Part 3
As the Weisshorn was to be our next peak we took train one afternoon to Randa and climbed up the Schalliberg some hours to the rocks below the ruined hut. This was a warm sleeping place, though rather exposed, where we slept well beneath the stars, woke up quite fresh, and enjoyed the climb immensely. On the rock arête at about 12,000 feet up, and while the dawn was lighting the peaks around, a dense black cloud appeared over Italy slowly moving towards the Matterhorn; lightning came flashing out of it every few seconds. It was a strange sight to witness this storm-cloud bursting over a distant land, while all about us the sky was clear and the stars were seen fading before the rising sun. A climber has related his experience in a thunderstorm which stopped him on the Dent Blanche, when the electric current made his goggles hiss upon his head. The hissing of the ice axe is generally near enough for an unpleasant sensation, and is not a rare occurrence, but the snow glasses being affected makes a more powerful appeal to the imagination. We had a good day on the Weisshorn (14,804 feet), and rested at the gîte on the rocks as we descended, then later had a refreshing tea at Randa, where we heard the first sad news of the loss of life that morning upon the Täschhorn just opposite us. A party of four, two gentlemen and two guides, trying to traverse the Täschhorn from Saas Fée to Randa, got benighted in the descent. By light of a lantern they got to a point of comparative safety where all four lay down to sleep, but only three woke up; Mr. Lucas had wandered off in the night and fallen over a precipice, where his body was found in the morning.
At Zermatt, though the hotels seem crowded, there are not many climbers, they go up higher or appear only for a day and off again. The place is full of people—omnibuses run over you in the streets—and you may be there some time before you notice that Mdlle. Biner has now started a cabin near the Monte Rosa and shaves you as well as ever, advertising herself as a coiffeuse. She is dressed in black, mourning for her brother, the guide killed this year with young Seiler on the Matterhorn. Just up the street is a tailleuse, a useful person sometimes after climbing rocks, and when your wardrobe is scanty.
Leaving Zermatt we spent one night at the Schwarzsee Hotel, close to the Matterhorn, intending to cross over into Italy by the Furgg-joch—this pass skirts the Matterhorn; we climbed to the top in about two and a half hours; starting from our inn at 4, we arrived at Valtournanche about 10 A.M. Then taking a carriage after a long rest and refreshment, our driver just made us miss the train at Châtillon, when the Italian sun was at its hottest; we had a siesta and dined there, and so in the evening to Aosta, where we slept the night. We took places in the diligence to Courmayeur next morning, and saw Mont Blanc before us in a few hours. The Aiguille Blanche de Péteret is well seen from the road, a sad reminder to all Cambridge men of Dr. Frank Balfour, who perished on that mountain in 1882. It has been climbed by Sir Seymour King, and again this year by Dr. Güssfeldt with Emile Rey as guide. Six hundred francs is said to have been paid as fee for guidance.
We were up early for an eight hours’ climb, with a final rock scramble to the Italian Quintino Sella club hut on the Aiguille Grise (11,812 feet). Here we had good food and sleep; our men went out for an hour and cut steps up a steep ice slope, ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc in the morning. As this ice slope appeared to be dangerous from falling stones, we began early, and were greatly helped by the steps already cut; if any stones came down we were not aware of them, though out of sight is not out of mind in these steep places.
The weather when we began our climb in the dusk before the day broke was very threatening, and later on a light fall of snow and hail gave us anxiety, as we clambered up the steep rocks, lest we should be driven back to our hut, the difficulty and danger of such a repulse increasing every hour until it was necessary to go on and make the ascent whatever befell us.
We passed on the higher rocks an enormous rusty ice axe of an ancient pattern, which doubtless has a story; we left it on the spot for others to wonder at. We made the ascent in about eight hours, including halts, and I stood on the highest point in these Alps—the great snow summit of Mont Blanc—15,780 feet. But let us not be proud, the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, is nearly twice as high.
