Year of publication 1960 - Fell and Rock Climbing Club

Dorothy Pilley Richards 21chiefly a focus of resistance to the wind. I had had hardly anhour's sleep and felt depleted of forces as the gale tore at mehour after hour. At the junction we gave up the Ebnefluh forthe Mittaghorn, as shorter. Soon the wind became chargedwith light rain. We passed two coming in to the Hollandiafrom an experimental bivvy. We would have liked to havelearnt from them what they had learned, but the wind stoppedall that. Before long we were on a ridge: none of the viewsof the Lauterbrunnen we had come for. But a few rocksunder foot were a relief. Then up the last snow ridge, thewind rising with us every minute. Two young Swiss returningcried to us. Their voices conveyed nothing. Then just abovea vast crevasse, which looked infinitely sheltering, we were onthe summit. Alfred had to kneel on his sack to keep it frombeing blown away, while he extracted a thermos. Visibility,near zero. It was harrowing to remember how tempting, asbelvedere, this point had seemed, two weeks before, from theBiittlassen, our first training climb. There was nothing to bedone but gulp a mouthful of tea and get down.After five minutes we turned to face the wind, now chargedwith rain, that had pushed us up. It was soon clear that wewould have a struggle. However, our tracks helped. We gotin at 10 a.m. The Dutch party had turned back from theEbnefluh because of the storm, so our choice had beenjustified. No ordinary storm it was; snow piled up in quantitythat night, and the damage done over half of Switzerland wewere to see in the coming weeks. We thought the twoexperimental bivvy men had missed a real chance to give theirsystem a thorough trial.We were all ready early next day for the descent: ready butwaiting—until it dawned on us that the other parties werehoping that Alfred would make them some tracks. So withspare loops on the rope off we went—the open-work bridgeacross the schrund looking solider under its fresh whiteblanket—out, round through the schrund cluster, and down.We soon came out under the roof of still scurrying cloud.The day was clearing. Alfred took us by the route on the trueright bank: an immense improvement on the moraines butwith the drawback that you have virtually to wade a torrent,which matters when you are going up into the snows but notwhen you are going down. The raging stream reminded us of