Winter Sports in Switzerland

by E. F. Benson

But the wonder of her, when seen through clear air with the brilliant winter sky around her head from the entrance to this valley that leads up to Lauterbrunnen! Up it we steamed in a little angry rattling snorting train, which cut itself in half to take some of its aspiring contents to Grindelwald on the left, and others among whom I numbered myself to Wengen and to Mürren. By the side of our way ran a turbulent mountain stream fed by the glaciers of the Oberland, too swift to freeze altogether, but with its backwaters and sheltered reaches covered over with lids of ice. For all its glacier-birth steam rose from it in the icy air that hovered in shaded places, and the alders and hazels that hung over it were thickly encrusted with the marvellous jewellery of the hoar-frost, spiked and parsemès and refoliaged in wondrous winter growth with tendrils and scrolls of minutest diamond-dust. Narrower grew the valley, steeper and taller the wooded hills that overhung it till at last we reached Lauterbrunnen, close to which the Staubbach, most amazing of all waterfalls, leaps a clear eight hundred feet from the edge of the high plateau-shelf, which skirts along the mountain-side on to the rocks below. Even in summer, when the melting of the snows that feed the stream make it of far greater volume than when the stricture of frost is on it, the water, poured as from a jug-spout, disintegrates in its fall, so that it reaches the valley more in wreaths of mist than in solid water, and collects again from the dripping rocks; while in winter its diminished volume is further spent in the manufacture of the huge icicles that fringe the edge of its leaping-place, and hang in great streamers, the beard and hair, you would say, of the very Frost-king himself, who sits at ease on this precipitous throne. Little water to-day runs away from where the clouds of mist and water-smoke fall on the rocks, for most of them are frozen there, and a layer of ice covers the boulders where they come to earth. For here, so engorged lies the valley, so close to the great rampart of the Oberland, that the sun which blazed on Interlaken has not yet surmounted the barrier of mountain-peaks.

Parallel with the Staubbach, and up a hillside which appears hardly less sheer than the precipice itself, runs the funicular railway which leads to the Mürren-plateau. At first sight it seems as if it must be meant for a practical joke, constructed by humorous engineers to astonish the weak minds of travellers, and, though practical from the point of view of a joke, to be perfectly impracticable as a means of conveyance. Its steepness is that of disordered images seen in a dream, and it was with a sense of utter incredulity that I first took my place in one of the small wooden compartments and was locked in by an apparently sane and serious conductor. He blew a whistle, or a bell sounded, just as is done on real lines of traffic, and immediately afterwards we began to ascend that impossible line of rails, sauntering with smooth and steady progress up that ridiculous precipice. More amazing still we soon observed a similar car sauntering steadily down it, just strolling down, even as we were strolling up. We met, we passed, and I had a vision of passengers smoking and chatting, as if nothing in the least remarkable was happening and imminent death did not await us all....

But more remarkable things than that were happening. Upwards from the valley we climbed on this Jacob’s ladder that reached if not to Heaven, to very heavenly places. Pine woods and rocks melted away below, streaming quietly downwards; presently we were level with the top of the towering precipice from which the Staubbach was discharged, and presently that too was left below. But higher as we mounted there climbed with us, in fresh unfoldings of glaciers and peaks and glittering snow fields, the great range of the Oberland. New peaks “met Heaven in snow,” new arêtes, too steep and wind-swept to allow a vestige of snow to lie there pointed arrow-like to the tops above them. Eiger, Monch, Silberhorn, and Jungfrau towered glittering just across the Lauterbrunnen valley from which we had come, and as we sidled along the upland shelf on which Mürren stands, gradually the whole range spread itself out in tremendous rampart, radiant, rejoicing, and austere. For foreground was this narrow ledge of white fields dotted here and there with cattle-châlets, and pines scattered singly or in companies, all wearing plumes and tippets of snow that made their foliage seem a black blot in the sunlight, and soon the congregation of village roofs appeared, and Mürren stood bathed and basking in sunshine, drowned, so to speak, in the sparkling champagne of the invigorating winter morning. And the intoxication of the high places, an entrancing vintage of oxygen and ice and sun, invaded limb and sinew and brain.

It is supposed by those who have never seen the infinite variety of forms into which frost converts mist and dew and all manner of water, that there must be a monotony in those vast expanses of snow and ice. They figure to themselves the depressing spectacle of snow as it usually appears in England, smooth and soft and wet, and too close a cousin to slush not to be tainted with a family resemblance; the image called up by ice is a grey surface in which are imbedded dead leaves, twigs and stones thrown on to it by boys for purposes not clearly understandable, while all they know of hoar-frost is an evanescent decoration that occurs at the edges of ditches and on lawns when tea is being made in the morning and disappears as soon as the poached eggs, leaving the grass soaked and dripping. But as is crystal to soap so are those radiant congelations of the High Alps to the same as seen beneath grey skies and unluminous days. Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees wear fine feathers and plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. During the fall of the snow there has been moisture in the air, and often on that brilliant morning that succeeds the fall, the air is full of minute frozen particles of water that sparkle like the old-fashioned glass-decoration on Christmas cards, so that one walks through a shining company of tiniest diamond fire-flies. And the frozen surface of snow reflects the wonderful azure and gold of sun and sky, and here in the blaze it lies white beneath a vivid yellow, there in the shade a dim blue permeates it. After a few days of hot sun more of the fall will have melted and slipped from the trees, and they stand black-foliaged and red-trunked waiting for the decoration of the hoar-frost. The one more night of frost covers every sprig and fir-needle with amazing spikes and fernlike sprays of minute crystal. Wondrous are their growths, more particularly if, as sometimes happens, some cold mist comes up from the valleys. Then with a craze for decoration almost ludicrous, you shall see your friends with hair and eyebrows bedecked with these jewels, each separate hair wearing its frozen garniture, and their coats and stockings ornamented in like manner. They grow white in a single minute almost; and such as have moustaches, close to the moisture of their breath will suddenly turn to walruses with long dependence of icicles. And yet—here is a conjuring trick again—though ice and frost frame their faces they are conscious of no cold at all.

Marvellous, too, are the dealings of the frost with the running streams and the lakes such as those at St. Moritz or Davos or Sils. Often, unfortunately, it happens that a snowfall will occur when they are but lightly frozen over, in which case the snow quite covers them, breaks through perhaps in places, and with the ice already formed, makes a rough uneven surface useless to the skater, and to the beholder no more than a level snow-field, with perhaps ugly stains on it where the water has come through and formed the grey ice, which is of no artistic moment. But sometimes it happens that a snowfall occurs before any ice has formed on the lake, and thus, though it lies on the surrounding ground, it melts in the water, and at the end of the fall the lake is still unfrozen, though the winter mantle lies over field and wood. Then let us suppose there comes a hard frost with no more snow. Night after night ice absolutely clear like glass forms on the water and gradually thickens. If the days are windless it is entirely smooth, and practically invisible, so that it is impossible to believe that you are not looking on a sheet of water. Then the glad word goes forth that the lake bears, and you hurry forth to skate on it. But mountain and wood and landscape are all mirrored in it as in perfectly still water, and it is almost incredible that here is ice a foot or two thick. Tremblingly you launch yourself on it, scarcely able to believe in its solidity; for through that unwavering surface you see every weed and stump under water. The very fishes flit and flick visibly below your feet, and so glassy is it that through it it is possible to see the subaqueous foundations of the lacustrine dwellings in the lake of Sils, never to be seen unless the lake is frozen, since the slightest ripple of the water sets the surface a-quiver and mars its translucency. But seen through this foot or so of perfectly clear ice—black ice, as it is called—it is as if one looked through that charming contrivance called the bathyscope, by which you can observe the depths of the sea. Below the ice, the water lies still and in a calm sheltered by this solid ceiling of crystal, and you see, as if in an aquarium, the fishes and the water-weeds, and all the gales that ever blew will not shatter the reflections or obscure the depths. Then when your courage has come to you, and you begin to grasp the fact that an army might march across this invisible plain of ice without breaking through, you will no doubt venture forth from the shore, and feel what you never feel on rinks and other prepared surfaces of ice, the divine elasticity of your floor. And very likely just when you are some half-mile from the shore, you will be terror-stricken to hear a crack as of artillery resound close to you, and a great crack will zigzag like lightning through the ice. The first time you hear that, the present writer is willing to wager any reasonable sum that your face will blanch (unless too sun-tanned) and you will skate with incredible celerity for the nearest land. But that salvo portends no danger whatever, except if your skate-blade enters such a crack (of which there will be, unfortunately, a considerable number in the course of a few days) longitudinally. Then it is true you may have a fall, but these explosions do not mean that you will ever be food for fishes.

But after a few days, in all probability, even though no snow falls, the surface of the ice, except where it is kept swept, becomes useless for skating, thanks to another of the wonderful conjuring tricks of the frost. Owing to dew, or from other moisture in the air, there begin to form upon the ice little nuclei of hoar-frost such as are seen in Plate VI. They look harmless enough, and with perfect justice you admire their exquisite fanlike fronds, and think no more of them. But in a couple of days the same surface, as shown from the identical point of view in Plate VII, presents a totally different aspect, and one which is clearly discouraging to the most ardent of skaters. But then, since you are finally and completely and irrevocably thwarted in any ambition to skate on this depressing surface (for it is as if all the ice-moles in the world had made their common earth there, multiplying exceedingly), you will be wise to examine and admire the astounding forms of this fairy frost-work before it becomes confluent, and, losing the individuality of its separate tufts, covers the whole lake like powdery snow. In Plate VIII you may see the marvellous delicacy in detail of these bouquets of frost-flowers, and the same on larger scale in Plate IX, where they are already becoming a very jungle of anti-tropical growth.

In that wonderful poem “By the Fireside,” Robert Browning, in speaking of the Alps in autumn, says:

“But at afternoon or almost eve
’Tis better; then the silence grows
To that extent you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows
Its bosom does so heave.”

And that which he weds to such lovely language is another of the spells which the circle of the Alpine day and night weaves round us. Only, I think, in winter the silence which he speaks of at evening, or, he might have added at night, is a thing incredible to those who, I may almost say, have never heard that silence. In spring or summer or autumn it is broken by sounds of cowbells perhaps, and, almost certainly by a murmur of wind in pine-woods, or of water hurrying from the heights. But in winter, on a still evening those evidences of life are dumb, and yet the silence itself is pregnant with vitality. At sunset the high tops burn in rose-coloured flame, and as the glory fades into the toneless velvet of the frosty sky, the stars in their wheeling are of a brilliance utterly unknown to lower altitudes, except perhaps where the desert lies fallow and dry beneath Egyptian skies, and no emanation from the earth dims the burning of these “patins of bright gold.” But that “quiring to the bright-eyed Seraphim” reaches not the mortal ear, and at evening or at night in these High Alps, there is felt, as it were, that ecstasy of silence that seems on the point of bursting into chorus: “it must get rid of what it knows.” Nowhere else have I felt so rapturous a quality of stillness: the frozen snow lies taut under the grip of the immense energy of the frost: no avalanches slipping from the snow-laden flanks of the Jungfrau under the hot beams of the sun, startle the valley with sonorous thunder: the wind stirs not the lightest needle of the pines; the villagers are home from the frozen fields, and doors are shut. Slowly the last rose-colour fades from the peaks, and the stars brighten, and you hold your breath to hear the most wonderful thing you have ever heard—utter stillness, that yet is strained almost to bursting point with the energies that make it, the peace that passes understanding that lies above the snow and beneath the stars....

Then having heard it, having thought perhaps you understood it, or best of all, being conscious that you do not understand it at all, you may start for home, and glide on your skis down a slope to the very doors of your hotel. Probably you will have a great many falls, for it is the most difficult thing in the world—which is saying a good deal—to ski with the smallest success in a fading or faded light. But you will have heard the silence of the winter night: that will generously console you for your misadventures....