Mountaineering

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Preface

A FEW LINES only are necessary to explain the object with which these volumes are put forth. There is no modem encyclopaedia to which the inexperienced man, who seeks guidance in the practice of the various British Sports and Pastimes, can turn for information. Some books there are on Hunting, some on Racing, some on Lawn Tennis, some on Fishing, and so on ; but one Library, or succession of volumes, which treats of the Sports and Pastimes indulged in by Englishmen — and women — is wanting. The Badminton Library is offered to supply the want Of the imperfections which must be found in the execution of such a design we are viii MOUNTAINEERING

conscious. Experts often differ. But this we may say, that those who are seeking for knowledge on any of the subjects dealt with will find the results of many years' experience written by men who are in every case adepts at the Sport or Pastime of which they write. It is to point the way to success to those who are ignorant of the sciences they aspire to master, and who have no friend to help or coach them, that these volumes are written.

To those who have worked hard to place simply and clearly before the reader that which he will find within, the best thanks of the Editor are due. That it has been no slight labour to supervise all that has been written, he must acknowledge; but it has been a labour of love, and very much lightened by the courtesy of the Publisher, by the unflinching, indefatigable assistance of the Sub- Editor, and by the intelligent and able arrangement of each subject by the various writers, who are so thoroughly masters of the subjects of which they treat. The reward we all hope to reap is that our work may prove useful to this and future generations.

THE EDITOR.

NOTE

The assistance rendered by the contributors in the preparation of this volume is by no means limited to the chapters they have severally written. In order to increase the authority of the work, and, at the same time, to diminish the appearance of patchwork that often results from collaboration, I have throughout consulted my colleagues freely, and have to acknowledge valuable help received from them. In addition, my best thanks are due, for many suggestions and much friendly aid, to Captain W. de W. Abney, Melchior Anderegg, Professor T. G. Bonney, Mr. K Whymper, and Mr. J. H. Wicks.

C. T. D.

Contents

CRAPrSX PAGB

I. The Early History of Mountaineering . . i

By Sir Frederick Pollock

Introduction

DUND men are sometimes said to have a knack of lighting upon the square holes in life, whilst the square men find the round same perversity Sport. There o dedicate their :reation to boat- Aipenrose j^^^ ^ glance at whose row-

ing form shows that nature meant them for the mountain-side ; others, bent on distinction as mountaineers, betray their natural bent by a passion for sliding seats. A book on Mountaineering may help to redress this want of symmetry. A natural magnetism will draw in the right direction a reader whose inborn, though undeveloped, instincts are those of the mountaineer, and a like influence may perhaps turn aside from an uncongenial pursuit one in whose nature the spirit of mountain adventure finds only a repellent pole.

xviii MOUNTAINEERING

To precipitate the subtle essence of thoughts, actions and habits which have become instinctive, and crystallise it into language is no easy task. How far it has been successfully attempted the reader must judge for himself It will occur to some, no doubt, that it takes many words to describe a simple movement ; and that no description will teach a man to climb — still less to be a mountaineer — any more than to dance. None the less may it be of use to enunciate some axioms of the craft, just as it may serve a purpose to tell the would-be sportsman how to hold a gun, or the embryo Grace how to wield a bat or deliver a ball. Even experts may correct faults ; and he must have great good fortune or little modesty — or both — who can learn nothing from the experience of others and from the precision which the very effort at system imposes upon a writer.

