Mountaineering by Telescope.
By Harold J. Shepstone.
An interesting account of the giant telescopes which have been erected on the Swiss mountains. They are very popular among visitors, who are enabled to watch climbers ascending difficult peaks, and in this way many accidents have been detected, the prompt dispatch of rescue-parties saving scores of lives. The instruments are so powerful that on clear days it is possible to see a distance of a hundred miles, and persons forty miles away appear almost within hailing distance!
A new attraction has been added to the long list which Switzerland offers in the form of the powerful observing telescopes which have been erected all over the country. You find them everywhere—in the grounds of the leading hotels, at the various railway stations, and at almost every point from which a panoramic view of the mountains can be obtained. There is one on the Jungfrau, for instance, which stands at an altitude of just over ten thousand feet above sea-level, and there are many others at elevations varying from five to seven thousand feet. They are rendered conspicuous by their construction and size, and are of an efficiency which, aided by the atmospherical conditions in the mountains, almost dumbfounds the tourist from more murky regions, for it is wellnigh incredible what one can see through these giant glasses.
THE TELESCOPE AT THE RIFFELALP.
From a Photograph.
It is only during the last few seasons that these telescopes have been erected to any extent, but the innovation has deservedly "caught on." Few of us have time or the physical strength to ascend the highest peaks in the Alps, but we can now do our mountaineering by means of the great telescopes, a peep through which brings the solitary and almost inaccessible regions of ice and snow to our very feet. The instruments produce a wonderful stereoscopic effect, everything standing out boldly and clearly, and appearing to be only a few yards away. There, right in front of us, looms forth in solitary grandeur some bleak and lofty summit which only the feet of the most experienced Alpinists have ever trod. Below are the gullies, so treacherous to the climber, and to the right and left great ridges which can only be safely crossed by the exercise of the greatest skill. Here and there are mighty crevasses and great glaciers. Without the slightest exertion on our part the whole beauty and grandeur of the mountain is placed before our eyes.
The telescopes fulfil other useful purposes besides gratifying the sightseer. If we have friends making some dangerous or difficult ascent, we can turn the glass upon them and watch their progress step by step. Every famous ascent nowadays is invariably watched through telescopes in this way. If the climbers are forty, or even sixty, miles away they can be detected and their movements followed almost as easily as though they were within hailing distance. This watching of climbers is one of the favourite pastimes of visitors. You can see them cutting steps in the ice when negotiating some difficult ridge, watch them paying out rope as they skirt along the edge of some dangerous crevasse, and, in a word, share the pleasure and excitement of their trip.
"SHE FOUND HERSELF SHOOTING DOWN TOWARDS THE EDGE."
The telescopes, too, have often been the means of saving life. When Alpinists are in serious difficulty, the guides at once make signals, and a relief party is promptly sent to their aid. The signal is the repetition of a sound, the wave of a flag, or the flash of a lantern at regular intervals, at the rate of six signals a minute, followed by a pause of a minute, with a continuation every alternate minute. Observers using the telescopes have often detected these signals before anyone else and given the alarm, when aid has at once been dispatched to those in distress. Sometimes, too, telescope-watchers have discovered climbers in difficulty, and have sent someone to their help. Were it not for the instruments, in fact, many men and women who have ventured far without guides would have perished. Only the other week a lady tourist, who had gone up the mountain alone, had a narrow escape from death, and probably owes her life to the fact that a guide happened to be idly watching her through one of the telescopes. In endeavouring to take a short cut down to the hotel she missed her footing, and in an instant found herself shooting down towards the edge of a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty feet. By the merest chance she was thrown into the branches of a pine tree some twenty feet over the edge, and there she hung, unable to move. The horrified observer at once left the telescope and informed the hotel proprietor, and in just under the hour four guides with ropes had reached the spot and rescued her. She was comparatively uninjured, but almost dead with fright.
