Mountaineering in Dauphiné
1894
Wet weather at Kandersteg—Fly-fishing there—The fisherman’s fear of a precipice—Birrenhorn ascent—Ascent of the Blümlis-Alphorn—Chateau at Vizille—La Bérarde in the Dauphiné—Accident to a guide’s tongue—Traverse of the Pointe des Ecrins—Guide’s hand benumbed—Wild and impressive scenery—Ascent of the Grande Aiguille—A frost-bitten porter—My ascent of the Meije with a broken rib—The heel spikes of the district.
The Alps of Dauphiné, which may be said to lie in France between the Mont Blanc range and the Mediterranean Sea, would be best approached by Paris, Lyons, and Grenoble, but as my climbing friend, A. B., was at Kandersteg, I went there to meet him and a guide, and to stretch my legs on the Swiss mountains. On the first day after my arrival we inspected, with a view to attack the steep south face of the Birrenhorn, and surmounted the only difficulty of the climb, a steep chimney where a rope is useful to avoid risk. We planned to complete the ascent on the first fine day. On this little mountain I found the most perfect snake’s cast I ever saw, which I gave to Professor Newton. Its head end was in the hole where its owner got rid of it. The films over the eyes were present, and by blowing into the mouth I could inflate the cast to a lively resemblance of the creature it had covered.
MAP OF THE HIGHEST MOUNTAINS IN THE DAUPHINÉ.
Walker & Bontall sc.
The weather in the Bernese Oberland was very bad, every day it rained in the valleys and snowed on the peaks; on any expedition one was sure to get wet, and mountains of any magnitude were impossible. With a Surgeon-Major on leave from India I took a turn at fly-fishing, not in the glacier water of the Kander, but in a pretty stream with pools, where the trout, though small, would rise to a fly. His Himalayan experience made the Surgeon-Major anxious to stock the glacier torrents of Switzerland with Mahsir, a fish more powerful than the salmon, whose first wild rush on tasting the hook gives such a fierce joy to the sportsman.
My companion, who was a strong walker, described to me his horrible sensations at the sight of a precipice. He told me that his father, though he had shot game in the Himalayas, could never overcome this fear. If the idea of space was absent my friend could climb well, but I gathered that horizontal as well as vertical distance was concerned, because he could not comfortably eat his lunch on a flat platform of an acre of grassland when there were miles of country far distant below and beyond. Mountain climbing for him was out of the question, his condition was almost that of one suffering from agoraphobia or la peur des espaces.
We engaged Joseph Truffer as guide, and as soon as he joined us we completed the Birrenhorn expedition. It was a satisfaction to me to find that he did not climb the couloir easily or at the first attempt, but we had a good scramble on an interesting arête rather like the Portjengrat, in which there is a rock hole or window to crawl through. We went home by a long route up by way of the Ober-Oeschinen Alp, and got thoroughly wet as usual.
To climb the Blümlis-Alphorn, the highest point of the range, we slept out at a hut, which was unluckily occupied by workmen, who were building another hut close by. Our night in dirty straw was not so pleasant in dirty company, and the early morning was dark and threatening; we started however at 4.30, led by Joseph Hari, a local man. After crossing the glacier he took us over some smooth slabs of rock arranged like a slated roof and coated with ice to make us careful. These safely crossed, Truffer took the lead, and up the final steep everything was ice wherein steps had to be laboriously cut to the summit. We stood on the top at 10 o’clock, but saw little of our surrounding glories, except occasionally a brief glance round through the mists while standing perched in an ice step. The weather ended up in snow, which shut us in on the glacier below, and made us thankful to be well off the ice, and safely quit of a mountain which, though usually an easy climb, could assert itself seriously in a storm.
Taking Truffer with us, A. B. and I travelled to Dauphiné; we spent a few hours at Grenoble to see the old church and the Bayard statue. While at lunch at the Hotel Monnet I admired the oak wine jugs, which are called there “Brocs.” There is a charming old chateau at Vizille, with a lovely trout stream in the grounds full of big fish. The tennis court no longer stands in which in 1788 a memorable meeting took place to protest against the tax. The late President Carnot unveiled a statue in 1888 in memory of this Revolutionary event and slept at the chateau as the guest of Madame Casimir-Périer. The old soldier who took us round showed an oubliette in the old part of the building—beneath its horrible shaft he had seen armour-coated skeletons dug up.
LES ECRINS FROM THE GLACIER BLANC.
