MODERN MOUNTAINEERING
Alpine History is not easy to divide into arbitrary periods; and yet
the conquest of the Matterhorn does in a certain sense define a period.
It closes what has been called “the golden age of mountaineering.”
Only a few great peaks still remained unconquered. In this chapter we
shall try to sketch some of the tendencies which differentiate modern
mountaineering from mountaineering in the so-called “golden age.”
The most radical change has been the growth of guideless climbing,
which was, of course, to be expected as men grew familiar with the
infinite variety of conditions that are the essence of mountaineering.
In a previous chapter we have discussed the main differences between
guided and guideless climbing. It does not follow that a man of
considerable mountaineering experience, who habitually climbs with
guides need entirely relinquish the control of the expedition. Such a
man--there are not many--may, indeed, take a guide as a reserve of
strength, or as a weight carrier. He may enjoy training up a young and
inexperienced guide, who has a native talent for rock and ice, while
lacking experience and mountain craft. One occasionally finds a guide
who is a first-class cragsman, but whose general knowledge of mountain
strategy is inferior to that of a great amateur. In such a combination,
the latter will be the real general of the expedition, even if the
guide habitually leads on difficult rock and does the step-cutting.
On the other hand a member of a guideless party may be as dependent
on the rest of the party as another man on his guides. Moreover,
tracks, climbers, guides and modern maps render the mental work of the
leader, whether amateur or professional, much less arduous than in more
primitive days.
But when we have made all possible allowance for the above
considerations, there still remains a real and radical distinction
between those who rely on their own efforts and those who follow a
guide. The man who leads even on one easy expedition obtains a greater
insight into the secrets of his craft than many a guided climber with a
long list of first-class expeditions.
One of the earliest of the great guideless climbs was the ascent of
Mont Blanc by E. S. Kennedy, Charles Hudson (afterwards killed on the
first ascent of the Matterhorn), Grenville and Christopher Smyth, E.
J. Stevenson and Charles Ainslie. Their climb was made in 1855, and
was the first complete ascent of Mont Blanc from St. Gervais, though
the route was not new except in combination, as every portion of it
had been previously done on different occasions. One of the first
systematic guideless climbers to attract attention was the Rev. A. G.
Girdlestone, whose book, _The High Alps without Guides_, appeared in
1870. This book was the subject of a discussion at a meeting of the
Alpine Club. Mr. Grove, a well-known mountaineer, read a paper on the
comparative skill of travellers and guides, and used Girdlestone’s book
as a text. Mr. Grove said: “The net result of mountaineering without
guides appears to be this, that, in twenty-one expeditions selected
out of seventy for the purposes of description, the traveller failed
absolutely four times; was in great danger three times; was aided in
finding the way back by the tracks of other men’s guides four times;
succeeded absolutely without aid of any kind ten times on expeditions,
four of which were very easy, three of moderate difficulty, and one
very difficult.” The “very difficult” expedition is the Wetterhorn,
which is nowadays considered a very modest achievement.
Mr. Girdlestone was a pioneer, with the limitations of a pioneer.
His achievements judged by modern standards are modest enough, but
he was the first to insist that mountaineering without guides is an
art, and that mountaineering with guides is often only another form of
conducted travel. The discussion that followed, as might be expected,
at that time was not favourable either to Girdlestone or to guideless
climbing. Probably each succeeding year will see his contribution to
modern mountaineering more properly appreciated. The “settled opinion
of the Alpine Club” was declared without a single dissentient to be
that “the neglect to take guides on difficult expeditions is totally
unjustifiable.”
