Peaks Passes and Glaciers Author:John Ball Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PEAKS, PASSES, AND GLACIERS. CHAPTER I. THE PASSAGE OF THE FENETRE DE SALENAj FROM THE COL DE BALME TO THE VAL FERRET, BY THE GLACIER DU TOUR, THE GLACIER ... more »DE TRIENT, AND THE GLACIER DE SALENA. The Glacier du Tour is perhaps the least generally and the least accurately known of the great ice-streams which descend on the northern side of the chain of Mont Blanc. It lies in so deep a recess, that its existence is scarcely suspected until the traveller is brought opposite to the opening by which it flows into the valley of Chamouni. The parts of the Tete Noire and the Col de Balme from which alone it is visible to the ordinary tourist are so near to the glacier, and the last slope over which it descends is so long and so steep, that even a careful observer could form no idea from below of the vast extent of its upper portion. It may be owing to this circumstance that it has tempted the curiosity of very few explorers. The passage I am about to describe was discovered many years ago by a man of the name of Munier; but, if I am correctly informed, it was never attempted again till the year 1850, when it was made by Professor Forbes, as related by him in a very interesting chapter appended to his " Norway and its Glaciers." From that time till the year 1857,—the date of the expedition recorded in the following pages,—I could not learn that the passage had been taken by any one. It has since become better appreciated ; and in 1858, two or three parties ascended the Glacier du Tour, and descended to Orsieres either by the Glacier de Salena or by the Glacier d'Orny. The Glacier du Tour is the most eastern of the glaciers of Mont Blanc descending into the valley of Chamouni. The great system of crags which closes up the head of the glacier may be roughly compared to the nave of a...« less