ALPINIST OF THE HEROIC AGE 561 



It was one of the severest climbs that Whymper ever had in his career, 

 full of peril and physical suffering. The party reached the summit 

 by the glacier of the Ancula. Bead again Whymper's description of 

 this glacier : 



Imagine a triangular plane 700 or 800 feet high, set at an angle exceeding 

 50 degrees; let it be smooth, glassy; let the uppermost edges be cut into spikes 

 and teeth, and let them be bent some one way, some another. Let the glassy 

 face be covered with minute fragments of rock, scarcely attached, but varnished 

 with ice. Imagine this, and then you will have a very faint idea of the face of 

 the Ecrins, on which we stood. It was not possible to avoid detaching stones, 

 which, as they fell, caused words unmentionable to rise. The greatest friends 

 would have reviled each other in such a situation. 



A few days afterward he climbed the Aiguille VeTte, a considerable 

 feat in itself, though "Whymper, in his modesty, makes little of it. 

 This was the first of the great Chamonix Aiguilles to be ascended. 



It was not until his eighth attempt on the 13th of July, 1865, that 

 Whymper finally attained the summit of the Matterhorn. He left 

 Zermatt at 5 :30 in the morning with three guides, Michel- Auguste 

 Croz, whom Whymper loved as a brother, old Peter and young Peter 

 Taugwalder, Lord Francis Douglas, the Rev. Charles Hudson and 

 Mr. Hadow, a young man of nineteen. After long study, Whymper 

 had rejected the usual route up the Matterhorn by the southwest or 

 Italian ridge. Professor John Tyndall and he, in their fruitless 

 emulation of each other, had stuck to this traditional route. Mr. 

 Whymper now determined to try the eastern face, convinced, as he 

 says, that its almost perpendicular appearance from Zermatt was an 

 optical illusion and that the dip of the strata, which on the Italian side 

 formed a continuous series of over-hangs — "ghastly precipices" — on 

 the opposite side would become a great natural staircase with steps 

 inclining inward. This apparently trivial deduction was the key to the 

 ascent of the Matterhorn, and this route has since become the usual one. 



All readers of adventure are familiar with this ascent. Sleeping 

 over-night on the mountain, they reached the summit, with severe rock- 

 work just before the finish. On the descent, however, came what is 

 perhaps the most sensational accident, everything considered, in the 

 history of mountain climbing. Let us quote Whymper's own words: 



A few minutes later (that is, just after the descent was undertaken) a 

 sharp-eyed lad ran into the Monte Eosa Hotel (at Zermatt), saying that he had 

 seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the Matterhorn on to the Matter- 

 horngletscher. The boy was reproved for telling idle stories: he was right, 

 nevertheless, and this was what he saw. Michel Croz had laid aside his axe, and 

 in order to give Mr. Hadow greater security was absolutely taking hold of his 

 legs and putting his feet, one by one, into their proper positions. As far as I 

 know, no one was actually descending. I can not speak with certainty, because 

 the two leading men were partially hidden from my sight by an intervening 



