The Alps

by Sir William Martin Conway

A well-known group, typical of the Aiguilles of the Mont Blanc chain.

We have considered domes and pyramids in special reference to their outline. But they and all sorts of other mountains have faces as well as bounding ridges, and these faces sometimes take the form of tremendous walls. We may therefore devote a moment's attention to mountain walls, or rather to what we may briefly describe as wall-faced mountains. These great walls are not necessarily, nor indeed often, truly precipitous, but the important point about them is that they look precipitous. They are not walls, but the eye is deceived into believing that they are. The Alps are rich in noble examples of this type. To name only the most famous: there are the Italian fronts of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, the Saas front of the Mischabelhörner, and the north face of the Jungfrau. If you stand in a suitable position, facing rather than enfilading any of these great walls, their slope seems practically vertical. Climbers know that they can all be climbed; their instructed eyes can even trace the routes without difficulty. In so far as that knowledge interferes with the imposing impression which ordinary persons derive from the mere look of the thing, it is a misfortune. Yet even the climber can sometimes forget his métier, and lose himself in pure contemplation of Nature's splendour. It is nowhere easier so to do than in face of these gigantic walls. Pre-eminent amongst them is, of course, the Macugnaga face of Monte Rosa. Not merely does it excel in unbroken width and continuity of plunge, but its striping by buttress and couloir, its impending masses of sérac, its huge piles of avalanche ruins below, and the frequency of the falls that take place, whose fresh traces are obvious even when they are not beheld in actual descent, all serve to increase the observer's sense of the actual steepness of the face. First beheld from near at hand, the vast size of the thing overwhelms the beholder, and yet this first impression is small compared with the ultimate sense of size which slowly grows within him as he gazes and learns the meaning of the details. His attention will soon be called to the fact that the whole face is ruled with lines. They seem fine, almost like the meshes of a spider's web, but a brief consideration proves that they are the tracks of falling masses—some of avalanches, others of falling stones. They are not fine lines at all, but deep grooves, perhaps ten feet wide and as deep as the height of a man. Realise that fact, as the climber does (in so doing he in his turn has the advantage), and you at once magnify, and may even overmagnify, the scale of the view.

BODEN AND GORNER GLACIERS

Monte Rosa from the Schwarzsee. The last gleam of the daylight. The foot of the Riffelhorn on the left.

It is a commonplace to proclaim the exhaustless prodigality of Nature's inventions, which every field of grass sufficiently proves, and yet it always seems to me that these great faces specially exemplify it. How easy, one might imagine, to invent detail for a precipice of ice and rock—but take a blank sheet of paper and try; you will find the task almost hopeless. Then turn to any view of Monte Rosa from Macugnaga and observe how it has been done, and how much, indeed how entirely, the effect of the view depends upon the structure and variety of the wall. The classical point whence the face is seen at its best is the Pizzo Bianco. There is a photograph from it in the eleventh volume of the Alpine Journal. Note how essential every detail is to the effect of the whole, and how impossible it would be to invent such a consistent multitude of details. The sky-line is of minor importance; it does not hold the eye. What first attracts it is the great sweeping buttresses that emerge through the snow and carry the attention down by their parallelism. As we look more closely at them we find that they in turn break up into minor groups of parallels, and these again into similar elements; yet with all this general repetition no two details are the same. The aspect of the general structure may be compared to that of a leaf with a number of ribs all obedient to a single law of form. The snow that fills the spaces between the buttresses and overflows them where it can, is no dead covering, but alive like a river. We obtain at first glance, now that we know how to look for it, a sense of its weight and movement. How strange it seems that that movement should not have been observed centuries ago! The flowing of the snow is expressed by all sorts of signs. Here it breaks into cliffs and tumbles; there it pours down in a continuous stream interrupted only by crevasses, which indicate its relative speed at adjacent points; there again, on some small ledge or gentler slope, it lags and piles up. But as a rule it is evidently in haste to get down, and the signs of this haste are a measure of the steepness of the slope. High aloft the plunge seems vertical, and one wonders how any snow can adhere to such uncompromising crags. When the mists are drawn across it, or a bed of clouds lies at its foot, filling the Macugnaga valley as with a white lake, the wall seems yet more cliff-like. It is only when low sunlight strikes it aslant and makes manifest its modelling that a suggestion is given of the actual angle of the slope leading up from the glacier floor below to the giddy crest.

