were obliged to manœuvre only by means of the ripping panel. We 

 touched a very steep field of snow. In my hand I held the strap which 

 allowed me to open the panel and to empty the balloon almost 

 instantly. But I took good care not to do it : the site was not suitable 

 for a landing. The balloon bounced and flew over a glacier. It was a 

 maze of crevasses. One moment I could see the lights of a village, and 

 I flashed a signal towards it with a torch. (The next day we learnt 

 that this signal was seen perfectly from Gurgl.) But the village dis- 

 appeared in the valley. At last we approached a flat place free of 

 crevasses. Now was the moment! Kipfer pulled the strap of the ripping 

 panel; the balloon quickly emptied; we touched the ice, the cabin 

 rolled a little, then came to rest. 



My manhole was on top, so I had an unrestricted view. The envelope 

 was floating above us. The wind was so light that at every moment it 

 threatened to fall on the cabin : then it leant over and lay down on the 

 glacier: the opened ripping panel being underneath, it emptied only 

 very slowly. A glance into the dark cabin showed me a heap of strange 

 objects: 400 lb. of instruments, 750 bags of small shot, all scattered 

 about upside down. And underneath, Kipfer, who was slowly picking 

 his way out towards the top. 



We had landed at an altitude of some 8700 ft. Switzerland ? Austria.'^ 

 Italy? We bivouacked where we were. The place would have been 

 fairyland if it had not been so cold ! Wrapped up in the balloon material, 

 I went to sleep, but I started from sleep from time to time, woken by 

 the noise of a waterfall which in my dream I mistook for the whistling 

 of our air leak ! At dawn, from aeronauts we became alpinists : linked 

 by a double rope, sounding the snow at every step with a bamboo 

 stick found in the rigging of the balloon, we reached the edge of the 

 glacier, and seeking out passages across the rocks, we went down slowly 

 towards the valley. At midday a patrol of skiers came from Gurgl to 

 our rescue, reached us and led us to the village. It is with gratitude that 

 I think of the valuable help given to us as much by the mountaineers 

 as by the authorities in the Tyrol. Forty men, twenty soldiers and 

 twenty peasants carried the envelope of the FNRS on their shoulders 

 from the Gurgl glacier to the village, without a path or on the worst 

 trails and all this without one tear in the delicate material. 



A few days later, at Zurich, where the Swiss Aero-Club welcomed 

 us in triumph, its president. Colonel Messner, congratulated us, and 

 expressed the hope that the world altitude record which we had just 



[15] 



