A Visit to the Doctor

Arthur W. Evans

I was busy getting ready for my annual visit to the Alps. The venue that year was Cortina in the Dolomites. One thing, however, was worrying me.

The previous year I had attended the Cleveland M.C.’s meet in the Oberland. We’d spent a week at the Concordia Hut climbing on the neighbouring peaks. Our last chmb was the Gros Griinhorn and I was climbing with Maurice Wilson. Part of this involved a couloir in full shade. Maurice led bombarding me with chunks of ice as he cut an excellent ladder of steps though, as usual, too far apart for my short legs. During this my hands went numb despite woollen mitts and over gloves and they were still numb the following day when we ah wandered back up the Aletsch glacier to the Jungfrau Joch. Maurice and I decided to stay the night at the climbers’ hut and climb the Jungfrau the next day. The rest of the party started for home.

Overnight the weather became cloudy with a strong Fohn wind and, after receiving a weather report from Zurich, the number of parties intending to climb dwindled to one rope of two Swiss guides and four Swiss climbers. Maurice and I decided to follow them.

The climb was straightforward, across the glacier to a short steep ice slope with large bucket steps up to a col and then cramp oning up hard snow to the top. After a photographic session we started down only to find the snow had softened and we floundered down thigh deep, one rope length at a time, to the col. There we found the other party still there. The ice slope had avalanched and all the steps had gone. One of the guides solved this by driving his axe into underlying hard snow and fixing an abseil rope.

At some time during the climb my fingers thawed out but on arriving back at Wengen, where my wife and family were staying, 1 took off my gloves to find all my fingers decorated with large grey blisters. Ever since, my fingers become numb and useless in shghtly cold weather and it was this that was worrying me as I prepared for my visit to the Dolomites.

I decided to seek medical advice and took my problem to my doctor. He was most helpful and said there were some pills which would deal with the problem He had to send away for them and they arrived two days before we were due to leave and I called to collect them.

I thanked him and he wished me a good holiday. The, as I was leaving his consulting room, he called after me and said: “Oh, by the way, they’ll make you dizzy!” I thanked him again and left.

The weather was good at Cortina and I had an excellent and very successful holiday, but that is another story. As for the pills, they were never used and somehow were mislaid.