THE PASSES OF PRIMIERO.
Past those jagged spires, where yet
Foot of man was never set;
Past a castle yawning wide,
With a great breach in its side,
To a nest-like valley.--J. INGELOW.
The rede is ryfe that oftentime
Great clymbers fall unsoft.--SPENSER.
THE LOWER PASSES--PANEVEGGIO--SAN MARTINO DI CASTROZZA--THE PATHS TO
AGORDO--VAL DI SAN LUCANO--PASSO DI CANALE--PASSO DELLE CORNELLE--PASSO
DI TRAVIGNOLO--CIMA DI VEZZANA.
Some time since a nineteenth-century Arthur, an enemy of shams moral
or mountainous and a President of the Alpine Club, wandering beyond
his usual bounds, found himself suddenly in the presence of a bevy of
formidable giants. Accustomed though he was to such encounters, the
prodigious stature of these monsters, their impenetrable armour, and
perhaps more than all the weird cruelty of their appearance, as with
flame-tipped crests they stood up in a mighty line against the sunset,
made such an impression on his mind that on his return, instead of
calling on his Round Table--the Alpine Club--to overthrow the untamed
brood, he solemnly warned them as they valued their lives to let it
alone.
The warning was of course ineffectual. One of the youngest knights
rushed to the spot, went straight at the very tallest and most
repulsive of the giant family, and returned victorious after an
encounter, brief it is true, but of the most deadly character. Their
prestige thus rudely shaken, others of the giants fell tamely enough,
and but two or three still remain, owing perhaps their prolonged escape
as much to their remoteness as to their individual terrors.
So far as I am concerned I have no such thrilling tale to tell as that
recorded by Mr. Whitwell in the 'Alpine Journal'[63] of the ascent of
the Cimon della Pala. On the only two occasions when I have come near
the giants of Primiero circumstances have hindered me from doing much
more than seek to detect the weak points in their harness; to abandon
a somewhat strained metaphor, to make passes. For although I have been
successful in reaching the second in height of these summits, this was,
as it proved, little of a mountaineering feat compared to the passage
of the gap beside it.
Passes have, however, for the general tourist more practical if less
poetical interest than peaks. I shall not scruple therefore to devote
some pages to the tracks which lead either round or across this
singular group.
The mountain-knot which raises its wellnigh perpendicular masses behind
Primiero may be compared to a horseshoe from which protrude spikes
of irregular length. The easiest paths, the only ones practicable for
beasts of burden, wind round the base of the protuberances; the higher
passes, fit for shepherds or foot-travellers, penetrate the recesses
between the lofty spurs and cross the horseshoe itself. The former are
not the least fascinating.
For this country owes its wonderful beauty in great part to the
constantly recurring contrast between the tall bare cliffs of the great
rock islands and the soft forms of the green hills which like a sea
roll their verdurous waves between them. Round the peaks of Primiero
lies a region of wide-spreading downs, scarcely divided from each other
by low grassy ridges; of forest-clad vales where the rich soil nurtures
a dense undergrowth of ferns and moisture-loving plants. The huge
crests of the Sass Maor or the Cimon della Pala never look so wonderful
as when, seen from among the rhododendrons and between the dark spires
of pine, their 'rosy heights come out above the lawns.'
It may perhaps be thought that I might well have passed over as
described by former travellers the two main lines of traffic by which
the people of the country communicate with their neighbours of Val
Fassa and Agordo. But the account given of these passes by Messrs.
Gilbert and Churchill seems to me to have been damped by the bad
weather which those energetic explorers met with in this neighbourhood;
and the pages of subsequent travellers have added but little to their
report. Moreover, the times marching on, even at Primiero, have made
many changes and smoothed away many obstacles, and thus rendered more
or less obsolete the tales of even a few years ago.
The greatest of these changes is the new carriage-road which has lately
been constructed from Primiero to Predazzo, in Val Fassa. From Primiero
to the top of the pass it is finished in 'the well-known style' of an
Austrian military highway; the descent through the forest to Paneveggio
is not as yet equally solidly constructed,[64] but the whole road is
perfectly safe and easy for spring-carriages.
The inns along the way (there are now three in the space of an eight
hours' drive) have shared the fortunes of the road. At San Martino di
Castrozza an hotel to contain twenty bedrooms has just been built, and
will be opened next summer. The situation, 5,000 feet above the sea,
amidst luxuriant meadows but at the very base of the greatest peaks of
the country, is, so far as I know, unequalled amongst the dolomites.
A new inn of more modest capacity has been erected on the very crest
of the Pass. Paneveggio, once the rudest of peasants' houses of call,
now furnishes ample if homely fare, and boasts at least one comfortable
bedroom.
* * * * *
Val Fassa ends, and the country under the spell of the Primiero peaks
begins, where the new road, having toiled up a green hillside to the
little chapel and hamlet of La Madonna della Neve, bends at a level
round the base of a flat-topped block of rock and pines which lies
across the valley and cuts off the 'Forest of Paneveggio' from the
outer world.
