Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880

C. T. Dent

Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880

PREFACE

Some of the following sketches do not now appear for the first time; but such as have been before published in other form have been entirely re-written, and, in great measure, recast.

To the writer the work has afforded an occasional distraction from more serious professional work, and he cannot wish better than that it should serve the same purpose to the reader.

Cortina di Ampezzo:

September 1884.

CHAPTER I.

AN EXPEDITION IN THE OLDEN STYLE

Buried records —Litera scripta manet– The survival of the unfit – A literary octopus – Sybaritic mountaineering – On mountain “form” – Lessons to be learned in the Alps – The growth and spread of the climbing craze – Variations of the art – A tropical day in the valley – A deserted hostelry – The hotel staff appears in several characters – Ascent of the Balfrinhorn – Our baggage train and transport department – A well-ventilated shelter – On sleeping out: its advantages on the present occasion – The Mischabelhörner family group – A plea for Saas and the Fée plateau – We attack the Südlenzspitz – The art of detecting hidden crevasses – Plans for the future – Sentiment on a summit – The feast is spread – The Alphubeljoch – We meet our warmest welcome at an inn.

There exists a class of generously-minded folk who display a desire to improve their fellow-creatures and a love for their species, by referring pointedly to others for the purpose of mentioning that the objects of their remarks have never been guilty of certain enormities: a critical process, which is about equivalent to tarring an individual, but, from humanitarian considerations, omitting to feather him also. The ordeal, as applied to others, is unwarrantable; but there is a certain odd pleasure in subjecting oneself to it. Now, it is but a paraphrase to say that the more we go about, the more, in all probability, shall we be strengthened in the conviction that the paradise of fools must have a large acreage. The average Briton has a constantly present dread that he is likely to do something to justify his admission into that department of Elysium. The thought that he has so qualified, will wake him up if it crosses his mind even in a dream, or make his blood run cold – whatever that may mean – in his active state. Thus it falls out that he is for ever, as it were, conning over the pass-book of his actions, and marvelling how few entries he can find on the credit side, as he does so. It is asserted as a fact (and it were hard to gainsay the sentiment), that Litera scripta manet. No doubt; but how much more obtrusively true is it that printed matter is as indestructible as the Hydra? It has occurred sometimes to the writer, on very, very sleepless nights, to take down from a shelf, to slap the cover in order to get rid of a considerable amount of dust, and to peruse, in a volume well-known to all members of the Alpine Club, accounts written years before, of early mountain expeditions. To trace in some such way, at any rate to search for, indications of a fancied development of mind has a curious fascination for the solitary man. Effusions which an author would jealously hide away from the eyes of his friends, have a strangely absorbing interest to the man who reflects that he himself was their perpetrator.

The survival of the unfit

We most of us, whatever principles we assert on the matter, keep stowed away, in some corner or another, the overflow of a fancied talent. The form varies: it may, perhaps, be a five act tragedy, possibly a psychological disquisition, or a sensational novel in three volumes of MS. It is a satisfaction to turn such treasures out from time to time when no eyes are upon us, even if it be only to thank Heaven devoutly that they have always lain unknown and uncriticised. “Il n’y a rien qui rafraichisse le sang comme d’avoir su éviter de faire une sottise.” Of work done, of which the author had no especial reason to be proud, a feeling of thankfulness in a lesser degree may arise from the consciousness that, if ever recognised at all, it is now, happily, forgotten. So have these early effusions sometimes amused, not infrequently astounded, and at the worst have nearly always brought the wished-for slumber; and yet in Alpine writings the same accounts were for the most part as faithful representations as the writer could set down on paper of impressions made at the time. It has often occurred to me to ask what manner of description a writer would give of an expedition made many years before. How would the lapse of time influence him? Would he make light of whatever danger there was? Would the picture require a very decided coat of varnish to make it at all recognisable? Would the crudities come out still more strongly, or would the colours all have faded and sunk harmoniously together in his picture? The speculation promised to be interesting enough to make it worth while to give practical effect to the idea. Now the expedition narrated in this chapter was made in 1870, and possibly, therefore, if a description were worth giving at all, it had better have been given fresh. We can always find some proverb tending more or less to justify any course of action that we may be desirous of pursuing, and by distorting the meaning of a quotation manage to serve our own ends. Of all the ill-used remarks of this nature, surely the most often employed is, “Better late than never;” the extreme elasticity of which saying, in the application thereof, is well evidenced by the doctor who employed it in justification of his late arrival when he came on a professional visit to the lady and found the baby learning its alphabet.

