On the sixth day of my expedition we left Lourtier shortly before 10 o’clock a.m., knowing full well that we were in no hurry, that we meant to thoroughly enjoy our day’s work, and that the hospitable door of the Cabane de PanossiÈre would be no more difficult to open after sunset than before.

As soon as we had passed the last houses of Lourtier, we put on our ski, and, practically, did not remove them from our feet till eight o’clock that evening, allowing for two hours’ rest in the heat of the day, from two to four. We branched off from the Fionnay direction to turn to the right at Granges Neuves, crossing the bridge to Mayens du Revers, and hence rising towards the path that leads in summer from Fionnay to the Alpe de CorbassiÈre. We thus reached, by two o’clock, after passing the wooden cross at the point 1,967, and just beyond the chalets of the Alpe de CorbassiÈre, the point 2,227 of the map. We spent there two hours, under a tropical sun. Then we plunged down a gully to the west, on our right, so as to advance on ground which the sun had not softened, and rose again along the side moraine to the point 2,644, whence there lay before us a most romantic moonlit landscape.

The hut was still in darkness when I reached it, the last of the party, in order to enjoy the sensation of seeing the windows dimly lit by the candlelight within, and the smoke curling up out of the chimney. The impression was one of charming “cosiness,” in the middle of a more than Arctic landscape, and there was that sublimity above and around which beggars the art of description. A snow and wind-tight Alpine hut, well stocked with fuel and blankets, well supplied with plain food and wholesome drink from the provision bag of its guests, is, in midwinter, one of the snuggest “ingle-nooks” a natural epicure may wish for, and, strange to say, what he may therein find most pleasurable is the shade and coolness of the shelter, so fairly could I compare our tramp of that day to a trip in the “scrub” under the equator. Forsooth, the prejudice which still prevails against roaming in winter at high altitudes is a remnant of that state of mind which kept early explorers of the High Alps tramping round and round the foot of such hills as the Matterhorn, which Macaulay’s healthy “schoolboy” would now think nothing of rushing at, with his sisters trailing behind.

If it is possible, in sporting circles, to speak of the Zeit Geist without pedantry, we should say that the spirit of the time, in matters mountaineering, has undergone a remarkable change since the advent of Macaulay’s proverbial schoolboy.

Or is the change not rather a return to a healthier frame of mind?

It is quite true that in few sports is the extreme penalty, death, so constantly near at hand as in mountaineering. But is it not quite apparent, too, that the early lovers of the Alps were full-grown, leisured, and cultured men, whose training, occupation, or temper, had not properly prepared them to see the risk in its true proportions? From them a whole generation took the cue. Then came another, for which the taking of risks exceeding the modicum attached to a passive existence was the touchstone of manliness. They sought in the Alps opportunities for strenuous displays, as well as haunts where the harassed soul could take holiday. They are the generation which made of Switzerland the playground of Europe. It is they who brought mountaineering to the present period, when first ascents have become a hackneyed amusement, and schoolboys marvel at the facility of undertakings which, when attempted for the first time in bygone days, rightly called forth the admiration of the civilised world. Is it in the modern spirit that, on the morning of my seventh day, with the grand unconcern of an ever-victorious squad, hitherto scratchless, bruiseless, and unwearied, we took the route, well known to all of us, which leads up the Glacier de CorbassiÈre to the Col des Maisons Blanches? On reaching the plateau which precedes the col, we made up our minds as to the choice between the two routes to the top of Grand Combin.

The choice lay between rock and snow. Rock won the toss. From the Plateau des Maisons Blanches we turned full south, and left our ski at the foot of the steep snow and ice slope which leads to the Col de Meiten. The track over this col, dotted upon the map (Siegfried Atlas, Swiss military survey), crosses the Combin rocks upon a snow belt from north to south, where it ends upon the so-called Plateau du Couloir. The ascent to the col—we were roped—presented no difficulty. The crusted snow was easily kicked into foot-holds.

The rocks of the Combin de Valsorey, which we ascended from the col, now looking east, were absolutely free from snow or ice, the only discomfort being exposure to a hot sun in an excessively dry atmosphere—just the thing, I should say, for salamanders, which, unfortunately, we were not. In this respect our experience totally differed from that, already alluded to, of Mr. Tauern and his friends. Not only did they take to the peak further east, from the corridor, vi Grand Combin de Zessetta (this summit is immediately south of the figures 3,600 on the Siegfried), using climbing-irons on the steep ice, but they experienced a cold so intense that they were driven back.

For my part, being no longer a young man at all, I felt so overcome with the dry heat on Combin de Valsorey, that I remembered with complacency how fully acquainted I was with the top of Grand Combin, and how useless it would be to bore such an old friend with another visit at an unusual time of year. I went, nevertheless, and spent some minutes of that triumphant afternoon in amicable nods to Mont Viso, which somehow I had missed on my previous visits.

The reader will gather from the late hours noted in the following time-table what confidence a rock-climber may gain from the knowledge that his ski are waiting for him below, firmly planted in the snow, and that a secure track marked on the friendly element runs uninterruptedly from the spot where they stand to a trustworthy refuge hut. We cheerfully cut through the loops of our ascending track, by a perpendicular course, and, as the reader will see, returned to the hut in an incredibly short time, enjoying with untroubled mind the afterglow of a magnificent sunset gradually whitening into mellow moonlight.

