Italian Alps

To sum up. Those who look for the charm of Campiglio in any view from the windows will be cruelly disappointed. Its attraction lies in the wonderful freshness and purity of the air, which rivals that of the Engadine, and in the variety and beauty of the excursions within reach.

For ladies, botanists, and quiet strollers there is an unusual abundance of easy walks, through shady glades full of rare and beautiful flowers and ferns, by the side of clear dove-coloured brooks glancing down over the limestone shelves, or up to secluded tarns and grassy ridges whence the great horns and teeth glow orange against the sky, or the Adamello snows glitter in the sunlight. Moreover, active climbers have within easy reach a variety of glacier-work which all but two or three of the greatest Swiss centres might envy, and rock scenery such as Switzerland can nowhere rival.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BRENTA GROUP. 57

The mighty pyramids of stoneWhich wedgelike cleave the desert airs,When nearer seen and better knownAre but gigantic flights of stairs. – Longfellow.VAL DI BRENTA – BOCCA DEI CAMOZZI – VAL AGOLA – PASSO D'AMBIES – VAL DI SOLE – GINEVRIE PASS – CIMA DI BRENTA – PASSO DI GROSTÈ – VAL TERESENGA – MOLVENO – CIMA TOSA – BOCCA DI BRENTA

It was from Pinzolo that we first started for the Bocca di Brenta. On the evening of our ascent of the Presanella we sent François to enquire about the pass, our only knowledge of which was drawn from the notice in the first edition of the 'Alpine Guide,' where it was spoken of 'as likely hereafter to be familiar to mountaineers as one of the most romantic walks in the Alps.' A peasant who declared himself to be well acquainted with the way was easily found, and at a reasonably early hour next morning we had slept off the fatigues of the day before and were again on the march. Leaving the cart-road to Campiglio we followed a footpath passing among scattered hamlets and through fertile meadows, until near some saw-mills it crossed to the left bank of the stream.

We here quitted the main valley and entered the mouth of Val di Brenta, a deep short glen clothed in beech and pine-woods. Our track led us through forest glades and over grassy banks covered in profusion with the wild fruits of the Alps. Bilberries carpeted the ground, strawberries fit for Titania's own table dangled temptingly on the banks. While we lingered a morning mist swept off and a bevy of wild pinnacles peered down on us, one gigantic tower looming above them all.

The scenery we were entering was at once strange and exciting. The common features of Alpine landscapes were changed; as if by some sudden enchantment we found ourselves amongst richer forests, purer streams, more fantastic crags.

The rocks which pierced the sky seemed solid, yet how could limestone take the form and subtle colours of flame? We could see ice overhead, yet how could the stream which sparkled at our side between mossy banks be a glacier child, or any relation to the noisy and muddy Swiss torrent? Later in the day we learnt the secret of its purity; the water as it creeps from the ice is filtered underground until it is fit company for the delicate trees and flowers which it soon joins.

Where a barrier of rock completely closed the glen we began to climb the southern hillside, zigzagging steeply amidst wet mossy crags and the tangled branches of a wood of creeping pines. The path suddenly reached the rim of an upper platform lying in the centre of the great peaks. Hitherto we had been wandering amidst woods and over broken ground, whence no general view could be gained. But the lawn on which we now lay was in the very heart of things. Full opposite to us rose a colossal rock, one of the most prodigious monuments of Nature's forces. Its lower portion rose in diminishing stories like the Tower of Babel of old Bible pictures. Above it was a perfect precipice, an upright block, the top of which was 4,000 to 4,500 feet above our heads. Behind this gigantic keep a vast mountain fortress stretched out its long lines of turrets and bastions. But as we approached its base the great tower rose alone and unsupported, and the boldness of its outline became almost incredible. It fairly challenges comparison with the Matterhorn from the Hörnli, or the Cimon della Pala from above Paneveggio; and it combines to a great extent the noble solidity of the Swiss peak with the peculiar upright structure which gives dolomite its strange resemblance to human architecture.

