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Updated: June 29, 2025


Marie Couttet's experience, in finding his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps. Couttet identified other relics: "This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz. He carried the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon the summit. Here is the wing of one of those pigeons.

We had nearly reached them when, looking back, I saw the heads of the other party appearing on the brink of the Mur. They looked up at us hanging right above them on the white slope, while Couttet carried my handkerchief, streaming triumphantly in the morning wind, from the end of his baton. Waving their hands, they sat down and gave up the race.

Yet the Ambroise Couttet of to-day is never so happy as when he is on the mountain. His eyes sparkle if he hears the thunder of an avalanche, and he smiles as he watches its tossing white crest ploughing swiftly across some snowy incline which he has just traversed. One porter sufficed, for my only traps consisted of a hand camera, a field-glass, and a few extra woollen shirts and stockings.

After about four hours, we had passed the most dangerous part, and in another hour we were safely upon the Mer de Glace, which we hailed with delight: Couttet, who reached the point of safety first, jumping on the firm ice and shouting to me "Il n'y a plus de danger, Monsieur."

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.

To this last proposition I decidedly objected, although Couttet was right, as it turned out; for in another hour the storm, which had not entirely ceased at any time, whipped itself into renewed fury, and before noon the wind was howling and shrieking with demoniac energy, and flinging gritty snow and ice in blinding clouds against the hut, which, situated on a ridge, was completely exposed.

The outer side of this wedge, whose edge we were traversing lengthwise, pitched down into the darkness and ended, I believe, in a crevasse. Presently we reached a place where the precipice overhung our precarious footway, and an inverted forest of icicles depended above us. "Make as little noise as possible, and step gently," said Couttet.

Another opportune gap in the clouds, which left us for an instant surrounded with retreating walls of vapor, confirmed that opinion, and vindicated the mountaineering skill of Couttet, who had found the way though way there was none. A quick, breathless scramble up a confused heap of ice and slippery points of rock brought us at last to the refuge.

The sun beat furiously while we were scrambling on the rocks, and the latter were warm to the touch, although, thousands of feet below, the immense cleft in the mountain side was choked with masses of never-melted ice. "Never mind," said Couttet, as I stopped to wipe the perspiration from my face, "it will be cool enough when we get onto the glacier."

It was so thick that objects a few yards away would have been concealed even without a violent wind to confuse the vision. At times Couttet, close ahead of me, was visible only in a kind of gray outline, like a wraith. On an open plain such a storm in such a temperature would have had its dangers for a traveller seeking his way.

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