The Alps

Croz planted a tent-pole which they had taken with them, though Whymper protested that it was tempting Providence, and fixed his blouse to it. A poor flag—but it was seen everywhere. At Breuil—as we have seen—they cheered the Italian victory. But on the morrow the explorers returned down-hearted. “The old legends are true—there are spirits on the top of the Matterhorn. We saw them ourselves—they hurled stones at us.”

We may allow this dramatic touch to pass unchallenged, though, whatever Carrel may have said to his friends, he made it quite clear to Giordano that he had identified the turbulent spirits, for, in the letter from which we have quoted, Giordano tells his friends that Carrel had seen Whymper on the summit. It might, perhaps, be worth while to add that the stones Whymper hurled down the ridge could by no possible chance have hit Carrel’s party. “Still, I would,” writes Whymper, “that the leader of that party could have stood with us at that moment, for our victorious shouts conveyed to him the disappointment of a lifetime. He was the man of all those who attempted the ascent of the Matterhorn who most deserved to be first upon its summit. He was the first to doubt its inaccessibility; and he was the only man who persisted in believing that its ascent would be accomplished. It was the aim of his life to make the ascent from the side of Italy, for the honour of his native valley. For a time, he had the game in his hands; he played it as he thought best; but he made a false move, and he lost it.”

After an hour on the summit, they prepared to descend. The order of descent was curious. Croz, as the best man in the party, should have been placed last. As a matter of history, he led, followed, in this order, by Hadow, Hudson, Douglas, and Peter Taugwalder. Whymper was sketching while the party was being arranged. They were waiting for him to tie on when somebody suggested that the names had not been left in a bottle. While Whymper put this right, the rest of the party moved on. A few minutes later Whymper tied on to young Peter, and followed detached from the others. Later, Douglas asked Whymper to attach himself to old Taugwalder, as he feared that Taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground in the event of a slip. About three o’clock in the afternoon, Michel Croz, who had laid aside his axe, faced the rock, and, in order to give Hadow greater security, was putting his feet one by one into their proper position. Croz then turned round to advance another step when Hadow slipped, fell against Croz, and knocked him over. “I heard one startled exclamation from Croz, and then saw him and Mr. Hadow flying downwards; in another moment Hudson was dragged from his steps, and Lord Francis Douglas immediately after him. All this was the work of a moment. Immediately we heard Croz’s exclamation, old Peter and I planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would permit: the rope was taut between us, and the jerk came on us both as on one man. We held: but the rope broke midway between Taugwalder and Lord Francis Douglas. For a few seconds, we saw our unfortunate companions sliding downwards on their backs, and spreading out their hands endeavouring to save themselves. They passed from our sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and then fell from precipice to precipice on to the Matterhorngletscher below, a distance of nearly 4000 feet in height. From the moment the rope broke, it was impossible to help them.”

For half-an-hour, Whymper and the two Taugwalders remained on the spot without moving. The two guides cried like children. Whymper was fixed between the older and younger Taugwalder, and must have heartily regretted that he left young Peter the responsibility of last man down, for the young man was paralysed with terror, and refused to move. At last, he descended, and they stood together. Whymper asked immediately for the end of the rope that had given way, and noticed with horror that it was the weakest of the three ropes. It had never been intended to use it save as a reserve in case much rope had to be left behind to attach to the rocks.

For more than two hours after the fall, Whymper expected that the Taugwalders would fall. They were utterly unnerved. At 6 p.m. they arrived again on the snow shoulder. “We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned. Convinced at last that they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts; and, too cast down for speech, silently gathered up our things, and the little effects of those who were lost, preparatory to continuing the descent.”

As they started down, the Taugwalders raised the problem as to their payment, Lord Francis being dead. “They filled,” remarks Whymper, “the cup of bitterness to overflowing, and I tore down the cliff madly and recklessly in a way that caused them more than once to inquire if I wished to kill them.” The whole party spent the night on a miserable ledge. Next day, they descended in safety to Zermat. Seiler met them at the door of his hôtel. “What is the matter?” “The Taugwalders and I have returned.” He did not need more, and burst into tears, but lost no time in needless lamentations, and set to work to rouse the village.

On Sunday morning, Whymper set out with the Rev. Canon M’Cormick to recover the bodies of his friends. The local curé threatened with excommunication any guide who neglected Mass in order to attend the search party. “To several, at least, this was a severe trial. Peter Perrn declared, with tears in his eyes, that nothing else would have prevented him joining in the search.” Guides from other valleys joined the party. At 8.30 they got to the plateau at the top of the glacier. They found Hudson, Croz and Hadow, but “of Lord Francis Douglas nothing was seen.”

This accident sent a thrill of horror through the civilised world. The old file of The Times, which is well worth consulting, bears tribute to the profound sensation which the news of this great tragedy aroused. Idle rumours of every kind were afloat—with these we shall deal later. For more than five weeks, not a day passed without some letter or comment in the columns of the leading English paper. These letters, for the most part, embodied the profound distrust with which the new sport was regarded by the bulk of Englishmen. If Lord Francis Douglas had been killed while galloping after a fox, he would have been considered to have fallen in action. That he should have fallen on the day that the Matterhorn fell, that he should have paid the supreme forfeit for a triumphant hour in Alpine history—such a death was obviously wholly without its redeeming features. “It was the blue ribbon of the Alps,” wrote The Times, “that poor Lord Francis Douglas was trying for the other day. If it must be so, at all events the Alpine Club that has proclaimed this crusade must manage the thing rather better, or it will soon be voted a nuisance. If the work is to be done, it must be done well. They must advise youngsters to practise, and make sure of their strength and endurance.”