But if the central object of the picture was enough to keep our attention fixed in growing astonishment, there was much else which called for notice. On our left was a second massive rock castle, the Cima di Brenta, connected with the Cima Tosa by the Fulmini di Brenta, a long line of flame-like pinnacles of the strangest shapes, some of them seeming to bulge near the top like a Russian steeple. Before us, between one of the loftiest of these spires and the Cima Tosa, lay a deep snowy gap which I pointed out as the Bocca di Brenta. Our peasant guide at once corrected me; he declared that the only passage to Molveno was to be found at the head of a long glacier ribbon crumpled up amongst the cliffs of the Tosa. As he professed to have stood on the summit and looked down the other side, we were unwillingly forced to believe him.

A very steep goat-track led us through rhododendron bushes to the level of the glacier, from which no visible stream came forth. After traversing a huge and unusually crumbling moraine, we entered upon the ice which, though steep, was little crevassed. The rock scenery was now most extraordinary. On either hand a line of ramparts rose sheer out of the glacier in precipices of mingled murky red and ashy-tinted grey; behind us lay the massive block of the Cima di Brenta, its precipices relieved by slender snow-streaks. In the distance was the Orteler group, with ominous clouds hanging about its summits. As we penetrated further the valley of ice rose in long steep steps before us. Overcoming these by the occasional use of the axe we reached a recess, the reservoir of the winter snows, at the back of the great tower of the Cima Tosa. On the right was a well-marked gap, which the guide pointed out as the Bocca. We were soon standing on it; at the same moment a pair of horns appeared on the opposite side, and we found ourselves face to face with a chamois. For some seconds we stared at the animal, and it at us, in mutual surprise. The moment some one spoke the chamois started off over the snow-field, and when we shouted after it took to the almost perpendicular rocks of the Cima Pra dei Camozzi, halting occasionally for a moment at François' whistle.

A considerable ice-field now lay before us, apparently slanting away to the west, in the direction of Pinzolo. The porter nevertheless insisted that we were on the true pass; but I soon saw that instead of having crossed the real backbone of the range we were only on one of its ribs, a secondary ridge which joins the Cima Tosa with the peak marked in the Austrian Ordnance Survey as the Cima Pra dei Camozzi. What was to be done? We were in the centre of a wilderness, clouds were rapidly sweeping up from behind, and we had fairly lost our way. The glacier before us must come down from the main ridge. Would this afford a passage? We determined to try, the porter following in sullen silence. After climbing a hard-frozen bank we reached the crest and looked down on a sea of mist. As we stood there the clouds enveloped us and snow began to fall heavily. Sheltering in a niche among the rocks on the eastern side of the ridge we turned to that universal resource under difficulties, the provision-sack, while François explored the cliffs below. Our guide soon returned with a face portending failure. After descending about 100 feet, he had reached an absolute precipice, so lofty that no noise announced the fall of the stones he rolled over its edge. The shouts of herdsmen rose tantalisingly out of the depths below, coming, no doubt, from the highest alp in Val d'Ambies, a lateral glen which falls into the Sarca valley near the Baths of Comano.

What was to be done? We were, like Bunyan's pilgrims in the Enchanted Ground, amidst the ruins of Castle Doubting, with no clue to guide us out of the wilderness. My companions appreciated the position and played their parts accordingly, – one, as Giant Despair, sallying on us with frightful prognostications of a night in the snow, while another, as Hopeful, maintained that we should still sleep at Molveno. Finally we determined to follow wherever the glacier led us.

The porter, the source of all our misfortunes, had been discovered to be profiting by our discussion to pocket a large share of our already small stock of provisions. He had been engaged only as far as the Bocca, and as he still insisted that we were on it we took him at his word and dismissed him on the spot.

Slithering somehow down the ice-slope we tramped on through mists until in half-an-hour we reached a moraine which we followed for some distance. Then we took shelter for some time in a cuplike hollow amongst the rocks, in hopes that a partial lifting of the snow-veil might show us something more of the face of the country around. But, far from amending, the storm only grew thicker.

