Poetry of the ice

Book review: a Swiss glaciologist celebrates the transient icebergs on a mountain lake and explains why they matter.

All across the Alps, glaciers are slumping into lakes and pools of their own meltwater. A typical example is the little glacier at the top of the Geren Pass, a windy gap in the ridgeline above Switzerland’s Bedretto Valley. A crescent-shaped lake formed at its foot at the start of this century, and has been expanding ever since, eating steadily into the remaining ice-field. 

In November 2020, however, something different happened here. As winter comes early at 2,670 metres, the lake had already frozen over by the 26th of the month. Unfortunately, nobody was watching on or around that day when, probably within a few minutes, huge blocks of the former glacier erupted upwards, smashing their way through the surface ice or rafting it high into the air.

The lake on the Geren Pass in September 2020.
Image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

What had happened? Within a few weeks, a curious researcher, Giovanni Kappenberger, had skied his way up to the pass to find out. Few could be better qualified to do so. As Kappenberger’s family and given names suggest, his life has spanned the very same Italian and German-speaking regions that the Geren Pass links together. He was born in Italian-speaking Lugano in 1948, but studied natural sciences at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). While working as a meteorologist for the next few decades, he also kept up his interests in glaciology by helping to monitor the mass balance of the Basodino glacier, Ticino’s largest expanse of ice.

The lake after the "evento catastrofico" of November 2020.
Image from Giovanni Kappenberger: Die Eisberge am Gerenpass

Arriving at the Geren Pass, Kappenberger saw a new chaos of giant ice blocks crowded into the small lake. This couldn’t be a normal “calving” from the end of the glacier, as in other lakes. Instead, he deduced that some kind of “evento catastrofico” was responsible.

Back at the nearby Piansecco hut that evening, he sketched out what must have taken place. The rising lake had progressively submerged the glacier’s tongue over a number of years until the warm summer of 2020 loosened its grip on the rock below, letting the ice break free and float to the surface. And this event was the starting point for Kappenberger’s book, Die Eisberge am Gerenpass: Poesie des Eises (The icebergs on the Geren Pass: Poetry of the ice), published two years later.

Kappenberger's sketch of the "evento catastrofico" that created the new icebergs.
Illustration from Die Eisberge am Gerenpass

Visitors to the pass could now see an extraordinary throng of icebergs jostling each other amid a frozen sea – and thanks to the lake’s low rim, this foreground was set against a backdrop of the Bernese Oberland’s highest peaks, some twenty or thirty kilometres distant. Kappenberger’s next move was to name the largest ice-blocks – Olaf, Irene, Central and so on – so that they could be more conveniently documented. And then he and his colleagues set to work to measure, monitor and record the lake, its water levels, flow rates and its unique icebergs.

The book's back cover
with watercolour by the author.

Or perhaps not quite unique. A submerged glacier tongue has broken free on more than one occasion elsewhere in the Alps, although usually with unspectacular results, as Kappenberger notes. But the icebergs of the Geren Pass were uniquely massive. This they owed to the unusual thickness of the parent glacier, as revealed by a survey with ice-penetrating radar in March 2021.

Between December 2020 and October 2022, Kappenberger made fifteen visits to the Geren Pass. The surveys he and his colleagues undertook, particularly on the lake’s water levels, are summarised in his book, which appeared first in Italian and then in German. 

But the researchers also took the time to enjoy and commemorate the scenery in a generous array of photos and even a watercolour or two. Poems too punctuate the narrative, including verses by Kenneth White (1936-2023), the founder of geopoetics. Kappenberger is delightfully multidisciplinary in his approach, amply justifying the subtitle he gave his book: “Poesie des Eises” (poetry of the ice).

In July 2021, the scientists were even joined by a swimmer who took a dip amidst the icebergs to raise funds for an “IceSwim4Hope” charity. But how much hope is left for the ice on the Geren Pass? The icebergs are already on their way to oblivion – only a few still show their backs above the water at the time of writing – and the glacier’s days too are numbered. Up to 2021, Kappenberger gave it twenty more years of existence; after the ferocious summer heat in 2022, he cut that estimate in half.

