THE FIRST ASCENT OF THE GRAND CORNIER.
“Ye crags and peaks, I’m with you once again!
. . . Methinks I hear
A spirit in your echoes answers me,
And bid your tenant welcome to his home
Again!”
S. KNOWLES.
Our career in 1864 had been one of unbroken success, but the great ascent
upon which I had set my heart was not attempted, and, until it was
accomplished, I was unsatisfied. Other things, too, influenced me to visit
the Alps once more. I wished to travel elsewhere, in places where the
responsibility of direction would rest with myself alone. It was well to
know how far my judgment in the choice of routes could be relied upon.
The journey of 1865 was chiefly undertaken, then, to find out to what
extent I was capable to select paths over mountainous country. The
programme which was drawn up for this journey was rather ambitious, since
it included almost all of the great peaks which had not then been
ascended; but it was neither lightly undertaken nor hastily executed. All
pains were taken to secure success. Information was sought from those who
could give it, and the defeats of others were studied, that their errors
might be avoided. The results which followed came not so much, perhaps,
from luck, as from forethought and careful calculation.
For success does not, as a rule, come by chance, and when one fails there
is a reason for it. But when any notable, or so-called brilliant thing is
done, we are too apt to look upon the success alone, without considering
how it was accomplished. Whilst, when men fail, we inquire why they have
not succeeded. So failures are oftentimes more instructive than successes,
and the disappointments of some become profitable to others.
Up to a certain point, the programme was completely and happily carried
out. Nothing but success attended our efforts so long as the excursions
were executed as they had been planned. Most of them were made upon the
very days which had been fixed for them months beforehand; and all were
accomplished, comparatively speaking, so easily, that their descriptions
must be, in the absence of difficulty and danger, less interesting to the
general reader than they would have been if our course had been marked by
blunders and want of judgment. Before proceeding to speak of these
excursions, it will not be entirely useless to explain the reasons which
influenced the selection of the routes which were adopted upon them.
In the course of the past five seasons my early practices were
revolutionised. My antipathy to snow was overcome, and my predilection for
rocks was modified. Like all those who are not mountaineers born, I was,
at the first, extremely nervous upon steep snow. The snow seemed bound to
slip, and all those who were upon it to go along with it. Snow of a
certain quality is undoubtedly liable to slip when it is at a certain
inclination.(153) The exact states which are dangerous, or safe, it is not
possible to describe in writing. That is only learnt by experience, and
confidence upon snow is not really felt until one has gained experience.
Confidence gradually came to me, and as it came so did my partiality for
rocks diminish. For it was evident, to use a common expression, that it
paid better to travel upon snow than upon rocks. This applies to snow-beds
pure and simple, or to snow which is lying over glacier; and in the
selection of routes it has, latterly, always been my practice to look for
the places where snow slopes, or snow-covered glaciers, reach highest into
mountains.(154)
It is comparatively seldom, however, that an ascent of a great mountain
can be executed exclusively upon snow and glacier. Ridges peep through
which have to be surmounted. In my earlier scramblings I usually took to,
or was taken upon, the summits (or arêtes) of the ridges, and a good many
mountaineers habitually take to them on principle, as the natural and
proper way. According to my experience, it is seldom well to do so when
any other course is open. As I have already said, and presently shall
repeat more particularly, the crests of all the main ridges of the great
peaks of the Alps are shattered and cleft by frost; and it not
unfrequently happens that a notch in a ridge, which appears perfectly
insignificant from a distance, is found to be an insuperable barrier to
farther progress; and a great detour, or a long descent, has to be made to
avoid the obstacle. When committed to an arête one is tied, almost always,
to a particular course, from which it is difficult to deviate. Much loss
of time must result if any serious obstruction occurs; and defeat often
follows a temporary check.
But it rarely happens that a great alpine peak is seen that is cut off
abruptly, in all directions, from the snows and glaciers which surround
it. In its gullies snow will cling, although its faces may be too steep
for the formation of permanent snow-beds. The merits of these snow-gullies
(or _couloirs_) have been already pointed out,(155) and it is hardly
necessary to observe, after that which was just now said about snow, that
ascents of snow-gullies (with proper precautions) are very much to be
preferred to ascents of rocky arêtes.
By following the glaciers, the snow-slopes above, and the couloirs rising
from them, it is usually possible to get very close to the summits of the
great peaks in the Alps. The final climb will, perhaps, necessarily be by
an arête. The less of it the better.
It occasionally occurs that considerable mountain slopes, or faces, are
destitute of snow-gullies. In that case it will, very likely, be best to
adhere to the faces (or to the gullies or minor ridges upon them) rather
than to take to the _great_ ridges. Upon a face one can move to the right
or to the left with more facility than upon the crest of a ridge; and when
a difficulty is arrived at, it is, consequently, less troublesome to
circumvent.