For three weeks, Whymper gave no sign. At last, in response to a dignified appeal from Mr. Justice Wills, then President of the Alpine Club, he broke silence, and gave to the public a restrained account of the tragedy. As we have said, malicious rumour had been busy, and in ignorant quarters there had been rumours of foul play. The Matterhorn accident first popularised the theory that Alpine ropes existed to be cut. Till then, the public had supposed that the rope was used to prevent cowardly climbers deserting their party in an emergency. But from 1865 onwards, popular authors discovered a new use for the rope. They divided all Alpine travellers into two classes, those who cut the rope from below (“Greater love hath no man—a romance of the mountains”) and those who cut the rope from above (“The Coward—a tale of the snows”). A casual reader might be pardoned for supposing that the Swiss did a brisk business in sheath knives. We should be the last to discourage this enterprising school—their works have afforded much joy to the climbing fraternity; but we offer them in all humility a few remarks on the art of rope-cutting by a member of Class II (those who cut the rope from above).

A knife could only be used with advantage when a snowbridge gives way. It is easy enough to hold a man who has fallen into a crevasse; but it is often impossible to pull him out. The whole situation is altered on a rock face. If a man falls, a sudden jerk may pull the rest of the party off the face of the mountain. This will almost certainly happen if the leader or, on a descent, the last man down, falls, unless the rope is anchored round a knob of rock, in which case—provided the rope does not break—the leader may escape with a severe shaking, though a clear fall of more than fifteen feet will usually break the rope if anchored; and, if not anchored, the party will be dragged off their holds one by one. Therefore, the leader must not fall. If any other member of the party falls, he should be held by the man above. On difficult ground, only one man moves at a time. No man moves until the man above has secured himself in a position where he can draw in the rope as the man below advances. If he keeps it reasonably taut, and is well placed, he should be able to check any slip. A climber who slips and is held by the rope can immediately get new foothold and handhold. He is not in a crevasse from which exit is impossible save at the rope’s end. His slip is checked, and he is swung up against a rock face. There is no need to drag him up. The rest of the party have passed over this face, and therefore handholds and footholds can be found. The man who has slipped will find fresh purchase, and begin again. In the case of the Matterhorn accident, the angle of the slope was about forty degrees. There was an abundance of hold, and if the rope had not parted Croz and Hadow would have been abruptly checked, and would have immediately secured themselves. Now, if Taugwalder had cut the rope, as suggested, he must have been little short of an expert acrobat, and have cut it in about the space of a second and a half before the jerk. If he had waited for the jerk, either he would have been dragged off, in which case his knife would have come in handy, or he would have held, in which case it would have been unnecessary.

To mountaineers, all this, of course, is a truism; and we should not have laboured the point if we wrote exclusively for mountaineers. Even so, Peter’s comrades at Zermat (who should have known better) persisted in believing that he cut the rope. “In regard to this infamous charge,” writes Whymper, “I say that he could not do so at the moment of the slip, and that the end of the rope in my possession shows that he did not do so before.” Whymper, however, adds: “There remains the suspicious fact that the rope which broke was the thinnest and weakest one we had. It is suspicious because it is unlikely that the men in front would have selected an old and weak rope when there was an abundance of new, and much stronger, rope to spare; and, on the other hand, because if Taugwalder thought that an accident was likely to happen, it was to his interest to have the weaker rope placed where it was.”

One cannot help regretting that Whymper lent weight to an unworthy suspicion. Taugwalder was examined by a secret Court of Inquiry; and Whymper prepared a set of questions with a view to helping him to clear himself. The answers, though promised, were never sent; and Taugwalder ultimately left the valley for America, returning only to die. Whymper, in his classic book, suggested the possibility of criminal dealings by publishing photographs of the three ropes showing that the rope broken was far the weakest.

Let us review the whole story as Whymper himself tells it. We know that Whymper crossed the Théodule on the eleventh in a state of anger and despair. The prize for which he had striven so long seemed to be sliding from his grasp. Carrel had deserted him just as the true line of attack had been discovered. Like all mountaineers, he was human. He gets together the best party he can, and sets out with all haste determined to win by a head. Hadow, a young man with very little experience, is taken, and Hadow, the weak link, is destined to turn triumph into disaster. Let the mountaineer who has never invited a man unfit for a big climb throw the first stone. And, before he has thrown it, let him remember the peculiar provocation in Whymper’s case.

All goes well. The Matterhorn is conquered with surprising ease. These six men achieve the greatest triumph in Alpine history without serious check. To Whymper, this hour on the summit must have marked the supreme climax of life, an hour that set its seal on the dogged labours of past years. Do men in such moments anticipate disaster? Taugwalder might possibly have failed in a sudden crisis; but is it likely that he should deliberately prepare for an accident by carefully planned treachery?

Now read the story as Whymper tells it. The party are just about to commence the descent. The first five hundred feet would still be considered as demanding the greatest care. The top five hundred feet of the Matterhorn, but for the ropes with which the whole mountain is now festooned, would always be a difficult, if not a dangerous, section. Croz was the best guide in the party. He should have remained behind as sheet anchor. Instead of this, he goes first. Whymper falls out of line, to inscribe the names of the party, ties himself casually on to young Peter, and then “runs down after the others.” In the final arrangements, young Peter, who was a young and inexperienced guide, was given the vital position of last man down. Flushed with triumph, their minds could find no room for a doubt. Everything had gone through with miraculous ease. Such luck simply could not turn. It is in precisely such moments as these that the mountains settle their score. Mountaineering is a ruthless sport that demands unremitting attention. In games, a moment’s carelessness may lose a match, or a championship; but in climbing a mistake may mean death.

As for Taugwalder, one is tempted to acquit him without hesitation; but there is one curious story about Taugwalder which gives one pause. The story was told to the present writer by an old member of the Alpine Club, and the following is an extract from a letter: “I had rather you said ‘a friend of yours’ without mentioning my name. I had a good many expeditions with old Peter Taugwalder, including Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa; and I had rather a tender spot for the somewhat coarse, dirty old beggar. I should not like my name to appear to help the balance to incline in the direction of his guilt in that Matterhorn affair. It was not on the Dent Blanche that he took the rope off; it was coming down a long steep slope of bare rock from the top of the Tête Blanche towards Prayagé. I had a couple of men with me who were inexperienced; and I fancy he must have thought that, if one of them let go, which was not unlikely, he would be able to choose whether to hold on or let go. I happened to look up and see what was going on, and I made him tie up at once. I don’t quite remember whether Whymper tells us how far from Peter’s fingers the break in the rope occurred. That seems to me one of the most critical points.”

