As soon as the first excitement of victory was over we began to look with interest at the new mountain region spread at our feet. The central mass of the Adamello was for the first time before me in such nearness and completeness as to allow of a ready insight into, and understanding of, its character. It is a huge block, large enough to supply materials for half-a-dozen fine mountains. But it is in fact only one. For a length and breadth of many miles the ground never falls below 9,500 feet. The vast central snow-field feeds glaciers pouring to every point of the compass. The highest peaks, such as the Carè Alto and Adamello, are merely slight elevations of the rim of this uplifted plain. Seen from within they are mere hummocks; from without they are very noble mountains falling in great precipices towards the wild glacier-closed glens which run up to their feet.
Imagine an enormous white cloth unevenly laid upon a table, and its shining skirts hanging over here and there between the dark massive supports. The reader, if he will excuse so humble a comparison, may thereby form a better idea of the general aspect of the snow-plains, the rocky buttresses, and overhanging glaciers of the Adamello as they now met our view.
It was clear that the descent of the Nardis Glacier, leading in a direct line to Pinzolo, was perfectly easy, and we half regretted having left our goods on the pass.
Returning a few paces to the highest rocks we spent an hour of pleasant idleness, only broken by the duty of building a cairn in which to ensconce a gigantic water-bottle charged with our cards. About three weeks later our representative received a visitor. Lieut. Julius Payer,[44] an Austrian officer whose name has since become familiar to the English public as the leader of a North Pole expedition, had, unknown to us, been spending the summer in exploring the peaks round Val di Genova. The Presanella, owing partly to the difficulties he found with his native guides, was left to the last, and consequently, when its summit was at length reached, the astonished mountaineers were greeted, not by a maiden peak, but by a fine stoneman.
The staircase which had taken three hours and a half to hew was readily run down in forty-five minutes. On the pass, hereafter to be known as the Passo di Cercen, we dismissed our hunter, with materials for many a long story, and our kindest regards to the douaniers.
A steep, short glacier fell away from our feet into Val di Genova. The ice was at first much fissured, but by bearing towards the rocks on the right we found a slope clear from crevasses and favourable to a long glissade. Soon afterwards we left the glacier, and descended through a gully and over some rough ground till, reaching a lower range of cliffs, we bore well to the left, and discovered a faint track which led us down through underwood to the side of the stream and the first hut. From this point there is a noble view of the Adamello, with the Mandron and Lobbia glaciers[45] shooting out their icy tongues over the rocks at the head of the valley. Hence we dropped down by a good path into the bottom of Val di Genova, which was reached in two hours from the pass.
Although the description of Mr. Ball relieves me from the responsibility of standing sponsor for this wonderful valley, I cannot pass over without a tribute the long, yet though now four times trodden, never wearisome twelve miles which separate the sources of the Sarca above the Bedole Alp from Pinzolo, the first village on its banks.
The Val di Genova leaves behind it an impression as vivid and lasting as any of the more famous scenes of the Alps or the Pyrenees. It is in one aspect a trench cut 8,000 feet deep between the opposite masses of the Adamello and Presanella. From another and perhaps truer point of view it is a winding staircase leading by a succession of abrupt flights and level landings from the low-lying Val Rendena to the crowning heights of the Adamello itself. In the valley there are four such flights or steps, locally called 'scale,' each the cause of a noble waterfall; the fifth step closes the valley proper, and the fall that pours over it is of ice, the flashing tongue of the great Mandron Glacier. The last step divides the glacier from the snow region, and is partially smoothed out by the vast frozen masses which slide over it, as a rapid is concealed by a swollen flood. Besides the falls of the Sarca in the bottom of the valley, the meltings of two great ice-fields have to find a way down its precipitous sides.
Lobbia Alta. Lobbia Bassa. Mte. Mandron.