In selecting the routes which were taken in 1865, I looked, first, for
places where glaciers and snow extended highest up into the mountains
which were to be ascended, or the ridges which were to be crossed. Next,
for gullies filled with snow leading still higher; and finally, from the
heads of the gullies we completed the ascents, whenever it was
practicable, by faces instead of by arêtes. The ascent of the Grand
Cornier (13,022), of the Dent Blanche (14,318), Grandes Jorasses (13,700),
Aiguille Verte (13,540), Ruinette (12,727), and the Matterhorn (14,780),
were all accomplished in this way; besides the other excursions which will
be referred to by and by. The route selected, before the start was made,
was in every case strictly followed out.
We inspected all of these mountains from neighbouring heights before
entering upon their ascents. I explained to the guides the routes I
proposed to be taken, and (when the courses were at all complicated)
sketched them out on paper to prevent misunderstanding. In some few cases
they suggested variations, and in every case the route was well discussed.
The _execution_ of the work was done by the guides, and I seldom
interfered with, or attempted to assist in it.
The 13th of June 1865 I spent in the valley of Lauterbrunnen with the Rev.
W. H. Hawker and the guides Christian and Ulrich Lauener; and on the 14th
crossed the Petersgrat with Christian Almer and Johann Tännler to Turtman
(Tourtemagne) in the Valais. Tännler was then paid off, as Michel Croz and
Franz Biener were awaiting me.
It was not possible to find two leading guides who worked together more
harmoniously than Croz and Almer. Biener’s part was subordinate to theirs,
and he was added as a convenience rather than as a necessity. Croz spoke
French alone, Almer little else than German. Biener spoke both languages,
and was useful on that account; but he seldom went to the front, excepting
during the early part of the day, when the work was easy, and he acted
throughout more as a porter than as a guide.
The importance of having a reserve of power on mountain expeditions cannot
be too strongly insisted upon. We always had some in hand, and were never
pressed, or overworked, so long as we were together. Come what might, we
were ready for it. But by a series of chances, which I shall never cease
to regret, I was first obliged to part with Croz, and then to dismiss the
others;(156) and so, deviating from the course that I had deliberately
adopted, which was successful in practice because it was sound in
principle, became fortuitously a member of an expedition that ended with
the catastrophe which brings this book, and brought my scrambles amongst
the Alps, to a close.(157)
On June 15 we went, from Turtman to Z’meiden, and thence over the
Forcletta pass to Zinal. We diverged from the summit of the pass up some
neighbouring heights to inspect the Grand Cornier, and I decided to have
nothing to do with its northern side. It seemed quite safe to pronounce it
inaccessible from that direction, although it was more than seven miles
away.
On the 16th we left Zinal at 2.5 A.M., having been for a moment greatly
surprised by an entry in the hotel-book,(158) and ascending by the Zinal
glacier, and giving the base of our mountain a wide berth in order that it
might be better examined, passed gradually right round to its south,
before a way up it was seen.(159) At 8.30 we arrived upon the plateau of
the glacier that descends towards the east, between the Grand Cornier and
the Dent Blanche, and from this place a route was readily traced. We
steered to the north (as shown upon the map) over the glacier, towards the
ridge that descends to the east; gained it by mounting snow-slopes, and
followed it to the summit, which was arrived at before half-past twelve.
From first to last the route was almost entirely over snow.
The ridges leading to the north and to the south from the summit of the
Grand Cornier, exhibited in a most striking manner the extraordinary
effects that may be produced by violent alternations of heat and cold. The
southern one was hacked and split into the wildest forms; and the northern
one was not less cleft and impracticable, and offered the droll piece of
rock-carving which is represented upon page 211. Some small blocks
actually tottered and fell before our eyes, and, starting others in their
downward course, grew into a perfect avalanche, which descended with a
solemn roar on to the glaciers beneath.
[Illustration: PART OF THE SOUTHERN RIDGE OF THE GRAND CORNIER.]
It is natural that the great ridges should present the wildest forms—not
on account of their dimensions, but by reason of their positions. They are
exposed to the fiercest heat of the sun, and are seldom in shadow as long
as it is above the horizon. They are entirely unprotected, and are
attacked by the strongest blasts and by the most intense cold. The most
durable rocks are not proof against such assaults. These grand, apparently
solid—eternal—mountains, seeming so firm, so immutable, are yet ever
changing and crumbling into dust. These shattered ridges are evidence of
their sufferings. Let me repeat that every principal ridge of every great
peak in the Alps amongst those I have seen has been shattered in this way;
and that every summit, amongst the rock-summits upon which I have stood,
has been nothing but a piled-up heap of fragments.