There we may leave Taugwalder, and the minor issues of this great tragedy. The broader lessons are summed up by Mr. Whymper in a memorable passage: “So the traditional inaccessibility of the Matterhorn was vanquished, and was replaced by legends of a more real character. Others will essay to scale its proud cliffs, but to none will it be the mountain that it was to the early explorers. Others may tread its summit snows, but none will ever know the feelings of those who first gazed upon its marvellous panorama; and none, I trust, will ever be compelled to tell of joy turned into grief, and of laughter into mourning. It proved to be a stubborn foe; it resisted long and gave many a hard blow; it was defeated at last with an ease that none could have anticipated, but like a relentless enemy—conquered, but not crushed—it took a terrible vengeance.”

The last sentence has a peculiar significance. A strange fatality seems to dog the steps of those who seek untrodden paths to the crest of the Matterhorn. Disaster does not always follow with the dramatic swiftness of that which marked the conquest of the eastern face, yet, slowly but surely, the avenging spirit of the Matterhorn fulfils itself.

On July 16, two days after the catastrophe, J. A. Carrel set out to crown Whymper’s victory by proving that the Italian ridge was not unconquerable. He was accompanied by Abbé Gorret, a plucky priest who had shared with him that first careless attack on the mountain. Bich and Meynet completed the party. The Abbé and Meynet remained behind not very far from the top, in order to help Carrel and Bich on the return at a place where a short descent onto a ledge was liable to cause difficulty on the descent. This ledge, known as Carrel’s corridor, is about forty minutes from the summit. It needed a man of Carrel’s determined courage to follow its winding course. It is now avoided.

The rest of the climb presented no difficulty. Carrel had conquered the Italian ridge. The ambition of years was half fulfilled, only half, for the Matterhorn itself had been climbed. One cannot but regret that he had turned back on the 14th. Whymper’s cries of triumph had spelt for him the disappointment of a lifetime. Yet a fine rôle was open to him. Had he gone forward and crowned Whymper’s victory by a triumph unmarred by disaster; had the Matterhorn defied all assaults for years, and then yielded on the same day to a party from the Swiss side and Carrel’s men from Italy, the most dramatic page in Alpine history would have been complete. Thirty-five years later, the Matterhorn settled the long outstanding debt, and the man who had first attacked the citadel died in a snowstorm on the Italian ridge of the mountain which he had been the first to assail, and the first to conquer.

Carrel was in his sixty-second year when he started out for his last climb. Bad weather detained the party in the Italian hut, and Signor Sinigaglia noticed that Carrel was far from well. After two nights in the hut, the provisions began to run out; and it was decided to attempt the descent. The rocks were in a terrible condition, and the storm added to the difficulty. Carrel insisted on leading, though he was far from well. He knew every yard of his own beloved ridge. If a man could pilot them through the storm that man was Carrel. Quietly and methodically, he fought his way downward, yard by yard, undaunted by the hurricane, husbanding the last ounces of his strength. He would not allow the other guides to relieve him till the danger was past, and his responsibilities were over. Then suddenly he collapsed, and in a few minutes the gallant old warrior fell backwards and died. A cross now marks the spot where the old soldier died in action.

In life the leading guides of Breuil had often resented Carrel’s unchallenged supremacy. But death had obliterated the old jealousies. Years afterwards, a casual climber stopped before Carrel’s cross, and remarked to the son of Carrel’s great rival, “So that is where Carrel fell.” “Carrel did not fall,” came the indignant answer, “Carrel died.”

Let us turn from Carrel to the conquerors of another great ridge of the Matterhorn.

Of others concerned with attacks on the Italian ridge, Tyndall, Bennen, and J. J. Macquignaz, all came to premature ends. Bennen was killed in an historic accident on the Haut de Cry, and Macquignaz disappeared on Mont Blanc. In 1879, two independent parties on the same day made the first ascent of the great northern ridge of the Matterhorn known as the Zmutt arête. Mummery and Penhall were the amateurs responsible for these two independent assaults. “The memory,” writes Mummery, “of two rollicking parties, comprised of seven men, who on one day in 1879 were climbing on the west face of the Matterhorn passes with ghost-like admonition before my mind, and bids me remember that, of these seven, Mr. Penhall was killed on the Wetterhorn, Ferdinand Imseng on the Macugnaga side of Monte Rosa, and Johan Petrus on the Frersnay Mont Blanc.” Of the remaining four, Mummery disappeared in the Himalayas in 1895, Louis Zurbrucken was killed, Alexander Burgener perished in an avalanche near the Bergli hut in 1911. Mr. Baumann and Emil Rey, who with Petrus followed in Mummery’s footsteps three days later, both came to untimely ends: Baumann disappeared in South Africa, and Emil Rey was killed on the Dent de Géant. The sole survivor of these two parties is the well-known Augustin Gentinetta, one of the ablest of the Zermat guides. Burgener and Gentinetta guided Mummery on the above-mentioned climb, while Penhall was accompanied by Louis Zurbrucken. In recent times, three great mountaineers who climbed this ridge together died violent deaths within the year. The superstitious should leave the Zmutt arête alone.

CHAPTER IX
MODERN MOUNTAINEERING

Alpine History is not easy to divide into arbitrary periods; and yet the conquest of the Matterhorn does in a certain sense define a period. It closes what has been called “the golden age of mountaineering.” Only a few great peaks still remained unconquered. In this chapter we shall try to sketch some of the tendencies which differentiate modern mountaineering from mountaineering in the so-called “golden age.”

