THE BRENTA GROUP.[58]
The mighty pyramids of stone
Which wedgelike cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen and better known
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.--LONGFELLOW.
VAL DI BRENTA--BOCCA DEI CAMOZZI--VAL AGOLA--PASSO D'AMBIES--VAL
DI SOLE--GINEVRIE PASS--CIMA DI BRENTA--PASSO DI GROSTÈ--VAL
TERESENGA--MOLVENO--CIMA TOSA--BOCCA DI BRENTA.
It was from Pinzolo that we first started for the Bocca di Brenta. On
the evening of our ascent of the Presanella we sent François to enquire
about the pass, our only knowledge of which was drawn from the notice
in the first edition of the 'Alpine Guide,' where it was spoken of
'as likely hereafter to be familiar to mountaineers as one of the most
romantic walks in the Alps.' A peasant who declared himself to be well
acquainted with the way was easily found, and at a reasonably early
hour next morning we had slept off the fatigues of the day before and
were again on the march. Leaving the cart-road to Campiglio we followed
a footpath passing among scattered hamlets and through fertile meadows,
until near some saw-mills it crossed to the left bank of the stream.
We here quitted the main valley and entered the mouth of Val di Brenta,
a deep short glen clothed in beech and pine-woods. Our track led us
through forest glades and over grassy banks covered in profusion
with the wild fruits of the Alps. Bilberries carpeted the ground,
strawberries fit for Titania's own table dangled temptingly on the
banks. While we lingered a morning mist swept off and a bevy of wild
pinnacles peered down on us, one gigantic tower looming above them all.
The scenery we were entering was at once strange and exciting. The
common features of Alpine landscapes were changed; as if by some sudden
enchantment we found ourselves amongst richer forests, purer streams,
more fantastic crags.
The rocks which pierced the sky seemed solid, yet how could limestone
take the form and subtle colours of flame? We could see ice overhead,
yet how could the stream which sparkled at our side between mossy
banks be a glacier child, or any relation to the noisy and muddy Swiss
torrent? Later in the day we learnt the secret of its purity; the
water as it creeps from the ice is filtered underground until it is fit
company for the delicate trees and flowers which it soon joins.
Where a barrier of rock completely closed the glen we began to climb
the southern hillside, zigzagging steeply amidst wet mossy crags and
the tangled branches of a wood of creeping pines. The path suddenly
reached the rim of an upper platform lying in the centre of the great
peaks. Hitherto we had been wandering amidst woods and over broken
ground, whence no general view could be gained. But the lawn on which
we now lay was in the very heart of things. Full opposite to us rose
a colossal rock, one of the most prodigious monuments of Nature's
forces. Its lower portion rose in diminishing stories like the Tower
of Babel of old Bible pictures. Above it was a perfect precipice,
an upright block, the top of which was 4,000 to 4,500 feet above our
heads. Behind this gigantic keep a vast mountain fortress stretched
out its long lines of turrets and bastions. But as we approached its
base the great tower rose alone and unsupported, and the boldness of
its outline became almost incredible. It fairly challenges comparison
with the Matterhorn from the Hörnli, or the Cimon della Pala from above
Paneveggio; and it combines to a great extent the noble solidity of the
Swiss peak with the peculiar upright structure which gives dolomite its
strange resemblance to human architecture.
But if the central object of the picture was enough to keep our
attention fixed in growing astonishment, there was much else which
called for notice. On our left was a second massive rock castle, the
Cima di Brenta, connected with the Cima Tosa by the Fulmini di Brenta,
a long line of flame-like pinnacles of the strangest shapes, some of
them seeming to bulge near the top like a Russian steeple. Before us,
between one of the loftiest of these spires and the Cima Tosa, lay a
deep snowy gap which I pointed out as the Bocca di Brenta. Our peasant
guide at once corrected me; he declared that the only passage to
Molveno was to be found at the head of a long glacier ribbon crumpled
up amongst the cliffs of the Tosa. As he professed to have stood on the
summit and looked down the other side, we were unwillingly forced to
believe him.
A very steep goat-track led us through rhododendron bushes to the
level of the glacier, from which no visible stream came forth. After
traversing a huge and unusually crumbling moraine, we entered upon the
ice which, though steep, was little crevassed. The rock scenery was
now most extraordinary. On either hand a line of ramparts rose sheer
out of the glacier in precipices of mingled murky red and ashy-tinted
grey; behind us lay the massive block of the Cima di Brenta, its
precipices relieved by slender snow-streaks. In the distance was the
Orteler group, with ominous clouds hanging about its summits. As we
penetrated further the valley of ice rose in long steep steps before
us. Overcoming these by the occasional use of the axe we reached a
recess, the reservoir of the winter snows, at the back of the great
tower of the Cima Tosa. On the right was a well-marked gap, which the
guide pointed out as the Bocca. We were soon standing on it; at the
same moment a pair of horns appeared on the opposite side, and we found
ourselves face to face with a chamois. For some seconds we stared at
the animal, and it at us, in mutual surprise. The moment some one spoke
the chamois started off over the snow-field, and when we shouted after
it took to the almost perpendicular rocks of the Cima Pra dei Camozzi,
halting occasionally for a moment at François' whistle.
A considerable ice-field now lay before us, apparently slanting away
to the west, in the direction of Pinzolo. The porter nevertheless
insisted that we were on the true pass; but I soon saw that instead of
having crossed the real backbone of the range we were only on one of
its ribs, a secondary ridge which joins the Cima Tosa with the peak
marked in the Austrian Ordnance Survey as the Cima Pra dei Camozzi.
What was to be done? We were in the centre of a wilderness, clouds
were rapidly sweeping up from behind, and we had fairly lost our way.
