Switzerland Part 6

On the Italian side similar conditions obtained, but it was not till I reached Isella that the greatest fall took place, or rather was taking place, for it had begun before I arrived, and it continued after I had pa.s.sed. There, a narrow gorge, with vertical cliff-sides facing one another, debouches on the main valley. It leads upwards to a great cirque in the hills, a cirque that is a gra.s.s-covered alpine pasture in the summer.

The avalanche was pouring out through this gorge and piling itself up upon the main valley-floor. How the ma.s.s of it was being renewed from behind I could not see. Doubtless all the hillsides above were shedding their snow, and it was flowing down and crowding into and through the gorge with a continuous flow. As the pressure was relieved below by the outpouring of the avalanche on to the valley floor, more snow came down--snow mixed with slush, and semi-liquid under the great pressure that must have been developed....

It is not easy to suggest to the reader the grandeur of effect that was produced. The volume of noise was terrific--a noise more ma.s.sive and continuous than thunder, and no less deep toned.... The avalanche, pouring through the ma.s.sive gateway of the hills and polishing its sides, came forth with an aspect of weight and resistless force that was extraordinarily impressive. Yet Nature did not seem to be acting violently, though her might was plain to see. She appeared to act with deliberation: one looked for an end of the snow-stream to come, but it flowed on and on, pulsating but not failing. The pressures that must be developed were easily conceived; correspondingly evident became the strength of the hills that could sustain them as if they had been but the stroking of a hand.

Later in the season the traveller often encounters, in deep-lying valleys, the black and shrunken remnants of these mighty avalanches, melted down by summer heats. Little idea can they give him of the splendour of their birth and the white curdled beauty of their surface when they first come to rest.

In the nature of things they travel far and fall low, well into the tree-belt, and even down to the chestnut-level on the Italian side. It is a strange sight to see these vast, new-fallen ma.s.ses lying in their accustomed beds, but surrounded by trees all freshly verdant with the gifts of spring. Yearly each one falls in the same place, falls harmlessly and duly expected. Its coming is welcomed. Its voice is the triumphant shout of the coming season of summer exuberance and fertility. Nature, newly awakened, cries aloud with a great and solemnly joyous cry, and the people dwelling around hear her and arise to their work upon the land.

The avalanche, then, is one of the great natural forces of the mountains, which is not necessarily or even ordinarily destructive.

But, like other natural forces--the fresh in the river or the gale at sea,--it can be very terrible, and, again like other natural forces, the wisdom and precaution of man can do much to minimise the danger of the avalanche and to avert any serious destruction by its agency. The Swiss people, so practical, so economical, so courageous, carry on a persistent scientific campaign against the unruly element in these torrents of ice, setting up lines of defence everywhere. The first and most important line of defence is the forest; and for this reason the forest laws of Switzerland are very severe. A man is not allowed to fell a tree in his own wood without the forester's consent. Everything is done to preserve the natural rampart afforded by a ma.s.s of pines.

In the second place, where avalanches descend regularly every year, stone galleries are built, or tunnels are mined out of the solid rock to protect roads. There are many examples of these galleries and tunnels in the Zuge, near Davos.

Scientific engineers are eager to add to these plans of defence. They believe that the root of the mischief ought to be attacked. In places where avalanches are expected, they recommend the building of terraces and dwarf-walls, so as to arrest the earliest snow-slip. Lower down, in the forest zone, piles should be driven into the ground, and fenced with wattling. These precautions, and others on similar lines, are now being taken, and most of the well-known avalanche tracks are being surrounded by various defensive works designed to arrest any tendency to mischief that they show. Destruction from avalanches there will continue to be in exceptional cases, for Nature insists, now and again, on displaying some unwonted, abnormal display of her power which sets at nought all precautions of man. A _t.i.tanic_ goes to the bottom of the sea to show that the shipbuilder can claim only a human and therefore limited surety against disaster. An avalanche may one day shock Europe by rushing unexpectedly down to overwhelm a whole Swiss village. But the danger from them has been diminished largely, and continues to be diminished. It is necessary to go back to the past to obtain the record of any great number of avalanche disasters.

