The Alps

by Sir William Martin Conway

The Lötschenlücke on the extreme left.

At first the disagreeable details are most keenly felt by contrast, but, when an hour has passed and the conflict is well entered upon, they are forgotten. We become accustomed to our surroundings and can, if we will, observe them with a deliberate interest. How the winds tear the mists about! There is no constant blast of air, but a series of eddying rushes, which come and pass like the units of an army. Each seems to possess an individuality of its own. Each makes its attack and is gone. One smites you in the face; another in the back. Some seem not devoid of humour; they sport with the traveller in a grim way. Others are filled with rage. Others come on as it were reluctantly.

The aspect of the foreground rapidly changes. Rocks and stones disappear under a thickening blanket of snow. What was a staircase on the way up is found to be a powdery snow-slope in the forced descent. The new snow is soft like a liquid. It flows into the footprints and blots them out. Can it be that there are places somewhere where it is warm and dry—places with roofs over them and snug chimney corners and hot things to eat and drink? How strange the idea already seems! We belong to another world and feel as though we had always belonged to it. Civilised life is like some dream of a bygone night, and this that we are in is the only reality. It, in its turn, we know, will hereafter seem to have been a dream, but now it is the only fact. Here is the world of ice in the making. This is what snow-fields and glaciers come from. Unpleasant is it? Well perhaps! but it is good to have had such experiences. They develop a man's confidence, employ his powers, and enrich his memory.

After all it is the snow regions in their days of storm that I remember best. One tempest that overwhelmed us on the flanks of Mount Sarmiento in Tierra del Fuego—how clearly even its details arise upon the lantern-screen of recollection! We were looking back northward over the Magellan channels towards the southern extremity of the South American continent, and a storm was pouring down thence upon us. "The darkness in the north was truly appalling. It seemed not merely to cover, but to devour the wintry world. The heavens appeared to be falling in solid masses, so dense were the skirts of snow and hail that the advancing cloud-phalanx trailed beneath it. Black islands, leaden waters, pallid snows, and splintered peaks disappeared in a night of tempest, which enveloped us also almost before we had realised that it was at hand. A sudden wind shrieked and whirled around us; hail was flung against our faces, and all the elements raged and rioted together. All landmarks vanished; the snow beneath was no longer distinguishable by the eye from the snow-filled air."

Sometimes the wind blows with a fury that is almost irresistible. I have this note of such an experience. "The wind struck us like a solid thing, and we had to lean against it or be overthrown. It lulled for an instant, and we advanced a few yards; then it struck us again, and we gripped the mountain and doubted whether we could hold on. A far milder gale than this would suffice to sweep men from a narrow arête. It was not only strong, but freezing. It dissolved the heat out of us so rapidly that we could almost feel ourselves crystallising like so many Lot's wives. We stood up to it for a minute or two, then rushed back into shelter and took stock of our extremities. My finger-tips had lost all sensation. It was enough."

Such raging tumults of the air are not a very common alpine experience, though most climbers have had to encounter them. Sometimes the air is still, or only gently in motion, while dense clouds envelop peak and glacier. Then a great silence reigns, which yet is not like the silence of night. It seems of a denser, more positive sort. Strange sounds punctuate it in times of heavy snow-fall. There are slidings from rocks, dull sunderings of snow-drifts grown too heavy to retain their unstable positions. There are crackings in deep beds of snow, newly formed. Small avalanches of snow fall with a cat-like, velvety movement, more of a flowing than a fall. Stones plunge with a dim thud into snow-drifts. All these sounds are heard, but the moving objects, though perhaps quite near at hand, remain invisible. We feel ourselves to be in the midst of unseen presences and activities, and instinctively picture them as hostile.

In the midst of such a silence the first boom of thunder breaking on the ear sounds solemn indeed. It may be a distant discharge, and the next will be nearer. But often the very cloud that envelops us is the thunderer, and the first clap is quite close at hand. If so, it will not so much boom as rattle, re-echoing from the rocks amongst or near which it strikes. It has not come unforeseen. The air has been electrical for some time. We have felt cobwebs upon our faces. Perhaps our ice-axes are hissing, and we may have felt a shock or two from them. With the breaking of the storm comes hail that spatters the rocks and pricks over the snow. The discharges multiply in frequency, and if we are in the heart of the storm we hear them now on one side, now on the other—rattling like the volley-firing of scattered companies. Seldom, at high altitudes, are the individual discharges very violent, though being near at hand they sound loud enough. The mountain is exchanging electricity with the clouds over all its surface at a number of suitable points. Many climbers have been struck by lightning, but few are known to have been killed, though lightning-stroke may have been the cause of mysterious accidents never accounted for. As a rule there is noise enough to produce a great impression; there is a sense of the power and activity of nature's forces; but there is little absolute danger.

Very different is the sensation of being in the midst of fine weather clouds, such as are often encountered before sunrise, but dissolve and disappear as the power of the sun increases. I well remember a beautiful experience of the kind upon the Rutor. The night had been overcast; when dawn appeared, the mists only seemed to thicken. We reached the summit crest and felt our way over the other side and down. We knew from the map that a great snow-field was sloping away before us in gentle undulations.

"We could not see it, nor indeed could we see anything except a small area of flat ripple-surfaced snow, losing itself in all directions in the delicate sparkling mist, through which the circle of the soaring sun now began to be faintly discerned. With compass and map we determined the direction to be followed, and down we went over admirably firm snow. Seldom have I been in lovelier surroundings than those afforded by the rippled névé and the glittering mist. The air was soft. A perfect silence reigned. Nothing in sight had aspect of solidity; we seemed to be in a world of gossamer and fairy webs. Presently there came an indescribable movement and flickering above us, as though our bright chaos were taking form. Vague and changeful shapes trembled into view and disappeared. Low, flowing light-bands striped the white floor. Wisps of mist danced and eddied around. A faint veil was all that remained, and through it we beheld with bewildered delight all the glory of the Mont Blanc range, from end to end and from base to summit, a vision of bridal beauty. Last of all, the veil was withdrawn and utter clearness reigned all around."

Such sudden and unexpected withdrawals of the cloud curtains, such revelations and surprises are amongst the most transcendently beautiful effects that the mountain-climber is privileged to behold. They amply repay hours of fog, and compensate for days of bad weather. But even if the fog remain, blotting out all distant views, it often provides a setting for near objects, which gives them an emphasis amounting to a revelation. Many of my readers must have beheld great sérac towers of ice looming out of mist, and magnified by it into excess of grandeur. Never is an ice-fall so imposing as when traversed in not too dense a fog. What a sense of poise between heaven and earth is received when one is in a steep couloir which vanishes into mist above and below.