Fresh Snow on La Grivola
A PILGRIMAGE TO COGNE
WHAT traveler in Switzerland — I do not say tourist—has not heard of Cogne ? Who among the number has not wished to reach it and be at rest ? How few the favored ones who have succeeded!
Our fathers have told us of the Switzerland of their day: a land of peace and quiet, of cheery welcome and honest hearts; a land where all men were friends. But the Grindelwald and Zermatt of old have departed. They have vanished forever with their kindly hosts and friendly servants, whose modest inns have given way to vast modern hotels with French cookery and advertised comforts. The cow-tracks have grown into streets with seductive shops. The eager populace roam about seeking for tips. The dress coat is nightly to be seen in the land. The saddened mountaineer hastens to hide his well-worn Norfolk in cabanes and hütten, with the memories of other days heavy in his soul. The sweetest sound in nature was the tinkling of the countless bells of the Wengern Alp, as it rose aloft to the climber on the Mönch, and swelled and faded with the light breeze. Now its silvery music is drowned by the raucous scream of the locomotive on the Kleine Scheidegg. The glorious view from the platform of the Gornergrat has been destroyed by the erection of the wooden barn of the Belvédère, where a noisy throng assemble daily and quack polyglot banalités on the giants of the Pennines. Wherever railway, boat, or diligence can force its way, there it disgorges its loads of trippers from the Vaterland, Birmingham and Manchester men with their interesting families, excursion parties from every state in the Union.
And the worst is not yet. Already the greed of a company has tunneled the hoary old Eiger, and is attacking the Jungfrau, purest, peerless among maidens. A suspension tram is to haul its gaping freight up the precipices of the Wetterhorn. Trains on runners are to defile the sacred sweep of the Aletsch. The majesty of the Matterhorn itself is to be desecrated, if the ears of the legislators are deaf to the fervent appeals from within and without the land; and its tented roof will soon be gored by a many-windowed gallery, and a Guide —bewahre! — will lecture to the Personally Conducted on the distant scenes and the tragic history of the peak.
Cogne — variously pronounced in the neighborhood, Cŏn, Cŏn, and Cŏnzhe being the most popular varieties — owes its fame and attractiveness, not to its circling sea of ice and snow, nor to the charm of its valley and the gloomy terror of its gorges, nor even to the glorious trinity of La Grivola, Gran Paradiso, and Herbetet, but to an old-time simplicity still kept unspotted from the world by the difficulties and disagreeables of getting there.
To begin with, if untoward circumstances prevent you from reaching it by the natural means of a mountain pass, a back-breaking diligence must be taken for hours along a hot, white, dusty road, much beloved of scorching automobilists. Why, par parenthèse, do these odorsome gentry so particularly affect the dustiest roads ? But it were as sensible to ask why they all seem to bear a striking family resemblance. Anyhow, the Italian Automobile Touring Club makes this a favorite run, and the wayside chalets from Aosta to Courmayeur are dotted with notices of Benzina à vendere.
The diligence and the motors are left on the shadeless high road about half a mile above the village of Aymaville. The mule, that you have wired to meet you exactly then and there, is nowhere to be seen. After waiting for an irritating time in dust and sun, the conviction grows that, if your luggage is to get down to the village at all, you will have to carry it yourself, and you take up your burden. In Aymaville a horse has been standing all ready for an hour; and you had better not get out of temper with the owner. His charge is exorbitant of course; much more so, if you foolishly take a petite voiture, as he will eloquently try to persuade you, telling of the trials of twentyfive kilometers uphill along a rugged road. As a matter of fact, it turns out to be fairly good walking, is not at all trying for any one in decent condition, and could easily be done under four hours, if the driver would permit.
After mounting the first tiresome slopes out of Aymaville, the road becomes easier but narrower, till it is for the most part a mere ledge some eight or ten feet wide on the face of a precipice. In about half an hour the grim defile of the Val d’Eypia is entered. There is no pretense at railing or parapet, and it requires at times some address to pass the occasional vehicles and heavily laden peasants without going over the side into the abyss below.
