Beyond the nearer range of mountains could be seen, through two depressions, a more distant range, remarkably steep and rugged, while one particularly high peak was adorned with extensive snow-fields and large glaciers.
Almost simultaneously with our arrival on the summit of the pass, a great change took place in the weather. The wind veered about, and the clouds, which hitherto had formed a monotonous gray covering, now began to separate rapidly and dissolve away, allowing the blue sky to appear in many places. Long, light shafts of sunlight forced a passage through these rents, and, as the clouds moved along, trailed bright areas of illumination over the valley below, developing rich coloring and pleasing contrasts of light and shade over a landscape ideally perfect.
This beautiful scene, which has taken some time to describe, even superficially, burst on our view so suddenly, that for a moment the air was rent with our exclamations and shouts, while those who had lately been most depressed in spirit were now most vehement in their expressions of pleasure. We spent a half-hour on the pass and divided up our work, so that while one took photographs of the scenery, another noted down the angles of prominent points for surveying purposes, while the rest constructed a high cairn of stones, to commemorate our ascent of the pass.
Whatever may have been the mental processes by which the result was achieved, we found all unanimous in a decision to go down into the new valley and explore it, whatever might result. The cold, desolate valley on which we now turned our backs, but which was the route homewards, was less attractive than this unknown region of so many pleasant features, where even the weather seemed changed as we approached it.
It was now already two-thirty P.M. We were 8400 feet above sea-level and at an unknown distance from Lake Louise, should we attempt the new route. Another great mountain range might have to be passed before we could arrive at the chalet, for aught we knew. There were, however, fully six hours left of daylight, and we hoped to reach the chalet before nightfall.
A long snow-slope descended from where we were standing, far into the valley. This we prepared to descend by glissading, all roped together, on account of W., who was this day enjoying his first experience in mountain climbing. An unkind fate had selected him, earlier in the day, to break through the bridge of the crevasse and now doomed him to still further trouble, for we had no sooner got well under way in our descent, before his feet flew out from under him, and he started to slide at such a remarkable rate that the man behind was jerked violently by the rope, and, falling headlong, lost his ice-axe at the same time. With consternation depicted in every feature, our two friends came rolling and sliding down, with ever increasing speed, spinning round—now one leading, now the other, sometimes head first, sometimes feet first. The shock of the oncomers was too much for the rest of us to withstand, and even with our ice-axes well set in the soft snow, we all slid some distance in a bunch. At length our axes had the desired effect and the procession came to a standstill. It required some time to unwind the tangled ropes wherein we were enmeshed like flies in a spider’s web, owing to the complicated figures we had executed in our descent. Meanwhile, a committee of one was appointed to go back and pick up the scattered hats, ice-axes, and such other wreckage as could be found.
The end of the descent was accomplished in a better manner, and in less than ten minutes we were 1500 feet below the pass. A short, steep scramble down some rocky ledges, where strong alder bushes gave good support for lowering ourselves, brought us in a few minutes to the valley bottom. At this level the air was warm and pleasant as we entered an open grove of larch and spruce trees. In the last quarter of an hour we had passed through all the gradations from an arctic climate, where the cold air, the great masses of perpetual snow, and bleak rocks, made a wintry picture, to the genial climate of the temperate zone, where were fresh and beautiful meadows enlivened by bright flowers, gaudy insects, and the smaller mountain animals. Humboldt has truly said: “In the physical as in the moral world, the contrast of effects, the comparison of what is powerful and menacing with what is soft and peaceful, is a never failing source of our pleasures and our emotions.”
We followed a small, clear stream of an unusual nature. In some places it glided quietly and swiftly over a sloping floor of solid stone, polished and grooved in some past age by glaciers. A little farther on, the character of the mountain stream suffered a change, and the water now found its way in many sharp, angular turns and narrow courses by large square blocks of stone, for the most part covered by a thick carpet of moss, while between were deep pools and occasional miniature waterfalls.
Pursuing our way with rapid steps, for we were like adventurers in some fairy-land of nature, where every moment reveals new wonders, we came at length to an opening in the forest, where the stream dashed over some rocky ledges, that frost and age had rent asunder and thrown down in wild disorder, till the stream bed was fairly strewn with giant masses of sandstone. Some of these colossal fragments were apparently just balanced on sharp edges, and seemed ever ready to fall from their insecure positions. The variety and novelty of form presented by the falling water, as the streamlets divided here and united there, some over, some under, the stone bridges accidentally formed in this confusion of nature, aroused our greatest admiration.
As we advanced down the valley towards the north, the outlines of the mountains changed, and we recognized at length the bare slopes of the southern side of Mount Temple, which at first seemed to us a strange mountain. Meanwhile, we had approached very near to the base of the beautiful mountain with the double peak and the many pinnacles, and found that proximity did not render it less attractive.