Читать книгу: «Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880», страница 5

The expedition resumed

If we could but once reach the cleft between the peaks there seemed every chance of our being able to reach the lower summit. At the outset progress was fast. We followed our former line till we were in sight of the rock tower and then at once bore off to the right. The climbing was rather more difficult, at least it seemed so to us in those days, than on the other part of the mountain with which we had previously made acquaintance. A series of short flat gullies had to be climbed, but there were exceedingly few inequalities to help us. The rope was of little or no use and might perhaps have been laid aside with advantage. We soon found that we had reached a higher point than at our previous attempt, and as the leader constantly returned favourable reports our spirits rose; so elated in fact did we become that the exact formalities to be observed on reaching the top were seriously discussed whenever the occasion offered for conversation, which was not very often. Old Franz chattered away to himself, as was his wont when matters went well, and on looking back on one occasion I perceived the strange phenomenon of a smile illuminating the porter’s features. Howbeit, this worthy spake no words of satisfaction, but pulled ever at his empty pipe. By dint of wriggling over a smooth sloping stone slab we had got into a steep rock gully which promised to lead us to a good height. Burgener, assisted by much pushing and prodding from below and aided on his own part by much snorting and some strong language, had managed to climb on to a great overhanging boulder that cut off the view from the rest of the party below. As he disappeared from sight we watched the paying out of the rope with as much anxiety as a fisherman eyes his vanishing line when the salmon runs. Presently the rope ceased to move and we waited for a few moments in suspense. We felt that the critical moment of the expedition had arrived, and the fact that our own view was exceedingly limited made us all the more anxious to hear the verdict. “How does it look?” we called out. The answer came back in patois, a bad sign in such emergencies. For a minute or two an animated conversation was kept up; then we decided to take another opinion and accordingly hoisted up our second guide. The chatter was redoubled. “What does it look like?” we shouted again. “Not possible from where we are,” was the melancholy answer, and in a tone that crashed at once all our previous elation. I could not find words at the moment to express my disappointment: but the porter could and gallantly he came to the rescue. He opened his mouth for the first time and spoke, and he said very loud indeed that it was “verdammt.” Precisely: that is just what it was. Having made this short speech, the porter allowed the smile to fade away from his features, shook out some imaginary ashes and proceeded to light some visionary tobacco, sucking at a lighted match through the medium of an empty pipe. It seemed hard to believe at first that we were to be baulked when so near the summit, and it was not till the guides had tried again and again to storm the almost vertical wall of smooth rock and had shown the utter impossibility of turning it either right or left, that we felt we were really beaten. One more forlorn chance remained: we might try the west face of the mountain from the spot we had reached at our first attempt, when the weather had prevented us from making any further progress. Had there been more time at our disposal we should have done better to try another line of ascent more to our right, that is, nearer to the col, and it might be possible to reach the cleft between the two summits by this means. As for the snow streak which looked so tempting at a distance, it is a delusion and a snare, if the latter term be applicable to a place which appears to be much more difficult to get into than it probably would be to get out of. We had already pretty fully realised that the mountain was more difficult to ascend than we had ever contemplated, and it seemed advisable at the moment to make for some definite point which at any rate we felt sure of reaching and to study the peak in detail to the best of our ability; so we made towards our cairn, though with little hope of gaining much knowledge thereby.

A sticking point

Without much difficulty, but not without some little danger from falling stones (though on the whole, the mountain is remarkably free from these annoyances, there being as a matter of fact but few loose stones to fall), we reached our former point and were able to judge distinctly of how much higher we had reached at our second attempt. We saw also that upward progress from the point on which we stood would not be possible, but it must be remembered that we were able only to see a small strip of the mountain lying directly above. Every crag that was not absolutely vertical appeared to overhang, and the few small cracks that might have afforded hand and foot hold led nowhere in particular. Altogether the view was depressing although limited. There was no time to hunt about for other routes, or we should certainly have done so, for we felt that though beaten our discomfiture only arose from the fact that we had chosen a wrong line of ascent. Possibly within a few yards of us lay a feasible route, but we knew not on which side it might be. Here it occurred to the porter for the first time that his pipe was empty and had been so all day: he thereupon made his second remark, which consisted in an audible request for something to put in it. We had dragged up with us (as a matter of fact the porter had carried it the whole time) some 200 feet of rope, thinking it might help us in the descent, but the part of the mountain on which we were presents no more difficulties in this respect than does Avernus.

