Up Chevedale and Down Again

IN 1872, the best way to get from the Baths of Bormio to Moran was to cross the Stelvio in a carriage. It may be the best way still, for aught I know to the contrary ; but there is one variance which I introduced not mentioned in the guidebooks, nor recommended by the more conservative tourists.

As you cross the head of the pass, and the narrow and precipitous Trafoierthal twists and winds down before you, the masses of the Ortler lie off to your right, with the long Lavine track, a streak of fresh, broken snow, stretching down diagonally in front along the rocky slopes of the opposite side of the valley. Other than these remnants of avalanches that have spent their force, the immediate surroundings consist of a wilderness of rock in all directions, strewn with fragments of every shape and size, extending from the road up to where the snow line begins; varied, of course, by occasional patches of ice and of crusted snow still clinging in the more protected depressions.

Intending to do some mountaineering a little later, I left the carriage before it reached the head of the pass, and for the sake of practice, abandoning the windings of the road, — which makes a long loop to the left, — went straight up over the ridge and down the opposite face, with the idea of meeting the road below on the other side.

On the way down this opposite face lay one of these ice patches I have mentioned : a lake of ice with a margin of broken rock, lying at a steep angle, and perhaps three hundred feet long by a hundred feet wide. Judged from the upper edge, it appeared to be entirely of crusted snow. Not stopping to examine it with sufficient care to notice the icy character of the greater portion, I thought to save time by that old resource in coming down steep snow fields, a Schnee-Parti. With this idea in mind, I sat down on the snow, braced my alpenstock under one arm, and, giving a couple of hitches, began sliding down the slope. The speed became almost immediately so excessive that I put on the brakes, — that is, bore down on my alpenstock, — and thereupon discovered that it was no longer snow, but glare ice, that I was sliding on. An instant later some irregularity in the ice carried my alpenstock from my hands, and it pursued an independent course far in the rear, rattling and banging after me. With its loss I was quite "at sea,”a rudderless ship on a trackless if limited ocean. My only chance to avoid disaster below was to diminish speed by lying flat on my back, and bearing down upon the ice with hand and heel and shoulder. This I did instantly, and with partial good result. Unfortunately, the effect of the bump in which the alpenstock was lost had been to turn me partly round, and I continued the balance of the descent sometimes sideways and sometimes head first, finally landing in a heap on the rocks below.

Ascertaining that there were no broken bones to regret, but feeling that I had added fifty years to my age in less than a second, I crawled slowly and reluctantly over and between the broken rocks down to the road, and sat there nursing my bruises until the carriage arrived, when, concluding that I had had enough mountaineering to last until next time, I gratefully resumed my place. Neither did I say much concerning my fortunately unobserved experiment with the more simple laws of physics, which, had resulted in such complete if unexpected proof.

Since then I have examined with most critical eye every snow field down which it was proposed to glissade before embarking on the journey. Doubtless no more exhilarating, easier, or more satisfactory way of abolishing time and space in the descent of a mountain exists than sliding down a steep snow field ; but it must be pursued with due caution. Some weeks later, when invited by Pinggera to adopt this method at one point on the way down the Zufall Spitze, I declined with earnestness and certainty, and with a lively recollection of the battered condition in which I found myself on the previous occasion.

The Zufall Spitze (or Chevedale, as it is generally called) is, by the way, a mountain by no means difficult except in one particular. The experiences of the ascent I made developed strikingly both the ease and the difficulty. I had passed under the mountain in coming to the Sulden-Thal, some days before, over the Maderatsch glaciers, from the MartellThal. For the ascent, Pinggera and I started from “the Herr Curat” Eller’s house at Sulden. The mountain is wholly a snow peak, and, if I remember rightly, lies somewhat back from the valley, to the southwest. The greater part of the ascent was comparatively uninteresting, — up over the snow fields, across a few ice-bridges, where the glaciers were badly broken, compelling us sometimes to skirt a crevasse for a little distance, and again up over the snow fields. The last few hundred feet alone presented any difficulty. The main peak (11,939'), being narrow and somewhat long, consists, roughly speaking, of two flat sides, or faces, and two sharp edges. One edge looks toward Ortler, and is far too steep for human ascent; the other partly slopes and partly curves, so as to make it possible to gain the summit by following it.

The only real question of doubt as to reaching the top is as to the condition in which you may find the “ Berg-Schrund ” (the last great crevasse), which, in this as in so many cases where a peak is wholly snow and ice, completely encircles the highest point of the mountain.