Time-table: Left PanossiÈre hut at 7.15 a.m.; reached first plateau by 8.20 a.m.; reached Maisons Blanches, 10 a.m.; reached foot of Col de Meiten, 10.55 a.m.; lunch, thirty-five minutes; reached top of Meiten pass, 12.20 p.m.; reached top of Combin de Valsorey, 2.30 p.m.; reached top of Grand Combin, 3.30 p.m. (14,164 feet); afternoon tea on top of Combin de Valsorey, thirty minutes; left Combin de Valsorey, 5 p.m., resumed our ski, 7.15 p.m.; back to hut, 7.45 p.m.

Remember that in runs like this, extending over 8 kilometres (5 miles), the runners must keep together from beginning to end.

The eighth day of this fascinating circular tour was an easy one. It is worth noting, as an instance of many of the same kind, which moderately trained ski-runners would find extremely remunerative. Our eight days’ work would form the third and last portion of a typical ski trip, such as the Val de Bagnes enables the intelligent amateur to compose in various ways, in this instance as follows: First day, from Lourtier (where night lodging can be had at the telegraph office), to Cabane de PanossiÈre, vi Fionnay; second day, Col des Maisons Blanches, and back to the hut; third day, back to Lourtier vi Col des Avolions, leaving plenty of time to reach Martigny by sledge, and catch the evening trains to Lausanne, Geneva, Milan, or Berne.

The Col des Avolions is an insignificant incision in the range of rocky heights which run along the tongue of the Glacier de CorbassiÈre on its west side, from north to south. From the hut you cross the glacier very much to the north, though slightly inclining to the west. In an hour’s time you will be on the col, the vertical displacement from the hut down to the foot of the pass being about 190 yards (the difference between 2,713 metres and 2,523 metres is the amount “dipped”), while the rise from the foot of the pass is 125 yards, approximately. These 125 yards were practically all the climbing we got that day. You will ascend with your ski slung over your shoulders, the most convenient way when the gullies are steep, short, and full of compact snow.

No man in his senses will attempt High Alp ski-running without strong, heavily soled and nailed mountain boots to his feet. The big nails round the toe of the boot are most valuable for lodging one’s feet into steep snow slopes or couloirs, and a broad, flat, nail-fringed heel need never interfere with the running, unless the heads of the nails are uneven. Nails on the sides of the boots are less necessary.

From the Col des Avolions there is a delightful run down, full north-west, to the stream which the path crosses (see map) to lead up to the Chalets de Sery. Keep well to the right (east) of the point marked 2,419. We found the bed of the stream quite practicable on ski, as far as we required it to get round the point 2,419. Then we made for point 2,243, so as to keep on the level (about 2,190 metres), while leaving that point on our left, slightly above us. Then we proceeded down to the Alpe de la Lys, keeping above the tree-line, till we could ski down to Tougne on fairly open ground. Thence, to the bridge that crosses the Dranse to Lourtier, the ground is not complicated, or you may ski down to Champsec. We left the hut at 8 o’clock a.m., sat astride the Avolions saddle at nine, and entered Lourtier at twelve, having in nowise hurried ourselves.

It is a distinctive feature of mountaineering on ski that its votaries look for natural highways of a new character.

The winter snow opens up quite unexpected routes, and it will soon be the business of ski-ing clubs to issue maps revised from that point of view. A well-filled-up steep gully becomes an opportunity for building up a stairway that summer is unaware of. A gorge in which a dangerous stream brawls in summer on slippery rocks may now appear in the guise of an open and straight line of communication between upper and lower reaches separated by impassable shelves of rock. Glacier tails, at other times bristling with spiky sÉracs and riddled with gaping blue pits, turn into smooth bridges thrown over blanks in nature that were a torture to contemplate. Torrents are reduced to the size of tiny transparent rivulets closely hemmed in between narrow banks of solid snow and easily spanned by the long, pliable boards. A frozen-over and snow-wadded Alpine lake, toilsomely skirted in summer by winding up and down its rocky, broken shores, may be crossed from point to point by a smiling navigator. The word snowcraft acquires a new meaning. The runner eyes the country in its broad, general aspect, determines, map in hand, the bee-line leading to his destination, fixes upon the stretches of unbroken snow that will bring him round any unskiable places, and in the end gets home more after the style of birds borne through the air than after the fashion of the clod-hopping kind. Here is, to wind up with, a note of the total vertical displacement which we have shown may be attained, with ski, in the course of eight days. From OrsiÈres to Cabane d’Orny, 1,802 metres; to Aiguille du Tour, 839; to Aiguille Chardonnet, 1,131; from Bourg St. Pierre to Grand St. Bernard hospice, 839; thence to Col de FenÊtre, 228; from Lourtier to PanossiÈre hut, 1,613; thence to Grand Combin, 1,617; Col des Avolions, 125; metres, 8,194. Of course, the measurement on the ground would show a still more significant total, but I do not really believe that more than 600 yards need be added on that score. On the other side the following items may be deducted, as done on foot, climbing: Tour, 270; Chardonnet, 500; Combin, 1,000—metres, 1,770. This leaves, as actually ascended on ski, a minimum of 7,000 metres, a trifle under 23,000 feet.