A letter to The Times, written by Mr (now Sir Henry Seymour) King comments as follows on this deplorable accident. It is endorsed by all the members of the Alpine Club then at Zermatt. After describing the circumstances of the ascent, the writer continues: "Instead of staying all together, as more experienced guides would have done, and keeping Mr Borckhardt warm and awake until help came, they determined at about 1 P.M. to leave him alone on the mountain. According to their account, the snow had ceased and the sun had begun to shine when they left him. At that moment a relief party was not far off, as the guides must have known. They heard the shouts of the relief party soon after leaving Mr Borckhardt, and there was, as far as I can see, no pressing reason for their departure. They reached the lower hut at about 5 P.M., and at about the same time a rescue party from Zermatt, which had met them descending, reached Mr Borckhardt, and found him dead, stiff, and quite cold, and partly covered with freshly-fallen snow. No doubt he had succumbed to drowsiness soon after he was left.
"The moral of this most lamentable event is plain. The Matterhorn is not a mountain to be played with; it is not a peak which men ought to attempt until they have had some experience of climbing. Above all, it is not a peak which should ever be attempted except with thoroughly competent guides. In a snowstorm no member of a party should ever be left behind and alone. He will almost certainly fall into a sleep, from which it is notorious that he will never awake. If he will not walk, he must be carried. If he sits down, he must be made to get up. Guides have to do this not unfrequently. A stronger and more experienced party would undoubtedly have reached Zermatt without misfortune. In fact, one party which was on the mountain on the same day did reach Zermatt in good time."
It is fitting that this short, and necessarily incomplete, account of the conquest of the Matterhorn, and events occurring subsequently on it, should conclude with the recital of a magnificent act of heroism performed by Jean-Antoine Carrel, whose name, more than that of any other guide, is associated with the history of the peak. No more striking instance of the devotion of a guide to his employers could be chosen to bring these true tales of the hills to an appropriate end.
I take the account from Scrambles Among the Alps.
"When telegrams came in, at the beginning of September 1890, stating that Jean-Antoine Carrel had died from fatigue on the south side of the Matterhorn, those who knew the man scarcely credited the report. It was not likely that this tough and hardy mountaineer would die from fatigue anywhere, still less that he would succumb upon 'his own mountain.' But it was true. Jean-Antoine perished from the combined effects of cold, hunger, and fatigue, upon his own side of his own mountain, almost within sight of his own home. He started on the 23rd of August from Breuil, with an Italian gentleman and Charles Gorret (brother of the Abbé Gorret), with the intention of crossing the Matterhorn in one day. The weather at the time of their departure was the very best, and it changed in the course of the day to the very worst. They were shut up in the cabane at the foot of the Great Tower during the 24th, with scarcely any food, and on the 25th retreated to Breuil. Although Jean-Antoine (upon whom, as leading guide, the chief labour and responsibility naturally devolved) ultimately succeeded in getting his party safely off the mountain, he himself was so overcome by fatigue, cold, and want of food, that he died on the spot."
Jean-Antoine Carrel entered his sixty-second year in January 1901,[15] and was in the field throughout the summer. On 21st August, having just returned from an ascent of Mont Blanc, he was engaged at Courmayeur by Signor Leone Sinigaglia, of Turin, for an ascent of the Matterhorn. He proceeded to the Val Tournanche, and on the 23rd set out with him and Charles Gorret, for the last time, to ascend his own mountain by his own route. A long and clear account of what happened was communicated by Signor Sinigaglia to the Italian Alpine Club, and from this the following relation is condensed:
"We started for the Cervin at 2.15 A.M. on the 23rd, in splendid weather, with the intention of descending the same night to the hut at the Hörnli on the Swiss side. We proceeded pretty well, but the glaze of ice on the rocks near the Col du Lion retarded our march somewhat, and when we arrived at the hut at the foot of the Great Tower, prudence counselled the postponement of the ascent until the next day, for the sky was becoming overcast. We decided upon this, and stopped.
"Here I ought to mention that both I and Gorret noticed with uneasiness that Carrel showed signs of fatigue upon leaving the Col du Lion. I attributed this to temporary weakness. As soon as we reached the hut he lay down and slept profoundly for two hours, and awoke much restored. In the meantime the weather was rapidly changing. Storm clouds coming from the direction of Mont Blanc hung over the Dent d'Hérens, but we regarded them as transitory, and trusted to the north wind, which was still continuing to blow. Meanwhile, three of the Maquignazs and Edward Bich, whom we found at the hut, returned from looking after the ropes, started downwards for Breuil, at parting wishing us a happy ascent, and holding out hopes of a splendid day for the morrow.
"But, after their departure, the weather grew worse very rapidly; the wind changed, and towards evening there broke upon us a most violent hurricane of hail and snow, accompanied by frequent flashes of lightning. The air was so charged with electricity that for two consecutive hours in the night one could see in the hut as in broad daylight. The storm continued to rage all night, and the day and night following, continuously, with incredible violence. The temperature in the hut fell to 3 degrees.
"The situation was becoming somewhat alarming, for the provisions were getting low, and we had already begun to use the seats of the hut as firewood. The rocks were in an extremely bad state, and we were afraid that if we stopped longer, and the storm continued, we should be blocked up in the hut for several days. This being the state of affairs, it was decided among the guides that if the wind should abate we should descend on the following morning; and, as the wind did abate somewhat, on the morning of the 25th (the weather, however, still remaining very bad) it was unanimously settled to make a retreat.