Part 6 (1/2)
I well remember standing, one very clear day, on the summit of a relatively high peak in the icy heart of Spitsbergen and surveying a vast panorama. The peaks in it being all actually small (though not appearing so) and the area of the panorama very large, the mult.i.tude of peaks in sight was numerically much greater than in any Alpine panorama, not excluding even that from Mont Blanc. In one direction the mountains happened to be all of one character. Each was similar in form to its neighbour. Some distance further round was another group formed of peaks as various as are the Alps. It was at once obvious how much the variety added to the picturesqueness. The same lesson can be learnt from the top of Monte Viso. Look southward and you will behold, ridge behind similar ridge, a remarkable uniformity. Face northward and round to the east, the effect is one of infinite variety. Such variety, contrast of walled peak with pyramid, of pyramid with dome, here thronged together, there sundered by some wide stretch of lower elevation, entertains and stimulates the observer's mind.
Sometimes the repet.i.tion of a form with only slight change has the value of emphasis, or, as in the case of minor ridges dividing couloirs or side glaciers, it binds the composition together and forms a kind of warp and woof for Nature's detailed embroidery. The value of repet.i.tion is instinctively felt by most in the case of a pair of peaks, standing side by side and visibly linked together by some high connecting ridge, or apparently linked by what seems to be a ridge but is really produced by foreshortening. They are frequently named ”the Twins.” A notable instance of such a pair is the Dom and Taschhorn. Stand anywhere commanding a view down the Zermatt valley, where you can see this pair of peaks defining it on the right, and the Weisshorn's delicate and single pyramid opposed to them on the left, and you will at once recognise how much the great pair and the single peak gain by contrast with one another. Or climb (I should now say take the train) to the Gorner Grat and look abroad to the south. How much less effective would be the panorama if the two long walls of the Breithorn and Lyskamm had a third similar wall between them instead of the coupled domes named Castor and Pollux.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 43. THE LYSKAMM. From the Riffelberg. Gorner glacier below.]
It would be easy to continue this fanciful cla.s.sification of Alps and discussion of types for another fifty pages, but it would serve no useful purpose. Long before this the reader has probably been objecting that it is an unscientific and incomplete cla.s.sification, and that most peaks could be made to enter all the categories if regarded from suitable standpoints. Such, in fact, may be the case. My object in thus writing has merely been to suggest cross-routes and byways for the memories, fancies, and future observations of my readers. The mountains for us who love them are the playthings of our fancy. We may do with them what we please. They excite in us the sense of beauty, and we try to tell of the emotions we have felt in their presence. Those emotions quickened by them, how we know not, in fact arise in us. We are free to make of them what we please, to give them any kind of play. They are then bound by no scientific laws. A mountain may be a chunk of granite heaved up by I know not what play of forces and carved out by a perfectly orderly denudation; but to me, if I please, it is a Maiden, an Ogre, a Golden Throne. I can endow it with a character, and reckon up friends and foes to it amongst its neighbours. Or I can call it a fairy palace, and people it with sprites and dancing creatures of gossamer clothed in the dawn. No one can say me nay. Now and again, perhaps, I may whisper my dream to a sympathetic friend--but not often. For the most part we keep such heart-frolics of a happy hour in the inaccessible places of their origin.
Brother climber! we have secrets of our own, you and I--secrets that we never told to one another, even when we stood side by side together on the mountain-top. But there was a thrill within each of us, was there not? and each knew that with the other it was well.
CHAPTER VIII
Pa.s.sES
A peak is primarily a thing to be looked at. It was only after the aspect of peaks had smitten the imagination of men that the desire to climb them arose. The climbing impulse is subordinate to the eye's delight. A pa.s.s, on the other hand, is a thing to be climbed and looked from, but only in a minor degree to be looked at. It is an experience rather than a sight. Few pa.s.ses indeed are striking objects in a view.
The Col Dolent, the Gussfeldtsattel, the Col du Lion, and a few more are imposing when you approach the foot of their final slopes, but it would be difficult to distinguish between such slopes and a similar mountain face. The fact that the slope leads to a notch or saddle in the sky-line does not give it dignity; that comes to it from its own character as a slope, and would be the same if it led to any other kind of sky-line.
Pa.s.ses, therefore, in and for themselves, are not conspicuously striking and beautiful elements in any great mountain panorama, and do not call for discussion by us from that point of view.
As experiences, however, they take another rank. I have long been prepared to maintain their general superiority to peaks in that respect.
Pa.s.ses generally lead through finer scenery than is commanded from the flank of a peak. A peak climbed rewards you with a panorama which no pa.s.s can offer; but, that excepted, the average pa.s.s is superior to the average peak for the scenery it reveals, and in the nature of things it must be. In climbing a peak, unless you are going up an arete, you normally have a steep slope rising straight in front of you. A few square yards of rocks or snow fill most of your vision as you look ahead. If you raise your eyes up the slope, you see it in its least impressive form, foreshortened into a mere belt. The real view is behind you, and you must turn round to behold it. That involves standing still and may mean delay. But in traversing a pa.s.s you normally ascend the bottom of a glacier valley, and the fine views are ahead and on both hands. The valley is not likely to be so narrow that you are not far enough away from its two sides, or at least one of them, to be able to behold the slope as a whole, from bottom to top, and not unduly foreshortened. Of course this general character of pa.s.s-routes is subject to infinite variation. The final slope is often steep, and the ascent of it will then be like the ascent of a mountain face; but, broadly speaking, it must be obvious that pa.s.ses offer better chances for enjoying continuous fine scenery than peaks, and experience proves it.