The glacier before us must come down from the main ridge. Would this
afford a passage? We determined to try, the porter following in sullen
silence. After climbing a hard-frozen bank we reached the crest and
looked down on a sea of mist. As we stood there the clouds enveloped us
and snow began to fall heavily. Sheltering in a niche among the rocks
on the eastern side of the ridge we turned to that universal resource
under difficulties, the provision-sack, while François explored the
cliffs below. Our guide soon returned with a face portending failure.
After descending about 100 feet, he had reached an absolute precipice,
so lofty that no noise announced the fall of the stones he rolled
over its edge. The shouts of herdsmen rose tantalisingly out of the
depths below, coming, no doubt, from the highest alp in Val d'Ambies,
a lateral glen which falls into the Sarca valley near the Baths of
Comano.
What was to be done? We were, like Bunyan's pilgrims in the Enchanted
Ground, amidst the ruins of Castle Doubting, with no clue to guide
us out of the wilderness. My companions appreciated the position and
played their parts accordingly,--one, as Giant Despair, sallying on us
with frightful prognostications of a night in the snow, while another,
as Hopeful, maintained that we should still sleep at Molveno. Finally
we determined to follow wherever the glacier led us.
The porter, the source of all our misfortunes, had been discovered to
be profiting by our discussion to pocket a large share of our already
small stock of provisions. He had been engaged only as far as the
Bocca, and as he still insisted that we were on it we took him at his
word and dismissed him on the spot.
Slithering somehow down the ice-slope we tramped on through mists
until in half-an-hour we reached a moraine which we followed for
some distance. Then we took shelter for some time in a cuplike hollow
amongst the rocks, in hopes that a partial lifting of the snow-veil
might show us something more of the face of the country around. But,
far from amending, the storm only grew thicker.
We had barely advanced a hundred yards from the hospitable cranny when
François, who was leading, came to a sudden halt. We were standing, so
far as we could see, on the brow of a precipice. Nothing was visible
below but one mass of mist, dense with snow-flakes; around us whirled
the seething clouds, which had already draped the crags in wintry
mantles. A more dismal scene I never wish to look upon; we realised
the terrors of the Alps in a spring 'tourmente,' when an icy wind is
added to the snow and mists. A momentary break revealed a shelf some
fifty feet below us. By making a slight circuit a practicable course
was found, and we let ourselves from ledge to ledge of a face of rocks,
made slippery by the melting snow. Thus we worked slowly downwards,
now stumbling over broken boulders, now clambering down ledges by the
help of hands and feet. Occasionally we were brought to a standstill;
but François' 'Allez seulement' was soon heard, the signal for further
progress. A friendly cleft came to our aid, and when forced to leave
it we were again in the region of creeping pines. Using their gnarled
branches to swing ourselves down by, we finally reached a faint track,
which bore to the right across a rough slope of scree, and then
descended into a marshy basin. This must have been the head of Val
d'Agola, recommended as an excursion from Pinzolo by Mr. Ball.
The track mounted slightly towards the left, until it joined a broad
terrace-path winding at a level along the hillside.
Here with the suddenness of enchantment the scene changed. The gloom
was broken by a dart of sunshine, blue shone overhead, and in a moment
the mists lifted on all sides, disclosing a view of the most dazzling
beauty. We were on a green hillside opposite the mouth of Val di
Genova, which was flanked on one side by the Presanella, the victim of
yesterday's onslaught, on the other by the Carè Alto. These were the
outposts of a vast amphitheatre of ice and snow, in the bend of which
stood the Adamello.[59] Below us was a group of châlets at the head
of a little glen, whose stream trickled down into the Sarca; beyond
lay the whole Val Rendena, almost to Tione, a rich mass of verdure,
dotted by frequent villages, and set off by the soft moulded mask of
new-fallen snow which hid the hills down to the highest pine-forests.
Instead of following the stream we turned to the right and descended by
a sledge-track to Baldino, a village twenty minutes below Pinzolo.
In after years I satisfied myself that the cliff we had turned back
from was visible from the high-road at the upper end of the gorge of
Le Sarche. The rocks seen from a distance did not look so formidable
as they had from above. The pass, if it could be made, would be a very
convenient one, leading directly from Campiglio to the Baths of Comano,
and enabling a mountaineer to pass through the pinnacles of the Brenta
Alta, and by means of a carriage reach Riva the same evening; and there
still remained sufficient doubt about the ascent on the south-east side
to render the problem interesting.
Ten years later I mustered some friends and François at the Baths of
Comano. We enquired of the master of the house for a porter acquainted
with the paths in Val d'Ambies. Such a valley, however, was unknown,
at least by that name, to all the inmates of the establishment. This,
considering the vague state of the mountain nomenclature in this
district, was not wonderful. We were more surprised when the existence
of any valley between Val d'Algone and the Molveno cart-track was
denied with persistent positiveness. At last a guest completely crushed
our importunate enquiries by producing a map on which the valley we
spoke of was not to be found. The map, it should be mentioned, was one
of the Island of Sardinia!
Upon this we gave up the struggle, and contented ourselves with hiring
a peasant to carry provisions to one of the villages on the rolling
upland above the Baths, where we should at least be able to point out
the mouth of the glen we meant to explore.
In three-quarters of an hour we had reached Tavodo, built on a brow
immediately over the torrent of Val d'Ambies. Behind us lay the
beautiful basin of Stenico, threatened by an advancing storm, through
the skirts of which the low sun flung Titianesque lances upon the
glittering orchards. In front the towers of the Cima Tosa were framed
between two bold buttresses, the ends of the bounding ridges of our
valley.
