Part 9
We found a more real scope for our climbing ambition on a boulder that the ice rivers of the dawn of time had left stranded in the woods. Some thirty feet in height, it fell away sheer on all sides and gave scope for some pretty problems. With vague memories of Bunyan we dubbed it ‘Hill Difficulty,’ and tried to believe that Apollyon lurked in the neighbouring wood. Apollyon was an actuality for whom we entertained a chastened respect. We thought then that every Alpine peak was formed of perpendicular cliffs scaled by infinitesimal handholds. Experience has shown that many of the climbs on this boulder were harder than any similar short stretch on, say, the Finsteraarhorn. Hill Difficulty, on which we learned our craft at the respective ages of six and four, was really a sound training-ground. More than once we were placed in positions of considerable ignominy, and, for our size, some danger. A twenty-foot fall head first might have had awkward results but for a helpful bush which often proved a friend. On one fateful occasion I remember weeping profusely and shouting for aid to my nurse, a humiliating experience for a mountaineer. She, worthy dame, declined to interfere, and beat me soundly on returning to earth.
When I look back on those long summers, and try to recapture the haunting vagueness of the first moods born of the hills, I am faced by the insufficiency of the written word to express sensations that seem the less definite in outline the more vividly their colour endures. But certain broad features stand out, and I am convinced by experience that the normal conception of childhood, as embodied, for instance, in _The Child’s Garden of Verses_, is radically wrong. Some of Blake’s detached verses, and the poetry--written at the age of seven--by Miss Enid Welsford, reflect truer glimpses of that mood of savagery and vague fear that enwraps the world of the imaginative child, a world in which there is little either of the cosy or the snug. Alarming actual incidents such as Grindelwald on fire often excite an abstract curiosity, whilst people and places intrinsically innocent may in a moment become charged with cosmic significance. Of fact and tradition the modern child is often a sceptic. Neither of us believed in fairies, though we accepted with indulgence the well-meant efforts of our elders to amuse. But to this day I cannot explain why there should ever have existed a well-marked boundary in the Grindelwald woods, beyond which there dwelt an unhealthy influence. I cannot understand what fixed this bourne, nor yet why a certain slope of scree and slag leading up to a cluster of rock and pine should even now seem laden with brooding fear. So, too, though we did not believe in the ice maiden, we yet felt that certain mountains were, so to speak, healthy and others provokingly sinister. The child in touch with Nature finds his own fairy land, and the mountains are the most potent magicians.
The inner secrets of the mountain fear are seldom revealed, for those that know are ashamed of the atavistic emotions that robbed them of self-control. For the possessing terror of the lonely hills is a thing by itself. It is most felt in childhood, and best known to the solitary intruder. I am not thinking of those trying periods whose horror is at least reducible to natural causes, of the slow advance from step to step across an ice-slope raked by falling stones, of the desperate race against darkness as night charged up from the valley, of the grim struggle when retreat was and advance seemed equally impossible:
νῦν δ’ (ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο μύριαι, ἃς οὐκ ἐστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ’ ὑπαλύξαι) ἴομεν.
The strain of such moments is at least healthy, but the uncanny terror that grips the lonely victim is not. Often it is independent of difficulty or danger. As a boy I had wandered up to that barren valley of barren boulders that closes in the head of the Val d’Arpette. There was no suggestion of gloom in the peaceful afternoon light that cast lazy shadows on the Clochers d’Arpette. I was perfectly happy. Suddenly the whole wilderness of forbidding stones seemed fraught with evil intent. There was no tangible reason for this transformation, but it was sufficiently real to produce a headlong flight. I still remember the compelling terror that drove me to bruise shin and elbow as I hurled myself from boulder to boulder in a desperate attempt to escape from a valley tenanted by the shades of dim derisive evil.