Beaten back

Arrived on the snow slope opposite the rock face on which we had been climbing during the day, we stopped, extended the telescope, and tried to make out our exact line, and endeavoured also to discover what had been our error; no easy task, as any persons of experience will admit. At any time the appearance of this peak is deceptive, and the outline no more guides you to a knowledge of the natural details than does the outline of a fashionable lady’s dress. But as we looked the mountain seemed flattened out by reason of a blue evening mist which obscured all the irregularities. So we turned and resumed our journey down, running hard across the Mer de Glace, for the shades of night drew on apace, and reached Chamouni at 8.30 in the evening, leaving the guides at the Montanvert with half a bottle of thin red wine between three of them. We were overtaken by Edouard Cupelin, one of the best of the Chamouni guides, at any rate on rock mountains, on our way down, and he gave us a rather sensational account of his own adventures on the peak. In justice to him it should be mentioned that he was almost the only Chamouni guide who seemed to think the ascent possible, and in his opinion the general line that we had adopted was the correct one. Our second expedition thus from first to last occupied about 20½ hours, but the halts were not nearly so numerous as on the first occasion. The experience of our two days’ climbing led us to the conclusion that Cupelin was right. From the peculiar character of the rocks and the fact that our climbing lay chiefly along short flat gullies we were unable, as already remarked, to get a very clear idea of any part of the mountain except that on which we were actually engaged, and we were led to the opinion that the only plan to find a possible route would consist in trying in succession from below the different parts of the southern face. The final peak, which from this side shoots up clearly defined from the great mass of the mountain, seemed to us tolerably easy of ascent provided one could reach the base. A sort of depression extends three parts of the way round, and the edge of this shallow moat appeared to be defended by an inaccessible belt of vertical rock. The actual rocks were wholly unlike any met with elsewhere in our experience. Great vertical slabs were fitted together with an accuracy which was beautiful in its perfection, but irritating beyond conception to the climber. Progress upwards, when above the level of the col, necessitated a series of fatiguing gymnastics like swimming uphill, but the rocks where they were possible proved invariably firm and good. On both occasions we were stopped by sheer difficulty and probably saw the mountain at its very best. The snow on the rocks, which proved such a formidable difficulty to Mr. Pendlebury’s party, had almost entirely disappeared before our assault. The rocks were warm and the weather on the second day was perfect.

Results gained

Such is the history of our first two attempts to climb this mountain. They served but to whet our appetite for success, but it was not till years after that we were fortunate enough to meet with that success.

CHAPTER IV.
A DAY ACROSS COUNTRY

The art of meteorological vaticination – The climate we leave our homes for – Observations in the valley – The diligence arrives and shoots its load – Types of travellers – The Alpine habitué – The elderly spinster on tour – A stern Briton – A family party – We seek fresh snow-fields – The Bietschhorn – A sepulchralbivouac – On early starts and their curious effects on the temperament – A choice of routes – A deceptive ice gully – The avalanches on the Bietschhorn – We work up to a dramatic situation – The united party nearly fall out – A limited panorama – A race for home – Caught out – A short cut – Driven to extremities – The water jump – An aged person comes to the rescue – A classical banquet at Ried – The old curé and his hospitality – A wasted life?