One might be inclined to think that with the numerous mountain railways that have penetrated into the very heart of the Alps during the last few years, the big observation telescope was really a superfluous luxury. As a matter of fact, however, the railways have rendered the telescope more necessary than ever. Indeed, the railway authorities do not consider their equipment complete unless at the very summit of their line they erect one of these giant instruments. These wonderful railways—monuments of engineering skill though they be—only land one several thousand feet below the actual summit. The view here, of course, is grand, but the snow-covered peak, the almost untrodden summit—the very thing the ordinary individual most wishes to see—is almost undiscernible to the naked eye. But with the telescope it is different. The summit comes right into the field of vision in an instant, grand and majestic, standing out boldly and clearly, appearing to be only a few yards away. Then the glass can be turned upon the whole surface of the mountain, and in this way one learns more about the formation of the rocks and glaciers and steep ridges than he would do by weeks of arduous climbing among them.
A word or two about the telescopes themselves will be appropriate here, for they are no ordinary instruments. The one at Nürren is valued at a hundred and twenty pounds. It is a double instrument, and two persons can look through it at the same time. The other instruments depicted in the various photographs are valued at from sixty-five to ninety pounds apiece. They were made by the famous optical firm of Carl Zeiss, of Jena, and represent the last word in telescope construction. Not all the telescopes through which visitors may peep for a small fee on the mountains of Switzerland were supplied by this firm, though there are certainly a large number of them. They are to be found on the Riffelalp, above Zermatt; on the Schynige Platte, near Interlaken; on the Rigi, the Weissenstein, near Solothurn; the Wengern-Alp, on the Jungfrau Railway; at Berne, Grindelwald, and other places.
THE FIVE-INCH TELESCOPE AT NÃœRREN.
From a Photograph.
Without going into technicalities, it may be added that the instruments are fitted with the new Jena glass, which is perfectly transparent, and, therefore, gives a clear image. In cutting and polishing the glasses every care was taken to eliminate chromatic aberrations, this being of great importance for landscape observations, the image being thus freed from the distracting coloured borders with which every user of ordinary glasses is familiar. The instruments may be roughly divided into two classes: monocular and binocular (i.e., those through which the observation is made with one eye only, and those through which it is made with two). The former are mostly fitted with a revolving appliance, the turning of which allows of a rapid change of magnifying power. The object glasses in these instruments vary from four inches to five inches in diameter. The four-inch instrument magnifies objects thirty-five, fifty-three, and seventy-three times, according to the turning of the wheel, and the five-inch glass instrument thirty-five, fifty-eight, and a hundred and sixteen times.
The binocular instruments are contrivances astonishing in their effect. It is well known that our power of perspective rapidly decreases as the distance from the object increases. The reason of this is that the facial angle at which objects appear decreases with the distance, and finally becomes so slight that we lose all power of estimating it. We can, however, enlarge this angle by approaching the object, or by bringing it apparently near to us. This is accomplished in these five-foot telescopes by the employment of an artificial medium, so that separate objects in a landscape view twenty miles distant—houses, trees, people, etc.—appear as if they were only eighteen yards away. The effect is wonderful and charming. Mountain peaks and wooded valleys, which when seen through an ordinary telescope are all apparently on the same plane, stand out sharp, clear, and in glowing natural colours.
There is a telescope on the Uetliberg, close to Zürich, through which on a clear day it is possible to detect the stone signal on one of the peaks of the Diablerets, near Lausanne, almost at the other end of Switzerland, being a distance of not less than ninety-six miles. This signal is only about four feet high. Climbers on the Titlis, forty miles distant, can easily be seen through this telescope, as well as the hotel on the Faulhorn, sixty miles distant, and, in very fine weather, the small trigonometrical signal itself. From the instrument on the Rigi the crevasses in all parts of the Alpine chain, and also one of the church clocks in Schaffhausen, may be plainly seen. From the observation station on the Riffelalp the movements of the Matterhorn climbers can be followed as clearly as if they were within hailing distance. Through the telescope on the Schynige Platte in the Bernese Oberland the timid and unapproachable chamois may be observed on precipices miles distant, and persons on the four-miles-distant Faulhorn are easily distinguishable.
"THEY WERE ALMOST BURIED IN SNOW AND DOING THEIR UTMOST TO STRUGGLE THROUGH IT."