The Alps merit a patient novitiate, and the mountaineer who does his Matterhorn and Mont Blanc in his first season misses the essential charm of the hills. We spent some ten summers and four winters in the mountains before we even crossed the snow-line. But the bitterness of waiting was redeemed by the joy of long deferred fulfilment. We learned during those years the fascination of the lower hills, too often dismissed as tedious grinds fit to serve only as training walks or as exercise for an off-day in bad weather. They are worthy of a more loving study. There is a peculiar joy in working patiently upwards from the smallest of beginnings to the culminating reward of a great peak. The landmarks of our climbing history advanced very slowly. There was the triumph of the Little Scheidegg at the age of six, the proud moment when we passed the eight thousand level on the Brevent, and the tantalising approach to the magic ten thousand on the Schwarzhorn. Finally, at the age of fifteen, I crossed the line of perpetual snow, which for years had haunted our dreams and marked the heights of earthly ambition. The Aiguille du Tour may seem a slight victory, but the romance of the first night in a club hut, the first dawn seen from the upper snows, the first generous breadth of vision from a real mountain, are among the unforgettable things. Even the long deferred Matterhorn belongs to a less splendid category of memories.
Those years taught us how meaningless is the cry that the Alps are played out. Railways and cheap trippers, it is said, have robbed Switzerland of all charm. Grindelwald is simply Brighton by the mountains, and so on and so forth. For the railways I agree with Mr. Belloc. ‘They are the trenches that drain our modern civilisation. Avoid them by so much as a quarter of a mile and you may have as much peace as would fill a nose bag.’ Nor need we deny even to the cheap tripper the possible possession of a soul for the beautiful. The heritage of the hills should not be the monopoly of the cultured classes. In the Lötschenthal I once met four men of that class which has recently begun to desert Margate for the mountains. Their savings were devoted to this one fortnight in the Alps. Because guides are expensive they confined their wanderings to easy snow summits. Because the _Climber’s Guides_ are expensive they spent long hours in the British Museum copying them out into notebooks. One should rejoice in the increased facilities of communication into lives otherwise lacking in colour of the saving inspiration of the snows.
The complaint that the Alps are over-run argues a barren lack of enterprise. The Wengen Alp is confessedly somewhat dense in the height of the season. This troubles me not at all. Within two hours of the Scheidegg lies one of the most ideal of Alpine summits. To the superficial observer the Tschuggen may seem an unattractive scree and slate peak, yet the actual top is a delightful yielding carpet of springy Alpine turf touched with the blue of late gentians. Who will, may spend untroubled hours here watching the clouds drifting across Jungfrau, and in the north the dark turquoise waters of Thun gleaming between the intervening hills. Solitary, remote, and secluded, they will scarce remember the proximity of the hidden hotel and its heterogeneous mob.
On the other side of the valley the Faulhorn is doubly starred in Baedeker, but fortunately the course of the double stars is so ordered that it does not light on the fairest of Alpine retreats. The treasures of this chain are hidden in its eastern wings, and you, friends, who find Grindelwald bourgeois, do you know that ‘very lovely, silent land’ hidden away behind the black pyramid of the Schwarzhorn? The long rampart that links the Grossenegg to the Krinne is perhaps the finest low-level wall in Switzerland; whilst shadowed by a fold in this curtain of rock lies one of the chiefest of Alpine wonders. Within the span of some thousand yards you can trace the life of a baby glacier that has never reached maturity. Meticulously fashioned, with névé, ice-fall, and crevasse on a perfect but diminutive scale, it recalls the dwarf trees of Japan in its miniature perfection.
So during the ten summers in which we explored this chain in all its moods we found for ourselves the essential romance of the mountains. We acquired a more extensive book knowledge of the topography and history of the greater peaks than most climbers we met. _Scrambles in the Alps_ was the first book that I laboriously spelt out for myself. Alpine literature and Alpine photographs, such as Mr. Donkin’s, gave us a precocious knowledge of the Alps. I remember surprising a chance acquaintance by the certainty with which I located the views at an Alpine Club Exhibition, and his comment, ‘You seem to have been climbing for many seasons,’ had a certain bitterness for a boy who had not crossed the snow-line.
