The sun beat furiously while we were scrambling on the rocks, and the latter were warm to the touch, although, thousands of feet below, the immense cleft in the mountain side was choked with masses of never-melted ice.
"Never mind," said Couttet, as I stopped to wipe the perspiration from my face, "it will be cool enough when we get onto the glacier."
And it was—so cool in fact that I hastily pulled on my coat. Having passed out of range of the Aiguille du Midi, we found comfortable going on the ice.
DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF THE ROUTE.
The northern slope of Mont Blanc is hollowed into a vast cavernous channel, half filled with glaciers, and edged on the east by the Mont Maudit, the Aiguille de Saussure, and the Aiguille du Midi, and on the west by the Dome and Aiguille du Gouter and the Gros Bechat. Down this tremendous gutter crowd the eternal snows of Mont Blanc, compressed toward the bottom into the Glacier des Bossons and the Glacier de Taconnaz. These immense ice streams are separated by the projecting nose of the Montagne de la Cote, which rises from the valley of Chamonix and lies in a long, dark ridge on the foot of Mont Blanc. Above the Montagne de la Cote several gigantic rock masses, shooting into pinnacles, push up through the ice from the bottom and near the centre of the channel. These are called the Grands Mulets, from the resemblance which they present, when seen from Chamonix, to a row of huge black mules tramping up the white mountain side.
I mention these features because the best route to the summit of Mont Blanc lies over the glaciers and snow fields and between the walls of the great trough I have described, and the first station is at the Grands Mulets, where a cabin for the accommodation of climbers has existed for many years. From the foot of the Aiguille du Midi, at the Pierre a l'Echelle, across the Glacier des Bossons to the rocks of the Grands Mulets the distance is about a mile and a quarter, and the perpendicular increase of elevation nearly two thousand feet. The passage seldom presents any difficulty, except to inexperienced persons, although at times many crevasses must be crossed, particularly at what is called the Junction, just above the point where the Glacier des Bossons and the Glacier de Taconnaz are divided by the Montagne de la Cote. Here some underlying irregularity of the rocks, deep beneath the surface of the mighty river of ice, causes the formation of a labyrinth of fissures and crevasses, overhung with towering séracs, or ice turrets; and the ice descends between the Grands Mulets and the rock wall in front of the Gros Bechat in a sort of motionless cascade—motionless, that is to say, except when cracks break apart into yawning chasms, and massive blocks tumble into the depths.
Even a practised climber is occasionally compelled to look to his steps in passing the Junction. On my return I witnessed an accident in this place which proved at the same time the reality of the danger and the usefulness in sudden crises of the mountaineer's rope. A tourist descending from the Grands Mulets was passing, under an impending sérac, around the head of a crevasse, where the only footway was a few inches of ice hewn with the axe. Being heedless or nervous, his feet shot from under him, and with a yell he plunged into the pit. Luckily, he was tied to the rope between two guides, one of whom had passed the dangerous corner, while the other, behind, had also a safe footing. As he fell the guides braced themselves, the rope zipped, and the unfortunate adventurer hung clutching and kicking at the polished blue wall. He had really descended but a few feet into the crevasse, though to him doubtless it seemed a hundred, and with a surprising display of strength, or skill, the guides hauled him out by simply tightening the rope. One of them pulled back and the other forward, and between them the sprawling victim rose with the strain to the brink of the chasm, where a third man dexterously caught and landed him.