The Swiss cla.s.sify avalanches into several sorts. The first of these, in order of maturity, is the _Staub-Lawine_ or Dust-Snow Avalanche.

This is a collection of loose snow, freshly fallen, which has been caught up in one of those sectional tornadoes which spring up on the mountain slopes, and is driven down on the wings of the wind to the valley below. This form of avalanche is, because of its suddenness, the most dangerous to human life, and is also the most difficult to provide against. Measures to prevent the acc.u.mulation of drift snow in dangerous pockets or wind-swept slopes are in some degree efficacious. Mr. Symonds records the experience of a Swiss who was caught in a Dust-Avalanche:

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAVOS IN WINTER. The home of John Addington Symonds.]

A human victim of the dreadful thing, who was so lucky as to be saved from its clutch, once described to me the sensations he experienced. He was caught at the edge of the avalanche just when it was settling down to rest, carried off his feet, and rendered helpless by the swathing snow, which tied his legs, pinned his arms to his ribs, and crawled upward to his throat.

There it stopped. His head emerged, and he could breathe; but as the ma.s.s set, he felt the impossibility of expanding his lungs, and knew that he must die of suffocation. At the point of losing consciousness, he became aware of comrades running to his rescue. They hacked the snow away around his thorax, and then rushed on to dig for another man who had been buried in the same disaster, leaving him able to breathe, but wholly powerless to stir hand or foot.

The usual spring avalanche is called the _Schlag-Lawine_ or Stroke-Avalanche. These, as already described, push down a slope of the mountains like a swiftly flowing river. Danger from the _Schlag-Lawine_, which is just as usual and inevitable a process of Nature as the growing of the trees or the splitting of rocks by frost, has been very largely reduced. This form of avalanche can be traced to its sources and its course and flow regulated by channels and break-ices. It has a secondary form called the _Grund-Lawine_ or ground avalanche. This is the avalanche which aroused the poetic anger of Mr. Symonds:

The peculiarity of a _Grund-Lawine_ consists in the amount of earth and rubbish carried down by it. This kind is filthy and disreputable. It is coloured brown or slaty-grey by the rock and soil with which it is involved. Blocks of stone emerge in horrid bareness from the dreary waste of dirty snow and slush of water which compose it; and the trees which have been so unlucky as to stand upon its path are splintered, bruised, rough-handled in a hideous fashion. The _Staub-Lawine_ is fury-laden like a fiend in its first swirling onset, flat and stiff like a corpse in its ultimate repose of death, containing men and beasts and trees entombed beneath its stern unwrinkled taciturnity of marble. The _Schlag-Lawine_ is picturesque, rising into romantic spires and turrets, with erratic pine-plumed firths protruding upon sleepy meadows. It may even lie pure and beautiful, heaving in pallid billows at the foot of majestic mountain slopes where it has injured nothing. But the _Grund-Lawine_ is ugly, spiteful like an asp, tatterdemalion like a street Arab; it is the worst, the most wicked of the sisterhood. To be killed by it would mean a ghastly death by scrunching and throttling, as in some grinding machine, with nothing of n.o.ble or impressive in the winding-sheet of foul snow and debris heaved above the mangled corpse.

But the _Grund-Lawine_ is really the most beneficial avalanche of the Alps, doing quickly the work, which a glacier does slowly, of carrying down soil from the heights to the plains. It is rare in the Swiss Alps, more common in mountains of younger age going through earlier processes of disintegration. Perhaps, if one is to look at an avalanche chiefly as an instrument of death, the _Grund-Lawine_ has a greater objectionableness than the _Staub-Lawine_. But any form of death by avalanche is best avoided: and the difference between death by the _Grund-Lawine_ and death by the _Staub-Lawine_ is purely aesthetic. And the _Grund_ usually kills quickly whilst the _Staub_ may take a freakish turn and bury you alive in a cranny or cavern which the avalanche has sealed by pa.s.sing over it. Men have slowly died of hunger in such circ.u.mstances. Yet, so long as life lasts, there is hope; no pains are spared in ransacking the snow after an avalanche; and cases of almost miraculous deliverance occasionally occur. One February (records Mr. Symonds) a young man called Domiziano Roberti, in the neighbourhood of Giornico, saw an avalanche descending on him.