The scenery becomes wilder. The road rises to a great height above the Grand’ Eypia, which boils below in tireless battle with obstructing rocks, after the manner of headstrong Alpine torrents. A fine cascade and several smaller falls, glacier tributaries of the Eypia, are passed. The stones along the road’s edge are margined with masses of delicate ferns; oakferns, hartstongues, spleenworts predominating. The sharp turns in the valley bring us from twilight into bright sunshine. Here butterflies rare and common, exquisite fritiilaries, brilliant moths, nearly all of smaller size, flutter about the gayly colored flowers that fairly cover every available patch of soil.
Few things strike the stranger to the mountains more forcibly than the altitudes at which the flowers and insects flourish. Every alp is a bright carpet of primary hues, though it freezes hard there as soon as the sun departs. I have seen hundreds of butterflies — I think they were the common red admiral — on the rocks of the Ruinette, at a height of over 11,000 feet. Mosquitoes have followed me high up the snows of Mount Temple. I have picked white flowers just below the abandoned upper hut on the Matterhorn (12,526 feet); and have a photograph of the Alpine saxifrage on the summit of Emilius (11,675 feet), which was long thought to be a flaw in the film.
In the ravines running down to the river bed grow ancient larches with curiously distorted trunks, twisted out of all resemblance to the slender arrowy tree we know, by the violence of the winds that sweep up the valley. Here, on the rock ledges, and wherever there is soil to be found, the thrift of the peasant raises his tiny plot of corn, vines, potatoes. Sometimes the melting of the winter’s snows washes away a valuable field several yards in extent; sometimes it enriches a more fortunate proprietor with a corresponding increase of estate.
Imagine the wife saying to the husband in spring, as they inspect the future potato-patch—eight feet by four — two hours’ perpendicular climb from the chalet, —
“ At least three inches of soil have collected on this rock. Shall we not plant a hill here?”
Husband: “ Well, my dear, it is perhaps worth the trial; but I am afraid the seed will be wasted.”
The men plough, mow, reap. The women assist them, and carry the crops down to the valley below in huge bundles on their backs. Horses or mules are seldom used in the harvest; for they cost money, and the path is often too steep for either, at least in descending. The size of the burdens is enormous; yet the bearers step out lightly. They are accustomed to it almost from birth. The little tot of four years old carries her tiny bundle on her shoulders like the rest. This early toil, added to the habit of tucking up the skirts round the waist, gives the girls a figure curiously distended about the hips. The women often go bareheaded, the men never —they even put on woolen nightcaps in bed. The younger girls have a fresh complexion, and often very pretty faces, both more suggestive of Switzerland proper than of Italy. But good looks and brilliant color soon depart; at middle age they are prematurely old, withered, and wrinkled; in old age they are crippled witches.
After a time we come to the little village of Vièyes, at the mouth of the picturesque glen of the Nomenon. Here there is a cantina, and the driver affects great concern for the welfare of his animal, which has been walking for nearly two hours under the oppression of a small portmanteau and a rücksack (total twenty-eight kilogrammes by the railway scales). Half an hour’s halt for hay, wine, and tobacco. Keep your temper, and pay up like a man.
The Italian vetturino, if not a highclass driver, is certainly a magnificent whip. It rather gets on one’s nerves at last, the incessant cracking of the lash which occupies the intervals between applying it to the poor beast’s head and sides. Fortunately for him, he does not seem to mind it much, for he does not alter his pace in the least. There is something homelike in the continual cries of “ Whoo-oop Gee! ” varied occasionally by a sound like “ Coom-ong.” But the only really effective method of quickening the speed seemed to be addressing reproaches to him in a mild, pained voice. This caused surprise at first, till I discovered that it was the regular prelude to the final resort of twisting his tail, otherwise employed in towing his master uphill.
At one turn only in the road we are vouchsafed a view of La Grivola. It is the curved snow arête of her northwestern side that she presents to us for a few minutes; an unbroken sweep of dazzling purity from summit to base. There is something so transcendent, so arresting, in the sudden revelation of that cold splendor high overhead in the blue sky, as for one brief space the night of the gloomy cliffs is split, that we hold our breath in silent homage. The driver, familiar as he is with the sight, stops to admire, and for the only time noises fail him.
But, fascinating as is this passing glimpse of her soaring spire, La Grivola is seen to best advantage from one of the near peaks to the northeast or southwest. Then the length of flanking rock-wall, which takes so much from her stature when seen across the Trajo glacier, disappears; and she becomes a graceful white lady, with dainty head bending slightly forwards, and slender, sloping neck; fit mate for the grim black Matterhorn across the way, broad brow erect, resolutely buffeting the blasts with aggressive shoulders.