But guideless climbing had come to stay. A year after this memorable
meeting of the Alpine Club, two of its members carried out without
guides some expeditions more severe than anything Girdlestone had
attempted. In 1871 Mr. John Stogdon, a well-known Harrow master, and
the Rev. Arthur Fairbanks ascended the Nesthorn and Aletschhorn, and in
the following year climbed the Jungfrau and Aletschhorn unguided. No
record of these expeditions found its way into print. In 1876, a party
of amateurs, Messrs. Cust, Cawood, and Colgrove climbed the Matterhorn
without guides. This expedition attracted great attention, and was
severely commented on in the columns of the _Press_. Mr. Cust, in an
eloquent paper read before the Alpine Club, went to the root of the
whole matter when he remarked: “Cricket is a sport which is admitted by
all to need acquired skill. A man can buy his mountaineering as he can
buy his yachting. None the less, there are yachtsmen and yachtsmen.”
Systematic climbing on a modern scale without guides was perhaps first
practised by Purtscheller and Zsigmondys in 1880. Among our own people,
it found brilliant exponents in Morse, Mummery, Wicks, and Wilson some
twenty years ago; and it has since been adopted by many of our own
leading mountaineers. Abroad, guideless climbing finds more adherents
than with us. Naturally enough, the man who lives near the mountains
will find it easier to make up a guideless party among his friends;
and, if he is in the habit of spending all his holidays and most of his
week-ends among the mountains that can be reached in a few hours from
his home, he will soon acquire the necessary skill to dispense with
guides.
So much for guideless climbing. Let us now consider some of the other
important developments in the practice of mountaineering. In the Alps
the tendency has been towards specialisation. Before 1865 the ambitious
mountaineer had scores of unconquered peaks to attack. After the defeat
of the Matterhorn, the number of the unclimbed greater mountains
gradually thinned out. The Meije, which fell in 1877, was one of the
last great Alpine peaks to remain unclimbed. With the development
of rock-climbing, even the last and apparently most hopelessly
inaccessible rock pinnacles of the Dolomites and Chamounix were
defeated. There is no rock-climbing as understood in Wales or Lakeland
or Skye on giants of the Oberland or Valais, such as the Schreckhorn
or Matterhorn. These tax the leader’s power of choosing a route, his
endurance and his knowledge of snow and ice, and weather; but their
demands on the pure cragsman are less. The difficulty of a big mountain
often depends very much on its condition and length. Up to 1865 hardly
any expeditions had been carried through--with a few exceptions,
such as the Brenva route up Mont Blanc--that a modern expert would
consider exceptionally severe. Modern rock-climbing begins in the late
’seventies. The expeditions in the Dolomites by men like Zsigmondy,
Schmitt, and Winkler, among foreign mountaineers, belong to much the
same period as Burgener and Mummery classic climbs in the Chamounix
district.
Mummery is, perhaps, best known in connection with the first ascent
of the Grepon by the sensational “Mummery crack,” when his leader was
the famous Alexander Burgener aided by a young cragsman, B. Venetz.
Venetz, as a matter of fact, led up the “Mummery” crack. Mummery’s
vigorous book, which has become a classic, contains accounts of many
new expeditions, such as the Grepon, the Requin, the Matterhorn
by the Zmutt arête, and the Caucasian giant Dych Tau, to name the
more important. His book, _My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus_, is
thoroughly typical of the modern view of mountaineering. It contains
some doctrines that are still considered heretical, such as the safety
of a party of two on a snow-covered glacier, and many doctrines that
are now accepted, such as the justification of guideless climbing and
of difficult variation routes. Shortly after the book appeared, Mummery
was killed on Nanga Parbat, as was Emil Zsigmondy on the Meije soon
after the issue of his book on the dangers of the Alps.
But even Dolomites and Chamounix aiguilles are not inexhaustible, and
the number of unconquered summits gradually diminished. The rapid
opening up of the Alps has naturally turned the attention of men with
the exploring instinct and ample means to the exploration of the great
mountain ranges beyond Europe. This does not fall within the scope of
the present volume, and we need only remark in passing that British
climbers have played an important part in the campaigns against the
fortresses of the Himalaya, Caucasus, Andes, and Rockies.
