CHAPTER VIII
PASSES
A PEAK is primarily a thing to be looked at. It was only after the aspect of peaks had smitten the imagination of men that the desire to climb them arose. The climbing impulse is subordinate to the eye's delight. A pass, on the other hand, is a thing to be climbed and looked from, but only in a minor degree to be looked at. It is an experience rather than a sight. Few passes indeed are striking objects in a view. The Col Dolent, the Güssfeldtsattel, the Col du Lion, and a few more are imposing when you approach the foot of their final slopes, but it would be difficult to distinguish between such slopes and a similar mountain face. The fact that the slope leads to a notch or saddle in the sky-line does not give it dignity; that comes to it from its own character as a slope, and would be the same if it led to any other kind of sky-line. Passes, therefore, in and for themselves, are not conspicuously striking and beautiful elements in any great mountain panorama, and do not call for discussion by us from that point of view.
As experiences, however, they take another rank. I have long been prepared to maintain their general superiority to peaks in that respect. Passes generally lead through finer scenery than is commanded from the flank of a peak. A peak climbed rewards you with a panorama which no pass can offer; but, that excepted, the average pass is superior to the average peak for the scenery it reveals, and in the nature of things it must be. In climbing a peak, unless you are going up an arête, you normally have a steep slope rising straight in front of you. A few square yards of rocks or snow fill most of your vision as you look ahead. If you raise your eyes up the slope, you see it in its least impressive form, foreshortened into a mere belt. The real view is behind you, and you must turn round to behold it. That involves standing still and may mean delay. But in traversing a pass you normally ascend the bottom of a glacier valley, and the fine views are ahead and on both hands. The valley is not likely to be so narrow that you are not far enough away from its two sides, or at least one of them, to be able to behold the slope as a whole, from bottom to top, and not unduly foreshortened. Of course this general character of pass-routes is subject to infinite variation. The final slope is often steep, and the ascent of it will then be like the ascent of a mountain face; but, broadly speaking, it must be obvious that passes offer better chances for enjoying continuous fine scenery than peaks, and experience proves it.
Pass-traversing, to me, however, and doubtless to many others, seems to possess more elements of romance than peak-climbing; for this reason—to climb a peak is to make an expedition, but to cross a pass is to travel. In the one case you normally return to the spot whence you set out; in the other you go from the known to the unknown, from the visible to what is beyond. The peak, which is before you when you set out to climb it, is only explained, not revealed, as you ascend; but every pass is a revelation: it takes you over into another region. You leave one area behind and you enter another; you come down amongst new people and into fresh surroundings. You shut out all that was familiar yesterday and open up another world.
This is true of all passing over; it is of course especially true when you are making a new pass for the first time. Then you have to find the way down as well as the way up, and the interest is sustained to the last moment. It has been my good-fortune to have had opportunities of climbing many new peaks and crossing several new passes—one of them the longest mountain-glacier pass in the world. Beyond all question the passes have been more interesting and exciting than the peaks. When you reach the summit of your peak the excitement suddenly ends; on the top of a pass it only culminates. The long pass to which I have above referred took about a fortnight to reach from the highest habitations. We could see the saddle ahead all the time, and we slowly drew nearer to it. The wonder increased as to what we should find on the other side. Whither should we be led on? Where should we come out? What difficulties might bar our progress? Not till the very moment when we topped the ascent and stood upon the col could any of these questions begin to be answered. Nor could any of them be fully answered till the week of descent had been actually accomplished. But the first sight over, the first glimpse into the new world, that was worth toiling for—that, and the last long regretful look back down the valley up which we had come, whose details had fastened themselves durably upon our memories.
THE ROAD FROM VITZNAU TO GERSAU
The Obere Nase corner. Pilatus group in the distance.
What the travelling explorer in previously untraversed places feels so keenly is, after all, only a slightly stronger form of the emotion that every pass affords to every climber who traverses it for the first time. He awaits the arrival at the summit for the moment of supreme revelation. He has the same slow development of desire to see over; the same sudden burst of illumination at the top; the same regretful look back; the same pleasurable anticipation of novel experiences awaiting him on the descent. He too leaves one world and comes into another; leaves if it be but the home of a night in exchange for untried quarters. It is this similarity between ordinary Alpine climbing and new exploration that gives to the former one of its greatest charms. The fact that a thing is new to us suffices. It is almost, perhaps quite, as good to behold for the first time what we have heard speech of, as to behold what no one has ever beheld before. We shall find friends to converse and share memories with about the one; we are liable to be considered bores if we talk too much about the other. The explorer writes his book and then dwells with his memories alone, but the Alpine traveller lays up a store of experiences and reminiscences, the pleasure of which he can share with a goodly number of friends, old and young.