The most radical change has been the growth of guideless climbing, which was, of course, to be expected as men grew familiar with the infinite variety of conditions that are the essence of mountaineering. In a previous chapter we have discussed the main differences between guided and guideless climbing. It does not follow that a man of considerable mountaineering experience, who habitually climbs with guides need entirely relinquish the control of the expedition. Such a man—there are not many—may, indeed, take a guide as a reserve of strength, or as a weight carrier. He may enjoy training up a young and inexperienced guide, who has a native talent for rock and ice, while lacking experience and mountain craft. One occasionally finds a guide who is a first-class cragsman, but whose general knowledge of mountain strategy is inferior to that of a great amateur. In such a combination, the latter will be the real general of the expedition, even if the guide habitually leads on difficult rock and does the step-cutting. On the other hand a member of a guideless party may be as dependent on the rest of the party as another man on his guides. Moreover, tracks, climbers, guides and modern maps render the mental work of the leader, whether amateur or professional, much less arduous than in more primitive days.

But when we have made all possible allowance for the above considerations, there still remains a real and radical distinction between those who rely on their own efforts and those who follow a guide. The man who leads even on one easy expedition obtains a greater insight into the secrets of his craft than many a guided climber with a long list of first-class expeditions.

One of the earliest of the great guideless climbs was the ascent of Mont Blanc by E. S. Kennedy, Charles Hudson (afterwards killed on the first ascent of the Matterhorn), Grenville and Christopher Smyth, E. J. Stevenson and Charles Ainslie. Their climb was made in 1855, and was the first complete ascent of Mont Blanc from St. Gervais, though the route was not new except in combination, as every portion of it had been previously done on different occasions. One of the first systematic guideless climbers to attract attention was the Rev. A. G. Girdlestone, whose book, The High Alps without Guides, appeared in 1870. This book was the subject of a discussion at a meeting of the Alpine Club. Mr. Grove, a well-known mountaineer, read a paper on the comparative skill of travellers and guides, and used Girdlestone’s book as a text. Mr. Grove said: “The net result of mountaineering without guides appears to be this, that, in twenty-one expeditions selected out of seventy for the purposes of description, the traveller failed absolutely four times; was in great danger three times; was aided in finding the way back by the tracks of other men’s guides four times; succeeded absolutely without aid of any kind ten times on expeditions, four of which were very easy, three of moderate difficulty, and one very difficult.” The “very difficult” expedition is the Wetterhorn, which is nowadays considered a very modest achievement.

Mr. Girdlestone was a pioneer, with the limitations of a pioneer. His achievements judged by modern standards are modest enough, but he was the first to insist that mountaineering without guides is an art, and that mountaineering with guides is often only another form of conducted travel. The discussion that followed, as might be expected, at that time was not favourable either to Girdlestone or to guideless climbing. Probably each succeeding year will see his contribution to modern mountaineering more properly appreciated. The “settled opinion of the Alpine Club” was declared without a single dissentient to be that “the neglect to take guides on difficult expeditions is totally unjustifiable.”

But guideless climbing had come to stay. A year after this memorable meeting of the Alpine Club, two of its members carried out without guides some expeditions more severe than anything Girdlestone had attempted. In 1871 Mr. John Stogdon, a well-known Harrow master, and the Rev. Arthur Fairbanks ascended the Nesthorn and Aletschhorn, and in the following year climbed the Jungfrau and Aletschhorn unguided. No record of these expeditions found its way into print. In 1876, a party of amateurs, Messrs. Cust, Cawood, and Colgrove climbed the Matterhorn without guides. This expedition attracted great attention, and was severely commented on in the columns of the Press. Mr. Cust, in an eloquent paper read before the Alpine Club, went to the root of the whole matter when he remarked: “Cricket is a sport which is admitted by all to need acquired skill. A man can buy his mountaineering as he can buy his yachting. None the less, there are yachtsmen and yachtsmen.”

Systematic climbing on a modern scale without guides was perhaps first practised by Purtscheller and Zsigmondys in 1880. Among our own people, it found brilliant exponents in Morse, Mummery, Wicks, and Wilson some twenty years ago; and it has since been adopted by many of our own leading mountaineers. Abroad, guideless climbing finds more adherents than with us. Naturally enough, the man who lives near the mountains will find it easier to make up a guideless party among his friends; and, if he is in the habit of spending all his holidays and most of his week-ends among the mountains that can be reached in a few hours from his home, he will soon acquire the necessary skill to dispense with guides.

So much for guideless climbing. Let us now consider some of the other important developments in the practice of mountaineering. In the Alps the tendency has been towards specialisation. Before 1865 the ambitious mountaineer had scores of unconquered peaks to attack. After the defeat of the Matterhorn, the number of the unclimbed greater mountains gradually thinned out. The Meije, which fell in 1877, was one of the last great Alpine peaks to remain unclimbed. With the development of rock-climbing, even the last and apparently most hopelessly inaccessible rock pinnacles of the Dolomites and Chamounix were defeated. There is no rock-climbing as understood in Wales or Lakeland or Skye on giants of the Oberland or Valais, such as the Schreckhorn or Matterhorn. These tax the leader’s power of choosing a route, his endurance and his knowledge of snow and ice, and weather; but their demands on the pure cragsman are less. The difficulty of a big mountain often depends very much on its condition and length. Up to 1865 hardly any expeditions had been carried through—with a few exceptions, such as the Brenva route up Mont Blanc—that a modern expert would consider exceptionally severe. Modern rock-climbing begins in the late ’seventies. The expeditions in the Dolomites by men like Zsigmondy, Schmitt, and Winkler, among foreign mountaineers, belong to much the same period as Burgener and Mummery classic climbs in the Chamounix district.

Mummery is, perhaps, best known in connection with the first ascent of the Grepon by the sensational “Mummery crack,” when his leader was the famous Alexander Burgener aided by a young cragsman, B. Venetz. Venetz, as a matter of fact, led up the “Mummery” crack. Mummery’s vigorous book, which has become a classic, contains accounts of many new expeditions, such as the Grepon, the Requin, the Matterhorn by the Zmutt arête, and the Caucasian giant Dych Tau, to name the more important. His book, My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus, is thoroughly typical of the modern view of mountaineering. It contains some doctrines that are still considered heretical, such as the safety of a party of two on a snow-covered glacier, and many doctrines that are now accepted, such as the justification of guideless climbing and of difficult variation routes. Shortly after the book appeared, Mummery was killed on Nanga Parbat, as was Emil Zsigmondy on the Meije soon after the issue of his book on the dangers of the Alps.