He crept under a great stone, above which there fell a large tree in such a position that it and the stone together roofed him from the snow, which soon swept over him and shut him up. There he remained 103 hours in a kind of semi-somnolence, and was eventually dug out, speechless and frightfully frost-bitten, but alive.

The avalanche record of a single village (Fetan) of Switzerland--a village which is characterised as a very unlucky one--will give some idea of the real extent of the toll of the avalanche. In the year 1682 a great avalanche swept over it. Six persons were killed, but the rest of the villagers, expecting some such catastrophe, had abandoned their houses. In one dwelling nothing was left standing but the living-room and one bedroom. These, however, contained the mother of the family and all her children, who escaped unhurt. In 1720 an avalanche demolished fifteen houses. In one of them a party of twenty-six young men and women were a.s.sembled. They were all buried in the snow, and only three survived. Altogether thirty-six persons perished at that time. In 1812 a similar catastrophe occurred, destroying houses and stables. But on this occasion the inhabitants had been forewarned and left the village. A curious story is told about the avalanche of 1812. One of the folk of Fetan, after abandoning his home to its fate, remembered that he had forgotten to bring away his Bible. In the teeth of the impending danger, through the dark night, he waded back across the snowdrifts, and saved the book. In 1888 there was further destruction at this village by avalanche, but with no loss of life.

That is a particularly unlucky village, evidently badly situated. But since 1720 the snow-falls have caused no loss of life there.

The down-coming of an avalanche, if it be sudden and swift, is often accompanied by a great blast of wind, which gives it an additional danger. This wind may in some cases be partly caused by the displacement of the air from the fall; in most cases, it is probable, the wind was in chief part the original cause of the snow-fall. The blast of the avalanche is known as the _Lawinen-Dunst_, and many thrilling stories are told of hairbreadth escapes from its blast. A carter driving with a sledge and two horses across the Albula Pa.s.s was hurled--horses, sledge, and all--across a gully by the wind. A woman was lifted into the air and carried to the top of a lofty pine-tree, to which she clung and was saved. Of more tragic tone is the record of the man lifted by an avalanche blast and smashed to pieces against a stone, of a house lifted up in the air and dashed down, killing most of its inhabitants.

The avalanche is snow in quick movement towards the valleys. The glacier is snow--pressed into ice--in slow movement. A river of ice, its flow to be measured by the records of months, not of moments--that is the glacier of Alps and Polar lands. Its mission in nature is the same as that of a river, to grind down mountain rocks and to carry the detritus for the enrichment of the plains below. The glaciers of the Polar lands, coming down as they do to the edge of the ocean, are responsible for the icebergs of those seas. Compared with Polar glaciers the Alpine ones are puny, no larger, as a rule, than a large iceberg--which represents just a fragment broken off an Arctic or Antarctic glacier. But the Alpine examples of glaciers, small though they be, are grandly impressive in their natural surroundings. Such a one as the Silvretta, for instance, stretching its length for nearly twenty miles across the mountains, looks magnificently vast. From a distance a glacier seems to be white, with bands of grey, or of black from the moraines (strips of earth and stones showing on the surface).

Studied at close hand it is a pageant of varied colours due to the variations of light and shade on its surface, and to the manner in which the refraction of the light is affected by the partial melting of the topmost layer of the snow. From this melting come little trickles of water which combine to form streams and then torrents. The beds of these torrents are blue in colour and like transparent gla.s.s--a lovely contrast with the general surface of the glacier. For that is made white by the innumerable fissures that penetrate its surface, fissures which are caused by the heat of the sun, from which the beds of the streams are protected. Yet more beautiful than the streams are the pools occasionally found on the surface of a glacier, when they have clean floors unsoiled by a moraine. They, too, have blue basins with white edges. Looked down upon from a distance, they appear like great sapphires. Sometimes a lake may be found not on but beside a glacier, where the ice forms one bank and the mountain another. Such are the Marjelen See by the Great Aletsch, and the lake at the west foot of Monte Rosa. On these one may see floating ma.s.ses of ice. Now and again will be found creva.s.ses filled with water, whose depth gives a yet bluer tone.

