Year of publication 1960 - Fell and Rock Climbing Club

2.2 THE EVENING ALPSCanadian problems but there is no real difficulty. Downbelow the good path loops through such beauty of knoll andplain and vale and glade, that we let Alfred step out off homeand lingered till we almost lost the last bus and train back toKandersteg.What now? What would be not too big and yet not toosmall and not something we had enjoyed to the full in earlierdays? We tried this and that! A day of surprises came on theSchneehuhnen Stock above the Oberalp. We had noticed awire going up its way, but not till we were among the cliffsdid we realize that they were full of voices. The mountainhas been virtually hollowed out, to become a great Radarstation we gathered. Tiny figures lounged and carolled,Italians, tunnellers and stonemasons as ever, on the lips ofvast orifices. We felt in a Wellsian fantasy as we clamberedup an artificial, wire-hung, ladder-way while mighty clangingsand the roaring of compressors echoed from within.Perhaps it was the too, too much traffic on the Oberalpthat made us remember out of the way Binn, its bridge and itschurch and the orange-berried rowans and magenta fireweedof the Hotel Ofenhorn. A jeep, we found, could take us up thevalley as far as Freische. That was a wild pre-dawn drivewith a huge setting moon holding level with us as we rose.Then came a long walk in our own shadows till a clear dawnshowed us what stones we were stumbling through. It is along way up the Ofenhorn, a piece of interesting mountaintravel rather than a climb. From the aluminium cross on thesummit you look down to the Italian Rifugio Citta di Busto.It was plainly closed. You have to get the key from far downthe valley but that would be a better thing to do. The Rifugiois 2,400 m., the Ofenhorn 3,242 m. and Binn but 1,400 m.and a long way off too, we found, as we tramped, facing aflaming sun now where that moon had hung on our way up.We were truly surprised to find ourselves back just in time fora delicious dinner in an old-style alpine mode. All the gueststaking a preprandial constitutional, exclaimed, 'Are you tired?'And so we came to the Grosser Fusshorn with our oldcompanion and friend Joseph Imseng of Brigue. I began theday by falling all the way down the near vertical staircase ofthe Ober Aletsch Hut. I.A.R. was just warning me of itwhen down I came in the dark. I was lucky to have nothing