Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
You know, some amateurs have a vile habit of getting the names of various peaks branded on their alpenstocks just as if any real climber ever used an alpenstock." "Why, what do they use?" asked Bessie, much interested. "Ice-axes, of course. Now, there is a useful individual in Interlaken, who is what you might call a wholesale brander.
But these mountain railways fill me with satisfaction and gratitude. When the Jungfrau railway was first projected, some athletic Englishmen with heavy boots and ice-axes, protested against the "desecration" of regions till then accessible only to them and to me, and others of our age and strength. They declared that the scenery would be injured by the railway and its troops of "tourists."
It must be confessed that our own party looked more workman-like. For we had our faithful ice-axes, and our lower limbs were swathed with putties, now almost universally worn by guides and climbers alike. I fancied our guides looked on the other guide with some contempt He was not one of those who do big ascents.
It deferentially subdues its nationality, and takes on an Anglo-American aspect. Harris-tweeded young men pitch golf-bags and ice-axes on the rack, and smoke bulldog pipes in its corridors with an air of easy proprietorship. American spinsters, scouring Europe in couples, order lunch in high-pitched American without troubling to translate.
This was a slow business, for ice-axes are not good to cut wood with. I caused my piers to be firmly set up in ranks in the cellar, and upon them I laid six of my forty-foot ladders, side by side, and laid six more on top of them. Upon this bridge I caused a bed of boughs to be spread, and on top of the boughs a bed of earth six inches deep.
His baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend, laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens of milk, were just setting out. They would spend the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and get up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise. I had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down a feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude, could not do.
The silk tents, which had not come, had to be made in Fairbanks; the ice-axes sent were ridiculous gold-painted toys with detachable heads and broomstick handles more like dwarf halberds than ice-axes; and at least two workmanlike axes were indispensable.
The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds. They even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this innocent dumb brute. But I stood between them and their prey, menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks, and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder, and it was directly over my corpse.
Michel pushed open the door of his cottage, and lit his lamp, without after all bethinking him that the room was dark and empty. His ice-axes stood in a corner, the polished steel of their adz-heads gleaming in the light; his Rücksack and some coils of rope hung upon pegs; his book with the signatures and the comments of his patrons lay at his elbow on the table, a complete record of his life.
Interlaken is not a climbing center. Consequently mountaineering is little in evidence, conversation about ascents is seldom heard, and ice-axes, ropes, and nailed boots are seen more often in shop windows than in the streets. Interlaken is not like some other Swiss towns.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking