J. Gilbert delt.
THE CIMON DELLA PALA AND CIMA DI VEZZANA
At our feet was a deep hollow lying under the back of the Cimon della Pala. We descended into it, and found it the first of a series of basins connected by steep troughs, at this early season snow-filled, but later in the year, when the rocks are bare, steep enough to require some scrambling.
We were threading a defile among the mountain-tops. Sheer walls of cliff impended on one hand; on the other the rocks of the Cima di Vezzana towered aloft in forms of the utmost daring, yet too massive and sublime to suggest the epithet 'grotesque.' Here was rock scenery seen in its purest simplicity, with no variety or relief from its sternness except what it could itself afford in the shapes and colouring of the crags. It was a Val Travernanzes destitute of its only elements of life—verdure and water. In one of the lower troughs a slender stream took the place of snow as a covering for the rock-surfaces, and we were forced to get down as best we could by the side of and sometimes through the cascade. At the end of the last basin the stream entered a narrow gorge. There was still no trace of path, and sometimes only just sufficient footing beside the water. We began to fear lest we might be trapped, when notched logs of wood placed as rough ladders against the rocks showed that some passage existed. Presently the opening of the gorge came in sight, and the opposing rock-walls gave space for an exquisite picture—the green slopes and rugged summit of the Cima di Pape bathed in a flood of sunshine. After plundering a bed of lilies of the valley (a rare flower in the Alps), we came to the brink of the cliff above the Gares valley. A log had been thrown across the water on the very edge of a waterfall. This rustic bridge was not substantial to look at, and too narrow for anything but Blondin or a monkey to walk over. We crossed it singly astride, and found on the other side a path which led us by a wide sweep round the rock-wall. This track recrosses the stream, still a mass of foam, beneath a fall which is perhaps the prettiest in the dolomite country. It then zigzags down rhododendron-covered slopes to the floor of the valley.
The village of Gares is perched on a knoll in the centre of a fertile basin and in full view of the green slopes of the Gesurette. Rugged cliffs form a complete barrier on the west, and the tiny gap from which we had emerged looked now the most unlikely entrance possible to a pass.
A haymaker of whom we enquired for an 'osteria' took possession of us and led the way to his cottage, where, having first hunted out benches and stools from all sorts of corners, he entertained us on milk, cheese, and butter. He knew of the existence of the pass we had crossed, but spoke of it as only used by chamois-hunters, and was unable to give it a name. Our host was most unwilling to receive even a trifle for his hospitality. Beyond Gares the valley is open and less wild and savage than most of the neighbouring glens. It runs at first in a north-easterly direction along the base of the Cima di Pape, until at an hour's distance from Gares the Val di Valles, through which runs the mule-track of the Valles Pass to Paneveggio, opens on the left and the united streams bend due east to join Val d'Agordo. At the corner stands Forno dei Canali, the bakehouse of the valleys, a long straggling village which uses the only path for a drain, and sadly needs sanitary reform. We had to creep under the walls and jump from stone to stone to avoid the sea of filth. Just beyond the last houses Monte Civetta, more tower-like in form than usual, closes the view. A picturesque defile—where the river, which flows beside the road, was almost choked by logs on their voyage from the upper forest to the saw-mills—led down to Cencenighe, a short two hours below the lake of Alleghe and somewhat less from Agordo.
We have now twice crossed the great horseshoe. There remains a third passage, the only one unknown to the people of the country, across the deep narrow gap between the Cimon della Pala and the Cima di Vezzana. This pass—which, in virtue of the privilege of discoverers, I venture to call the Passo di Travignolo—leads from Paneveggio to Gares.
On a clear starlight evening in September 1872 our carriage, hired at an exorbitant rate from the inn-master at Vigo, drew up before the shining windows of the hospice of Paneveggio. My friend and I were unprovided with guides, not purposely or because no peasants fit to undertake such service were to be found in the Venetian Alps, but from a combination of personal accidents. In the Alps only for a fortnight I had not thought it worth while to summon François Devouassoud from his far-off home. My friend, who had counted on the services of Santo Siorpaes of Cortina, had found him already engaged to a lady who had taken the first cragsman in Tyrol to lead her mule.
But the assurances we had received before leaving England that the untrodden crest of the Cima di Vezzana was likely to be attainable without serious difficulty encouraged us to persevere in our intentions against that mountain; and at the first opportunity we applied to the people of the inn to procure for us the best chamois-hunter of the neighbourhood to carry our provisions and to serve as a third on the rope. A peasant of stalwart size and manly bearing was soon produced who, by his professions of readiness to go anywhere, created a favourable first impression, weakened it is true, in my mind, by some slight suspicion that his 'anywhere' might be different to ours, and possibly mean anywhere he had been before. But for this doubt I had no foundation except the stubborn disbelief shown by our proposed companion in Mr. Whitwell's ascent of the Cimon della Pala. In such a discussion it is difficult to know how to act. To tamely leave a fellow-countryman's credit to take care of itself, with the precarious assistance of any stonemen he may have left behind him, is opposed to one's impulse. Yet the statement that an Englishman's word is above question loses its impressiveness when delivered with a consciousness that your assertions are at that very moment accepted as the strongest evidence to the contrary.
Shortly after five A.M. we were on the path which follows the eastern branch of the Travignolo. After some time the hills opened, the stream bent suddenly to the south, and wide grassy spaces extended along its banks. High against the sky the pale heads of the dolomites rose in a bare gigantic row. Above the end of the glen towered the gaunt form of the Cimon della Pala girt about his loins by a glacier, the only ice-stream in this group which makes a determined effort to descend into the valley. A grass-slope and a stone-slope led us to the ice, which rose in a steep and slippery bank. Higher up its more level surface was split by a few incipient crevasses, the largest of a size to engulf the heel of a boot or a torpid butterfly. Unluckily they did not escape the keen eyes of our hunter, and he proceeded to probe one of them with his staff. When he had done so his face assumed an air of singular resolution, and to our utter astonishment he informed us that the ice was hollow and that it would be madness to proceed. We of course pointed to the rope he carried on his shoulders. In vain; our philosopher briefly remarked that 'life was more than gulden,' and prepared to descend.