Sir Martin Conway (from whose expert study of glaciers I have freely quoted) gives the palm for glacier colouring to what is called the dry glacier.

"Note," he writes, "the brilliance of its surface and the peculiarity of its texture. It consists of an infinite mult.i.tude of loosely compacted rounded fragments of ice with a little water soaking down between them. If you watch it closely you will see that the moving water makes a shimmering in the cracks between the ice fragments. You will also observe that the blue of the solid ice below the skin of fragments appears dimly through the white, and the least tap with an ice-axe to sc.r.a.pe away the surface reveals it clearly. Each little fragment of ice has a separate glitter of its own, so that the whole surface sparkles with a frosted radiance. It is not the same at dawn after a cold night, for then there is no water between the fragments, but all is hard and solid. No sooner, however, does the sun shine upon them, than the bonds are released and the ice-crystals begin to break up with a gentle tinkling sound and little flashes of light reflected from tiny wet mirror-surfaces. One can spend hours watching these small phenomena as happily as gazing upon the great mountains themselves. Size is a relative term. The biggest mountain in relation to the earth is no greater than is one of these small ice-fragments in relation to a glacier. Reduce the scale in imagination and the smallest object may be endowed with grandeur, for all such conceptions are subjective. The open creva.s.ses that are never far away on the dry glacier are full of beauties. It is not easy to tire of peering down into them.

Sometimes one may be found into which a man armed with an ice-axe may effect a descent. He will not stay there long, for the depths are cold. Once I was able not only to descend into a creva.s.se but to follow it beyond its open part into the very substance of the glacier. It was a weird place, good to see but not good to remain in, and I was glad to return to sunshine very soon."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MaRJELEN SEE AND GREAT ALETSCH GLACIER.]

Ordinarily a glacier surface is not diversified by any large features.

But sometimes peaks of rock rise as islands out of a sea of ice.

Sometimes, too, inequalities in the bed of the glacier acting with the pressure of the ice ma.s.s cause great wrinklings on the surface (the Col du Geant is an instance), and from the ridges thus formed hang very beautiful ice-falls.

For the proper study of glacier beauty it is recommended to Alpine travellers that they should arrange to camp for some days in the glacier region. But there are good examples of glaciers within walking distance of some of the higher hotels.

CHAPTER XI

THE ALPINE CLUBS

Though the palm for Alp-climbing is not held by the Swiss themselves--one unkind critic has said that "in this as in all other things the Swiss show their invincible mediocrity"--and the Swiss Alpine Club was not the pioneer among climbing clubs, its work has been of very great value in safeguarding the Alps against desecration and Alpine climbers against accident. In the year 1913 it celebrated its jubilee year, and the occasion was marked by great festivities in Lucerne. Unlike the British Alpine Club, which is of a somewhat aristocratic const.i.tution, the Swiss inst.i.tution is of a very "democratic" character, not exacting high subscriptions and welcoming all to its ranks who can pay the very moderate subscription.

The objects for which the Club was originally founded were "to explore the Swiss Alps, to study them more accurately from every point of view, to make them better known, and to facilitate access to them."

This programme has been interpreted in a very liberal sense, for it has been made to include not merely the construction, furnishing, and maintenance of huts, but also the training and insurance of guides, the organisation of rescue parties, and the publication of guide-books, of accurate maps, of an annual, and of two periodicals, one in German and the other in French. The Swiss Alpine Club now numbers 13,496 members (the German and Austrian 100,023, the Italian 7500, the French about 6500, and the British about 730). A British section of the Swiss Alpine Club exists, and its members last year presented the parent club with funds to erect and furnish a new hut, the Britannia Hut, situated above Saas Fee, a district of Switzerland to which British climbers most frequently go.