Nothing in the history of modem sport has been more striking than the rapid growth of interest in Mountaineering. No wonder : few sports, perhaps few pursuits, afford keener or more lasting enjoyment, or contribute more to the acquisition of self-reliance, patience, and self-restraint. The Introduction, however, must not depart from the tone of the book. The authors of the following chapters have felt that the spirit which rejoices in mountain craft is either in a man, or is absent. In the one case, good wine needs no bush ; in the other the cup of mountain nectar has no taste, and the book of mountain wisdom will be written in an unknown tongue. There has been no desire to whip up recruits for the Alpine Club ; still less to incite to rash or precipitate enterprise those who would not spontaneously

INTRODUCTION »x

seek the snow-field or the aiguille. There is, indeed, throughout these pages, a key-note of warning rather than of encouragement The Alps have been styled the playground of Europe ; but the playfield may be the field of death if incautiously approached or ignorantly dallied with. Nature trusts her secrets to those only who hold her in awe and reverently own her mystery and reserve. To such as woo her with respectful admiration and with patient suit she tells her story freely and with ever-growing kindness. Woe betide those who think they can know her at first sight, or win her confidence without sympathy or effort.

Those who sound the warning know what they are talking about I myself belong to a generation of mountain lovers already past, and have been rather a pioneer than one of the good soldiers by whom the triumphs of mountaineering have been won. It is very satisfactory to me that men younger, bolder, better trained in mountain craft than I was, inculcate the spirit of caution which I have long advocated, and teach the immorality as well as the folly of running into useless danger and risking valuable lives.

There are three things specially to be dreaded in the mountains, as beyond human control and occasionally beyond human foresight : bad weather, falling stones, steep grass slopes, with herbage either short and dry, or long and wet or frozen. I do not think it possible for anyone who has not felt it to have any idea what very bad weather means in high places, even in places by no means of the highest ; or to imagine the rapidity with which, under unsettled atmospherical conditions,

XX MOUNTAINEERING

the destructive forces of nature can be raised, and the worst assaults of the elements delivered. Falling stones may come from the most unexpected places, and I have seen from my own Alpine home a whole flake of mountain-side peel off without warning, and sweep with a cannonade of thirty hours' duration a gfully that I and mine have used for years as a highway to the upper world. Slopes of grass look so easy, and are so treacherous that it is scarcely possible to secure for them the respect which they have a deadly fashion of enforcing.

There are few other dangers which care and knowledge will not eliminate. To narrow to the utmost the area of unavoidable danger, to press the necessary care, to show how the necessary knowledge can be gained, and to make it easier of acquisition, has been one aim of this compilation. It is enriched with matter historical, scientific, and practical, which ought to make it not the

least attractive of the series.

ALFRED WILLS.

Edelweiss

CHAPTER I By Sir Frederick Pollock

OUNTAINEERING, as the term has been used and understood for about a generation, is not the same thing as mountain travelling. When we speak of mountaineering, we imply that the traveller goes to the mountains for the sake of something that is to be found there. His motive may be the scientific curiosity of a geographer, a geologist, a "^■*^ .-^- V..- botanist, or a natural

A friend of Scheuchzer's , -i , . ^,

philosopher in other branches. It may be the love of mountain scenery, or of forms of adventure and exercise remote from the common round of his every-day life. Oftentimes the mountaineer's pleasure is happily compounded of all or several of these

B elements. In every case there is something that turns his free choice to the mountain heights. A traveller who goes among mountains merely because that is the only way for him to attain some further object, or the least inconvenient way, may possibly become a mountaineer in the course of his journey, but he is not one when he begins it He is a true apprentice of the craft only when he can say from a full heart Labor ipse vo!uptas, Hannibal was not a mountaineer, nor Bonaparte, nor the kings and emperors who, through the middle ages, fared to Rome by way of the Mont Cenis or the Brenner ; ^ still less that nameless English clerk of the tenth century who was so impressed by the horrors of the Alps that in the charters framed by him he threatened any profane violator of the gift, not with the fires of Erebus, but with the icy breath of Pennine fiends.^ The history of mountaineering proper has no direct concern with the journeys undertaken during the last twenty centuries or more by the people, famous or obscure, warriors, pilgrims, or travellers, bent on business or pleasure in Italy, who crossed the Alps because they stood in the way, and would have been better pleased had there not been Alps to cross. Indeed the necessity of traversing mountain regions does not seem of itself likely to produce any desire to explore them beyond that of a practical road-maker. And, in fact, the decisive impulses were quite unconnected with the well-worn Alpine routes of the middle ages, and took a quite different direction. If Alpine exploration had been determined by the known lines of travel, Mont Blanc would have been gradually approached from the valley of Aosta, and

