Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860-69 by Edward Whymper

" 'Tis a lesson you should heed, Try, try, try again. If at first you don't succeed, Try, try, try again. Then your courage should appear, For if you will persevere You will conquer, never fear. Try, try, try again. " Hickson

The year 1862 was still young, and the Matterhorn, clad in its wintry garb, bore but little resemblance to the Matterhorn of the summer, when a new force came to do battle with the mountain, from another direction. Mr. T. S. Kennedy of Leeds conceived the extraordinary idea that the peak might prove less impracticable in January than in June, and arrived at Zermatt in the former month to put his conception to the test. With stout Peter Perrn and sturdy Peter Taugwalder he slept in the little chapel at the Schwarzsee, and on the next morning, like the Messrs. Parker, followed the ridge between the peak called Hörnli and the great mountain. But they found that snow in winter obeyed the ordinary laws, and that wind and frost were not less unkind than in summer. "The wind whirled up the snow and spiculae of ice into our faces like needles, and flat pieces of ice a foot in diameter, carried up from the glacier below, went flying past. Still no one seemed to like to be the first to give in, till a gust fiercer than usual forced us to shelter for a time behind a rock. Immediately it was tacitly understood that our expedition must now end; but we determined to leave some memento of our visit, and, after descending a considerable distance, we found a suitable place with loose stones of which to build a cairn. In half-an-hour a tower six feet high was erected; a bottle, with the date, was placed inside, and we retreated as rapidly as possible. "71 This cairn was placed at the spot marked upon Dufour's Map of Switzerland 10,820 feet (3,298 metres), and the highest point attained by Mr. Kennedy was not, I imagine, more than two or three hundred feet above it.