Chapter 6 AN AVALANCHE ON THE HAUT-DE-CRY

The Haut-de-Cry is not one of the giants of the Alps. It is a peak of modest height but fine appearance, rising abruptly from the valley of the Rhone. In 1864 it had never been climbed in winter, and one of our countrymen, Mr Philip Gosset, set out in February of that year to attempt its ascent. He had with him a friend, Monsieur Boissonnet, the famous guide Bennen, and three men from a village, named Ardon, close by, who were to act as local guides or porters.

The party had gained a considerable height on the mountain when it became necessary to cross a couloir or gully filled with snow. It was about 150 feet broad at the top, and 400 or 500 at the bottom. "Bennen did not seem to like the look of the snow very much," writes Mr Gosset in The Alpine Journal. "He asked the local guides whether avalanches ever came down this couloir, to which they answered that our position was perfectly safe. We were walking in the following order-Bevard, Nance, Bennen, myself, Boissonnet, and Rebot. Having crossed over about three-quarters of the breadth of the couloir, the two leading men suddenly sank considerably above their waists. Bennen tightened the rope. The snow was too deep to think of getting out of the hole they had made, so they advanced one or two steps, dividing the snow with their bodies. Bennen turned round and told us he was afraid of starting an avalanche; we asked whether it would not be better to return and cross the couloir higher up. To this the three Ardon men opposed themselves; they mistook the proposed precaution for fear, and the two leading men continued their work.

"After three or four steps gained in the aforesaid manner, the snow became hard again. Bennen had not moved-he was evidently undecided what he should do. As soon, however, as he saw hard snow again, he advanced, and crossed parallel to, but above, the furrow the Ardon men had made. Strange to say, the snow supported him. While he was passing, I observed that the leader, Bevard, had ten or twelve feet of rope coiled round his shoulder. I of course at once told him to uncoil it, and get on to the arête, from which he was not more than fifteen feet distant. Bennen then told me to follow. I tried his steps, but sank up to my waist in the very first. So I went through the furrows, holding my elbows close to my body, so as not to touch the sides. This furrow was about twelve feet long, and as the snow was good on the other side, we had all come to the false conclusion that the snow was accidentally softer there than elsewhere. Bennen advanced; he had made but a few steps when we heard a deep, cutting sound. The snow-field split in two, about fourteen or fifteen feet above us. The cleft was at first quite narrow, not more than an inch broad. An awful silence ensued; it lasted but a few seconds, and then it was broken by Bennen's voice, 'Wir sind alle verloren.'[1] His words were slow and solemn, and those who knew him felt what they really meant when spoken by such a man as Bennen. They were his last words. I drove my alpenstock into the snow, and brought the weight of my body to bear on it. I then waited. It was an awful moment of suspense. I turned my head towards Bennen to see whether he had done the same thing. To my astonishment I saw him turn round, face the valley, and stretch out both arms. The ground on which we stood began to move slowly, and I felt the utter uselessness of any alpenstock. I soon sank up to my shoulders, and began descending backwards. From this moment I saw nothing of what had happened to the rest of the party. With a good deal of trouble I succeeded in turning round. The speed of the avalanche increased rapidly, and before long I was covered up with snow. I was suffocating, when I suddenly came to the surface again. I was on a wave of the avalanche, and saw it before me as I was carried down. It was the most awful sight I ever saw. The head of the avalanche was already at the spot where we had made our last halt. The head alone was preceded by a thick cloud of snow-dust; the rest of the avalanche was clear. Around me I heard the horrid hissing of the snow, and far before me the thundering of the foremost part of the avalanche. To prevent myself sinking again, I made use of my arms, much in the same way as when swimming in a standing position. At last I noticed that I was moving slower; then I saw the pieces of snow in front of me stop at some yards distant; then the snow straight before me stopped, and I heard on a large scale the same creaking sound that is produced when a heavy cart passes over frozen snow in winter. I felt that I also had stopped, and instantly threw up both arms to protect my head, in case I should again be covered up. I had stopped, but the snow behind me was still in motion; its pressure on my body was so strong that I thought I should be crushed to death. This tremendous pressure lasted but a short time; I was covered up by snow coming from behind me. My first impulse was to try and uncover my head-but this I could not do, the avalanche had frozen by pressure the moment it stopped, and I was frozen in. Whilst trying vainly to move my arms, I suddenly became aware that the hands as far as the wrist had the faculty of motion. The conclusion was easy, they must be above the snow. I set to work as well as I could; it was time for I could not have held out much longer. At last I saw a faint glimmer of light. The crust above my head was getting thinner, but I could not reach it any more with my hands; the idea struck me that I might pierce it with my breath. After several efforts I succeeded in doing so, and felt suddenly a rush of air towards my mouth, I saw the sky again through a little round hole. A dead silence reigned around me; I was so surprised to be still alive, and so persuaded at the first moment that none of my fellow-sufferers had survived, that I did not even think of shouting for them. I then made vain efforts to extricate my arms, but found it impossible; the most I could do was to join the ends of my fingers, but they could not reach the snow any longer. After a few minutes I heard a man shouting; what a relief it was to know that I was not the sole survivor!-to know that perhaps he was not frozen in and could come to my assistance! I answered; the voice approached, but seemed uncertain where to go, and yet it was now quite near. A sudden exclamation of surprise! Rebot had seen my hands. He cleared my head in an instant, and was about to try and cut me out completely, when I saw a foot above the snow, and so near to me that I could touch it with my arms, although they were not quite free yet. I at once tried to move the foot; it was my poor friend's. A pang of agony shot through me as I saw that the foot did not move. Poor Boissonnet had lost sensation, and was perhaps already dead.