We had our foolish moments. A girl of fifteen returning from the Eiger, and seemingly careless of an experience for which we would have bartered our appetites, provoked a desperately absurd attempt on the Wetterhorn. Without rope or axe we found our way to the Gleckstein Hut. There we realised the impossibility of any serious attempt on the Wetterhorn itself, and turned aside towards one of the great buttresses below the main peak. By a nasty chimney and an arête which would prove trying to most unroped climbers we reached the top of our little peak. From our feet the great curtain of cliff that overshadows Grindelwald fell away in one curve to the pastures of the Scheidegg. A touch of uncertainty as to our chance of recovering the line of ascent added to the majesty of that compelling precipice. There were no traces of a previous visit, so we proudly erected a cairn, and then, more alarmed than we should have cared to confess, we cautiously retraced our steps down the ridge. On this and similar scrambles we may have learned something that is missed in a more orthodox novitiate. Occasionally we managed to borrow an axe, and derived much amusement from the tangled labyrinth of crevasses that can be found among the upper reaches of the Grindelwald glaciers. These expeditions were carried out somewhat stealthily, but an unusual and enlightened view of the educational value of the mountains allowed us considerable liberty of action.
The hopeless call of the skyline that we could never cross lent to the historic gap between the Jungfrau and the Mönch the mystery of those corners one can never turn in dreams. When at length we began to climb the greater peaks, fate took us to other ranges. But after years of waiting we at last solved the mystery of the other side, and a six-day journey across the glaciers of the Oberland on ski owed its inmost charm to the discoveries that answered the questions of those early years. Imagination had fashioned a mysterious conception of those fields of unknown snow behind the Jungfrau, and the last steps up the slope leading to the portals of the Lötschenlücke were quickened by the return of the child’s desire. And when at last the glory of the Great Aletsch snowfield, white with the softness of a winter moon, gave substance to the dream--‘Behold, the half had not been told.’
As a small boy I had compiled a guide-book, in which I had affirmed that ‘the Finsteraarhorn will test the powers of a first-class mountaineer.’ And now as we left our ski and passed on to its ascent, there was a touch of sadness in the ease with which we overcame the stronghold that to childhood had seemed almost impregnable. From the summit the little chalet of those earlier summers was just visible, and across the white recesses of the familiar lower ranges, and across the interval of years, our eyes seemed to meet the eager upward looks that had so often searched for the secrets of our present tranquil resting-place.
With such surroundings for our childhood it was almost inevitable that there should be little room for the sentiment with which others look back on school and home life. The snows are a jealous tutor, and resent a divided attention. It might be truer to say that Grindelwald was our real home and school. On the first day of summer and winter holidays we left for the Alps, to return only as term began. We never talked of ‘going,’ but always of ‘going back’ to the Grindelwald, where the chalet was the centre of our most enduring associations. The associations remained with us at school. My kindliest memories of Harrow centre round the Vaughan Library, comfortably remote from the minor annoyances of school life. The monitor’s key was a very real privilege, for it gave undisturbed possession of silent spaces whose full beauty was only revealed during a winter ‘first school’ when the sun shone in awakening glory through the windowed recesses that open on to terrace, fields, and the low-lying hills in the east. One shelf in particular proved a sovereign alchemist, and an intricate book knowledge of the Himalayas and Caucasus was accumulated with its help at the expense of the humaner letters.
The Grindelwald epoch was followed by three summers that gave us some experience of guideless scrambling among third-rate snow mountains. By judiciously choosing the worst of all conceivable routes we managed to discover educative difficulties where none need have existed. And if we are the only people who have found a dangerous route up the Wildstrubel, we may as well have the discredit attaching to that feat. The providence that cares for the young and very foolish preserved us among sundry and manifold perplexities. At least we brought the axe and rope out of the sphere of imaginative usage, and acquired an eye for country that we might not have gained on first-class peaks between guides. Just as the charm of the lower hills is too little understood, so also the fascination of these dependent courtiers of the greater monarchs is woefully ignored. These smaller mountains provide the most natural transition from the hills of mere imagination to the actual mountains of romance.