» For particulars of such journeys see E. Oehlmann, Die Alpenpdsse im Mittelalter, 1878-9. This book does not deal with the legends of high glacier passes having been used in the Middle Ages, as to which see £. Richter, GeschichU der Schwankungen der Alpengtelscher (from voL xxii of Ztschr, des D. u. Oe. A. V.), Wien, 1891.

* Alpine Joumah xi. 294 ; Coolidge, Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide* books, 160 ; Kemble, Cod. Dipl. ii. pp. 208-262, in nine charters ranging in date from 938 to 946. The form is * perpessus sit gelidis glacierum flatibus et pennino exercitu malignorum spirituum.'

THE EARLY HISTORY OF MOUNTAINEERING y

Courmayeur, not Chamonix, would have been the first headquarters of mountaineering enterprise. But Chamonix and its glaciers were an object of undefined curiosity to Windham and Pococke, of noble scientific ambition to De Saussure, and of artistic enthusiasm to Bourrit, because they lay so much off the main lines as to be to all practical intent an undiscovered country for the good people of Geneva, much more for the European world of letters.* The way to the heights was pointed out by men to whom travel, as travel, was of little importance, and who were inspired by sentiments of art, science, and adventure in various proportions.

After such men had set the example, but only then, the mountains came to be regarded as a normal resort of persons travelling for pleasure, and energy which in former generations would have been divided between field sports at home and the performance of the Grand Tour abroad was directed to Alpine excursions. It is needless to set forth that the taste for travelling and the taste for mountain climbing are in themselves distinct things ; they are perhaps now more likely to be found together than they have been at any former time ; still we have many good mountaineers who are no travellers, travelling only so far as needful to find their climbing, and travellers who are no mountaineers, climbing (if at all) only when they cannot accomplish their travels otherwise.

What concerns us here, therefore, is the history not of travel routes or topography, but of a taste and a pursuit. The

1 Chamonix has a continuous and particularly well authenticated medieval history going back to the eleventh century (A, Perrin, His'oire <U la ValUe et du prieuri de Chamonix^ Chamb6ry, 1887) ; nor did Windham and Pococke, although they were not acquainted with the fact, ever assert the contrary. M. Durier has well pointed out that they are not answerable for the fictions and exaggerations of later writers who talked of Chamonix as if it had been in Central Africa {Le Mont-Blanc, chap. iv.). As for Windham and Pococke's party going ' well arm'd/ it was the practice of travellers on every high road in Europe in 174 x and long afterwards. They would have had to go at least as well armed in some parts of Great Britain. Besides, their arms were carried partly wilh a view to sport. See, however, De Saussure, Voyages dans les Alp€s, § 732, which seems to be the origin of the statements in later books.

B 2 modem legends of disused medieval glacier passes in the Alps would not be relevant to our topic even if they were as true as they are, almost without exception, demonstrably false. And the fathers of mountaineering were not those who first attained any given height above the sea-level (in which case Europe would have to give place to the traders of Thibet), but those who first perceived in mountain climbing something else than mere labour, and were bold enough to proclaim its delights. We may read in Livy how Philip V. of Macedon ascended some ridge of the Balkans in search of a view comprising the Alps, the Adriatic, the Danube, and the Black Sea ; how his chief difficulty was making way through forest (still a very possible experience in roadless countries, the Selkirks for example) ; and how he saw nothing but mist, and so, being unable to check the popular estimate of the view, wisely refrained from contradicting it. And we may read in Sallust how Marius, with the aid of a local soldier who had found the way by accident, and acted as guide, got his men up a rock supposed inaccessible to troops, and took a Numidian hill-fort in rear with complete success. But these things are mere detached curiosities. As such they were recorded, and such they remained. From the point of view now taken, the continuous history of mountaineering can be carried back only a few generations. The recognition of climbing among the forms of active recreation open to civilised men may be dated from the time when persons who ascended Mont Blanc were no longer deemed to have performed an astonishing feat, or expected to write a little book about it. Albert Smith's ascent in 1851 was the last, or nearly the last, of the old school, as his lecture on Mont Blanc, afterwards preserved in book form, was the last, or nearly the last, of the old-fashioned narratives. Albert Smith himself contributed in no small measure to make it so. He could not be called a mountaineer, but his admiration of the mountains was perfectly genuine, and his work doubtless kindled Alpine enthusiasm in many young Englishmen of the generation who, from ten to fifteen years later, achieved the