"Rebot did his best. After some time he wished me to help him, so he freed my arms a little more, so that I could make use of them. I could do but little, for Rebot had torn the axe from my shoulder as soon as he had cleared my head (I generally carry an axe separate from my alpenstock-the blade tied to the belt, and the handle attached to the left shoulder). Before coming to me Rebot had helped Nance out of the snow; he was lying nearly horizontally, and was not much covered over. Nance found Bevard, who was upright in the snow, but covered up to the head. After about twenty minutes, the two last-named guides came up. I was at length taken out; the snow had to be cut with the axe down to my feet before I could be pulled out. A few minutes after 1 P.M. we came to my poor friend's face.... I wished the body to be taken out completely, but nothing could induce the three guides to work any longer, from the moment they saw it was too late to save him. I acknowledge that they were nearly as incapable of doing anything as I was. When I was taken out of the snow the cord had to be cut. We tried the end going towards Bennen, but could not move it; it went nearly straight down, and showed us that there was the grave of the bravest guide the Valais ever had or ever will have."

Thus ends one of the most magnificent descriptions of an avalanche which has ever been written. The cause of the accident was a mistaken opinion as to the state of winter snow, which is very different to the snow met with in summer, and of which at that time the best guides had no experience.

A RACE FOR LIFE

Once upon a time, in the year 1872, a certain famous mountaineer, Mr F. F. Tuckett, had with his party a desperate race for life. The climbers numbered five in all, three travellers and two guides, and had started from the Wengern Alp to ascend the Eiger. Nowadays there is a railway to the Wengern Alp, and so thousands of English people are familiar with the appearance of the magnificent group of mountains-the Eiger, the M?nch, and the Jungfrau-which they have before them as they pass along in the train. Suffice it here to say that the way up the Eiger lies over a glacier, partly fed by another high above it, from which, through a narrow, rocky gully, great masses of ice now and again come dashing down. Unless the fall is a very big one, climbers skirting along the edge of this glacier are safe enough, but on the only occasion I have been up the Eiger, I did not fancy this part of the journey.

Eiger. M?nch.

From the Lauberhorn.

The Cross marks the Scene of "A Race for Life." The dotted line shows the steep Ice-Wall of the Eigerjoch (page 208).