Pa.s.s-traversing, to me, however, and doubtless to many others, seems to possess more elements of romance than peak-climbing; for this reason--to climb a peak is to make an expedition, but to cross a pa.s.s is to travel.
In the one case you normally return to the spot whence you set out; in the other you go from the known to the unknown, from the visible to what is beyond. The peak, which is before you when you set out to climb it, is only explained, not revealed, as you ascend; but every pa.s.s is a revelation: it takes you over into another region. You leave one area behind and you enter another; you come down amongst new people and into fresh surroundings. You shut out all that was familiar yesterday and open up another world.
This is true of all pa.s.sing over; it is of course especially true when you are making a new pa.s.s for the first time. Then you have to find the way down as well as the way up, and the interest is sustained to the last moment. It has been my good-fortune to have had opportunities of climbing many new peaks and crossing several new pa.s.ses--one of them the longest mountain-glacier pa.s.s in the world. Beyond all question the pa.s.ses have been more interesting and exciting than the peaks. When you reach the summit of your peak the excitement suddenly ends; on the top of a pa.s.s it only culminates. The long pa.s.s to which I have above referred took about a fortnight to reach from the highest habitations.
We could see the saddle ahead all the time, and we slowly drew nearer to it. The wonder increased as to what we should find on the other side.
Whither should we be led on? Where should we come out? What difficulties might bar our progress? Not till the very moment when we topped the ascent and stood upon the col could any of these questions begin to be answered. Nor could any of them be fully answered till the week of descent had been actually accomplished. But the first sight over, the first glimpse into the new world, that was worth toiling for--that, and the last long regretful look back down the valley up which we had come, whose details had fastened themselves durably upon our memories.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 44. THE ROAD FROM VITZNAU TO GERSAU. The _Obere nase_ corner. Pilatus group in the distance.]
What the travelling explorer in previously untraversed places feels so keenly is, after all, only a slightly stronger form of the emotion that every pa.s.s affords to every climber who traverses it for the first time.
He awaits the arrival at the summit for the moment of supreme revelation. He has the same slow development of desire to see over; the same sudden burst of illumination at the top; the same regretful look back; the same pleasurable antic.i.p.ation of novel experiences awaiting him on the descent. He too leaves one world and comes into another; leaves if it be but the home of a night in exchange for untried quarters. It is this similarity between ordinary Alpine climbing and new exploration that gives to the former one of its greatest charms. The fact that a thing is new to us suffices. It is almost, perhaps quite, as good to behold for the first time what we have heard speech of, as to behold what no one has ever beheld before. We shall find friends to converse and share memories with about the one; we are liable to be considered bores if we talk too much about the other. The explorer writes his book and then dwells with his memories alone, but the Alpine traveller lays up a store of experiences and reminiscences, the pleasure of which he can share with a goodly number of friends, old and young.
Pa.s.ses, like peaks, admit of cla.s.sification. The first and most beautiful is the long snow pa.s.s, the kind of pa.s.s which is reached by ascending one long glacier, and from which the descent leads down another long glacier, so that the point of departure is as widely separated as possible from the point of arrival, and the divergence of scenery between the two extremities most p.r.o.nounced. These may be called the great snow highways.
The longest snow highway-pa.s.s, and to my thinking one of the finest in the Alps, leads right through the heart of the Bernese Oberland from the Lotschen valley at one end to the Grimsel at the other. It is really not one pa.s.s but a succession of three, for three ridges have to be crossed--which, however, only increases its interest. It leads through snow scenery of superlative pomp and extent, and reveals that scenery in the most fascinating manner, continually opening out and presently again closing up the wildest vistas, and always providing new interests and fresh culminations. Bietschhorn, Aletschhorn, Jungfrau, Finsteraarhorn, not to mention other less important peaks, in turn dominate the view, and one glacier after another opens out a vision of remote blue valleys and lower ranges. I am aware that this long traverse does not oppose to the climber the smallest real difficulty from end to end, and that it is what is commonly described as ”a mere snow pound.” It calls for endurance and that is all. Unless the climber counts scenery first among the attractions of the way, he will be well advised to select some other expedition. He who does so count it will agree with me that this is _par excellence_ ”the” pa.s.s of the Central Alps. It lacks only one element of charm: it brings the traveller down into the same kind of scenery as that from which he started. A similar remark may be made on the Strahleck, which is likewise a glorious snow highway. Both pa.s.ses, it may be observed, are eminently suited for ski experts to traverse in winter, under suitable conditions of weather and equipment.