J -_ J IP..I* _J"IL JJconquest of the great peaks and passes.' Also the year 1849 was the last in which no ascent of Mont Blanc was made, and from 1853 the frequency of ascents increased rapidly. Thus the modern period of mountaineering may be fairly said to have opened with the second half of the nineteenth century. But if we are to do justice to the precursors of the art, we must go much farther back.

The earhest deliberate attack on an Alpine peak of which we have any record was the unsuccessful attempt on the Roche Melon near Susa (over 1 1,600 feet), shortly described by the anonymous eleventh-century chronicler of Novalesa. Down to the last century this mountain was reputed the highest in Savoy. In the early middle ages it was called Mons Romuleia^ from Romulus, a prince of monstrous ambition and avarice (* rex elefantiosissimus ' may thus be rendered with the help of Ducange), who was said to have amassed a huge treasure somewhere in its flanks. An old man who himself told the story to the chronicler tried the ascent, with a certain Count Clement, on a day of brilliant promise ; but after making considerable progress they were baffled by mist, and, it seems, also by falling stones, if we may so far trust the story in details (* visum erat . . . illis ut desuper lapides mitterentur '). A procession of clerks who repeated the adventure, armed with all spiritual power, singing litanies and * Vexilla regis,' had no better fortune. In 1358, however, Rotario d'Asti not only achieved the ascent, but built a chapel close to the top, in performance of some vow, perhaps on behalf of his city. For many generations there has been a regular pilgrimage to this chapel in August ; the present king of Italy and several of his ancestors, beginning with Charles -Emmanuel II. in 1659, have made the ascent.*-*

1 Doner, Le Mont-Blanc, ch. v. note ii. Mr. L. Stephen has favoured me with inivate information to the same efifect Albert Smith's book was first printed in 1853, and published in 1853.

• Chron. NovaL iL 5 ; Martelli e Vaccarone, Guida ddh Alpi Occident taU, L 350. Cf. letter on ' Mountain Sanctuaries,' signed ' W. A. B. C. ,* in Guardian, June 17, 1891, p. 966. Apparently the tradition connecting

In the last quarter of the thirteenth century Peter III. of Aragon, whose praise is in Dante's 'Purgatory,' ascended Canigou (2,787 m.) in the Pyrenees. As Fra Salimbene tells the tale in his chronicle,* this king, being of a high courage and daring temper, had a mind to see what might be on the summit of this hill where no son of man was known to have trod. So he took to himself two knights of his companions whom he loved, and, having equipped themselves with provisions and fitting instruments {congruentibus armis^ possibly alpenstocks), they set forth. They met with a thunderstorm at some considerable height, but persevered. Afterwards, however, the two knights * began to fail in such wise that for exceeding weariness and for fear of the thunder they could scarce breathe.' Peter therefore, like Mr. Bryce on Ararat, completed the ascent alone. When he came down he told his companions how he had found a lake on the summit and cast a stone into it, whereupon there came out a great and terrible dragon, and flew away, breathing out a vapour which darkened the air. Moreover he gave them leave to repeat the story as much as they pleased. We may suppose that he had accurately measured their credulity. It is by no means clear that this royal jest was taken seriously by Fra Salimbene, whose name is singularly apt for an early recorder of climbing, and who was otherwise a man of some mark. There is no reason, however, to doubt that King Peter did reach the summit. According to modem accounts there is no difficulty about the ascent, though the last piece is a steep rock gully where hands as well as feet must be used.

