The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-31 00:00:00

ACCIDENT' TO THE MALADETTA.

Mr. Charles Packe, in a letter to a contemporary,
says :—lt is too much the fashion of Alpine travel-
lers, more especially of members of the society to
which I have the honour to belong, altogether to
ignore the merits of these mountains, and to sup-
pose that the charm and danger of snowfields, or at
any rate of regular glaciers is altogether wanting.
That there are. glaciers in the Pyrenees was suffi-
ciently shown in an ascent of the Maladetta which
I made a few years ago. I send you a short ac-
count, should you think it worth while to publish
it. I must premise that, owing to the unusually
hot and dry summer which has prevailed in these
parts, the mountains have not at all their average
coating of snow, and the glaciers are sensibly
diminished, which does not at all favour the
facility the ascents of the higher summits.
had already experienced this in an ascent of the
Pic des Ponts, the second highest summit in the
Pyrenees, a little to the West of the Maladetta, and
only 120 feet lower than the Pie de Nethon,- the
highest point of the last-named mountain. I may
here mention that those travellers who care to try
their hands at chamois hunting will do well to
select the Pyrenees in preference to the Alps. I
was five days in the neighbourhood of the Pie des
Ponts, and no day passed without my seeing izards,
more or less numerous; and we constantly came
upon the perdrix Manche, or ptarmigan. On Mon-
day last I started, with three gentlemen and four
guides, for the Rencluse of the Maladetta, an over-
hanging rock at the toot of the glacier of the Mala-
detta proper, which is the usual sleeping place
preparatory to the ascent.' At 4 a.m. we started,
with Mercury shining brightly for a morning
star, and by 30 minutes past 6 had reached
the Postilion, the spot where you quit the rock and
pass on to the Glacier de Nethou. The passage of
this generally occupies not quite two hours, but we
were obliged to make several detours to clear the
crevasses, which seemed wider and more frequent
this year. About three-quarters of the way across
we all sat down to repose in a spot where the snow
seemed perfectly smooth. We were, of course, roped
together, with an interval between each of about
eight feet. There was a call_for something to drink,
and the last guide detached himself to hand the wine
bottle to each of us. He was passing before us, and
when certainly not more than three yards from the
spot where I was sitting he suddenly dropped through
the snow and disappeared. There was no sound,
either cry or cracking of the ice, but the glacier
quietly swallowed up its victim. It was horrible to
witness; but, of course, there was only one thing
to be done. We speedily disengaged the rope from
our bodies, and carefully holding it in our hands
approached the hole, whieh was not a large one,
Pierre Barran, 'my guide, being the first. We let
down the rope through the hole, and anxiously
expected a reply to our shout ; for some seconds,
however, we could get none. At last it came, but,
the voice sounded fearfully indistinct and distant-,
stifled as it was by the snow and walls of i_ce.
The man, the guide said, fell 18 metres, but from
the rope let down I should say about l 0 feet.
Thanks, however, to the bed of snow that fell
with him, and in which he Was partly buried,
he was not hurt, and he was able to fasten the
rope round his body, so that in about five minutes
we drew him up, none the worse, but fearfully cold.
He described his position as having been very poil-
ous, having been caught on a ledge, below which
sunk an abyss, the bottom of which we could not
have reached. But in this he may have exagge-
rated. However, the man himself, whose name is
Correge, showed plenty of courage and presence of
mind, and all the guides behaved very well; so the 'c
it was unanimously decided to continue our coterse
to the top, which we all reached, with the ex.eviition
of one of our party, a French gentleman, Nebo de-
clined passing the Pont de Mehemet, a short but
precipitous arete of rock, between the glacier and
the actual summit. I found that a minimum
registering thermometer, which I had left on the
top in an ascent the previous year, had been
swept away by the wind. The height of the Pie
de Nethou is 11,168 feet. An Alpine sympiesome-
ter by Casella, marked 20.32 inches. The boiling
point, as shown by a portable little apparatus by-
the same maker, was 193.3 deg. Fahrenheit, and
the temperature of the air was 42 deg. in the shade.
This was at 10 am. On the previous ascent last
year at 9 a.m, the thermometer had only marked
22 deg. Our descent to the Rencluse was effected
in about 31 hours, without anything remarkable.
An ascent of the Maladetta is not at all an uncom-
mon or very difficult occurrence, as ladies sometimes,
accomplish it with the help of their guides, but this
was the first time a man had fallen in a crevasse
altogether out of sight since 1824, when Barran, the
grandfather of my guide, fell into one, and the body
was never recovered.