To return to Mr Tuckett and his friends. They were advancing up the snowy valley below the funnel-shaped opening through which an avalanche occasionally falls. The guide, Ulrich Lauener, was leading, and, remarks Mr Tuckett, "He is a little hard of hearing; and although his sight, which had become very feeble in 1870, is greatly improved, both ear and eye were perhaps less quick to detect any unexpected sound or movement than might otherwise have been the case. Be this as it may, when all of a sudden I heard a sort of crack somewhere up aloft, I believe that, for an instant or two, his was the only head not turned upwards in the direction from which it seemed to proceed, viz., the hanging ice-cliff; but the next moment, when a huge mass of sérac broke away, mingled apparently with a still larger contingent of snow from the slopes above, whose descent may, indeed, have caused, or at least hastened, the disruption of the glacier, every eye was on the look-out, though as yet there was no indication on the part of any one, nor I believe any thought for one or two seconds more, that we were going to be treated to anything beyond a tolerably near view of such an avalanche as it rarely falls to anyone's lot to see. Down came the mighty cataract, filling the couloir to its brim; but it was not until it had traversed a distance of 600 to 800 feet, and on suddenly dashing in a cloud of frozen spray over one of the principal rocky ridges with which, as I have said, the continuity of the snow-slope was broken, appeared as if by magic to triple its width, that the idea of danger to ourselves flashed upon me. I now perceived that its volume was enormously greater than I had at first imagined, and that, with the tremendous momentum it had by this time acquired, it might, instead of descending on the right between us and the rocks of the Klein Eiger, dash completely across the base of the Eiger itself in front of us, attain the foot of the Rothstock ridge, and then, trending round, sweep the whole surface of the glacier, ourselves included, with the besom of destruction.

"I instinctively bolted for the rocks of the Rothstock-if haply it might not be too late-yelling rather than shouting to the others, 'Run for your lives!'

"Ulrich was the last to take the alarm, though the nearest to the danger, and was thus eight or ten paces behind the rest of us, though he, too, shouted to Whitwell to run for his life directly he became aware of the situation. But by this time we were all straining desperately through the deep, soft snow for dear life, yet with faces turned upwards to watch the swift on-coming of the foe. I remember being struck with the idea that it seemed as though, sure of its prey, it wished to play with us for a while, at one moment letting us imagine that we had gained upon it, and were getting beyond the line of its fire, and the next, with mere wantonness of vindictive power, suddenly rolling out on its right a vast volume of grinding blocks and whirling snow, as though to show that it could out-flank us at any moment it chose.

"Nearer and nearer it came, its front like a mighty wave about to break, yet that still 'on the curl hangs poising'; now it has traversed the whole width of the glacier above us, taking a somewhat diagonal direction; and now run, oh, run! if ever you did, for here it comes straight at us, still outflanking us, swift, deadly, and implacable! The next instant we saw no more; a wild confusion of whirling snow and fragments of ice-a frozen cloud-swept over us, entirely concealing us from one another, and still we were untouched-at least I knew that I was-and still we ran. Another half second and the mist had passed, and there lay the body of the monster, whose head was still careering away at lightning speed far below us, motionless, rigid, and harmless. It will naturally be supposed that the race was one which had not admitted of being accurately timed by the performers; but I believe that I am speaking with precision when I say that I do not think the whole thing occupied from first to last more than five or six seconds. How narrow our escape was may be inferred from the fact that the spot where I halted for a moment to look back after it had passed, was found to be just twelve yards from its edge, and I don't think that in all we had had time to put more than thirty yards between us and the point where our wild rush for the rocks first began. Ulrich's momentary lagging all but cost him his life; for in spite of his giant stride and desperate exertions he only just contrived to fling himself forwards as the edge of the frozen torrent dashed past him. This may sound like exaggeration, but he assured me that he felt some fragments strike his legs; and it will perhaps appear less improbable when it is considered that he was certainly several yards in the rear, and when the avalanche came to a standstill, its edge, intersecting and concealing our tracks along a sharply defined line, rose rigid and perpendicular, like a wall of cyclopean masonry, as the old Bible pictures represent the waters of the Red Sea, standing 'upright as an heap' to let the Israelites through.

"The avalanche itself consisted of a mixture, in tolerably equal proportions, of blocks of sérac of all shapes and sizes, up to irregular cubes of four or five feet on a size, and snow thoroughly saturated with water-the most dangerous of all descriptions to encounter, as its weight is enormous. We found that it covered the valley for a length of about 3300 feet, and a maximum breadth of 1500, tailing off above and below to 500 or 1000 feet. Had our position on the slope been a few hundred feet higher or lower, or in other words, had we been five minutes earlier or later, we must have been caught beyond all chance of escape."

There was no rashness which can be blamed in the party finding themselves in the position described. Avalanches, when they fall down the gully, hardly ever come so far as the one met with on this occasion, and they very seldom fall at all in the early morning. The famous guide, Christian Almer, while engaged on another expedition, visited the spot after the avalanche had fallen, and said that it was the mightiest he had ever seen in his life. Mr Tuckett roughly estimated its total weight as about 450,000 tons.