Sybaritic mountaineering

When an aquarium was a fashionable resort, amongst a good many queer and loose fish, we became familiar with a monstrously ill-favoured beast called a cuttle-fish: and may have had a chance of seeing how the animal, if attacked by his physical superior, resorted to the ingenious plan of effusing a quantity of ink, and, under cover of this, retreating hastily backwards out of harm’s way. There are some, less ingenuous than the Octopus, who retreat first into obscurity and then pour out their effusion of ink. But it is more common to use the flare of an epigram or of a proverb, as a conjurer does his wand, to distract attention for the moment and divert the thought current from matters we do not wish to be too evident. At any rate, I must in the present instance lay under tribute the author of Proverbs, and add another straw to the already portentous burden that they who wish to compound for literary sins have already piled on his back. Apologising is, however, a dangerous vice, as a well-known writer has remarked. The account, though a sort of literary congenital cripple, has still a prescriptive right to live. Besides this expedition was undertaken in the pre-Sybaritic age of mountaineering, and before the later refinements of that art and science had taken firm hold of its votaries. What would the stern explorers of former time have thought, or said, if they had perceived persons engaged on the glaciers sitting down on camp-stools to a light refection of truffle pie and cold punch? Such banquets are not uncommon now, though precisians with a tendency to dyspepsia still object strongly to them. In those days, too, mountaineers were not so much differentiated that climbers were talked of by their fellows like cricketers are described in the book of Lillywhite. “Jones,” for instance, “is a brilliant cragsman, but inclined to be careless on moraines.” “Noakes,” again, “remarkably sure and steady on snow, fairly good in a couloir, would do better if he did not possess such an astounding appetite and would pay more attention to the use of the rope.” “Stokes possesses remarkable knowledge of the Alps; on rocks climbs with his head; we wish we could say honestly that he can climb at all with his hands and feet.” “Thompson, first-rate step-cutter; walks on snow with the graceful gait and unlaboured action of a shrimp-catcher at his work: kicks down every loose stone he touches.” Thus different styles of climbing are recognised. “Form,” as it is called in climbing, was in the old days an unknown term, and yet it is probable that the “form” was by no means inferior to any that can be shown now-a-days. The reason is obvious enough and the explanation lies simply in the fact that the apprenticeship served in the mountains was then much longer than it is now. People did not so often try to ride a steeple-chase before they had learnt to sit in a saddle, or appreciated that the near side was the best by which to get up. When this particular expedition was made (towards which I feel that I am an unconscionable time in making a start) I had been five or six seasons in the Alps, during the first two of which I had never set foot on a snow-slope. There had always seemed to me from the first, to be so much absolutely to learn in mountaineering: there is no less now, indeed there is more, for the science has been developed, but it seems beyond doubt, that fewer people recognise the fact. Like most other arts, it can only be learnt in one way, by constant practice, by constant care and attention and by always doing everything in the mountains to the best of one’s ability. Too many may seem to think that there is a royal road, and fail to recognise that a plebeian does not alter his status by walking along this variety of highway.

