An Alpine Letter
1895
Training at Kandersteg—Climbing the south face of the Birrenhorn—The viper’s cast—The larches replacing the pines—The ascent of the Doldenhorn—The Petersgrat—The ascent of the Bietschhorn—An interesting anniversary ascent—Ascent of Monte Rosa by the Lys Pass—Cold feet on the glacier—The Furggen Joch—Accident to a guide—Traverse of the Matterhorn—Naked feet of guides photographed in climbing position—The Traverse of the Charmoz—Farewell to Melchior—Lines to my lantern.
Every one should try to be in good training once a year, and experience has confirmed my opinion that Kandersteg, in the Bernese Oberland, is a good place to train for a climbing holiday. There the expeditions are interesting enough without being too serious. The enervating effect of what is ironically called carriage exercise, which only exercises the carriage, and does nothing for the man inside, must be gradually counteracted by hard work in fine air. Also it must be remembered that as one grows older, training is more difficult, and too often hurried in the process.
With a friend of former years, our first little climb up the Tschingellochtighorn resulted in a ducking, and for myself it must be confessed that the bodily fatigue of the first tug up steep slopes hardly permits of the usual interests and enjoyments of the way. Now it is rather sad to reflect upon those two black sluggish lizards that I was too lazy to collect, and that a fine crop of yellow Gentians were merely noticed without pleasure. Climbing the Tschingellochtigrat—a yellow Gentian it was that: and very little more.
Every struggle makes the next more easy—at first it is a purgatory for the pie-crust of the past year, then the later labour is all delight.
Mr. M., that veteran climber, hailed me on my arrival at Kandersteg with a shout: with him was his son, already at sixteen well experienced in mountain craft, and the well-beloved Melchior Anderegg. Mr. M. says “a man is always at his best on the Alps,” and surely this is true; his body is most freed from disorder, and his mind from cant, as he climbs away from all the worries of life.
We had an expedition together, a pretty climb up the steep south face of the Birrenhorn; on our way up to the rock we killed an adder. Near this spot last year I found a perfect viper’s cast (eye-covers and lips also quite entire). It is now in the Cambridge Museum, and proves that Gilbert White is correct in his statement that the snake’s cast is turned completely inside out. Here too are a great number of large white snails like escargots—“O helix infelix tui quam miseresco sine sheetis aut blankets dormientis al fresco.”
As my friend had made with me this same ascent last year, we were allowed to lead the way up, and had a nice scramble, notes of which are to be found in the Alpine Journal, and seen on a later page. This excursion gives a good view of the forests of the two valleys seen from many points above the Kander stream and Oeschinen See. No one can fail to note, when once attention is aroused to it, how the larch is gaining ground in the struggle for existence, and the pine is rapidly diminishing. Rarely does one see a young Arolla pine, and the old trees are picturesque ruins. In the Arolla valley the same observation may be made, and there are decaying stumps of trees, 200 or 300 years old, remaining high up, near the glaciers, where once a forest stood. A great advantage the larch has in being a deciduous tree, shedding its thin and spiky leaves every winter, and riding out the storm with bare poles, when the pine holds on its evergreen branches a great weight of snow, and presents a large surface for the tempest to burst upon.
When these pine trees stand together collecting snow, more opportunities for avalanches occur, and ruin is scattered on the forest beneath. The lovely green tints of the sprouting larches in Spring will bring us some compensation if the pines are to be lost.
A REGIMENT OF LARCHES ADVANCING ON VETERAN PINES.
According to Mr. Sowerby, in his Forest Cantons, the larches always choose the crystalline rocks, while the pines prefer the limestone.
Starting from the Hotel at half-past one in the morning, we had a roasting hot day on that beautiful snow-peak, the Doldenhorn. With Hari as guide, we followed a large swinging oil-lamp, instead of the usual lantern, and toiled up through jungle, to find the snow all fresh and soft; lovely to look upon, but wearisome to travel up; a long ice-slope at the top gave rest to all except our leader, who had to cut steps to the final corniced ridge; there we held him with the rope in leaning over to judge whether we might safely sit down upon the summit.
On our departure from Kandersteg, a lady and her husband joined us in a delightful walk over the Petersgrat. We rested a night at the Selden châlets in the hay, giving the lady the only bed of the place, and, starting the next morning early, had an easy day over that beautiful glacier pass, arriving at Ried in the Lötschen Thal in a broiling sun. Nothing more was then known of those two poor fellows who went for their last climb a few weeks before, left the little inn and never returned.
My companion had come with me to ascend the Bietschhorn, and we found it a first-rate climb, requiring continual care because of the rotten state of the rock arête. Every stone has to be tested before the weight is allowed to rest upon it, and the movements over the ridge must be lovingly and embracingly made without jerk or hurry. In Alpine slang the mountain is badly in need of repair. We were on the summit during an earthquake, of which we felt nothing, though at Zermatt there was considerable alarm, and a climber on the Rothhorn is reported to have had to sit tight as though on a bucking horse!
Next day we walked down to the Rhone valley, and came to Zermatt with our guides, Alois Kalbermatten and Peter Perren. Here again Mr. M. was actively at work with Melchior, and as he came down from Monte Rosa, he told me how pleased he was to have made an anniversary ascent of a mountain he had climbed forty years ago!
We made for the highest point of Monte Rosa by starting from the hut by lantern-light, and going up the glacier as if to cross the Lys Joch, then taking a rock arête to the summit, we descended by the usual snowy route to the Gorner glacier, and so back to Zermatt. My feet had been very cold on the glacier; the mass of nails carried, unless the soles of the boots be very thick, chills the feet as the iron gets cold upon the ice, and in this respect there is more to say for Mummery spikes, which carry the feet slightly off the ice. F. Andenmatten, of Zermatt, made such a successful improvement in clumping my boots, that he obtained an order for another pair on the spot, and I believe him to be an artist of the first rank for climbing boots.
