Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880. C. T. Dent
royally.
A few days later we crossed over to Zermatt by the Alphubel Joch, a heavy fall of snow having prevented any idea of making our contemplated assault on the Dom. A Swiss gentleman of a lively nature and excessive loquacity accompanied us. He was not an adroit snow walker, and disappeared on some five or six occasions abruptly into crevasses. The moment, however, that he got his head out again, he resumed his narrative at the exact point at which it had been perforce broken off without exhibiting the least discomposure. The subject to which his remarks referred I did not succeed in ascertaining. We parted at a little chalet not far from the Riffel, leaving our friend lying flat on his back on the grass contemplating the sky with a fixed expression, with his hands folded over his waistcoat. He may have been a poet inspired with a sudden desire for composition for aught I know, or may have assumed this attitude as likely to facilitate [pg 30]the absorption of a prodigious quantity of milk which he took at the chalet.
As we drew nearer to the odd mixture of highly coloured huts and comfortable hotels that make up the village of Zermatt, a sense of returning home crept over the mind, a consciousness of friends at hand, of warm welcomes, mixed with the half presentiment that is always felt on such occasions, that some change would be found; but happily it was not so. The roadway was in its former state; the cobble stones a trifle more irregular and worn more smooth, but still the same. The same guides, or their prototypes, were sitting on the same wall drumming their heels. The same artist was hard at work on a sketch of the Matterhorn in a field hard by. The same party just returning from the Görner Grat. The same man looking out with sun-scorched face from the salon window and the same click from the self-willed billiard balls on the uncertain table below. Ay, and the same unmistakable heartfelt greetings and handshakings at the door of the Monte Rosa. Churlish indeed should we have been if we had sighed to think that we had met our warmest welcome at an inn.
[pg 31]
CHAPTER II.
THE ROTHHORN (MOMING) FROM ZERMATT
The Alpine dramatis personæ—Mountaineering fact and romance—The thirst for novelty and its symptoms—The first ascent of the Moming—Preliminaries are observed—Rock v. snow mountains—The amateur and the guide on rocks and on snow—The programme is made out—Franz Andermatten—Falling stones in the gully—We smooth away the difficulties—The psychological effects of reaching mountain summits—A rock bombardment and a narrow escape—The youthful tourist and his baggage—Hotel trials—We are interviewed—The gushers.
The writer of an Alpine narrative labours under more disadvantages than most literary folk—if authors generally will permit the association, and allow that those who rush into print with their Alpine experiences have the smallest claim to be dignified with such a title. One drawback is that their accounts necessarily suffer from a paucity of characters. A five-act tragedy supported, to use a theatrical expression, by two walking gentlemen, one heavy lead and a low comedy “super,” might possibly pall upon an audience, but in Alpine literature, if I may be permitted to push the metaphor a little further, not only is this the case but the unhappy reader finds the characters like “barn [pg 32]stormers” playing now comedy, now tragedy, and sometimes, it may possibly be added, dramas of romance.
Fact and romance
Again, in all matters absolutely relating to mountaineering in the Alps, the narrator feels bound to stick to matters of fact. The drama of romance must be excluded from his répertoire, or, at any rate, very cautiously handled. I knew a man once, who on a single occasion went a-fishing in Norway and caught a salmon. Naturally he was proud of the achievement, and when in the company of brother sportsmen, would hold up his head, assume a knowing air, and take part in the conversation, such conversation relating, of course, to the size of the various fish those present had caught. Such unswerving and prosaic veracity did my friend possess, that, though sorely tempted as he must have been on many occasions, for ten years he never added a single ounce to the weight of his fish. A writer, an Alpine scribbler at any rate, is perhaps justified if he introduces incidents into an account of an expedition which may not have happened on that particular occasion, but which did happen on some other; and surely he may, without impropriety, romance a little on such part of his work as is not strictly geographical; for example, he may describe a chalet as being dirty, when according to the peasant’s standard of cleanliness it would have been considered spotless, or describe [pg 33]a view as magnificent, when as a matter of fact he paid no attention to it, but he would be acting most culpably if he asserted that he got within fifty feet of the summit, well knowing that he was not fifty feet from the base of the peak, or if he stated that rocks were impossible, or an ice-fall impracticable, when the sole reason for his failure consisted in his being possessed with a strong desire to go back home. Of course a writer can only give his own impressions, and these are much tempered by increased experience and the lapse of time, but in taking up old accounts of Alpine work one not unfrequently finds a good deal of description that requires toning down. In these sketches I have striven honestly to render all that relates intimately to the actual mountains as accurate as possible, and would sooner be considered a dull than an unreliable historian.
It is no easy matter to reproduce almost on the spot an account of a climb with absolute accuracy, however strong the desire may be to do so. Besides, a climber does not pursue his pastime with a note book perpetually open before him. If he does, his mountaineering is more of 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 [pg 34]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, [pg 35]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,