The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1876-03-16
A Winter Ascent Of Mont Blanc.

| fire place now-one OF the household SodS
no money could buy.
A Winter Ascent Of Mont Blanc.
THE Paris Debdts publishes from a cor
respondent very interesting account of
an ascension of Mont Blanc made on the
goth of January last by Mr.. James Ec-
cles, an English geologist, and NJ. Gabriel
Loppe, French painter. Winter visits
to the snowy monarch are not of very
common occurrence, and Alpine tourists
will perhaps be surprised to learn that his
hoary majesty is far more agreeable and
worth seeing in winter than in summer.
We append the most salient features ofthe
ascent:
"MM Eccles and Loppe left Chamou-
nix on the evening of the 18th. Chamou-
nix is very pleasant and inhabitable in the
winter. While the papers were announc-
ing bitter cold and snow from the south
of France the thermometer at ChamouniX
was warming itself quietly in the sun and
rising to twenty-three degrees above zero.
At 80 O'Clock on the morning of the Goth
the two tourists set out from the Hotel
Couttet Not cloud was to be seen in
the sky. The great slopes that lead up to
the Aiguille du Midi, which in summer
are strewn with rhododendrons, were car
petcd with fresh, soft covering of snow,
in which one might have rolled himself
with pleasure. The two Alpine explorers,
accompanied by two guides and two por
tcrs, ascendcd gaily as far as the upper
part of the Glacier des Blossoms, where
they arrived at 4 :35 o'clock, and where
they rcposed themselves for short time
to admire the finest sight that winter ever
offered to the eye. The sky was clear,
without the slightest speck, and thin
mist hovercd over Lake Leman. But the
tourists were forced to cut short their ad-
miratiOn of the scene before them in order
to accomplish the most difficult part of the
ascent before nightfall. They had to leave
the junction of the glaciers of Blossoms and
TacoDnay, and climb up to the Grands-
Mulets, up sleeps of ice and over crcvices
which often frightcn apprentices.
Some of 'thc crevices are SO wide
that a ladder has to be used to
cross them, while others are hidden by
accumulatiOns of snow, which suddenly
give way under the foot. The fatigue is
great, but the danger is small, us the
climbers, who ascend one by one, are at
tached to one another with ropes. lie
who falls into a crevicc is at once drawn
out by those behind or before. Add to
these ordinary difficulties an accumula-
ton of fresh, fine snow and that mud
peculiar to winter, into which you sink
knee deep, and the reader will easily un-
dcrstand why our travellers did not reach
the pavilion of the Grands- -Mnlets, the
| highest habitation that exists in Europe,
before ) 80 O'Clock in the evening. This
pavilion, especially in winter, is de-
licious retreat. 1t contains three little
rooms, provided with mattresses and rugs,
under which the tourist rcposcs better
than in the best of hotel beds. Moreover,
| it possesses a cuisine whose advantages it
would be difficult to appreciate too much
after seven hours ascension. The sup
per was perfect, and the reposc excellent.
| The temperature was extraordinarily mild.
On the preceding night it had frozen at
| Laghouat, which is $50 kilometers south
of AIgicrs At the Grands- Mulets, in the
open air, 5000 meters above the level of
the sea, none of the three thermometers
borne by Mr.. Eccles fell below seven de-
erees centigradc, which is about A 80 de-
grccs Fahrenheit. The little Alpine par
tY resumed their ascent at six o'clock on
the following morning, each man bearing
! a lantern. The cold was so little intense
that the guides took off their thick gloves
to hold their piOlets or iCc.ChOppers. AT
seven O'Clock, at the corner of the Dome,
the glass did not mark more than eight
degrees centigrade, while at the same
hour, at the bottom of the Valley of Cha
mounix, the thermometer of the Hotel
Couttet fell to eleven degrees cent?
grade, which proves that it is
warmer up than down the Alps-a
fact hitherto unknown. at nine O'Clock
the painter and the geologist were
on the grand plateau. They now had
only to climb the final summit OF Mount
Blanc, a comparatively easy ascension
which NJ. Loppe had often made in two
hours and a half. A little more courage
and the intrepid tourists would be the firs
men that ever sat in full winter on the
apex of Mont Blanc, which dominates all
Europe But the east wind had beer
blowing for several hours, and it grew
stronger. Soon it blew the fine snow int
a mist, and finally it whirled the snow
about in dense whirlwind columns. They
who have never ascended the higher sum
mits know not what is the wind. There
are travellers who complain of the btsc OF
Geneva and the mistrdL of Avignon, bu
they are Sybarites; they should see and
feel what the wind is on the snowy
heights of the Alps. Six years ago, ant
in the summer, too, party OF ten person:
, were smothered by similar wind on the
apex of Mont Blanc, ard all their bodies
have not yet been recovered. When th'
snowy whirlwind ceased little, the tour
lists were able to see that the other sum
; mits were perfectly clear and sunny. Blu
for this wind the temperature would hav'
been bearable; the glass fell to only thir
teen degrees centigrade. On the SAM
plateau in summer the thermometer Otter
falls much longer. Picture these six mel
in the midst of such whirlwind, at 4 ,00
metres above the level of the sea, in tn
depth of winter, liable to be blown ava.
at every moment and buried forever il
the secret depths of the snowy mountain
They now had to descend. Driven by tn
wind, the tourists descended, or rathe
rolled down to the Grands- Mulets, a
times going over in five minutes spac
of ground which had taken them on
hour to ascend At half past four o'clocl
they returned to Chamounix, where the
found the sun shining and spring-lik
breeze blowing.
Experiments made by a commission
under the Socicte dc IIndustrie Mineral
90 CANT Et;,nuo Franco on the action q