We had to cross a torrent and reascend to the neighbouring hamlet of
San Lorenzo in order to obtain quarters for the night. There was no
regular inn in the place, but we found clean beds and cooking materials
in the house over the village shop.
Our start next morning was unexpectedly delayed. We had agreed
overnight with an elderly and loquacious inhabitant for the carriage of
our provisions and a bag to the top of the pass for four gulden. Our
porter's first act on appearing at six A.M. was to call for spirits;
his second, to declare he must have five gulden to go not to the pass
but to the highest 'malga.' His pretensions were increasing with his
'little glasses,' and in inverse ratio to his competency, when we cut
the matter short by engaging another man.
We had got fairly off when the old Bacchanalian shuffled up in the rear
and enlivened the first half-hour by an energetic declamation, in which
the chief points seemed to be that he alone in the countryside knew
every crag and cranny where we were going, that he was 'President of
the Village' and a 'galantuomo,' and that, 'corpo di Bacco,' the least
we could do was to pay his tavern score.
Above some saw-mills a good cattle-path mounted steadily along the left
bank of a very slender stream. At the first bend in the narrow valley
we had a good view of the barrier to be crossed. The gap we must aim at
was clearly the second on the south-west of the mass of the Cima Tosa.
We could recognise the very spot where François had halted that day ten
years on the brink of the precipice. A hundred yards further south a
fan-shaped snow-bed lay against the base of the abrupt crags. This snow
must have fallen through some breach; and closer inspection showed a
shadow on the face of the cliff--good proof that it was not so smooth
as it looked, and that a hidden gully might be found at our need.
A long and steep ascent, like that of Val di Brenta, closes the lower
glen.
Halfway up the barrier the path splits, and the traveller must either
continue to climb steeply and afterwards traverse at a level the higher
slopes, or recross the stream and remain in the valley. The upper
basin is hemmed in by wooded cliffs, on the top of which lies a ring of
pasturages, the base of the dolomite peaks which extend in a complete
semicircle round the head of the glen. The sky-line of the range does
not equal in boldness or eccentricity of form that of Val di Brenta;
but, except where a high but obvious pass leads over towards Molveno,
it presents to the eye a most formidable barrier.
As we approached the rock-wall clouds swept rapidly over it. François
suggested dolefully that history was apt to repeat itself. But we
knew enough already to be tolerably independent of weather. There were
two bays in the cliffs before us, one to our right filled by a small
glacier with which we had nothing to do, the other containing the
fan-shaped snow-slope seen from below. A rough ascent over the last
grass, snow and boulders led to the latter.
The steep snow-slope was hard-frozen and slippery, and altogether too
much for our porter's powers. Like the schoolboy he went two steps
back for each forward, and, as even turning his back to the slope
proved ineffectual, we were constrained to shoulder his burden and
let him go. Had it not been for his ludicrous incapacity to follow we
should have had a long financial discussion; as it was, his murmurs
at pay for which a Swiss porter would have been thankful, soon grew
faint with distance. At the head of the snow-bed we were met by an
almost vertical rock; but a sharp scramble of fifty feet gave us the
key of the pass. On our right, slanting parallel to the cliff like a
staircase to a castle-wall, and completely masked up to the present
moment by a buttress, was a steep narrow snow-filled gully. While
François was converting the hard snow into a convenient ladder, we
watched with wonder and admiration the great red towers which broke
out of the neighbouring mists. 'Pour moi je préfére votre maison de
Parlement,' said our guide when we called his attention to the mountain
architecture.
We gained the watershed a few yards to the south of the spot we had
reached from the other side. The pass has two crests, one of rock, one
of snow, with a bowl between them. The distant view was veiled; but the
Presanella, rising through clouds opposite, proved that the chain was
really crossed. Either side of the Bocca dei Camozzi was now open to
us. We preferred to pass through the gap and follow the glacier of Val
di Brenta, by which, descending at our leisure, we reached in good time
the 'Stabilimento Alpino' of Campiglio.
* * * * *
Our first glimpse, in the summer of 1872, of the peaks of the Trentino
was from the gap at the western foot of the Pizzo della Mare. As our
heads rose above the ridge of pure snow which had hitherto formed
our horizon, and we walked up against the hard blue sky, a well-known
pinnacle shot up before us, and out of the great sea of cotton-wool
cloud spread over the Italian hills and valleys rose the shining cliffs
of the Presanella. Further from us the serrated outline of the dolomite
range cut sharply against the clear upper heaven. Familiarity never
renders commonplace this marvellous chain. Seen from the Orteler group
it is a gigantic wall crowned by square towers and riven in places to
its base by mighty clefts. The breaches, despite their depth, are cut
so narrow and so clean that fancy suggests that the elements must have
borrowed some magic power with which to work such fantastic ruin.
It was partly the intention of scaling the Cima di Brenta, one of the
loftiest towers of the dolomites, which was taking us for the third
time to Pinzolo. So the mountaineers among us pulled out field-glasses
and began at once to dissect the peak; to decide that this 'couloir'
was snow and available, that 'arête' broken and useless; in short, to
converse in that Alpine jargon which marks the race which Mr. Ruskin
once thought capable of treating the Alps only as greased poles.
On the same afternoon we descended into the head of the great valley,
which was the home of the 'Nauni feroces' of Horace's times, the
highway to Italy of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. It now bears two names.