We had barely advanced a hundred yards from the hospitable cranny when François, who was leading, came to a sudden halt. We were standing, so far as we could see, on the brow of a precipice. Nothing was visible below but one mass of mist, dense with snow-flakes; around us whirled the seething clouds, which had already draped the crags in wintry mantles. A more dismal scene I never wish to look upon; we realised the terrors of the Alps in a spring 'tourmente,' when an icy wind is added to the snow and mists. A momentary break revealed a shelf some fifty feet below us. By making a slight circuit a practicable course was found, and we let ourselves from ledge to ledge of a face of rocks, made slippery by the melting snow. Thus we worked slowly downwards, now stumbling over broken boulders, now clambering down ledges by the help of hands and feet. Occasionally we were brought to a standstill; but François' 'Allez seulement' was soon heard, the signal for further progress. A friendly cleft came to our aid, and when forced to leave it we were again in the region of creeping pines. Using their gnarled branches to swing ourselves down by, we finally reached a faint track, which bore to the right across a rough slope of scree, and then descended into a marshy basin. This must have been the head of Val d'Agola, recommended as an excursion from Pinzolo by Mr. Ball.

The track mounted slightly towards the left, until it joined a broad terrace-path winding at a level along the hillside.

Here with the suddenness of enchantment the scene changed. The gloom was broken by a dart of sunshine, blue shone overhead, and in a moment the mists lifted on all sides, disclosing a view of the most dazzling beauty. We were on a green hillside opposite the mouth of Val di Genova, which was flanked on one side by the Presanella, the victim of yesterday's onslaught, on the other by the Carè Alto. These were the outposts of a vast amphitheatre of ice and snow, in the bend of which stood the Adamello.58 Below us was a group of châlets at the head of a little glen, whose stream trickled down into the Sarca; beyond lay the whole Val Rendena, almost to Tione, a rich mass of verdure, dotted by frequent villages, and set off by the soft moulded mask of new-fallen snow which hid the hills down to the highest pine-forests.

Instead of following the stream we turned to the right and descended by a sledge-track to Baldino, a village twenty minutes below Pinzolo.

In after years I satisfied myself that the cliff we had turned back from was visible from the high-road at the upper end of the gorge of Le Sarche. The rocks seen from a distance did not look so formidable as they had from above. The pass, if it could be made, would be a very convenient one, leading directly from Campiglio to the Baths of Comano, and enabling a mountaineer to pass through the pinnacles of the Brenta Alta, and by means of a carriage reach Riva the same evening; and there still remained sufficient doubt about the ascent on the south-east side to render the problem interesting.

Ten years later I mustered some friends and François at the Baths of Comano. We enquired of the master of the house for a porter acquainted with the paths in Val d'Ambies. Such a valley, however, was unknown, at least by that name, to all the inmates of the establishment. This, considering the vague state of the mountain nomenclature in this district, was not wonderful. We were more surprised when the existence of any valley between Val d'Algone and the Molveno cart-track was denied with persistent positiveness. At last a guest completely crushed our importunate enquiries by producing a map on which the valley we spoke of was not to be found. The map, it should be mentioned, was one of the Island of Sardinia!

Upon this we gave up the struggle, and contented ourselves with hiring a peasant to carry provisions to one of the villages on the rolling upland above the Baths, where we should at least be able to point out the mouth of the glen we meant to explore.

In three-quarters of an hour we had reached Tavodo, built on a brow immediately over the torrent of Val d'Ambies. Behind us lay the beautiful basin of Stenico, threatened by an advancing storm, through the skirts of which the low sun flung Titianesque lances upon the glittering orchards. In front the towers of the Cima Tosa were framed between two bold buttresses, the ends of the bounding ridges of our valley.

We had to cross a torrent and reascend to the neighbouring hamlet of San Lorenzo in order to obtain quarters for the night. There was no regular inn in the place, but we found clean beds and cooking materials in the house over the village shop.

Our start next morning was unexpectedly delayed. We had agreed overnight with an elderly and loquacious inhabitant for the carriage of our provisions and a bag to the top of the pass for four gulden. Our porter's first act on appearing at six A.M. was to call for spirits; his second, to declare he must have five gulden to go not to the pass but to the highest 'malga.' His pretensions were increasing with his 'little glasses,' and in inverse ratio to his competency, when we cut the matter short by engaging another man.

We had got fairly off when the old Bacchanalian shuffled up in the rear and enlivened the first half-hour by an energetic declamation, in which the chief points seemed to be that he alone in the countryside knew every crag and cranny where we were going, that he was 'President of the Village' and a 'galantuomo,' and that, 'corpo di Bacco,' the least we could do was to pay his tavern score.