But even Dolomites and Chamounix aiguilles are not inexhaustible, and the number of unconquered summits gradually diminished. The rapid opening up of the Alps has naturally turned the attention of men with the exploring instinct and ample means to the exploration of the great mountain ranges beyond Europe. This does not fall within the scope of the present volume, and we need only remark in passing that British climbers have played an important part in the campaigns against the fortresses of the Himalaya, Caucasus, Andes, and Rockies.

Meanwhile the ambitious mountaineer was forced to look for new routes on old peaks. Now, a man in search of the easiest way up a difficult peak could usually discover a route which was climbable without severe technical difficulty. On a big mountain, it is often possible to evade any small and very difficult section. But most mountains, even our British hills, have at least one route which borders on the impossible, and a diligent search will soon reveal it. Consider the two extremes of rock-climbing. Let us take the Matterhorn as a good example of a big mountain which consists almost entirely of rock. It is impossible to find a route up the Matterhorn which one could climb with one’s hands in one’s pockets, but the ordinary Swiss route is an easy scramble as far as the shoulder, and, with the fixed ropes, a straightforward climb thence to the top. Its Furggen Ridge has been once climbed under fair conditions and then only with a partial deviation. It is extremely severe and dangerous. The task of the mountaineers who first assailed the Matterhorn was to pick out the easiest line of approach. The Zmutt, and in a greater degree the Furggen routes, were obviously ruled out of consideration. The Italian route was tried many times without success before the Swiss route was discovered. Of course, the Matterhorn, like all big mountains, varies in difficulty from day to day. It is a very long climb; and, if the conditions are unfavourable, it may prove a very difficult and a very dangerous peak.

Turning to the nursery of Welsh climbers, Lliwedd can be climbed on a mule, and Lliwedd can also be climbed by about thirty or more distinct routes up its southern rock face. If a man begins to look for new routes up a wall of a cliff a thousand feet in height and a mile or so in breath, he will sooner or later reach the line which divided reasonable from unreasonable risk. Modern pioneer work in the Alps is nearer the old ideal. It is not simply the search for the hardest of all climbable routes up a given rock face. In England, the danger of a rock fall is practically absent, and a rock face is not considered climbed out as long as one can work up from base to summit by a series of ledges not touched on a previous climb. Two such routes will sometimes be separated by a few feet. In the Alps, the pioneer is compelled by objective difficulties to look for distinct ridges and faces unswept by stones and avalanches. There is a natural challenge in the sweep of a great ridge falling through some thousand unconquered feet to the pastures below. There is only an artificial challenge in a “new” route some thousand feet in height separated only by a few yards of cliff from an “old” route. We do not wish to depreciate British climbing, which has its own fascination and its own value; but, if it calls for greater cragsmanship, it demands infinitely less mountain craft than the conquest of a difficult Alpine route.

And what is true of British rock-climbing is even more true of Tirol. Ranges, such as the Kaisergebirge, have been explored with the same thoroughness that has characterised British rock-climbing. Almost every conceivable variation of the “just possible” has been explored. Unfortunately, the death-roll in these districts is painfully high, as the keenness of the young Austrian and Bavarian has not infrequently exceeded their experience and powers.

Abroad, mountaineering has developed very rapidly since the ’sixties. We have seen that English climbers, first in the field, secured a large share of unconquered peaks; but once continental climbers had taken up the new sport, our earlier start was seriously challenged. The Swiss, Austrian, and German have one great advantage. They are much nearer the Alps; and mountaineering in these countries is, as a result, a thoroughly democratic sport. The foreign Alpine Clubs number thousands of members. The German-Austrian Alpine Club has alone nearly ninety thousand members. There is no qualification, social or mountaineering. These great national clubs have a small subscription; and with the large funds at their disposal they are able to build club-huts in the mountains, and excellent meeting places in the great towns, where members can find an Alpine library, maps, and other sources of information. They secure many useful concessions, such as reduced fares for their members on Alpine railways. Mountaineering naturally becomes a democratic sport in mountainous countries, because the mountains are accessible. The very fact that a return ticket to the Alps is a serious item must prevent Alpine climbing from becoming the sport of more than a few of our countrymen. At the same time, we have an excellent native playground in Wales and Cumberland, which has made it possible for young men to learn the craft before they could afford a regular climbing holiday in the Alps. Beside the great national clubs of the Continent, there are a number of vigorous university clubs scattered through these countries. Of these, the Akademischer Alpine clubs at Zürich and Munich are, perhaps, the most famous. These clubs consist of young men reading at the Polytechnic or University. They have as high a mountaineering qualification as any existing Alpine clubs. They attach importance to the capacity to lead a guideless party rather than to the bare fact that a man has climbed so many peaks. Each candidate is taken on a series of climbs by members of the club, who report to the committee on his general knowledge of snow and rock conditions, and his fitness, whether in respect of courage or endurance for arduous work.

It is young men of this stamp that play such a great part in raising the standard of continental mountaineering. Their cragsmanship often verges on the impossible. A book published in Munich, entitled Empor, affords stimulating reading. This book was produced in honour and in memory of Georg Winkler by some of his friends. Winkler was a young Munich climber who carried through some of the most daring rock climbs ever recorded. Empor contains his diary, and several articles contributed by various members of one of the most remarkable climbing groups in Alpine history. Winkler’s amazing performances give to the book a note which is lacking in most Alpine literature. Winkler was born in 1869. As a boy of eighteen he made, quite alone, the first ascent of the Winklerturm, one of the most sensational—both in appearance and reality—of all Dolomite pinnacles. On the 14th of August 1888 he traversed alone the Zinal Rothhorn, and on the 18th he lost his life in a solitary attempt on the great Zinal face of the Weisshorn. No definite traces of him have ever been found. His brother, born in the year of his death, has also carried through some sensational solitary climbs.