The summer season of 1878 was one of the worst on record. Meteorologists, by a species of climatic paradox, might have had a fine time of it; mountaineers had a most wet and disagreeable time of it. The weather prophets easily established a reputation for infallibility – according to the accepted modern standard of vaticination – by predicting invariably evil things. They were thus right five times out of six, which will readily be acknowledged as very creditable in persons who were uninspired, save by a desire to exalt themselves in the eyes of their fellow tourists. But, as in the case of that singularly hopeful person Tantalus, the torture was rendered more artistic and aggravating by sporadic promise of better things. One day the rock aiguilles were powdered over and white-speckled with snow. The climber looked up longingly at the heights above, but visions of numbing cold and frost-bitten fingers caused him to thrust the latter members into his pockets and turn away with a sigh, to put it mildly, and avert his gaze from the chilling spectacle. Then would he follow his daily practice – his thrice-a-daily practice in all probability – of overeating himself. Perhaps, while still engaged at table d’hôte in consuming, at any rate in masticating, the multiform dish generically named “chevreuil,” the glow of a rosy sunset, and the hope of brighter things in store for the morrow, would attract him to the window.

Autres temps, autres mœurs

The next day would produce scorching heat, a clear sky, a rising barometer, and a revival of spirits; diet, as the physicians say, as before. The powdered snow would disappear off the ledges and, melting, distribute itself more uniformly over the rocks, which as a result presented a shining appearance, as the morning face of a schoolboy or the Sunday face of a general servant. At night a clear sky and a sharp frost in the high regions, and the next day the mountain would be more impossible than ever. Still, recognising that another few hours of grateful sunshine would cause the thin film of ice glazing the rocks to melt and evaporate, the energetic climber (and we were very energetic that year) would summon his guides and all his resolution, pack up his traps, and start for a bivouac up aloft, to return, in all probability, at the end of twenty-four hours, in a downfall of rain and in the condition of steamy moisture so tersely described by Mr. Mantalini. Such, during July 1878, was our lot day after day in the glorious Alpine climate. We paced up and down, with the regularity of sentries, between our camp on the Aiguille du Dru and Couttet’s hotel at Chamouni. Occasionally we ascended some distance up the Glacier de la Charpoua and took observations. Once or twice we proceeded far enough on the rocks of the Aiguille du Dru to prove the impossibility of ascending them to any great height. Still we were loth to depart and run the risk of losing a favourable opportunity of assaulting the mountain with any chance of success. It fell out thus that we had good opportunities of observing our fellow creatures and the various types of travellers who, notwithstanding the weather, still crowded into Chamouni; for it was only on rock peaks such as the Aiguille du Dru, or difficult mountains like the Aiguille Verte, that climbing was impossible. This condition of things did not affect to any very appreciable extent the perambulating peasants who constitute the vast majority of the body known as guides in Chamouni. These worthies merely loafed a little more than they were wont to do, if that be possible. Perhaps the gathering invariably to be found, during twenty hours out of the twenty-four, at the cross roads near Tairraz’s shop was still more numerously attended, and there was some slight increase in the number of sunburnt individuals who found intellectual exercise sufficient to apologise for their existence in wearing their hands in their pockets, smoking indifferent tobacco, expectorating indiscriminately, and uttering statements devoid of sense or point to anybody who cared to listen. The weather had no effect on them; whether wet or dry, cold or warm, they still occupied themselves from June to September in the same manner. Once in the early morning, and once again about five o’clock in the evening, were they momentarily galvanised out of their listlessness by the arriving and departing diligences.

The diligence arrives

On the arrival of the caravan the contingent was usually reinforced by some of our own countrymen. The proper attitude for the English visitor at Chamouni to assume, when watching the evening incursion of tourists, consisted in leaning against the wall on the south side of the street, and so to pose himself as to indicate independence of the proceedings and to wear an expression of indifference tinged with a suggestion of cynical humour. This was usually accomplished by wearing the hands in the pockets, tilting the hat a little over the eyes, crossing the legs, and laughing unduly at the remarks of companions, whether audible or not. Some few considered that smoking a wooden pipe assisted the realisation of the effect intended: others apparently held that a heavy object held in the mouth interfered with the expression. I have observed that these same onlookers were bitterly indignant at the ordeal they had to pass through on returning to their native shores viâ Folkestone, when clambering wearily with leaden eyes and sage-green complexions up the pier steps. Yet the diligence travellers, begrimed with dust, stung of horse flies, cramped, choked, and so jolted that they recognised more bony prominences than previous anatomical knowledge had ever led them to expect they possessed, were none the less objects of pity. Still human nature is always worthy of study, and those who arrived, together with those who went to see them arrive, were equally interesting under the depressing climatic influences which so often forbade us to take our pleasure elsewhere.