That section of the work of the Swiss Club which is worthy of the most praise is devoted to urging upon visitors a standard of good conduct and respect for the rights and convenience of others. Its recently issued "Mottoes for Mountaineers" are put up on the walls of railway stations, in mountain inns, or anywhere else where they are likely to attract the notice of those whom it is hoped to educate. They exhort, in particular, to the avoidance of all alcoholic drinks when in the mountains; to suitable equipment; to quiet behaviour and refraining from bawling and shouting; to the clearing up of all litter after a meal, leaving no soiled paper or tins about, and, above all, not throwing away or breaking any bottles. They likewise appeal for merciful treatment of Alpine wild flowers.

We are all of us familiar with a "tourist resort" of some kind, so general is the habit of travel for curiosity's sake to scenes of beauty or of renown; and we are all of us aware, therefore, of the need there is for popular education to contend against the vulgar defacement of natural beauties and of historic monuments. No place is spared by a type of visitor eager to perpetuate a worthless name, and careless to stain a revered shrine with his untidy litter. An historic grove has its tree-trunks marked with knives; a famous meadow or a field of renowned beauty has its surface scarred with rubbish; a grand cathedral or hall of renown has its stones scratched, its floors littered. All praise to the Swiss Alpine Club for its work to protect Alpine meadows from bottles and tins, Alpine cliffs from scratched and painted inscriptions. And if, perhaps, it one day takes heart of grace and decides to make a stand against the undue extension of railways and palace hotels upon beautiful peaks, it will earn still warmer praise, and will act, too, in the best interests of Switzerland, which gains from tourists now 12,000,000 a year, and is in danger of driving some of the pilgrims of the picturesque away to the Carpathians or the Balkans by allowing the Swiss peaks to be spoiled with too much "modern improvement."

Before the growth of the influence of the Swiss Alpine Club, the Swiss did not indulge in mountain-climbing as a sport on their own account to any very great extent. But the Club is working to arouse a national "amateur" (as opposed to mercenary) interest in the national mountains, and the quick growth of its membership seems to argue well for its success. Will a climbing knowledge of the mountains lead to a better appreciation of them on the part of the Swiss and a better determination to protect them against railway and hotel vandalism? It is a moot point. Sir Martin Conway, who has climbed mountains in three continents, seems to think that familiarity brings increased respect at first, but that afterwards the aesthetic interest begins to fade:

Almost universal is the feeling aroused by a first sight of a great snowy range that it is unearthly. Mystery gathers over it. Its shining majesty in full sunlight, its rosy splendours at dawn and eve, its pallid glimmer under the clear moon, its wreathed and ever-changing drapery of cloud, its terrific experiences in storm, all these elements and aspects strike the imagination and appeal broadly to the aesthetic sense. Nor are they ever quite forgotten even by the most callous of professional mountaineers.

But with increase of experience on the mountains themselves come knowledge and a whole group of new a.s.sociations.... The mountain, judged by the scale of remembered toil, grows wonderfully in height. The eye thus trained begins to realise and even to exaggerate the vast scale on which peaks are built.

But along with this gain in the truthful sense of scale comes the loss of mystery. The peak which was in heaven is brought down to earth. It was a mere thing of beauty to be adored and wondered at; it has become something to be climbed. Its details have grown intelligible and interesting. The mind regards it from a new aspect, begins to a.n.a.lyse its forms and features, and to consider them mainly in their relation to man as a climber. As knowledge grows this att.i.tude of mind develops.

Each fresh peak ascended teaches something....

The longer a climber gratifies his instincts and pursues his sport, the larger becomes his store of reminiscences and the greater his experience. If he confines his attention to a single range of mountains such as the Alps, he is almost always in sight of mountains he has climbed and glaciers he has traversed. Each view shows him some route he has once pursued, some glacier basin he has explored, some pa.s.s he has crossed.

The labyrinth of valleys and the crests of successive ridges do not puzzle him. He knows how they are grouped and whither they lead. Beyond those mountains is the Zermatt valley; that peak looks down on Zinal; that col leads to Saas. Thus there grows in him the sense of the general shape and arrangement of the country. It is no longer a tangled chaos of heights and depths, but an ordered anatomy, formed by the action of definite and continuous forces. So far as his knowledge extends this orderliness is realised. He has developed a geographical sense....