We may, perhaps, be excused a certain satisfaction in the thought that the British crags can occasionally produce climbers whose achievements are quite as sensational as those of the Winklers. Without native mountains, we could not hope to produce cragsmen equal to those of Tirol and the Alps. One must begin young. It is, as a rule, only a comparatively small minority that can afford a regular summer holiday in the Alps; but Scawfell and Lliwedd are accessible enough, and the comparatively high standard of the British rock-climber owes more to British than to Alpine mountains. It was only in the last two decades that the possibilities of these crags were systematically worked out, though isolated climbs have been recorded for many years. The patient and often brilliant explorations of a group of distinguished mountaineers have helped to popularise a fine field for native talent, and an arena for those who cannot afford a regular Alpine campaign. Guides are unknown in Great Britain, and the man who learns to climb there is often more independent and more self-reliant than the mountaineer who is piloted about by guides. There is, of course, much that can be learned only in the Alps. The home climber can learn to use an axe in the wintry gullies round Scawfell. He learns something of snow; but both snow and ice can only be properly studied in the regions of perpetual snow. The home-trained cragsman, as a rule, learns to lead up rocks far more difficult than anything met with on the average Swiss peaks, but the wider lessons of route-finding over a long and complicated expedition are naturally not acquired on a face of cliff a thousand feet in height. Nor, for that matter, is the art of rapid descent over easy rocks; for the British climber usually ascends by rocks, and runs home over grass and scree. None the less, these cliffs have produced some wonderfully fine mountaineers. We have our Winklers, and we have also young rock-climbers who confine their energies to the permissible limit of the justifiable climbing and who, within those limits, carry their craft to its most refined possibilities. Hugh Pope, one of the most brilliant of the younger school of rock-climbers, learned his craft on the British hills, and showed in his first Alpine season the value of that training. To the great loss of British mountaineering he was killed in 1912 on the Pic du Midi d’Ossau.

Another comparatively recent development is the growth of winter mountaineering. The first winter expedition of any importance after the beginnings of serious mountaineering was Mr. T. S. Kennedy’s attempt on the Matterhorn in 1863. He conceived the curious idea that the Matterhorn might prove easier in winter than in summer. Here, he was very much mistaken. He was attacked by a storm, and retreated after reaching a point where the real climb begins. It was a plucky expedition. But the real pioneer of winter mountaineering was W. A. Moore. In 1866, with Mr. Horace Walker, Melchior Anderegg, Christian Almer, and “Peterli” Bohren, he left Grindelwald at midnight; they crossed the Finsteraarjoch, and returned within the twenty-four hours to Grindelwald over the Strahlegg. Even in summer this would prove a strenuous day. In winter, it is almost incredible that this double traverse should have been carried through without sleeping out.

Most of the great peaks have now been ascended in winter; and amongst others Mr. Coolidge must be mentioned as a prominent pioneer. His ascents of the Jungfrau, Wetterhorn, and Schreckhorn—the first in winter—with Christian Almer, did much to set the fashion. Mrs. Le Blond, the famous lady climber, has an even longer list of winter first ascents to her credit. But the real revolution in winter mountaineering has been caused by the introduction of ski-ing. In winter, the main difficulty is getting to the high mountain huts. Above the huts, the temperature is often mild and equable for weeks together. A low temperature on the ground co-exists with a high temperature in the air. Rock-ridges facing south or south-west are often denuded of snow, and as easy to climb as in summer. Signor Sella also made some brilliant winter ascents, such as the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa.

The real obstacle to winter mountaineering is the appalling weariness of wading up to the club-huts on foot. The snow in the sheltered lower valleys is often deep and powdery; and the climber on foot will have to force his way through pine forests where the snow lies in great drifts between the trees, and over moraines where treacherous drifts conceal pitfalls between the loose stones. All this is changed by the introduction of ski. The ski distributes the weight of the climber over a long, even surface; and in the softest snow he will not sink in more than a few inches. Better still, they revolutionise the descent, converting a weary plug through snow-drifts into a succession of swift and glorious runs. The ski-runner takes his ski to the foot of the last rock ridges, and then proceeds on foot, rejoining his ski, and covering on the descent five thousand feet in far less time than the foot-climber would take over five hundred. Skis, as everybody knows, were invented as a means of crossing snowy country inaccessible on foot. They are sometimes alluded to as snowshoes, but differ radically from snowshoes in one important respect. Both ski and the Canadian snowshoe distribute their wearer’s weight, and enable him to cross drifts where he would sink in hopelessly if he were on foot, but there the resemblance ends. For, whereas snowshoes cannot slide on snow, and whereas a man on snowshoes cannot descend a hill as fast as a man on foot could run down hill, skis glide rapidly and easily on snow, and a ski-runner can descend at a rate which may be anything up to sixty miles an hour.

Ski-ing is of Scandinavian origin, and the greatest exponents of the art are the Norwegians. Norwegians have used ski from time immemorial in certain districts, such as Telemarken, as a means of communication between snow-bound villages. It should, perhaps, be added that ski-jumping does not consist, as some people imagine, in casual leaps across chasms or over intervening hillocks. The ski-runner does not glide along the level at the speed of an express train, lightly skimming any obstacles in his path. On the level, the best performer does not go more than six or seven miles an hour, and the great jumps one hears of are made downhill. The ski-runner swoops down on to a specially prepared platform, leaps into the air, and alights on a very steep slope below. The longest jump on record is some hundred and fifty feet, measured from the edge of the take-off to the alighting point. In this case, the ski-runner must have fallen through nearly seventy vertical feet.

To the mountaineer, the real appeal of ski-ing is due to the fact that it halves the labour of his ascent to the upper snowfields, and converts a tedious descent into a succession of swift and fascinating runs. The ski-runner climbs on ski to the foot of the final rock and ice ridges, and then finishes the climb in the ordinary way. After rejoining his ski, his work is over, and his reward is all before him. If he were on foot, he would have to wade laboriously down to the valley. On ski, he can swoop down with ten times the speed, and a thousand times the enjoyment.