The Alpine habitue

It was curious to note how, day after day, the diligence on its arrival released from the cramped thraldom of its uncomfortable seats almost exactly the same load. As the great lumbering yellow vehicle came within sight, one or two familiar faces would be seen craning out to catch the first sight of an old guide or mountain friend. These habitués as a rule secured for themselves the corner seats. We knew exactly what their luggage would be. A bundle of axes like Roman “fasces” would be handed out first, with perhaps a little unnecessary ostentation, followed by a coil of rope which might have been packed up in the portmanteau, but usually was not; then a knapsack, with marks on the back like a map of the continent of America if the owner was an old hand, and a spotless minute check if he were only trying to look like one. The owners of the knapsacks would be clad in suits that once were dittos, flannel shirts and the familiar British wide-awake, the new aspirants for mountaineering fame decorating their head gear with snow spectacles purchased in Geneva. Very business-like would they show themselves in collecting their luggage before anybody else; then, with a knowing look at the mountains, they would make their way to Couttet’s. Next, perhaps, would follow a party of some two or three spinsters travelling alone and as uncertain about their destination as they were of their age. To attract such, some of the hotel proprietors, more astute than their fellows, despatched to the scene of action porters of cultivated manners and obsequious demeanour, who seldom failed, by proving themselves to be “such nice polite men, my dear,” to ensnare the victims. Burdened with the numerous parcels and odd little bags this class of traveller greatly affects, the nicely mannered porter would lead the way to the hotel or pension, probably bestowing, as he passed, a wink on some friend among the guides, who recognised at once the type of tourist that would inevitably visit the Montanvert, probably the Chapeau and possibly the Flégère, and recognising too the type in whom judicious compliments were not likely to be invested without satisfactory results. Such people invariably enquired if they could not be taken en pension. Somewhat frugal as regards diet, especially breakfast, but with astounding capacities for swallowing table d’hôte dinners or such romance as the guides might be pleased to invent on the subject of their own prowess and exploits. Charming old ladies these often were, as pleased with the novelty of everything they saw around them as a gutter child in a country meadow. Their nature changes marvellously in the Alps. Scarcely should we recognise in the small wiry traveller in the mountains the same individual whom we might meet in town – say in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury. I have noticed such a one not a hundred miles from there whose energy for sight-seeing when in the Alps surpassed all belief. Yet here she seemed but a little, wrinkled, bent-in-the-back old woman, flat of foot, reckless at crossings, finding difficulty on Sunday mornings in fishing a copper out of her reticule for the crossing sweeper, by reason of the undue length of the finger-tips to her one-buttoned black kid gloves, and accompanied on week days, perhaps for the sake of contrast, by a sprightly little black and tan dog of so arrogant a disposition that it declined to use in walking all the legs which Providence had furnished it. Next, perhaps, the British paterfamilias, who might or might not be a clergyman, most intractable of tourists; ever prone to combine instruction with amusement for the benefit of his bored family, slightly relaxing on week days, but rigid and austere on Sundays beyond conception. And then the foreign sub-Alpine walker or “intrépide,” clad in special garments of local make and highly vaunted efficiency, garrulous, smoky, voracious, a trifle greasy, and dealing habitually in ecstatic hendecasyllables expressive of admiration of everything he saw. Next the family party, possibly with a courier, with whom the younger members were, as a rule, unduly familiar: the boys wearing tailed shooting coats, consorting but ill with Eton turn-down collars, groaning under the burden of green baize bags containing assorted guide books, strange receptacles for the umbrellas of the party, and with leathern wallets slung around their shoulders, stuffed with the useless articles boys cherish and love to carry with them; the girls awkwardly conscious and feeling ill at ease by reason of the practical dresses, boots, and head gear devised for them at home, looking tenderly after a collection of weakly sticks tipped with chamois horns and decorated with a spirally arranged list of localities; the whole party in an excessively bad temper, which the boys exhibited by pummelling and thumping when “pa” was not looking and the girls by little sniffs, head tossings, and pointed remarks at each other that they had no idea what guys they looked. It will be observed that the constant bad weather induced a cynical condition of mind.

