In A Mile Or Two It Was A Little Lighter, And
This Was As Well, For Some Weeks Before A Great Avalanche Had Fallen,
And We Had To Cross It Gingerly.
Beneath the wide cap of frozen snow
ran a torrent roaring.
I remembered Colorado, and how I had crossed
the Arkansaw on such a bridge as a boy. We went on in the uneasy dawn.
The woods began to show, and there was a cross where a man had slipped
from above that very April and been killed. Then, most ominous and
disturbing, the drizzle changed to a rain, and the guide shook his
head and said it would be snowing higher up. We went on, and it grew
lighter. Before it was really day (or else the weather confused and
darkened the sky), we crossed a good bridge, built long ago, and we
halted at a shed where the cattle lie in the late summer when the snow
is melted. There we rested a moment.
But on leaving its shelter we noticed many disquieting things. The
place was a hollow, the end of the ravine - a bowl, as it were; one way
out of which is the Nufenen, and the other the Gries.
Here it is in a sketch map. The heights are marked lighter and
lighter, from black in the valleys to white in the impassable
mountains. E is where we stood, in a great cup or basin, having just
come up the ravine B. C is the Italian valley of the Tosa, and the
neck between it and E is the Gries. D is the valley of the Ticino,
and the neck between E and it is the Nufenen. A is the Crystal
Mountain. You may take the necks or passes to be about 8000, and the
mountains 10,000 or 11,000 feet above the sea.
We noticed, I say, many disquieting things. First, all, that bowl or
cup below the passes was a carpet of snow, save where patches of black
water showed, and all the passes and mountains, from top to bottom,
were covered with very thick snow; the deep surface of it soft and
fresh fallen. Secondly, the rain had turned into snow. It was falling
thickly all around. Nowhere have I more perceived the immediate
presence of great Death. Thirdly, it was far colder, and we felt the
beginning of a wind. Fourthly, the clouds had come quite low down.
The guide said it could not be done, but I said we must attempt it. I
was eager, and had not yet felt the awful grip of the cold. We left
the Nufenen on our left, a hopeless steep of new snow buried in fog,
and we attacked the Gries. For half-an-hour we plunged on through snow
above our knees, and my thin cotton clothes were soaked. So far the
guide knew we were more or less on the path, and he went on and I
panted after him. Neither of us spoke, but occasionally he looked back
to make sure I had not dropped out.
The snow began to fall more thickly, and the wind had risen somewhat.
I was afraid of another protest from the guide, but he stuck to it
well, and I after him, continually plunging through soft snow and
making yard after yard upwards. The snow fell more thickly and the
wind still rose.
We came to a place which is, in the warm season, an alp; that is, a
slope of grass, very steep but not terrifying; having here and there
sharp little precipices of rock breaking it into steps, but by no
means (in summer) a matter to make one draw back. Now, however, when
everything was still Arctic it was a very different matter. A sheer
steep of snow whose downward plunge ran into the driving storm and was
lost, whose head was lost in the same mass of thick cloud above, a
slope somewhat hollowed and bent inwards, had to be crossed if we were
to go any farther; and I was terrified, for I knew nothing of
climbing. The guide said there was little danger, only if one slipped
one might slide down to safety, or one might (much less probably) get
over rocks and be killed. I was chattering a little with cold; but as
he did not propose a return, I followed him. The surface was
alternately slabs of frozen snow and patches of soft new snow. In the
first he cut steps, in the second we plunged, and once I went right in
and a mass of snow broke off beneath me and went careering down the
slope. He showed me how to hold my staff backwards as he did his
alpenstock, and use it as a kind of brake in case I slipped.
We had been about twenty minutes crawling over that wall of snow and
ice; and it was more and more apparent that we were in for danger.
Before we had quite reached the far side, the wind was blowing a very
full gale and roared past our ears. The surface snow was whirring
furiously like dust before it: past our faces and against them drove
the snow-flakes, cutting the air: not falling, but making straight
darts and streaks. They seemed like the form of the whistling wind;
they blinded us. The rocks on the far side of the slope, rocks which
had been our goal when we set out to cross it, had long ago
disappeared in the increasing rush of the blizzard. Suddenly as we
were still painfully moving on, stooping against the mad wind, these
rocks loomed up over as large as houses, and we saw them through the
swarming snow-flakes as great hulls are seen through a fog at sea. The
guide crouched under the lee of the nearest; I came up close to him
and he put his hands to my ear and shouted to me that nothing further
could be done - he had so to shout because in among the rocks the
hurricane made a roaring sound, swamping the voice.
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