Meanwhile the ambitious mountaineer was forced to look for new routes
on old peaks. Now, a man in search of the easiest way up a difficult
peak could usually discover a route which was climbable without severe
technical difficulty. On a big mountain, it is often possible to evade
any small and very difficult section. But most mountains, even our
British hills, have at least one route which borders on the impossible,
and a diligent search will soon reveal it. Consider the two extremes of
rock-climbing. Let us take the Matterhorn as a good example of a big
mountain which consists almost entirely of rock. It is impossible to
find a route up the Matterhorn which one could climb with one’s hands
in one’s pockets, but the ordinary Swiss route is an easy scramble as
far as the shoulder, and, with the fixed ropes, a straightforward climb
thence to the top. Its Furggen Ridge has been once climbed under fair
conditions and then only with a partial deviation. It is extremely
severe and dangerous. The task of the mountaineers who first assailed
the Matterhorn was to pick out the easiest line of approach. The Zmutt,
and in a greater degree the Furggen routes, were obviously ruled out of
consideration. The Italian route was tried many times without success
before the Swiss route was discovered. Of course, the Matterhorn, like
all big mountains, varies in difficulty from day to day. It is a very
long climb; and, if the conditions are unfavourable, it may prove a
very difficult and a very dangerous peak.
Turning to the nursery of Welsh climbers, Lliwedd can be climbed on a
mule, and Lliwedd can also be climbed by about thirty or more distinct
routes up its southern rock face. If a man begins to look for new
routes up a wall of a cliff a thousand feet in height and a mile or
so in breath, he will sooner or later reach the line which divided
reasonable from unreasonable risk. Modern pioneer work in the Alps is
nearer the old ideal. It is not simply the search for the hardest of
all climbable routes up a given rock face. In England, the danger of
a rock fall is practically absent, and a rock face is not considered
climbed out as long as one can work up from base to summit by a
series of ledges not touched on a previous climb. Two such routes will
sometimes be separated by a few feet. In the Alps, the pioneer is
compelled by objective difficulties to look for distinct ridges and
faces unswept by stones and avalanches. There is a natural challenge in
the sweep of a great ridge falling through some thousand unconquered
feet to the pastures below. There is only an artificial challenge in a
“new” route some thousand feet in height separated only by a few yards
of cliff from an “old” route. We do not wish to depreciate British
climbing, which has its own fascination and its own value; but, if it
calls for greater cragsmanship, it demands infinitely less mountain
craft than the conquest of a difficult Alpine route.
And what is true of British rock-climbing is even more true of Tirol.
Ranges, such as the Kaisergebirge, have been explored with the same
thoroughness that has characterised British rock-climbing. Almost
every conceivable variation of the “just possible” has been explored.
Unfortunately, the death-roll in these districts is painfully high, as
the keenness of the young Austrian and Bavarian has not infrequently
exceeded their experience and powers.
Abroad, mountaineering has developed very rapidly since the ’sixties.
We have seen that English climbers, first in the field, secured a large
share of unconquered peaks; but once continental climbers had taken up
the new sport, our earlier start was seriously challenged. The Swiss,
Austrian, and German have one great advantage. They are much nearer
the Alps; and mountaineering in these countries is, as a result, a
thoroughly democratic sport. The foreign Alpine Clubs number thousands
of members. The German-Austrian Alpine Club has alone nearly ninety
thousand members. There is no qualification, social or mountaineering.
These great national clubs have a small subscription; and with the
large funds at their disposal they are able to build club-huts in
the mountains, and excellent meeting places in the great towns,
where members can find an Alpine library, maps, and other sources of
information. They secure many useful concessions, such as reduced fares
for their members on Alpine railways. Mountaineering naturally becomes
a democratic sport in mountainous countries, because the mountains are
accessible. The very fact that a return ticket to the Alps is a serious
item must prevent Alpine climbing from becoming the sport of more
than a few of our countrymen. At the same time, we have an excellent
native playground in Wales and Cumberland, which has made it possible
for young men to learn the craft before they could afford a regular
climbing holiday in the Alps. Beside the great national clubs of the
Continent, there are a number of vigorous university clubs scattered
through these countries. Of these, the Akademischer Alpine clubs at
Zürich and Munich are, perhaps, the most famous. These clubs consist of
young men reading at the Polytechnic or University. They have as high a
mountaineering qualification as any existing Alpine clubs. They attach
importance to the capacity to lead a guideless party rather than to
the bare fact that a man has climbed so many peaks. Each candidate is
taken on a series of climbs by members of the club, who report to the
committee on his general knowledge of snow and rock conditions, and his
fitness, whether in respect of courage or endurance for arduous work.
