Riffelberg Sunday 14th Dearest Mother. I am having two well earned days off, and this one is more beautiful than words can say, cloudless, the great peak of the Matterhorn cutting up into an absolutely blue sky. I'll tell you my adventures. I left here about 3 on Thursday and went down to a hut on the glacier at the foot of Monte Rosa, about 2 hours off - first down and then up for Riffelberg stands very high above the glacier. As we got to the hut it began to rain and heavy thunder clouds blew up. There was the usual strange hut company - a German, a Dutchman, 2 Greeks and me. I slept extraordinarily sound on my straw, but at intervals I heard it thundering. However at 5 it was clearer though still rather doubtful, and we determined to start, much to the disgust of the fat German who was clearly looking forward to being prevented from taking any further exertion. We were the only party going for the Lyskamm. We speedily left the others behind and went on our way up a very long glacier, pretty tedious, except for some tolerably amusing séracs. After about 3 hours we turned off from the way up to the pass and had an interesting hour under and up seracs in bad condition which gave us some trouble. So we reached the shoulder at the foot of the Lyskamm. We climbed up through very soft snow onto the arête, the guides shaking their heads and saying that if the snow was as bad there we should not be able to do it. But it was pretty cold and fortunately we found it in excellent condition so that a very little cutting and kicking cleared the new snow out of the old steps. The arête of the Lyskamm is famous. It is very very sharp and has an immense snow cornice, rather smaller than usual this year. You go along some fifteen ft Bellow the summit to avoid the cornice, on the side of a snow slope as steep as snow can lie, curving over Bellow so that you look down into a thousand ft of nothingness. The head needs training as much as the body. I felt terribly frightened when I found myself out on this airy arête and I went through 10 minutes of unmixed fear. NB I nearly turned back, but I knew I should have to go through with it sometime and it might as well be on the Lyskamm as anywhere. Presently I began to feel happier and by the time we turned to come back down the arête, generally a more alarming process than ascending, it was all one whether we were walking on the edge of a precipice or on a flat glacier. So I hope that's over. The Lyskamm goat is enough to strike courage into the softest heart. It was 3 by the time we got down to the shoulder and I was so tired that I went to sleep for half an hour. We were going to sleep at the Margherita Hut on one of the peaks of Monte Rosa and we had a most tedious 2½ hours round the head of an immense {snow slope} glacier and up a snow slope which was, as Schwartzen admitted, ungemein lang. The hut is 14,965 ft up so you see there was a pretty long pull for the end of the day and one felt the elevation a little. The kind Italian ..... ran down the last slope towards us with a bottle of hot coffee which was most refreshing. It's a miserable hut, but one puts up with a good deal on the highest inhabited point in Europe - it's inhabited for 2 months a year. There is one observatory attached and two delightful Italian professors were up there making observations. They did me the honours and made me a bed in the Observatory sleeping room where I slept peacefully for an hour before dinner. They had a colleague up on a visit, who was a Finn, a big, square man with a grave, unhappy face. He began at once talking about the war and "We hope the Japanese are going to revenge us" he said. The other inhabitant of the hut was an extremely cheerful handsome Italian Captain of Cavalry who chattered agreeably during dinner in several languages. You may judge how exquisite were his manners when I tell you that he complimented me on my Italian! After dinner the professors invited us to dessert in the observatory and gave us tinned peaches and wine and other delicacies - charming people they were. I had a bad attack of inflammation of the eyes in the middle of the night which caused me acute pain. Heinrich treated it most successfully with a poultice of hard warm white of egg and in the morning I was nearly all right again. It had been a fearfully glaring day - mists with the sun shining through, which burns much more, I always think, than a clear sun. We didn't start till 7 next day as we hadn't a very long climb in front of us. It was a gorgeously clear morning and the whole of Italy lay revealed at our feet. Monte Rosa is not a mountain at all, but a group of 7 peaks. We were at the top of the Signal Kuffe, we traversed the Zumsteinspitz and climbed to the top of of the Dufour Spitz which is the highest and very little Bellow Mont Blanc. This took us about 3 hours. We saw all the Alps in the world, the Oberland, Mont Blanc, the beautiful Italian group of the Grivola and the Paradiso and our own Pennines all round us. Then we ran down immense snow slopes and got back to the hut in which we had slept the first night in under 2 hours. So we came on here where I am settled till Tuesday morning. It was quite pleasant to come down to a lower level after spending 2 days so very high up and it is very pleasant indeed to be doing nothing after such a very energetic beginning.
There are two nice old things in this hotel. One is English and one German and they are travelling together. I sit by them at meals. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude