This line from Spiez terminates at Zsweisimmen, and at Zsweisimmen begins a light mountain railway which traverses the upland valley southwards, and debouches at Montreux on the Lake of Geneva. This valley itself is of an average height of between 3000 and 4000 feet, but on either side of it are lines of hills of considerably greater altitudes, which abound in admirable ski-ing slopes. Zsweisimmen, Saanan, and Gstaad are all first-rate centres of the sport, and there is skating and tobogganing, including bob-sleighing, to be had. But the clou of all these places is the ski-ing, which is excellent both in quantity and quality.
Further on towards Montreux stands Château d’Oex, an exceedingly charming little place with a good skating-rink. It is not more than 3200 feet above sea-level, and thus the visitor cannot expect the greater security in the matter of frost that the higher places afford, but the ice there is often excellent, and in an average cold winter his enjoyment of it should be uninterrupted. After that the line passes through Les Avants, which is about the same height as Château d’Oex. Here there is a rink, and facilities for tobogganing and bobbing. Finally, at the level of about 3600 feet, Caux, with its palace of a hotel, overlooks the lake itself, much in the manner that Beatenberg overlooks the Lake of Thun.
We are now on the Lake of Geneva, at the upper end of which begins the Rhone valley, which extends right away up to the Simplon pass and the tunnel into Italy. Here are situated three winter resorts, opened and controlled by the Public Schools Winter Sports Club, and a hill-station called Leysin, which, however, in the main, is a place of out-door cure and sun for invalids. These other winter-sport centres are Montana, Villars, and Morgins.
Of these Morgins lies on the south side of the Rhone, at a height of 4600 feet, and is in a well-sheltered basin. A light railway goes up from Aigle to a small village called Trois Torrents, from which Morgins is reached by a sleigh-drive. It is surrounded by excellent ski-ing slopes, and there are good expeditions to be made. This year (1912-1913) it has also started into ardent activity as a nucleus of skating in the English style, and has a very fine rink of about 10,000 square metres. Lying as it does on northern slopes (since it is on the south side of the valley), it is far colder than places of corresponding height facing south, and thus in the matter of the permanence of its ice and snow. At mid-winter the hours of sun are rather short, about four.
Opposite, on the north side of the Rhone, stands Villars, on a shelf of the mountain-side rather than in a valley. It is reached by a mountain-railway from Bex on the main line, and has an altitude of 4200 feet. Climatically it is absolutely ideal in a decently cold winter, and the big hills which shield it to the north and east afford several very good ski-ing expeditions. It has not, however, from a skier’s point of view, the limitless scope of Davos, and it is in the main as a centre of English skating that it has become so popular and widely known. The rink is in extent second only to the public rink at Davos, being about 17,000 metres in extent, and is maintained on the principles of ice-making which have come from Grindelwald. But at Villars the whole expanse of the rink lies in the blaze of the sun, and, as at Davos, there is a restaurant immediately adjoining. Of this big ice-surface a certain part, of adequate size for practice and combined figures, is reserved for those who have passed the National Skating Association’s Third Test, or the lower of the two Villars tests. This, then, forms a club-rink for English skating, which is the only school that at present exists at Villars. There, rink and skating alike have quickly grown big from the small beginnings of some seven years ago, and annually a large number of good skaters spend a month there. Elsewhere on the rink is a strip reserved for curlers, who have also another small private rink. For tobogganers there is provided both an artificial snow-run for the use of luges, and for skeletons a very good ice-run, not, indeed, of the arduousness of the Cresta, but fast and well banked. In addition bob-sleighing can be had on the mountain-track up to La Bretaye, and there are the usual suitable slopes for luges. The place has now been open some eight years, and yearly the four big hotels are crowded with visitors. Nor is this to be wondered at, for, apart from the excellence of its provisions for all manner of winter sports, Villars, set in its pine-woods and faced by the splendid open view across the valley, is possessed of an extraordinary charm of situation and natural beauty.
On a similar northern shelf of mountain, but higher up the Rhone valley, and also higher up in the air, stands Montana. It is reached by an amazing funicular from Sierre, and is 4900 feet above sea-level. Behind and above it and around it stretch limitless ski-ing slopes, and there are any amount of expeditions to be made from it. There are two good rinks: one for curlers, another for skaters; and after a considerable period of Laodicean apathy, Montana seems to have made up its mind to be of the English school. But up till lately it had put its chief energies into ski-ing and curling, and had not pursued skating in that tense and scientific spirit which it deserves. There is a fairly good artificial ice-run for toboggans, and another snow-run down valleywards, and plenty of those quiet, hard-trodden paths down which the amateur tobogganer likes to ramble. There are two lakes which, when the snow has made an agreeable arrangement with the frost, can be used for skating, and in summer, when the sun has come to an understanding with the snow, a fine golf-course is found to reveal itself. But all winter long the sun blazes on Montana, while its altitude and the cold of its nights preserves its frozen mantle. Of the view I have already spoken: there is something to be said for a view in the intervals of falling-down, and in the meditation and quiescence which such falls sometimes entail.
Plate XL
A PRACTICE GROUND