Rotario's vow with a captivity among the infidels has not any real foundation. The date of the ascent itself is attested by Rotario* s own inscription on a statue of the Virgin which he placed in the chapel, and which is now at Susa. 1 BolUtt, del C.A.I, xxiii. 155, m appendix to Signor Urielli's article ' Leonardo da Vinci e le Alpi.' The article itself is a storehouse of early Alpine and mountaineering references. Fra Salimbene's rather ambiguous sentence of commentary runs thus : ' Videtur mihi quod opus Petri Aragonimi possit connumerari cum operibus Alexandri, qui in multis terribilibus negotii^ et operibus voluit exsperiri ut laudem in posterum mereretur.'

We can hardly count Petrarch as a spiritual father of those who climb on the strength of his ascent of Mont Ventoux near Vaucluse, accomplished in 1339, which is described with some minuteness at the opening of the fourth book of his collected letters. But, being Petrarch, he must not be forgotten in this place. One element of mountaineering was indeed present ; he made the expedition from pure cunosity to see what the top of a high hill was like, * sola videndi insignem loci altitudinem cupiditate ductus/ And when he reached the top, after losmg much time by casting about at lower levels in search of an easier way up which was not to be found, and rejoining his companion with much trouble, he took note of the view. But there is nothing to show that he enjoyed the walk, or that the view was more to him than the strange fact of seeing so nmch of the world at once. At any rate he did not follow up his performance, nor did it become an example to others. Dante, though no one remarkable ascent can be ascribed to him, had much more of a climber's feelings and observation, as t>oth an English and an Italian mountaineer have shown. ^ There is nothing in his descriptions, however, to suggest any very high or remote excursion.

Again the Mont Aiguille, in the parts of Grenoble, has a curious isolated history. It is a very steep and difficult rockmass, called one of the Seven Wonders of Dauphine, with trees and grass on its flat top ; and it was reputed inaccessible until in 1492 Charles VIII. of France commanded his chamberlain, Julien de Beaupr<5, to ascend it, which he did by means of ropes and ladders. No other ascent is recorded until 1834, so that the effect of Julien de Beaupr^'s feat on the custom and art of mountaineering in general may safely be set down as stark naught. In our own time chains have been

> The Mountains of Dante, A. J. x. 400, by D. W. Freshfield ; Dante Alpinista, Boliett. del C.A.I, xx. 12, by O. Brentari. Signor Brentari perhaps proves too much when he undertakes to show not only that Dante was a mountaineer, but that Virgil has all the qualities of an excellent guide. 1 am not aware that Shakespeare has yet been proved a mountaineer. It would be about the only thing left to prove him.

provided by the Section de Tls^re of the French Alpine Club. Mr. Coolidge, whose notes of an ascent made in 1881 were published by Mr. F. Gardiner in the * Alpine Journal ' in 1889, is, I believe, the only English-speaking mountaineer who has yet ascended the Mont Aiguille. Few heights in' Europe of historic fame have been so much left alone by the Alpine Club. On the whole, it must be admitted that the Middle Ages give us nothing but stray curiosities.

