ALPINE PASS TRAGEDY

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 October 1930, Page 8

ALPINE PASS TRAGEDY

“EMIGRANTS’ ” SUFFERINGS The Theodul is not the only Alpine pass frequented by unauthorised Italian emigrants. From time to time the Italian customs officers and frontier guards tighten up their precautions, and thus drive the would-be emigrants still higher up. Zermatt guides report a number of stories of the terrible exertions and hardships of these trespassers, the most recent of which is told in a Swiss newspaper. Four tourists coming down from the Castor observed a party of three on the Zwillingpass, between Castor and Pollux, at an altitude of 12,000 ft. above sea-level, a region where generally only the most daring and experienced of mountaineers are met. On coming nearer the tourists were greatly astonished to discover that one of the' three was a young Italian woman in a dress reaching right down to her feet, with light and inadequate footwear, and with an eight-months-old baby in her arms. She was sheltering in a little hollow from the icy wind, waiting till her companions could hew footholds in a sheer icebank dropping down nearly 200 ft. She intended to follow her husband, who is working in France. The tourists, seeing that the baby would die under the prolonged exposure to the cold, and that it would take hours to hew the footholds, bound their ropes together and let the whole party down thf bank. There was then the wild labyrinth of the Zwillings Glacier to be passed, another difficult achievement even for well-equipped, mountaineers, but the woman bore all these hardships with bravery and calmness. The party reached Zermatt in safety. The casual advent of the four tourists very probably saved the party from destruction. The Zermatt guides say they are convinced that the glaciers between the Wallis and Italy witness many tragedies in these days, some of which will probably never be heard of.