On Wednesday, at noon, we two arrived at Zürich. Weber went off to bed at once and was more or less an invalid for the next six weeks. His hands and feet were badly frost-bitten, the result of wearing woollen gloves and tight, ill-fitting boots. Thanks to careful treatment, his hands recovered completely, but most toes of both feet had to be amputated.

More serious was Morgenthaler’s fate. Nearly all his fingers had to be amputated at the first or second joint, and the remaining ones will probably always be stiff. He, also, wore woollen gloves, but large, loose-fitting ski-ing boots had kept his feet in perfect condition.

Obexer and I suffered no serious consequences. A frost-bitten thumb worried the former for the next month. I lost a few teeth, and with a swollen, half-frozen face, hobbled about for a day or two in gouties. A fortnight later I was able to accompany Forster on a ski-ing trip over the Furka and Nägelisgrätli up the Oberaarhorn. A month later Obexer and I climbed Piz Urlaun, revisiting en route the scene of our bivouac. We succeeded in rescuing in all six skis (unfortunately not three pairs), two of which were recovered out of a great flat-bottomed crevasse which had split open just below our camp.

The story of this adventure has a moral; an old moral it is true, but one that will well bear repeating. In the first place, we should never have attempted a mountain like the Tödi with companions of whose equipment and experience we had no knowledge; and, secondly, methylated spirits and cooking apparatus, warm clothes, loose-fitting boots, sailcloth gloves lined with wool, and last, but not least, a reliable pocket barometer which would have warned us of an approaching change in the weather, are indispensable items of equipment for serious winter ascents.

CHAPTER IX
THE BIFERTENSTOCK

Far to the north of the main chain of the Alps there lies a range of mountains crowned by the two outstanding summits of the Tödi and the Bifertenstock. The former, rising from the lowlands of the Linth Valley to an altitude of 11,887 feet, is the loftier of the two and justly gives its name to the group; but the latter far excels it in beauty and impressiveness, and gives its name to the greatest glacier of the group, which flows down the deep cleft valley between the “King of the Little Mountains,” as the Tödi has appropriately been named, and the stupendous precipices of the north-west wall of the Bifertenstock. The range is within easy reach of Zürich by rail, and affords climbing of almost any degree of difficulty, from the simplest of snow trudges to the most desperately hard ice or rock ascents. Small wonder, then, that climbers flock hither in their numbers during the week-ends, and that daily throughout July and August the more accessible club-huts are crowded to overflowing. The vast majority of these mountaineers, however, have designs upon the Tödi alone. For hours on end they trudge up the wearisome upper slopes of the Biferten Glacier to the summit, whence, after enjoying one of the most wonderful panoramic views in the Alps, they return contented to the valleys. A few, imbued with the pioneering spirit, or to whom the spice of danger and the sense of achievement after hard-fought battles are of stronger allure than the wonders of the summit view, desert the well-trodden glacier track and sally forth to grapple with unsolved problems, or problems so seldom attacked that they are still clothed in the nimbus of the mysterious and superlatively difficult.

A glance at the three main stages in the history of the exploration of these “Little Mountains” is astonishingly interesting, not only for its own sake, but for the light it throws on the trend of modern mountaineering. The story of the conquest of the range begins with Pater Placidus à Spescha, a jovial monk and surely one of the stoutest-hearted men that ever lived. Climbing alone or with the most inefficient of companions, and inadequately equipped, he accomplished some astonishing feats, which even to-day would stand well to the credit of an expert mountaineer. To give the details of his many conquests and valuable contributions towards the topographical knowledge of the Bündner Alps, would be beyond the scope of this book; but as an example of his outstanding perseverance it may be mentioned that this Swiss priest made no less than six attempts to reach the summit of Piz Rusein, the highest of the three summits of the Tödi, and that his last attempt, also unsuccessful, was made at the age of seventy-two. When we consider that his explorations were carried out towards the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, at a time when the belief had not yet died out that the mountains were the abode of fearsome and savage dragons, and when the inhabitants of a secluded valley, such as the one whence this valiant pioneer hailed, were still ready to condemn as sacrilegious any unwonted activities on the part of a member of their community, we are filled with amazed admiration at the intrepidity, resolution and prowess of this valiant monk. Contemptuous of discomfort and danger, defiant of criticism and defeat, ever aspiring towards the highest his little mountain world held forth to him, actuated only by love of the mountains and a lively, intelligent curiosity as to what secrets lay hidden therein, without hope of gain, Pater Placidus à Spescha well deserves recognition as one of the fathers of mountaineering. With the cessation of his climbing career in 1824 ends the first stage in the history of the exploration of the Tödi range.[4]