Those who have seen mountain forests in their virgin splendour amongst
ranges moistened by more abundant rains and heated by stronger suns
must ever after feel that, beautiful, nay incomparable, as the Alps
are in many respects, in this one they distinctly fail. Even setting
aside the ravages of man, Alpine forests can hardly have equalled in
richness and variety those of the more southern ranges, such as the
Himalayas, and Caucasus, which seem the paradise of the vegetation
of the temperate zone. But the axe, in the hands of Swiss and Italian
peasants, has been used with equal stupidity and effect. The barrier
interposed by nature between the valley and the impending avalanches
has been destroyed, the foliage which caught and distributed the
rain-storms has been hacked away. For the sake of an immediate gain,
the ignorant villagers have left their homes open to the rushing snows
of spring; their saturated hillsides and meadows to be torn up by the
autumn rains.
The 'Forest of Paneveggio' is interesting as an almost solitary
specimen of a district where sensible forest laws have been for some
time in force, and where in consequence the pine-woods are, for general
luxuriance and for the size attained by single trees, amongst the
finest in the Alps. The trees are periodically thinned, and wherever a
patch has been cleared young pines are at once planted, and the space
enclosed so as to protect the tender tops against cattle. Let us hope
that the exertions of many intelligent men both in Switzerland and
Italy may induce the peasantry in other districts to follow the wise
example set by these southern Tyrolese.
The hospice of Paneveggio stands on a sloping meadow on the right
bank of the Travignolo. It is a plain massive building, one of those
raised in bygone years as resting-places and refuges for the people
of the country on the long roads through the wildernesses separating
their scattered hamlets. Across the stream rise the steep, green sides
of Monte Castellazzo. Guiribello, a model 'casera' or mountain-farm,
the property of an Austrian archduke, lies high on one of its upper
shelves. On either side of this promontory flow the sources of the
Travignolo, one gathering itself in a wide basin under the passes to
San Martino and the Laghi di Colbricon, the other flowing out of a
deep dell at the immediate base of the Pala and Vezzana, both peaks
of 11,000 feet, and, next to the Marmolata, the highest summits of the
dolomite country.
The high-road, soon crossing the latter stream, winds in long, shady
zigzags through the forest, and then reaches broad, sweet-scented
pastures lying on the shoulder of Monte Castellazzo, and overhung by
the thin wedge of the Cimon della Pala.
The Costonzella Pass is a mere grassy bank, from which a gradual
descent over open alps leads to San Martino. The great peaks are almost
too near for picturesque effect, unless when clouds partially veil
them, filling the place of foreground. Then the spectacle of the top of
the Cimon breaking through a mist might be enough to frighten a nervous
traveller, who may naturally expect it the next moment to topple over
on his head.
Pedestrians who are not afraid of distance, especially those going
towards Primiero, will do well to abandon the high-road. From the
hospice of Paneveggio a track mounts along the main branch of the
Travignolo, and passing in succession before the precipices of the
Fuocobono, the Vezzana, and the Pala, and leaving on the left the
glacier which descends between the two latter peaks, crosses the
back of Monte Castellazzo near the foot of the Pala, and rejoins the
high-road. Lovers of Alpine tarns should cross it at right angles and
take a track which, starting from the highest chalet on the northern
side of the carriage-pass, leads over the broken slopes of Monte
Cavallazzo to the Laghi di Colbricon, two blue lakes framed by green
fir-clad mounds, over which peer the crests not only of the great
Pala but of the more distant Rosengarten and Marmolata. The upper lake
lies on the lowest pass between the headwaters of the Cismone and the
Travignolo. The descent towards San Martino is at first steep; the
mule-track lies some distance to the right, but a footpath a few yards
to the left of the lake leads down at once into a picturesque glen. At
the foot of the second descent is a 'casera' standing on a green lawn.
Seen from this point the great turret-crowned wall is like a vivid but
impossible dream of mountain splendour. The sweeping outlines of dark
forest form a foreground out of which its rigid flame-coloured ramparts
rise like some phantom castle against the Italian blue.
A short walk over hay meadows leads to San Martino di Castrozza, a
chapel standing near a substantial building formerly used as a hospice
and frontier station, but lately converted into an Alpine 'pension.'
It stands on a level meadow near the point where the stream, hitherto
tranquil, makes a sudden plunge southwards. Immediately behind the
house rises the giant row of Primiero peaks. From the Pala to the Cima
Cimedo the whole line is in sight from top to bottom, and the only
fault of the view, if it can be called one, is that we are too near
the mountains. At Campiglio we long to approach the peaks; here we draw
back on to the opposite hillsides, where we may break their outline and
see but one or two at a time between the nearer brows.
But a more delightful halting-place I cannot imagine, whether for
climbers or idlers. At hand are many easy and shady strolls, and two or
three hours places you on the top of the great wall free to climb its
crests and explore all the mysteries of the weird tableland which lies
behind it. To the south the Sass Maor and Palle di San Martino raise
their unconquered, but probably conquerable, peaks. The former at any
rate may best be attacked from this side. The road to Primiero sinks
in a long descent, terraced along the right-hand hills, and commanding
superb and constantly shifting views of the opposite chain.