To find the long snow pa.s.s in its most romantic form one must look for it in a region where a great mountain range divides districts of strongly contrasted scenic character. There can be no doubt whither we should turn. The great range that gazes southward over Italy and northward into Switzerland perfectly fulfils the conditions. This culminates along the watershed south of Zermatt, which place is therefore indicated as the starting-point at one end. Of the long snow pa.s.ses leading southward from Zermatt, the Lysjoch undoubtedly takes first place for magnificence of scenery throughout the whole length of its route. Gymnastic climbers may ask, Why not the Sesiajoch? On the north its route coincides with that of the Lysjoch, but on the south they diverge, and the easier route lies through finer if less catastrophic scenery. The Sesiajoch plunges down a great wall, and the view does not vary for a long time. The Lysjoch leads down one of the loveliest glacier valleys in Europe and affords endless variety. There is really no comparison between the two.
We may therefore select the Lysjoch as type of the n.o.blest kind of Alpine pa.s.s. Consider what wealth of interest it supplies to those who traverse it from Zermatt at one end to Gressoney at the other; for to enjoy a pa.s.s properly it should be followed from village to village throughout its full length, and not merely from hut to hut. The modern method of zigzagging across the crest of a chain without descending far below the snow-line, taking one pa.s.s one day and another the next, is, I am aware, not without fascinations, to which who has not succ.u.mbed? but it is not the best way to enjoy scenery, for it lacks the enforcing emphasis which the exchange of levels yields.
It is of the essence of such a pa.s.s as the Lysjoch that it leads you from the foot of a great glacier, up through its whole length to its head, and then from the head of another glacier down to its foot. It thus traces a definite and natural succession of the features of a glacier. It is like following the course of a river from mouth to source, or pa.s.sing through the progress of the seasons of a year. From step to step there is a succession of related features, each being another stage of the one before and of the one next to follow. Thus there is a growth of interest. What you behold is not a mere succession of unrelated vistas. Each foreground in turn implies all that has been pa.s.sed and all that is yet to come on the upward way. True, convenience generally dictates that you shall not actually enter upon a glacier at its extreme foot, and mount right up it to its head. There is probably better going for part of the way along the bank. But the glacier is commonly close at hand and in full view most of the time, so that you become familiar with it at all points of its course. To ascend it is to advance through stages of increasing glory and purity. First you have its shabby moraine-strewn extremity; then its cleaner surface and open white creva.s.ses. Higher up they turn continually bluer and the ice grows still whiter. The glacier widens; the slopes that border it become less gra.s.sy. You are leaving the habitable, profitable world behind, and approaching the clean undevelopable lands, which man may visit but where he must not dwell. The naked crags stand forth on either hand, furrowed with snow couloirs, and clothed with white raiment. Now you come to the snow-covered surface of the glacier itself. Blue-looking pools of water may be seen here and there. The snow becomes purer as you advance. There are no more dust-patches or groups of rocks interrupting the clean surface. Higher up, the glacier breaks into bolder forms as it pours down over steeper and more rugged slopes. The seracs tower aloft, fantastic in form and unstable in position. Great creva.s.ses marvellously coloured in their depths yawn all about. You wind your way amongst them, creeping over snow-bridges and under impending walls and pinnacles of ice, all decked with sparkling icicles. Finally, you emerge on to some gentler-sloping, wide-expanding field of spotless snow, that only a gentle undulation diversifies with the most delicately displayed modelling. All around are steep slopes of snow or ice, cliffs of newly-riven rock, avalanche tracks and heaps of ruin. The details of the high peaks can be distinguished, their overhanging cornices, their furrowed sides. Ahead, and not so far away, is now the pa.s.s--a broad opening between great heaped-up domes of snow, perhaps with crests of rock cutting through. The slope grows easier. At last the ground is level, and a distant view opens before you as behind. You are on the top.
The ascent has been marked, as a morning's work should be, by steady growth of interest. The descent, though it merely reverses the order of events and succession of interests, is not a simple inversion of the experiences of the ascent. It would be if you descended backwards, facing the pa.s.s, but such is not the human method of going. You now face downwards, and have before you the blue valley, the distant lower ranges, and perhaps some fragment of the broad lowlands in view, whereas in going up you look at the heights. The valleys promise rest and refreshment to your growing fatigue. The way becomes less laborious as you descend. You leave the snow behind gladly. The first flowers welcome you. And now as you quit the ice and traverse the high meadows the steady increase of fertility is delightful to observe. You enter the tree-level through a fringe of skimpy and wind-beaten scouts. The timber becomes finer as you advance. After all, this fertile earth is the place for man. Down you go into a new valley, the torrent hurrying and tumbling beside you. You come to a poor village and then to one more thriving. Fruit-trees begin to find place, and then chestnuts. How delightful it is to come down to the chestnut-level! It is then no far cry to the figs and the Italian lakes, and all the luxury of north Italian nature--its rich atmosphere, its colour, its suave forms, and picturesque surprises.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 45. AMSTEG IN THE REUSSTHAL. On the St. Gotthard Railway.