The minor ridges do not usually present such extraordinary forms as the
principal ones. They are less exposed, and they are less broken up; and it
is reasonable to assume that their annual degradation is less than that of
the summit-ridges.
The wear and tear does not cease even in winter, for these great ridges
are never completely covered up by snow,(160) and the sun has still power.
The destruction is incessant, and increases as time goes on; for the
greater the surfaces which are exposed to the practically inexhaustible
powers of sun and frost, the greater ruin will be effected.
[Illustration: PART OF THE NORTHERN RIDGE OF THE GRAND CORNIER.]
The rock-falls which are continually occurring upon all rock mountains
(such as are referred to upon pp. 29, 55) are, of course, caused by these
powers. No one doubts it; but one never believes it so thoroughly as when
the quarries are seen from which their materials have been hewn; and when
the germs, so to speak, of these avalanches have been seen actually
starting from above.
These falls of rock take place from two causes. First, from the heat of
the sun detaching small stones or rocks which have been arrested on ledges
or slopes and bound together by snow or ice. I have seen such released
many times when the sun has risen high; fall gently at first, gather
strength, grow in volume, and at last rush down with a cloud trailing
behind, like the dust after an express train. Secondly, from the freezing
of the water which trickles, during the day, into the clefts, fissures,
and crannies. This agency is naturally most active in the night, and then,
or during very cold weather, the greatest falls take place.(161)
When one has continually seen and heard these falls, it is easily
understood why the glaciers are laden with moraines. The wonder is, not
that they are sometimes so great, but that they are not always greater.
Irrespective of lithological considerations, one knows that this débris
cannot have been excavated _by_ the glaciers. The moraines are _borne_ by
glaciers, but they are _born_ from the ridges. They are generated by the
sun, and delivered by the frost. “Fire,” it is well said in Plutarch’s
life of Camillus, “is the most active thing in nature, and all generation
is motion, or at least, with motion; all other parts of matter without
warmth lie sluggish and dead, and crave the influence of heat as their
life, and when that comes upon them, they immediately acquire some active
or passive qualities.”(162)
If the Alps were granted a perfectly invariable temperature, if they were
no longer subjected, alternately, to freezing blasts and to scorching
heat, they might more correctly be termed “eternal.” They might still
continue to decay, but their abasement would be much less rapid.
When rocks are covered up by a sheet of glacier they do enjoy an almost
invariable temperature. The extremes of summer and winter are unknown to
rocks which are so covered up,—a range of a very few degrees is the most
that is possible underneath the ice.(163) There is, _then_, little or no
disintegration from unequal expansion and contraction. Frost, _then_, does
not penetrate into the heart of the rock, and cleave off vast masses. The
rocks, _then_, sustain grinding instead of cleaving. Atoms, _then_, come
away instead of masses. Fissures and overhanging surfaces are bridged, for
the ice cannot get at them; and after many centuries of grinding have been
sustained, we still find numberless angular surfaces (in the _lee-sides_)
which were fashioned before the ice began to work.
The points of difference which are so evident between the operations of
heat, cold, and water, and those of glaciers upon rocks, are as follow.
The former take advantage of cracks, fissures, joints, and soft places;
the latter do not. The former can work _underneath_ overhanging masses;
the latter cannot. The effects produced by the former continually
_increase_, because they continually expose fresh surfaces by forming new
cracks, fissures, and holes. The effects which the latter produce
constantly _diminish_, because the area of the surfaces operated upon
becomes less and less, as they become smoother and flatter.
What can one conclude, then, but that sun, frost, and water, have had
infinitely more to do than glaciers with the fashioning of mountain-forms
and valley-slopes? Who can refuse to believe that powers which are at work
everywhere, which have been at work always, which are so incomparably
active, capable, and enduring, must have produced greater effects than a
solitary power which is always local in its influence, which has worked,
_comparatively_, but for a short time, which is always slow and feeble in
its operations, and which constantly diminishes in intensity?
Yet there are some who refuse to believe that sun, frost, and water have
played an important part in modelling the Alps, and hold it as an article
of their faith that the Alpine region “owes its present conformation
mainly to the action of its ancient glaciers”!(164)
My reverie was interrupted by Croz observing that it was time to be off.
Less than two hours sufficed to take us to the glacier plateau below
(where we had left our baggage); three quarters of an hour more placed us
upon the depression between the Grand Cornier and the Dent Blanche (Col du
Grand Cornier(165)), and at 6 P.M. we arrived at Abricolla. Croz and
Biener hankered after milk, and descended to a village lower down the
valley; but Almer and I stayed where we were, and passed a chilly night on
some planks in a half-burnt chalet.(166)