The path from Agordo, still the most frequented, though no longer since
the construction of the carriage-road to Predazzo the easiest, approach
to Primiero, has often had injustice done to it in many ways. It has
been described on the one hand as shorter than it really is, on the
other as a difficult and rugged track; and little justice has been done
in any quarter to its great and varied beauty.
Average walkers must allow for the pass seven hours of very 'actual
walking,' excluding all those 'petites haltes' which Toppfer justly
counted amongst the happiest moments of life, the five or ten minutes'
rest in the shade to admire a view or drink a cup of cold water. But
for the whole way there is a good mule-path, although, as on almost
all mule-paths, there are pieces which no one with the free use of
his limbs would by preference ride down. One of the most tiresome of
these rough places is the steep hill under the castle of La Pietra.
But this the foot-traveller may easily avoid, and at the same time
gain some superb views. On leaving La Fiera he will have to cross the
river, and pass through the village of Transacqua, one of the cluster
which form Primiero, then to climb a very steep little track up the
hill immediately behind until he reaches a terrace-path running nearly
at a level along the mountain-side. From the first corner one looks
back for the last time on the lake-like valley, with its islands of
villages and waves of Indian corn. The path then bends along a shelf of
meadows, with the whole chain of the dolomites in full view opposite.
Further the shelf broadens to a crescent-like plain dotted with châlets
lying immediately above the castle of La Pietra, and looking over Count
Welsberg's park and away into the heart of Val Pravitale and Val di
Canale. Hence a short descent leads back into the regular road above
the stoniest part of the ascent, and about halfway between the castle
and the pass.
A little inn, supplying drinkable wine, stands on the further side of
the ridge. For the next two hours the path leads through scenery of a
large and noble aspect. Deep below lies a valley, narrowing to a savage
gorge before it releases its stream to flow out into the sunny meadows
of Val di Mel. Above its head a broad-shouldered isolated mountain,
known by the simple name of Il Piz, towers high into the air.
The first village in Venetia, conspicuous by a large new church, offers
itself for a midday halt. A grassy slope leads thence to the crests
of the wooded ridges which divide the glens sloping towards Agordo.
Numerous paths wander about their tops, and unless the first left-hand
track is taken it is easy to miss the way amongst them. This leads
down into Val Sarzana, a long but pleasant glen, supporting several
villages, and opening nearly opposite the little town of Agordo.
So much for those of the main tracks, of which I can speak from
experience. The road down the valley to Feltre is still incomplete;
other paths can be learnt of from the 'Alpine Guide.' I must turn
to the higher passages across the great horseshoe, which, if not
absolutely unknown, were in any case known only to a few goatherds and
hunters before the expeditions here described.
On the morning of May 30, 1864, a strange arrival disturbed the quiet
of the little mountain town of Agordo, and collected what might pass
for a crowd on the piazza, which in England we should call a green.
Soon after nine A.M. the strangers who were the cause of this unusual
stir issued from the inn door in an armed procession--four Englishmen
headed by a Swiss and a Savoyard, the two latter girt with rope. Each
individual brandished a formidable axe. The native mind was by no
means satisfied with the explanations offered by the strangers, and
(as our guides afterwards told us) rushed to the conclusion that we
were a party of diggers wandering over the mountains to seek spots
favourable for mines, and that our strange-looking implements must be
for breaking rocks in search of gold. At the village of Taibon, some
half-an-hour above Agordo, a path crosses the river and turns into a
side-glen--the Valle di San Lucano. After-experience has confirmed our
first impressions of this valley. It is one of the most imposing spots
in this romantic region. The level bottom is dotted with pines and
watered by one of those sparkling streams too rare in the Western Alps,
which, content with their own station in life, do not seek notoriety
by doing harm to their neighbours. On one hand the Palle di San Lucano
rises in stupendous cliffs, in many places smooth and perpendicular as
a newly-built wall, and capped by three massive towers. On the other is
Monte Agnaro, a more broken and slightly less precipitous dolomite, its
rugged face furrowed by numerous clefts filled at this early season by
beds of snow, the remains of spring avalanches. At the châlets of Col,
an hour's walk from the high-road, the glen split into two branches,
the one short and steep running up to the Forcella Gesurette, a grassy
gap leading to Gares, the other a deep trench (sometimes called the Val
d'Angoraz) penetrating deeply into the corner of the Primiero horseshoe
and ending in a wild precipice-closed amphitheatre. A herdsman assured
us that by following a path on the western slopes of Val d'Angoraz
we might find a passage across the mountains, occasionally used by
shepherds, but, as he added, over snow and superlatively 'cattivo.' The
savage and uninviting character of the cliffs at the extreme head of
the valley made us quite ready to follow his advice.
Our first start that morning had been from Belluno, and it was now
approaching noon. Just torn from the languid luxury of Venetian
gondolas and under the scorching influence of a midday sun we crept
upwards but slowly, and the only eagerness displayed amongst us was in
finding from time to time some plausible excuse for a halt.
Underwood slowly gave place to pines, and these in turn yielded to
Alpine rhododendrons, amongst which our path came to an end. Several
hours, however, had passed before we gained the limit of vegetation,
and sat down on the rocks to consider our line of march over the
snow-slopes which still separated us from the wished-for ridge. The
wild cliffs of the Sasso di Campo, here and there nursing infant
glaciers in their rough recesses, rose opposite. On the north stretched
a wide elevated pasture, lying on the back of the Palle di San Lucano
and the slopes of the Cima di Pape.