The growth of the climbing craze

Time rolled on. The fascination of climbing spread abroad, and it followed with the increasing number of mountaineers that more and more difficulties were experienced in attempts to diversify the sport in the Alps alone, and in emerging from the common herd of climbers. Then a new danger arose. The sport grew fashionable – a serious symptom to its true lovers. Books of Alpine adventure readily found readers; novels, and other forms of nonsense, were written about the mountains; accounts of new expeditions were telegraphed at once to all parts of the world, and found as important a place in the newspapers as the Derby betting, or the latest reports as to the precise medical details of some eminent person’s internal complaint. Still further did the craving for novelty spread, and more strange did the means of satisfying it become. The mountains were ascended without guides: in winter; by people afflicted with mental aberration who wore tall hats and frock coats on the glaciers; by persons who were ignorant of the laws of optics as applied to large telescopes; in bad weather, by wrong routes and so forth. Then, too, set in what may be called the variation craze. This is very infectious. For those who can see no beauty in a scene that some one else has gazed on before it is still a passion. We may still at times, in the Alps, hear people say, “Oh yes, that is a very fine expedition, no doubt, but I don’t think I care much about undertaking it; you see so and so has done it; couldn’t we manage to strike out a different line?” The result is a “variation” expedition. The composer when hard driven, and not strongly under the influence of the Muse, will at times take some innocent, simple melody and submit it to exquisite torture by writing what he is pleased to call variations. Sometimes he will not rest till he has perpetrated as many as thirty-two on some innocent little tune of our childhood. The original air becomes entirely lost, like a sixpence buried in a flour bag, and we may marvel, for instance, as may the travelled American, at the immense amount of foreign matter that may be introduced into “Home, sweet home.” Even so does the climber sometimes practise his art. But for one who entertains a strict respect for the old order of things, and for the memory of an age of mountaineering now rapidly passing into oblivion, to write in any such strain would be intolerable. And so, even as a theatrical manager when his brilliant play, stolen, or, as it is generally described, “adapted,” from the French, does not run, I may be allowed to raise the curtain on a revival of the old drama, a comedy in one short act, and not provided with any very thrilling “situations.” The “scenarium” lay ready to hand in the leaves of an old journal, which may possibly share, with other old leaves, the property of being rather dry. But we are meandering, as it were, in the valleys, and run some risk of digressing too far from the path which should lead to the mountain in hand. There is a story of a clergyman who selected a rather long text as a preface to his discourse, and finding, when he had read it at length a second time, that his congregation were mostly disposed in attitudes which might be of attention, but which were, at the same time, suggestive of slumber, wisely concluded to defer enlarging upon it till a more fitting occasion, and dismissed his hearers, or at any rate those present, with the remark that they had heard his text and that he would not presume to mar its effectiveness by any exordium upon it. Revenons.

A tropical day in the valley

In the early part of August 1870, our party walked one sultry day up the Saas Valley. The dust glittered thick and yellow on our boots. Many of the smaller brooks had struck work altogether, while the main river was reduced to a clear stream trickling lazily down between sloping banks of rounded white boulders that shone with a painful glare in the strong sunlight. The more muscular of the grasshoppers found their limbs so lissom in the warmth that they achieved the most prodigious leaps out of sheer lightheartedness; for they sprang so far that they could have had no definite idea where they might chance to light. On the stone walls busy little lizards, with heaving flanks, scurried about with little fitful spurts, and vanished abruptly into the crannies, perpetually playing hide and seek with each other, and always seeming out of breath. The foliage drooped motionless in the heavy air and the shadows it cast lengthened along the dusty ground as steadily as the streak on a sundial. The smoke from the guides’ pipes (and guides, like itinerant nigger minstrels, always have pipes in their mouths when moving from the scene of one performance to another) hung in mid air, and the vile choking smell of the sputtering lucifer matches was perceptible when the laggards reached the spot where a man a hundred yards ahead had lighted one of these abominations.

To pass under the shade of a walnut tree was refreshing like a cold douche; and to step forth again into the heat and glare made one almost gasp. Flannel shirts were miserably inadequate to the strain put upon their absorbent qualities. The potatoes and cabbages were white and piteously dusty. Even the pumpkins seemed to be trying to bury their plump forms in the cool recesses of the earth. Everywhere there seemed a consciousness as of a heavy droning hum. All of which may be concisely summed up in the now classical opening remark of a well-known comedy character, one “Perkyn Middlewick” to wit, “It’s ’ot.”

