AMONGST the many rock scrambles in the neighbourhood of St Martino in the Dolomites of Tyrol, the Rosetta when ascended by the western face can be counted on to awaken an interest in the most stolid of climbers. I am indebted to the courtesy of a girl friend for the loan of her mountaineering diary, and permission to make extracts from its very interesting contents, of which her account of an ascent of the Rosetta will, I feel sure, be read with keen enjoyment by climbers and non-climbers alike. That a young English girl on her first visit to the mountains should carry out with such success so difficult an expedition, is much to the credit of both herself and her guides. Her brother accompanied her, and the climb took place on 10th August 1898.

“The guides jabbered between themselves; Bettega smiled sublimely and looked utterly in his element, but Tavernaro seemed rather subdued; he is under the moral influence of Bettega, for though Tavernaro may have more education and cleverness he rounds upon his comrade at times owing to his excitable disposition. But on the mountains he slinks at Bettega’s elbow, as the two roll along with the peculiar mountaineer’s bending stride on level ground, and Tavernaro never asks a price or arranges for an excursion without consulting Bettega. But, on the other hand, Bettega lives in fear of Tavernaro’s lively tongue, so it is about balanced!

“Of course I don’t pretend I did it all myself. Quite half a dozen times I doubt if I could have got up without material aid from the cord, or from Tavernaro below. Once, in a camino, the latter gave me a butt with his head, which made me reflect how great a man was lost to the game of football, while the way he placed my feet was a great help to one who, as a novice, had not yet learnt to study the foot-holds in advance.

“We now reached a place where a third camino ran up above us, while an awkward traverse led to another on the right. Here I heard Tavernaro remonstrate with Bettega on the route he had taken, but the latter said, very decidedly, that he intended going straight on, so Tavernaro, as usual, subsided, but became very quiet. He had never before ascended this camino, which was a discovery of Bettega’s, but no doubt he had heard about it.

“While I was in the throes of the difficult part, Papa’s cap fell off my head, but Tavernaro caught it and brought it up. He was in an awful state of mind about his own cap, which had his guide’s badge, etc., on it, and begged me to call down to my brother about it. I did so, but G—— replied several times with some asperity that he had enough to do to get himself up. ‘Why can’t he bring it up in his mouth?’ cried Tavernaro excitedly, and, in the end, G—— brought it in his belt.

“My opinion is that both G—— and Tavernaro ran a great risk, and that Tavernaro was fully aware of it, and, for a few minutes after, was not a little shaken.

The party descended by the ordinary route, a pleasant change after all the difficult work they had accomplished during the upward climb.

IGNORANCE of what the future has in store is often not a bad thing. Had I realised that at the hour when we ought to have been at Zinal we should be sitting—and for the second time in one day—on the top of the Rothhorn, we should hardly have set out in so light-hearted a fashion from the little inn in the Trift Valley, above Zermatt, at 4 A.M. on 14th September 1895.

The party consisted of my two guides, Joseph and Roman Imboden, father and son, and myself, and our idea was to cross the fine peak of the Rothhorn, 13,855 feet high, from Zermatt to Zinal. I had been up that mountain before, and so, on many previous occasions, had Imboden, but, oddly enough, he had never been down the other side. Roman, however, had once or twice made the traverse, and, in any case, we knew quite enough about the route from hearsay to feel sure we could hit it off even without Roman’s experience.

Our only trouble now was owing to the fresh snow, but this had partially consolidated, and we got down steadily and safely, gradually leaving behind the cold wind which whistled amongst the crags above.

It was early in the day, and we went slowly, stopping once or twice to photograph where warm and sheltered resting-places of comfortable proportions tempted us to linger. The rocky knife edge was unpleasantly sharp for the arms bent over it, but useful ledges down the side helped to distribute the weight and amuse and occupy the mind. When finally we reached the end of the rocks, and had nothing but snow between us and the Mountet Hut, we considered ourselves as good as there, and made a long halt on the last stones.

A far more serious occurrence, however, took place on the north side of the Rothhorn in 1894, involving the loss of a life, the rest of the party escaping in a miraculous manner.

I take my account of the disaster from The Alpine Journal.

“I left the Hôtel Silberhorn with Ambrose Supersax and Louis Zurbrücken as guides, and a porter, at ten o’clock on the morning of the 23rd of September, and followed for some distance the usual path to the Jungfrau Hut; at length, leaving the Roththal path on the right, we struck off into a goat track, which leads by narrow ledges round the shoulder of the great bluffs forming the northern boundary of the Roththal. In this way gaining the face of the alp fronting Mürren, we made our way to the base of the ‘Strahlplatten,’ where we had determined to encamp for the night.

“For half an hour we neither saw nor heard anything of him, and our shouts remained unanswered. Zurbrücken muttered at intervals something about ‘Dummheit,’ and was evidently very uneasy. Suddenly we heard a shout from above, which told us he had succeeded in ascending the wall above him, and getting on to the ridge, down which he was actually coming at the moment, and the next minute he was peering over the point where we had been stuck.

“It was really a magnificent exhibition both of pluck and skill, and Ambrose deserves the highest credit for his success. Letting the rope over, and fastening it well to a piece of rock, he first hauled up the ice axes and knapsacks, and then we each in turn were half hauled, and half climbed to the place where he stood. I know when I arrived at the top I was nearly speechless from the terrible exertion it was necessary to make, and the pressure of the rope on my ribs; I could only lie on my back and gasp feebly for brandy!

“The wall above the great bergschrund was in shadow, the bergschrund last year was especially formidable, and we were all too exhausted safely to face the freezing wind on such a steep ice-slope in the dark. We returned, therefore, to the rocks, and, after a brief consultation, decided to pass the night there as best we could. We managed to find a corner shut in on two sides by rock about 5 feet high, from the floor of which we set to work to rake out the snow with our axes. The snow had drifted to a considerable depth, and its excavation gave us a good quantity of heat to start the night with, but our boots refused to thaw, and do what we would our feet would not get warm.

“The night was beautifully clear, but far away to the south we could see a great thunderstorm raging over the Italian hills, and were in no little trepidation lest it should be coming up in our direction, as indeed a storm had done in exactly a similar way a week before; but the north wind kept it at bay, and we luckily had not a snow-storm to face in addition to the other discomforts.

“The night passed slowly enough; it was necessary to keep shuffling our feet and beating our arms together the whole night long without cessation, in order to prevent being frost-bitten, and it was even more difficult to keep awake. The hours, however, passed somehow, and at half-past four the first primrose streaks in the sky heralded the coming day. By five o’clock the welcome face of the sun peeped over the Trugberg, and we began to prepare for a start.