Italian Alps. Freshfield Douglas William
made ourselves comfortable in niches and enjoyed the view and iced Asti, a beverage which can only be appreciated at over 10,000 feet. While we were reroping, Michel grew oracular, and to a question on the easiness of our route, replied in a formula we had learnt by experience to dread as much as Cleopatra the 'but yet' of the messenger from Antony – 'Es geht, – aber.'
The descent of a partially ice-coated cliff is one of the most ticklish parts of a climber's work. But so long as there is any good hold on rock, and the party can proceed directly downwards, there is no danger if the rope is properly used. When it becomes necessary to move diagonally across the face of the mountain the difficulty is much increased, and the rope is not so easily kept taut. Yet there are few places where with sufficient care a slip of any one man may not be checked before it becomes a fall.
In the present instance it was some time before we met with anything to justify Michel's reservation. But about half-way down the rib which had helped us came to an end, and the rocks grew smooth and mixed with ice. To have descended in a straight line would have brought us to the edge of a gaping crevasse; we tended, therefore, continually to the right, where the glacier rose higher against the cliff, and snow bridged the obstructive chasm. Here a long step down, there a longer straddle round was required, and our progress became of the slowest, as prudence often required a majority of the party to be stationary.
After passing one very obnoxious corner, which each pulled himself round, partly by an imperceptible grasp on an invisible handhold, but principally trusting to the support of the rope, we got on easier ground, and, by cutting a few steps, reached at last (in two hours from the pass) the snow-bridged moat. Once on the ice, François was aided by old experience, and steered us through the labyrinth of the Bondasca Glacier without either delay or difficulty.
After leaving the ice we followed the steep path which leads down amongst the creeping pines and underwood on the right side of the valley, to the lower level of Val Bondasca.
Another plunge, this time through chestnuts, brought us to the maize-fields and vine-trellised villages of Val Bregaglia. Neither at Promontogno nor Castasegna was any carriage to be obtained. In order to arrive at Chiavenna we were compelled, ice-axes in hand, to storm the roof of a diligence, where, intrenched among the luggage, we formed a garrison far too formidable for any guard or postillion to dislodge.
In the summer of 1866 I again found myself with my friend Tucker and François Devouassoud, in eastern Switzerland. The passes of Val Masino were accomplished, but its peaks still remained maiden and unassailed. Having added Fluri to our party, we started one afternoon from Pontresina for the old hospice on the top of the Maloya, then a humble inn, now a familiar house of call for the fashionable society of St. Moritz.
The Cima del Largo, the highest peak in the range between Val Bregaglia and Val Masino, was our aim for the morrow. I spare the reader the long and somewhat tedious march over familiar ground to the head of the Forno Glacier. We had started under a cloudless sky, but before we reached the foot of the Largo no 'Cima' was to be seen, only snow-slopes stretching up into the mists. Fortunately we already knew how to attack our peak. From the N. or E. the Cima del Largo presents itself as a bold round tower rising sheerly above the wall on which it stands. As far as its northern base there could, we believed, be little difficulty. Our expectations were fulfilled: steep snow-banks and easy rocks lifted us to the rim of the snowy basin of the Forno. The ridge which divides it from the Albigna Glacier is a narrow comb of granite; we moved along it in the chink between the rocks and snow. A wall of ice suddenly loomed before us through the mist. We had reached the foot of the tower, and the trial of strength was about to begin. The ice was very hard and the slope very steep, and steps seemed to take a long time. At last a patch of rock was gained. We now followed a ridge, sometimes rock, sometimes ice; steps had still to be cut, and we progressed but slowly. Suddenly our leader said, 'C'est assez,' reversed his axe, and stepped out freely for a few paces. We were on the snow-dome which forms the summit of the Cima del Largo.
