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Press, Volume LXI, Issue 11954, 5 August 1904, Page 4

Few persons who have not Alpine had personal experience of Dangers. Alpine climbing in Switzerland can form a just apprecia- j tion of its dangers, and of the difficulties which b?set the Alpinist, at every step in his path. The season, as a rule, generally opens in the early days of June. By the middle of that month the hotels and inns have already reopened their doors, and most of the mountain railways aro again running. This year it was otherwise. Tho previous winter was so intensely •severe, that in the middle of Juno a good many of the summits were -still quite un-, attainable. 'In view of this exceptionally severe- winter, it is nil the more remarkable that as early as February 25th HenHugo Mylius, of Frankfort-, made the ascent of Mont Blanc--a most remarkable! feat. The "Daily Express" tells us that the descent, and most of the ascent, was accomplished on skis. The difficulties attending the expedition wero intense, and the cold, which reached as low as forty degrees below the Fahrenheit zero, was most trying. Herr Mylius had one of his feet and a hand badly frozen, and ono of his guides had a foot frost-bitten also. A heavy snow fall in the Alps in winter, followed by an early and wet f-pring, is apt to alter the appearance of the mountain side completely, and as a consequence guides have to be continually amending their Alpine geography. No longer can they recognise "their own particular climbing places, for crevasses now yawn where formerly solid snow lay. Narrow cracks or chimneys that last year formed short cuts to elevated plateaux, have disappeared, and in their places are impassable -walls of ice. Snow-bridges that joined ridge to ridgo have been -swept away, and a new means of communication have had to be found." This is some of tho work which is done by avalanches. Dire, indeed, was tho disaster worked by them last spring. The loss of life largely exceeded all previous records, and fhe destruction of property was immense., "Whole forests and villages have been swept away," wrote a Geneva correspondent, on Juno 12th, "families have been buried alive, whil** several times, entire hamlets have been aroused in the middle of tho night by the alarm of an approaching avalanche, and fhe inhabitants have had to flee in their night attire to places of safety. An avalanche of wet snow and mud, 3000 ft long, 250 ft wide, nnd from 10ft to 12ft deep, swept away part of the village of Grevjiok, pear the Rhone glacier, in April, killing nineteen persons. A few hours later a camp of miners at Bracolato, near Turin, were buried by an avalanche, and seventy-five men were killed on the spot, besides which several others succumbed later to injuries received.