THE ASCENT OF THE GRAND CORNIER.
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 of selecting 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 af 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
revolutionized. 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. 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.
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 total defeat is not at all improbable.
But it seldom 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, 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 out of 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 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 neighboring 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;[41] 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 brought my scrambles amongst the Alps
to a close.
[41] See Chapter xx.
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 neighboring heights to inspect the Grand Cornier, and I decided to
have nothing to do with its northern side. The mountain was more than
seven miles away, but it was quite safe to pronounce it inaccessible
from our direction.
On the 16th we left Zinal at 2.05 A.M. having been for a moment greatly
surprised by an entry in the hotel-book,[42] and ascending by the Zinal
glacier, and giving the base of our mountain a wide berth in order that
it might the better be examined, passed gradually right round to its
south before a way up it was seen. At 8.30 we arrived upon the plateau
of the glacier that descends toward the east, between the Grand Cornier
and the Dent Blanche, and from this place a route was readily traced.
We steered to the north over the glacier, toward 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. 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 the glaciers beneath.
[42] It was an entry describing an ascent of the Grand Cornier (which
we supposed had never been ascended) from the very direction which we
had just pronounced to be hopeless! It was especially startling,
because Franz Biener was spoken of in it as having been concerned in
the ascent. On examining Biener it was found that he had made the
excursion, and had supposed at the time he was upon his summit that it
was the Grand Cornier. He saw afterwards that they had only ascended
one of the several points upon the ridge running northwards from the
Grand Cornier—I believe, the Pigne de l’Allée (11,168 feet)!
[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.
[Illustration: PART OF THE NORTHERN RIDGE OF THE GRAND CORNIER.]
The wear and tear does not cease even in winter, for these great ridges
are never completely covered up by snow,[43] 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.
[43] I wrote in the _Athenæum_, August 29, 1863, to the same effect.
“This action of the frost does not cease in winter, inasmuch as it is
impossible for the Matterhorn to be entirely covered by snow. Less
precipitous mountains may be entirely covered up during winter, and if
they do not then actually gain height, the wear and tear is, at least,
suspended. . . . We arrive, therefore, at the conclusion that,
although such snow-peaks as Mont Blanc _may_ in the course of ages
grow higher, the Matterhorn must decrease in height.” These remarks
have received confirmation.
The men who were left by M. Dollfus-Ausset in his observatory upon
the summit of the Col Theodule, during the winter of 1865, remarked
that the snow was partially melted upon the rocks in their vicinity
upon 19th, 20th, 21st, 22d, 23d, 26th, 27th December of that year,
and upon the 22d of December they entered in their Journal, “_Nous
avons vu au Matterhorn que la neige se fondait sur roches et qu’il
s’en écoulait de l’eau.”—Matériaux pour l’étude des Glaciers_, vol.
viii. part i, p. 246, 1868; and vol. viii. part ii. p. 77, 1869.
The rock-falls which are continually occurring upon all rock-mountains
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: they 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.[44]
[44] In each of the seven nights I passed upon the south-west ridge of
the Matterhorn in 1861-3 (at heights varying from 11,844 to 12,992
feet above the level of the sea), the rocks fell incessantly in
showers and avalanches. See p. 175.
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.”[45]
[45] Tonson’s Ed. of 1758. Bacon may have had this passage in mind
when he wrote, “It must not be thought that heat generates motion, or
motion heat (though in some respects this be true), but that the very
essence of heat, or the substantial self of heat, is motion and
nothing else.”—_Novum Organum_, book ii. Devey’s Translation.
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 continue to decay, but their abasement would be much less rapid.
When rocks are covered 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.[46] 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 the action of glaciers upon rocks, are as
follow. The former take advantage of cracks, fissures, joints and soft
places—the latter does 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 produces constantly diminish, because the area of the
surfaces operated upon becomes less and less as they become smoother
and flatter.
[46] Doubtless, _at the sides_ of glacier-beds, the range of
temperature is greater. But there is evidence that the winter cold
does not penetrate to the innermost recesses of glacier-beds in the
fact that streams continue to flow underneath the ice all the year
round, winter as well as summer, in the Alps and (I was informed in
Greenland) in Greenland. Experimental proof can be readily obtained
that even in midsummer the bottom temperature is close to 32° Faht.
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 modeling 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”![47]
[47] Professor Tyndall “On the conformation of the Alps,” _Phil.
Mag._, Sept. 1862.
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), and at 6 P.M. we arrived at Albricolla.
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 halt-burnt châlet.