The valley opens out at length into a fair green plain, a kilometer wide, girt with a cirque of fir-clad cliffs. Three mountain streams come parting the fields from north and south and east, and at the meeting of the waters is a rambling huddle of chalets and white stone buildings, overseen by a quaint church tower.
And that is Cogne.
There is not much embarrassment in the choice of hotels. There are just two of them, named of course La Grivola and Gran Paradiso. The former, which I choose, is kept by a Gérard, relative of the well-known guides; the other by the curé of the parish. There are no stuffy carpets in rooms or halls, but the white boards are riddled with the nails of a generation of climbers. Everything is scrupulously clean. Every one is charmingly hospitable and attentive. As I am vigorously removing the traces of the day’s tramp in my room, enter two maids with fresh linen for the bed. Far from fleeing incontinent at the splashing, they stop to chat and give eager information about recent ascents, the state of the bergschrund on Paradiso, the rocks on Grivola — for, of course, signore has come to climb ?
Thank goodness, no one does come as yet for other purposes than climbing, tramping, or naturalizing; but how long will this blessed state of things last ? The sacra fames is already compelling the foolish inhabitants, and they are agitating for a widening of the road and a triweekly vettura service, which shall introduce the German, the American, and the British tourist to this earthly Eden, which will then promptly cease to exist. Even so has many another restful nook of olden times perished by the high road that leadeth to destruction.
A similarly delightful state of patriarchal simplicity reigns in the other departments of the establishment; though there is no hay now in the bedrooms, nor do the chickens any longer flutter down from perches overhead to share your food, as old Séraphin Bessard tells of.
The dining-room is also reading, writing, and smoking-room. This is as it should be. Ladies who object, or don’t smoke — I did not meet any — can always take their meals in comfort on the doorstep. A sweet little maid of fourteen presides, and is touchingly interested in your appetite. I think mine pleased her. The red wine, far superior to the ordinary Valdostano, may be described as a light Burgundy with a dash of Cape Madeira. The food is excellently cooked, and the dishes much too luxurious for people who are earnestly trying to train down to something like decent condition. That wholly good and indescribable graygreen soup that goes so well with Parmesan; fresh trout from a neighboring brook; a local dressing for spaghetti that is worth working up an appetite for — if they would only stop with these. The landlord discusses the guides, examines your nails, and grows reminiscent of the days when Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Yeld used to come to Cogne. And his charges — but I am not going to give them away. No act of mine shall hasten the bitter end, and contribute to the ruin of this haven of peace.
Full in front of my bedroom window the snows of Gran Paradiso, visible through a V in the black cliffs, are crimson with the Alpenglühen, as I retire to early rest; for the Punta Tersiva is the morrow’s training climb. But a few minutes, and the moon has transmuted them to purest silver. The growing cold tears me away from the contemplation of their lonely mystery, towering solemnly into the purple mezzotint of the sky. One more lingering look at Mont Blanc, shining starlike down the valley thirty miles away, and into bed with you. Prrr — No wonder it is cold. We are over five thousand feet above the sea. Even this absurd down quilt, which only reaches from breast to knees, is welcome. Let me try it diamond-wise.
The general population of the place are equally friendly. They give you “ Good-day,” when they meet you, and “ Bless you,” when you sneeze. They are replete with information when you start for a tramp; they congratulate and ask particulars on your return from a climb. Young and old profess surprise and dismay when they learn of your departure. For the time comes at length when you must leave Cogne, and, sadder still, return to Aymaville and the high road, to the dust and the motors and the diligences, to the wretched comforts of civilization.
Then the question of how to get back has to be faced. If the gymnasticallyminded visitor requires a change in the nature of his exertions, let him drive back in a petite voiture to catch the morning diligence. If he is one of those lazy fellows who generally walk, he will probably be extremely surprised; and his aching body will suggest a source that might have inspired the first massageurs with the idea of passive exercise. If, in addition, the horse be one that is much given to shying at fallen trees, old women, calves, and the like, he will not complain of the monotony of the way. The slabs on La Grivola are less exciting.
Crede experto.