The lake in October 2024: few icebergs have survived.
Image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

After a decade or two, visitors to the Geren Pass will see only a little round lake. The shape, though not the size, may remind some of the great basin of the Arctic Ocean. Kappenberger is on familiar terms with the High North, having spent two summers in the Canadian Arctic back in the 1970s, studying the Laika Glacier while curious polar bears looked in at the window of his hut. And in the last pages of his book, he draws the parallels between the Arctic seas and the Swiss glacier lakes.

As Kappenberger notes, the Arctic sea ice is shrinking fast, just like its alpine analogue. Once that insulating cover goes, the sun’s energy will beat down on the ocean to even greater effect, further lessening the temperature difference between the Arctic regions and everywhere else. This will weaken the jetstream, causing it to meander more widely (in so-called Rossby Waves) and reinforcing the blocking high or low pressure zones that bring droughts or flooding in their wake.

That outlook may be depressing – especially if we fail to respond to it – but Kappenberger’s approach is far from depressive. In the prologue, he writes that his efforts to document the icebergs’ brief existence and to understand the underlying dynamics seemed to be the best way of celebrating their beauty. It was like this, he suggests, reaching for a parable:

A man walking through a field happened on a tiger. Pursued by the beast, he ran away. When he came to a cliff, he grabbed the roots of a wild vine and lowered himself into the abyss. The tiger gnashed its teeth at him from above. Terrified, the man looked downwards, where he saw another tiger waiting to devour him. Only the wild vine protected him from that fate, and now he saw a couple of mice starting to gnaw at its tendrils. Just then, the man saw a strawberry growing next to him. With one hand, he kept his hold on the vine root and with the other he plucked the strawberry from its stem. My, how sweet it tasted…

Neither this parable or the book itself will appeal much to readers of a denialist persuasion. On the other hand, for those who like their hard scientific facts leavened with a dash of Latin wit, charm and aesthetic flair, Kappenberger’s slim volume is bound to taste sweet.

References

Giovanni Kappenberger, Die Eisberge am Gerenpass: Poesie des Eises, Unterstalden: rottenedition, 2022 (German edition, 203 pages, fully illustrated, translated from the original Italian text). The review copy was sourced from Zurich's specialist mountain book store, Piz Berg und Buch. 

Pints, potions and glasses (3)

The disquisition concluded: In which we trace the sorry decline of alcoholic alpinism.

And so we come to Edward Whymper (1840–1911), whose Matterhorn ascent – and descent – bookended the Golden Age. 

Illustration from Whymper's Scrambles in the Alps in the Years 1860-69

Never one to let his guides wilfully “impair their vigour”, let alone fall into a helpless stupor, Whymper found an effective remedy during his ascent of the Pointe des Écrins in June 1864:

The night passed over without anything worth mention, but we had occasion to observe in the morning an instance of the curious evaporation that is frequently noticeable in the High Alps. On the previous night we had hung up on a knob of rock our mackintosh bag containing five bottles of Rodier’s bad wine. In the morning, although the stopper appeared to have been in all night, about four-fifths had evaporated. It was strange: my friends had not taken any, neither had I, and the guides each declared that they had not seen any one touch it. In fact, it was clear that there was no explanation of the phenomenon but in the dryness of the air. Still, it is remarkable that the dryness of the air (or the evaporation of wine) is always greatest when a stranger is in one’s party; the dryness caused by the presence of even a single Chamounix porter is sometimes so great that not four-fifths but the entire quantity disappears. For a time I found difficulty in combating this phenomenon, but at last discovered that if I used the wine-flask as a pillow during the night the evaporation was completely stopped.

The evaporation may have stopped by the time we enter the Silver Age – generally taken to embrace the years between 1865 and W W Graham’s ascent of the Dent du Géant in 1882 – but not quite the drinking. At least, not completely. The growing technical difficulty of climbs might perhaps have militated against the intake of intoxicating refreshments. Yet, even within the very top rank of alpinists, worthy holdouts could be found against the general trend towards abstemiousness.

