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ALPINE MOUNTAIN CLIMBING

FIRST ATTEMPTS HALF A CENTURY AGO[46]

BY EDWARD WHYMPER

On the 23d of July, 1860, I started for my first tour of the Alps. At
Zermatt I wandered in many directions, but the weather was bad and my
work was much retarded. One day, after spending a long time in attempts
to sketch near the Hörnli, and in futile endeavors to seize the forms
of the peaks as they for a few seconds peered out from above the dense
banks of woolly clouds, I determined not to return to Zermatt by the
usual path, but to cross the Görner glacier to the Riffel hotel. After
a rapid scramble over the polished rocks and snow-beds which skirt the
base of the Theodule glacier, and wading through some of the streams
which flow from it, at that time much swollen by the late rains, the
first difficulty was arrived at, in the shape of a precipice about
three hundred feet high. It seemed that there would be no difficulty in
crossing the glacier if the cliff could be descended, but higher up and
lower down the ice appeared, to my inexperienced eyes, to be impassable
for a single person.

The general contour of the cliff was nearly perpendicular, but it was a
good deal broken up, and there was little difficulty in descending by
zigzagging from one mass to another. At length there was a long slab,
nearly smooth, fixt at an angle of about forty degrees between two
wall-sided pieces of rock; nothing, except the glacier, could be seen
below. It was a very awkward place, but being doubtful if return were