It is young men of this stamp that play such a great part in raising
the standard of continental mountaineering. Their cragsmanship often
verges on the impossible. A book published in Munich, entitled _Empor_,
affords stimulating reading. This book was produced in honour and
in memory of Georg Winkler by some of his friends. Winkler was a
young Munich climber who carried through some of the most daring
rock climbs ever recorded. _Empor_ contains his diary, and several
articles contributed by various members of one of the most remarkable
climbing groups in Alpine history. Winkler’s amazing performances
give to the book a note which is lacking in most Alpine literature.
Winkler was born in 1869. As a boy of eighteen he made, quite alone,
the first ascent of the Winklerturm, one of the most sensational--both
in appearance and reality--of all Dolomite pinnacles. On the 14th of
August 1888 he traversed alone the Zinal Rothhorn, and on the 18th
he lost his life in a solitary attempt on the great Zinal face of
the Weisshorn. No definite traces of him have ever been found. His
brother, born in the year of his death, has also carried through some
sensational solitary climbs.
We may, perhaps, be excused a certain satisfaction in the thought that
the British crags can occasionally produce climbers whose achievements
are quite as sensational as those of the Winklers. Without native
mountains, we could not hope to produce cragsmen equal to those of
Tirol and the Alps. One must begin young. It is, as a rule, only a
comparatively small minority that can afford a regular summer holiday
in the Alps; but Scawfell and Lliwedd are accessible enough, and the
comparatively high standard of the British rock-climber owes more to
British than to Alpine mountains. It was only in the last two decades
that the possibilities of these crags were systematically worked
out, though isolated climbs have been recorded for many years. The
patient and often brilliant explorations of a group of distinguished
mountaineers have helped to popularise a fine field for native talent,
and an arena for those who cannot afford a regular Alpine campaign.
Guides are unknown in Great Britain, and the man who learns to climb
there is often more independent and more self-reliant than the
mountaineer who is piloted about by guides. There is, of course, much
that can be learned only in the Alps. The home climber can learn to use
an axe in the wintry gullies round Scawfell. He learns something of
snow; but both snow and ice can only be properly studied in the regions
of perpetual snow. The home-trained cragsman, as a rule, learns to
lead up rocks far more difficult than anything met with on the average
Swiss peaks, but the wider lessons of route-finding over a long and
complicated expedition are naturally not acquired on a face of cliff
a thousand feet in height. Nor, for that matter, is the art of rapid
descent over easy rocks; for the British climber usually ascends by
rocks, and runs home over grass and scree. None the less, these cliffs
have produced some wonderfully fine mountaineers. We have our Winklers,
and we have also young rock-climbers who confine their energies to the
permissible limit of the justifiable climbing and who, within those
limits, carry their craft to its most refined possibilities. Hugh Pope,
one of the most brilliant of the younger school of rock-climbers,
learned his craft on the British hills, and showed in his first Alpine
season the value of that training. To the great loss of British
mountaineering he was killed in 1912 on the Pic du Midi d’Ossau.
Another comparatively recent development is the growth of winter
mountaineering. The first winter expedition of any importance after
the beginnings of serious mountaineering was Mr. T. S. Kennedy’s
attempt on the Matterhorn in 1863. He conceived the curious idea that
the Matterhorn might prove easier in winter than in summer. Here, he
was very much mistaken. He was attacked by a storm, and retreated
after reaching a point where the real climb begins. It was a plucky
expedition. But the real pioneer of winter mountaineering was W. A.