We came up about the centre of one of the two flat sides to the lower lip of the crevasse. There, any idea of crossing was out of the question. The upper edge hung threateningly full ten feet above our heads, and as we crouched on the lower edge its depths were by no means inviting. Pale sea-green may be a beautiful color in silk, but it is an extremely cheerless one when you peer into a crevasse, and wonder how many feet down the sides will pinch together enough to prevent your falling farther. Neither is it exactly cheerful to contemplate, in such event, being preserved for future use as a curious specimen of the prehistoric vertebrate, for the delectation of the Sunday museum visitor of, say, the year 4002.

Our only resource was to skirt the crevasse, if necessary, entirely round the mountain, to find an ice-bridge, or see if it narrowed sufficiently at any spot to make it possible to cross. By the same token, it is marvelous how slight a snow wreath will become dignified with the title “ an ice-bridge,” in the enthusiasm of an ascent. We backed down a few feet from the lip, and followed the mountain round to the left and south. Nowhere along that face could we find anything like the ghost of a chance, but at the southerly edge, the one which sloped the more, a slight projection up from the lower lip seemed to promise a foothold at least within reach of the upper edge.

Pinggera climbed up on this ice pinnacle, while I sat below, so that if he fell into the crevasse, the rope, running from me up over the lip and down to where he might be dangling, would make it possible for me to haul him out, and not get dragged in too. He found that by standing on the exact point (which was broad enough for secure foothold) and allowing his body to fall forward (the upper edge of the crevasse being withdrawn a little beyond the lower), he could get his arms as far as the elbows upon the ice above. The next thing was to cut two hand-holes in the ice where his hands reached conveniently, and two more some six or eight inches beyond them, in order that he might get a second hold above when he drew himself up.

I watched him chipping out the ice, in eager expectancy at the prospect of passing this last obstacle, and without a thought for that which afterwards concerned me much more greatly, — how we were to get down again.

The hand-holds completed, Pinggera stuck the hatchet in his belt, reached up, gave a half spring, half struggle, in the air, clutched at and caught first one and then the other of the upper hand-holds, and got half his body on the ice above. Then, with a couple of earnest but ludicrous wavings of his legs in the air, he scrambled up, and, cutting a step or two, crawled on his hands and knees to the end of the rope, some six or eight feet above the edge, and, as we had lengthened out the rope, perhaps thirty to forty feet in all from where I sat below.

Reaching this limit, he dug two deep holes for his heels, turned cautiously round, and lay back against the ice, with the rope, leading from his waist down to me, held in both hands, and as I came up to the top of the ice pinnacle gathered it slowly in.

Gaining the top of the pinnacle and getting a firm foothold there, I threw up to him along the ice, first his alpenstock, and then my own, both of which he methodically secured under one leg, and resumed his hold on the rope. There remained then nothing for me to do but repeat his process of falling forward against the ice, grasping the first handholds, and floundering up as best I might, while he gathered in the rope, so that if I slipped my fall could be checked at once, and before my falling body should gather sufficient momentum to drag him out of his foot-holds. No such untoward event as a slip occurred, however, and a moment later I had crept up to where he was.

For the next hundred feet or so it was a matter of nicking holes in the ice, to serve alternately as hand and foot holds as we crept up the edge. After that, the slope was first somewhat less considerable, then distinctly so, and in perhaps fifteen minutes the summit was reached.

There are few more pleasurable sensations than to sit down on the summit of a mountain up which you have crawled and toiled, and from that vantage post survey the peaks and clouds below you.

This entire group, — the most important, in the heights attained, of the Tyrol, — from any of its major peaks, of which there are a dozen, presents on all sides a wilderness of ice and snow, of fantastic pinnacle, smooth snow field, and broken glacier, with but little rock in view. Seen under a summer sun, it is a sea of spotless, dazzling white almost as far as the eye can reach in every direction.

The day was as nearly perfect as one could readily be made. At that height, and with such breeze as there was coming to you over surrounding peaks and snow fields, the warmth of the noonday sun was by no means objectionable, while black bread, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and red wine made a most acceptable lunch.

These disposed of, we sought refuge in the contemplative porcelain pipe of government tobacco. — stretched at full length on the snow, and enjoying the pleasurable sensation known as “ feeling the tiredness go out of your bones.”

Presently Pinggera suggested that it was time to begin our descent. Now, there had been creeping into my mind, during the preceding few minutes of contemplation, a certain doubt as to whether the Berg-Schrund might not be even less attractive approached from above than it had appeared on the ascent. This doubt — bred of dyspepsia — had been so rapidly concreting that I was not indisposed to put off its solution. Pleading, therefore, a fatigue which I hardly felt, I suggested a second pipe of tobacco. We smoked for perhaps ten minutes more in silence, when Pinggera again urged our beginning the descent. Again I could see no special reason for haste. Pinggera’s answer was practical and conclusive: “ Stay here, and the icebridges, having had the full afternoon’s sun, will be rotten, and we shall be lost crossing them ; wait when we reach them until they freeze, and we shall be lost among the lower crevasses in the darkness. “ This seemed unanswerable argument, so we gathered up our few belongings and made ready. I re-tied the rope around my waist, Pinggera did the same, and we started down the southerly edge of the mountain, at first stepping in the foot-tracks we had made in the snow on the way up. The first hundred feet, while fairly steep, were not specially objectionable. But soon, following the edge, we reached the steeper and therefore icy portion of the slope which led sharply down to where we had crossed the Berg-Schrund.

