Crossword-Solution: ALPENSTOCKS 11 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 19

Hard by is a group of chalets and inns, with the usual appurtenances of a prosperous Swiss resort--lean brown guides in baggy homespun, lounging under carved wooden galleries, stacks of alpenstocks in every doorway, sun-scorched Englishmen without shirt-collars.

Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh, slowly groping our way through tangled lines of crevasses, crossing on snow bridges here and there after cautiously testing them, jumping at narrow places, or crawling around the ends of the largest, bracing well at every point with our alpenstocks and setting our spiked shoes squarely down on the dangerous slopes.

They passed all the other pilgrims bound the same way—stout square Germans with their coats slung through straps, who trailed behind them heavy alpenstocks, carried greenish bags, and marched stolidly at a pace that never varied, growling, as Anna and the boy went by: “Aber eilen ist nichts!” But those two could not go fast enough to keep pace with their spirits.

The passage was encumbered with rope ladders, knotted cords, torches, flasks, grappling irons, alpenstocks, pickaxes, iron shod sticks, enough to load ten men.

But they are peacefully disposed goatherds, who, alpenstocks in hand, are endeavoring to see "what in the world those queer-looking things are, coming up the road." Their tuneful noise, as they play on some kind of an instrument, greets our ears from a dozen mountain-slopes round about us, as we put our shoulders to the wheel, and gradually approach the summit.