CHAPTER VI
THE AIGUILLE DU CHARDONNET AND THE AIGUILLE DU TOUR
The aspect of the Grand Combin--Topography--Weather conditions for a successful raid--A classification of peaks--The Orny nivometer--The small snowfall of the High Alps--The shrinkage of snow--Its insufficiency to feed the glaciers--The Aiguille du Tour--Ascent of Aiguille du Chardonnet--The St. Bernard hospice--Helplessness of the dogs--The narrow winter path--The monks’ hospitality--Their ski--The accident on the Col de Fenêtre--“Ce n’est pas le ski.”
The Val de Bagnes, the Val d’Entremont, which leads up to the pass of the great St. Bernard, and the Val Ferret are comparatively little frequented by Englishmen, even in the height of the summer season. Why it should be so is not quite clear. There is no finer group in the Alps, from Tyrol to Dauphiné, than the Grand Combin and Mont Velan group. As seen from Lake Champex, or from almost any point of vantage in the Val de Bagnes, the group of the Combins and abutting snow-clad tops forms one of the grandest pieces of mountain architecture that can be imagined, one of a character that is somewhat uncommon, for the breadth and width of the lines are more striking here than in the usual type of mountains tapering up to a peak. The snow-fields and icefalls are magnificent, while the altitude of this group (Grand Combin 4,317 metres, or 14,164 feet) enables it to rank beside Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and the Mischabel range, eclipsing the Finsteraarhorn and Piz Bernina.
If the Englishman is not so often seen in summer in that region as he might be, I am sure that in winter none have yet visited on ski the valleys of Bagnes, Entremont and Ferret, with the exception of a party about which I may have something to say in another chapter. The writer of these lines has, therefore, an excellent chance of introducing a novel field to the British ski-runner. He spent an eight-days’ week in March, 1907, upon a raid in the valleys above named, ranging from one to another on ski, with two friends, one of whom was a youth of eighteen, and the other a well-known Valaisan ski-runner, Maurice Crettex, from Champex.
A knowledge of topography being absolutely essential to one’s safety in High Alp ski-running, even the most expert runner will take care that at least one of his party possesses that knowledge to perfection. The runner who takes the risk of wasting some of his strength--or time on short winter days--upon errors in direction, is little short of a fool. Owing to steep slopes and complicated ground, the slightest topographical mistake may cause a fatal waste of precious time--and of a man’s useful energy, the fund of which is limited in a town or plain dweller, who only occasionally tries his physical endurance in winter at a high altitude.
A raid on ski is not a raid if it is interrupted by stress of weather. It is then best described as a commonplace misadventure. The intending raider must trust to chance, assisted by a careful reading of the daily reports of the weather issued from Zürich. These reports now very usually distinguish between High Alp weather and the conditions prevailing during the same periods in the lake and river region. When there is a scientific prospect of fog over the lakes and rivers, this means that the air is still, and that the sun shines upon every mountain rising above four, five, or six thousand feet, as the case may be. A wind arising from north or east will not interfere with the raid (except in the matter of cold), but a gale from west or south will bring it to an abrupt end, and be attended with the utmost danger if the warning of a falling glass is not immediately acted upon.
During the eight days that this raid lasted, the weather was absolutely steady, fine, and windless, the sun and moon vying uninterruptedly with each other to extinguish darkness. We suffered at no time from the cold after sunset or in club huts, and basked all day long in the sun’s direct heat and in the rays reflected from the snows. The temperature fell at night to 10 or 15 degrees under zero Centigrade, and rose to most extraordinary readings during the day. We were dressed in the warm, tough material used by all competent mountain climbers even in the height of summer, with strong thick boots, and never for a moment suffered from cold feet.
