The Alps

by Sir William Martin Conway

The pyramid of the Bristenstock in the background. Föhn wind blowing.

Snow that vanishes away before it is a year old is generally feeble-looking stuff. It is only snow with a history, snow that has weathered twenty hot summers, that really tells in a view. The first is a mere inert covering of the ground; the second is a mighty and moving agent. In short, the one is dead; the other is alive. A sheet of snow, lying where it fell, is amorphous. It might be twice the size or half the size and any single square yard of it would be the same. But a glacier, the moving accumulation of a score or scores of winter snow-falls, is a unit, and all its parts imply the rest. Increase or diminish the area and you must needs change every detail, just as the whole body of a man is modified when he begins to grow stout or to waste away.

It is not often that you can see the whole of a glacier in a single view, unless it be a very small glacier. Generally you see only a part; but, to one who knows, that part implies the whole. When you see a man's leg you know that there is the rest of him round the corner; from the attitude of what is visible it is often possible to infer much about what is hidden. So, too, is it with a glacier. The more familiar a man is with glacier phenomena, the more certainly can he infer from the known to the unknown. How easy it is with a little practice to tell at a glance whether a bit of white beheld aloft is part of a glacier or merely a bed of winter snow that will presently disappear. The one is modelled by its own motion; the other merely borrows its modelling from the ground on which it lies inertly.

The sense of motion, unity, and life—it is when these are instinctively perceived in glaciers that a view of snow-mountains begins to possess its true significance. Before it had been discovered that glaciers move, people used to call them frightful, terrible, and so forth. Ignorance blinded men's eyes to the beauty that was actually in sight. Not knowing how to look, they could not see it. What forests, grass, and flowers are to the lower regions, that glaciers are to the higher—they are the vitalising element. Hence the importance to the mountain-lover of learning to know glaciers and familiarising himself with their structure, their ways, and their moods. It is easy enough to declare that every form and movement of a glacier is determined by the action of definite forces—so perhaps are all the ways and doings of men. But we pretend that they are not, and talk of our whims and moods, and may take the same liberty of speech about glaciers.

Every climber knows that there are glaciers of all sorts and characters, and every mountain traveller knows that they behave differently in different climates and latitudes. In the Arctic regions they flow faster and spread more widely. They have a more viscous appearance to the eye. They bulge and swell at the lower end, so that no one would ever have invented the name "snout" for the termination of an Arctic ice-stream. Moreover they break very readily into crevasses, even upon gentlest inclines in their lower course, whilst high up they seem less ready to form ice-falls than in the Alps. Glaciers in Norway vary from the Arctic to the temperate character as you go from north to south. The glaciers of Lyngen resemble those of Greenland. The glaciers of Jotunheim are almost Alpine—more than Alpine, indeed, in the development of their glorious ice-cascades, but less than Arctic in the outreach of their lower extremities. The glaciers of the Tropics, again, present peculiarities of their own, due to the fact that the ice evaporates rather than melts. Thus their surfaces are dry and almost granitic in aspect. Their towering séracs seldom fall. Avalanches are much rarer than one would expect. Glacier streams are insignificant. Thus it is in the Bolivian Andes and thus also in the regions of Kenya and Ruwenzori. In the great Asiatic mountain territory there are glaciers of many types, corresponding to the great variety of climates. Those of Sikkim seem to be almost of the tropical character. Those of the Mustagh are of the temperate sort; and there are many intermediate varieties.

FURGGEN GLACIER ICEFALL

Furggjoch at top of picture.

Alpine glaciers are of the medium type, lying as they do half-way between the Arctic and tropical extremes. They have not the rapid flow of the Arctic nor the dry rigidity of the tropical sort. Their walls are not silent as in the Central Andes, nor thundered over by continual avalanches like those of the upper Baltoro. They are of medium size also. In a single day almost any of them may be ascended from snout to snow-field, and descended again. To explore their remotest recesses no elaborately equipped expedition is required. Yet they are large enough to be imposing, and penetrate deep enough into the heart of the hills to isolate their votaries completely from the world of human habitation. It is to this medium quality that the Alps owe much of their charm. This, too, it is that makes them an almost perfect mountain play-ground. Were they but a little smaller, how much they would lose that is most precious! Were they larger, how many persons that now can afford the cost and the strength to explore them would have to linger at their gates wistfully looking in. In area, too, they are large enough for grandeur and yet small enough for easy access. No part of them is beyond the range of a summer holiday, yet a commanding view of them is as apparently limitless as is the view from the greatest Asiatic peaks which, thus far, have been climbed. They are the only range of snow-mountains in the world thus blessed with moderation.

It is for this reason that the Alpine climber so soon acquires an understanding of glaciers as units. A novice, after a single year's Alpine experience, can talk easily and with understanding of all the parts of a glacier. It takes twenty seasons to know them well, but the foundations of knowledge can be laid in one. The modern tendency amongst climbers is to devote their main attention to rock-scrambling; but those who have spent the best years of their life amongst mountains, generally end by giving their hearts to glaciers and the high regions of snow. The best advice that can be given to a young climber is, "Learn to know glaciers." They offer the strongest contrast to the ordinary surroundings of life. They present the most varied phenomena. They most readily impress the imagination. They are the vital element, the living inhabitants of the high world.