DIABLERETS—WILDHORN—WILDSTRUBEL—GEMMI PASS.
(Reproduction made with authorisation of the Swiss Topographic Service, 26.8.12)
To face p. 64.
Let me here remind the reader that the Wildhorn hut is away far down on the northern slope of the Wildhorn, at the top of the Iffigenthal. Runners who wish to break their journey and spend a night there will beware of running down the glacier of Tenehet. They will cross the watershed to the north at the point 2,795, or thereabouts, and descend to the point 2,204, in the vicinity of which they will find the hut.
The course on to the Rawyl pass presents no difficulty to a competent runner. When under point 2,767, turn to the south, where the slope dips, and then again, when well under point 2,797, and the lake, turn to the north-east, so as to reach and keep on dotted curve 2,400. South or south-east would be irrecoverably wrong. In fair weather it will be unbroken pleasure, on condition that the runner is well led or is thoroughly conversant with map or level readings in a very difficult country. I reached the Rawyl pass by six o’clock.
The fairly level stretch along which undulates the Rawyl mule track is called the Plan des Roses, which sounds very poetical to cultivated minds, such as my readers always are. The Alps, and many other ranges in Europe, are studded with those appellations, whose delightful ring calls forth the fragrance and beauty of the rose at an altitude at which gardens are not usually met. Never did a summer rose grow or blossom naturally in most of the places bearing that pretty name—not even the Alpen Rose or the Alpine Anemone.
The imagination of some has seen in the name an allusion to the pink colour of the sky at dawn and at sunset. Alas, this too is a fallacy borne in upon us by the literary faculty. Monte-Rosa does not mean pink mountain.
Rosa (as in Rosa Blanche, above the Val Cleuson), roses, roxes, rousse, rossa, rasses, rosen (as in Rosenlaui), ross, rosso (as in Cima di Rosso), rossère, all mean rocks or rock. The Tête Rousse (above St. Gervais) would not be in English the Ruddy Brow, but the much more commonplace Rocky Tor, Ben, or Fell. All forms of the word go back to a common Celtic origin, whether they appear in Swiss nomenclature, in a French, German, Italian, or Romance form. This phenomenon is a good illustration of the manner in which the association of ideas by sound enriches and varies in time the very rudimentary stock of primitive impressions gathered in by the ancient Alp dwellers.
If the reader will think of Rhine, Rhône, Reuse, Reuss, Reusch, in the light of the foregoing explanations, he will hear through all those words the rush of water that is characteristic of Alpine streams.
I have lively recollections of the Rawyl pass dating back to the days of my boyhood. This pass is dear to me also as having served as an introduction to my young friend, Arnold Lunn. When he battled with the pass, on ski, he was probably little older than myself when I first fought my way through it on foot.