Italian Alps. Freshfield Douglas William
GLACIER
To the crowd, which having sat down in a draught on the roof of Europe spends its time mostly in bemoaning the cold, to the water-drinkers of St. Moritz or the pensioners of Pontresina, the mountains of Val Masino are unknown. Yet had they eyes to see they might often be attracted by the vision of two square towers rising far beyond the blue lakes and the green ridge of the Maloya, and shining like an enchanted keep through the warm haze of Italy.13 They are indeed the ramparts of Paradise, for on the further side they look down upon the gardens of Lago di Como.
Even to climbers this western wing of the Bernina has remained little known. So long ago as 1862 Messrs. Kennedy and Stephen carried at the second assault its proudest peak, the Monte della Disgrazia. But I could count on my fingers the names of all the Englishmen who have since penetrated Val Masino. Foreign Alpine Clubs have for the most part held aloof. The Swiss have found enough to do elsewhere, and have not as yet chosen Val Bregaglia – politically a Swiss valley – as the 'gebiet' of one of the summer 'excursions' in which they contrive to combine so happily the features of a prolonged picnic and a mountain-battue. That practical, and in some respects energetic, body, the Italian Alpine Club, is only beginning to turn its attention to a district containing one of the few wholly Italian peaks of over 12,000 feet.
Those who have been already somewhat disappointed in the Upper Engadine and the heart of the Bernina will perhaps argue that there cannot be much worth seeing in its extremities, where the peaks are lower and the ice-fields as a whole less extensive. Such an assumption, however, would be ill-founded. For scenic effects, every one will allow, the measurement of a mountain must be taken, not from the sea level, but from its actual base. Moreover the lower the base the richer and more varied will be the contrast in vegetation. On applying this test we find that the Punta Trubinesca14 towers 8,500 feet above the chestnut trees of Promontogno, while Piz Bernina itself rises 1,000 feet less, and far more gradually, above Pontresina. The icy ridges of the Disgrazia soar 11,000 feet above the vineyards of the Val Tellina, or as much as Mont Blanc above Courmayeur.
The peaks, moreover, are of a durable granite. They have, therefore, that combined boldness of outline and solidity which often belongs to this hardy rock. Other mountains have the air of having been built up; granite peaks seem rather to have been rough-hewn like a sculptor's block out of a larger mass. In glaciers the group possesses almost every known variety. The Bondasca and the eastern glaciers of the Disgrazia worthily represent the frozen cataract type, tumbling in broken billows from cope to base of the mountain; the Albigna is an ice-lake fed by huge snow-basins; the Forno a stately stream surpassing in length the Morteratsch.
Here, however, I gladly break off from the conventional tone of recommendation in which discoverers are apt to assert their own merits.
For the people who either cannot or will not walk, the large class which, taking advantage of the shade of contempt already attached to the epithet by Vatican infallibility, I may venture to call the 'Subalpine Club,' Val Masino has few attractions. Inaccessible on three sides except to pedestrians, this valley will probably remain for long a sure refuge for the misanthropic climber driven away from the peaks of the central Bernina by the demands of the guides or the clatter of his fellow-countrymen.
In the summer of 1864 I set out from Splugen with two companions and François Devouassoud for the Bernina. Our route led us through the Avers Thal, a cross-road of travel still but little frequented, though no better reason than fashion can be assigned for its neglect. For mile after mile the Averser Rhein, a strong blue-grey torrent, leaps and roars between masses of marble crag tinted with lichens, and clasped about by huge pine-roots. Tributary streams rush down from the rugged precipices towering on either side the gorge, and shoot with a creamy rush into the deep cleft which holds the larger flood.
Above the long defile lies a broad grassy upland dotted with some of the highest villages in Europe, and encompassed by green slopes which divide the waters of three seas. The landscape is, it is true, tame to the eye; but on a sunny August morning, when the vast hayfield is alive with mowers and the air fragrant with the smell of ripe grasses, it contains much to tickle other senses than sight.
We turned up a side branch of the valley, the Madriser Thal. Near its head a white line seamed the slopes we had yet to surmount. On nearer approach this resolved itself into a laboriously-built stone staircase, showing that we were on what was once a frequented passage for beasts of burden. Judging from the solidity and care with which it had originally been put together the 'pavé' might have been Roman. I do not venture to say it is. More probably in the middle ages this was an alternative route for the Septimer. Perhaps the indefatigable explorer and describer of his native Alps, Herr Theobald, or some other curious enquirer, has told the date and story. If so I have failed to fall on the passage.