The upper portion, where it is comparatively narrow, is called the Val
di Sole, probably from its direction admitting both the sun's morning
and evening rays; the lower, where the hills drop into broad-backed
downs, preserves the memory of the ancient tribe in the titles Val di
Non or Nonsberg. It is as a whole a wide sunny valley, rich in fields
of maize and vines, and crowded with prosperous villages overlooked
by the ruins of mediæval fortresses. Two of its side-glens, Val di
Pejo and Val di Rabbi, penetrate deeply into the Orteler range, and
the bath-houses they contain have a local fashion amongst the people
of the hotter parts of the Trentino; but the accommodation is not
such as will tempt foreign visitors. To catalogue the bath-houses of
the Orteler as Thackeray has inns, if Santa Catarina is the 'cochon
d'or,' Rabbi is the silver, and Pejo the black animal, and I scarcely
know where to find a blacker. Besides, the scenery accessible to any
but very good walkers is not of a high order; the heads of the glens
are wild and savage rather than beautiful, and their lower portions,
though delightful to drive down for a mountaineer coming from the
glaciers, would scarcely repay a separate visit. From Santa Catarina,
Rabbi can only be reached by a long but most glorious march over the
Monte Cevedale and Pizzo della Venezia;[60] Pejo, over the Pizzo della
Mare, is a comparatively short journey, and the traveller will do well
to escape from its slovenliness and discomfort by driving on to the
junction of Val dei Monti and the main valley and the clean country inn
at Fosine.
The walls of its chief room were some years ago adorned with a
remarkable series of Bible pictures. One plate illustrated an unusual
subject, the early life of Mary Magdalene, who was represented
receiving the attentions of a moustache-twirling young officer in full
Austrian uniform. It seemed doubtful whether a reflection was intended
on military men in general, or whether the Milanese artist had taken
this indirect means to insinuate the peculiar profligacy of his then
rulers.
On the morning of the day succeeding our ascent of the Pizzo della
Mare, we found ourselves at a tolerably early hour at the little
village of Dimaro, a cluster of prosperous-looking farmhouses standing
some distance off the high road, amongst quiet meadows, fields of
tall maize and walnut-trees. Here the mule-path over the Ginevrie
Pass leaves Val di Sole, and we had to abandon our car and look for
a quadruped of some sort to help us over the hill. The only available
mule had just come in from a hard morning's work, drawing down granite
boulders to embank the bed of the torrent, and required some rest; its
master also demurred on his own account to starting in the heat of the
day. These hindrances, joined to the probable length of the journey,
and the unanimous voices raised in favour of the hospice of Campiglio,
made us reconsider our previous plan of pushing on to Pinzolo, and
agree to trust to the hospitality of the 'ricco signor,' who had always
meat in his house, and whose best room was as beautiful as any at Cles,
or even Trento.
The inn at Dimaro is a very clean-looking little house evidently owned
by tidy people. Some of us spent the midday hours in a siesta in a
cool bedroom, with a row of bright flower-pots across the window,
through which there came in to us glimpses of an atmosphere quivering
with light, mingled with fresh sounds of rustling branches and running
waters. The sunshine of the mountains is always full of life and
freshness; it is only down in the stagnant plains that the midday heat
burns like a dull furnace, drying up the energies alike of plants and
men.
Meanwhile the agriculturist of the party found interest in watching
the threshing in the barn below, where a dozen peasants--men, women,
and girls--disposed in a circle, were wielding their short flails with
incessant industry. At length the mule was rested. Its master did not
at first seem likely to prove a pleasant addition to our number, for he
declined to help the guides by carrying a knapsack, resented strongly
the suggestion that he should go to his animal's head, and discoursed
gloomily on the difficulties and fatigues of the road. This strange
conduct on the part of a Tyrolese peasant was accounted for by our
companion's informing us that he had spent a year in Paris.
A mile of dusty cart-road leads to a bridge at the foot of the wooded
rock which juts out from the dolomite range and blocks up the lower
part of Val Selva. Steep zigzags carried us up through a picturesque
tangle of trees and crags to where the road turns the northern corner
of the huge promontory. A fair landscape of the romantic school now
opened suddenly before our eyes. In front, and slightly beneath us,
lay a wide green basin, through which the stream wandered peacefully
towards our feet. Above its further end rose a sheer cliff, limestone
or dolomite, fringed with dark pines. Beyond this valley-gate the eye
wandered into the quivering Italian sky, imagining, if it did not see,
further distances and a limitless extent of waving hills and wooded
plains. On our right the ground rose in wave above wave of forest, in
the recesses of which, the right track once lost, one might wander for
hours without seeing any snowy landmark by which to steer a course.
The path traversed the stream, and then mounted gently along the
western side of the valley, through glades where wild strawberries
and bilberries flourished in rare profusion. After the foot of the
cliff had been passed, higher mountains towered on the south, and
glimpses of the strange red pinnacles and white waterless gullies of
the Sasso Rosso were caught from time to time through the floating
vapours that wreathed them. A boundary stone marked the limit of the
districts of Cles and Tione. As yet there was no sign of a watershed.
In fact there appeared no reason why we need come to one at all. The
ground rose sufficiently to hinder our seeing for any distance in
advance, but still so gently that it might have gone on rising almost
for ever. Deep boggy holes, which we crossed on causeways of decaying
logs, while the ingenious mule picked his own way through the mud,
interrupted the path. These were the difficulties of which our Parisian
had warned us. Meantime the eastern range retreated further from us,
and a stream flowed out from a broad valley at its base. At last the
hillside sensibly steepened, and the forest grew less thickly. We
overtopped the brow of the ascent and found ourselves on the edge of
a vast undulating pasture. Barns and stables, too large to be called
châlets, were sprinkled here and there. Frequent fences and gates
suggested an English homestead. Sleek cows reposed contentedly on the
grass, careless young heifers quarrelled and made it up again, while
a couple of fussy donkeys raised a bray of welcome and galloped up to
greet their half-brother in our train.
