Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880. Dent Clinton Thomas
a business than he is usually willing to admit. The guide often, the amateur commonly, fails to recognise exactly from a distance a line of ascent or descent on rocks, though but just completed. Still more difficult is it to work out the precise details of a particular route on a map or photograph. The microscopist knows that the higher powers of his instrument give him no additional insight into the structure of certain objects, but rather mislead. Even so may my readers be asked to employ but gymnoscopic criticism of these sketches.
The thirst for novelty
In September 1872 our party reached Zermatt from Chamouni by the “high-level” route, a series of walks which no amount of familiarity will ever deprive of their charm, and concerning which more will be found elsewhere in this work. All Alpine climbers were then burning as fiercely as they ever did to achieve something new. They had just begun to realise that the stock of new peaks and passes was not inexhaustible, and that the supply was wholly inadequate to meet the demand. This feeling showed itself in various ways. Climbers looked upon each other with something of suspicion and jealousy, and if any new expedition was being planned by any one of their number the others would quickly recognise the state of affairs. If an Alpine man were found secreted in obscure corners conversing in a low voice with his guides and intent on a study of the map, or if he returned evasive answers when questioned as to his plans, he was at once set down as having, probably, a new expedition in mind. As for the guides, they assumed at once airs of importance, as does a commencing schoolboy newly arrayed in a tall hat, and exhibited such mystery that their intentions were unmistakable. Their behaviour, indeed, may have been partly due to the fact that the natural efforts of their comrades to extract information was invariably accompanied by somewhat undue hospitality, and their brotherly feelings were usually expressed in an acceptably liquid form. As a rule such hospitality did not fail in its object. Whether due to a certain natural leakiness of mind on the part of the guides or not, I cannot say, but certainly the information always oozed out, and the intentions of the party were invariably thoroughly well known before the expedition actually started to achieve fresh glory. Every one of the first-rate peaks in the Zermatt district had been ascended, most of them over and over again, before 1872, but the Rothhorn was still out of the pale of the Zermatt expeditions. Messrs. Leslie Stephen and F. Craufurd Grove, who first climbed the peak, ascended it from Zinal, and descended to the same place. It seemed to us, therefore, that if we could prove the accessibility of the mountain from Zermatt, we should do something more than merely climb the peak by a new route. The rocks looked attractive, and the peak itself lay so immediately above Zermatt that it seemed possible enough to make the ascent without sleeping out or consuming any great amount of time.
We went through all the necessary preliminary formalities. We assumed airs of mystery at times; why, I know not. We inspected distant peaks through the telescope. At other times we displayed an excess of candour, and talked effusively about districts remote from that which we intended to investigate. We climbed up a hill, and surveyed the face of our mountain through a telescope, thereby wasting a day and acquiring no information whatever. We pointed out to each other the parts of the mountain which appeared most difficult, and displayed marvellous differences of opinion on the subject, owing, as it is usually the case, to the circumstance that we were commonly, in all probability, talking at the same time about totally distinct parts of the peak. With the telescope I succeeded in discovering to my own entire satisfaction a perfectly impracticable route to the summit. Finally, in order that no single precaution might be omitted to ensure success, we sent up the guides to reconnoitre – a most useless proceeding. We had new nails put in our boots, ordered provisions, uncoiled our rope and coiled it up again quite unnecessarily, gave directions that we should be called at an unhallowed hour in the morning, and went to bed under the impression that we should not be object in the least to turn out at the time arranged.
Rock v. snow mountains
It is on the rock mountains of Switzerland that the acme of enjoyment is to be found. Not that I wish to disparage the snow-peaks; but if a comparison be instituted it is to most climbers, at any rate in their youthful days, infinitely in favour of the rock. Of course it may be argued that there are comparatively few mountains where the two are not combined. But a mountaineer classifies peaks roughly as rock or snow, according to the chief obstacles that each presents. A climber may encounter serious difficulties in the way of bergschrunds, steep couloirs, soft snow, and so forth; but if on the same expedition he meets with rocks which compel him to put forth greater energies and perseverance than the snow required, he will set the expedition down as a difficult rock climb, simply, of course, because the idea of difficulty which is most vividly impressed on his mind is in connection with that portion of his climb, and vice versâ. An undeniable drawback to the snow peaks consists in their monotony. The long series of steps that have to be cut at times, or the dreary wading for hours through soft or powdery snow, are not always forgotten in the pleasure of overcoming the difficulties of a crevasse, reaching the summit of a peak, or the excitement of a good glissade. It is the diversity of obstacles that meet the rock climber, the uncertainty as to what may turn up next, the doubt as to the possibility of finding the friendly crack or the apposite ledge, that constitute some of the main charms. Every step is different, every muscle is called into play as the climber is now flattened against a rough slab, now abnormally stretched from one hold to another, or folded up like the conventional pictures of the ibex, and every step can be recalled afterwards with pleasure and amusement as the mountain is climbed over again in imagination.
The amateur and the guide
But there is more than this; on rocks the amateur is much less dependent on his guides and has much more opportunity of exercising his own powers. It must be admitted that on rocks some amateurs are occasionally wholly dependent not on, but from their guides, and take no more active share in locomotion than does a bale of goods in its transit from a ship’s hold to a warehouse. Too often the amateurs who will not take the trouble to learn something of the science and art of mountaineering are but an impediment, an extra burden, as has been often said, to the guides. The guides have to hack out huge steps for their benefit. The amateurs wholly trust to them for steering clear of avalanches, rotten snow bridges, and the like. The amateur’s share in a snow ascent usually consists, in fact, either in counselling retreat, insisting on progress, indicating impossible lines of ascent, or in the highly intellectual and arithmetical exercise of counting the number of steps hewn out to ensure his locomotion in the proper direction.
Place the unpaid climber, on the other hand, on rocks. Here the probability is that a slip will entail no unpleasant consequences to anyone but the slipper. The power of sustaining a sudden strain is so enormously increased when the hands have a firm grip that the amateur can, if he please, sprawl and scramble unaided over difficult places with satisfaction to himself and usually without risk to anyone else; that is, as soon as he has fully persuaded the guides (no easy task, I admit) that the process of pulling vehemently at the rope, possibly encircling his waist in a slip knot, is as detrimental to his equilibrium as it is to his digestion. Guides, however, as has been hinted, do not acknowledge this fact in animal mechanics, and their employers frequently experience as an acute torture that compressing process which, more deliberately applied, is not regarded by some as hurtful, but rather as a necessary accompaniment of fashionable attire. When the amateur has succeeded in overcoming the natural instinct of the guides to pull when there is no occasion to do so, he becomes a unit in the party, a burden of course, and a hindrance to some guides, but nothing to what he was on the snow.
Sentiments similar to the above have not unfrequently been set forth in print: they seldom, if ever, actuate the minds of mountaineers when actually engaged in their pastime or when describing their exploits to less skilled persons.
There is great satisfaction, too, in translating one’s self over a given difficult rock passage without other assistance than that provided by nature herself, and without surreptitious aid from one’s neighbour in the shape of steps. Then again, snow mountains are as inconsistent as cheap aneroids. One day each step costs much labour and toil, and almost the next perhaps the peak will allow itself to be conquered in one-tenth of the time. Not that the writer seeks to argue that there is no pleasure to be derived from snow mountains. It is to climbing per se that these remarks apply. After all, everyone has his own opinion; but he who has not tasted the pleasures of a really difficult and successful rock climb – especially if it be a new one – knows