Once on the snow all our fatigue vanished before the delicious air,
and our spirits shared the exhilaration. It was fortunate they did so,
for the scouts of the party, who had pressed on to the apparent pass,
found on the further side wide-spreading snow-fields, barred at a great
distance by a rocky ridge. After studying the military map of Venetia
(in which, as we afterwards found, all this region is laid down in
the vaguest and most misleading manner), we determined to retrace our
steps and make for a higher gap in the ridge on our right. This was a
mistake, for had we gone straight on we should have found ourselves,
with hardly any further ascent, on the edge of Val di Canale,[65] near
the spot we afterwards reached by a most circuitous route.
On gaining this second depression we saw more slopes between us and the
ridge which now seemed to be the watershed. The third pass in its turn
proved only a gap in one of the numerous low spurs running across the
great tableland which lies at the back of the rim of peaks seen from
the valley of the Cismone.
We were now in the very heart of this huge stony wilderness. In every
direction stretched an undulating expanse of whitish-grey rock, brittle
in substance and pockmarked by weather. Strange snow-filled pits here
and there broke the monotony of the weird waste, which, but for these
and its greater unevenness, resembled a rocky shore between low and
high water-mark. But the impression of barrenness and desolation far
exceeded what such a comparison will suggest; snow instead of water
filled the crannies, and the life of sea-weeds and sea-creatures was
altogether wanting in this middle realm of utter nakedness. There was
too much sunshine for the glacier, too much frost for the flowers which
began to find root scarcely 500 feet lower wherever the sun shone on a
patch of disintegrated rock. Here there was nothing even for a chamois
to nibble.
On the south the tableland was bounded by a line of snowy eminences,
on the west by a fantastic cockscomb of lofty crags, perhaps part of
the spur of the Palle di San Martino. But the wide horizon to the north
and east bore witness to the height on which we stood. Nothing impeded
our view over the central dolomite region, and beyond it we recognised
against the horizon the pale snowy line of the distant Tauern.
But the beautiful evening shadows already creeping over the view gave
us cause for as much uneasiness as delight. We had started late from
Agordo; time had flown by and it was within an hour of sunset, while
we were yet far on the wrong side of the Pass. Not a moment was to
be lost if we wished to sleep in the valley of Primiero. We wandered
incessantly on over shoulders, down gullies, across wide basins of soft
snow, until about sunset we stood at last on the edge of steep rocks
falling away into a southern valley, the far-sought Val di Canale.
A succession of snow-filled gullies rendered the descent easy, and
enabled us to slide swiftly downwards for some 2,000 feet. When we
reached the bottom of the glen daylight had already left us, and the
young moon, which threw romantic lights upon the huge pinnacles of
the Sasso di Campo and Sasso Ortiga, disdained the humbler office of
serving as a lantern to our path.
It was now so dark that we had to keep close together to avoid losing
ourselves. After reaching a brow we too hastily began to swing
ourselves down steep slopes by the tough branches of the creeping
pines. There was a cliff at the bottom, and it was necessary to
remount. Anyone who knows the difference between working upwards and
downwards through such a thicket, even when fresh and by daylight, will
sympathise with our despair. Yet despite slips, tumbles into holes,
slaps in the face from swinging branches, we scrambled somehow up
again. At the next attempt we got down with less difficulty.
In time we came to the bed of a torrent, here dry, as the water
preferred a subterranean course; for half-an-hour more we stumbled
along amongst the white boulders, every minute adding to our bruises.
Then we fancied we had found a path, and got into thick woods on the
left side of the glen. Soon the track, if it was one, was lost sight
of, and we wandered off into deeper darkness than ever. At last we were
brought to a dead halt. A steep step broke the valley, and cliffs, from
the base of which the river sent up far distant murmurs, barred our
progress. Whilst we were all engaged in beating about for any traces
of a path, a shout was raised. We eagerly enquired the cause. 'I have
got a native here, but I can't make him understand,' was the reply.
We rushed to our friend's assistance, and found his native to be our
German guide, whom in the darkness he had taken for a shepherd, and was
now cross-examining in his best Italian.
After this disappointment we resigned ourselves to the prospect of a
night in the forest. A fire was soon lighted in the nearest sheltered
hollow, and sufficient fir-branches cut down to form a bed. We should
have been happy had any water been at hand, but two oranges divided
between four were but poor relief to parched throats. As it was, we
were disposed to reflect that the same moonlight which lit our sky was
falling softly on the Piazza di San Marco, and to look back with fond
regret on the ices and lemonade of Florian's. After a long absence
François reappeared with the indiarubber bag, which usually held our
wine, full of water. Then our cravings were satisfied, and we soon gave
up watching the stars sparkling between the pine-branches and fell fast
asleep.
Daylight, as usual, revealed an easy escape from the perplexities of
the night, and we speedily found ourselves in the exquisite meadows
surrounding Count Welsberg's shooting-box, and an hour later filed down
the high street of La Fiera.