Moore. In 1866, with Mr. Horace Walker, Melchior Anderegg, Christian
Almer, and “Peterli” Bohren, he left Grindelwald at midnight; they
crossed the Finsteraarjoch, and returned within the twenty-four hours
to Grindelwald over the Strahlegg. Even in summer this would prove a
strenuous day. In winter, it is almost incredible that this double
traverse should have been carried through without sleeping out.
Most of the great peaks have now been ascended in winter; and amongst
others Mr. Coolidge must be mentioned as a prominent pioneer. His
ascents of the Jungfrau, Wetterhorn, and Schreckhorn--the first in
winter--with Christian Almer, did much to set the fashion. Mrs. Le
Blond, the famous lady climber, has an even longer list of winter first
ascents to her credit. But the real revolution in winter mountaineering
has been caused by the introduction of ski-ing. In winter, the main
difficulty is getting to the high mountain huts. Above the huts,
the temperature is often mild and equable for weeks together. A low
temperature on the ground co-exists with a high temperature in the air.
Rock-ridges facing south or south-west are often denuded of snow, and
as easy to climb as in summer. Signor Sella also made some brilliant
winter ascents, such as the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa.
The real obstacle to winter mountaineering is the appalling weariness
of wading up to the club-huts on foot. The snow in the sheltered lower
valleys is often deep and powdery; and the climber on foot will have
to force his way through pine forests where the snow lies in great
drifts between the trees, and over moraines where treacherous drifts
conceal pitfalls between the loose stones. All this is changed by the
introduction of ski. The ski distributes the weight of the climber
over a long, even surface; and in the softest snow he will not sink in
more than a few inches. Better still, they revolutionise the descent,
converting a weary plug through snow-drifts into a succession of swift
and glorious runs. The ski-runner takes his ski to the foot of the
last rock ridges, and then proceeds on foot, rejoining his ski, and
covering on the descent five thousand feet in far less time than the
foot-climber would take over five hundred. Skis, as everybody knows,
were invented as a means of crossing snowy country inaccessible on
foot. They are sometimes alluded to as snowshoes, but differ radically
from snowshoes in one important respect. Both ski and the Canadian
snowshoe distribute their wearer’s weight, and enable him to cross
drifts where he would sink in hopelessly if he were on foot, but there
the resemblance ends. For, whereas snowshoes cannot slide on snow, and
whereas a man on snowshoes cannot descend a hill as fast as a man on
foot could run down hill, skis glide rapidly and easily on snow, and
a ski-runner can descend at a rate which may be anything up to sixty
miles an hour.
Ski-ing is of Scandinavian origin, and the greatest exponents of the
art are the Norwegians. Norwegians have used ski from time immemorial
in certain districts, such as Telemarken, as a means of communication
between snow-bound villages. It should, perhaps, be added that
ski-jumping does not consist, as some people imagine, in casual leaps
across chasms or over intervening hillocks. The ski-runner does not
glide along the level at the speed of an express train, lightly
skimming any obstacles in his path. On the level, the best performer
does not go more than six or seven miles an hour, and the great jumps
one hears of are made downhill. The ski-runner swoops down on to a
specially prepared platform, leaps into the air, and alights on a very
steep slope below. The longest jump on record is some hundred and fifty
feet, measured from the edge of the take-off to the alighting point.
In this case, the ski-runner must have fallen through nearly seventy
vertical feet.
To the mountaineer, the real appeal of ski-ing is due to the fact
that it halves the labour of his ascent to the upper snowfields, and
converts a tedious descent into a succession of swift and fascinating
runs. The ski-runner climbs on ski to the foot of the final rock and
ice ridges, and then finishes the climb in the ordinary way. After
rejoining his ski, his work is over, and his reward is all before
him. If he were on foot, he would have to wade laboriously down to
the valley. On ski, he can swoop down with ten times the speed, and a
thousand times the enjoyment.
Ski were introduced into Central Europe in the early ’nineties. Dr.