We walked up to La Bérarde, a mule carrying our baggage. Immediately on my arrival I was told of an awkward accident which had just happened. Two parties were ascending a slope of ice when the last man of the first caravan slipped out of his step and sent his iron-shod heel into the jaw of the leader of the second caravan, who was too near. Poor Maximin Gaspard got a bad torn wound of his tongue, cut by his teeth, which I had to stitch up with silk and horse-hair. As he was in fine health the wound healed well, and in a few days, in fact, as soon as ever he could feed, he was climbing again. Maximin’s father, Pierre Gaspard, is the fine old fellow who has made so many first ascents in these districts, and still makes the great climbs.
The highest mountain in the Dauphiné, is the Pointe des Ecrins, 13,462 feet, its summit is a ridge of several beautiful points of snow and rock. With Hippolyte Rodier to assist Truffer we started to traverse this peak. We met on the way to the Challeret hut, a native with a dead sheep on his shoulders; it had been killed by a stone falling from the height above, and no doubt was to be made into “precipice mutton.” After sleeping a few hours at the hut we got off at 1.30 in the morning, over the glacier to the Col des Avalanches. Rodier led us to the couloir on the south face, and we began to crawl up; this was a rock couloir, which at a steep part was iced and caused some delay. Our leader, however, got up to a firm position and I followed, but no one else came, and looking down I saw Truffer wringing his hands and in distress. He explained that his right hand was frost-bitten and he could not proceed; nevertheless, he was pulled up by the help of the rope, and finding from the appearance of the hand and from the pain, which is really a good sign of reaction, that recovery was sufficient, we decided to proceed, with some misgiving on my part. We gained the highest part of the Ecrins about 10 o’clock. There was a great deal of fresh snow on the arête, and in coming down to the glacier Blanc on the north side we worked hard for five hours without a halt to reach the Col des Ecrins. Here we rested and then descended a couloir of 1,000 feet to the glacier de la Bonne Pierre, with its long and dreary moraine. There is a measurement station on this moraine to register the movements of the glacier, and here we found a marmot recently killed, its flesh almost entirely eaten, the entrails strewn around. An eagle’s feather on the body suggested the mode of death. The sight of the sheep killed by a stone, and still more the beautiful furry marmot killed by an eagle, added in a strange way to the savagery of the scene. In this wild region stern Nature seems to cry, “I care for nothing, all shall go.” We had a long walk home, the last half-hour by lantern light, having been eighteen hours over our expedition.
We wished next to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde to La Grave, which neither of our guides had ever done, so it seemed best to let Truffer go back to Switzerland, lest on a serious expedition his hand should fail him again and its recovery be delayed. His helpless condition in the iced couloir was explained by the fact that months before he had been ill with a bad hand, and its vitality had been impaired by what was probably a previous attack of frost-bite. Before his departure we had a lovely day on the Grande Aiguille; on the top we basked and slept in the sun after a lunch of tinned fruits and bread and butter. There is a little ice and snow requiring care on this beautiful peak, but we climbed it up and down without a rope, and here we passed over the slope where the tongue accident occurred.
One evening I was aware of a pain in my chest, especially when I laughed, and I was reminded that at Easter I had broken a rib—in climbing to the top of a cromlech on Dartmoor called “The Spinster’s Rock,” but the bone seemed to have mended in spite of some neglect, and was forgotten until my compass box in the breast pocket jammed against the hurt in some scramble and found out the weak point. I was warned by pains in certain movements of the arms against any attempt to traverse the Meije, and very sadly I had to see my friend take off our guides for a successful expedition; for though with a suitable bandage on my chest I was quite active, yet could not pull myself up by my arms in climbing.
JOSEPH TURC. PIERRE GASPARD. MATHON. HIPPOLYTE RODIER.
W. HERR VON RATH. A. B. HERR GRISAR.
We had parted from Truffer with mutual regrets, for he was a very good fellow, and taken on Joseph Turc, a more experienced man than Rodier, and they worked well together. This Turc had just come over from La Grave with a porter named Etienne. The latter, a poor wizened sun-baked little man, had all his finger tips on each hand blackened with frost-bite; his thumbs had escaped. It appears that a Frenchman who could not climb well was taken by Turc to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde. They got no further than the Pic Central, there they had to spend the night—next day getting into La Grave. The poor porter was allowed to sleep with his fingers in this bad state, and come back over a pass to La Bérarde where in the afternoon I saw him. He had had some pain in the morning of this day, and this encouraged me to attempt treatment; so during two or three hours I rubbed him and watched him, and was assisted by my friend; it was satisfactory to find a considerable improvement, especially in his right hand, which next morning was even more apparently improved when the limits of the black dead portions were more defined—his nails will probably come off, and there will be ulcerated surfaces on his finger ends, which will be months in healing. The aspect of this man presented a pitiable combination of apathy and patience, reminding me of the wolf-bitten Russian peasants I saw in Pasteur’s laboratory in the Rue D’Ulm years ago. The guide with the frost-bitten feet, of whom I wrote in my letter last year, is only now hobbling about with sticks, the wounds of his amputated toes still unhealed, so much is the process of repair hindered in tissues damaged by frost-bite.