Thanks to the above circumstances and to a happy concourse of every advantage, my two companions and myself were the first human beings who ever smoked their pipes and cigars in winter, and sat in their shirt-sleeves on the top of the Aiguille du Tour, Aiguille du Chardonnet, and Grand Combin. The latter summit was attempted by one of my colleagues at Bâle (Mr. O. D. Tauern, the German gentleman mentioned in another chapter). But the most gallant efforts failed to bring him and his friends to the very top, though the tour was a complete vindication of winter mountaineering on ski. An account of their expedition appeared in the Annual (1908) of the _Schweizer Ski-Verband_.
A ski-raid upon the giants of the Alpine world does not necessarily mean that the raider sets his ski upon the brow of the conquered adversary. Such a pretension would be pedantic. The summits of the Alps may, for the ski-runner, be divided into three classes, strictly according to their conformation, whether they be small or great, Alpine or only sub-Alpine.
There is the class which is inaccessible under winter conditions, because those summits are then led up to by slopes so sharp or insecure that neither ski nor boot can reasonably be used upon them. That class we reject altogether. Another class consists of mountains, such as the Diablerets, Wildhorn, Wildstrubel, the tops of which are led up to by slopes eminently fitted for ski, both upwards and downwards. A third class consists of summits which cannot be reached on ski, because they are rock-pinnacles, but which can be _only_ conveniently approached on ski. This class, to my mind, is the best, as it combines ski-running with rock-climbing. The Dufour Spitze of Monte Rosa would be the grandest example in this category.
Grand Combin, approached on the north side from the Plateau des Maisons Blanches, belongs to the same class as Diablerets, Wildhorn, and Wildstrubel. But if the ascent be varied by climbing the rocks _viâ_ Combin de Valsorey, a course which I found as easy and comfortable in winter as in summer, the Grand Combin passes into a--to my mind--higher class. The Aiguille du Chardonnet and the Aiguille du Tour, to the tops of which there is from no side a continuous way on snow, are other typical instances.
Any one who would follow in our footsteps and perform, like us, an eight or ten days’ ski-running and rock-climbing raid, will find every useful indication as to programme and distribution of time in the following description:--
The raid comprises three parts: First, Aiguille du Tour and Aiguille du Chardonnet; second, Great St. Bernard, and Val Ferret back to Orsières; third, Grand Combin, and back to Martigny.
The ski-runners will leave Orsières at about 7 o’clock a.m., and proceed on their first day to the Cabane d’Orny, or to the Cabane Dupuys, which lies still higher. The Cabane d’Orny being quite comfortable, the vertical displacement from Orsières (890 metres) to the site of that hut (2,692 metres) will probably be found a sufficient effort to justify one in leaving the higher hut severely alone that day. The Cabane d’Orny may be reached either by following the bed of the Combe d’Orny from Orsières, or _viâ_ Chalets de Saleinaz, from Praz de Fort. We found both lines of access equally good, but information as to the best at any given time of the winter season should always be obtained from those locally acquainted with snowcraft. The ascent to the hut being continuous, the ski-runner will save much time, and save up much energy, in using a contrivance against back-slip, whichever may be the one he favours.
There is near the Cabane d’Orny, against a flight of rocks, a nivometer. This is an apparatus for recording the height at which the snow may rise against a rock face. Persons of an observant turn of mind are requested to read the nivometer (which consists of horizontal bars of red paint, bearing each a number at regular intervals) and to enter in the hut-book the date of the observation. This is one of the many lame devices which have been contrived to measure the snowfall at a given spot during the year. It is supposed that interesting data, and points of comparison from year to year, may thus be collected. And these, with observations made at other places in the glacier zone, are digested and published from time to time.
There is no doubt that the nivometer will show every day in the year--though it will not be so often noticed--the height at which the snow stands against the face of that rock. But how much information can it give about the snowfall? Snow cannot find its true level on the face of a rock against which it is blown about by the wind and where it is interfered with by the temperature of the stone, sometimes heated by the sun and sometimes colder than the air surrounding it.
Snow is not like water or air. It is not an elastic consistent substance or a uniform fluid, like gas, seeking its own level or settling down upon a surface. It falls unevenly upon an uneven ground. It melts or accumulates, shrinks or flies about according to its local situation, and, within a given time, the nivometer will give very contradictory readings. A snow gauge is no easy thing to establish. When rain falls it is easily measured, because, in the course of nature, it is mere water. Not so with snow.