On the curve of snow at the highest point a huge timber skeleton of a building is erected; heavy beams as thick as my body, strongly fixed together, make a truncated pyramid with a rectangular base, which looks as if it might stand the storms, or get buried in snow. At present the wind whistles through, and it presents no surface to the blast. M. Vallot, who is building this for an observatory, has had to plant the foundations in ice, finding no rock after thirty feet excavation. Whether the ice will move, or piled up snow will displace the structure, remains to be proved. Snow collects always more on the north (French) aspect of the summit, and this tendency to collect may be increased by the obstruction. The workmen stated at Chamounix that plum stones were found at a depth of twenty feet, and if this be true it is exceedingly interesting and important as showing that these stones, which must have been dropped on the summit by travellers, had maintained their verticalness, and had not been carried down towards the glaciers below. There the hut stands at present with a small tricolour flag floating alongside. My vulgar wish to climb the timbers was unexpressed and unfulfilled. We were shut in completely by dark fog. Cold wind and the dangers of storm drove us down to just below the top on the Chamounix side, where there is a hut built as an observatory. This shelter we feared at first to leave; wind and darkness kept us there, no tracks were visible, nor anything to guide us but the snow all round. The wind was not the dangerous (south) Föhn wind, and presently, after a cold blast, we were able for a moment to see our direction; then by the advice of our guides we hurried down over the Grand Plateau, scuttling and sliding to the Grands Mulets, and safety, in two hours and ten minutes. After a cup of tea and a rest we continued our journey over the beautiful glacier des Bossons in bright sunshine. We reached Couttet’s capital hotel in Chamounix at six o’clock, thus traversing Mont Blanc from Italy into France in fourteen hours, including halts by the way. This is a far finer expedition than up and down from Chamounix, but is not so popular, and the traveller, bringing with him foreign guides into the place, is not saluted by a salvo of artillery.
Next day we were at Montanvert admiring the Mer de Glace, and during thunderstorms of many hours we made our arrangements to climb the Aiguille du Dru. Sleeping out under a rock, where we had passed a stormy night last year, we began in fine weather our steep ascent mostly of rocks, with plenty of opportunities for adventures on the way. There is one place in climbing the rocks where a rope is hung over a precipice, and by gently swinging on this rope a long step or giant stride is made across to a foothold beyond. It is only one of the many positions in mountaineering where imagination shows you what a slight distance there is between what you are and what you may become. In the descent a frightful avalanche of stones fell down just as we cleared the rocks, but it was not near enough to shake our nerves.
On the 28th of August I slept at the Couvercle to climb the Aiguille Verte. This sleeping place is a good one where an enormous rock overhangs the little platform on which the sleeper stretches, and it is grandly situated above the famous Jardin in the Glacier de Talèfre. Being roused before midnight in threatening weather, we hesitated before attacking such a mountain as the Aiguille Verte with a high wind and storm-clouds in prospect; meantime we had some hot chocolate, and only set off with some misgivings at one in the morning. The wind moderated as the day broke, we got over the bergschrund, and made a successful ascent in about nine hours. The summit of the Verte is of snow, commanding a fine view of Mont Blanc and the peaks around. We noted with feelings of annoyance that the majestic snow curve upon the head of the Monarch is broken by the erection of Vallot’s wooden building, which looks from here like a projection of dark rocks. Time may revenge himself, and play skittles with the timbers.
When I parted from my guides, whose conduct was worthy of all praise, and came down to Chamounix, I saw there a most piteous sight, that of a fine young fellow with both feet frost-bitten. All the toes of both feet were black, and large blisters appeared on the reddened skin of the foot above the blackened toes. He was a guide named Maquignaz, and forty-eight hours before my visit had been exposed during one night on the Italian side of Mont Blanc; he was with Mr. F. and another guide, a cousin of the same name. The others of the party put their feet into their knapsacks, and took such like precautions, and so escaped. On examining this poor fellow’s boots I discovered that, though sound enough in the soles, they had the tongues fastened only halfway up the upper leathers, and with no gaiters or other wrapping except his trousers, he must have got his feet wet. The latest accounts I heard were not hopeful as to saving the big toes. Without the great toes he cannot climb again and his occupation will be gone; the loss of the little toes is not so serious. The reflection after such a sad sight is forced upon one, that though over sixty deaths are said to have occurred on Mont Blanc, history takes small account of the travellers who have lost portions of their bodies upon the mountains and had their after lives wrecked by their maimed condition.
The delay caused by an endeavour to help this unfortunate man, decided me to journey to Geneva with my friend rather than travel alone over the Tête Noire. It was late next night before I reached Zermatt again and joined my wife, who had reached the Riffelberg from Paris ten days previously. We found most comfortable quarters at the Riffel Alp lower down, in an enormous hotel, where two hundred and seventy people dined every day, including an archbishop and forty-five clergymen.
The weather this year has been good for climbers, though there have been peculiar dangers associated with the sunshine; and as every season has its own peculiar dangers, so this year the weather was almost too good. The sun tamed the severity of giant peaks, and made the descents dangerous from avalanches.