In 1864 'Alpinisti Inglesi' were unheard-of novelties at Primiero,
and our procession filled every doorway with large wondering eyes, and
roused conjectures wilder even than those of the Agordans. Some words
of French spoken to François were caught by eager listeners, and it was
currently reported in the little town that we were a party of French
officers engaged in a surreptitious survey of the mountains. For the
simple mountaineers could not believe that Napoleon's word would not
yet be kept, and at least an effort made to complete the work of 1859
and free Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic.
No one, however, interfered with our siesta, or prevented us from
leaving early in the afternoon for San Martino. Here, however, we found
some officious person had given warning to the douaniers, and had not
Tuckett's German been fluent and our passports in order, we should have
no doubt had difficulty. As it was, we spent a very pleasant evening
with the officials, who were glad enough of a little company, and
invited us to join them in the circular chimney-corner which is the
best, if not the only, invention which has come out of Tyrol.
The old hospice was as rough quarters as could well be found, and our
beds did not interfere with early rising. Our object was to discover
a pass leading directly to Gares and so to Cencenighe and Caprile. We
had found it impossible to obtain any information overnight, but, as we
were starting, a peasant on his way to Val Fassa offered to set us in
the right path. We soon found, however, that he was leading us too far
north, towards a far-away mule-track on the other side of Paneveggio.
Much to our friend's surprise, therefore, we turned our backs on him
and our faces towards the great wall of cliffs which rises immediately
to the east of San Martino. A long climb through a fir-wood brought
us to the bare crags. The only difficulty, if it can be called one,
lies in hitting off the easiest point at which to pass a low cliff.
Above this the way lies over steep slopes covered with loose rubbish.
Three hours after leaving San Martino we stood on the crest close
to the base of the Cima della Rosetta. The view to the west was very
wide and beautiful. We looked over a foreground composed of mountains
pasture-clothed to their summits, beyond which the snows of the Orteler
and Œtzthaler groups, the towers of the Brenta, and the sharp peak
of the Presanella shone in the distance. We were now on the further
edge of the great waste we had wandered over two days previously, and
in the centre of the rocky peaks which dominate it. Several of them
appeared accessible. One, the Rosetta, is in fact only half-an-hour's
easy scramble, and well rewards the trouble of an ascent by a delicious
glimpse of the fertile fields of Primiero as well as a more extensive
panorama.
[Illustration: THE CIMON DELLA PALA AND CIMA DI VEZZANA
J. Gilbert delt.]
At our feet was a deep hollow lying under the back of the Cimon della
Pala. We descended into it, and found it the first of a series of
basins connected by steep troughs, at this early season snow-filled,
but later in the year, when the rocks are bare, steep enough to require
some scrambling.
We were threading a defile among the mountain-tops. Sheer walls
of cliff impended on one hand; on the other the rocks of the Cima
di Vezzana towered aloft in forms of the utmost daring, yet too
massive and sublime to suggest the epithet 'grotesque.' Here was
rock scenery seen in its purest simplicity, with no variety or relief
from its sternness except what it could itself afford in the shapes
and colouring of the crags. It was a Val Travernanzes destitute of
its only elements of life--verdure and water. In one of the lower
troughs a slender stream took the place of snow as a covering for the
rock-surfaces, and we were forced to get down as best we could by the
side of and sometimes through the cascade. At the end of the last basin
the stream entered a narrow gorge. There was still no trace of path,
and sometimes only just sufficient footing beside the water. We began
to fear lest we might be trapped, when notched logs of wood placed
as rough ladders against the rocks showed that some passage existed.
Presently the opening of the gorge came in sight, and the opposing
rock-walls gave space for an exquisite picture--the green slopes
and rugged summit of the Cima di Pape bathed in a flood of sunshine.
After plundering a bed of lilies of the valley (a rare flower in the
Alps), we came to the brink of the cliff above the Gares valley. A
log had been thrown across the water on the very edge of a waterfall.
This rustic bridge was not substantial to look at, and too narrow for
anything but Blondin or a monkey to walk over. We crossed it singly
astride, and found on the other side a path which led us by a wide
sweep round the rock-wall. This track recrosses the stream, still a
mass of foam, beneath a fall which is perhaps the prettiest in the
dolomite country. It then zigzags down rhododendron-covered slopes to
the floor of the valley.
The village of Gares is perched on a knoll in the centre of a fertile
basin and in full view of the green slopes of the Gesurette. Rugged
cliffs form a complete barrier on the west, and the tiny gap from which
we had emerged looked now the most unlikely entrance possible to a
pass.
A haymaker of whom we enquired for an 'osteria' took possession of
us and led the way to his cottage, where, having first hunted out
benches and stools from all sorts of corners, he entertained us on
milk, cheese, and butter. He knew of the existence of the pass we
had crossed, but spoke of it as only used by chamois-hunters, and
was unable to give it a name. Our host was most unwilling to receive
even a trifle for his hospitality. Beyond Gares the valley is open
and less wild and savage than most of the neighbouring glens. It runs
at first in a north-easterly direction along the base of the Cima di
Pape, until at an hour's distance from Gares the Val di Valles, through
which runs the mule-track of the Valles Pass to Paneveggio, opens on
the left and the united streams bend due east to join Val d'Agordo.