What is measured by the Alpine nivometers is the height of the snow lying at a certain place on a given day. Density cannot be checked. Yet it operates immediately after the snowfall. This mode of mensuration gives no reliable clue. Some of the snow was carried away by the wind that would have remained on a windless day. Some has been blown from elsewhere, in what proportion it is impossible to tell. How much has melted depends on the sun heat, and the amount of this deficiency no instrument is there to record. A storm may have intervened. Another may have blown the snow flat, concentrating the total mass within a smaller compass. Another may have piled it up in abnormal wreaths.
The science of snow measurement is quite in its infancy. When it is developed it will probably be on lines very different from those at present followed, and the results cannot be foretold.
Natural nivometers should be raised above the surface like dovecots and set up in wide-open spaces, in situations exposed to the four winds of heaven. They should be able to receive on all sides the snow moving in the air. They should be in the shape of a cone with long, gently sloping sides. And even then they would not prove much, unless the snow they had collected was gauged after every fall and the apparatus swept clean and prepared to receive the next fall on a smooth surface.
It would then probably be found that the amount of snow falling on the glaciers of the Alps is much smaller than we are apt to imagine. In any case, the depth of the snow that finds a permanent station upon the rock and ice surface of the Alps, till spring, is only a fraction of the depth of snow that would be obtained by adding together each volume of snow that might be gauged after each separate snowfall. Snowflakes form an aggregate which gradually passes into a conglomerate. They lie at first like the pieces of a game of spillikins, at different angles with one another. By degrees the crystals lose their shape. The edges of the prisms die out. The air that circulated between them is expelled. A hard texture takes the place of the flimsy structure of the first moment. In this process of reduction in volume and of increase in density, cracks are generated in the mass. They are at first potential and remain latent till wind-pressure, or the footfall of man, determines the bursting open of the surface, accompanied by a report which sometimes unnecessarily alarms the unwary, and at other times is a sure sign of a dangerous snow-quake.
The depth of the snow is also modified by a process of sublimation which causes it to shrink rapidly. The atmosphere while re-absorbing the air expired by the snow, also re-assimilates some of its moisture, even without the suggestion of a thaw.
The outcome of so many efficient causes may be summed up in one word: shrinkage. But, as snow almost always is wind-driven when it falls, a large portion of the quantity follows in the air a course parallel to the wind, and (when it strikes obliquely the smooth and slippery surfaces--old snow, ice, rock surfaces--over which it travels instead of locating itself upon them) it is impelled forward, and sweeps along till it can find a lodgement against a solid protuberance, or is dropped over the edge of some break in the surface, out of the reach of the wind, when it finds a resting-place and gets piled up. This is another reason why one meets with less snow on the wind-swept, high-lying surfaces than in the middle zone of the Alps.
A third effective cause is to be found in the clouds. Snow-laden clouds do not generally unload themselves at a very high altitude. They form themselves in belts on the lower flanks of each range and pour forth their contents nearer the grazing and forest zone than one would be led to expect when one looks up towards them from the bottom of a valley. We then see the basement and sides of the cloud masses. We project their vertical lines almost infinitely into space. This is the kind of delusion to which we are subject when we look at a house from the street-level or, _vice versâ_, when we look down from a roof on to the pavement. The actual volume of snow whirling above our heads is considerably thinner than we assume. This is the case particularly during the winter season in Switzerland, as winter balloonists may testify.
So, without entering any further into the scientific aspects of this question, we wish here to note provisionally that a properly conducted nivometric survey of the Alps might show that the winter snow storage is quite out of proportion with the quantities required to replenish the upper ice-forming reservoirs to whose function so much importance is attached in the current theories about glaciers.