It is one thing to come up an ice slope step by step, cutting foot and hand holds, resting your body forward against the mountain, and quite a different matter to creep down, facing half outwards, each heel catching perhaps an inch to an inch and a half of hold in a nick in the ice, leaning backwards with one hand against the ice, and getting a more or less untrustworthy brace for your body from your alpenstock set below you and a little to one side. On very steep slopes even this is impossible, and you must turn round and back down as you came up, feeling below with the toe of your boot, each foot alternately, for each new foot-hold. The descent to the great crevasse was not quite steep enough to make this latter mode necessary, except for the last few feet; so we crept down, half sideways, Pinggera first, I following, with the rope stretched nearly taut between us. We had gone perhaps half the distance from where the steeper portion of the slope began to the crevasse, when, taking momentary counsel with my fears, I said to Pinggera, “ If we slip here, what then ? ” I suppose it was more the tone of my voice than what I said that affected him. He evidently thought that now for the first time, and belying twenty experiences during the past few weeks, of almost every conceivable combination of difficulties on ice and rock, I was about to lose my head, or, to put it in plain English, my “ courage.” He turned back on me a face of ashy whiteness, and, announcing what he thought the fact rather than answering my question, said simply, in tones of quiet, despairing conviction, “ Wir sind verloren.” As often happens, a recognition of the effect on another person of a momentary loss of confidence removed the actuating doubt. Whatever of pride I had came to my immediate assistance. But more than that, instant appreciation arose that, should any lack of confidence on my part infect Pinggera so that he also lost confidence, we were indeed, as he succinctly put it, “verloren.”Therefore I laughed, and said, “Well, go on; you can slip if you like; I shall not;” and we methodically resumed our descent. Nevertheless, that exercise of care usually expressed by the conventional phrase “ walking on eggs ” bore but slight comparison or relation to the excess of caution which I used for the next few minutes.

After all, it is more a question of stomach than of sure-footedness, under circumstances such as ours were then. If one can avoid the deathly faintness apt to come with gazing down into “comparative eternity,” there is no great difficulty in going anywhere on an ice slope which even so much as looks possible.

In perhaps five minutes more we reached the upper lip of the crevasse; and now our respective duties in ascending were practically reversed. I lay stretched out above, with my feet in the last pair of foot-holds, and paid the rope out slowly as Pinggera slid and crawled down to the actual edge. He let his hody slide as far over the edge as was compatible with still retaining control of his movements and a hold in the lowest pair of hand-holds, and felt in the air with his feet to see if he could reach the lower lip. Naturally he could not, for his body, hanging straight down, brought his feet within the outer edge of the crevasse, some inches above and perhaps a foot inside the lower lip. Looking over his shoulder, he marked the exact spot he must reach with his feet, and judged the amount of outward swing he must give to his body when he let go his hold upon the ice above. This determined, he called up to me, and I paid him out about four feet of loose rope, as much as I could afford if he were to miss his footing on the lower lip; for if he fell either inside or outside the crevasse he could do nothing to check the momentum of his body, and I wanted no such tug at my waist as that of a body dropping, say, fifteen feet or so without a check. I had had one experience of that kind about a week before, on another mountain, when, fortunately, I had a moment’s notice before the strain came, and also was in a situation where I both could and most promptly did get a firm hold. But here even a moderate jerk on the rope would bring me up in my foot-holds past the perpendicular. If that happened, whether we both went inside the crevasse or outside would be a matter of absolutely no materiality.

Pinggera called to me that he was going to make his jump, steadied himself, glanced again over his shoulder, swung his feet, at the same time pushing his body out from the ice, and dropped. For just half a second he swayed and balanced himself on the top of the pinnacle, and then stood firm. There was a sense of definite relief in seeing that thus much, at least, was successfully accomplished. Again I paid him out rope, and he crawled down to where I had formerly perched below the lower lip, going a little to one side, that if I should slip in my descent I might not strike him, and send us both rolling down the mountain. There, bracing himself as firmly as he could, with feet below and back against the mountain, he called to me that he was ready, and to come on. If I now fell, there were two possibilities : one of my going inside the crevasse, in which case the rope would lead from Pinggera on the outside over the edge to myself inside, and I could be hauled out. On the other hand, if I overshot the lip, I should half roll, half tumble, past him ; and if he did not succeed in grabbing me as I went by, he could at least shorten up on the rope and check my momentum so that he could stop my fall. Following his procedure, I turned round, lowered myself along the ice to the lowest set of handholds, hung there for a moment, looked down over my shoulder, swung my feet steadily back, and dropped on the top of the ice pinnacle. My calculation had been accurate, and I found myself standing there in a half-crouching posture, but firmly and solidly.

