The Alps

by Arnold Lunn

Alpine History is not easy to divide into arbitrary periods; and yet the conquest of the Matterhorn does in a certain sense define a period. It closes what has been called “the golden age of mountaineering.” Only a few great peaks still remained unconquered. In this chapter we shall try to sketch some of the tendencies which differentiate modern mountaineering from mountaineering in the so-called “golden age.”

The most radical change has been the growth of guideless climbing, which was, of course, to be expected as men grew familiar with the infinite variety of conditions that are the essence of mountaineering. In a previous chapter we have discussed the main differences between guided and guideless climbing. It does not follow that a man of considerable mountaineering experience, who habitually climbs with guides need entirely relinquish the control of the expedition. Such a man—there are not many—may, indeed, take a guide as a reserve of strength, or as a weight carrier. He may enjoy training up a young and inexperienced guide, who has a native talent for rock and ice, while lacking experience and mountain craft. One occasionally finds a guide who is a first-class cragsman, but whose general knowledge of mountain strategy is inferior to that of a great amateur. In such a combination, the latter will be the real general of the expedition, even if the guide habitually leads on difficult rock and does the step-cutting. On the other hand a member of a guideless party may be as dependent on the rest of the party as another man on his guides. Moreover, tracks, climbers, guides and modern maps render the mental work of the leader, whether amateur or professional, much less arduous than in more primitive days.

But when we have made all possible allowance for the above considerations, there still remains a real and radical distinction between those who rely on their own efforts and those who follow a guide. The man who leads even on one easy expedition obtains a greater insight into the secrets of his craft than many a guided climber with a long list of first-class expeditions.

One of the earliest of the great guideless climbs was the ascent of Mont Blanc by E. S. Kennedy, Charles Hudson (afterwards killed on the first ascent of the Matterhorn), Grenville and Christopher Smyth, E. J. Stevenson and Charles Ainslie. Their climb was made in 1855, and was the first complete ascent of Mont Blanc from St. Gervais, though the route was not new except in combination, as every portion of it had been previously done on different occasions. One of the first systematic guideless climbers to attract attention was the Rev. A. G. Girdlestone, whose book, The High Alps without Guides, appeared in 1870. This book was the subject of a discussion at a meeting of the Alpine Club. Mr. Grove, a well-known mountaineer, read a paper on the comparative skill of travellers and guides, and used Girdlestone’s book as a text. Mr. Grove said: “The net result of mountaineering without guides appears to be this, that, in twenty-one expeditions selected out of seventy for the purposes of description, the traveller failed absolutely four times; was in great danger three times; was aided in finding the way back by the tracks of other men’s guides four times; succeeded absolutely without aid of any kind ten times on expeditions, four of which were very easy, three of moderate difficulty, and one very difficult.” The “very difficult” expedition is the Wetterhorn, which is nowadays considered a very modest achievement.

Mr. Girdlestone was a pioneer, with the limitations of a pioneer. His achievements judged by modern standards are modest enough, but he was the first to insist that mountaineering without guides is an art, and that mountaineering with guides is often only another form of conducted travel. The discussion that followed, as might be expected, at that time was not favourable either to Girdlestone or to guideless climbing. Probably each succeeding year will see his contribution to modern mountaineering more properly appreciated. The “settled opinion of the Alpine Club” was declared without a single dissentient to be that “the neglect to take guides on difficult expeditions is totally unjustifiable.”

But guideless climbing had come to stay. A year after this memorable meeting of the Alpine Club, two of its members carried out without guides some expeditions more severe than anything Girdlestone had attempted. In 1871 Mr. John Stogdon, a well-known Harrow master, and the Rev. Arthur Fairbanks ascended the Nesthorn and Aletschhorn, and in the following year climbed the Jungfrau and Aletschhorn unguided. No record of these expeditions found its way into print. In 1876, a party of amateurs, Messrs. Cust, Cawood, and Colgrove climbed the Matterhorn without guides. This expedition attracted great attention, and was severely commented on in the columns of the Press. Mr. Cust, in an eloquent paper read before the Alpine Club, went to the root of the whole matter when he remarked: “Cricket is a sport which is admitted by all to need acquired skill. A man can buy his mountaineering as he can buy his yachting. None the less, there are yachtsmen and yachtsmen.”

Systematic climbing on a modern scale without guides was perhaps first practised by Purtscheller and Zsigmondys in 1880. Among our own people, it found brilliant exponents in Morse, Mummery, Wicks, and Wilson some twenty years ago; and it has since been adopted by many of our own leading mountaineers. Abroad, guideless climbing finds more adherents than with us. Naturally enough, the man who lives near the mountains will find it easier to make up a guideless party among his friends; and, if he is in the habit of spending all his holidays and most of his week-ends among the mountains that can be reached in a few hours from his home, he will soon acquire the necessary skill to dispense with guides.

So much for guideless climbing. Let us now consider some of the other important developments in the practice of mountaineering. In the Alps the tendency has been towards specialisation. Before 1865 the ambitious mountaineer had scores of unconquered peaks to attack. After the defeat of the Matterhorn, the number of the unclimbed greater mountains gradually thinned out. The Meije, which fell in 1877, was one of the last great Alpine peaks to remain unclimbed. With the development of rock-climbing, even the last and apparently most hopelessly inaccessible rock pinnacles of the Dolomites and Chamounix were defeated. There is no rock-climbing as understood in Wales or Lakeland or Skye on giants of the Oberland or Valais, such as the Schreckhorn or Matterhorn. These tax the leader’s power of choosing a route, his endurance and his knowledge of snow and ice, and weather; but their demands on the pure cragsman are less. The difficulty of a big mountain often depends very much on its condition and length. Up to 1865 hardly any expeditions had been carried through—with a few exceptions, such as the Brenva route up Mont Blanc—that a modern expert would consider exceptionally severe. Modern rock-climbing begins in the late ’seventies. The expeditions in the Dolomites by men like Zsigmondy, Schmitt, and Winkler, among foreign mountaineers, belong to much the same period as Burgener and Mummery classic climbs in the Chamounix district.

Mummery is, perhaps, best known in connection with the first ascent of the Grepon by the sensational “Mummery crack,” when his leader was the famous Alexander Burgener aided by a young cragsman, B. Venetz. Venetz, as a matter of fact, led up the “Mummery” crack. Mummery’s vigorous book, which has become a classic, contains accounts of many new expeditions, such as the Grepon, the Requin, the Matterhorn by the Zmutt arête, and the Caucasian giant Dych Tau, to name the more important. His book, My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus, is thoroughly typical of the modern view of mountaineering. It contains some doctrines that are still considered heretical, such as the safety of a party of two on a snow-covered glacier, and many doctrines that are now accepted, such as the justification of guideless climbing and of difficult variation routes. Shortly after the book appeared, Mummery was killed on Nanga Parbat, as was Emil Zsigmondy on the Meije soon after the issue of his book on the dangers of the Alps.

But even Dolomites and Chamounix aiguilles are not inexhaustible, and the number of unconquered summits gradually diminished. The rapid opening up of the Alps has naturally turned the attention of men with the exploring instinct and ample means to the exploration of the great mountain ranges beyond Europe. This does not fall within the scope of the present volume, and we need only remark in passing that British climbers have played an important part in the campaigns against the fortresses of the Himalaya, Caucasus, Andes, and Rockies.