The great rocks have been bared of ice and snow and tempted attacks, while earth-fast and frost-bound stones were loosened from the heights above and made the mountains dangerous. The steep couloirs of the Aiguille Verte were decidedly dangerous from falling stones, and though I do not pretend to have any hair-erecting story to tell, it will be understood that we made our way up and down on the rocks, as much as possible avoiding the tracks of the stones. The traverses across the couloirs were as rapid as caution could permit, and only made when absolutely necessary. Great stones occasionally hurtling down as if shot from a catapult, with enough force to dash the brains out or hurl to destruction the poor climber balanced in his ice step. Thus upon the Aiguille Noire a man was killed by a blow on the head, and many had narrow escapes. On all great mountains where ice, snow, and rock have all to be climbed over, it must be difficult to find weather which will suit so as to find everything in perfect order, but for the true enjoyment of a climb both the man and the mountain must be in fine condition. The weather of the day I have described on Mont Blanc, though it gave us some uneasiness, was just perfect for avoidance of fatigue and mountain sickness. Absence of sun and presence of wind enabled the climbers to feel fairly vigorous, though at such a height. In other conditions of hot, still weather, the strain might have been severe.
These days are now delightful memories for me, and if my remarks just written do not rise above what Scott called the “ordinary bow-wow,” at least they are “high notes” in one sense, and may find an echo in the hearts of those who love the mountains.
An Alpine Letter
1892
Saas Fée—Grimsel Pass—Mountain sickness—A tired lady on the Matterhorn—Ascent of the Matterhorn—Ascent of the Ober-Gabelhorn—The Trift Joch from Zermatt to Zinal—The Concordia Hut—The Jungfrau—The Lötschen Lücke—Mr. Nettleship’s death on Mont Blanc—Beaten by bad weather on the Dru—The disaster at St. Gervais—Neuchâtel to Bâle.
“In all my wanderings round this world of care” I have found few places so free from the black canker as the mountain tops. Let the climber carry out a burden as big as was Christian’s in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, he leaves it all behind upon the high peaks. If Mr. Gladstone could only have managed to attain to the summit of Snowdon he might have seen more than the coast of Ireland.
Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man. So once again I take my holidays upon the Alps, and will hope that the following account may interest readers who travel, for these like to be reminded of beautiful places they have visited, and those who stay at home may be encouraged to try the mountains abroad.
In order to avoid the hot part of the Rhone Valley, and to reach Saas Fée, our first halting place, by an interesting route, my wife and I took the train for Lucerne—by way of Calais, Rheims, Laon, and Bâle. This journey takes less than a day. Starting from London at 11 A.M. we found ourselves the following morning in a boat on the blue Lake of Lucerne with the mountains around us. Travelling by rail over the Brünig Pass, which we had crossed on foot ten years before, we reminded each other of a long walk from Meiringen to Lauterbrunnen in one day, over the Greater and the Lesser Sheidecks when our porter over-ate himself at Grindelwald, about midway, and nearly collapsed at the end of the journey, turning very white and sick in the steep descent to Lauterbrunnen. We came to Meiringen, still chiefly in ruins from the recent fire. The hot, strong Föhn wind blowing from the south is the cause of these awful fires, it will both start and spread the flames. For miles round Meiringen there are notices forbidding smoking in the open road when this wind is blowing. From this sad spot by easy roads we came to Guttannen and here spent the night, rising early next morning for a walk over the Grimsel Pass, with a man to carry our light luggage.
The first early morning walk in Switzerland is always delicious, and wipes away the discomfort of the journey out. We stayed at Handeck to look at the finest waterfall in the country. Two converging torrents, “with a mighty uproar,” pour their waters into an unfathomable, mysterious abyss, hidden by clouds of spray, where a rainbow arches in the sun.
As we walk up the pass, which has been described as a “sepulchre unburied by the sun,” there are, on either hand, enormous, dark, smoothly rounded rocks, the evidence of glacier action in the ages gone. The Grimsel Hospice is situated in the most savage rock scenery, and is not improved by containing a piano, electric bells, and a smart waiter in dress clothes. However, I made use of their telegraph to order a mule from Saas Fée to meet us at Stalden for my wife to ride up there. All the crooked places are now being made plain by means of telegraphs and railways!