The highest point of the tableland of the Ginevrie Alp was our pass;
from it the path dipped suddenly into a waterless dell. A few paces
further brought us to the verge of the short steep descent whence we
looked down on the meadows of Val Nambino and the tower of La Madonna
di Campiglio. The path made a circuit to reach it, but we preferred a
short cut, despite the warning of a priest who shouted after us that it
was 'piu pericoloso.'
Before we went to bed it was decided that the mountaineers should
set off next morning with Henri Devouassoud, a brother of the more
celebrated François, in search of a route up the still maiden Cima di
Brenta. Owing to various delays it was past five when we started. Our
ideas as to the direction to be at first taken were rather crude, and
had been rendered more so by the assurances of a German traveller we
met overnight that there was no valley between the Val di Brenta and
Monte Spinale.
Close to a second inn, a peasants' drinking-house, we left the road to
Pinzolo for a terrace-path skirting the lower slopes of Monte Spinale.
As we gradually turned the most projecting spur of the mountain, the
lower portion of Val Nambino opened beneath us. The morning clouds were
rapidly dispersing under the warm influence of the sun. High up in air,
severed from the solid earth by a grey belt of yet undissolved mist,
the great snow-plains of the Carè Alto shone in a golden glory such as
that in which Mont Blanc veils himself when seen from a hundred miles'
distance.[61] Thin vapours still clung round the dolomites of the Bocca
di Brenta, making their strange forms appear still more fantastic. Thus
far our path had been gradually descending. Now a valley opened exactly
where we looked for it at the south-eastern base of Monte Spinale.
A timber-slide, which, if in good repair, forms the most luxurious
of mountain-paths, avoiding all inequalities of ground, bridging
chasms and mounting by an almost uniform gradient, led us up the glen
which is known as the Vallesinella. Through breaks in the forest the
glacier-crowned crags of the Cima di Brenta were now seen for the
first time, followed on the north by an array of slender obelisks,
beaks, and crooked horns, the strangeness of which would, but for a
long experience in dolomite vagaries, have made us doubt our eyes. In
the foreground a romantic waterfall, framed amongst woods of birch,
beech, ash, and pine, dashed over the rocks. We could not but feel the
contrast between such mountain scenery, where Nature seems to revel in
the indulgence of her most poetical mood, and the dull formality of
much we had lately been living amongst in eastern Switzerland. To me
the Upper Engadine, with its long perspective of brown barren mountains
leading to an ignoble termination, suggests irresistibly the last
Haussman boulevard. Yet while the choicest spots of the Italian Tyrol
remain deserted, fashion crowds the bleak shores of St. Moritz, and
finds a charm even in the swamps of Samaden.
On a knoll above the waterfall stands a group of châlets. We were
attacked in passing them by a gigantic dog, armed with a collar
bristling with iron spikes. But for our ice-axes our expedition might
have been brought to an untimely end. As it was, we stole a flank march
on the foe, while Henri occupied his attention with a blow on the nose
which indisposed him to follow up our retreat. The timber-slide we
had lately followed comes down from the furthest corner of the recess
at the back of Monte Spinale, whence an easy pass leads into the Val
Teresenga, a lateral glen of Val di Sole, parallel to Val Selva.
Under the châlets a bridge crosses the stream, and a path mounts
steeply the opposite hillside. We, by keeping too long beside the
water, missed the track. While forcing our way back to it over the
slowly decaying trunks, and amongst the rich ferns and weeds, we were
tempted for a moment to fancy ourselves in a wilder land. Alas! the
woodcutter's axe is already busy on these slopes, and they will not
long retain their robes of primeval forest.
The path regained, a well-marked zigzag led us to the broad crest of
the ridge dividing Val Brenta from the Vallesinella. There is probably
no spot in the neighbourhood--not even excepting Monte Spinale--which
commands so general, and at the same time so picturesque, a view.
On three sides the ground falls rapidly towards Val Nambino and its
tributary glens. Full in front of us stood the defiant tower of the
Cima Tosa, with the two Boccas on either side of it. We could trace
every step of our ascent to the Bocca dei Camozzi, an expedition in
some respects even more singular than the Bocca di Brenta, and one
which will in time become well known to travellers. Beyond the valley
rose the comparatively tame forms of the granite range. Nearest to
us was my old conquest, the Presanella, the highest summit of the
whole country; further south, the upper snows of the Lares and Lobbia
glaciers spread in a great white curtain between the Carè Alto and
Adamello. Behind Monte Spinale the circle of mountains was completed by
the dolomites of Val Selva.
Our path forked on the crest, one branch descending to a châlet perched
on a shelf immediately overlooking the green plain at the head of
Val Brenta. From this alp a footpath of some kind leads down to the
track of the Bocca--a fact to be borne in mind by future travellers
who wish to see in a day as much as possible of the scenery of the
dolomites without crossing the pass to Molveno. We followed an upper
track, skirting the southern base of a group of rocky pinnacles, on
the highest of which stands a withered pine-stem, perhaps planted
there by some agile shepherd. Before long the path came to an end in
a rocky hollow immediately at the base of the precipices of the Cima
di Brenta. Their appearance, had we not learnt from afar something of
their secrets, would have been sufficiently forbidding. Over the gap
by which we were about to recross into the head of Vallesinella shot
up an astonishing dolomite, a facsimile of a Rhine castle, with a tall
slender turret, perhaps 300 feet high, at one corner. Once across the
ridge, the climber turns his back on all green things, and enters on
a stony desert. He is within range of the mountain batteries, and in a
fair position to judge of the havoc caused when frost and heat are the
gunners. Overhead tower sheer bastions of red rock; the ground at their
base is strewn with fragments varying in size from a suburban villa to
a lady's travelling-box. A dripping crag, with a scanty patch of turf
beside it, offered all that was wanted for a halting-place. We were
now overlooking the lower portion of the deep trench, filled higher up
by glacier, which divides the Cima di Brenta from the rock-peaks to
its north. Through it a pass, a worthy rival of the Bocca di Brenta,
and leading like it to the Val delle Seghe, has been discovered by Mr.
