8o 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



fording good foot- and handholds. On the other hand, 

 what from afar looked like easy stair-form ledges often 

 proved to be very disagreeable projecting terraces of more 

 than a man's height. By the same magic of proximity 

 small white patches became hanging fields of hard-frozen, 

 granulated snow, on which every step had to be cut with 

 care. Furthermore, even in the relatively easy places one 

 is never quite unconscious of the sharply descending slope, 

 which on any part of the Matterhorn calls for a cool head 

 and steady nerves. Constant circumspection is the price 

 of Hfe. Being the rearmost, I deemed it wise to watch 

 also the spaces above me. Even the most careful climbers 

 sometimes dislodge rocks. We were going up a some- 

 what difficult chimney, when suddenly, before Burgener's 

 ejaculation could reach my ear, I saw a rock of about a 

 foot diameter falling directly toward my head. I instantly 

 dodged at the risk of slipping, and not a moment too soon, 

 for I felt the eddy of air the dread messenger was carry- 

 ing in his wake, and smelt the sulphur of the first contact 

 as it struck with a crash behind me and went bounding 

 into the abyss. 



Halfway up climbing became more difficult. We now 

 kept well to the arete. The sun began to break through 

 the clouds and to dissipate the fog-banks through which 

 the summits of the higher peaks appeared like islands. 

 The strong wind was a great obstacle. It swept across 

 the Matterhorn Glacier and up the almost perpendicular 

 north side of the mountain, then spilled itself over the 

 edge of the arete with a momentum that at times threat- 

 ened to lift us into the air. Yet for several rod-lengths 

 the arete formed the only practicable ascent. It was 

 barely two feet wide in places where the wind had combed 

 the snow of the previous day into a ridge. On the crest 

 of this ridge we moved along the edge of the awful preci- 

 pice that ends in the crevasses of the Matterhorn Glacier, 

 two thousand feet or more below. When old Burgener 

 was cutting steps above us, the wind would lift great 

 chunks of ice and snow, toss them about like feathers, and 