Let me instance the Glacier de la Plaine Morte, a field of névé on the route to no great peaks, and rarely visited. Its elusive magic is all its own. Just as the quiet spell of Wordsworth escapes those whose taste in poetry tends towards sound and fury, so the Plaine Morte is a useful touchstone to discriminate between the esoteric and exoteric school of mountain lovers. ‘Any goose sees glory’ in the ice-fall of the Rhone or the sweep of the Aletsch. But if a man can see nothing in the Plaine Morte but a somewhat featureless field of snow, he is not one of those to whom the precious things of the lasting hills will yield up their treasure. He is no dweller in the inner-most.
On the glaciers near Finse there is something of the like fascination. There, as on the Plaine Morte, the appeal consists in no outstanding feature, but in an impression of organic unity in a seemingly neglected world. On the Plaine Morte the effect is heightened by the insignificance of the shapeless bounding wall of low-lying shale slopes that cut off the greater peaks. Here also there is nothing to disturb by an assertion of disproportionate grandeur. There is the same secret and spacious charm on the Hardanger-Jokul, where the eye travels unarrested over dim white spaces of ice-capped plateaus only suggesting by a suspicion of haze the unseen fjords that sleep among their folds, and falling away like the rhythm of dying music to a far and grey horizon. In such places there is an uneasy feeling as of an unsought intrusion upon the quiet of a world withdrawn to die, a death with a wayward note of incompleteness:
‘As though some God in his dreaming had wasted the work of his hand And forgotten the work of creation.’
The Plaine Morte is also associated with less seemly memories. Our first guideless venture above the snow-line took us to the Wildstrubel. We left at midnight without sleeping, and were dead tired when we started home. But our older companion should have known better than to give himself and two exhausted boys neat whisky as a pick-me-up. The next distinct memory is that of watching our friend carrying out his suggestion that he should lead. His movements did not seem governed by any concept of the shortest distance between two points, and after a few aimless curves he sat himself in the snow. There was much competition to avoid leading, as those that followed could doze peacefully, guided and led by the tension of the rope. Our intermittent slumbers provoked abrupt jerks on the rope, which as often as not induced a unanimous collapse, followed by a brief but peaceful repose on the glacier. My brother’s mind was divided between two obsessions. He identified me with a certain ‘Hetta,’ and was firmly convinced that I was leading towards the wrong end of the glacier. A violent death would have then seemed preferable to the mental effort involved in disabusing him of these fancies; and I accepted with resigned disregard his blandishments, at times unpleasantly affectionate, and his repeated attempts to change the line of march. As we dragged on I became acutely conscious of what are, I believe, two fairly common phenomena. Movement, continued in extreme exhaustion, set itself to the sound of an irritating jingle of words that worked its way into the subconscious mind, governed the swing of one’s limbs, and repeated itself monotonously till it seemed to be part and parcel of one’s being. Again weariness awoke that strange tendency to see faces in inanimate objects. Familiar countenances formed suddenly, and as suddenly resolved themselves into grinning boulders. Mr. Belloc may have had this in mind:
‘It darkens. I have lost the ford, There is a change on all things made. The rocks have evil faces, Lord, And I am awfully afraid.’
Insufficient attention is paid to the curious data that mountaineering contributes to the psychology of exhaustion. Experiences of a different character were the outcome of another struggle on the Plaine Morte against overpowering weariness.
