The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 131, February, 1909 — John Shaqi
The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 131, February, 1909Various
History
The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 131, February, 1909
Various
Adventure stories -- Periodicals; English periodicals; History, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals; Voyages and travels -- Periodicals
At Easter, nearly five years later, a party of novices were trying
to climb the Pillar Rock from the east side. For some time they were
unsuccessful. Just then another party reached the top of the Pillar
Mountain; one of them, a Whitehaven youth of the name of Walker, had
climbed the rock some time before. Seeing the predicament of the
novices, he set off down a snow-slope towards them, intending to direct
their ascent. He had only gone a few feet when he slipped on to his
back and shot off down the snow. Gathering terrific and uncontrollable
impetus as he slid, he reached the Rock, which juts out of the side of
the mountain, in a few moments and dashed into it. His body bounded off
it and then fell into a gully on the right. This was filled with hard
snow, which carried him swiftly downward until the crest of a sheer
cliff was reached. Over this, for five hundred feet, he plunged, and
far into the Ennerdale valley below, death, of course, being inevitable.
[Illustration: SCAWFELL AND MICKLEDORE--THE DOUBLE CROSSES INDICATE THE
LEDGE FROM WHICH THE PARTY OF FOUR FELL; THE SINGLE CROSS DENOTES WHERE
PROFESSOR MARSHALL SLIPPED; AND THE CIRCLE SHOWS WHERE ALL THE BODIES,
INCLUDING THAT OF MR. GOODALL, WERE FOUND.
_From a Photograph._]
Of the witnesses of this accident two subsequently lost their reason,
and the death of another shortly afterwards was attributed to the
shock. And all for the want of a little caution and forethought on
a snow-slope! Still, “out of evil comes good,” and no doubt the
remembrance of this terrible tragedy and its contributory cause has
ultimately saved many valuable lives. Only once since then has it been
forgotten in the Lake District, and this led to the last tragedy that
has happened. This was to poor Alexander Goodall, a Keswick youth, who
deliberately set off glissading down the snow at the top of Deep Ghyll
on Scawfell.
To those of us who know the frightful velocity that is attained in a
few feet on steep snow, and the long years of practice necessary to
control this speed, such an act would appear quite inexplicable. But
to him, whose first day on snow it was, and in entire ignorance of its
insidious dangers, that downward slide would present no terrors, until,
with balance gone and ice-axe snatched out of his grasp by the snow
in which he wildly dug it, his mistake flashed across his mind with
terrible meaning. Alas! he learnt his lesson too late; he did not live
to profit by it, for his body dashed downward, crashing into the rocks
as it sped, until it came to rest on the scree-slope five hundred feet
below, within a few feet of the place on which Professor Marshall fell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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