Tuckett.
A short distance above us was the glacier-covered breach by which we
felt confident the fortress might be won. To reach the level of the
ice we climbed under the base of an almost overhanging cliff, and
then across a boulder-strewn shelf. Mounting the sides of the glacier
by a ladder of steps kicked in the snow which still covered them, we
quickly reached and left below precipices and pinnacles which a short
time before had looked hopelessly near the sky. At the top of the
steep ascent lay a miniature snow-plain, surrounded by steep broken
crags. From its further end a sort of funnel fell through the cliffs
overhanging the Bocca di Brenta.
The summits of the Cima di Brenta were at some distance to the left,
and it seemed possible there might yet be difficulties in store for
us. The steep faces of rock fronting the south offered good hold
for feet and hands, and discarding the rope we took each of us his
own path. In a quarter of an hour we came to a broader part of the
mountain, and surmounted in succession two snowy cupolas. The second
looked like the summit, but on reaching it we saw a still higher crest
beyond. Between us and it was a gap, on the north side of which lies
a glacier which soon curls steeply over and falls upon the larger
ice-stream at the base of the mountain. A short scramble, down and up
again, brought us to the real top--a ridge of shattered crag nearly
level for some distance. From here our eyes should have feasted on
a view of rare beauty over the rich valleys of the Trentino to the
rival peaks of Cadore and Primiero, down upon the deep-lying waters of
Lago di Garda, and northwards over the snowy ranges of Tyrol. But our
ill-luck in distant views that season followed us to the last. Dark
clouds, the forerunners of a thunder-storm, had already wrapped the
distant mountain tops, and fleecy vapours choked up the valleys at our
feet. Nothing was clear but our own peak and the Cima Tosa, the huge
mass of which now scarcely overtopped us by the height of its final
snow-cap. We waited long and patiently for some friendly breeze to lift
even a corner of the white carpet which concealed from us all that lay
at the base of the precipices on the Molveno side. We prayed in vain;
the weather changed only for the worse, and we did not care to risk a
meeting with the thunder-cloud.
The storm which broke on us during the descent prevented any attempt to
vary the morning's route until we reached Val Nambino, when we turned
off to the left, and hurried down to rejoin our companions at Pinzolo.
* * * * *
Val Selva, though the shortest, is not the only tolerably easy means
of access from Campiglio to Val di Sole. To the left from the Ginevrie
Pass a path branches off to the Passo delle Malghette, and leads in six
hours to Pelizzano; to the right another track leads over at the back
of Monte Spinale to the Flavona alp--a high pasturage at the head of
Val Teresenga, one of the few valleys in the Alps six hours in length
which have escaped the all-seeing eyes of the author of the 'Alpine
Guide.'
The Passo di Grostè is sometimes ascended by visitors to Campiglio
as the nearest spot whence it is possible to look eastward over the
Trentino. The rocks fall away from the top towards the Flavona Alp
in a series of advancing courses of massive masonry, like the sides
of a Greek theatre. Without local guidance, it is easy for a solitary
traveller to get into difficulty amidst the maze of low cliffs.
The upper châlet of the Flavona Alp stands in the middle of a broad
sloping pasturage overlooked by the bold cliffs of Monte Fublan and
connected on the further side by an easy shepherds' pass with Val
Sporeggio. Another 'Bocca' lately brought to light leads under the
cliffs of the Cima di Brenta to the Val delle Seghe and Molveno. We
must now, however, follow the water, which carries us down into one
of the strangest recesses of the Alps. Our guide will soon desert us.
For the greater part of its length Val Teresenga has no stream and no
channel for one to run in. Where by every precedent there should be
a level trough, we find nothing but a confusion of high-piled mounds.
Mountains have fallen and blocked up this glen with their ruins, and
one's impulse, unscientific it may be, suggests an earthquake as the
only adequate cause for so extraordinary a cataclysm.
The open alps lie high up on the sunny shoulders of the Sasso Rosso
and Sasso Alto; the depths are clothed in dense forests rich with
a rank undergrowth of ferns and flowers, and, still more welcome to
dry-throated travellers, of wild fruit. One Saturday afternoon, when
the woodcutters and their families who visit the glen in summer were
on their way down to spend a holiday at their villages in Val di Non,
we met at least 200 people, scarcely one of whom was without a basket
filled with bilberries, strawberries and raspberries.
Suddenly a new colour shines through the branches, and we reach the
shore of a large circular sheet of water hemmed in on every side by
cliffs and woods. By such a solitary pool might old Saturn have sat,
Forest on forest hung about his head,
Like cloud on cloud.
In the centre the water is dark blue as an Egyptian night; round the
rim fallen pine-trunks are strewn in disorder along the bottom and dye
the border of the lake the deepest red.
Below the lake smooth, wall-like cliffs threaten the valley, and huge
rock-slips again bury the stream, giving by their rough unclothed
surface an air of desolation to the landscape. When the water suddenly
gushes out, a noble fountain, half its waters are at once seized and
imprisoned afresh in stone channels, which are soon seen high up on
opposite sides of the glen running boldly along the face of vertical
cliffs to carry refreshment to the upper slopes of Val di Non.