Having had quite enough of the ridge, we abandoned it for the side face of the mountain which we had come up, and which was somewhat less steep. From here on the descent was easy, and, after a little, most of the slopes were in fact gradual.

Our extra delay at the top warned us that we must hurry, and, coming to a wide, gently sloping snow field, we started down it on a run. It was really the sloping face of a glacier covered with perhaps a foot or eighteen inches of snow (fallen during the nights of the past few weeks), and now lying in a smooth, unbroken field hanging across the small crevasses which from time to time broke the face of the glacier, their presence indicated only by slight waves or depressions in the surface. These were, nevertheless, readily perceptible to even a partly experienced eye, and merely necessitated a jump of perhaps six or eight feet as we reached them successively. We raced along nearly parallel, but some distance apart, to keep the rope up off the snow.

It may have been, indeed probably was, exuberance of spirits, arising from the successful negotiation of the great crevasse, coupled with contempt for the relatively insignificant dangers of the lower snow fields and glaciers, or perhaps mere exultation in the safety now substituted for the former peril, which led to the trying of a foolhardy experiment on my part.

It seemed so unnecessary to go to the extra exertion of a jump every time the surface line of the snow waved a little, and it seemed so reasonable to suppose that the snow might bear over the crevasses, and the crevasses, if a crevasse underlay every depression in the snow, were so irritatingly numerous, and the jumps therefore so annoyingly frequent, that I determined to dispose definitely of all these questions at once.

Some gleam of reason remaining, I took the precaution of slackening my pace, thus dropping back a little, so that we were no longer running on parallel lines. This accomplished, instead of jumping at the next depression in the snow, — a wave of at most three inches, and perhaps five feet wide, — I stepped squarely into the middle of it. My doubts were all resolved. Every question involved was settled. To all intents and purposes, the snow offered no more resistance to my body than the air. In less than one second of actual time I was hanging under the snow at the end of six or seven feet of rope, with a wall of ice on each side, a round hole above my head where I had come through, and a soft, diffused green light all about which shaded off into darkness in the depths of the crevasse.

I had barely time to realize my surroundings, and absolutely no time to take notice of any details, when I began coming up out of the crevasse with a rapidity which seemed to equal my descent. In fact, I was pulled and scraped up over the edge so fast that my best endeavors and all my attention were needed to protect my face and keep it away from the ice. In an instant my head was again above the snow, and there, about fifteen feet off, sat Pinggera hauling away on the rope with a resolute earnestness that was almost laughable. Once my shoulders were above the edge of the crevasse he stopped pulling, and I scrambled up, explaining to him breathlessly that I had wanted to make sure whether the snow would not bear, and save us the trouble of jumping.

Pinggera was a very silent man. It took either a direct question or absolute necessity to induce speech on his part. Indeed, Julius Payer, the Austrian explorer, has left on record that, after a fall of some six hundred feet in a miniature avalanche of detached snow, when he and Pinggera were on their way up a mountain in this same vicinity, some years before, Pinggera, after they found each other (the rope having broken, and they become separated in the fall), had shaken hands, laughed, tied the broken rope together, and started again up the mountain without speaking. This quality of silence I knew by experience, having not infrequently toiled up behind him for as much as two hours without a word being interchanged. I therefore neither expected nor received other reply to my explanation than a brief grunt and a resumption of the downward journey.

From that point on I tried no further experiments, and anything that could be taken as indicating the absence of undersupporting ice received the same treatment which would have been accorded to an open and undisguised fissure.

The remainder of the descent was without incident. In due time we reached the rocks and fields which led to the chapel of St. Grcrdraut and the three houses which constituted the alleged village of Sulden. At the curé’s house, hot supper, the peaceful pipe, and a comfortable bed were full repayment for the day’s adventures.

I think, however, that the Berg-Schrund left its effect, for I regarded the König Spitze, which it was proposed we should ascend on the next day but one, and which, as a future enemy, I had carefully scrutinized a few days before from the adjacent Ortler, with a lurking suspicion that perhaps it might furnish, so far as I was concerned, the demonstration of the old proverb concerning the pitcher that goes often to the well.

Charles Stewart Davison.