The statement has been made more than once, and may even be seen in print, that the first-class amateur is superior, as a mountaineer, to the first-class guide. Surely such a statement can emanate only from those who have no actual, personal experience of the highest capacities of a great guide. The truth is, that the first-class guides of the Alps number less than the fingers of one’s two hands, and—let us be humble—the first-class, British, all-round amateur mountaineers less than one third of that. The ideal, strongest mountaineering party would be composed of two or more first-rate guides; but obviously such a party has no raison d’être. The next strongest party, therefore, would be a combination of first-class guides and first-class amateurs. Such a party would be able to attack the most difficult mountaineering problems with the greatest possible prospects of success and a wide margin of safety. Herein is probably the chief reason why a few proficient amateurs still endeavour to obtain the services of the few guides of the highest rank.
With the firm establishment of guideless mountaineering, the exploration of the range of the Tödi entered upon its last phase. Diffident of their powers, the new climbers who thronged the Grünhorn, St. Fridolin’s, and other club-huts were at first content to feel their feet on the old familiar paths; but soon the more adventurous began to yield to the lure of the unknown and seek their chosen summit by hitherto untrodden ways. Almost without exception, the discovery of every subsequent new route up the mountains of the Tödi group has fallen to the lot of guideless climbers. To-day, in this part of the Alps, a guided party is seldom seen, and then, as a rule, only on the well-beaten track which marks the easiest way up one or other of the more popular summits. So successfully have these keen young men carried out their work that the end of the era of exploration in the range of the Tödi is in sight. Possibilities of new routes still exist, though it is only too obvious that these will provide climbing of exceptional difficulty and tax the capabilities of the guideless climber to the uttermost. Of the few fine problems still awaiting solution, perhaps the most alluring is the crossing of the Bifertenlücke, one of the wildest and grandest of Alpine passes.
Early in September, 1913, persistent snowfalls having seriously impaired climbing conditions in the Mont Blanc group, Guy Forster and I turned our attention to the range of the Tödi where, thanks to its position well to the north of the main chain of the Alps and comparatively low elevation, climbing possibilities were still at their best and likely to remain so for some time. Our main interest centred on the Bifertenstock, whose culminating point reaches an altitude of 11,241 feet above sea-level. Belted, as it were, from head to foot with girdle upon girdle of bronze-coloured rock besprinkled with the crystal of snow and ice, the Bifertenstock was unique not only in appearance, but in that its west ridge, which rears itself up out of the Bifertenlücke towards the summit in a series of huge, precipitous, even overhanging buttresses, had never suffered the imprint of human foot. Here was one of the few problems that still awaited the explorer in the Tödi. More than one party of mountaineers had gone up to the Bifertenlücke with the avowed intention of climbing this ridge; but the aspect of the first buttress, a tremendous overhanging corner rising straight out of the pass, had so successfully repelled them all that no one had ever even come to grips with it. On September 5, 1913, in the hope of meeting with better fortune, Forster and I set out from Zürich to investigate the chances of success. As there is so far no direct approach from the north to the Bifertenlücke, whence the climb must begin, we selected as our base the Ponteglias hut which stands on the southern side of the range.
The Bifertenstock from the Bündner Tödi.
The west ridge commences in the Bifertenlücke, just beyond the snow slope in the foreground.
Facing page 128.
A five-hours’ rail journey via Coire brought us to the village of Truns in the Rhine Valley, whence professional help in the shape of a guide assisted in carrying up to the hut our ponderous rucksacks replete with a full week’s provisions, ropes, spare clothes, photographic equipment and all the other things that add to the interest and comfort of life in the solitudes. Towards nightfall, after a laborious three hours’ walk through the narrow, steep Ponteglias Valley, we arrived at the hut where our guide, having dumped his load, was paid off and returned to the village. Plans for the following day provided only for an ascent of the Bündner Tödi, a little snow-capped summit to the west of the Bifertenlücke, whence a commanding view of the west ridge of the Bifertenstock could be obtained, and for a reconnaissance, at close quarters, of the first great buttress of the ridge. There was, therefore, no need for an early start on the morning of the 6th. It was daylight when we arose to cook a breakfast which proved so much to our liking that we immediately set to and prepared another even more sumptuous one. At length, in the bright sunshine of a cloudless day we sallied forth. For an hour we strolled leisurely up the gently-rising, stone-strewn surface of the Ponteglias Glacier which reaches from just below the Bifertenlücke to within a few hundred yards of the hut. At the point where the glacier becomes snow-covered and crevassed and rises more steeply towards its source, we put on the rope and steered an uneventful, zig-zag course round the more fissured zones towards a little scree slope lying just below the Bifertenlücke. At 9 a.m. we were in the pass, and looking down the breathless precipice that falls away to the Biferten Glacier. Here we deposited the knapsacks and, after twenty minutes’ trudge up a broad snow ridge, gained the summit of the Bündner Tödi.