It was from the ridge which divides the Rhine from the Maira that I gained my first general view of the mountains of Val Masino. Opposite, and separated from our stand-point, the Madriser Pass, only by the deep but narrow trench of Val Bregaglia, a great mountain-mass glowed in the afternoon sunshine. Its base was wrapped in chestnut woods, its middle girt with a belt of pines, above spread a mantle of the eternal snow. The sky-line was formed by a coronet of domes and massive pinnacles carved out of grey rocks, whose jagged yet stubborn forms revealed the presence of granite. Full in front the curving glacier of Val Bondasca filled the space beneath the smooth cliff-faces, and at one spot a gap between them irresistibly suggested a new pass for the morrow.
The descent on the southern side of the Madriser Pass, long, rough, and extremely steep, leads to the village of Soglio, which rests on a terrace high above the valley, and commands a noble view of the granite peaks. Here stands a deserted villa belonging to the old Grisons family of De Salis, surrounded by ruinous gardens and tall poplars, an Italian intrusion on a landscape otherwise Alpine. Mossy banks shaded by old Spanish chestnuts slope down to the high-road and the river. On the opposite side, near the tunnel from which it takes its name, we found the 'Albergo della Galleria,' which provides clean rooms and moderate fare for those who are bent on penetrating the Val Bondasca, the most beautiful of the side glens of Val Bregaglia.
It was not my first visit to this valley. Long before Mr. Ball had written his handbook I had found in Professor Theobald's excellent little volume on Canton Graubrunden15 a most exciting description of the waterfalls and ice-tables of the Albigna Glacier and the rocky splendours of Val Bondasca. At the same time the appearance on maps of the Forno Glacier as a long ice-stream equal to the Morteratsch had excited in me keen curiosity. But my companions in 1862, although induced to halt a day at Vico Soprano, and to venture as far as the level of the Albigna Glacier, could not be persuaded that the Zocca was 'fit for ladies,' and my explorations were reduced to an ineffectual race against time to reach a point overlooking the Forno.
The Upper Bregaglia, seen from a carriage, is a green Alpine valley showing, except in such additions as man has made to the landscape, little trace of the approach to Italy. Pines are still the prevailing trees; near at hand the mountains are green; higher up naked grey pinnacles saw the sky or cut through the vapour-wreaths.
A mile or two above Vico Soprano clouds of sunbeam-painted foam shoot up round the base of a white column, and the tourist, driven by the first cold days of September from the hill-barracks of the Engadine to the lake-palaces, takes out his 'Guide' and his notebook and ticks off as 'visited' another waterfall.
This is the fall of the Albigna, and close at hand the track to the Zocca branches off through the woods. It is a forest-path known only to smugglers and shepherds (and, I may add, chamois, for I once met two here within a mile of the high-road). Every passer-by, who has a real love of nature, and can endure for it a night in a clean country inn, is strongly recommended to leave the road and climb at least as far as the foot of the glacier.
The scenery is best seen as a descent. From the wild bare crags of the inmost recesses of Val Masino and from the cold snows and savage ice-peaks of the Albigna, the traveller suddenly plunges over the edge of the uplands into a region of mountain-sides broken up by deep chasms fringed with pines and broad-leaved trees, and resonant with the roar of the great glacier torrent, which, scarcely released from its icy cradle, 'leaps in glory' down a stupendous cliff.
The
See Vignette.
Herr Theobald states that the villagers of Bondo give the name of Trubinesca to the Cima di Tschingel of the Federal map. Herr Ziegler, the author of a new and very beautifully executed map of this portion of the Alps, confirms this statement, adding that 'Turbinesca' is the correct spelling, and he has accordingly changed the names of the two peaks. As a rule, local usage should, no doubt, be followed. But in the present instance, the mistake is of such long standing, that an endeavour to correct it would only lead to confusion, and I have adhered to the nomenclature of the Federal map. It is much to be regretted that Herr Ziegler's map is wholly inaccurate with regard to the glaciers of Val Masino, and the position of many of the ridges dividing its lateral glens.