With a friend, a sound mountaineer, but a novice on ski, I had set out some years later to cross the hills from Montana to Villars. I left my friend on the Plaine Morte, and pressed on to reach the Wildstrubel for the sunset. Incidentally of all mountain memories that lonely sundown on the Wildstrubel is the most haunting. Adelboden was hidden, and from bourne to bourne there was no suggestion of life but for the deserted snow-gagged road to the Gemmi. A chaos of crag and snowfield, with no touch of colour to relieve the greyness, reddened for a few moments, and then sank back into the shadow as night crept upwards from the valley to the summit ridges. Darkness had fallen when I again reached the Plaine Morte, and one of those bitter winter breezes blew over the glacier. Mental and physical fatigue followed the inevitable reaction after thirteen strenuous hours. The monotony of surroundings has a hypnotic effect on tired limb and brain. The alternating spaces of shadow and snow, subdued by the glimmering light of the stars, the indefinite bounding wall with a dark curving of great hills beyond, possessed a rhythmic suggestion of sleep that I found difficult to resist. I tried counting steps, but only accentuated the rhythm. I vowed not to look up till I had reached the thousand, but nothing seemed to break the maddening reiteration of those undulating snows. And then my hands and feet suddenly lost sensation.
A steady sequence of thuds disturbed me; and I realised that my friend was chopping wood outside the hut some three miles away. That Inquisition torture, the slow succession of drops of water falling at intervals of a minute on the victim’s head, had, we are told, the effect of inducing a lively loyalty to the Catholic faith. I can well believe it, for I know that the regular fall of the beats carried across the glacier filled me with zealous and unreasoning anger. It added the last artistic touch to the monotony of the Dead Plain, for it followed a different rhythm, and proved almost more than I could stand.
The mountain gloom is often most pronounced below the snow-line.
One of our earlier climbs took us from the Wildstrubel Hut to the Wildhorn, and thence without incident to the head of the Rawyl gorge. Here the paths divide, the westerly to Sion, the easterly to Montana. At the dividing paths my brother and I started cheerily along that which leads to Montana. One of our two companions was a middle-aged man who considered that the experience gained in some camping expedition in Africa had given him an instinct for locality. He assured us that Montana would be found on the western flanks of the gorge. Analogous reasoning would lead one to look for Murren on the slopes of the Scheidegg. We did not like to break up the party, lest further knowledge won on the veldt should have even more disastrous results. So on we wandered, while the dividing gorge dropped ever further and further below. I do not know what provoked the final outburst. Perhaps they reminded us of our youth, a sore subject. They were the kind of men who ‘have no hesitation in contradicting those younger than themselves.’ At any rate we parted. They chanced upon a peasant who guided them home by midnight, a barren victory, for had they followed our advice we should all have been home by tea. Meanwhile we two scrambled down some fifteen hundred feet to the boiling torrent. This we crossed by a fallen tree. A faint track led thence to the lower of the two ‘bisses’ that run along the great sweep of the mountain-side. These ‘bisses’ are an ingenious attempt to harness the waters that would otherwise flow to waste, and to convey them at a uniform gradient through a country that is all ups and downs. The stream guided into troughs is carried across the face of the precipices. The troughs and planks, which afford a passage to the engineer and to chance but astute visitors, are supported on poles driven into the face of the cliff. Even in the daytime the lower ‘bisse’ is not oversafe, for the water escapes at intervals and trickles over the planks. By the time we reached it night--a sullen overclouded night--had fallen. Slowly we began to feel our way through the darkness, cautiously creeping along the slippery treacherous platform that hung poised above the thunder of the river. Childish nightmares had often centred round mountain cataracts, and to this day there is something uncanny in the turbid fury of an Alpine stream. We were soon filled with useless hatred for the unending tumult from below. Above the gorge a crag loomed out of the night and looked down upon us with malicious contempt. At such moments the mountains seem to develop a treacherous and repellent personality. There is something inhuman in the grim relish with which they seem to watch a desperate struggle.
‘The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay Chin upon hand to see the game at bay.’
The shadowy lines of forbidding precipice crept upwards to dim clusters of twisted pine. Below us flashed the evanescent glimmer on the tumult of the torrent. Its monotonous shouting beat unceasingly about our ears. Something of the nightmare imagery that inspired Kubla Khan added a note of terror to the voice of the river as it forced its way, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.