As the seasons go by, it happens that the aesthetic interest, which was at first the climber's main delight, begins to fade.

If he be a man of scientific interests it is liable to an even quicker evanescence than if he be not, for problems of geological structure, or of botanical distribution, or of glaciology and the like, are a keen source of intellectual enjoyment. At length, perhaps, the day comes when the loss is felt. There is a gorgeous range of snow mountains with every effect of cloud and sunshine that the eye can desire, displayed about and upon them, yet the climber finds with dismay that his heart is cold. The old glory has vanished from the scene and the old thrill is an unfelt emotion. What is the matter? Have his eyes grown dim? Has he lost the faculty of delight? Is he growing old? Whatever the cause, the effect is painful in the extreme. It is one that many of us have felt, especially towards the close of a long and successful climbing season, or extensive journey of exploration. There is but one remedy--to quit the mountains for a while and attend to the common business of life. When winter months have gone by and summer is again at hand, the old enthusiasm is liable to return. Sooner or later the true mountain-lover will begin to starve for sight of the snows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING UP VALLEY TOWARDS ZERMATT FROM NEAR RANDA.]

From a tourist-attracting point of view, then, the encouragement of climbing would not seem to be altogether a good thing. But on the other side of the argument it has to be remembered that the population of Switzerland is fairly large for its area, that a generation is not eternal, and that there is no likelihood of a very large number ever getting so much Alpine climbing as to find the mountains an _ennui_.

On the whole it would seem to be good policy on the part of the Swiss Alpine Club to seek to extend its membership and to encourage in other countries similar "democratic" climbing organisations, with the idea of spreading as widely as possible the sport of mountain-climbing in the Alps, not in its highest phase of very difficult and dangerous ascents, but in a moderate form available to people of moderate strength and moderate means. So far as the danger of climbing has to be taken into consideration, all the ascents have been so carefully mapped now that in good weather, with good guides, there is practically no risk to careful and strong climbers. Yet the present summer (1913) has been a very deadly one on the Alps, a fact due to over-much familiarity bringing to climbers some measure of contempt for the dangers of the peaks and inducing foolhardy attempts under unsuitable weather conditions. During September of 1913 there were eleven fatal accidents to climbers, and five other accidents causing grave injuries. The climbing season was a late one, as the weather had been consistently unfavourable in July and August. In September the weather still continued uncertain, but there was a general tendency among disappointed climbers and guides to take risks so as to get in some ascents before the season closed. To this willingness to take undue risks most of the accidents were due. A characteristic one was on the Zermatt Breithorn when a guide allowed himself to be persuaded against his better judgment to continue an ascent in the face of obvious danger. The details regarding this accident are worth recording as ill.u.s.trating the actual most pressing peril of the Alps to-day, that of foolhardiness. Three German climbers, one a lady, set out with the guide Heinrich Julen to attempt to ascend the Zermatt Breithorn--usually easy. When they reached the Gandegg or Lower Theodule hut (10,000 feet), the weather being very threatening, they took with them a second guide, an Italian. The party ploughed through very deep fresh snow for about an hour and a half, after which one of the men and the lady said they would prefer to turn back. The other, however, Dr. Schrumm, of Kempten, Bavaria, insisted on continuing the ascent with the guide Julen, who, it is said, was very unwilling to proceed. Nevertheless he did so. Apparently the party did not leave the Gandegg Hut, owing to bad weather, until 8 A.M., and it was four in the afternoon when Dr. Schrumm and the guide Julen reached the summit. During the descent a violent snowstorm came on, the guide lost his bearings, and, not being provided with a compa.s.s, wandered about for a time without making any progress. He scooped out a hole in the snow for shelter. The doctor and guide remained there the night, and the next morning the doctor died of cold and exhaustion.

Apparently he was not sufficiently warmly clad.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DENTS DU MIDI FROM GRYON ABOVE BEX.]