The cart-road descends rapidly through a deep and narrow gorge which,
after making a sharp angle, opens into the noble expanse of the great
valley a mile below Tuenno, and three or four below Cles. The high-road
would soon carry us down to the Adige and the railway-station of San
Michele. But we have yet to see the Lago di Molveno and the back of the
Brenta.
At the eastern base of the dolomitic chain, more than 7,000 feet
below its crowning crags, lies a deep trough, bounded on the further
side by the crest of Monte Gazza, which, descending in steep cliffs
into the valley of the Adige, slopes more gently towards the west. A
considerable portion of this depression, the waters of which are turned
in opposite directions by a low bank traversing its centre, is filled
by the Lago di Molveno, one of the largest of high Alpine lakes. A
strong stream flowing from the Val delle Seghe is its principal feeder,
and, strange to say, it has no visible outlet. The village of Molveno,
situated at the head of the lake, is the natural head-quarters for the
exploration of the neighbouring mountains. Its situation, at a height
of 3,000 feet above the sea, and close to peaks of nearly 11,000 feet,
is so attractive, that if reasonable accommodation were provided it
would become a favourite halting-place for travellers. At present it is
almost completely unknown.[62]
The tracks to Molveno most frequented by the country people are those
from the gorge of the Rocchetta in Val di Non and from the valley of
the Sarca, near the Baths of Comano. We shall choose the northern.
We had spent a day of continuous downpour in driving down the Val
di Non, and it was already late afternoon when our dripping omnibus
deposited us in front of the wayside inn which marked the turning-point
of the path to Val di Spor and Molveno.
As we wound up the steep hill the last clouds blew over, and wide
views opened on all sides over the rich gentle slopes of the Nonsberg,
covered with white villages, whose wet walls and roofs glittered
in the slanting sunshine. Before long Spor itself came into sight,
lifted high on a healthy hillside and capped by a picturesque castle.
The sound of its sonorous church bells followed us far on our way.
Hereabouts we left the cart-road and followed a shorter track under
the castle-crag and along the eastern hillside to the village of
Cenedago. Hence a short ascent over meadows, gorgeous in June with
tiger-lilies, leads to the watershed, and the path, passing a pine-girt
pool, begins almost imperceptibly to descend before Andolo is reached
and the road rejoined. Our way now followed the right bank of the Bior
brook, through woods above whose tree-tops tall dolomite pinnacles
shot up against the sky. The forest soon thickened, and, although the
ground no longer rose in front, shut out all view in the direction of
Molveno, until on a sudden a corner was turned, and at the end of a
long dark-green vista,
Lo! the shining levels of the lake,
confined on one side by a steep brow, on the other by the bold
buttresses of the Brenta group. Far away to the south, seen through a
space of air still aglow and quivering with the late sunbeams, rose the
rounded crests of the hills above Riva. Close at hand, to be reached
by some well-made zigzags, lay Molveno village on the shore of its lake
and beside a little bay of singular beauty, shut in between steep banks
and spanned at its mouth by a wooden bridge. The whole picture recalled
some imaginative landscape of a great painter rather than any other
Alpine scene.
[Illustration: MOLVENO.
Looking up Val delle Seghe.
J. Gilbert delt.]
We would willingly have lingered before it. But the sun had already
set, and it was necessary to seek food and shelter without delay.
We were led to an irregular open space, which, despite its fountain,
did not venture to call itself a piazza, and into a low, broad, dark
entry, where among a litter of carts and logs we sat down while the
guides sought the people of the inn. They were already half asleep,
and came down with bewildered looks to tell us that there was no food
in the house, but fish--yes--in the lake. Had not our own supplies
fortunately furnished supper we should have fared but poorly. Nor
did the accommodation promise well. Orcus itself can scarcely have a
blacker portal than that which yawned for us on our way to the upper
floor. The walls were coated with layer upon layer of soot and smoke,
each so thick that the only reasonable theory seemed to be that in
some alteration of the premises the original chimney of the house had
been turned into the staircase without any preliminary cleansing. The
bedrooms upstairs proved better than such an approach had led us to
expect. It was an illustration of the primitive and trustful manners
of the place that my bed and the next were separated by a baby's
cot, the tenant of which, thus abandoned to our tender mercies by its
parents, wisely refrained from expressing any emotion, and was not even
discovered until morning.
The access from Molveno into the heart of the Brenta chain is by the
Val delle Seghe--the valley of the saw-mills, the torrent of which
discharges itself through a considerable delta into the lake a quarter
of a mile south of the village. This glen is narrow and shut in by
magnificent smooth, red cliffs of great height shooting out of dense
beech forests. After penetrating three or four miles due west, rising
steeply all the time, it abruptly terminates in a basin enclosed by
the wildest crags. The two streams which here meet fall from recesses
lying north and south, and giving access respectively to the Bocca
di Vallazza, a pass leading to the high pasturages at the head of Val
Teresenga, and to the more famous Bocca di Brenta. Between the two a
third pass, discovered by Mr. Tuckett, leads directly to Campiglio by
the Vallesinella.
We left Molveno by starlight, and dawn had but just bared the sky
when we turned up the rough hillside leading to the Bocca di Brenta.
The track at first climbed so steeply through the dewy forest that we
were often glad to catch at a branch or root to ease the strain. The
pasturage above is the Malga dei Vitelli, and the calves and the boys
who tend them can afford to dispense with zigzags. The mothers of the
herd are in more luxurious quarters, chewing the sweet herbage of the
Flavona Alp or wandering over the broad ridges of Monte Gazza.