At the corner stands Forno dei Canali, the bakehouse of the valleys, a
long straggling village which uses the only path for a drain, and sadly
needs sanitary reform. We had to creep under the walls and jump from
stone to stone to avoid the sea of filth. Just beyond the last houses
Monte Civetta, more tower-like in form than usual, closes the view.
A picturesque defile--where the river, which flows beside the road,
was almost choked by logs on their voyage from the upper forest to the
saw-mills--led down to Cencenighe, a short two hours below the lake of
Alleghe and somewhat less from Agordo.
We have now twice crossed the great horseshoe. There remains a third
passage, the only one unknown to the people of the country, across the
deep narrow gap between the Cimon della Pala and the Cima di Vezzana.
This pass--which, in virtue of the privilege of discoverers, I venture
to call the Passo di Travignolo--leads from Paneveggio to Gares.
On a clear starlight evening in September 1872 our carriage, hired at
an exorbitant rate from the inn-master at Vigo, drew up before the
shining windows of the hospice of Paneveggio. My friend and I were
unprovided with guides, not purposely or because no peasants fit to
undertake such service were to be found in the Venetian Alps, but from
a combination of personal accidents. In the Alps only for a fortnight
I had not thought it worth while to summon François Devouassoud from
his far-off home. My friend, who had counted on the services of Santo
Siorpaes of Cortina, had found him already engaged to a lady who had
taken the first cragsman in Tyrol to lead her mule.
But the assurances we had received before leaving England that the
untrodden crest of the Cima di Vezzana was likely to be attainable
without serious difficulty encouraged us to persevere in our intentions
against that mountain; and at the first opportunity we applied to
the people of the inn to procure for us the best chamois-hunter of
the neighbourhood to carry our provisions and to serve as a third
on the rope. A peasant of stalwart size and manly bearing was soon
produced who, by his professions of readiness to go anywhere, created
a favourable first impression, weakened it is true, in my mind, by
some slight suspicion that his 'anywhere' might be different to ours,
and possibly mean anywhere he had been before. But for this doubt I
had no foundation except the stubborn disbelief shown by our proposed
companion in Mr. Whitwell's ascent of the Cimon della Pala. In such
a discussion it is difficult to know how to act. To tamely leave a
fellow-countryman's credit to take care of itself, with the precarious
assistance of any stonemen he may have left behind him, is opposed to
one's impulse. Yet the statement that an Englishman's word is above
question loses its impressiveness when delivered with a consciousness
that your assertions are at that very moment accepted as the strongest
evidence to the contrary.
Shortly after five A.M. we were on the path which follows the eastern
branch of the Travignolo. After some time the hills opened, the stream
bent suddenly to the south, and wide grassy spaces extended along its
banks. High against the sky the pale heads of the dolomites rose in a
bare gigantic row. Above the end of the glen towered the gaunt form
of the Cimon della Pala girt about his loins by a glacier, the only
ice-stream in this group which makes a determined effort to descend
into the valley. A grass-slope and a stone-slope led us to the ice,
which rose in a steep and slippery bank. Higher up its more level
surface was split by a few incipient crevasses, the largest of a size
to engulf the heel of a boot or a torpid butterfly. Unluckily they did
not escape the keen eyes of our hunter, and he proceeded to probe one
of them with his staff. When he had done so his face assumed an air
of singular resolution, and to our utter astonishment he informed us
that the ice was hollow and that it would be madness to proceed. We
of course pointed to the rope he carried on his shoulders. In vain;
our philosopher briefly remarked that 'life was more than gulden,' and
prepared to descend.
From our standpoint the whole upper glacier was in sight, a
semicircular hollow open to the north-west, hemmed in elsewhere by
the cliffs of the Vezzana and the steep broken face of the Pala.
Between them lay a natural pass, approached on this side by a long
bank of snow, between which and us the crevasses were evidently easy
of circumvention. The day was cloudless. The path to a maiden peak was
open. Should we follow the craven-hearted hunter? The suggestion, if
made, was not for a moment entertained. We roped ourselves together and
turned our faces to the mountain.
I feel it well here to guard myself from the risk of being reckoned
amongst those who would set up an example of 'mountaineering without
guides.' We were in fact neither of us disposed to disregard the
verdict of the Alpine Club. That verdict may be thus summarised--'Do
not dispense with a guide except when and where you are capable of
taking his place.'
An heretical but excellent climber, driven into revolt, perhaps,
by some of the excesses of Grindelwald or Chamonix orthodoxy, once
endeavoured to incite Englishmen to begin climbing by themselves. I
quite agree with Mr. Girdlestone in disliking the passive position
of the man who, having linked himself between two first-rate guides,
leans on them entirely for support, moral and physical, under every
circumstance.
This situation may be appropriate and even acceptable to the 'homo
unius montis' who wishes once for all to do, or rather have done, his
Wetterhorn or Mont Blanc. But for my own part I can never feel in it
any of the pride of a mountaineer, or resist from comparing myself to
the bale of calico which abandons itself to the force of a pulley in
order to reach the top storey of the warehouse.