LA GRIVOLA
IT is a good many years since I first saw La Grivola. It was a case of love — hot, burning love — at first sight. Resting for breath on the rocks of Emiliums, my gaze was attracted by a snowy spire that was beginning to rise Valsavaranchewards. The guide, an ancient duffer who knew no tongue but the Valdostan dialect, managed to explain that its name was La Grivŏla. A beautiful name, that befits the owner: La Grivola, the famous, the Matterhorn of the Eastern Graians.
From the summit of our peak she presented a truly remarkable appearance. Two sides of her pyramid were visible: one a solid black rock-face from apex to base: the other an unbroken slope of purest white. She at once became the object of my climbing ambition. Nor was there any likelihood of forgetting her. There is no loftier rival to hide her lovely face from the kings of the Mont Blanc, Grand Combin, and Monte Rosa groups, the three great ranges that stretch east and west to the north of her. From many a summit of these I have since looked for her graceful figure, and seldom in vain. She is always visible, if your own eyes be not clouded.
“ Our peaks are always clear on a fine day,” says Pierre, as we throw ourselves down panting on a mountain-top, and see the ranges round us, from Dauphiné to Oberland, veiled in summery cirrus draperies.
So it came to pass that in the process of time I made a pilgrimage to Cogne.
There are two Gérards known to fame as guides; but on my arrival I found them both engaged. The landlord recommended a third brother, Pierre by name,— every one speaks French in Cogne, and very fair French, for they are carefully taught it in the schools, — and I had no reason to be sorry for the exchange. He proved himself steady, capable, most attentive to his monsieur, and excellently acquainted with his own country. A fourth brother, Sylvester, turned up for this expedition as porteur, and we started for the cabane de Pousset. I learned later that it would have been far better to start from the hotel and do it all in one day. But good advice and experience are apt to reach us a little behind time.
There had been only one ascent of La Grivola so far in the season, made by Pierre himself with two English climbers. But much snow had fallen on her since then, and her black dress, usually showing so clean between the edges of her ermine mantle, was now wearing a suspiciously spotty, guinea-fowl look. The famous guide Burgener had arrived at the hotel that morning from Zermatt, with two German climbers, for the express purpose of doing La Grivola. He absolutely refused to attempt it, and they had to content themselves with a tedious grind up the Gran Paradiso.
It occurred to me at the time as rather a sporting act to wipe the eye of Alexander the Great, and Pierre, being young and enthusiastic,— I like keenness in a guide, and prefer to attend to the discretion myself, — was more than willing; but later we began to entertain respect for our superior’s opinion, when we were clawing for handholds on ice-varnished rocks. It recurred to our minds with increasing weight, as we sprawled on those evil slabs of the last rib. It takes a truly great guide to refuse on occasion.
The cabane is reached by the usual four hours’ weary zigzagging up the steep side of the Val d’Eypia. Drawing near it, I was rewarded with one of the most interesting sights in all my hill experience.
Some gray spots were seen moving along a ledge on the cliff ahead. The brothers grew excited, and proclaimed them as bouquetins. They might as well have been sheep at the distance; but just then two royal chasseurs came swinging down valley-wards, provided with powerful field-telescopes. One amiably made a rest with his cap on a rock and took careful aim with the longuevue, and I was soon able to watch four live bouquetins at a seeming interval of some hundred feet. The first was a noble beast with huge horns; the last was barely three parts grown. The elders were still wearing much of their gray winter overcoats: the junior had come out in a new summer suit. As they nibbled along in single file, the leader suddenly looked up at an invisible ledge overhead, apparently a dozen feet above him, probably between six and seven, and without taking a step jumped up to it “ all standing.” Numbers 2 and 3 followed suit, and finally the youngster rose to it without an effort, bird-like. The grace of the action cannot be described. After this a light-hearted chamois practicing dancesteps on the rocks all by himself provoked only a languid interest.
The bouquetin is the most daring and skillful mountaineer known. Formerly roaming all over the Alps, as the names of the Dent des Bouquetins, of exciting memory, and of other peaks prove, his comparative boldness has led to his destruction; while the shyer nature of the chamois has enabled the latter to prolong a precarious existence. The mountains about Cogne are a shooting preserve of the King of Italy, and here the last of the bouquetins are carefully protected. According to the natives, their numbers, now estimated at over two hundred, are increasing. They are frequently to be seen by the climber in this part of the Graian Alps.
