Ski-runs in the High Alps

by F. F. Roget

KANDER GLACIER.

To face p. 123.

My intention was to use Kandersteg as a starting-point, to land on the high level, at 9,000 feet, by means of the Kander glacier gradient, to go down to Kippel, in the Loetschenthal, by the Petersgrat; to pass through the Loetschenlücke, to drop thence into the basin formed by the Aletsch névés (the Jungfraufirn and Ewig Schneefeld of German maps); to rise again to the Grünhornlücke, to skid down upon the firn of the Fiesch glacier, to overtop this network of ice-mountains by the ascent of the Finsteraarhorn, to go round the Finsteraarhorn group on its south side, to return to the north as far as the Oberaarjoch, to descend the Oberaar glacier to the Grimsel hospice, to follow thence the posting road and to enter Guttannen as knights-errant, mounted and spurred—that is, in our case, on trusty ski and shod with nailed boots, the attire in which we would leave Kandersteg.

Thanks to the absence of any unpleasant incident, thanks also to a most obligingly long spell of unbroken weather, the precautions we had taken enabled me and my companions to carry out this programme without interruption and without inconvenience. The “stripling,” Mr. Arnold Lunn, gave proof of remarkable staying powers. Though our Bernese porters seemed at first to believe that they were being “let in” for harum-scarum adventures, by which they discreetly hoped the party might be brought to a standstill after a few hours’ march, before it could run its head, beyond hope of escape, into the dangers of this raid, they laid no visible claim to being wiser than ourselves. They proved themselves to be good and reliable fellows to the end, and came out of their trials with beaming countenances, grateful for the lessons they had received in High Alp ski-running.

We got into training at Beatenberg, where a snowfall delayed our start for three days, if three days spent on the running slopes above Beatenberg may be looked upon as a delay. Then, one morning, the sun, bursting through the snow clouds, showed us the great peaks of the Oberland looking down on a scene newly painted white. Our hopes rose high, and making our rucksacks proportionately heavy, we skied down to Interlaken, losing a bottle of whisky on the way. Carefully laid on the top of my pack, with its nozzle looking out upon the world, it flew out, on Arnold’s calling a sudden halt, and broke its nose against the wall by the roadside. Thus was our expedition christened straight away, as a launched ship that leaves the stocks.

On reaching Kandersteg, the gossamer banner of ice-dust blowing off the Blümlisalp showed plainly enough that the gale from the north, which had brought the fine weather, was still in full swing. My sympathy went out to any young men who might be then battling up there with the raging wind, for at Christmas and New Year’s tide the Alpine huts are much visited by holiday-makers. Indeed, I saw later from an account published in the Swiss periodical Ski, by Mr. Tauern, and by Mr. Schloss in the Alpine Ski Club Annual, that those gentlemen were actually at the time on the Aletschfirn. They had hoped to ascend the Jungfrau. Under the circumstances the prospect lost its charm.

As I write, the Jungfrau has not yet been ascended in winter. The Swiss papers gave out last year that my young friend Fritz Pfeiffer had succeeded in reaching the top. It was a misapprehension. Within two hundred yards of the ice-cap that crowns the Jungfrau, Mr. Pfeiffer, who was accompanying an officer of the St. Gothard troops, was compelled to fall back before the heap of slabs of solid ice, with which the combined action of wind and sun had strewn the way. On these the two distinguished mountaineers were unable to gain footing. The slabs slipped away from under their feet, or bore them down in such a manner that they could not have had better toboggans. Toboggans, however, were not the thing wanted, nor even such trays or pieces of board as children are fond of using, for the sake of amusement, in sliding down grass slopes nearer home.

The formation of these ice-slabs on exposed summits of suitable shape opens up an interesting, and as yet unsolved, question in the history of natural phenomena. What clearly happens is this. Snow, driven by a tearing wind, falls against an ice buttress. Then the sun shines with all its winter power upon the snow that sticks to the rugged ice. Exposed to the action of two physical agents of great force, namely, to the heat produced by the sun and to the impetus of the wind sweeping now with perhaps still greater violence across a clear sky, the amorphous but plastic mass is cut up and divided by a process which may be compared, though the analogy is merely superficial, to what happens to dough in an oven when a hot blast is driven through it. The dried-up dough breaks up into flakes.

When I first came across that winter phenomenon—I have never met with it in summer—I was led to compare those piled-up ice-slabs to the stone slabs of like shape and size which lie on the bare crests of so many mountains. The supposition lies near that these, too, may be due to some combined action of pre-existent heat and supervening wind impetus, in those geological ages when we have a fancy for imagining that the still plastic earth-crust was blown about in huge billows by the liquid and aerial elements.