The Alps

by Sir William Martin Conway

MÄRJELEN ALP

Winter snow on ground. Foot of Eggishorn on left, ridges of Strahlhorner on right.

I have only once spent a portion of the spring in an Alpine region. It is not a comfortable season, but it has its own beauties as great in their kind as those of summer and winter. Now the snow begins to melt, and all the hillsides trickle and run with water. The great silence of winter is past. Nature whispers with a thousand tiny voices, and sings aloud along the valleys and gorges. The hillsides emerge brown from their snowy blanket, but the fresh green soon shoots through and early flowers are swift to put forth. The sense of young life is felt among the mountains as in the plains, for the awakening of the vegetable world is everywhere the same. But the mountains possess spring-time splendours of their own, depending upon the dissolution of the snow. Spring is the great time for avalanches. They fall indeed all the year round, chiefly at high levels, but it is only in the spring that the great avalanches get adrift. Certain great spring avalanches come down with remarkable regularity in particular places, one every year. An avalanche falls at a recognised spot in the neighbourhood of almost every village, which dates from its advent the opening of the spring. Any one who has beheld the descent of one of these giants will not forget the experience, nor will it occur to him to compare such an avalanche with the relatively small ones that tumble among the highest névé regions in the summer. These are the veriest snow-balls compared with those vast discharges.

A great spring avalanche is no sudden freak of Nature, but an inevitable occurrence, slowly engendered. The snow that piles up, flake by flake, during the winter months, on what in summer are the grass slopes below the snow-line, gradually becomes unstable as spring melting advances. The mass loses its cohesion, ceases to bind firmly together, and tends to flow downwards. The conformation of the ground decides how it shall fall. If the slopes upon which it lies are narrow, and lead straight to a suitable resting-ground, or if they are of gentle declivity, it may fall in small masses and early come to rest; for the distance to which it is projected depends upon the momentum of a fall, and the momentum depends upon the volume and the slope. But if the snow lies upon large concave slopes, or upon a cirque, then, when the discharge begins, all the snow within the cirque may flow together, and pouring down the bottom like a fluid, may form a great cataract; then tumbling over cliffs and rushing down hollows and through gorges, it will continue its descent till it reaches a valley bottom, flat enough to hold it. There it will pile up into a great cone or "fan," solidifying as it comes to rest, and strongly bridging over the valley torrent.

An avalanche of this kind does not fall in a few moments, but may occupy hours in its discharge. I saw several of them falling, in the first days of May 1882, in the neighbourhood of the Simplon road. Near Bérisal I crossed one which had recently come to rest, traversing the road. By its rugged white surface, broken into great protuberances, its solidity, and its general form, it resembled a small glacier. To climb on to it one had to cut steps, so steep were the sides. Higher up I crossed several more such fallen masses, through which gangs of workmen were cutting out the road. Towards the top of the pass the snow was tumbling in smaller masses. Over a hundred little avalanches crossed the road within a couple of hours. Then they stopped. On the Italian side similar conditions obtained, but it was not till I reached Isella that the greatest fall took place, or rather was taking place, for it had begun before I arrived, and it continued after I had passed. There, a narrow gorge, with vertical cliff-sides facing one another, debouches on the main valley. It leads upwards to a great cirque in the hills, a cirque that is a grass-covered alpine pasture in the summer. The avalanche was pouring out through this gorge and piling itself up upon the main valley-floor. How the mass of it was being renewed from behind I could not see. Doubtless all the hill-sides above were shedding their snow, and it was flowing down and crowding into and through the gorge with a continuous flow. As the pressure was relieved below by the outpouring of the avalanche on to the valley floor, more snow came down—snow mixed with slush, and semi-liquid under the great pressure that must have been developed. As the fan was built up, the snow, relieved of strain, hardened into ice-like consistency.

It is easy to describe the process that was going forward, but it is not easy to suggest to the reader the grandeur of effect that was produced. The volume of noise was terrific—a noise more massive and continuous than thunder, and no less deep-toned. A low grey cloud roofed in the view and cast over everything a solemn tone. The avalanche, pouring through the massive gateway of the hills and polishing its sides, came forth with an aspect of weight and resistless force that was extraordinarily impressive. Yet Nature did not seem to be acting violently, though her might was plain to see. She appeared to proceed with deliberation. One looked for an end of the snow-stream to come, but it flowed on and on, pulsating but not failing. The pressures that must be developed were easily conceived; correspondingly evident became the strength of the hills that could sustain them as if they had been but the stroking of a hand.

Later in the season the traveller often encounters, in deep-lying valleys, the black and shrunken remnants of these mighty avalanches, melted down by summer heats. Little idea can they give him of the splendour of their birth and the white curdled beauty of their surface when they first come to rest. In the nature of things they travel far and fall low, well into the tree-belt, and even down to the chestnut-level on the Italian side. It is a strange sight to see these vast, new-fallen masses lying in their accustomed beds, but surrounded by trees all freshly verdant with the gifts of spring. Yearly each one falls in the same place, falls harmlessly and duly expected. Its coming is welcomed. Its voice is the triumphant shout of the coming season of summer exuberance and fertility. Nature, newly awakened, cries aloud with a great and solemnly joyous cry, and the people dwelling around hear her and arise to their work upon the land. It is not well for a mountain-lover never to have beheld this characteristic awakening, for it is one of the great events of the mountains' year.

For the rest, spring in the Alps has many of the qualities of spring everywhere else, which need not detain us, for to say that is to say enough. Characteristically Alpine alone are the passing away of the snow and the phenomena that accompany it. After the avalanches have fallen, steady melting does the rest. Each warm day withdraws the winter blanket somewhat and reveals the earth to the sunshine. Convex slopes melt sooner than concave, steep slopes sooner than flats or gentle inclines. Thus the large uniform winter covering breaks up into islands and stripes of white. Gullies are defined against slopes, which previously were lost in them. The detailed anatomy of the hills is manifested more clearly from day to day.

It may be claimed that the effect produced is patchy, and so, judged by spring-time photographs, it appears indeed to be. Never, for photography, are mountains less suitable than in the spring; by some ill-luck the camera seizes upon and magnifies the patchiness of the receding snow. In actual vision the margin of the snow bears a less piebald aspect. Indeed patchiness is not the effect that the eye receives from it. The edge is at once perceived to be melting. The white garb is being withdrawn. That fact is apparent. If one watches the changes from day to day, they will be found most entertaining from the manifestations of form they yield. Moreover, the daily alteration of the colouring of the ground from which snow has recently melted is most remarkable. The transition is from brown to green. Hence the edge of the snow is margined with brown, and that in turn by green—a kind of iris effect which ascends the hillside as the snow withdraws.