The cabane de Pousset is not the worst climbing hut in the Alps. If the floor was clay, it was fairly dry. If the wooden tray in the corner contained neither rugs, hay, nor straw, at least we did not have to share it with unpleasant companions. There was neither stove nor chimney, but we had the stone fireplace all to our own cooking, and the brisk wind that blew through the holes in the walls soon drove the smoke out of doors.
Mountaineers who can do their climbing from a hotel, starting with a warm breakfast, after sleep in a comfortable bed, have much to be thankful for. The case is different when, after a sleepless night, with joints aching rheumatically from the hardness of the couch, unrested, half-frozen, and insufficiently fed, the climber has perhaps to face the hardest toil of his life; when, in spite of lacerated fingers, strained sockets, and quivering muscles, the eye must be clear and the head steady; when hand and foot, numbed and aching with the cold, must do their duty without a slip. Useful, necessary as the rope is on ice or snow, often though it may save one from the consequences of a stumble, woe unto him — and his guide — that putteth his trust therein on precipitous crags!
With thoughts like these I stumbled out at 3 A. M., in a wind that chilled to the bone, and followed Pierre’s lantern to the steep snows that lead to the foot of the Col de Pousset. A glorious dawn was flushing the Graian snow-peaks to pink, as we breasted the slopes, and soon we were scrambling up the upright but easy rocks to the summit of the col. Arrived at the top, the rope was put on, for now the névé of the Trajo glacier had to be crossed diagonally. The snow was frozen hard after yesterday’s thaw, and we made rapid progress to the foot of our peak, with the rays of the rising sun shining gratefully on our backs. Here the névé runs up to steep ice slopes that bridge the bergsehrund and meet the mountain proper.
The ascent from the Trajo glacier is made entirely up the rock-face of La Grivola’s pyramid. On the other sides it is made principally up snow and ice. The two edges of the rock-face are easy curves and from a distance look feasible and tempting. As a matter of fact, owing to deep clefts and slabby gendarmes, they are all but impossible. A broad central couloir and a smaller one to the right run far up the face between three precipitous rock-ribs. Under favorable conditions it is possible to make much of the ascent by these couloirs, but on this occasion the new snow put their use altogether out of the question. The route begins on the rib to the left of the great couloir; when this becomes impracticable, the couloir must be crossed to the centre rib, and so on; till the original line brings the climbers out on the summit. Neither arête is touched from start to return. Ordinarily speaking, the only danger is from the falling stones that continually sweep the couloirs, but to-day it is the one that is wanting, doubtless owing to the fresh snow on the upper crags.
We found the rocks on the first rib upright but good, with but a little snow in the hollows, and stuck to them for several hundred feet, before it became necessary to cross the great couloir to the rib on its right. Here our troubles began. The rocks were less steep, but slabby and much harder, the downward and outward dip of the strata being very pronounced, and the cracks, which should have made them easy, filled with hard snow or ice. We soon had to cross the smaller couloir to get something simpler. But here the verglas began to make itself objectionable. The rocks of this buttress were glazed with a coating like brown glass, sometimes in ropes and lumps several inches thick. I have never seen worse. Gloves were not to be thought of, and, to add to my misery, each good prominent handhold was decorated with a tuft of snow, till frozen fingertips became sodden too.
Back again. But little improvement. Once more across the great couloir to the perpendicular rocks of the left-hand rib, with the summit crags overhanging us up in the sky. Still the hideous verglas everywhere.
“ Ferme, Pierre ? ”
“ Non, monsieur; mais il faut avancer.”
Foot by foot, with painful caution, the top is neared. The rocks become harder and the holds less frequent, but the work grows pleasanter, for the ice coating is beginning to disappear in the sun.
It was about time. Not only were fingers in a deplorable condition, the memory of which was to abide for several days to come, but there were two awkward corners to be turned with a stretch of varappe—that is, crackless slab—between; a mauvais pas that can sometimes be avoided by taking hereabouts to the northeastern arête. As I was vainly feeling round the buttress with leg and arm for knob or notch, the thought kept intruding, “ What will this be like in descending ? ” Fortunately Pierre is a good guide and does not pull on the rope, but leaves you to work out your own problems. At the worst corner we were horizontally placed, and a tug would probably have sent us both to the bottom.