On our next climb, in crossing the Furggen Joch to reach the Italian hut above the Col du Lion, on the Italian side of the Matterhorn, we had an awkward adventure. Perren was helping a porter, who carried up wood for us, over the bergschrund, and was leaning forwards to reach him with his axe, when down came a stone from above—“a bolt from the blue” and struck poor Perren on the head. The blood ran over his face and gave him a ghastly look. The blow did not result in ordinary shock, it only excited him so that he would not sit down to have his hurt dressed, but shouted out a noisy account of the accident. Fortunately I had an antiseptic dressing and bandage in my rücksack, and though he had a nasty torn wound of the scalp, I decided to proceed at least as far as the hut, though it was five hours’ hard climb, and I felt doubtful as to whether he would be fit to traverse the Matterhorn in the morning.
The main object of our expedition was to climb over the top of the mountain from Italy and down the Swiss side to Zermatt. However, when day broke he wished to proceed, and assured me that he could manage the climbing. Rather than risk the success of the expedition, I offered to come down with him, and pay him the same price, but he would not hear of it, and the other guide being quite confident, with some misgiving I went over the mountain with the wounded man. My fear was of brandy combined with a hot sun, and images arose before me of a strong man delirious on the awful precipices of this south side of the Matterhorn. It was very soon apparent that my guide’s powers were fully equal to his work, for our party went strongly and at a fair pace. We had breakfast and rested half an hour on the classic rocks of the Tyndallgrat, and reached the summit in less than five hours from the start, the second time we have stood together on that snowy ridge which crowns the majestic mountain. “Long Biner,” a Zermatt guide, who came up with a party from the other side, here told us of the death of Emile Rey, and we were filled with wonder that the famous climber should have ended his career by a fatal slip when all his serious work was done on the Aiguille du Géant—a mountain which he knew so well.
Returning to the Monte Rosa Hotel for a rest, I was fortunate in falling in with Captain Abney, who kindly photographed for me the naked feet of my guides in the act of climbing a rock. It has often been noticed that a guide can go face forward, and whole-footed up a slope, while the amateur following, and coming to the steep part, has to go on his toes or turn sideways. It seems possible that the angle made by the foot with the leg may be more acute in the guide who has climbed from infancy, and though it is probably very much a matter of balance, I wished to compare photographs of amateurs’ feet when put into similar action. The guides wear thick leather boots loosely laced at the top, so that it is difficult to see the play of the ankle.
There is a most interesting discussion by Darwin, in his voyage of the Beagle, on muscular action and balance in riding, but of course in the case of the guides’ feet there may be some structural difference, hereditary and acquired, actually permitting more freedom of movement at the ankle joint, which neither muscular action nor power of balance could give to the amateur. These points are separately considered in another chapter on the “Climbing Foot.”
On a memorable morning at the end of August, the morning of Miss Sampson’s fatal accident upon the Triftjoch, while we were packing up to travel over that same pass, my friend had a telegram to report the death of his mother at Chamounix. It was his first great grief, and seemed the one unbearable thing in life. With him I travelled to join his afflicted family. The sorrow of others thus threw a strong shadow over me, and my friend having gone to England, I had now little heart for further climbing.
Nevertheless, taking my guides to Montanvers I traversed the Charmoz, a very fine rock climb, in which five points of varying size are scrambled over. There is a good deal of standing on one another’s shoulders in acrobatic fashion in the ascents, and the use is frequent of a second rope looped over a point of rock in the descents. The highest peak is the last climbed, and its couloir is descended to the base of the rock to join the route below the couloir of the first ascent. The glacier which it is necessary to cross is, this year, in a dangerous state; falls of ice are seriously frequent. When on the highest point of the Charmoz, the most awful avalanche of stones came thundering down from near the top of the adjacent Grépon. The noise was deafening, and a strong sulphurous smell, which lasted some time afterwards, suggested, as Whymper says, that the Devil was at the bottom of the business.
MELCHIOR ANDEREGG, 1895.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MR. MYLES MATHEWS.
Wandering into Couttets’ Hotel at Chamounix quite without intention, I witnessed a touching farewell between Mr. M. and Melchior. To see an undemonstrative Englishman kiss his grey-bearded old guide on both cheeks, when these two have climbed together for forty years, gives one suddenly a glimpse of the pathos of life impossible to recall without emotion.
Beautiful for weather, dreadful for disasters, this season will be remembered as the year in which Emile Rey was killed on the Alps, and Mummery lost in the Himalayas. All who knew the strong and genial Benjamin Eyre have felt his loss, and he was a man with many friends. Then alas! there were others to whom we say farewell for ever.
For this season I have said good-bye to my faithful guides, one of whom is a friend of many other climbs, giving them a modest addition to their moderate fees and the old rope, which I leave behind. My folding lantern shall come away with me for future use; it shuts up into a leather case no larger than the little sketch-book in which I write the following somewhat heathenish, but very hopeful hymn:
Guide, who breaks my midnight sleep,
Leads me up the glacier steep,
Where the lantern’s feeble beams
Shine on snow and icy streams;
We fear no darkness in the night
While your strong hand controls the light.
Dawn will for the climber rise,
Daylight point him to the skies—
What if all be mist and cloud
When we reach that summit proud?
Who, conquering, can victory cry,
More gladly lives, dreads less to die!
Mighty Guide! who woke and led me here,
Lend Thy light to make my pathway clear.
Though dim at first on Life’s all doubtful way,
The struggle ends in dawn and perfect day;
Obscuring daylight hides my lantern and Thy star,
But purple glows with gold on glorious peaks afar.