VINTAGE MOUNTAIN RECALL

A. D. MODDIE

DESPITE THE FACT that mountain journals seem such strait-jackets, my good friend, Editor Harish has been kind to accept contributions beyond the strait-jacket. This is one. (Arnold Lunn once wrote, 'The conventional Alpine article is a dreary affair'). The vintage recall is of some great moments, of a variety of human expressions from both mountaineers and non-mountaineers; some eloquent, some quaint, some amusing. The recall is offered from a long forgotten past of mountain history in a packed present. So packed, as to leave little time or inclination to savour the past. The recall is a personal choice from Anthony Kenny's 357 page Mountains: An Anthology. So this is a vintage tabloid for those who do not have time or inclination to wade through thick books. There is a joy in reliving the past in the mountains beyond ourselves.

As I have been one of those who have been under the impression that technology has made modern mountain equipment of recent origin and light years ahead of the early Everesters, not to speak of the alpenstock carrying climbers of Whyimper's age; let R.E.G. Irving correct our perspective in the Romance of Mountaineering. The rope, he reminds as was in Simler's book on the Alps, published in 1574, and was in use by the leader in a similar way as now. Crampons, which most of us believed was a product of only the last century, was mentioned by Strabo as being used in the Caucasus in the wars of Pompey, against Mithridates. They were then made of hides, shaped like cymbals, and carried sharp points. In the Middle Ages, they were used in the Alps with stout soles and three spikes. The geologist pioneer, Saussure mentions similar crampons attached by straps. The ice-axe is certainly an original and successful improvement on the old alpenstock and the peasant's axe. So too are the piton, the Karabiner and the windproof. In the long disputes over artificial aids being ethical or not, it is surprising to read even the now standard pitons and fixed ropes were anathema to many early climbers; as oxygen became later. After the Munich school of "sporting/heroic/arithmetic" type technical climbs took over on big rock faces. Irving amusingly describes their heroic feats watched from below "as elephants are watched at the zoo". For the purists for whom the mountain was a spirit, not just a lump of matter, it was abhorrent to even drive nails into it. "If you wrestle with a friend", it was argued, "do you use sharp claws to get a hold?" Perhaps, as in the rest of modern life, we are less sensitive now "of the intense love of every sort of mountaineering that does not contain a lie in the soul".

And that takes me to the long 20th century era of climbing on command, "sirkari climbing" as I have described it in India in earlier years since 1960. The first record of it - perhaps the first serious rock climb in history - was when King Charles VII of France commanded his chamberlain to climb Mount Aigulle (6430 feet) near Grenoble in 1492; the time when Columbus was commissioned to sail the Atlantic for the Indies. Then there was the Third Reich's notorious command performances on the Eiger Wall in the 1930s, when Hitler promised rewards to prove Teutonic superiority; really a piece of shameless racialist nationalism in the mountains. The Communist regimes followed suit with the muscle of the state to boost its ideological raison d'etre. These were basically expressions of power and superiority of races, nations, ideologies, the state: "a lie in the soul?". Earlier, John Ruskin, a purist if there ever was one, complained, "The French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of France; you have made race-horses of the cathedrals of the earth," and jockies of climbers!

In contrast, I know of no more human story of mountaineering than the first ascent of Mont Blanc by Jacques Balmat in 1786. He begins charmingly. "In those days I really was something worth looking it", and "with a stomach like cast-iron", he could walk three days without eating! Night and day the thought of climbing Mont Blanc was running in his brain. One night it was a nightmarish climb, "like a lizard on the wall", his legs failing, he went to grasp a branch. "At that moment I was awakened by a vigorous box on the ear by my wife, and, would you believe it, I had caught hold of her ear and was tugging at it, as if it were India rubber." When the real climb came, his comments were as humane and simple. In the face of storm and avalanche, "I covered my face with a handkerchief and said, "All right, go on, don't mind me". Later, he found his guides "sleeping like marmots", and then resumed the march upward. In the face of difficulties, he consoled himself, "No man is made of iron". When he found Mont Blanc with its night cap on, he knew it was in a bad temper. With his rug he muffled up his Doctor friend "like a baby", even after a gust of wind carried off the doctor's hat! He "wheezed like one with consumption", his "lungs had gone", and "chest was quite empty", "the muscles of my legs only held together by my trousers". But, behold, he was at the end of the climb. "I was on a spot where no living being had ever been before, no eagle, or even a chamois!....I was the monarch of Mount Blanc. "Then he turned towards Chamonix, "and waved my hat at the end of a stick". Hard to beat for charming simplicity. Even though his eyes were red, his face black, his lips blue, blood spouted from lips and cheeks, and he was half blind. Who writes so entertainingly now?