This accident caused a good deal of discussion among Alpine climbers, and it is possible that one outcome of it will be to protect guides by more stringent regulations against the urgency of climbers who wish to incur dangers of which they are ignorant.

There are, however, to be enjoyed in Switzerland very many Alpine climbs which come within an ample margin of safety, requiring guides in some cases, but not taking any extravagant toll either on the purse or on the muscles. Thus from Adelboden one may go to the summit of the Gemmi Pa.s.s and back within a day: or over the Bunderchrinde to Kandersteg; or to the Bonderspitze (8343 feet), the Elsighorn (7697 feet), the Elsigfirst (8366 feet), the Albristhorn (8366 feet), the Gsur (8894 feet). Or from the same point of departure with a little more expense, but no more danger, the Wildstrubel (10,715 feet) may be climbed. There is a fine glacier (the Strubel) on this route. From another point of departure, Champery, the various peaks of the Dents du Midi are easily reached. In the Dents du Midi group the highest is the most accessible. To climb the Haute Cime one usually sleeps at Bonaveau, whence one starts off at early morning through the Pas d'Encel, the valley and the pa.s.s of Susanfe. With a guide these can easily be done and without difficulty in six hours. From the summit the panorama embraces all of the central and western Alps. From Les Plans (to mention another centre) there are no less than fifty good climbs, most of them suitable for the modest Alpinist. For an example of a "big" climb from this centre take the ascent of the Grand Muveran (10,040 feet). It is a steep and difficult ascent, not dangerous, but a guide is a necessity. The starting-point is Les Plans. From there to the summit takes at least five hours. The expedition is less fatiguing if the climber pa.s.ses the night at the Rambert shelter. From this hut to the top of the mountain it is a climb of two hours. From the Muveran the view over the Valais is particularly good. The ascent of the Diablerets (10,663 feet), the summit of the Vaudois Alps, is more difficult, but in good weather not attended with any risk.

In bad weather almost any climb can be dangerous, and one needs to be a particularly expert and keen Alpinist to attempt an ascent when storms are likely. But for that expert and keen Alpinist it seems that there is "a music in the thunder and the growling of the gale," and a joy in breasting and overcoming an Alpine storm. A stirring description of such a storm by a famous climber:

The gathering squadrons of the sky grow dark, and seem to hold the just departed night in their bosoms. Their crests impend.

They a.s.sume terrific shapes. They acquire an aspect of solidity. They do not so much seem to blot out as to destroy the mountains. Their motion suggests a great momentum. At first too they act in almost perfect silence. There is little movement in the oppressively warm air, and yet the clouds boil and surge as though violently agitated. They join together, neighbour to neighbour, and every moment they grow more dense and climb higher. To left and right, one sees them, behind also and before.

The moments now are precious. We take a last view of our surroundings, note the direction we should follow, and try to fix details in our memories, for sight will soon be impossible.

Then the clouds themselves are upon us--a puff of mist first, followed by the dense fog. A crepitating sound arises around us; it is the pattering of hard particles of snow on the ground. Presently the flakes grow bigger and fall more softly, feeling clammy on the face. And now probably the wind rises and the temperature is lowered. Each member of our party is whitened over; icicles form on hair and moustache, and the very aspect of men is changed to match the wild surroundings. Under such circ.u.mstances the high regions of snow are more impressive than under any other, but climbers must be well-nourished, in good hard condition, and not too fatigued, or they will not appreciate the scene. No one can really know the high Alps who has not been out in a storm at some great elevation. The experience may not be, in fact is not, physically pleasant, but it is morally stimulating in a high degree, and aesthetically grand. Now must a climber call up all his reserves of pluck and determination. He may have literally to fight his way down to a place of shelter. There can be no rest, neither can there be any undue haste. The right way must be found and followed. All that can be seen is close at hand and that small circle must serve for guidance. All must keep moving on with grim persistence, hour after hour. Stimulants are unavailing and food is probably inaccessible. All depends upon reserve stores of health and vigour, and upon moral courage. To give in is treason. Each determines that he for his part will not fail his companions. Mutual reliance must be preserved.