From the hut try the ascent of the Aiguille du Tour the following morning. On ski, along the easy slant of the Glacier d’Orny, and then by an easy climb, lasting one hour at the most, on good dry rock (3,531 metres = 11,615 feet); this undertaking will be a great delight. The upper reaches of the Glacier du Trient and of the Glacier d’Orny are one of the most magnificent ski-grounds that man can imagine. They can be taken advantage of both before sunset on the day of one’s arrival at the hut, which should be reached by two o’clock, and on the next day, for a departure at eight from the hut should enable you to be on the Aiguille du Tour by eleven, which leaves the whole afternoon for runs.
Your third day can be employed in ascending the Aiguille du Chardonnet (12,585 feet) as follows: ski up to the Col du Tour; ski down the pass facing west, and leaning a bit to your left; then up the slope from right to left (that is facing full south) at first, and then full west, along the foot of Aiguille Forbes. From the moment you have passed that point the ski-runner becomes a climber. You may have to cut a few steps to reach the eastern arête, which runs from the dip on the west flank of Aiguille Forbes to the top. The _arête_, of course, requires rope and much skill in manipulating it.
In splendid weather, the rock being free from snow or ice, and, into the bargain, well known to one of the three of us, we did the climb without experiencing anywhere a moment’s delay. Time-table: Started from Cabane d’Orny, 5.50 a.m.; reached Col d’Orny, 7.15 a.m.; crossed Plateau du Trient to Col du Tour by 8.15 a.m.; passed foot of Aiguille Forbes by 10.20 a.m.; set foot on _arête_ by 12 a.m.; reached top at 1.25 p.m.; completed descent of _arête_ by 3.20 p.m.; resumed our ski at 4.20 p.m.; skied back to Col du Tour by 5.40 p.m.; got home by 7 o’clock.
Our rests were: Twenty minutes at 8.15 a.m., twenty minutes at 10.20 a.m., thirty-five minutes at 1.25 p.m., twenty-five minutes at 4.20 p.m., twenty minutes at 5.40 p.m.
For ski tours in the Mont Blanc range, consult the maps by Barbey, Imfeld, and Kurz.
The fourth day of this raid was employed in an easy and very fast run down to Orsières, then on a vehicle to Bourg St. Pierre, whence four hours on ski bring the runner to the Hospice du Grand St. Bernard, the gates of which are open night and day to all-comers. A long night in a most comfortable bed, after a most substantial meal, and followed by a plentiful breakfast next day, made sufficient amends for the nights spent in the Cabane d’Orny.
In summer the hospitality extended by the St. Bernard monks to passing tourists--one may not spend more than two nights under their roof--is somewhat perfunctory, because they are oppressed by numbers. In winter, on the contrary, they are left to themselves. Time and solitude are somewhat heavy and passers-by of some education are the more welcome.
Within a lap of the hospice we were spied by the famous dogs. They barked and made but a poor pretence at coming towards us. They were terribly handicapped in the snow, which we lightly brushed with the flat of our ski. No wonder they floundered: the floury snow was about 6 feet deep. Their fore and hind quarters went under, and then hove again into sight, while they swung out of one hole into the next, as nutshells rising and falling with the waves.
This situation threw some fresh light upon their legendary life-saving occupation. The tables were turned. We were much better prepared to save them from suffocation than they to lend us a helping paw. In fact, one huge beast’s efforts to get on board my ski somewhat perplexed me.
We had struck out our own line, in coming up, across the surges of the snow. The farther from any path, the happier the ski-runner. But we saw enough of the winter track to understand the usefulness of the dogs. The track is about 2 feet wide. It cuts in and out of the summer road, and consists simply of the narrow footpath which pedestrians and the monks have trodden hard. They manage to keep it open from summer to spring by directing upon it the little traffic there is. The snow hardens after each fall when walked on and raises the pathway by so much, building up by degrees a kind of elevated viaduct on which to remain is the condition of safe progress. Step out to the right or to the left by one inch, you drop down several feet into the drifts.
