_FURTHER ANECDOTES OF GUIDES._
Endurance is absolutely necessary in a guide undertaking first-class
ascents. It is simply astounding how much fatigue a guide will go
through without any symptom of giving in. One one occasion, Alexander
Burgener, having returned to Zermatt after fourteen hours’ climbing,
left with me the same evening, and put in another forty-three hours’
exertion (relieved by one halt of two hours on an exposed ledge while
waiting for the moon), almost “without turning a hair.” The porter,
too, had participated in both ascents, and though certainly fatigued on
our reaching Zermatt, was still far from prostrate.
I have known Martin Schocher go up Piz Bernina five times in one week,
taking an “off day” on Piz Palü on the other two days; and amongst the
long excursions which I have made with guides who, on their return,
declared that they felt quite fresh, may be mentioned the Dent du
Géant, twenty-three hours; Aiguille du Midi (winter), twenty hours;
Col d’Argentine (winter), twenty hours; Finsteraarhorn, up and down by
Agassiz-joch (following an ascent of the Schreckhorn the day before),
twenty-three hours.
It is when a party encounters bad weather or is benighted in an exposed
situation that the endurance of a guide is most put to the test. Some
years ago a party consisting of Mr. Howard Knox and a German gentleman,
with Peter Dangl of Sulden and Martin Schocher of Pontresina, were
benighted on the _arête_ of Piz Scerscen. The German was almost
unconscious from cold and fatigue, and Mr. Knox, too, was worn-out
from want of sleep. The guides during the entire night never ceased
rubbing and attending to the German, and from time to time Schocher
took Mr. Knox in his arms and allowed him three or four minutes’ sleep,
which refreshed him much more than would be expected from the short
time during which it was safe for him to indulge in it. At daybreak,
Schocher led the party in magnificent style down an entirely new route
to the Scerscen glacier, and brought them all safe and sound home to
Pontresina the same afternoon. The final splendid piece of guiding of
Jean-Antoine Carrel in 1890, when, after two days’ confinement by
bad weather in the upper hut on the south side of the Matterhorn, he,
after twenty hours’ fearful toil, got his party safely out of all their
difficulties, and then laid down and died, is one of the most pathetic
incidents in Alpine history.
Referring to this, Mr. Whymper wrote in the _Alpine Journal_, “It
cannot be doubted that Carrel, enfeebled though he was, could have
saved himself had he given his attention to self-preservation. He took
a nobler course, and, accepting his responsibility, devoted his whole
soul to the welfare of his comrades, until, utterly exhausted, he fell
staggering on the snow. He was already dying; life was flickering, yet
the brave spirit said, ‘It is _nothing_.’ They placed him in the rear
to ease his work; he was no longer able even to support himself; he
dropped to the ground, and in a few minutes expired.”
An extraordinary case of endurance came to my notice a short time
ago, when turning over the leaves of some old numbers of the _Alpine
Journal_. It is not connected with guides, and thus is perhaps out
of place here. Still, as my object in this little work is rather
to interest my readers than to aim at a careful classification of
subjects, I shall quote the account for their benefit.
“The same number of the same work (_i.e._, the _Bulletino Trimestrale_,
Nos. x. and xi.) relates an Alpine misadventure so extraordinary as
to deserve notice, and so incredible as hardly to seem worthy of it.
But it is equally out of the question to suppose that the organ of the
Italian Alpine Club is itself guilty of a hoax, or that it could be
hoaxed in a matter verified by the signature of three Italian gentlemen
of station, by a public subscription, and by an official document. This
premised, we give the following narrative, greatly condensed from the
Italian.
“A party of young men, who had been employed on the Fell railway over
the Mont Cenis, took their way home, about the middle of October 1866,
over the Col du Collarin to the Piedmontese valley of Ala. Near the
top, still on the Savoy side, one of them, named Angelo Castagneri,
slipped, apparently on the edge of the _bergschrund_, and disappeared.
