The Alps

by Sir William Martin Conway

The broad portals of the great mountain highways offer, as I have said, and obviously must offer, scenery of the grandest and most logically consistent type along all the way; but there are passes of other kinds richly endowed with power to please. I would choose next, as a delightful type, the most opposed in character to the broad snow col,—I refer to those range-traversing routes which lead over steep mountain-walls. Such on a great scale for the Alps are the Col du Lion, the Domjoch, and the Col de Miage. I think, however, that the classical pass of this kind is the Triftjoch. It will at all events perfectly serve as an example of the rest. Seeing that, by definition, the final slope of all such passes is a steep wall, that wall, dropping from the watershed, must be at the end of some deep glacial recess. Herein lies the distinguishing feature of the way. The lower part of the route will resemble the lower part of any other pass, but ultimately somewhere in the névé region the traveller is led into a deeply embayed cirque.

The snow-field may and often does lie almost level at the foot of the wall, perhaps above some final ice-fall which it has been difficult to surmount. These high névé basins that look so lake-like and restful in the heart of the hills are always lovely. Imposing precipices rise around them, and in fact feed them with showers of avalanches on active days. But in fine summer weather the avalanches have all fallen. The surrounding walls are like a defensive fortress, towering so high and steeply, and excluding the world and all its vicissitudes and violences. It is only a seeming, for nowhere, in fact, do storms eddy and surge with more violence than in these theatres of the mountains. But seeming is the very substance of beauty, and all the fine-weather aspect of these places is suggestive of peace. The further you advance the more completely are you enclosed. Sometimes a bend in the hollow may actually so shut you in, that no glimpse of the lower regions is to be seen in any direction. Such isolation is delightful for a while. Besides yourselves there is no other trace to be found of the existence of the human race, or of its ever having existed; you might be on the surface of the moon and discover nothing more indifferent to mankind and their motions. A few hours of sunshine will blot out every sign of your passing. This entire cleanness and invulnerability is specially delightful to men who have grown up in crowded cities, where, save sometimes in the sky, the very reverse is the case, and nothing is visible that does not imply the handiwork of man.

The final climb is like all wall-climbing, and commands no view unless you can turn round; but so much the more does the last step tell, the step that lifts your eyes above the crest and suddenly displays to you the great vista on the other side. In peak-climbing, the views to right and left rapidly develop and approach as you near the top; it is only in the ascent of these wall-ended passes that the view is kept back to the last, and then suddenly revealed. In the case of the Triftjoch, as you climb to it from Zermatt, the result is even more than usually impressive; for what bursts upon your vision, right opposite to you, on the far side of a splendid and vast circle of snow-field, is the whole pyramid of the Dent Blanche, from base to summit, with its finest side turned towards you. For the view thus to burst upon the traveller with overwhelming suddenness, the steepness of the wall of ascent must be continued to the very top. If it rounds off for the last few feet, as sometimes happens, the effect is spoiled. The Triftjoch view is one of the best arranged, because the gap you pass through is so narrow, and the distance is beheld as it were in a frame of rocks, which form a foreground. Most saddles of the kind are wider. Then the view lacks foreground and is no better than part of a mountain-top panorama. The narrow gaps are the ones to look for. They can be found all over the Alps, but not usually along the crest of the main ranges.

THE DENT BLANCHE FROM THE RIFFELBERG

July 22, 1903. The Dent Blanche and all the other peaks mostly engaged in powdering their heads behind a curtain of cloud. The water in foreground is not a lake, merely a pond of rain-water.

There is, however, a great charm attached to many passes across minor ridges. They enable an expedition to be made, out and back, from a single centre, with variety of scenery all the way—up one side valley and down another. The side valleys often deserve more attention than they get. A climber's natural tendency is to go for the big expeditions—the highest mountains and the greatest passes. It is worth observing that the greater the scale on which mountains are built, the more widely are the main features separated. Minor peaks and lower ridges have their different members nearer together. Juxtaposition often produces admirable results, and may educate the eye to look for effects on a great scale which have once been observed in little. After all, variety is the great thing,—variety and the emphasis that contrast gives to beauty of different kinds. It is so easy to grow accustomed, so easy to become dull to an effect that is constantly before the eyes. How tired of ourselves, and one of another, we should become, if we were not always growing older! In the mountains, if we would have our sense of their beauty ever fresh, our appreciation of it ever keener and keener, we should alter our point of view: exchanging great for small, arid magnificence for fertile attractiveness, snow for rock, peak for pass, alp for valley. We should beware of specialisation. Why climb only aiguilles? Why scramble up nothing but rock-faces? There may be breadth or narrowness even in our play. We are likely to manifest in life as a whole the qualities that we show in sport. Why not make play react on life?

A highway-pass penetrates a range by help of a corridor, a wall-pass leads right over a cliff. These are the two most definitely marked types of col. We might feel ourselves compelled to assign most cols to one type or the other, if we allowed our freedom to be restrained by the bondage of scientific definition. There is, however, a kind of pass which I prefer to capture for a group by itself, though no descriptive name for it occurs to me,—I mean passes like the Weissthor or the Col du Géant, which are approached by regular snow highways on one side, and fall very rapidly on the other. They and their like are always popular, and there are many of them. Their chief general characteristic is the contrast that must strike every one between the ascent and the descent, on one side and on the other, and between the views in opposite directions from the col. This side, you look down a glacier valley with a broad white foreground limited by a mountain avenue, along which some great glacier flows, winding away. That side, a cliff plunges from your feet, and such foreground as there may be consists of the nearest mountains before you. Thus the near view fixes your attention in one direction, the remote distance in the other. One is essentially a view among mountains, the other an outlook over the wide earth. One impresses by its wildness, the other by its extent. You keep facing about, and, each time you turn, the contrast of scenery enforces the charm of either outlook.

Obviously the right way to enjoy such a pass to most advantage is to ascend by the gentler slope and to go down the cliff. It is not the easiest way for the climber, who is likely to prefer to mount the cliff and descend the slope. The technically and æsthetically best are here at variance. In ascending by the highway side the fine view is always before you, but if you go up the cliff nothing faces you but a few acres of snow and rock. On the contrary, when you descend the cliff, the uninteresting outlook is at your back and the fine view in front all the way.

The crest of some passes of this sort, notably of the Weissthor, is a point of vantage for enfilading a great mountain face. Usually one looks up or down such faces, or, being actually upon them, can only look a short distance to right or left. But from the crest of a suitable pass you may see the great curtain of ice and rocks edgewise, and the view has an impressiveness of its own. Those who have seen Niagara, or any wide waterfall of considerable height, will remember how fine it is to stand and look along the edge of it. Fronting it, you obtain a sense of its width; below it, you feel its force and volume; but in profile its grace is its leading quality. So is it with a wide mountain-wall. It is not enough to see it from below, or from over against. It must also be looked along. Then its surface modelling, its outsets and insets, its ribs and gullies, the meandering as well as the slope of its front become apparent. Few great walls of this kind do not grandly curve round. They are most impressive when that curvature is apparent. Once thus beheld, a wall takes on a new meaning when seen again from some more common standpoint. It no longer looks flat. Its bays and buttresses become perceptible to the trained eye, which is thus better enabled to appreciate the complexities of form and the true architecture of any other mountain-wall afterwards encountered.