Mrs Aubrey Le Blond sets out in a long skirt ([page 87]).
As she approached the top she felt better, and was able to advance without support, and when she stepped on to the summit, and knew that her great wish was at last accomplished, all sensation of illness vanished as if by enchantment.
"And now, mademoiselle, you shall go higher than Mont Blanc!" exclaimed the guides, and joining hands they lifted her above their shoulders.
One more ascent by a lady deserves mention here, that of Miss Stratton, on 31st January 1876. She was the first person to reach the summit of Mont Blanc in mid-winter.
It is difficult to understand why these early climbers of Mont Blanc, men as well as women, suffered so terribly from mountain sickness, a disease one rarely hears of nowadays in the Alps. The question is too vexed a one for me to discuss it here, but I may say that want of training and unsuitable food bring it on in most cases. "The stagnation of the air in valleys above the snow-line," was believed to produce it, and I cannot help thinking that this does have some effect. The first time I went up Mont Blanc I did not feel well on the Grand Plateau, but was all right when I reached the breezy ridge of the Bosses. The second time, ascending by the route on the Italian side of the peak, where there are no snowy valleys, I did not suffer at all. The third time I felt uncomfortable on the slope leading to the Corridor, but quite myself again above.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ASCENT OF A WALL OF ICE
Of all the writers on Alpine matters none has a more charming style, or has described his adventures in a more modest manner, than Sir Leslie Stephen. Perhaps the most delightful passages in his Playground of Europe are those in which he tells how, in company with the Messrs Mathews, he managed to get up the great wall of ice between the Mönch and the Eiger, known as the Eigerjoch. The Messrs Mathews had with them two Chamonix guides, while Mr Leslie Stephen had engaged the gigantic Oberlander Ulrich Lauener. In those days there was often keen rivalry—and something more—between French and German-speaking guides, and Lauener was apt to be rather an autocrat on the mountains. "As, however, he could not speak a word of French, nor they of German, he was obliged to convey his 'sentiments' in pantomime, which, perhaps, did not soften 'their vigour.' I was accordingly prepared for a few disputes next day.
"About four on the morning of 7th August we got off from the inn on the Wengern Alp, notwithstanding a few delays, and steered straight for the foot of the Eiger. In the early morning the rocks around the glacier and the lateral moraines were hard and slippery. Before long, however, we found ourselves well on the ice, near the central axis of the Eiger Glacier, and looking up at the great terrace-shaped ice-masses, separated by deep crevasses, which rose threateningly over our heads, one above another, like the defences of some vast fortification. And here began the first little dispute between Oberland and Chamouni. The Chamouni men proposed a direct assault on the network of crevasses above us. Lauener said that we ought to turn them by crossing to the south-west side, immediately below the Mönch. My friends and their guides forming a majority, and seeming to have little respect for the arguments urged by the minority, we gave in and followed them, with many muttered remarks from Lauener. We soon found ourselves performing a series of manœuvres like those required for the ascent of the Col du Géant. At times we were lying flat in little gutters on the faces of the séracs, worming ourselves along like boa-constrictors. At the next moment we were balancing ourselves on a knife-edge of ice between two crevasses, or plunging into the very bowels of the glacier, with a natural arch of ice meeting above our heads. I need not attempt to describe difficulties and dangers familiar to all ice-travellers. Like other such difficulties, they were exciting, and even rather amusing for a time, but, unfortunately, they seemed inclined to last rather too long. Some of the deep crevasses apparently stretched almost from side to side of the glacier, rending its whole mass into distorted fragments. In attempting to find a way through them, we seemed to be going nearly as far backwards as forwards, and the labyrinth in which we were involved was as hopelessly intricate after a long struggle as it had been at first. Moreover, the sun had long touched the higher snow-fields, and was creeping down to us step by step. As soon as it reached the huge masses amongst which we were painfully toiling, some of them would begin to jump about like hailstones in a shower, and our position would become really dangerous. The Chamouni guides, in fact, declared it to be dangerous already, and warned us not to speak, for fear of bringing some of the nicely-poised ice-masses down on our heads. On my translating this well-meant piece of advice to Lauener, he immediately selected the most dangerous looking pinnacle in sight, and mounting to the top of it sent forth a series of screams, loud enough, I should have thought, to bring down the top of the Mönch. They failed, however, to dislodge any séracs, and Lauener, going to the front, called to us to follow him. By this time we were all glad to follow any one who was confident enough to lead. Turning to our right, we crossed the glacier in a direction parallel to the deep crevasses, and therefore unobstructed by any serious obstacles, till we found ourselves immediately beneath the great cliffs of the Mönch. Our prospects changed at once. A great fold in the glacier produces a kind of diagonal pathway, stretching upwards from the point where we stood towards the rocks of the Eiger—not that it was exactly a carriage-road—but along the line which divides two different systems of crevasse, the glacier seemed to have been crushed into smaller fragments, producing, as it were, a kind of incipient macadamisation. The masses, instead of being divided by long regular trenches, were crumbled and jammed together so as to form a road, easy and pleasant enough by comparison with our former difficulties. Pressing rapidly up this rough path, we soon found ourselves in the very heart of the glacier, with a broken wilderness of ice on every side. We were in one of the grandest positions I have ever seen for observing the wonders of the ice-world; but those wonders were not all of an encouraging nature. For, looking up to the snow-fields now close above us, an obstacle appeared which made us think that all our previous labours had been in vain. From side to side of the glacier a vast chevaux de frise of blue ice-pinnacles struck up through the white layers of névé formed by the first plunge of the glacier down its waterfall of ice. Some of them rose in fantastic shapes—huge blocks balanced on narrow footstalks, and only waiting for the first touch of the sun to fall in ruins down the slope below. Others rose like church spires, or like square towers, defended by trenches of unfathomable depths. Once beyond this barrier we should be safe upon the highest plateau of the glacier at the foot of the last snow-slope. But it was obviously necessary to turn them by some judicious strategical movement. One plan was to climb the lower rocks of the Eiger; but, after a moment's hesitation, we fortunately followed Lauener towards the other side of the glacier, where a small gap between the séracs and the lower slopes of the Mönch seemed to be the entrance to a ravine that might lead us upwards. Such it turned out to be. Instead of the rough footing in which we had hitherto been unwillingly restricted, we found ourselves ascending a narrow gorge, with the giant cliffs of the Mönch on our right, and the toppling ice-pinnacles on our left. A beautifully even surface of snow, scarcely marked by a single crevasse, lay beneath our feet. We pressed rapidly up this strange little pathway, as it wound steeply upwards between the rocks and the ice, expecting at every moment to see it thin out, or break off at some impassable crevasse. It was, I presume, formed by the sliding of avalanches from the slopes of the Mönch. At any rate, to our delight, it led us gradually round the barrier of séracs, till in a few minutes we found ourselves on the highest plateau of the glacier, the crevasses fairly beaten, and a level plain of snow stretching from our feet to the last snow-slope.
"We were now standing on the edge of a small level plateau. One, and only one, gigantic crevasse of really surpassing beauty stretched right across it. This was, we guessed, some 300 feet deep, and its sides passed gradually into the lovely blues and greens of semi-transparent ice, whilst long rows and clusters of huge icicles imitated (as Lauener remarked) the carvings and ecclesiastical furniture of some great cathedral.