In contrast, witness the intense sensitive Shelley on Mont Blanc, where

"The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind'';

where,

"Power dwells apart in tranquility, Remote, serene, inaccessible''; where,

"glaciers creep like snakes that watch their prey"; "dome, pyramid and pinnacle, A city of death

Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin is there.''

"Upon that mountain....

the flakes burn in the sinking sun,

Or the star-beams dart through them'',

"The voiceless lightning in these solitudes".

"And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,

If the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy''.

And John Tyndall on the summit of the Weishorn: "Being: I was part of it and it a part of me, and in the transcendent glory of Nature I entirely forgot myself as a man East, west, north, south, rose those billows of a granite sea back to the distant heaven, which they hacked into an indented shore".

Perhaps the most challenging question in all mountaineering history lies in Sir Leslie Stephen's "The Playground of Europe": "Where does Mont Blanc end, and where do I begin?"

I know of no mountaineer who has attempted to answer that fundamental question. Though Stephen gave his answer, it would be great hearing the answers of the likes of Messner and Bonington, even if Gurdial is as reticent as the sphinx.

See what emotions mountains evoked even in rotund, chair-addicted Hilaire Belloc, a non-climber. "One saw the sky beyond the edge of the world getting purer as the vault rose. But right up, ...ran peak and field and needle of intense ice, remote, remote from the world. Sky beneath and sky above them, a steadfast legion, they glittered as though with the armour of immoveable armies of Heaven". "Here were these magnificent creatures of God, the Alps; they were something different from us, and could strike one motionless with the awe of supernatural things... "These the great Alps link one in some way to one's immortality.... from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion,....the glory of God,....whence springs that divine thirst of the soul." And then a fat intellectual's simple confession. "This is also, which leads men to climb mountain tops but not me, for I am afraid of slipping down." Belloc was like the Rependent Climber.

"Let he who wills go climb the hills,

My taste with his don't tally;

Let he who will go climb the hills,

But I'll stay in the valley''.

Or, as the poet W. H. Auden cutely put it;

"For an uncatlike

Creature who has gone wrong,

Five minutes on even the nicest mountain

Is awfully long.''

Then, from the vintage world, there is Geoffrey Winthrop Young's unique "Walking Manners". Does one even think of so trivial a thing as walking manners these days? "The first point of manners for the man in control is that of pace." Most who take the lead increase the pace. This is trying and wasteful. Keep consistently to the group's "right tempo". He adds, "It is better to be thought to be getting old or lazy than that the party should be rushed inopportunely." The second frequent failing is "the half step trick". Fifty percent keep a half stride in front. The friend is perpetually trying to catch up, "the pace thus steadily accelerates till both are practically racing extraordinarily irritating on a long tramp". The third "breach of manners" is passing ahead in the line of march. This is "silly competition", "irritating", "leaving a slight sense of injury to others." "It is more politic to be considered a well-mannered tramp than to assert one's powers as a limber hill-rusher". I must confess to often lengthening my stride to be free of a bore, or to enjoy my solitude in the hills.

Finally, that old master, Edward Whymper, the first conqueror of the Matterhorn way back in 1865. On the summit it was superlatively calm and clear. He scanned the landscape, ridge and crag, snow and glacier, and a hundred peaks. For him,

'One crowded hour of glorious life';

Before the tragic descent and criticism for the most fatal mistake in Alpine history. Then a kind of exile to the Andes, to Cotopaxi and Chimborazo, musical names of angry volcanoes. Thirty years later, the famous Guido Rey after descending from the Theodul, wrote: "I saw slowly coming up towards me a fine, tall, old man, clean shaven, clear eyed, with snow white hair. His face bore the impress of an iron will; his body straight as a dart not withstanding his years, was full of vigour; his lung rhythmical gait testified to his familiarity with mountains". Guido doffed his hat to him. He returned my bow and passed on. A few steps on his guide asked him, "Do you know who that is? Monsieur Whymper!" All his old comrades gone, Whymper had come back after thirty years of the tragedy and self- exile to be with his mountain, each making the other famous. He walked in quiet dignity looking up at the Matterhorn. Only he knew his memories, with Odell's last vision of Mallory and Irving on the upper slopes of Everest, this is my prize vintage recall. The solitary dignity of a great mountaineer in his last days walking alone at the foot of his mountain moves me as few things do in the mountain world.

SUMMERY

Recalling memories from author's mountain experiences.

 

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