This pulling habit is one of the worst vices in a guide. When on the knife-edge of a giddy arête, they will take a pull at the rope that nearly sends you into an abyss below. They think to give you support. They simply upset your delicate balance. Is it not Leslie Stephen who relates how on a peak one day he met a countryman, who piteously implored him to tell him the German for “ don’t pull ” ?
Immediately under the summit the rib leans inwards, and as we mount rapidly, I wonder how we are to get over the projecting edge. A convenient cleft in the coping comes into view, through which we crawl, and at nine o’clock stand on the summit of La Grivola.
A cloudless, windless sky greeted us as we clambered on to the little flattened snow cone to tbe right, that forms the allerhöchste Spitze, just big enough to hold two at once. Third déjeuner at once on the edging rocks, with our boots dangling over vacancy. All the old familiar faces are smiling at us to-day, from the black Viso in the Cottians to the grand old Finsteraarhorn, the monarch of the Oberland. The Meije, Ecrins, Mont Blanc, Aiguille Verte, Grand Combin, Dent Blanche, Matterhorn, and Monte Rosa are as usual most forward in claiming recognition. Before noon, however, all our northern friends have retired into seclusion for the rest of the day.
The question of returning soon forced itself on our notice. The snows of the southwestern face looked tempting, and our shining ice-wall at the foot of the rocks half a mile below us, dead under the overhang of the edge, did not. But Valsavaranche is a good day’s tramp from Cogne, and our rücksacks had been left below. It was my last day in the district, for Henri Garny was to meet me at Courmayeur the following evening, and the petite voiture had been engaged. A traverse was plainly out of the question. There was only one thing to be done. We waited an hour or so to give the sun, now well on the rocks, time to thaw out the verglas, and, with a wholly unnecessary admonition to caution from Pierre, lowered ourselves on to the face of the mountain.
As long as possible we stuck to the same route. I had not been mistaken. The two corners were worse in descending. It is still a mystery to me how I ever got round the last; and the glisten of the ice-wall at the foot kept catching my eye as I looked down.
But the holds were no longer glazed, and all went merrily till we reached the last crossing of the great couloir. Pierre was just about to step on it, when a small schild-lawine broke away, starting apparently from our steps above. It was not very big, but quite unnecessarily so for sweeping us to annihilation — or eternity. There was clearly a lot more to come from above; and come it did later on, with the grand roar that is so absurdly disproportioned to such a tamelooking thing as a snow-avalanche.
No help for it. We must stick to the bad slabs of the right-hand rib all the way to the foot. Thank the stars, there was no more verglas. Only a trickle of water everywhere instead. Unpleasant, yes; but what if it had still been ice?
With much relief we got down to our ice-ladder, and found the steps still sound. We hurried down them and started on the looked-for glissade. Alas, the sun had so softened the snow that it was hopeless, and we had to dig in our heels — and sometimes our legs — till the névé was reached. The bergschrund seems to be kept well filled with avalanches descending from the couloirs.
The névé was by this time soft and tiresome, and progress in the deep snow very tedious. We unroped on the col, took breath and another breakfast, and then lowered ourselves down the rocks with lightsome hearts, looking on all sides for bouquetins. We saw none, for it was probably too early for them to come from the heights to graze. We made one more attempt to glissade on the last slopes. General result, partial disappearance. Personal result, solid burial to the hips. I had to be dug out to the boots by the slow aid of the ice-axes.
It was three o’clock when we got back to the cabane. Here we indulged in a square meal; that is, we ate up everything that was left. Apparently there was nothing left to drink. And then I had my first pipe that day. Smoker-climbers will understand without more words all that this statement conveys. Non-smokers do not deserve to know.
A cordial welcome from guides and hotel people awaited us at Cogne. It appeared then that there had been some doubts entertained about the success of the expedition, and they were doubtless pleased to have the temporary condemnation of their chief attraction reversed. For La Grivola is the general object of the climber’s ambition in the Eastern Graians. Her height, 13,022 feet above the level of the sea, is surpassed only by her consort, the Gran Paradiso. The singular beauty of her form is conspicuous from the summits of the most magnificent peaks in the Cottian, Graian, and Pennine groups. And her conquest, whether by rock-face or snow arête, affords the mountaineer a climb of the most interesting description.