Above some saw-mills a good cattle-path mounted steadily along the left bank of a very slender stream. At the first bend in the narrow valley we had a good view of the barrier to be crossed. The gap we must aim at was clearly the second on the south-west of the mass of the Cima Tosa. We could recognise the very spot where François had halted that day ten years on the brink of the precipice. A hundred yards further south a fan-shaped snow-bed lay against the base of the abrupt crags. This snow must have fallen through some breach; and closer inspection showed a shadow on the face of the cliff – good proof that it was not so smooth as it looked, and that a hidden gully might be found at our need.

A long and steep ascent, like that of Val di Brenta, closes the lower glen.

Halfway up the barrier the path splits, and the traveller must either continue to climb steeply and afterwards traverse at a level the higher slopes, or recross the stream and remain in the valley. The upper basin is hemmed in by wooded cliffs, on the top of which lies a ring of pasturages, the base of the dolomite peaks which extend in a complete semicircle round the head of the glen. The sky-line of the range does not equal in boldness or eccentricity of form that of Val di Brenta; but, except where a high but obvious pass leads over towards Molveno, it presents to the eye a most formidable barrier.

As we approached the rock-wall clouds swept rapidly over it. François suggested dolefully that history was apt to repeat itself. But we knew enough already to be tolerably independent of weather. There were two bays in the cliffs before us, one to our right filled by a small glacier with which we had nothing to do, the other containing the fan-shaped snow-slope seen from below. A rough ascent over the last grass, snow and boulders led to the latter.

The steep snow-slope was hard-frozen and slippery, and altogether too much for our porter's powers. Like the schoolboy he went two steps back for each forward, and, as even turning his back to the slope proved ineffectual, we were constrained to shoulder his burden and let him go. Had it not been for his ludicrous incapacity to follow we should have had a long financial discussion; as it was, his murmurs at pay for which a Swiss porter would have been thankful, soon grew faint with distance. At the head of the snow-bed we were met by an almost vertical rock; but a sharp scramble of fifty feet gave us the key of the pass. On our right, slanting parallel to the cliff like a staircase to a castle-wall, and completely masked up to the present moment by a buttress, was a steep narrow snow-filled gully. While François was converting the hard snow into a convenient ladder, we watched with wonder and admiration the great red towers which broke out of the neighbouring mists. 'Pour moi je préfére votre maison de Parlement,' said our guide when we called his attention to the mountain architecture.

We gained the watershed a few yards to the south of the spot we had reached from the other side. The pass has two crests, one of rock, one of snow, with a bowl between them. The distant view was veiled; but the Presanella, rising through clouds opposite, proved that the chain was really crossed. Either side of the Bocca dei Camozzi was now open to us. We preferred to pass through the gap and follow the glacier of Val di Brenta, by which, descending at our leisure, we reached in good time the 'Stabilimento Alpino' of Campiglio.

Our first glimpse, in the summer of 1872, of the peaks of the Trentino was from the gap at the western foot of the Pizzo della Mare. As our heads rose above the ridge of pure snow which had hitherto formed our horizon, and we walked up against the hard blue sky, a well-known pinnacle shot up before us, and out of the great sea of cotton-wool cloud spread over the Italian hills and valleys rose the shining cliffs of the Presanella. Further from us the serrated outline of the dolomite range cut sharply against the clear upper heaven. Familiarity never renders commonplace this marvellous chain. Seen from the Orteler group it is a gigantic wall crowned by square towers and riven in places to its base by mighty clefts. The breaches, despite their depth, are cut so narrow and so clean that fancy suggests that the elements must have borrowed some magic power with which to work such fantastic ruin.

It was partly the intention of scaling the Cima di Brenta, one of the loftiest towers of the dolomites, which was taking us for the third time to Pinzolo. So the mountaineers among us pulled out field-glasses and began at once to dissect the peak; to decide that this 'couloir' was snow and available, that 'arête' broken and useless; in short, to converse in that Alpine jargon which marks the race which Mr. Ruskin once thought capable of treating the Alps only as greased poles.

