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| Brevasstinden was first climbed
by Elizabeth Main (a.k.a. Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond) and the Swiss guides
Emil
and Josef Imboden on August 28th 1898. "The next morning, to our amazement, the weather was perfect. Indeed, so fine did it appear that we hardly liked to start; feeling persuaded it would change abruptly before long. It was 10.15 A.M. when we set out, and this time we were bound for the Isskar, or Ice Pass, a high snowy gap close to the Isskartind and visible from our camp. We got to it after a tiresome grind of more than three hours, and had leisure while we ate our lunch on the top to study the queer, ragged, inaccessible-looking little peak just opposite, the object of our hopes and fears. We knew that bad as it looked on the side facing us, it was ten times worse on the other side. A couloir — it looked vertical — ran straight down the west face and seemed to offer the only hope — and that a remote one — of gaining the summit. We could also, if we wished, try the south ridge, but at two points this seemed as if it might not "go." Crossing the broad plateau of the glacier, we mounted a short and steep snow-slope and deposited our axes on the stones above. We then braced ourselves for a real scramble. I mean that I fastened the wrist buttons of my blouse and tied my hat on more firmly, while Imboden let out the rope to its full length. Now that I come to think of it, I have only a confused recollection of that upward climb, when the nails in Imboden's boots and the top of Emil's hat were the chief points of view above and below. The couloir or chimney — for into such it soon narrowed — was wet and slippery from the melting of a patch of fresh snow above. This constituted the difficulty of the last few feet, where for a step or two there is little handhold. The climb needed care, and receiving it was perfectly safe. As Imboden topped the last bad bit he turned to Emil, saying: "Shall I help you, mein Liebchen?" Emil's expressive "Ach! " — which is patois for "No, thank you, father, I don't need it" — was hardly complimentary to so highly respectable a chimney. Gaining the ridge, we were in a few minutes on the summit, a summit which it gave us much satisfaction to have reached. We called the mountain the Tre Gygre, or Three Witches Peak." Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond: Mountaineering in The Land of The Midnight Sun (1908). |
