Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
While such cheerful recollections were running through my mind I noticed that we were no longer ascending, and that Couttet, whom I had not troubled with questions as long as he showed no hesitation, was bearing now this way and now that, and occasionally stopping and peering about with spread nostrils, like a dog seeking a trail.
They warned us that the snow above was in bad condition, and, believing that more foul weather was to come, they were embracing this opportunity to get down. Couttet proposed that we should accompany them, especially as they reported nothing left to eat at the observatory, but I declined.
Not a word was spoken, but with instant unanimity we turned and scrambled up again, Couttet in the lead, and the porter breathing hard at my heels. Such a scene in the fraction of a second is photographed on the memory for a lifetime.
A detachment of guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious trip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in. They had to wait; nothing could be attempted in such a tempest. The wild storm lasted MORE THAN A WEEK, without ceasing; but on the 17th, Couttet, with several guides, left the cabin and succeeded in making the ascent.
A few minutes later they were seen making the first steps of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid them from view. Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came, no one had returned to the Grands Mulets. Sylvain Couttet, keeper of the cabin there, suspected a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help.
They left the Grands Mulets at midnight, and we followed them three-quarters of an hour later. There was no moon, and Couttet carried a lantern. On reaching the Petit Plateau we saw the lights of the other party flashing ahead of us, and at the foot of the Grands Montées we overtook them.
Even before that time Pierre Couttet had been whirled to death on the great peak, and his body, embedded and preserved in a glacier, was found nearly half a century afterward at its foot. And two other Couttets of past years escaped, by the merest hair of miraculous fortune, from a catastrophe on the same dreadful slopes in which three of their comrades were swallowed up.
We put on the rope and scrambled down, but when we got upon the neck below the Bosses the clouds whirled off and the burnished sun stood over the white peak, too splendid to be looked upon. "Couttet, we must go up," I exclaimed. "As you say," he replied; and we turned upon our track.
Couttet did not immediately reply, but looked up and about, as if trying to pierce the driving snow with his gaze. "If I could catch sight of the rocks," at length he said. Suddenly the gale seemed to split the clouds, and for an instant a vision opened of blue sky over our heads, and endless slopes of snow, falling one below another, under our feet.
When we reached the foot of the Corridor the lights of the other party were not visible. But here step-cutting became necessary, and this delayed us so much that presently I caught dancing gleams from the pursuing lanterns moving rapidly at the bottom of the bowl of night out of which we were climbing. They were fast gaining upon us. "We must hurry, Couttet!"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking