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After the disappointment of the Devil’s Bridge, #AnneLister sets herself the task of crossing the Furka and Grimsel. They had been advised against crossing due to the bad weather and deep snow. Her guides told her to sit it out a little. #AnneListerCodeBreaker
In fact, one of her guides, Pierre, refused to cross. Anne accused him of being ‘knocked up’, fired him and sent him home. Her other guide, Christian, was also unwilling and ‘persisted in the horrors of passing the Furca’, but Anne managed to persuade (read as strong-arm) him.
She sent home the more clumsy mules with Pierre and arranged for sure-footed alpine horses for the task. “off at 8 – 2 gray horses and 1 black ditto and Christian mounted for as far as the top of the Furca – the sun soon smiled upon us the clouds clear off a little"
"got to the top of the Mayenwand at 5 – we had been obliged latterly to wade about the ancles in snow – but now on descending towards the hospice, all around was white and our easy work was to come –"
"the horses went first – poor things! Not alarmed by thought of danger it was sometimes laughable to see them floundering about above their middles in snow – then followed a guide – then I jumping from out of one of the steps he had made into another"
"then Christian – then Mrs and Miss Barlow – each following the guide, holding by his coat collar and scrambling as well as they into the holes of steps he made for them – I could not help laughing at the droll figure we all cut"
"at 5 ¼ at the Lac des Morts, like the dark glazed basin of a dazzling white basin – here was the scene of battle between the French and Austrian and many a poor wretch found his cold bed upon the lake called Lac de Morts –"
"at 5 ½ in sight of the other lake and the hospice close by it in the hollow – the water looked like a dunghill water at the bottom of a bilious green basin"
"very singular appearance occasioned by the rock all around the water being bare of snow and covered with diminutive yellow green moss –"
"for the last ¼ hour we could discern the regular rough paved road down to the hospice, and pick our way to avoid the snow that lay along it – at the hospice at 6 –"
"no Roman Catholics here – a neat, clean young Bernoise shewed us to nice little comfortable wooden double bedded rooms and lent us stockings, brought us tea (white wine and hot water for me) and good bread and butter"
"7 of these little rooms for strangers – a comfortable wooden house for savage clime like this – Mrs Barlow would be glad when our toils were over – Jane owned she had had enough of mountains – sat talking over our tea and wine and water till 7 ½ – very fine day”
The wooden hospice Anne originally stayed in has since been submerged by the rising waters of the hydro-electric dam. The current hospice, completed in 1932, was the first electrically heated hotel in Europe.
The history of a hospice at Grimsel stretches back to 1142, when it was first mentioned in documents regarding the Piemont-Burgund trade route. The two black and white photos of the Grimsel Hospice in this thread dates back to circa 1850s.