What this might mean, in the fog or during a blizzard, to those weary, ill-shod, ill-clad, under-fed Italian labourers who still choose that mode of transit to save their railway fare under the Simplon, we could easily imagine. The dogs, on the other hand, would keep upon the track and scent in what snow-covered spot the poor trespasser had missed his footing and strayed. The remainder would be spade and shovel work for the charitable monks.
Easter being early that year, Lent was drawing to an end. The house was wrapped in silence. The bells being hushed, a rattle croaked along the passages instead. But Lenten hospitality may be lavish and fishes must swim at all times, as the capital trout from the Dora Baltea experienced, that was floated on the best of wines down to a worthy home of rest. On the next morning we met a procession; they were calves being driven up from Italy. They looked sickly against the pure sunlit snow, but they capered and frolicked, and booed with joy. Well might they do so as long as the bells were silent. But after!
Years before this, the monks had been driven to the use of boards for getting about. They invented a rude ski wanting in the essential feature of modern planks, free action for the heel. With them the heel was fastened down to the boards. They sprinted and punted about with the help of a long stout pole, achieving quite a style of their own. With their long robes waving, and swinging their gaffs from side to side, now to steer, and now to propel their unsteady craft, with arms alternately raised and lowered, they cut very picturesque figures against a terribly bleak background, with their dogs pounding after them, till we lost sight of them behind the corner like a flock of mountain choughs.
My next day saw me across the Col de Fenêtre (2,773 metres = 8,855 feet), along the whole Val Ferret, back to Orsières, a most magnificent, perfectly easy and reposeful trip. From point to point, that is, from Orsières up the Val d’Entremont to the Col du Grand St. Bernard, and through the Col de Fenêtre, down the Val Ferret, back to Orsières, the ski-ing is first-rate, these valleys running on parallel lines, downwards, from south to north. The crossing from one col to the other, upon south-facing slopes, is the only unpleasant piece of ski-ing, though quite safe and easy.
A fatal accident befell here a party of runners a few years after. They intended running up the Val Ferret to the hospice when they committed a serious mistake. As the map shows, the summer path winds corkscrew fashion from the bed of the valley to the lakes of Ferret. Now, when a ski-runner is seen upon a steep winding path, or ploughing his way up the sides of it, it often means that he has not reconnoitred the skiers’ route on his map. Those young men cut into a snow bulge, the snow ran out through the slit and overwhelmed one of them.
Those bulges are a most treacherous invention of the snow-fiend. They are best likened to an egg-shell full of sand, with some compressed air imprisoned between the shell and the sand. Break the crust, the air runs out with a puffing sound, and the snow, freed from pressure, begins to trickle through the hole, enlarging it. Then the whole mass, blowing itself out and thrown out of balance, comes down.
The study of the map would have shown to the victims of this phenomenon of nature that however much the corkscrew might be the right way up or down for loaded men and cows (the pack and the cow between them determine the lie of every mountain path), such a path was not for men mounted on skiffs that could choose their course upon the country-side with the same liberty of choice as a ship steering upon the open sea.
This brings back to my mind a regulation supposed to have been issued by a certain War Office on the Continent. Some zealous officers had been coaching their men in the use of ski upon open fields, and some trifling injuries had been entered by the army medico in his report sheet.
Next autumn a circular was received in every army corps recommending officers to teach ski-ing on roads only!
Last winter I was trotted up a steepish and narrow winding path by some well-meaning friends who had acquired their ski-ing from a “big” man. Some patches of the road under wood were sunk in deep snow; others, in the open, were ice; others bare earth and stones, and the whole was so well banked in that side-stepping was impossible.
When I mildly remonstrated--after, not before, discipline would forbid--I was politely told that so-and-so always took his parties up that way. No doubt, and quite heroic of him, _mais ce n’est pas le ski_.
In the evening of this day, which I reckon as the fifth, a conveyance carried the three runners, in whom the readers of this chapter may by now have become interested, to Châble, in the Val de Bagnes, and then to Lourtier, a convenient starting-point for an attempt upon the Combin region.