In the sixteenth century we may claim, as in some sort a precursor of mountaineering, one of the most extraordinary men of any time, Leonardo da Vinci. His drawings show an admirable sense of mountain form, and there is ample evidence of his acquaintance with the hill country of Lombardy. But more than this, Leonardo was at some time on a height of the main chain of the Alps * dividing France from Italy,' then called Monboso, so high, he says in a note still extant, that little snow falls there, but rather hail, as he observed about the middle of July ; and he noticed that the sky overhead was dark, but the sun more brilliant than in the plains. The remark about hail is either a hasty generalisation or, as Mr. Freshfield suggests, an attempt to account for the granular structure of glacier ice. He expressly says that * no mountain hath his basis at the like height.' These observations point to Leonardo having made a fairly high expedition, and Signor Uzielli, in an elaborate paper published in the ' Journal of the Italian Alpine Club,' for 1889, has given strong reasons for holding that Monboso signifies some part of the Monte Rosa group. * Indeed, that is still a local name of a certain spur of Monte Rosa (some say of the whole mass) in the parts of the Val Sesia, the direction in which Leonardo would probably have come if he came that way at all. The gravest objection to Signor Uzielli's theory is that no part of the Monte Rosa group could be said, in any sense to which we

' See Mr. Freshfield's note on Signor Uzielli's paper, Proc, R,G.S., May 1893.

are accustomed, to divide France from Italy. Still it is possible that Leonardo regarded the Valais as a mere incident on the road from Italy into France ; and it would be the natural road for the centre and north of France for a traveller starting from Milan. Moreover it is known that maps of the sixteenth century did use geographical expressions in a large way without regard to the details of political boundaries, and treated everything north of the Alps and west of the Rhine as being in some sense French. And perhaps it is not insignificant that what modem diplomacy would call the sphere of French influence extended at that time as far up the Valais as Sion. On the whole, it may be accepted as a probable opinion, though not beyond reasonable doubt, that Leonardo did attain a considerable height somewhere in the Alagna region of the Monte Rosa mass. Mr. Freshfield thinks he * may have got as far as the rocks above the Col d'Ollen, where, at a height of 10,000 feet, the inscription " A.T.M. 1615 " has been found cut in the crags.*

Proceeding to certainties, we find that as early as the middle of the sixteenth century the humanists of Switzerland studied and visited the mountains in the truest mountaineering spirit. There is reason to think that their work was arrested only by the troublous time of religious controversies and wars which checked all civilisation throughout Central Europe for almost a hundred years. This appears to be one more pitiful example, though a minor one, of the ways in which the fruit of the Renaissance was blighted by the violence of its own child, the Reformation. It is certain that the work of Gesner and Simler slumbered until Germany had made her first recovery from the Thirty Years* War, and was then taken up in a fashion inferior to their own. And I do not think we can justly ascribe their failure to found a school of mountaineers to want of energy or of merit. I will endeavour to let the reader judge for himself

Conrad Gesner of Ziirich, renowned among his contemporaries as the German Pliny, wrote thus to his friend Vogel of Glarus (Latinized as Avienus) in tlie year 1541 :—

Most learned Avienus, — I have resolved for the future, so long as God grants me life, to ascend divers mountains every year, or at least one, in the season when vegetation is at its height, partly for botanical observation, partly for the worthy exercise of the body and recreation of the mind. What must be the pleasure, think you, what the delight of a mind rightly touched, to gaze upon the huge mountain masses for one's show, and, as it were, lift one's head into the clouds ? The soul is strangely rapt with these astonishing heights, and carried off to the contemplation of the one supreme Architect . . . Philosophers will always feast the eyes of body and mind on the goodly things of this earthly paradise ; and by no means least among these are the abruptly soaring summits, the trackless steeps, the vast slopes rising to the sky, the rugged rocks, the shady woods.

It is remarkable to find here, in the words of a Swiss naturalist, that love of the sublime and picturesque elements in wild nature which is often supposed to have been born with Rousseau two centuries later. But this is love of wild scenery and something more ; there is the love of earning the sight by one's own muscular toil, the genuine mountaineering spirit Gesner's employment of a rather artificial Latin phraseology does him a little injustice in this passage ; and we may smile if we will at his physics, which are surely less rational than Leonardo's. He claims admiration for mountains, among other reasons, because they do not sink into the earth by their own weight, which he treats as a singular wonder of nature. But his ascent of Pilatus, described by him fourteen years later, leaves no doubt possible that modem mountaineers ought to revere him as a true ancestor.