Getting killed in the Alps is becoming rapidly an
international mania. This is evidenced by the statistics of the Swiss Alpine
Club, already quoted, showing that last year 165 tourists and guides somehow
managed to break their necks, while the number of wounded, those who managed
only to break something,arms, legs or ribs - is quite beyond compute. The
periodic massacre is due largely to the fact that alpine dangers are unseen. On
the sea shore, for instance, sane persons who cannot swim would not think of bathing
in a rough sea, for the sight and roar of the waves terrifies them. In the Alps
it is just the contrary, for nature, it would seem, takes pains to cover the
deadly crevasses with thin snow bridges and avalanches come down without
warning where the novice would least expect them. The most beautiful alpine
flowers, too, contrive to bloom overhanging the most perilous abysses.
Some years ago it was the elite which climbed, while the
man-in-the-street stayed in the street, or looked at the mountains from his
hotel window. Now it is a mad scramble of a hundred thousand souls to reach
some snow-capped summit. As most of these know nothing of the techniques of
getting killed, the following rules may be of service, and are easily
memorized: A fascinating way is to go and pick edelweiss; To pluck it one must
approach from above. Descend slowly, therefore, clinging to some small shrub.
If a passing guide chances to call warning, reply that you know what you are
about, and that tourists, as well as guides, have a right to pick alpine
flowers. Lean slightly over the precipice- and as one hand grasps the alluring
bloom, with the other hand pull on the shrub, which will come loose, roots and
all! There will be a grating sound of loose,moving rock, the overhanging ledge
will cave in,and one may soar, edelweiss in hand, into the void below.
There
will be three lines in the newspapers about it, and a caravan of expert guides
will find the body. Climbing without guides is why so many Germans and Austrians
succeed – vide statistics - while
English and Americans somehow, unfortunately, cannot get over the habit of
choosing always the best ones. Eighty per cent of the fatalities occur to
tourists climbing without guides. Signor Cumani, an Italian artist, started to
climb Mont Blanc alone twenty years ago and he has never been heard of since.
M. H. N. Riegel, from Philadelphia, in 1898, also attempted Mont Blanc alone,
and guides found his body later on the Glacier de Miage, to which he had fallen
from several thousand feet above.
Sitting down in avalanche paths is sometimes effective. A
friend of mine, dispensing with guides, climbed up above Pierre Pointue on the
route up Mont Blanc and deliberately sat down quietly to lunch in a gully where
avalanches come down off the Aiguille du Midi every fifteen minutes. Suddenly
the air was filled with singing,flying stones and ice, the velocity making the smaller
stones invisible. He failed to get hit, however, and disgusted, leaving
everything behind, fled to Pierre Pointue, where he recommenced with absinthe
cocktails.
Climbing without heavily-nailed boots, too, has its
advantages. An American, who considered it commonplace to ascend Mont Blanc
like everybody else, tried it with patent leather shoes. At the
"Jonction" of the Glaciers des Bossons and de Taconnaz he slipped into
a crevasse, dragging with him an English friend. Guides had great difficulty in
getting them out. Hot words followed the cool crevasse, and the two Anglo-Saxons,
each blaming the other for what had happened, indulged in a warm pugilistic encounter
in the snow. But for being attached to the guides by rope both men might to-day be buried somewhere in the glacier.
The famous
guide, Emile Rey, of Courmayeur, lost his life on the Dent du Géant by
neglecting to renew some worn nails. He was descending with Mr A. C. Roberts,
an English climber, and as the weather was growing bad, they unroped so as to
move quicker. In descending a chimney Rey jumped to a narrow shelf covered with
small pebbles, when his feet went out from under him and he fell over 600ft.
His body was found and brought to Courmayeur two days later. Nothing is easier
than falling over a precipice. Guides say that if a tourist has a tendency to
vertigo he should confine his ascension to peaks frequented by cows. To get
killed, therefore, the alpinist with vertigo should tackle the Matterhorn,
Schreckhorn, or the Aiguille Verte.
While it lasts the sensation of falling several thousand
feet must be extraordinary. Dr Cauro, an alpinist, broke his neck falling off
the Montagne de la Cote, a goat-frequented buttress of Mont Blanc; while a
French actress, in 1902, trying to be polite, was instantly killed on the
Mauvais Pas, by the side of the Mer de Glace, while attempting to pass outside
when she met a party coming in the contrary direction. In case of passing
beneath a forest fire on a mountain side, stop and have a look at the thick
yellow spirals of ascending smoke. In an amazingly short time the roots of the
trees burn, releasing the stones lodged between them, and these, falling,
bombard the footpaths below. By watching the fire from an exposed vantage point
the spectator will be hit squarely in the face by a twenty-pounder and his
body will be recognized later by visiting-cards, which, by the way, every novice
should carry in his pocket.
Do not bother about heavy underwear, double pairs of socks,
mittens and dark goggles when going above the snow-line. If the sun shines one
may go blind, and, therefore, more easily fall over a precipice. In case of bad
weather coming on suddenly, as it often does, one can freeze in a very short time.
It is said to be a delicious, drowsy death. A party of three English and
American tourists, with eight guides, during bad weather froze on Mont Blanc,
and ten days later, when the storm abated, watchers below with telescopes saw
them sitting dead in the snow.
Making rash glissades is a method adopted sometimes even by
experienced alpinists. The glissade starts in sunshine in fairly soft snow, but
in passing swiftly from sunshine into shadow, where the snow is freezing, one
encounters an icy crust, and there is no possible way of stopping. With one
swoop one goes until he strikes the wall of a crevasse or bergschrund, and then
well, it does not matter.
Persons addicted to heart trouble should undertake violent
exertion and quick changes of atmospheric pressure. It may put an end to their trouble.
For the same reasons those without physical force to resist fatigue and cold
weather should undertake long climbs. This is a tiresome end, however, and the
least desirable. Getting struck by lightning is not so easy. The unhappy
porter, Casoli, who was struck on the summit of Mont Blanc and charred from
head to foot, lived three days. The guide Joseph Simond, also, was killed by
lightning while descending the Aiguille du Geant with the guide Joseph Ravanel
and M Fontaine, the celebrated French alpinist. Simond was the only one carrying
an ice-axe. Take note, therefore, tourists, and when in the midst of an
electrical disturbance seize the steel ice-axe!
Breaking rope played a fatal part in the catastrophe on the
Matterhorn when Lord Francis Douglas and three others were killed. Moral: Do
not take old rope, for it might not break. Falling stones have killed more than
one in the Alps. In the early morning, when everything is frozen tight, falling
stones are rare. It is in the afternoon, when the sun is melting hot, that the
silence is continuously broken by their dropping. Amateurs when amusing themselves
in such places should do so in the afternoon when the sun is hot!
For those who know nothing of the mountains, and who
continue lusting for the flesh-pots, there is left always the climbing receipt
of Mark Twain: Hotel veranda! Bottle of whisky! Telescope!
Frederick Burlingham: 'How to become an Alpinist' (1914)