Ski were introduced into Central Europe in the early ’nineties. Dr. Paulcke’s classic traverse of the Oberland in 1895, which included the ascent of the Jungfrau, proved to mountaineers the possibilities of the new craft. Abroad, the lesson was soon learned. To-day, there are hundreds of ski-runners who make a regular practice of mountaineering in winter. The Alps have taken out a new lease of life. In summer, the huts are crowded, the fashionable peaks are festooned with parties of incompetent novices who are dragged and pushed upwards by their guides, but in winter the true mountain lover has the upper world to himself. The mere summit hunter naturally chooses the line of least resistance, and accumulates his list of first class expeditions in the summer months, when such a programme is easiest to compile. The winter mountaineer must be more or less independent of the professional element, for, though he will probably employ a guide to find the way and to act as a reserve of strength, he himself must at least be able to ski steadily, and at a fair speed.

Moreover, mountain craft as the winter mountaineer understands the term is a more subtle and more embracing science as far, at least, as snow conditions are concerned. It begins at the hôtel door. In summer, there is a mule path leading to the glacier line, a mule path which a man can climb with his mind asleep. But in winter the snow with its manifold problems sweeps down to the village. A man has been killed by an avalanche within a few yards of a great hôtel. From the moment a man buckles on his ski, he must exercise his knowledge of snow conditions. There are no paths save a few woodcutter’s tracks. From the valley upwards, he must learn to pick a good line, and to avoid the innocent-looking slopes that may at any moment resolve themselves into an irresistible avalanche. Many a man is piloted up a succession of great peaks without acquiring anything like the same intimate knowledge of snow that is possessed even by a ski-runner who has never crossed the summer snow-line. Even the humblest ski-runner must learn to diagnose the snow. He may follow his leader unthinkingly on the ascent; but once he starts down he must judge for himself. If he makes a mistake, he will be thrown violently on to his face when the snow suddenly sticks, and on to his back when it quickens. Even the most unobservant man will learn something of the effects of sun and wind on his running surface when the result of a faulty deduction may mean violent contact with Mother Earth.

Those who worship the Alps in their loveliest and loneliest moods, those who dislike the weary anti-climax of the descent through burning snowfields, and down dusty mule paths, will climb in the winter months, when to the joy of renewing old memories of the mountains in an unspoiled setting is added the rapture of the finest motion known to man.

In England mountaineering on ski has yet to find many adherents. We have little opportunity for learning to ski in these isles, and the ten thousand Englishmen that visit the Alps in winter prefer to ski on the lower hills. For every Englishman with a respectable list of glacier tours on ski to his credit, there are at least a hundred continental runners with a record many times more brilliant. The Alpine Ski Club, now in its sixth year, has done much to encourage this “new mountaineering,” and its journal contains a record of the finest expeditions by English and continental runners. But even in the pages of the Alpine Ski Club Annual, the proportion of foreign articles describing really fine tours is depressingly large. Of course, the continental runner lives nearer the Alps. So did the continental mountaineer of the early ’sixties; but that did not prevent us taking our fair share of virgin peaks.

The few Englishmen who are making a more or less regular habit of serious mountaineering on ski are not among the veterans of summer mountaineering, and the leaders of summer mountaineering have not yet learned to ski. Abroad, the leaders of summer mountaineering have welcomed ski-ing as a key to their mountains in winter; but the many leaders of English mountaineering still argue that skis should not be used in the High Alps, on the ground that they afford facility for venturing on slopes and into places where the risk of avalanches is extreme. On the Continent thousands of runners demonstrate in the most effective manner that mountaineering on ski has come to stay. It is consoling to reflect that English ski-runners are prepared to work out the peculiar problems of their craft with or without the help of summer mountaineers. Of course, both ski-ing and summer mountaineering would be strengthened by an alliance, and ski-runners can best learn the rules of the glacier world in winter from those mountaineers who combine a knowledge of the summer Alps with some experience of winter conditions and a mastery of ski-ing. For the moment, such teachers must be looked for in the ranks of continental mountaineers.

CHAPTER X
THE ALPS IN LITERATURE

The last chapter has brought the story of mountaineering up to modern times, but, before we close, there is another side of Alpine exploration on which we must touch. For Alpine exploration means something more than the discovery of new passes and the conquest of virgin peaks. That is the physical aspect of the sport, perhaps the side which the average climber best understands. But Alpine exploration is mental as well as physical, and concerns itself with the adventures of the mind in touch with the mountains as well as with the adventures of the body in contact with an unclimbed cliff. The story of the gradual discovery of high places as sources of inspiration has its place in the history of Alpine exploration, as well as the record of variation routes too often expressed in language of unvarying monotony.

The present writer once undertook to compile an anthology whose scope was defined by the title—The Englishman in the Alps. The limitations imposed by the series of which this anthology formed a part prevented him from including the Alpine literature of foreign authors, a fact which tended to obscure the real development of the Alpine literature. In the introduction he expressed the orthodox views which all good mountaineers accept without demur, explaining that mountaineers were the first to write fitly of the mountains, that English mountaineers had a peculiar talent in this direction, and that all the best mountain literature was written in the last half of the nineteenth century. These pious conclusions were shattered by some very radical criticism which appeared in leading articles of The Times and The Field. The former paper, in the course of some criticisms of Mr. Spender’s Alpine Anthology, remarked: “In the matter of prose, on the other hand, he has a striking predilection for the modern ‘Alpine books’ of commerce, though hardly a book among them except Whymper’s Scrambles in the Alps has any real literary vitality, or any interest apart from the story of adventure which it tells. Mummery, perhaps, has individuality enough to be made welcome in any gallery, and, of course, one is glad to meet Leslie Stephen. But what is C. E. Mathews doing there? Or Norman Neruda? Or Mr. Frederic Harrison? In an anthology which professed to be nothing more than a collection of stories of adventure, accidents, and narrow escapes, they would have their place along with Owen Glynne Jones, and Mr. Douglas Freshfield, and innumerable contributors to Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers and The Alpine Journal.”