What I call determination, but my friends describe as obstinacy, now induced me, after three days’ rest, to climb the Meije, 13,081 feet. It is a serious rock climb, decidedly stiffer than the Matterhorn, and I did not attempt the traverse, but it was an error of judgment to have climbed it in my crippled condition. Doubtless the fine air, which makes a man laugh so easily, and makes the careworn light-hearted, steals away the reason like champagne—making the old man seem young—so the poet writes—
“The plague of guide and chum, and wife and daughter
Is Senex who will climb and didn’t oughter.”
LA MEIJE FROM THE VAL DES ETANÇONS.
My friend having returned to rest from his expeditions I took off the guides for the ascent of the Meije. We walked up the valley and halted at the hut. Joseph Turc wanted to put his skin of wine, containing over five bottles, into my rücksack, and we had a difference, as I objected to his claret leaking into my shirts, so he had to carry it separately; it was quite an easy matter, as I had a porter to carry my sleeping bag to a rock gîte where the night was to be passed, a climb of several hours. On reaching the glacier, Joseph and I being in front of the others, who carried the rope, he asked me if I was afraid to go over the glacier. Probably he meant without the rope. I said it was what I had come for; but when we began to get to steep ice I found he did not cut steps, and as he had three large spikes in each of his heels he could go where I could not follow without using my axe vigorously. He then said he could not cut the steps because of his wine skin, and thus I was left either to cut on up all the slopes or carry his skin. After a little hesitation I offered to carry the wine for fear of hurting my rib, and I carried it up to the sleeping place, though I did not find the steps cut much better after his burden was removed.
We went to sleep under the stars on a lovely night, but the day broke dark and gloomy, so that it was half-past four before we could start. We roped at once, leaving the porter to take the things back, and Turc led, but instead of placing me second I was left to the last. With my own rope of 80 feet long it happened frequently that the men passed out of sight, and I had no sort of communication with them unless I chose to pull and shout. But this is well enough when going straight up. It is a difficult corner or traverse where the position is a bad one; the experts who have been on their own mountain before, leave the traveller alone to get round his corner as best he can. “In medio tutissimus ibis,” is a good motto.
I gained the summit at nine o’clock, but just at the final struggle, where it is necessary to straddle on a sharp red rock ridge, called the “cheval rouge,” with fine precipices below, my rib gave way, and went completely broken through. In spite of firm bandaging, the coming down was a painful experience, for I could feel and even hear the ends of the broken bone grating together; but I kept at it, going down steadily and slowly with groans and grunts. The guides sang and shouted and drowned my feeble exclamations. They had had a good feed with tinned peaches and plenty of wine on the top when we rested, and it seemed to make them very happy. They carried seven bottles of wine on this expedition, besides each man a flask of brandy, and as I do most of my climbing on cold tea, they had a good allowance.
Joseph Turc is a real genius at rock climbing, a truly brilliant performer; but on ice, as he can’t cut steps, another time I should get spikes or crampons. The guides here use three spikes in each heel, driven in, fixed by gomphosis, not like the Mummery spikes with a screw.
I got to the Inn in time to change for the table d’hôte, not in the least fatigued, only blaming myself for the painful ordeal I had passed through. While changing my garments in the small bedroom we occupied together, my companion could plainly hear across the room the grating of my fractured rib. So soon as exertion ceased I was entirely well, and had a good dinner and night’s rest.
No traveller who goes for mountain expeditions to the Dauphiné district will leave without feeling a debt of gratitude (mixed with envy) to his own countrymen who have climbed and walked all over this wonderful country. The maps and climber’s guide by Mr. Coolidge are marvels of convenience and accuracy, and must be carried by everyone who wishes to learn his way about these very difficult regions. Mr. Whymper ought to be as proud of the conquest of the Pointe des Ecrins as of the Matterhorn.
My friend had a good climb on the Pic Bourcet, but of course I did not attempt this, returning to England by easy stages, halting at Aix-les-Bains and at Paris. In London I found laughing at “Charley’s Aunt” a serious matter for my damaged rib, though I thoroughly enjoyed this absurd farce, as I enjoyed every day of my vacation, and there was no day I would not willingly live over again.