View there was none; we could see we were on the top, and that was all. But even in the worst of weather the newness of his plaything offers some consolation to the childlike simplicity of the true climber. Comforting ourselves, like Touchstone, with the reflection that the Largo, if, under the circumstances, but 'a poor virgin, an ill-favoured thing,' was at least 'our own,' we adjourned to a sheltered niche in the rocks a few feet below the summit. The atmosphere was tolerably warm and windless, and in our bivouac under the overhanging eaves of the great rocks we were sheltered from the soft, thickly-falling veil of snow which cut us off from the lower world.
If our surroundings might have seemed cheerless, our feelings were by no means so. I never assisted at a more festive meal than that which celebrated the birth of our stoneman.
Fluri was determined to do his best to compensate for the want of view; he was in his highest spirits, pleased with the mountain, the food, the wine-bag, the 'herrschaft,' and last, but not least, with himself. Now Fluri, whether in good or bad spirits, used in any case to be careful to let you know his mental condition. On this occasion he exploded in a series of small but elaborate jokes. First he got into a hole and played marmot. Then he scrambled after a solitary ranunculus (which, strange to say, was blooming at this great height), and pretended not to be able to get back again, wriggling his body absurdly over the easiest rock in the neighbourhood. Nearly an hour must have thus passed, and yet no break in the mist offered to reward us for revisiting the summit. So about 1 P.M. we set out to return. The descent of the ice-wall called for considerable care, as it was necessary to be prepared for a slip, although such an accident might not be very likely to happen. François, who was leading, had to clear out the fresh-fallen snow from our old steps, which were quite effaced. Here Fluri, who in his early period, before he had learnt snowcraft from English mountaineers and foreign guides, showed a morbid dislike to the commonest and most necessary precautions, raised himself greatly in our esteem. Though screaming and howling every variety of jödel the whole time, I never saw him once without the rope taut and his axe firmly anchored in the ice. The rest of the descent was easy enough, and it does not take long to get down snow-slopes. From the foot of the peak we had a long and heavy walk back to the inn on the Maloya. The snow on the glacier was soft and ridgy, and the path beyond sloppy and slippery, and the light snow-flakes changed into heavy rain when we got down again into the lower world. At Maloya we found the car ordered from Silvaplana to meet us. Our day's journey was yet far from its end. There was much still before us that would be wearisome to relate, and was still more wearisome to endure.
How the postmaster at Silvaplana tried to impose on us, how we relaced our sodden boots and tramped through the rain to St. Moritz, how there Badrutt gave us a car which carried us moist and sleepy to Zutz, this is not the place to tell. Enough that we arrived at Zutz in a state of depression which even the scene of revelry by night offered by the 'Schweizerbund,' where we found Swiss warriors absorbed in the task of conducting village maidens through the solemn revolutions of a national variation of the waltz, failed to cheer. It was the last of our trials that no inducement would persuade a Swiss maiden to make our beds.
In the same summer we visited for the third time the Bagni del Masino. We were forced by weather to enter the valley by its proper gate instead of by one of the irregular but more tempting modes of access open to mountaineers.
For the first hour the car-road between the Val Tellina and the Baths runs through a steep and narrow defile. It is not until the village of Cattaeggio, picturesquely imbedded amongst rocks and foliage, and the mouth of Val Sasso Bisolo have been passed, that the valley opens, and the jagged range near the Passo di Ferro comes into sight. Before reaching San Martino the stupendous boulder, known to the peasants as the Sasso di Remeno, is encountered. On near approach it quite maintains its reputation as the largest fallen block in the Alps. Beside the monster lie several more boulders of extraordinary size. On the top of one of them is a kitchen garden approached by a ladder. The snows melt sooner on such an exposed plot, and the goats cannot get at the vegetables.
The object of our return to so recently visited a region was to complete in peaks the work we had already carried out in passes. The problem which on the whole we looked to with most interest was now immediately before us. Mr. Ball had pronounced the Punta Trubinesca, the highest peak west of the Cima del Largo, and the prince of the rocky summits overlooking Val Bondasca, absolutely inaccessible from this side. But from what we had