In August 1880 Émile Rey and Andreas Maurer were guiding an English 'climber', who wanted to reach the summit of the Aiguille du Plan by means of the steep ice slopes [of the Glacier du Plan] above the Chamonix Valley. After step-cutting all day, they reached a point where to go on was impossible, and retreat looked hopeless. To add to their difficulties, bad weather came in with snow and intense cold. They had no alternative but to remain exactly where they were for the night, and, if they survived it, to attempt the descent of the almost precipitous ice-slopes they had with such difficulty ascended. Through the long hours of the bitter night, they stood, roped together, without daring to move, on a narrow ridge, hacked level with their ice-axes. They believed their case was hopeless. Although Andreas Maurer's own back was frozen hard to the ice-wall against which he leaned, and in spite of driving snow and numbing cold, he opened his coat, waistcoat and shirt, and through the long hours of the night he held, pressed against his bare chest, the half-frozen body of the traveller who had urged him to undertake the expedition. The morning broke, still and clear, and at six o'clock, having thawed their stiffened limbs in the warm sun, they commenced the descent. Probably no finer feat in ice-work has ever been performed than that accomplished by Maurer and Rey on that day. Had the bad weather continued, the party could not possibly have descended alive. It then took ten hours of continuous down-climbing on steep ice to reach safety, after eighteen hours of continuous effort without food on the previous day, followed by a night of horrors such as few can realise.