But in order to avoid this position it is surely not necessary, as
Mr. Girdlestone would have us, to rush into the opposite extreme
and do without guides altogether. Employing guides need not involve
self-effacement. A guide may be looked to as a teacher instead of
as a mere steam-tug; he may be followed intelligently instead of
mechanically.
Although we may feel very far from, and may despair of attaining, the
ideal of a mountain athlete embodied in an Almer, there is no reason
why we should not endeavour to make some humble approach to it.
Let the traveller accustom himself to choosing his own line of
march, practise his skill by steering through an easy bit of an
ice-fall, cutting steps down a snow-bank, or taking the lead along a
rock-ridge such as that of Monte Rosa. In this way he will, without
much additional risk, test and improve his own skill, and may become
in time capable of undertaking, without other company than that of
similarly qualified friends, any expedition of moderate difficulty. Let
it never be forgotten, however, that in sports as well as in trades an
apprenticeship must be served. Forgetfulness of this fact has led to
the worst of Alpine disasters, and it is by its tendency to ignore it
that the doctrine of 'mountaineering without guides' is most dangerous.
In the present case we considered ourselves qualified to undertake the
work before us; that is to say, we saw nothing to lead us to suppose
that we were about to enter on ground where we could not tread safely,
or on which a chance slip, should one occur, would not be remediable by
such skill as we might have previously acquired.
The ice-chasms, some of them of formidable breadth, of the upper
glacier were easily turned, and in a time which seemed short we came
to the last of them, the great moat which ran round the base of the
mountain. It was furnished with two bridges, one immediately under the
centre of the snow-wall, over which any bodies falling from above would
probably pass; the second, over which we crossed, somewhat nearer the
Pala. This steep bank, for most snow-walls are little more, may have
been at a rough guess 800 feet high.
The snow, though in a very trustworthy condition, was a little too
hard for speed, and my friend, who is an excellent step-cutter, found
plenty of occupation for his axe. Some hour and a half had slipped by
and we were still 150 to 200 feet below the crest, when a low bank of
rock, parallel to the slope and lying along the base of the cliffs on
our left, offered us an alternative path. We swerved towards them,
not however without exchanging a reminder of the need of caution in
crossing from snow to rock. An unusually capacious last step had been
cut, and my friend had already attached to the crag all his limbs with
the exception of one leg, when his whole body suddenly became subject
to a struggle between the laws of gravity and the will of the climber.
He had grasped a portion of the living rock which came away in his
hand, for the first time, as if it had been the least stable of loose
boulders. I had hardly time to close my axe in a tighter grip before my
companion flew past me at a velocity of I cannot say how many feet to
the second.
My foothold was too slight to resist any severe shock; the power of
resistance lay in arms and axe. In a moment the rope tightened, rather,
however, with a strong increasing pull than with a sharp jerk. I
felt myself moving downwards, but in my old position, erect, my face
to the slope and my axe-head buried as deeply as ever in the snow,
and dragging heavily like an anchor through its hard surface. Two or
three seconds more and I felt the impulse less, my power of tension
increasing. In another moment I had stopped altogether. My companion's
fall, checked at the first by my resistance, and still more afterwards
by his own exertions with his axe, of which he had with the impulse of
an old climber retained his hold, had come to an end, and the moment
the downward strain was taken off I stopped also.
I have no mental sensations to record during the time of the slide.
The mind has, or seems to have, at times an extraordinary power while
the body is flying down a snow-slope of, as it were, anticipating
its separation from its old companion, and standing apart to watch
its fate, in what a writer in 'Fraser' has happily called 'colourless
expectation.' The phrase may suggest of itself an explanation of this
curious indifference. In such situations the brain is called upon to
register so many sensations at the same moment that as in a well-spun
top the various hues are mingled into one, and the pale complexion of
terror has not time to predominate. But in order to experience this
frame of mind the slip must be irremediable by any present exertion;
our moments of descent had their practical impulses, and these were
quite sufficient to occupy them.
We now found ourselves respectively some sixty and twenty-five feet
lower than we had been before, and with our positions reversed, but
otherwise none the worse for our accident. So at least I thought
for the first moment; but a red patch on the snow immediately drew
my attention, and I found that my knuckles, skinned by the friction
against the frozen surface, were bleeding freely. My friend, who had
fallen further, had suffered more, and the backs of his hands were
indeed in a pitiable condition.
Such a temporary inconvenience was not likely, however, to render
us melancholy. Confident that no worse thing could happen to us, and
that despite foul play we had proved our ability to cope with the Cima
di Vezzana, we looked for the best means of gaining the crest and a
convenient halting-place. An upright corniched wall, representing the
thickness of the snow-field lying across the top of the pass, barred
the head of the gully. With the rocks on our left we naturally declined
to have any further dealings; those on the right did not look much more
inviting. But, though loose and very steep, they proved with care to
be quite manageable; and ten minutes' careful climbing brought us in
safety to a spur of rock some fifty feet above the lowest gap.
The way to our maiden peak was still blind. It presented to us a
massive shoulder of crag and snow-beds, masking the real summit which
lay somewhere out of sight. We bore well to the right along the Gares
side of the mountain, and over the shoulder, until we found a gully
which took us back towards the crest. A short scramble placed us on
it, and by a few steps more along a shattered ridge the summit was
conquered.
