CHAPTER XIII. AVALANCHES ON THE JUNGFRAU—THE GUIDES OF GRINDELWALD.
The avalanche about to be described started just below the peak of the Silberhorn, a few minutes before midday. At that hour the sun was beginning to make his rays felt in the frozen bosom of the Jungfrau. The Silberhorn is the showiest ornament of that most bewitching of mountains. It is an acute pyramid, and has a surface like frosted silver. It seems so dead and cold that one does not suspect its latent capacity for motion and sound. Yet it is from this statuesque spur that some of the most terrible avalanches of the Jungfrau are let loose. The sides are so steep that the ice and snow are always about to slide off, and, when the afternoon sun shines straight and hot upon them, the watcher for avalanches is never disappointed. I had been staring at the dazzling Jungfrau through smoke-colored glasses for some time, and waiting for the show to begin. My point of observation was on a knoll or excrescence of the Wengern Alp—itself no mean mountain—from which the peerless Jungfrau can be seen at the shortest range. The day was perfect, the sky cloudless and the wind hushed. The only signs of life around me were the fluttering of butterflies and the humming of bees. The silence was awful. Far off, down in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, I could see the Staubbach Fall sparkling in the sunshine. From my exalted station its course could be tracked for a long distance before it flung itself into the abyss and kept its horse-tail form complete for nearly a thousand feet. It looked so near, through the transparent air, that sometimes I fancied I could hear its roar. But this was an illusion. The only sound that breaks the stillness of the solitary height is that of the avalanche for which I was so patiently waiting.
Suddenly there was a gleam as of particles in motion on a part of the Silberhorn at which I had often looked with keen expectations. For just there could be discerned, without a glass, a series of long, parallel scratches such as avalanches always make. These are the grooves in which, like many human institutions, they may be said to run from year to year by force of habit. The rate of the motion was so slow and indeterminate—for a reason which I afterward found out—that one might, for a moment, question if the shining atoms were not stationary, after all. But no! though the pace seemed to be that of a snail, it was real and downward, and was soon too accelerated to be mistaken. The whole breadth of one side of the Silberhorn was moving, beyond a doubt. I was witnessing the sublime spectacle of a great avalanche. More swiftly it descended, and yet it seemed to crawl. In this way it slid along for a short distance—about 2,000 feet, as I afterward learned—when the mass fell over a jutting piece of ice or rock. Then it looked something like a waterfall. Below was another steep slope scored with the furrows of old avalanches. Here the motion was more rapid, but still surprisingly slow. Then, and not before, I heard a sound as of thunder. If the sky had not been one unspotted blue, I should have supposed a storm to be bursting somewhere among the mountains. It was the noise of the avalanche, at that moment reaching my ears from a distance, which was so deceptive. Later on, studying the phenomena of avalanches more deliberately, I ascertained that the scene of action—apparently not more than half a mile off—was often seven miles and never less than three. By noting the avalanche at the instant of its birth and counting the seconds of time till the first boom reported itself, one can calculate the distance with sufficient accuracy.
The Silberhorn being many miles from my standpoint in an air-line, it follows that the terms “small” and “slow,” used in connection with its avalanches, are irrelevant. The breadth of the falling mass should be expressed in rods and not in feet. Its movement was exceedingly swift. What seemed to start as snow was, in fact, a great ice-cake, acres in extent, and perhaps fifty feet thick. This, striking against rocks in its course, broke into fragments which were indistinguishable in the distance. The apparent waterfall was composed chiefly of large lumps of ice. These were destined to be pulverized in good earnest as they continued their descent. Then I heard a sound as of hissing mingled with the deeper reverberations. A short distance—more than a thousand feet, probably—was thus traversed when the avalanche entered upon another stage of its career. It tumbled over another ridge—this time looking more like a waterfall than before. Here its volume was much contracted, and I could clearly see that this fact was due to the depth of the rock-bound channels through which it ran. Then it sprawled quite freely over a great open space or plateau, where it rested and formed a perceptible heap, thick at the center, and flattening out gradually toward the edges. Judging of its dimensions by my revised standards, I should say that it covered many acres, and was deep enough to bury an Alpine village of the average size.