When it is remembered that there were seventy five fatalities in the Alps last year, and three hundred and fifty more or less grave accidents to climbers, it will be seen that observation of the movements of persons upon the mountains through the telescopes fulfils a useful purpose. There is no doubt that Mr. Turner, a well-known English Alpinist, owes his life to-day to the fact that he was watched in this way during his attempt to cross the Col Bonder-Krinden (seven thousand two hundred feet high) last season. He was accompanied by a guide named Amschwand. An observer at a telescope watched their ascent and followed them step by step, until a blinding snowstorm arose. They were then lost to view for several minutes, when suddenly they were detected apparently almost buried in snow and doing their utmost to struggle through it. The observer gave the alarm and, it being then late in the afternoon, it was decided to send a search-party out on the following morning at sunrise. Meanwhile the couple on the mountain realized that their only hope of life was to reach a hut on the pass, and they heroically struggled on through six feet of snow. They arrived at the hut exhausted and without food, for they had brought none, as the Col, under ordinary conditions, is easy to climb. The snow penetrated into the hut and the unfortunate pair were literally buried beneath it. Next morning ten guides left Adelboden to search for them, solely because their distress had been noticed through the telescope. The rescuers, however, were driven back by avalanches, several of them being injured. A second search-party was finally got together, and they succeeded, after great hardships and at no little risk, in digging their way to the hut, where they found Mr. Turner and his guide starving, frost-bitten, and in the last stage of exhaustion. They had been imprisoned in the hut for forty-eight hours. After administering restoratives the rescuers carried the couple to Adelboden.
Last season thirteen persons lost their lives in the Alps while attempting to gather edelweiss and other mountain flowers. There is no doubt the number would have been greater were it not for the part played by the telescopes. Two young English ladies staying at Zermatt decided to collect some edelweiss and take it back to London with them. They learned that the flowers could be obtained within four hours' journey up the mountain, and one bright morning started off in the highest spirits. Everything went well until late in the afternoon, when they were returning with their prize, much pleased with themselves as the result of their adventure. If they had followed the same path as that which they had taken, all would no doubt have been well; but, believing they could make the journey shorter, they descended by a different route and came to grief. Suddenly they found their way blocked, and decided to negotiate a short but dangerous ridge. In doing this one of them fell a distance of some twenty feet, fortunately into fairly soft snow, but the weight of the lady's body broke her ankle, and there she lay, unable to move. With the greatest difficulty her companion got down to her and remained by her side. Then a snowstorm came on, descended, and blotted them from view. This accident was witnessed through a telescope by a boy, who had sense enough to give the alarm, and two guides were at once dispatched to escort the ladies down the mountain. They soon found them, but it was clear that if the rescuers had not arrived when they did the two girls might have fared very badly. They had completely lost their nerve, and were found huddled together in the snow, crying hysterically.
THE GIANT TELESCOPE AT SCHYNIGE PLATTE, NEAR INTERLAKEN.
From a Photograph.
Few mountains look more absolutely inaccessible than the mighty Matterhorn, standing up at the head of the Zermatt Valley like a prodigious obelisk, some fifteen thousand feet in height. The first impression one gets on viewing the mountain is that one could no more climb it than he could scale Cleopatra's Needle. Naturally, therefore, it is the peak that attracts the attention of the more daring climbers, and watchers using the telescopes that are trained upon this mountain are frequently afforded wonderful glimpses of what it means to ascend its steep sides and cut one's way step by step up its ice-covered slopes. Some nasty accidents, too, have been witnessed through the glasses which command this famous mountain—hapless climbers have been seen to miss their footing and hurtle downwards for hundreds of feet until lost to view in some abyss. It is then that search-parties are at once organized, and for hours their movements in turn are eagerly watched through the telescopes. Then comes the pitiable sight of the return of the rescuers, dragging the dead bodies over the ice behind them. Fortunately, such incidents as these are rare, and to the ordinary visitor the mountain telescopes of Switzerland are appreciated for the wonderful scenery they reveal and the opportunities they afford of doing one's mountaineering by deputy.
