As I have said, the “basket-on-a-string” description fits the teleferica exactly, for the principle is precisely similar to that of the contrivance by which packages are shunted around in the large stores and factories. The only points which differentiate it in the least from the overhead ore-tramways is the fact that—in its latest and highest development—it is lighter and more dependable. For the ore-tramway—always built in a more or less protected position—had only the steady grind of the day’s work to withstand; the teleferica has not only the daily wear and tear racking it to pieces, but is also in more or less perennial peril of destruction by flood, wind, and avalanches, to say nothing of the fire of the enemy’s artillery or of bombs from his aeroplanes. That the Italians have evolved a contrivance more or less proof against the ravages of these destructive agents is, perhaps, the best evidence of their genius for military engineering. Nothing more perfect in its way than the teleferica has been produced by any of the belligerents.
Theoretically, a teleferica can be of any length, though I think the longest on the Italian front is one of three or four miles, which makes a good part of the eight-thousand-foot climb up to the summit of the Pasubio, in the Trentino, and which—at the time of writing—is still in Italian hands. The cable may run on a level—as when it spans some great gorge between two mountain peaks—or it may be strung up to any incline not too great to make precarious the grip of the grooved overhead wheels of the basket. I was not able to learn what this limit is, but I have never seen a cable run at an angle of over forty-five degrees. Wherever a cable does not form a single great span it has to be supported at varying intervals by running over steel towers to prevent its sagging too near the earth.
A teleferica has never more than its two terminal stations. If the topography of a mountain is such that a continuous cable cannot be run the whole distance that it is desired to bridge by teleferica, two—or even three or four—separate installations are built. This is well illustrated in the ascent of the Adamello, the highest position on the Austro-Italian front. One goes to the lower station of the first teleferica by motor, if the road is not blocked by slides. At the upper station of this two-mile-long cableway a tramcar pulled by a mule is taken for the journey over three or four miles of practically level narrow-gauge railway. Leaving this, a hundred-yard walk brings one to another teleferica, in the basket of which he is carried to its upper station, on the brow of a great cliff towering a sheer three thousand feet above the valley below. Three hundred yards farther up another teleferica begins, which lands him by the side of the frozen lake at Rifugio Garibaldi. Three more telefericas—with breaks between each—and a dog-sled journey figure in the remainder of the climb to the glacier and summit of the Adamello.
The engine of a teleferica—its power varies according to the weight and capacity of its basket and the height and length of the lift—is always installed at the upper station. The usual provision is for two baskets, one coming up while the other goes down. As with the ore-tramways, however, an installation can be made—if sufficient power is available—to carry two or three or even a greater number of baskets. As this puts a great strain on the cableway the Italians have only resorted to it at a few points where the pressure on the transport is very heavy.
The two greatest enemies of the teleferica are the avalanche and the wind—the latter because it may blow the baskets off the cable, and the former because it may carry the whole thing away. As the tracks of snow-slides—the points at which they are most likely to occur—are fairly well defined, it is usually possible to make a wide span across the danger-zone with the cable and thus minimise the chance of disaster on this score. It is only when the dread valanga—as occasionally happens—is launched at some unexpected point that damage may be done to an aerial tramway. A great slide—perhaps the worst which has occurred on the Italian side of the lines during the war—which came down, a mile wide, from the summit of the Tofana massif to the Dolomite road in the valley five miles below, carried away a block of barracks and a battery of mountain guns, in addition to burying a considerable length of teleferica a hundred feet deep in snow and débris. Visiting this slide in December, 1916, a few days after it happened, I saw—at a point where a cut had been run in an endeavour to save some of the several hundred Alpini who had been buried—the twisted tower of the teleferica, inextricably mixed up with the body of a mule and a gun-carriage and overlaid with a solid stratum of forest trees, two miles below the point at which it had formerly stood.
Though the number of disasters of this kind from avalanches may be counted upon one’s fingers, trouble from high wind is always an imminent possibility. In the early days of the teleferica accidents traceable to the blowing off of the baskets were fairly common; in fact, it was feared for a time that the difficulty from this source might be so great as materially to limit the usefulness of the cableway system. The use of more deeply-grooved wheels, however, did away with this trouble almost entirely, so that now the only menace from the wind is when it comes from “abeam” and blows hard enough to swing the baskets into collision when passing each other in mid-air.
Though I have had many a teleferica journey that was distinctly thrilling—what ride through the air on a swaying wire, with a torrent or an avalanche below, and perhaps shells hurtling through the clouds above, would not be thrilling? —I have never figured in anything approaching an accident, and only once in an experience which might even be described as “ticklish.” This latter occurred through my insistence on making an ascent in a teleferica on a day when there was too much wind to allow it to operate in safety. It was on the Adamello in the course of an ascent which I endeavoured to make toward the end of last July.
There was a sinister turban of black clouds wrapped around the summit of the great peak, and before we were half-way up what had only been a cold rain in the lower valley was turning into driving sleet and snow. We ascended by the first teleferica—a double one—without difficulty, but the ominous swaying of the cables warned us that the next line, which was more exposed, might be quite another matter. This latter is the one I have mentioned as running from an Alpine meadow to the brow of a cliff towering three thousand feet above it. It was one of the longest—if not the longest—unsupported cable-spans on the whole Alpine front. It was also the steepest of which I had had any experience. The fact that it was exposed throughout its whole length to a strong wind which blew down from an upper valley was responsible for putting it “out of business” during bad weather and thus made it the weak link in the attenuated chain of the Adamello’s communications.
As we had feared, we found this teleferica “closed down” upon our arrival at the lower station, ample reason for which appeared in the fifteen or twenty-foot sway given to the parallel lines of cable by the powerful “side-on” wind gusts which assailed it every few moments from the direction of the glacier. Fortunately, as the storm was only coming in fitful squalls as yet and had not settled down to a steady blow, the tenente in charge thought that it might be possible to send us up in one of the quieter intervals.
“There’s no danger of the baskets blowing off the cable,” he said; “it’s only a matter of preventing them striking one another in passing, of which there is always risk when the wires are swaying too much.”