The second stage sees the rise of a protagonist of other mettle, the chamois hunter, strong, sure-footed, quick to grasp the use of rope and axe, and possessing valuable local knowledge, but for the most part lacking in initiative and slow to understand the joy in climbing for climbing’s sake. He was soon induced by offers of generous payment to turn guide and place his skill and physical strength at the disposal of the stranger, whose self-imposed task it was to supply the initiative in which his employee was deficient and to arouse in him the energy and will-power without which nothing would have been accomplished. From 1830 onwards, the summits of the range of the Tödi shared the fate of mountains throughout the length and breadth of the Alps, and fell before the onslaughts of parties composed of amateurs aided by professional mountaineers, or, in short, guided parties. But the conquest of the last virgin peak still left much work to be done; only the fringe of the pioneering had been touched, for, as a rule, the first ascent opened up but one way to the summit, and that usually the easiest and least interesting. And so it came about that, as the numbers of unclimbed mountains decreased, the attention of the more ambitious climber turned towards the discovery of new routes. In the greater mountain groups of the Alps, success in this new line again fell almost exclusively to guided parties, the amateur members of which, generally speaking, continued to supply the mental stimulus, while the guides, by virtue of their greater climbing ability, superior physical strength and improving knowledge in all practical matters pertaining to their new craft, were able not only to help them to overcome the mountaineering difficulties encountered, but also to ensure their immunity from the subjective—that is avoidable, given the exercise of due skill and precaution—dangers inherent in the pursuit. In the range of the Tödi, however, it was otherwise. After the conquest of the individual peaks, little was done by way of opening up new routes, and a period of comparative stagnation set in.

Towards the latter end of the last century, the old style amateur climber, a true lover of mountain adventure, was rarely seen in this corner of the Alps. Not that there was any deficiency of climbers, for even then had appeared the sure signs of the impending deluge. The little Grünhorn club-hut, the first of many huts built by the Swiss Alpine Club for the benefit of mountaineers, and which still stands on a rocky spur of the Tödi hard by the Biferten Glacier, no longer harboured an occasional party at distant intervals, but was regularly so overcrowded that a larger hut, the St. Fridolin’s, was built to relieve the congestion. Whence came these throngs of climbers, and who were they?

So far the Alps had been almost exclusively the playground of a small, select circle composed of men of leisure and means who could afford to pay for the by no means inexpensive services of guides and the charges for their upkeep while engaged. Within the circle there soon moved two classes; the first consisted of the real pioneers, true lovers of mountain adventure, and the second of imitators, who climbed because climbing was deemed fashionable. In course of time, here and there from out the ranks of these early amateur climbers would come one or two, vaguely moved perhaps by the supreme joys that unaided achievement might bring, to dispense for a space with professional help and climb “on their own.” From them sprang the modern guideless climber. Rendered inarticulate at first by the appearance of the new species, it was not long ere certain members of the climbing fraternity of the day had collected themselves enough to pour unstinted abuse upon those who dared to indulge in the new form of mountaineering. They condemned climbing without guides as suicidal, and therefore wicked and immoral, and started out to strangle the new tendency in its cradle. They all but succeeded. Yet one of their strongest contentions, to the effect that the practice was fraught with undue danger and likely to lead to unnecessary loss of life, will not bear the cold light of fact; statistics of mountaineering accidents show, if anything, that the percentage of casualties amongst the guided exceeds that amongst the unguided. In condemning climbing without guides, they were attempting to deny for ever to the youth, who could not afford the luxury of a guide, the adventure, health and happiness that are to be found in the mountains, and did their utmost to pinion his wings. Fortunately, the new movement weathered the storm and steadily pursued its course, until to-day purely amateur parties completely outnumber the guided. Nor are the ranks of the guideless recruited solely from those who cannot afford the expense of guides; on the contrary, many of the old faith, having once tasted of the more satisfying joys of the new, have definitely embraced the latter.