Another kind of mountain front, akin to these yet belonging to a class of its own, is the true rock-face. Such may have their ledges and gullies picked out with snow, or even (as in the case of the Meije) a small glacier caught on a shelf, but snow must not predominate, must not even cover a considerable fraction of their surface. Mountains with rock-faces of this kind are, of course, commonest among the secondary groups. Thus there are many in Canton Glarus and thereabouts, yet more among the Dolomites and in all the limestone districts. The west face of the Weisshorn may perhaps be counted a rock-wall, but, if that is excluded, the Grivola is, I think, the biggest example. The Blümlisalp and Breithorn, Altels and the Balmhorn, are other examples. If, however, I were to be compelled to select one such peak as type, I should choose Pelmo or Schlern in the Dolomites, and be content, even though some vaster example were quoted against me. For, after all, it is not the actual scale that matters, but the appearance of scale. I have heard it said that the north-east face of the Zinal Rothhorn is the biggest true cliff in the Alps. It may be, but it does not so appear from any ordinary point of view—the Rothhorn, in fact, seeming insignificant from almost everywhere.

These rock fronts must not be looked at from too far away. Unless they subtend a high vertical angle to the vision they produce little effect. But stand beneath them, and what pomp and power they display! You must be near enough to see the details of their structure, and to trace the joints of their masonry, for it is in the recognition of their upbuilding, stone by stone, that their impressiveness consists. That is why a snow-slope drawn down across the edges of their strata is so little to be desired. If by good-luck the successive strata vary somewhat in colour, the cliff will be magnified thereby. To the perception of multiplicity recurrent detail is essential, and that perception involves relative proximity and is helped by familiarity. The oftener you stand beneath such a wall the bigger it appears to grow.

It is not a thing that can be painted, still less photographed; for no painter could set down details enough, and the camera will not select the right ones. It is the horizontal details that we want. If the reader will observe how a high tower or other lofty building impresses its scale upon him, he will find it to be by the joints of its masonry, unless indeed he be standing far off and the tower is seen to rise high above the houses of a town whose size is instinctively perceived. Here again the accomplished climber who has actually scrambled up the sheer face of such a cliff and so measured it against his own slow progress and his accumulated fatigue, has an advantage over any mere spectator. This advantage is increased by the fact that he will recognise and know the size of many details of ledge and pitch which he has actually handled and surmounted. Such personal knowledge is the best of all measuring scales. A traveller who cannot attain it must be content with the lesser insight that can be attained by slow examination. In no case is the full effect to be perceived at once. Nature sometimes, as it were, flings herself upon our imaginations and suddenly overpowers us by her excessive grandeur. At other times she seems to say, "It is nothing"; so as to let superficial persons pass by; but just then perhaps we are in the presence of some superlatively great exhibition of her majesty which it requires experience, time, and attention to discover.

It should remove any tendency to conceit in those who have travelled far and seen much to remember that, however often they may have beheld and delighted in glorious sights, the best-visioned of them and the most sensitive has missed far more than he has seen. What opportunities he must have had, and how relatively few of them has he utilised! At best he has been but like a traveller in a motor-car, whisking across historic lands, and passing here by an abbey, there through some old town, there again over some historic battle-field, and not suspecting their existence, or not knowing enough to thrill with the rich emotions they would excite in a better-informed mind. It is not the eyes that are lacking, but the knowledge and the time to acquire it. You may scurry along below the cliff of Pelmo without a flutter of the heart. But wander half a day beneath it, examine its details, watch the sunlight playing on its ledges, and the shadows in the gullies that cut them, a sense of its grandeur will invade your consciousness, and the memory of that will remain with you till you turn childish with old age and others know that you have lived too long.