A Little Storm in Alpland.

Two of us were up on the sharp terminal spur of the Sealey Range one day. Sealey is nearly six thousand feet high and between three and four thousand feet above the Hermitage, at the range foot. From the little mountain tarn we worked along the narrow rocky summit until we reached the extreme end of the spur overlooking the Mueller Glacier. A vertical precipice dropped at our feet. Directly opposite, across the glacier, was giant Sefton, ice-sheathed, shedding avalanches every few minutes. Glaciers and snowfields blazed all around in an intense burning whiteness.

It was warm, and there was scarcely a breath of wind when we reached the end of the range, and it quickly became close and oppressive.

“Thunderstorm's coming,” one of us said.

In a few moments the still air was heavily charged with electricity. We looked for some place of shelter. There was no cave or any shelter of that kind, so we just descended a few yards below the spur top and waited events. The steel of our ice-axes vibrated and hummed with electricity, and I suddenly snatched off my hat—it felt as if there was a bee buzzing around in it. Jack Clarke grinned; he said, “Better put it on again, or you'll have what little wool you've got singed off you.” Sure enough our hair was buzzing and tingling and standing on end, an uncomfortably eerie sensation. To be on the safe side, we left our ice-axes lying on the ground and moved away.

Presently the heat and gloom were split by a terrific burst of lightning and thundercrash. The lightning did not come in mere flashes, but in blazes that covered the whole sky, and the Alps bellowed with big-gun reverberations. The thunder culminated in a final crash that shook the mountain under us. Then page 24 down came the rain, such rain as comes only in the high country. It ceased as suddenly as it began. The sun shone out; the air was cool and clear. The mountain land seemed all the better for the lightning god's little fit of temper; all the world was fresher for its rain bath. The great cups of the Ranunculus Lyalli were brimming with water as we picked up our ice-axes again, and clambered down towards the little lake on Sealey-side, and then descended to the Hermitage for dry clothes and something good to drink.

That was but a trifle of a mountain storm, a clearing of the air; it only lasted half-an-hour or little more. But the feature such meteorological disturbances have in common with a fierce storm such as that which overwhelmed a party of five young people on the Tasman Glacier some years ago is the suddenness with which they arise. Gales spring up with scarcely any warning on the finest of days.

Ordinarily the traverse of such a glacier is an easy matter, and travellers may not think of consulting the barometer before they set out on a few hours' walk. But in Alpland nothing should be taken for granted.