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Updated: May 23, 2025
It was wrong, monsieur, to try the Brenva ridge. Yes, we shall die here"; and he fell to blubbering like a child. "Could you go down alone?" Garratt Skinner asked. "There is the glacier to cross, monsieur." "I know. That is the risk. But it is cold and there is no sun. The snow-bridges may hold." Pierre Delouvain hesitated. Here it seemed to him was certain death.
A detailed description of that five days' journey over the mountains would of itself suffice to fill a book, for it would be a record of continuous adventure and hairbreadth escapes from avalanches that were constantly threatening to overwhelm them; of treacherous snow-bridges that crumbled away beneath their feet; of furious, icy winds that, seeming to be imbued with demoniac intelligence and malignity, always assailed them in some especially perilous situation, and sought to buffet them from their precarious hold; and of long hours of intolerable suffering when, during the hours of darkness, they were compelled to camp on some snow-patch and build themselves a snow-hut as a partial protection from the howling, marrow-piercing, snow-laden gale.
But if he climbed down the ice-arête, the snow-slopes, and the rocks below, if the snow-bridges held upon the glacier, there would be life for one of the three. Pierre Delouvain had little in common with that loyal race of Alpine guides who hold it as their most sacred tradition not to return home without their patrons.
"I wish it was at the bottom of the Glacier!" groaned the Goat-mother, staggering along; her bonnet nearly falling off, her shawl trailing on the snow behind her. "Be careful, Pyto! Careless Goat!" she cried. "Test the snow-bridges carefully with your alpenstock before you venture on them!"
Another very important reason for using the dog is that this small creature can much more easily cross the numerous slight snow-bridges that are not to be avoided on the Barrier and on the glaciers. If a dog falls into a crevasse there is no great harm done; a tug at his harness and he is out again; but it is another matter with a pony.
We took twenty pairs of ski, all of the finest hickory; they were 8 feet long, and proportionately narrow. I chose them of this length with a view to being able to cross the numerous cracks in the glaciers; the greater the surface over which the weight could be distributed, the better prospect we should have of slipping over the snow-bridges. We had forty ski-poles, with ebonite points.
Panting violently, fatigued beyond belief, and overcome with mountain-sickness, we would stop and lean on our ice axes until able to take twenty-five steps more. It did not take very long to recover one's wind. Finally we reached a glacier marked by a network of crevasses, none very wide, and nearly all covered with snow-bridges.
Walking at the time was comparatively easy, for a sharp frost had hardened the surface of the snow, and the gem-like lights of heaven enabled them to traverse valleys of ice, clamber up snow-slopes and cross crevasses without danger, except in one or two places, where the natural snow-bridges were frail and the chasms unusually wide.
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