steep and broken glacier. Croz's route seemed likely to turn out to be impracticable, because much step-cutting would be required upon it. Almer's rocks did not look good; they were, possibly, unassailable. I thought both routes were bad, and declined to vote for either of them. Moore hesitated, Almer gave way, and Croz's route was adopted.
He did not go very far, however, before he found that he had undertaken too much, and after [glancing occasionally round at us, to see what we thought about it, suggested that it might, after all, be wiser to take to the rocks of the Schallhorn]. That is to say, he suggested the abandonment of his own and the adoption of Almer's route. No one opposed the change of plan, and, in the absence of instructions to the contrary, he proceeded to cut steps across an ice-slope towards the rocks.
Let the reader now cast his eye upon the map of the valley of Zermatt, and he will see that when we quitted the slopes of the Arpitetta Alp, we took a south-easterly course over the Morning glacier. We halted to settle the plan of attack shortly after we got upon the ice. The rocks of the Schallhorn, whose ascent Almer recommended, were then to our south-east. Croz's proposed route was to the south-west of the rocks, and led up the southern side of a very steep and broken glacier.[1] The part he intended to traverse was, in a sense, undoubtedly practicable. He gave it up because it would have involved too much step-cutting. But the part of this glacier which intervened between his route and Almer's rocks was, in the most complete sense of the word, impracticable. It passed over a continuation of the rocks, and was broken in half by them. The upper portion was separated from the lower portion by a long slope of ice that had been built up from the débris of the glacier which had fallen from above. The foot of this slope was surrounded by immense quantities of the larger avalanche blocks. These we cautiously skirted, and when Croz halted they had been left far below, and we were half-way up
- ↑ Through what is technically called an "ice-fall."