A great new road is in process of making over this pass, and as we reached the summit, the blasting operations were heard in many explosions; each was at first like the pop of a champagne cork, but after a pause came a tremendous thundering echo from all the mountains around. We left the Rhone glacier on our left hand, and descended to Obergestelen in the upper part of the Rhone valley, taking there a carriage to Brieg. The sensations are delightful on a sunny day, when, after some hours’ walking in bleak, bare, rock wilderness, you come down into a green and fertile valley; the effect of the keen fresh air is still with you as you drive along among the trees and flowers in the sun, and you are cheered with a sense of well-being in the present and the future. Here you “cannot see the smiling earth and think there’s hell hereafter.” A night was spent at Brieg and then a short journey by rail to Visp and up to Stalden, from whence I followed my wife’s mule to Fée. After spending a few days in comfortable quarters there I left to make some expeditions.
My climbing friend, A. B., was at the Eggishorn Hotel, and had just made the ascent of the Finsteraarhorn, the highest peak of the Oberland, whereupon he had been taken with mountain-sickness, and made his ascent with some difficulty, his guide helping him on and holding his head occasionally while he vomited. His trouble was, probably, caused by his going too fast up his first peak, for, though accustomed to the mountains, he had only been out from England a few days of this season. This interesting malady is well described in Whymper’s travels amongst the Great Andes of the Equator; both himself and his men suffered from headache and fever, but the conditions were very different from what obtains on our mountains; the highest point is here only 15,700 feet (Mont Blanc), compared with over 20,000 on Chimborazo. All exertion seems more severe at great heights, and though in Europe mountain-sickness is rare, there are few climbers who have not felt at 14,000 feet a sense of breathlessness if going upwards at any great pace. It is often hard to distinguish it from mere fatigue, and I do not think that guides would acknowledge it in themselves; but for myself I have had the feeling, and “thought I could not breathe in that fine air.” Whymper’s observations prove that man may gradually accustom himself to these great alterations in barometric pressure, though the dangers of want of training and of sudden ascents are well known.
Paul Bert, by means of a metal cylinder, in which he shut himself, had the pressure of the air reduced to be equivalent with that on Mont Blanc, but was soon sick and dizzy; afterwards, in experiments, he was able so much to revive himself with bags of oxygen gas, that three balloonists were emboldened to ascend to a height of 28,000 feet, taking with them a supply of oxygen: with the result that when the balloon again reached earth two of the aeronauts were dead, and the third had a very narrow escape. Man has not yet gained the summit of Mount Everest.
Very extraordinary is the description given of the effects of altered atmospheric pressure by early climbers. Mr. Fellows (afterwards Sir Charles Fellows) in 1827, with Mr. Hawes and ten guides, writes that at the distance of 1000 feet below the summit of Mont Blanc, “the effect of the rarity of the air was still more striking, for the noses of several of our guides burst out with blood.... None of us were free from many effects of the peculiarities of the atmosphere: we all spat blood; the eyes of all were blood-shot, our faces were blistered, and in our respiration we all suffered intensely; for it was impossible to proceed many paces without stopping to recover our breath.” Near the summit “two of our guides fell from faintness, and copiously vomited blood, while all of us gave proof of its internal loss (we all experienced symptoms of haematuria).” Mr. Fellows and his companions suffered less than did the guides.
Those who are interested in this subject should read the account of the ascent of the German Emperor’s balloon Phœnix in 1895, in which Coxwell’s record was beaten. Oxygen cylinders were used.
My friend, A. B., joined me at Schwarz See to climb the Matterhorn. Our two guides were also ready; the leading man, Alois Kalbermatten, we usually called Hercules; his brother, a still stronger man, was named Quinbus Flestrin, or the man-mountain. Together we went up to the hut to spend the night, ready to begin our ascent in the morning. As we were thinking about supper there came down a wretched, worn-out, grey lady, who said she had been up the Matterhorn, was too exhausted to proceed, and must stay the night with us. The place was very unfit, dirty, and stuffy, so we made her rest awhile, restoring her with brandy and lemonade. I then made her guides rope her carefully the whole of the way down, and she reached the hotel safely.
On a fine day when the Matterhorn will “go,” the hut is always crowded, chiefly with foreigners, and we stretched ourselves on the bunkers alongside of a polyglot Pole, who talked half the night. Italian guides stole one of our lanterns, and my friend’s silk scarf.
We had a lovely day for our ascent, which occupied six hours, including halts and feedings. Upon the summit we spent about an hour of most glorious life in view of Italy on one side and Switzerland on the other, while we walked carefully on the delicate ridge of snow which forms the apex of the peak. The ascent of the Matterhorn from the Zermatt side is more interesting historically than as a climb. The hut occupied by Whymper in early attempts still remains, and as the guides pass the fatal spot they cheerfully point out where poor so and so broke his neck, where poor Dr. B. died. The shattered photographic apparatus remains on the precipice upon which, two years ago, an entire party was killed.