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Updated: May 25, 2025
The inferior ice-slopes and the valleys far below were bathed in the golden glories of a magnificent sunset and, before they reached the huts at the Grands Mulets, they had passed from a condition of excessive cold to one of extreme heat, insomuch that the Captain and Professor were compelled to walk with their coats slung over their shoulders, while perspiration streamed from their bare brows.
In about an hour the storm lightened, and the Englishman and the porters started back to the Grands Mulets. I consulted Couttet about making a dash for the summit; but he thought it would be better to wait awhile, and better still to follow the others down the mountain.
Here some underlying irregularity of the rocks, deep beneath the surface of the mighty river of ice, causes the formation of a labyrinth of fissures and crevasses, overhung with towering séracs, or ice turrets; and the ice descends between the Grands Mulets and the rock wall in front of the Gros Bechat in a sort of motionless cascade motionless, that is to say, except when cracks break apart into yawning chasms, and massive blocks tumble into the depths.
I mention these features because the best route to the summit of Mont Blanc lies over the glaciers and snow fields and between the walls of the great trough I have described, and the first station is at the Grands Mulets, where a cabin for the accommodation of climbers has existed for many years.
Need we say that the younger of our adventurers for such they may truly be styled felt a tendency to "spin yarns," as Captain Wopper expressed it, till a late hour that night, as they sat round the fire at the Grands Mulets?
Another relief party presently arrived at the cabin on the Grands Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events.
The Grands Mulets formed the stopping place in some of the earliest attempts to climb Mont Blanc, more than a hundred years ago. Here Jacques Balmat, the hero of the first ascent, passed an awful night alone, amid the cracking of glaciers and the shaking of avalanches, before his final victory over the peak in 1786.
It is therefore necessary to sleep at a place named the Grands Mulets, from which a fresh start is made for the summit at the earliest hours of morning on the second day. Towards this resting-place our travellers now directed their steps.
No; the Glacier de Boisson was given up, and I am sorry for it now, because it is the commencement of the road up Mont Blanc; and, though I could not go to the top thereof, I should like to have gone as far as I could. In fact, I should have been glad to sleep one night at the Grands Mulets: however, that was impossible.
Chayne sent for them. "Yes," they said. "At half past two this morning, the climbing party descended from the rocks on to the ice-fall of the glacier. They should be at the hut at the Grands Mulets now, on the other side of the mountain, if not already in Chamonix. Perhaps monsieur would wish for porters to-morrow." "No," said Chayne.
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