A deserted hostelry

When within a little distance of the hotel I enquired whether it was worth while for one of the party to push on to secure rooms. The guides thought, on the whole, that it was unnecessary, and this opinion was justified subsequently by the fact that we found ourselves the sole occupants of the hotel during the week or so that we remained in the district. It was the year of the war; ugly rumours were about, but very few tourists. Selecting, therefore, the most luxurious apartment, and having given over to the care of one Franz, who appeared in the character of “boots” to the hotel, a remarkable pair of cowhide brogues of original design, as hard as sabots and much more uncomfortable, I sat down on a stone slab, in order to cool down to a temperature that might permit of dining without fear of imperilling digestion. So pleased were the hotel authorities at the presence of a traveller that they exerted themselves to the utmost to entertain us well, and with remarkable results. I find a record of the dinner served. There were ten dishes in consecutive order, exclusive of what Americans term “fixings.” As to the nature of nine it was difficult to speak with any degree of certainty, but the tenth was apparently a blackbird that had perished of starvation and whose attenuated form the chef had bulged out with extraneous matter. Franz, who seemed to be a sort of general utility man to the establishment, had thrown off, with the ease of a Gomersal or a Ducrow, the outward habiliments of a boots and appeared now as a waiter, in a shirt so hard and starched that he was unable to bend and could only button his waistcoat by the sense of touch. The repast over, Franz removed the shirt front and unbent thereupon in manner as in person. Assuming engaging airs, he entered into conversation, disappearing however for short intervals at times, in order, as might be inferred from certain sounds proceeding from an adjoining apartment, to discharge the duties of a chamber-maid. Subsequently it transpired that he was the proprietor of the hotel.

The hut above Fée

We agreed to commence our mountaineering by an ascent of the Balfrinhorn, a most charming walk and one which even in those days was considered a gentle climb. There are few peaks about this district which will better repay the climber of moderately high ambition, and it is possible to complete the expedition without retracing the steps. There is no danger, and it is hard to say to what part of the mountain an enthusiast would have to go in order to discover any: so the expedition, though perhaps prosaic, is still very interesting throughout and quite in the olden style. The solitude at the hotel was somewhat dull, and the conversational powers of the guides soon exhausted if we travelled beyond the subject of chamois hunting, I did indeed try on one occasion to explain to them, in answer to an earnest request, the military system of Great Britain. But, with a limited vocabulary, the task was not easy and, as I could not think of any words to express what was meant by red tape, circumlocution, and short service, my exposition was limited to enlarging on the facts that the warriors of my native country were exceeding valiant folk with very fine chests, that they wore highly padded red coats and little hats like half bonbon boxes cocked on one side and that they would never consent to be slaves. Burgener, anxious for some more stirring expedition, suggested that we should climb the Dom from the Saas side or make a first ascent of the Südlenzspitz. We had often talked of the former expedition, which had not at the time been achieved, and, in order to facilitate its accomplishment, divers small grants of money had been sent out from England to be expended in the construction of a hut some five hours’ walk above Fée. In answer to enquiries, the guides reported with no small amount of pride, that the building had been satisfactorily completed and they were of opinion that it was ready for occupation. At some length the process of building was described and it really seemed from their account that they had caused to be erected a shelter of unduly pretentious dimensions. It appeared, however, that the residence was equally well placed to serve as a shelter for an ascent of the Südlenzspitz and we decided ultimately to attack that peak first. Great preparations were made; an extensive assortment of very inferior blankets was produced and spread out in the road in front of the hotel, either for airing or some other ill-defined purpose, possibly from some natural pride in the extensive resources of the hotel. Then they pulled down and piled into a little stack, opposite the front door, fire wood enough to roast an ox, or convert an enthusiast into a saint.