We rubbed our eyes when we read these heterodox sentiments in such a quarter. Mr. Mathews was, perhaps, an Alpine historian rather than a writer of descriptive prose, and he does not lend himself to the elegant extract, though he is the author of some very quotable Alpine sketches. To Mr. Freshfield we owe, amongst other good things, one short passage as dramatic as anything in Alpine literature, the passage in which he describes the discovery of Donkin’s last bivouac on Koshtantau. The Field was even more emphatic:

“What is not true is that the pioneer sportsmen who founded the Alpine Club had exceptional insight into the moods of the snow. One or two of them, no doubt, struck out a little literature as the result of the impact of novel experiences upon naïve minds.... On the whole, in spite of their defects, their machine-made perorations and their ponderous jests, they brought an acceptable addition to the existing stock of the literature of adventure.... But they had their limitations, and these were rather narrow. They dealt almost exclusively with the externals of mountaineering experience; and when they ventured further their writing was apt to be of the quality of fustian. Their spiritual adventures among the mountains were apt to be melodramatic or insignificant. Perhaps their Anglo-Saxon reticence prevented themselves from ‘letting themselves go.’... At all events there does remain this notable distinction—that, while the most eloquent writings of the most eloquent Alpine Club-man are as a rule deliberately and ostentatiously objective, the subjective literature of mountains—the literature in which we see the writer yielding to the influence of scenery, instead of lecturing about its beauties, existed long before that famous dinner party at the house of William Mathews, senior, at which the Alpine Club was founded. England, as we have said, contributed practically nothing to that literature.”

We have quoted this passage at some length because it expresses a novel attitude in direct contradiction to the accepted views sanctified by tradition. We do not entirely endorse it. The article contains proof that its writer has an intimate knowledge of early Alpine literature, but one is tempted to fancy that his research did not survive the heavy period of the ’eighties, and that he is unacquainted with those modern writers whose work is distinctly subjective. None the less, his contention suggests an interesting line of study; and in this chapter we shall try briefly to sketch the main tendencies, though we cannot review in detail the whole history, of Alpine literature, a subject which requires a book in itself.

The mediæval attitude towards mountains has already been discussed, and though we ventured to protest that love of the mountains was not quite so uncommon as is usually supposed, it must be freely admitted that the literature of the Middle Ages is comparatively barren in appreciation of mountain scenery. There were Protestants before Luther, and there were men such as Gesner and Petrarch before Rousseau; but the Middle Ages can scarcely rob Rousseau of the credit for transforming mountain worship from the cult of a minority into a comparatively fashionable creed. Rousseau’s own feeling for the mountains was none the less genuine because it was sometimes coloured by the desire to make the mountains echo his own philosophy of life. Rousseau, in this respect, set a fashion which his disciples were not slow to follow. The mountains as the home of the rugged Switzer could be made to preach edifying lay sermons on the value of liberty. Such sentiments were in tune with the spirit of revolt that culminated in the French Revolution. A certain Haller had sounded this note long before Rousseau began to write, in a poem on the Alps which, appearing in 1728, enjoyed considerable popularity. The author is not without a genuine appreciation for Alpine scenery, but he is far more occupied with his moral, the contrast between the unsophisticated life of the mountain peasant and the hyper-civilisation of the town. Throughout the writings of this school which Haller anticipated and Rousseau founded, we can trace an obvious connection between a love for the untutored freedom of the mountains and a hatred of existing social conditions.

It is, therefore, not surprising to find that this new school of mountain worship involved certain views which found most complete expression in the French Revolution. “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” This, the famous opening to The Social Contract, might have heralded with equal fitness any mountain passage in the works of Rousseau or his disciples. Perhaps these two sentiments are nowhere fused with such completeness as in the life of Ramond de Carbonnière, the great Pyrenean climber. We have not mentioned him before as he took no part in purely Alpine explorations. But as a mountaineer he ranks with De Saussure and Paccard. His ascent of Mont Perdu, after many attempts, in 1802, was one of the most remarkable climbing exploits of the age. He invented a new kind of crampon. He rejoiced in fatigue, cold, and the thousand trials that confronted the mountaineer in the days before club-huts. His own personality was singularly arresting; and the reader should consult The Early Mountaineers for a more complete sketch of the man than we have space to attempt. Ramond had every instinct of the modern mountaineer. He delighted in hardship. He could appreciate the grandeur of a mountain storm while sitting on an exposed ledge. He lingers with a delight that recalls Gesner on the joy of simple fare and rough quarters. He is the boon companion of hunters and smugglers; and through all his mountain journeys his mind is alert in reacting to chance impressions.

But his narrative is remarkable for something else besides love for the mountains. It is full of those sentiments which came to a head in the French Revolution. Mountain description and fierce denunciations of tyranny are mingled in the oddest fashion. It is not surprising that Ramond, who finds room in a book devoted to mountaineering for a prophecy of the Revolution, should have played an active part in the Revolution when it came. Ramond entered the Revolutionary Parliament as a moderate reformer, and when the leaders of the Revolution had no further use for moderate reformers he found himself in the gaol at Tarbres. Here he was fortunately forgotten, and survived to become Maître des Requêtes under Louis XVIII. Ramond is, perhaps, the most striking example of the mountaineer whose love for mountains was only equalled by his passion for freedom. In some ways, he is worthier of our admiration than Rousseau, for he not only admired mountains, he climbed them. He not only praised the simple life of hardship, he endured it.

Turning to English literature, we find much the same processes at work. The two great poets whose revolt against existing society was most marked yielded the Alps a generous measure of praise. It is interesting to compare the mountain songs of Byron and Shelley. Byron’s verse is often marred by his obvious sense of the theatre. His misanthropy had, no doubt, its genuine as well as its purely theatrical element, but it becomes tiresome as the motif of the mountain message. No doubt he was sincere when he wrote—