Ski-runs in the High Alps

by F. F. Roget

“The view from the Finsteraarhorn is of its kind almost unique. It is the very hub of vast spaces of eternal winter. Below, the ice-bound cliffs of the Oberland, scored with the passage of ages, rise from a waste of glaciers. The Finsteraarhorn is the culminating point of this rugged chain, and looks defiantly over a host of lesser peaks towards its great brethren of the Swiss Alps. From the Dolomites to Dauphiny, from the Vosges to the Apennines, scarcely a peak of any importance was hid. The winter atmosphere toned down the harsh features whilst rendering the whole flawless panorama strangely distinct. The mountains were clad in those wonderful bluish tints peculiar to the winter months, their crudities had been softened, their barren places made smooth. The keynote in the panorama was a dreamy, languorous atmosphere.”

The boundless canopy of clouds dragged itself out lazily, like a huge soft beast, to fill up all the interstices in this rock-bound and rock-studded vista, shot through with waves of light. There was a superb suggestion of indolence on the far horizon, turning pale against a sky of unfathomable blue. Below us the small wooden hut, perched on its rock, added a touch of human interest to the view.

The guides went to sleep in the snow, while the two educated men of the party contemplated and smoked, smoked and contemplated.

“Nine long summers I had spent as a small boy in getting to know the remote bye-ways of the Faulhorn chain. For nine summers we had looked longingly up to the great cliffs of the Oberland, the peaks of storm and of dread, the dark Aar peak, the Maiden, the Monk, and the Giant. Vaguely we wondered if it would ever be ours to penetrate into their recesses. By the peculiar cussedness of things, I had climbed in other ranges, but till then had never returned to my first love.

“The force of associations formed in childhood has been insisted on ad nauseam by Wordsworth and his imitators, but the sentiment is none the less powerful for being somewhat trite. And even now, as this early ambition had at last reached the point of realisation, I could scarce restrain a feeling of regret. Though, in later years, calm reason convinced me that the terrors in which my childish imagination had clad the Oberland peaks were almost non-existent, yet the ease with which we had conquered their monarch had its element of sadness.

“The hour passed like ten minutes. The professor gave the word to return. We roused Adolf and sadly turned down the arête. The weaker brother led with great deliberation. On this occasion we lacked not æsthetic compensations for his slowness. It was a unique sensation, sitting astride that vast cliff, watching the afternoon lights spreading tinges of an infinite gradation of tones over the boundless canopy of mist.”

We reached again the fantastic little gap of the Hugi-Sattel, overlooking a sheer cliff that drops down to the Finsteraarhorn glacier. We now rested in the afternoon where we had breakfasted in the forenoon. We looked back up the way we had come down. Owing to the ice, we had been forced off the summer route—which keeps some distance below the ridge—on to the very arête. There is nothing on the Matterhorn finer than that sheer cliff that falls away to the glacier 3,000 feet below. Drop a stone, and it falls the entire distance without a bound. The climbing, however, both up and down, had been easy enough. Good sound hand and foot-holds—no shadow of an excuse for a slip, not even for Adolf, who had come up wailing in the forenoon, contributing to the gaiety of the party by his monotonous: “Ich komme schon, aber nur nicht so schnell.” With a shudder he beheld the track of the two Norwegians, who had taken their ski to within a thousand feet of the summit, and, on their return, appeared to have gaily descended a slope of soft snow lying on streaks of ice, at an angle of 45 degrees, bridging several yawning cracks.

Having rested on the Hugi-Sattel—this part of Switzerland recalls everywhere the names of its explorers and scientific investigators—we slowly retraced our steps to the hut, reaching it at 5.45.

The merry Swiss boys had left everything in beautiful order. We had all the room—and all the raindrops—to ourselves. Heated through and through, the roof was letting the water from the melting snow pass through the shingles.

Once more a perfect sunset gave promise of yet another day of cloudless beauty. Our anxieties—we had none others than those which might come from eagerness to succeed—were at an end. We had done what we had set out to do. Had we planned to go to the North Pole—or to discover the Antarctic—and succeeded likewise (as mountaineers would have done long ago if they had troubled to) our feelings could have differed but little from those that now passed in our minds. There is a likeness in all achievements in this. When the past is just putting forward its forefinger in warning of its readiness to withdraw our deed gently from our grasp and from the sight of men, we feel a pang that to have done something means parting with it soon after. Some may have been so ambitious to reach the North Pole that they set about it in a dishonest spirit. Some returning from another voyage of joint and mutual discovery—that generally goes under the name of a wedding tour—carry home with them a melancholy tinge of regret upon their happiness. So did we.