How ruin seized a roofless thing

One fine afternoon we started. The entire staff and personnel of the hotel would have turned out to wish us good luck, but did not actually do so, as he was engaged in a back shed milking a cow. Laden with a large bundle of fire wood, I toiled up the steep grass slopes above Fée, leading to the Hochbalm glacier. The day was oppressively hot, and I was not wholly ungrateful on finding that the string round my bundle was loose and that the sticks dropped out one after another: accordingly I selected a place in the extreme rear of the caravan, lest my delinquencies should perchance be observed. The sun beat mercilessly down upon our backs on these bare slopes and we sighed involuntarily for Vallombrosa or Monaco or some equally shady place. The guides, who up to that time had spoken of their building as if it were of somewhat palatial dimensions, now began rather to disparage the construction. Doubts were expressed as to the effects certain storms and heavy falls of snow might have had on it and regrets that the weather had prevented the builders from attending as minutely to details of finish and decoration as they could have wished. Putting this and that together, I came to the conclusion that the erection would probably be found to display but indifferent architectural merit. However, there was nothing better to look forward to. “Where is it?” “Oh, right up there, under the big cliff, close to where Alexander is.” In the dim distance could be distinguished the form of our guide as a little dark mass progressing on two pink flesh-coloured streaks, striding rapidly up the hill. The phenomenon of colour was due to the fact that, prompted by the sultriness of the day, Alexander had adopted in his garb a temporary variation of the Highland costume. A few minutes later he joined us, clothed indeed, and in a right, but still a melancholy frame of mind. Shaking his head sadly, he explained that a grievous disaster had taken place, evidently in the spring. The forebodings of the constructively-minded rustics we had left below, who knew about as much of architecture as they did of metaphysics, proved now to be true. They had remarked that they feared lest some chance stone should have fallen, and possibly have inflicted damage on the hut. Why they had selected a site where such an accident might happen, was not at the moment quite obvious, but it became so later on. Burgener told us that the roof had been carried away. Beyond question the roof was gone; at any rate it was not there, and the rock must have fallen in a remarkable way indeed, for the cliff above was slightly overhanging, and the falling boulder, which was held accountable for the disaster, had carried away every vestige of wood-work about the place, not leaving even a splinter or a chip. However, to the credit of the builders, be it said that they had tidied up and swept very nicely, for there was no sawdust to be seen anywhere, nor indeed, any trace of carpentering work. The hut consequently resolved itself into a semi-circular stone wall, very much out of the perpendicular, built against a rock face. The chief architect, evidently a thoughtful person, had not omitted to leave a door. But it was easier on the whole to step over the wall, which I did, with as much scorn as Remus himself could have thrown into the action when seeking to aggravate his brother Romulus. So we entered into possession of the premises without, at any rate, the trouble of any preliminary legal formalities.

On sleeping out

In the matter of sleeping out, all mountaineers pass, provided they keep long enough at it, through three stages. In the early period, when imbued with what has been poetically termed the “ecstatic alacrity” of youth, they burn with a desire to undergo hardship on mountains. Possibly a craving for sympathy in discomfort – that most universal of human attributes – prompts them to spend their nights in the most unsuitable places for repose. The practical carrying out of this tendency is apt to freeze very literally their ardour; at least, it did so in our case. Then follows a period during which the climber laughs to scorn any idea of dividing his mountain expedition. He starts the moment after midnight and plods along with a gait as free and elastic as that of a stage pilgrim or a competitor in a six days’ “go-as-you-please” pedestrian contest: for those who have a certain gift of somnambulism this method has its advantages. Finally comes a stage when the climber’s one thought is to get all the enjoyment possible out of his expedition and to get it in the way that seems best at the time. Now again he may be found at times tenanting huts, or the forms of shelter which are supposed to represent them. But his manner is changed; he no longer travels burdened with the impedimenta of his earlier days. He never looks at his watch now, except to ascertain the utmost limit of time he can dwell on a view. With advancing years and increasing Alpine wisdom, he derides the idea of accurately timing an expedition. His pedometer is probably left at home; he eats whenever he is hungry, and ceases to consider it a sine quâ non that he must return to hotel quarters in time for dinner. Nor does he ever commit the youthful folly of walking at the rate of five miles an hour along the mule path in the valley or the high road at the end of an expedition, gaining thereby sore feet and absolutely nothing else. When he has reached this stage, however, he is considered passé; and when he has reached this stage he probably begins really to appreciate to the full the depth of the charm to be found in mountaineering.