A family party

We made up our minds, notwithstanding the attractions of this varied company, to quit them for a while, to seek fresh snow-fields and glaciers new, and to leave the rocks of the Aiguille du Dru for a time unmolested. At the suggestion of Jaun we betook ourselves to the Oberland for a contemplated ascent of the Bietschhorn by a new route. Under a tropical sun we made our way by the interminable zigzags through the Trient valley down to Vernayaz, where we met again, like the witches in “Macbeth,” in thunder and in rain. Our project was to ascend the Bietschhorn from the Visp side and descend it by the usual route to Ried. This form of novelty had become so common in mountaineering that a new word had been coined expressly to describe such expeditions, and the climber, if he succeeded in his endeavour, was said to have “colled” the peak. The phrase, however, was only admissible on the first occasion, and it was subsequently described by any who followed, in more prosaic terms, as going up one side and down the other.

A sepulchral bivouac

We did not experience any unusual difficulty in leaving Visp tolerably early in the morning. The chorus of frogs, who were in remarkably fine voice that night in the neighbouring swamps, kept us awake, and the proper musical contrast was provided by the alto humming of some hungry mosquitoes. Our plan of assault was to camp somewhere at the head of the Baltschieder Thal, which is a dreary stony valley with only a few huts that would scarcely be considered habitable even by a London slum-landlord. The living inhabitants appeared to consist of three unkempt children, two pigs, one imbecile old man, and a dog with a fortuitous family. On the whole, therefore, we came to the conclusion that nature would probably provide better accommodation than the local architectural art, and a short search revealed a most luxurious bivouac, close to the left moraine of the Baltschieder Glacier, under the shelter of the Fäschhorn and a little above the level of the ice fall. A huge, flat slab of rock formed the roof of a wedge-shaped cavity capable of holding at least six persons, if disposed in a horizontal position. The space between the floor and the roof, it is true, was not much more than three feet; but the chamber, though well sheltered, demanded no ventilating tubes to ensure a proper supply of fresh air. Having a little spare time and being luxuriously inclined, we decided to sleep on spring beds. First we swept the stone floor, then covered it with a thick layer of dry rhododendron branches, over which were laid large sods of dried peat grass, and the beds were complete. The pointed ends of the twigs showed rather a tendency to penetrate through the grassy covering during the night, but otherwise the mattresses were all that could be desired. About two in the morning we got up – that is, we would have got up had it not been physically impossible to do so by reason of the lowness of the roof. A more correct expression would be perhaps to say that we turned out, rolling from under the shelter of the slab one after another. By the dim light of an ineffective candle, poked into the neck of a broken bottle, we found it no easy matter to collect all the articles which the guides had of course unpacked and stowed away as if they were going to stay a week; indeed, a certain bottle of seltzer water will probably still be found – at any rate the bottle will – by anyone who seeks repose in the same quarters.