Our perch was a narrow one, and when our future champion, the
indispensable stoneman, had taken his place between us, there would
have been little room for a fourth. Still we soon made ourselves
comfortable enough to enjoy to the utmost the glory spread out around
us. The Cimon della Pala, a great unstable wedge of a mountain, shot
up opposite us, its highest rocks overtopping ours by little more than
the height of Mr. Whitwell's cairn. The white houses of Primiero showed
over the huge shoulder of the Pala. The lake of Alleghe lay peacefully
in its hollow. Beyond it rose the central dolomites, the Pelmo,
the Civetta, and the Tofana, looming largely through the glistening
air, like Preadamite monsters couched on the green hills and sunning
themselves in the noontide blaze. On one side we looked down on the
white stony desolation of the great wilderness which fills the hoof of
the shoe, on one of the nails of which we stood, on the other on the
forest of Paneveggio and a green stretch of lakelet studded pastures.
Far away to the west spread the rolling hill-waves of the Trentino, a
vast expanse of broken country stretching out towards the Brenta and
the Orteler.
In this region the common rule is reversed. While the troughs of the
streams are narrow and rugged, the summits are wooded downs covered
with villages. Seen from any moderate eminence, such as the Caressa
Pass, the hill-tops compose instead of confining the landscape, they
spread out their broad backs to the sunshine in place of cutting it
off. Instead of striking against one opposite range the eye sweeps
across twenty surging ridges, and wanders in and out of a hundred
hollows, distinct or veiled, according as the sunlight falls on them,
until it meets on the horizon the snows of the distant range extending
from the Adamello to the Weisskugel.
So far as I know, no great painter has chosen a subject from the basin
of the Adige. Yet here, even more than in Titian's country and the Val
di Mel, all the breadth and romance of Italian landscape is united to
Alpine grandeur and nobleness of form.
The full blaze of an unclouded heaven was just tempered into the most
delicious warmth by a gentle breath of air. We could have lingered for
many happy hours, and the moment for parting came but too soon.
The return to the gap was only a matter of minutes. There we left our
old tracks, and, turning in the opposite direction, slid quickly down
snow-slopes filling a recess between the wildest cliffs. The brow
on which we halted to tie up the rope was green with grass and gay
with the brightest flowers, a tiny garden in the desert, where the
seeds wind-borne from far-off pastures are caught by the earth and
nursed into being by the kindly rays of the sun streaming full on the
southward-facing slope.
We were now immediately above the ravine descending from the Cornelle
Pass. Once in this glen we were on old ground, and might easily
have descended to Gares.[66] Anxious, however, to regain Paneveggio
before dark, we turned our faces to a steep ascent. The way across
the level ground on the crest of the ridge had been newly marked out
by stonemen. We rested for a few minutes to gaze again over the broad
field of the blue and green Trentino, and then plunged beneath the
breeze and into an atmosphere of sunbeams. The rays came down on our
heads, reflected themselves from the white cliffs, and fastened on us
with a steady persecution, from which there was no great rock to flee
unto. I need not enter into any details as to our exact route, which
was so contrived as to cut into the carriage-road between Paneveggio
and San Martino as nearly as possible at its summit-level. If anybody
ever chances to aim at the same end he cannot do better than bear to
the châlets which he will see below him on the right, and there hire
a cow-boy to guide him through the ups and downs of the forests and
across the great stony scars which mar the mountain side. Anyhow he
must make up his mind to reascend the final zigzags to the Costonzella
Pass.
After the pathless thirsty hillside and the burning heat, our walk in
the luminous deep-hued evening shadows down a smooth road, varied by a
milk-giving châlet or a mossy short cut, was most enjoyable.
As the air grew chill and the golden radiance of the sunbeams died out
of it the mountain forms exchanged their flaming splendours for a cool
grey-blue tint. In some strange way this bloom in the air seemed to
thicken until it became no longer transparent. A thin shadowy film grew
into being, and the huge spectral dolomites faded away into it like
genii of the 'Arabian Nights.'
Their battle was over; they had done their worst; and the Pala and
Vezzana, knowing themselves vanquished, might well be imagined, like
respectable Afreets, to have retired into the bottles with which their
conquerors had, after the custom of climbers, provided them. But the
Alpine Club has no seal of Solomon with which to bind its captives. The
Primiero giants have doubtless by this time come forth again, and are
ready for fresh encounters with human foes.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] _Alpine Journal_, vol. v. p. 111.
[64] This part of the road was being remade in September
1874.
[65] Canale is a frequent synonym for 'Valle' in the Venetian
Alps, and travellers have been led to suppose that a fanciful
analogy between the glens of the mountain provinces and the
water-streets of the capital led to the use of the word. But
'canale' was used in the sense of valley before the period of
Venetian rule, and it is found at the present day in mountain
districts of the Apennines near Spezzia, far removed from
any Venetian influences. See Du Cange's 'Glossarium' for some
curious details and quotations as to this word.
[66] An inn will probably be established before long at
Gares. The ascent of the Cima di Vezzana from that side is a
fine expedition, free from the slightest difficulty.