On the same afternoon we descended into the head of the great valley, which was the home of the 'Nauni feroces' of Horace's times, the highway to Italy of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. It now bears two names. The upper portion, where it is comparatively narrow, is called the Val di Sole, probably from its direction admitting both the sun's morning and evening rays; the lower, where the hills drop into broad-backed downs, preserves the memory of the ancient tribe in the titles Val di Non or Nonsberg. It is as a whole a wide sunny valley, rich in fields of maize and vines, and crowded with prosperous villages overlooked by the ruins of mediæval fortresses. Two of its side-glens, Val di Pejo and Val di Rabbi, penetrate deeply into the Orteler range, and the bath-houses they contain have a local fashion amongst the people of the hotter parts of the Trentino; but the accommodation is not such as will tempt foreign visitors. To catalogue the bath-houses of the Orteler as Thackeray has inns, if Santa Catarina is the 'cochon d'or,' Rabbi is the silver, and Pejo the black animal, and I scarcely know where to find a blacker. Besides, the scenery accessible to any but very good walkers is not of a high order; the heads of the glens are wild and savage rather than beautiful, and their lower portions, though delightful to drive down for a mountaineer coming from the glaciers, would scarcely repay a separate visit. From Santa Catarina, Rabbi can only be reached by a long but most glorious march over the Monte Cevedale and Pizzo della Venezia;59 Pejo, over the Pizzo della Mare, is a comparatively short journey, and the traveller will do well to escape from its slovenliness and discomfort by driving on to the junction of Val dei Monti and the main valley and the clean country inn at Fosine.

The walls of its chief room were some years ago adorned with a remarkable series of Bible pictures. One plate illustrated an unusual subject, the early life of Mary Magdalene, who was represented receiving the attentions of a moustache-twirling young officer in full Austrian uniform. It seemed doubtful whether a reflection was intended on military men in general, or whether the Milanese artist had taken this indirect means to insinuate the peculiar profligacy of his then rulers.

On the morning of the day succeeding our ascent of the Pizzo della Mare, we found ourselves at a tolerably early hour at the little village of Dimaro, a cluster of prosperous-looking farmhouses standing some distance off the high road, amongst quiet meadows, fields of tall maize and walnut-trees. Here the mule-path over the Ginevrie Pass leaves Val di Sole, and we had to abandon our car and look for a quadruped of some sort to help us over the hill. The only available mule had just come in from a hard morning's work, drawing down granite boulders to embank the bed of the torrent, and required some rest; its master also demurred on his own account to starting in the heat of the day. These hindrances, joined to the probable length of the journey, and the unanimous voices raised in favour of the hospice of Campiglio, made us reconsider our previous plan of pushing on to Pinzolo, and agree to trust to the hospitality of the 'ricco signor,' who had always meat in his house, and whose best room was as beautiful as any at Cles, or even Trento.

The inn at Dimaro is a very clean-looking little house evidently owned by tidy people. Some of us spent the midday hours in a siesta in a cool bedroom, with a row of bright flower-pots across the window, through which there came in to us glimpses of an atmosphere quivering with light, mingled with fresh sounds of rustling branches and running waters. The sunshine of the mountains is always full of life and freshness; it is only down in the stagnant plains that the midday heat burns like a dull furnace, drying up the energies alike of plants and men.

Meanwhile the agriculturist of the party found interest in watching the threshing in the barn below, where a dozen peasants – men, women, and girls – disposed in a circle, were wielding their short flails with incessant industry. At length the mule was rested. Its master did not at first seem likely to prove a pleasant addition to our number, for he declined to help the guides by carrying a knapsack, resented strongly the suggestion that he should go to his animal's head, and discoursed gloomily on the difficulties and fatigues of the road. This strange conduct on the part of a Tyrolese peasant was accounted for by our companion's informing us that he had spent a year in Paris.

A mile of dusty cart-road leads to a bridge at the foot of the wooded rock which juts out from the dolomite range and blocks up the lower part of Val Selva. Steep zigzags carried us up through a picturesque tangle of trees and crags to where the road turns the northern corner of the huge promontory. A fair landscape of the romantic school now opened suddenly before our eyes. In front, and slightly beneath us, lay a wide green basin, through which the stream wandered peacefully towards our feet. Above its further end rose a sheer cliff, limestone or dolomite, fringed with dark pines. Beyond this valley-gate the eye wandered into the quivering Italian sky, imagining, if it did not see, further distances and a limitless extent of waving hills and wooded plains. On our right the ground rose in wave above wave of forest, in the recesses of which, the right track once lost, one might wander for hours without seeing any snowy landmark by which to steer a course.