Between noon and two o’clock, when I left the fascinating scene to seek for luncheon at the Hôtel des Avalanches, about three hundred feet below my mound of solitary observation, the Silberhorn had contributed nothing further to the pile at its base. But, at other points of the imposing range visible from the Wengern Alp, and especially on the main body of the Jungfrau, on a shoulder of the Monch, and on the steepest part of the Eiger, some avalanche was always in sight of the attentive observer. They usually resembled cascades from beginning to end. Rarely could one see the popular idea of an avalanche realized. Most people, I find, think of avalanches as broad tracts of snow which are transferred from the upper part of a mountain into a valley at its foot, keeping their general shape all the way. The Silberhorn specimen corresponded to this ideal for a short distance, as I have said. But all the others trickled down in a water-like way from top to bottom. The behavior of the falling ice and snow was so much like that of water that one could be convinced that he was beholding an avalanche only when he saw what took place at its terminus. For, in five cases out of six, the icy torrent ended in a white heap, which still remained far up the mountain-sides, though below the true snow-line. Except that they lacked the well-known green tint, the tracts of snow and ice thus deposited looked like glaciers. Brooks ran from the lower end of them into the valleys far beneath.
The grooves—or deeply worn passage-ways—through which these avalanches descend, seem as if made by human hands. Some of them run as straight as bowling-alleys. Others have easy and graceful curves, as if laid out for a railway. But, almost without an exception, the transit of the avalanche from peak to base is interrupted by narrow rock-gorges. Against these it dashes itself with a fury expressed to my ear by a sound like that of a small cannon, which is heard far above the rest of the racket. The latter generally reminds one of the irregular firing of infantry, and appears to be caused by large fragments of ice and stones which are brought down with the lighter material. It is only an avalanche of the broadest pattern that imitates the deep roll of thunder. And this reminds me to mention that some of the most deafening sounds that one hears in the Alps are not easily explained. As he is gazing intently upon the Jungfrau, he is startled by an ear-splitting report as of a 500-pounder. He expects, as a matter of course, to see some enormous cornice of ice tumbling down. But all is motionless up there. He asks his guide what has happened. The man tells him that probably a big rock has fallen on the other side of the Jungfrau, or in some ravine on the spectator’s side, but out of his sight. I have observed that, wherever there is a glacier, this loudest and most striking of all the mountain sounds is most often heard. At our hotel (de l’Ours), in Grindelwald, from which two glaciers can be seen, these extraordinary noises called the guests to the doors and windows many times on sunny afternoons. But not once did they see anything which served to explain the mystery. In defiance of the guides, I attribute the sounds to the cracking of ice in the glaciers under the influence of heat. There is something strangely uncanny in the occurrence of such appalling noises without any visible cause.
The guides of Grindelwald, and of all the Bernese Oberland, are an aristocracy. I am referring to those who pilot you safely among the real dangers of the Jungfrau, the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, and the other first-class peaks. The most distinguished of them are named in all the hand-books. They pose as objects of admiration in the streets. And they are well worth looking at. They are lithe and sinewy, with frank, resolute faces. They mostly dress in corduroy velveteen, with slouch hats of the same. Their yellow beards sweep their breasts. A provokingly slow gait also identifies them. They walk—unless under the spur of necessity—about half as fast as the ordinary American or Englishman. A friend of mine, in tow of a guide, consumed six hours in the ascent of the Wengern Alp from Grindelwald. The usual time is only three hours. But he arrived at the top perfectly unblown, and then appreciated the wisdom of going slowly. These men are very taciturn. They give opinions about the weather with great reluctance, if at all, and will not converse about anything while in the act of climbing. Thus they save their wind, the want of which is so trying to inexperienced Alpine tourists. But, what they lack in affability they make up in essential service. They will stand by their employer in every tight place, and will rescue his remains and bear them back to the valley, if he persists in despising the guide’s advice and perishes in consequence.
These trusty fellows make great friends of members of the Alpine Club, and are sometimes well paid for leaving their beloved Switzerland and aiding in the conquest of high mountains in the antipodes. One of the corps has visited both India and New Zealand for this purpose. He showed as much sagacity in attacking the redoubtable giants of those distant countries as if he had known all about their weakest points from his infancy. In every case he took his patron successfully to the top, by a route which he instinctively chose as the easiest and the best. This guide returned home through London, and, while there, his employer made him the subject of an interesting experiment to test his “bump” of locality. One evening the man was asked to take a ride across London in a cab. He was driven a distance of many miles, and the route was purposely made as tangled and intricate as possible. Arriving at their destination—the house of an Alpine celebrity—the cab was dismissed. After a short detention, the guide was told to return with his employer through the same streets which they had traversed in their roundabout journey. And he did it without making a single mistake, although an entire stranger in the great city. The man had not the faintest suspicion that he would be asked to do this difficult thing. He had almost unconsciously marked down the whole labyrinthine route. He did in London exactly what he would have done without the least effort among the mountains of his native land. His observation and memory of trifles supplied the unerring clews by which he retraced his way through the maze of the metropolis.