Paulcke’s classic traverse of the Oberland in 1895, which included the
ascent of the Jungfrau, proved to mountaineers the possibilities of
the new craft. Abroad, the lesson was soon learned. To-day, there are
hundreds of ski-runners who make a regular practice of mountaineering
in winter. The Alps have taken out a new lease of life. In summer, the
huts are crowded, the fashionable peaks are festooned with parties
of incompetent novices who are dragged and pushed upwards by their
guides, but in winter the true mountain lover has the upper world to
himself. The mere summit hunter naturally chooses the line of least
resistance, and accumulates his list of first class expeditions in
the summer months, when such a programme is easiest to compile. The
winter mountaineer must be more or less independent of the professional
element, for, though he will probably employ a guide to find the way
and to act as a reserve of strength, he himself must at least be able
to ski steadily, and at a fair speed.
Moreover, mountain craft as the winter mountaineer understands the
term is a more subtle and more embracing science as far, at least, as
snow conditions are concerned. It begins at the hôtel door. In summer,
there is a mule path leading to the glacier line, a mule path which a
man can climb with his mind asleep. But in winter the snow with its
manifold problems sweeps down to the village. A man has been killed
by an avalanche within a few yards of a great hôtel. From the moment
a man buckles on his ski, he must exercise his knowledge of snow
conditions. There are no paths save a few woodcutter’s tracks. From
the valley upwards, he must learn to pick a good line, and to avoid
the innocent-looking slopes that may at any moment resolve themselves
into an irresistible avalanche. Many a man is piloted up a succession
of great peaks without acquiring anything like the same intimate
knowledge of snow that is possessed even by a ski-runner who has never
crossed the summer snow-line. Even the humblest ski-runner must learn
to diagnose the snow. He may follow his leader unthinkingly on the
ascent; but once he starts down he must judge for himself. If he makes
a mistake, he will be thrown violently on to his face when the snow
suddenly sticks, and on to his back when it quickens. Even the most
unobservant man will learn something of the effects of sun and wind
on his running surface when the result of a faulty deduction may mean
violent contact with Mother Earth.
Those who worship the Alps in their loveliest and loneliest moods,
those who dislike the weary anti-climax of the descent through burning
snowfields, and down dusty mule paths, will climb in the winter months,
when to the joy of renewing old memories of the mountains in an
unspoiled setting is added the rapture of the finest motion known to
man.
In England mountaineering on ski has yet to find many adherents. We
have little opportunity for learning to ski in these isles, and the
ten thousand Englishmen that visit the Alps in winter prefer to ski
on the lower hills. For every Englishman with a respectable list of
glacier tours on ski to his credit, there are at least a hundred
continental runners with a record many times more brilliant. The
Alpine Ski Club, now in its sixth year, has done much to encourage
this “new mountaineering,” and its journal contains a record of the
finest expeditions by English and continental runners. But even in
the pages of the Alpine Ski Club Annual, the proportion of foreign
articles describing really fine tours is depressingly large. Of course,
the continental runner lives nearer the Alps. So did the continental
mountaineer of the early ’sixties; but that did not prevent us taking
our fair share of virgin peaks.
The few Englishmen who are making a more or less regular habit of
serious mountaineering on ski are not among the veterans of summer
mountaineering, and the leaders of summer mountaineering have not yet
learned to ski. Abroad, the leaders of summer mountaineering have
welcomed ski-ing as a key to their mountains in winter; but the many
leaders of English mountaineering still argue that skis should not be
used in the High Alps, on the ground that they afford facility for
venturing on slopes and into places where the risk of avalanches is
extreme. On the Continent thousands of runners demonstrate in the most
effective manner that mountaineering on ski has come to stay. It is
consoling to reflect that English ski-runners are prepared to work
out the peculiar problems of their craft with or without the help of
summer mountaineers. Of course, both ski-ing and summer mountaineering
would be strengthened by an alliance, and ski-runners can best learn
the rules of the glacier world in winter from those mountaineers who
combine a knowledge of the summer Alps with some experience of winter
conditions and a mastery of ski-ing. For the moment, such teachers must
be looked for in the ranks of continental mountaineers.