There remains but one more type of pass that appeals for special mention before our space is exhausted. It is the Couloir Pass, a col led up to by a narrow snow-or ice-filled gully. The Col du Mont Dolent and the Col du Lion are the grandest examples of the type, which however is not an uncommon one. For me these passes always possess singular charm. They are really a subdivision of the wall-pass group, but they arouse emotions altogether their own. Once in the couloir you are completely isolated, almost as though perched in the air. A wall of rocks close at hand shuts you in on either side. The steep slope rises in front. Behind, you look straight away to some far distance with nothing to interrupt the vision. So indeed you do from the face of a wall or cliff, but the effect is greatly enhanced by your enclosure on either hand. The contrast between those near rocks to left and right and the absolute openness behind makes the steep drop of the slope appear much steeper than it is. Perhaps you may be compelled to remain for hours in the narrow gully. So much the more striking becomes the view revealed at the top and the sudden sense of being in the open. It has been implied that the couloir has to be ascended, for such is usually the choice, and sometimes the only wise choice; but it is far more delightful to descend one, with the view in front all the way and the valley bottom slowly approaching. Never is the depth beneath better appreciated than under such circumstances.
THE VILLAGE OF SOLDIMO, AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE VAL MAGGIA
I have thus far been referring to passes from the climber's point of view, as leading from one mountain centre to another. Truly, however, the whole of a pass is the route through a mountain region from plain to plain. Few mountaineers nowadays ever cross a range in that way except by train, and yet it is one of the most delightful experiences. Motor-cars will enable us to enjoy such traverses by road, when the Swiss have learnt the wisdom of granting free passage across the Alps to any kind of vehicle. It is only when a range of mountains is approached from the plain that its mass and geographical value as a dividing wall can be felt. Arriving by train among mountains is a very different thing, for you can see nothing from a train unless you are the engine-driver—all revealing views being necessarily ahead. Afoot there is usually some definite point, immediately perceptible, where you first come in contact with the slope. You enter the mouth of a valley; the hills reach forth their arms to embrace you, and you consciously enter a new world. Beside you is now a riotous river on the one hand and a steepening slope on the other. It is not long before you know that you have begun to ascend. The flatness of the valley's mouth presently changes into a gentle slope. At first the fertility of the plain accompanies you into the hills, but the fields grow smaller, the villages may be cramped for space and forced to adapt themselves to difficult ground, attaining a new picturesqueness in the process. Thus for long miles, hour after hour, and, in large mountain regions, day after day, the character of the scenery slowly changes. The mountains grow bigger; vegetation varies with level and aspect; Nature grows more austere, and therewith more magnificent. You traverse some vast defile, like the gorge of Gondo perhaps, where road and river find passage beneath opposite cliffs, water-worn and of imposing height. You enter secluded basins, where the valley widens to close again; you pass round the margin of lakes that hold the hill-tops, as it were, in their depths. And always the flanking heights grow greater, and their tops, when visible, further and further away. Side valleys radiate, leading around romantic corners to invisible fastnesses. The slope of the main valley steepens again. You reach the foot of the forest region, the snouts of glaciers begin to appear, and high aloft the snows look down upon you. Now you traverse the last village and approach the foot of the glacier that fills your valley's head. You mount beside it through the tree-belt and out on to the grassy alp, then up that to the region of broken rocks and stones, and so to the margin of the snow. It is only the last stage of your traverse which now arrives, but that last stage is the beginning and end of the mere climber's pass. To you it means much more—it is the crest of the great range that you have been so long penetrating to these its uttermost recesses. The final wall is before you, the great white wall that looked so ethereal, so cloud-like, when first beheld from afar. You toil up it, stand on the crest, and look abroad over the world of mountains. Then down to the stones, to the grass, to the trees, the high village, and the valley road. So onward again by the roaring torrent, down the ever more fertile, more luxuriant valley, till you come to the low hills and the wide flat stretches that at last lead you out on to the plain once more.
A long traverse of that kind is a real pass, a whole pass; nothing else is more than a fragment—a choice fragment it may be, but still a part and not the whole. The old mountaineers, such as John Ball, used to take their passes in this complete form. So did the old coach-travellers like John Ruskin in his early days. Now mountaineers scorn to waste time on so lengthy an experience and to remain for so long at low levels. It is not their way. They have continual business aloft. They leave to motorists that kind of expedition. What good-fortune, then, that motor-cars should have been invented in time to provide such possible delights for climbers when their days of activity are done.
CHAPTER IX
GLACIERS
INCIDENTALLY, in the course of the preceding chapters, glaciers have been frequently referred to, but they form so prominent a feature in Alpine scenery as to demand a chapter alone. For, in fact, it is the glaciers that most of us think about when we turn our minds to the Alps. Minor ranges have walls of rock as precipitous and grand, gullies as difficult to climb, valleys as beautiful and even as profound as the Alps. Other European ranges are for a longer or shorter part of the year snow-covered, and often deeply snow-covered, so as to present snow-arêtes, cornices, couloirs, and snow-slopes that might almost have been stolen from the highest regions of so-called eternal snow. The Pyrenees, if exception be made of one or two small glaciers of no importance, are practically a range of this sort. They possess fascinations, and great fascinations, but lacking glaciers they lack what every traveller amongst them must feel to be the essential element of greatness. Where glaciers exist the mountains are of the grand style. A small Spitsbergen peak draped and surrounded by glaciers has a more imposing effect than a great tropical hill, three times as big, which lacks glaciers.
FLÜELEN AT END OF LAKE OF URI, SOUTH ARM OF LAKE OF LUCERNE