THE PENNINE RANGE FROM GRAND ST. BERNARD TO ZERMATT.
(Reproduction made with authorisation of the Swiss Topographic Service, 26.8.12.)
To face p. 208.
In January, 1908, the third attempt took place. Like the first, this caravan started from Chamonix. It consisted of M. Baujard (from Paris), with Joseph Ravanel, “le Rouge,” and E. D. Ravanel. Already on the first day this party got off the bee-line. They went down to Châble along the Col des Montets and the Col de Forclaz, then to Chanrion. On the third day they left Chanrion at midnight, and got to Zermatt at 6.30 in the evening, having crossed the Col de l’Evêque, Col du Mt. Brûlé, and the Col de Valpelline (see Revue Alpine, 1908, p. 80).
As one sees, these three expeditions partly followed, or cut across, the high-level route. So far as the first three passes are concerned (those of Argentière, of Planards, and of Sonadon), they left them completely on one side. They were right in leaving the first. The best and only rational course is to traverse this part of the Mont Blanc range by the Col du Chardonnet, or the Col du Tour and Orny. Indeed, the Col d’Argentière, on the Swiss side, lands one in a wall of rock, where nobody should think of venturing on ski. The Col du Géant cannot either be used to any advantage.
The Col des Planards (2,736 m.), leading from the Val Ferret to Bourg St. Pierre, is quite ski-able, but does not present the same interest as a run on a glacier. Thus if you start from Chamonix, you must, at least once, descend into the valleys. This necessity makes of the “high level” from Chamonix an empty word for the Alpine runner.
If you start from Bourg St. Pierre and proceed to Zermatt from pass to pass, you will travel along an almost unbroken ice route, which may be compared to that which leads across the Bernese Oberland from the Lötschenthal to the Grimsel. Chanrion, at the altitude of 2,400 m., is the only downward bend of some depth on this road, the only place where one is not surrounded by ice.
“Mr. F. F. Roget, of Geneva,” says a newspaper, “who in January, 1909, with Mr. Arnold Lunn, explored the high-level route from Kandersteg to Meiringen, planned out as follows his exploration of the Pennine high level in January, 1911:—