How characteristic of poor Jones the whole of that passage is! The unconcealed evidence of his own great physical strength, the playful sense of humour--his friends will remember how he used to explain his own initials, O.G., as standing for the ‘Only Genuine Jones’--in the words ‘they shed tears and ice-axes,’ and the touch of pathos, in the light of after events, of the phrase ‘beyond the seductive influence of axe and rope.’
The omission of the names of the Mittaghorn and Egginerhorn from Jones’s own list in 1892 shows that even his own record cannot be regarded as complete, a thing not to be wondered at considering the enormous amount of work he did.
It will be noticed that in this year, as in the year before and in 1894, Jones has entered the names of peaks and passes that in the succeeding years he would have considered quite unworthy of serious notice.
But next year he ventured on a feat that, so far as I know, was not only extraordinary for one with comparatively so little experience of the higher Alps, magnificent climber though he was, but it has remained, I believe, unique in the annals of the great mountain on which it was performed. At Easter, 1893, Jones climbed the Dent Blanche, the mountain with which his name will be for ever associated in the climbing world. The ascent was made on the 25th and 26th April, and the expedition took thirty-six hours, a wonderful feat of strength and endurance. M. Adrien Spahr, the landlord of the Hotel de la Dent Blanche at Evolena, and of the new Kurhaus at Arolla (from which Jones started the day before his last, fatal climb), has kindly favoured me with the following brief note in reference to that expedition:--
‘C’est bien le 25 Avril, 1893, que Monsieur Jones a fait l’ascension de la Dent Blanche avec les guides Pierre Gaspoz et Antoine Bovier père d’Evolène. Je suis redescendu moi-même avec lui depuis Evolène à Sion.’
In an interview which appeared in the press in 1894 Jones said of this climb, one of the most difficult things he ever did:--‘The longest day I ever had afoot was at Easter, ’93, doing the Dent Blanche. We took two guides and a porter, and had great difficulty in getting them to attempt the last two hundred feet. We were out in the open for thirty-six hours, with very short rests, no sleep, and excessive labour, but we revelled in every minute of it. The mountain was in a dangerous condition, and the last five hours on the way home we spent in wading, waist-deep, through soft snow. It was rather painful, of course, but there was a certain pleasure even in our pain, for it helped to make philosophers of us. We agreed to think of other things in the midst of our sufferings, and we succeeded creditably well. I believe now that I could stand almost anything in the way of pain or exposure.’