Eiger. Mönch.
From the Lauberhorn.
The Cross marks the Scene of "A Race for Life." The dotted line shows the steep Ice-Wall of the Eigerjoch ([page 208]).
To return to Mr Tuckett and his friends. They were advancing up the snowy valley below the funnel-shaped opening through which an avalanche occasionally falls. The guide, Ulrich Lauener, was leading, and, remarks Mr Tuckett, "He is a little hard of hearing; and although his sight, which had become very feeble in 1870, is greatly improved, both ear and eye were perhaps less quick to detect any unexpected sound or movement than might otherwise have been the case. Be this as it may, when all of a sudden I heard a sort of crack somewhere up aloft, I believe that, for an instant or two, his was the only head not turned upwards in the direction from which it seemed to proceed, viz., the hanging ice-cliff; but the next moment, when a huge mass of sérac broke away, mingled apparently with a still larger contingent of snow from the slopes above, whose descent may, indeed, have caused, or at least hastened, the disruption of the glacier, every eye was on the look-out, though as yet there was no indication on the part of any one, nor I believe any thought for one or two seconds more, that we were going to be treated to anything beyond a tolerably near view of such an avalanche as it rarely falls to anyone's lot to see. Down came the mighty cataract, filling the couloir to its brim; but it was not until it had traversed a distance of 600 to 800 feet, and on suddenly dashing in a cloud of frozen spray over one of the principal rocky ridges with which, as I have said, the continuity of the snow-slope was broken, appeared as if by magic to triple its width, that the idea of danger to ourselves flashed upon me. I now perceived that its volume was enormously greater than I had at first imagined, and that, with the tremendous momentum it had by this time acquired, it might, instead of descending on the right between us and the rocks of the Klein Eiger, dash completely across the base of the Eiger itself in front of us, attain the foot of the Rothstock ridge, and then, trending round, sweep the whole surface of the glacier, ourselves included, with the besom of destruction.
"I instinctively bolted for the rocks of the Rothstock—if haply it might not be too late—yelling rather than shouting to the others, 'Run for your lives!'
"Ulrich was the last to take the alarm, though the nearest to the danger, and was thus eight or ten paces behind the rest of us, though he, too, shouted to Whitwell to run for his life directly he became aware of the situation. But by this time we were all straining desperately through the deep, soft snow for dear life, yet with faces turned upwards to watch the swift on-coming of the foe. I remember being struck with the idea that it seemed as though, sure of its prey, it wished to play with us for a while, at one moment letting us imagine that we had gained upon it, and were getting beyond the line of its fire, and the next, with mere wantonness of vindictive power, suddenly rolling out on its right a vast volume of grinding blocks and whirling snow, as though to show that it could out-flank us at any moment it chose.
"Nearer and nearer it came, its front like a mighty wave about to break, yet that still 'on the curl hangs poising'; now it has traversed the whole width of the glacier above us, taking a somewhat diagonal direction; and now run, oh, run! if ever you did, for here it comes straight at us, still outflanking us, swift, deadly, and implacable! The next instant we saw no more; a wild confusion of whirling snow and fragments of ice—a frozen cloud—swept over us, entirely concealing us from one another, and still we were untouched—at least I knew that I was—and still we ran. Another half second and the mist had passed, and there lay the body of the monster, whose head was still careering away at lightning speed far below us, motionless, rigid, and harmless. It will naturally be supposed that the race was one which had not admitted of being accurately timed by the performers; but I believe that I am speaking with precision when I say that I do not think the whole thing occupied from first to last more than five or six seconds. How narrow our escape was may be inferred from the fact that the spot where I halted for a moment to look back after it had passed, was found to be just twelve yards from its edge, and I don't think that in all we had had time to put more than thirty yards between us and the point where our wild rush for the rocks first began. Ulrich's momentary lagging all but cost him his life; for in spite of his giant stride and desperate exertions he only just contrived to fling himself forwards as the edge of the frozen torrent dashed past him. This may sound like exaggeration, but he assured me that he felt some fragments strike his legs; and it will perhaps appear less improbable when it is considered that he was certainly several yards in the rear, and when the avalanche came to a standstill, its edge, intersecting and concealing our tracks along a sharply defined line, rose rigid and perpendicular, like a wall of cyclopean masonry, as the old Bible pictures represent the waters of the Red Sea, standing 'upright as an heap' to let the Israelites through.
"The avalanche itself consisted of a mixture, in tolerably equal proportions, of blocks of sérac of all shapes and sizes, up to irregular cubes of four or five feet on a size, and snow thoroughly saturated with water—the most dangerous of all descriptions to encounter, as its weight is enormous. We found that it covered the valley for a length of about 3300 feet, and a maximum breadth of 1500, tailing off above and below to 500 or 1000 feet. Had our position on the slope been a few hundred feet higher or lower, or in other words, had we been five minutes earlier or later, we must have been caught beyond all chance of escape."
There was no rashness which can be blamed in the party finding themselves in the position described. Avalanches, when they fall down the gully, hardly ever come so far as the one met with on this occasion, and they very seldom fall at all in the early morning. The famous guide, Christian Almer, while engaged on another expedition, visited the spot after the avalanche had fallen, and said that it was the mightiest he had ever seen in his life. Mr Tuckett roughly estimated its total weight as about 450,000 tons.