr Munz, who was struck by some of the falling fragments, was the result.