On a sudden the tip of the rock opposite us glowed as if with ruddy
flame; for a few seconds every pinnacle was of the same colour, then
the whole sun reached them, and over the solemn greens and greys of the
lower earth the mountain rampart flashed out gorgeous with light and
colour. The red gold assumed at sunrise by rocks of this formation may
be better realised by a glance at Turner's 'Agrippina landing with the
Ashes of Germanicus' (No. 523 in the National Gallery), than by reading
pages of description.
Nowhere does a climber's attempt appear more ambitious and hopeless
than in a dolomite country. The broken crags serve as scales by
which to measure distance and emphasise height. There is none of the
encouraging but deceitful monotony of snow-slopes. Yet as, ourselves
still untouched by the sun's rays, we steadily mounted our treadmill
path, huge towers which half-an-hour before had seemed sky-piercing,
sank beneath us and gave place to another tier rising far overhead.
At last the battlements were reached and the snowy breach of the Bocca
opened on the right. But the pass did not satisfy our ambition, and we
told Nicolosi to lead us against the keep itself. Passing round a rocky
corner, we found ourselves for the first time facing the huge mass of
the Cima Tosa. Two fields of ice lying at different levels clothed its
shoulders, over which rose a bold head of rock. Below and behind us
lay a strange tableland pierced by a deep punchbowl, empty as if it
had been recently drained in a witches' Sabbat. But its singularity
did not long detain our eyes, for in the east, far as the eye could
reach, shone range behind range of deep-toned mountains, and the memory
wandered to past summers as we counted over again the noble roll of the
Venetian Alps.
The Cima Tosa is everywhere cliff-girt, and it is difficult to decide
where to attack it. The spot where we approached it did not look more
tempting than others. But Nicolosi had the advantage of experience,
whereby we gained confidence and lost excitement.
To avoid a burning sun, we lunched in the cave between the ice and
rock. After a few yards' scrambling the foot of an absolute wall was
reached. Its height may be estimated by the fact that our rope, sixty
feet long, just sufficed to pull a man up the whole of it. It was
therefore some ten feet less than the rope. But although practically
perpendicular throughout, and at the top even considerably overhanging,
so much so that in descending I tried in vain, sitting on the edge,
to watch the progress of my predecessor, it was not dangerous or even
difficult. Leave on any wall bricks projecting throughout and send a
man to the top of it with a rope, it is no hard matter for any one of
moderate activity and nerve to follow. No strain may be put on the rope
round your waist, yet it is a sort of moral banister which places one
completely at one's ease.
This crag scaled, the rest of the way, though steep, proved easy. The
rope was left, and we scrambled as we liked up alternate rocks and
snow-beds until the final snow-dome of the mountain was gained.
The view resembled in general character those from the Adamello
summits, except that the neighbouring snow-fields hid the Swiss Alps,
and in revenge the upper end of Lago di Garda lay, a blue polished
sheet, beneath the broad back of Monte Baldo.
The neighbouring tower or buttress, so noble from the Val di Brenta,
was now a stone's throw below us. Its top may some day be reached, but
there is a gap to be crossed, and the Matterhorn has not more awful
precipices. A long trough, filled with the snows which break off year
by year from the mountain crest, falls 3,000 feet, at an almost uniform
angle, on to the Val di Brenta side of the Bocca. A party of steady,
patient men with ice-axes might mount or even descend it in safety, but
it is a place where haste or carelessness would mean broken necks.
It is easy to return by the ordinary route to the corner whence
the peak was first seen, and then traverse ledges to the top of the
Bocca. The way from the pass to the plain beneath the great tower lies
along the bottom of a trough, snow-filled and steep above, then more
level and grassy. The last descent is made by a stony zigzag on the
right-hand side of the cleft. Run down it as swiftly as you may, and
then fling yourself on your back among the creeping pines and look up
straight into the sky, where more than 4,000 feet overhead the vapours
meet and part round the astounding rock-tower which shoots up solitary
and unsupported until its top is lost in the sky. Nowhere in the Alps
will you gain so strong an impression of sheer height.
Then careless of 'times,' and leisurely, as if your sinews had not been
strung up by a severe climb, loiter through the strawberry-beds and
linger at the 'malghe' until the sun shines only on the great Lares
snowfields, and the lower world is cool in shade and rich in colour.
When as you stroll down to Pinzolo or up to Campiglio you think over
the impressions of the day, we shall surely agree that the Brenta group
are as 'Delectable Mountains' as any Alpine pilgrim need sigh for.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] See Appendix E on the nomenclature of this group.
[59] We may possibly have mistaken the Dosson di Genova or
Corno Bianco for this peak.
[60] See Appendix C.
[61] This view is engraved as the frontispiece to the
Jahrbuch for '69-70 of the Swiss Club; but the artist,
fancying himself to have before him the snow-fields of
the Lobbia Glacier, has gone hopelessly wrong in his
identification of the peaks. His Crozzon di Lares is the Carè
Alto, his Crozzon di Fargorida the Corno Alto, his Lobbia
Alta the Corno di Cavento, and his Lobbia Bassa the Crozzon
di Lares.
[62] Six Englishmen visited it in 1873; of these my own
party supplied three, a fourth was a friend whom I directed
thither.
[Illustration: THE PRIMIERO DISTRICT.
Until more accurate measurements have been made and
published it is useless to assign exact heights to the
Primiero peaks.
The Cimon della Pala and Cima di Vezzana are certainly
within 100 ft. of 11,000 ft. The Palle di San Martino and
Sass Maor from 300 to 400 ft. lower.
The Cima di Fradusta and Cima di Ball are probably
the next in height and the lesser peaks average about 10,000
ft.
Stanford's Geogl. Estabt., 55 Charing Cross, London.
London: Longmans & Co.]