On early starts

We started in the usual frame of mind – that is to say, everybody was exceedingly facetious for about three minutes. In about ten minutes one of the party, who would slake his thirst unduly at a crystal spring near the bivouac the previous evening, found that his boot lace was untied; circumstances which do not seem associated at first sight, but are not, nevertheless, infrequently observed. So again have I often remarked that a good dinner overnight develops in an astonishing manner admiration for distant views when ascending on the subsequent day. Within a quarter of an hour the amateurs of the party ceased to indulge in conversation, their remarks dying away into a species of pained silence similar to that which is induced in youthful voluptuaries by the premature smoking of clay pipes. The guides, however, seldom if ever desisted from dialogue, and never for the purpose of listening to each other’s remarks. Still, the respiratory process is governed by the same conditions in the case of guides as in other mortals, and though they would scorn to stoop to the boot-lace subterfuge, and feel that a sudden admiration for scenery would deceive no one, they yet found it necessary before long to distribute their burdens more equally; a process achieved by halting, untying several strings, taking out several parcels and replacing them in the same positions. By these various methods we acquired what athletes call “second wind” and stepped out more strongly. We crossed a moraine of the usual inconsistency – however, the subject of loose moraines has been, I fancy, touched upon by other writers. The Baltschieder Glacier sweeps at a right angle round a mountain christened, not very originally, the Breithorn. This particular member of that somewhat numerous family blocks up the head of the Baltschieder Thal. We skirted the north base of the Breithorn, passing between it and the Jägihorn, and arriving at the top of a steep little slope came in full view of the eastern slopes of our objective peak. At this point Maurer gave vent to a dismal wail of anguish as it suddenly occurred to him that he had left the bottle of seltzer water down below. With some difficulty did we persuade him that it was not necessary to return for it, although the idea of repose was not wholly distasteful, but we felt that we had probably all our work cut out for us in one sense, and that the days were none too long for such an expedition as the one we had in hand. Two distinct lines of attack appeared to offer themselves. One route, more to our right, led upwards by a gentle curved ridge, chiefly of snow, connecting the Baltschieder Joch with the northern arête of the mountain. In 1866 Messrs. D. W. Freshfield and C. C. Tucker, as we learnt subsequently, attained a high point by this way and were only prevented from accomplishing the actual ascent by bad weather, though they did enough to prove the practicability of the route. However, this way, which appeared the easier of the two, was evidently the longer from our position. The other route had the advantage of lying straight in front of us. Its attraction consisted of a broad long gully of snow enclosed between two ridges of rock. By the dim morning light the snow appeared easy enough and was evidently in suitable condition: howbeit, long snow couloirs, at the summit of which rocks overhang, are not usually to be recommended when the mountain itself is composed of friable material. Now it would be difficult to find in the whole of the Alps a mountain more disposed to cast stones at its assailants than the Bietschhorn, a fact of which we were fully aware. Every ascent of this disintegrating peak so rearranges the rocks that the next comers would not be wholly without justification if they pleaded that the details of their ascent were to a great extent new. Still, mountaineers up to the present have not been quite reduced to such a far-fetched claim to novelty, although in these latter days they have at times come perilously near it. Judging by the direction of the strata, we felt certain that the rock ridges must be practicable, and the problem in mountaineering set before us consisted in finding out how we might best ascend without subjecting ourselves to the inconveniences experienced by some of the early martyrs.

The rocks of the Bietschhorn

An early breakfast put fresh strength into us. It is a common mistake of mountaineers not to breakfast early enough and not to breakfast often enough. If it be desired to achieve a long expedition when there is not likely to be too much spare time, the wise man will eat something at least every two hours up to about 10 o’clock in the morning, supposing, for instance, he started about 2 A.M. It is astonishing to notice how the full man gains upon the empty one on fatiguing snow slopes. We strode rapidly across the basin of snow called the Jägifirn and arrived at the foot of the gully. But now we could see that our suspicions were more than verified: ugly-looking marks in the snow above indicated falling stones, and the snow itself was obviously in a condition prone to avalanches. This danger must always be present in couloirs to a greater or less extent in such seasons as the one we were experiencing. There had been sufficient power of sun to convert the contents of the gully into what would have been, in fine weather, a glistening ice slope. But much fresh snow had fallen recently. It but rarely can happen, when snow has fallen late in the season or during the hot months, that the new and the old layers can become properly amalgamated. If, therefore, there is too great a thickness of fresh snow to allow of steps being cut through this into the ice beneath, such couloirs are unsafe. The mark of a single avalanche due to the sliding off of the fresh snow on the ice beneath – a mark easily enough recognised – would deter any save an unwise person or a novice from attempting such a line of ascent. The marvellous hereditary instinct so often attributed to guides in judging of this condition really reduces itself to a matter of very simple observation and attention, and one within the reach of anybody. But travellers in the Alps too often appear to treat their reasoning faculties like they do their tall hats, and leave them at home. The question then was, Were the rocks right or left of this snow gully practicable? We all agreed that they were, and proceeded at once to test the accuracy of our opinion.