His companions, instead of returning for help to the village of
Averolles, little more than an hour distant, seem to have been
possessed with the notion that a man down in a glacier was past help,
and crossed the col to Balme, the first village where Castagneri’s
parents lived. They took it coolly, for it was a week before anybody
went to look for him, and then the father, descending by help of a
ladder, found him lying on the wet earth beside a clot of blood, which
had flowed from a wound in his head, and still alive. It took nine or
ten hours to get him home, using the ladder as a litter, and many days
elapsed before he was seen by a medical man.” The account goes on to
say that it was nine months before he was taken to Turin and placed
in a hospital there, where his legs, from which he had lost his feet
from frost-bite and subsequent mortification, were healed, apparently
without amputation. Castagneri says that he had no recollection of
anything from the time of his fall until aroused by his father’s voice
and touch. In that case he lay senseless between eight and nine days,
and probably owed his life to his insensibility.
The subject of the manifold kindnesses and acts of unselfishness
shown by guides, both to their employers and also to each other,
is so wide a one that I can only touch on it in a most superficial
manner. I well remember, some years ago, hearing of a very kind act of
Melchior Anderegg’s. The party had ascended the Dent d’Heréns, and, in
returning, Ulrich Almer was struck and badly hurt by a stone. It was
impossible to get him down to Zermatt that night, and several hours had
to be spent, while waiting for daylight, sitting on the rocks. It was
extremely cold, and Melchior took off his coat and wrapped the wounded
man in it, remaining all night in his shirt-sleeves.
In my work “The High Alps in Winter,” I have related how my guides,
while I was asleep in the Cabane d’Orny (near the Orny Glacier), took
off their coats and covered me with them, so that I might not feel
cold, while they sat up all night brewing hot tea, and vying with each
other in stories of chamois hunts.
Experience every good guide must have. Here is an anecdote showing
how one member of the profession acquired it. This guide, now well
known and in the first rank, began his career with two Germans as his
victims. The party were bound for, I believe, the Cima di Jazzi, and
when the ice of the Gorner Glacier gave place to snow, the moment
came for putting on the rope. The guide felt greatly puzzled; and
he was slow of thought. Meanwhile the two gentlemen, as ignorant of
mountain-craft as their guardian, stood by and watched the cord being
slowly uncoiled. At last the guide took a sudden resolution, and making
a loop at each end of the rope, he slipped it round the necks of his
two charges, and taking the cord in the centre, held it in his hand,
having just enough native wit not to tie it round his own neck! In
this frightfully dangerous condition they remained during the entire
ascent. When returning, another party was seen approaching. The guide
halted on finding that it was led by a friend of his. He took him aside
and said, “Tell me, how ought people to be roped? Have I not done it
correctly?” The other guide replied, with inward merriment, “Oh, yes,
it’s quite right!” Whereupon his friend exclaimed, “And yet I assure
you the gentlemen have sworn at me all day!” So much for that pleasing
operation known as “buying experience.”
The guide who has had the greatest amount of experience in the Alps
is, I think, Christian Almer, if by experience we mean making a large
number of different ascents and excursions. The Oberlanders travel out
of their own district more than any other guides; next to them probably
the Saas and St. Nicholas men; then some of the Chamonix guides
(though not many). Peter Dangl of Sulden, Tyrol, and several of the
Valtournanche men are also to be met with _en voyage_, the former very
frequently.
In closing the subject of guides, I will only add that I trust these
little details of my experience of them and that of others may have
helped some to better realise what a splendid body of men they are,
and how much may be learnt in knowing them well, and in the constant
intercourse with them which every climber enjoys. I have tried
to show that the upper grades of the profession are not a number
of self-seeking, ignorant, unprincipled peasants, who regard all
travellers as their lawful prey, but a set of courageous, noble-minded
men, often conspicuous in intellectual qualities, and in many ways
unique as a class.