Lyskamm - the Man Eater
The following text appeared in a London newspaper in September 1877:
“A telegram from Geneva states that the Englishmen Mr Lewis and Mr Paterson with three local guides, the brothers Knubel, left Zermatt on Sept. 7 to ascend the Lyskamm; all five were killed by the bursting of a glacier. Mr Lewis and Mr Paterson were buried in the English cemetery at Zermatt. Subsequent information states that the party left the Riffel Hotel a.m. on Sept. 6 with three guides. As they did not return that evening, a party started next day to see whether they had gone down the Italian side, but they returned with the news that all had perished, owing, so far as they could make out, to the giving way of a cornice of snow on the edge of the mountain. The whole five bodies were precipitated a distance of 3000 or 4000 feet, and death must have been instantaneous. The accident is the most terrible that has ever occurred here, and a universal gloom is spread over the place.”
Charles Gos writes in his “Alpine Tragedy” what likely happened:
"The snow was good. They found it easy to place their feet, which bite into the crust of sparkling crystal. But are they not drifting too far from the crest? To assess the thickness of the cornice and to estimate the extent of its overhang they should be below it, or lower down, at a point clear of snow. But they are above it. Now it is just at this point that very thin fissures begin to run parallel to the cornice at the edge of the crest, blue serpentine lines on white snow. They are too far to the left, completely above the overhang. The five men never reach the edge. For them it is all over. For suddenly, some ten feet from the arête, the snow beneath them moves and slips away, like a ship sinking in the trough of a wave. They are swallowed up in a flash and vanish into the abyss of the Italian side in a cloud of snow and ice."
In 1896 an almost identical accident took place when the German Dr. Max Günther with his guides Roman Imboden and Peter Ruppen died when a cornice broke. These tragic events have given the Lyskamm a bad reputation and the nickname the Man Eater (German: Menschenfresser). Accidents still happen on this mountain and are even witnessed by SP-members as described in this trip report by as: Lyskamm traverse.
“A telegram from Geneva states that the Englishmen Mr Lewis and Mr Paterson with three local guides, the brothers Knubel, left Zermatt on Sept. 7 to ascend the Lyskamm; all five were killed by the bursting of a glacier. Mr Lewis and Mr Paterson were buried in the English cemetery at Zermatt. Subsequent information states that the party left the Riffel Hotel a.m. on Sept. 6 with three guides. As they did not return that evening, a party started next day to see whether they had gone down the Italian side, but they returned with the news that all had perished, owing, so far as they could make out, to the giving way of a cornice of snow on the edge of the mountain. The whole five bodies were precipitated a distance of 3000 or 4000 feet, and death must have been instantaneous. The accident is the most terrible that has ever occurred here, and a universal gloom is spread over the place.”
Charles Gos writes in his “Alpine Tragedy” what likely happened:
"The snow was good. They found it easy to place their feet, which bite into the crust of sparkling crystal. But are they not drifting too far from the crest? To assess the thickness of the cornice and to estimate the extent of its overhang they should be below it, or lower down, at a point clear of snow. But they are above it. Now it is just at this point that very thin fissures begin to run parallel to the cornice at the edge of the crest, blue serpentine lines on white snow. They are too far to the left, completely above the overhang. The five men never reach the edge. For them it is all over. For suddenly, some ten feet from the arête, the snow beneath them moves and slips away, like a ship sinking in the trough of a wave. They are swallowed up in a flash and vanish into the abyss of the Italian side in a cloud of snow and ice."
In 1896 an almost identical accident took place when the German Dr. Max Günther with his guides Roman Imboden and Peter Ruppen died when a cornice broke. These tragic events have given the Lyskamm a bad reputation and the nickname the Man Eater (German: Menschenfresser). Accidents still happen on this mountain and are even witnessed by SP-members as described in this trip report by as: Lyskamm traverse.