Illustration from the Badminton Library: Mountaineering

Albert Mummery (1855–1895), for example, prosecuted ascents at standards that were second to none. The crack named for him on the Aiguille du Grépon was probably the hardest rock pitch ever climbed in the Alps. And, as one might expect, he has little enough to say about high-altitude tippling through most of My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus – until, that is, we reach the crux of his attempt on the Matterhorn’s unclimbed Furggen Ridge in 1880. It was at this critical moment that his guide, the great Alexander Burgener (1845–1910), remembered the bottles in their knapsacks:

Immediately in front, the long, pitiless slabs, ceaselessly swept by whizzing, shrieking fragments of all sorts and sizes, suggested to Burgener — who has a most proper and prudent objection to every form of waste — that it would be well to drink our Bouvier, and consume our other provisions, before any less fitting fate should overtake them. The knapsack was accordingly unpacked, and, in the grave and serious mood befitting the solemnity of the occasion, we proceeded to demolish those good things with which the thoughtful Seiler had stored our bags. Under these various benign influences our spirits rose rapidly, and Burgener's face resumed its wonted look of confidence; he once more shook his beard with defiance at the falling stones, and called “Der Teufel" to witness that we had been in quite as bad places before.

Then, “springing across the slabs like a herd of frightened chamois”, the party made a terrifyingly stone- and ice-swept traverse towards the Hörnli Ridge, their chosen escape route. Yet, as Mummery later reflected, the Bouvier had helped rather than hindered:

Looking back on that distant lunch, I have little doubt that Burgener fully realised that a rollicking, self-confident party can dodge falling stones and dance across steep slabs, in a manner, and at a pace, which is impossible to anxious and disheartened men. His object was fully attained; by the time we had tied on our hats with sundry handkerchiefs, seen to the lacing of our boots, and otherwise pulled ourselves together, we felt quite satisfied that the stones and ice would exhibit their usual skill in missing the faithful climber.

Alas, just as the art of alcoholic alpinism saw this brief revival, others were starting to lampoon it. In the very same year that Mummery and his crew returned unscathed from the Furggen, Mark Twain published his satirical A Tramp Abroad – in which he sets afoot an expedition to Zermatt’s Riffelberg supported by fifteen barkeepers presiding over “22 Barrels Whiskey” and “27 Kegs Paragoric”. Few, it seemed, could take the great tradition seriously any more.

For the next generation, drinking while climbing had all but faded into folklore. While Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876–1958), one of the representative alpinists of the Belle Époque, was learning the ropes, he found himself bemused by the guidance he received from an older Clubbist. As he recalls in his memoir, On High Hills:

We had taken advice bashfully as to our outfit ; but my friend, who had grown up under the wing of one of the great and early alpine climbers,’ could only recall one fragment of his counsel, which he gurgled to me at intervals : ‘My boy, what you most need in the Alps is a good drink. Now, if you take six bottles of red wine and three of white, a flask of curacao, some cognac and chartreuse, two siphons, four lemons, some sugar, a litle spice—and don’t forget the ice !—and make your guide carry a large-sized “Dampfschiff” to mix it in—well, then, you'll be sure of a sound drink or so on your peak!’

By an exquisite coincidence, the above-mentioned “great and early alpine climber” is identified by Young in a footnote as Charles Edward Mathews, a younger brother of the same William Mathews who took “ten bottles of sour white wine” up the Grand Combin and played a central part in founding the Alpine Club.

W T Kirkpatrick in alcohol-free ascent mode.

At least Young climbed with a guide, notably the great Josef Knubel (1881–1961) of St Niklaus. But the rot really set in with guideless climbing. Without porters and guides, climbers couldn’t be expected to carry much of a decent cellar with them. Worse still, some seemed to positively revel in their Spartan ethic. One such was William Kirkpatrick, who before the First World War climbed “ten years without guides” in the company of Philip Hope. In his memoir Alpine Days and Nights (1932), Kirkpatrick puts his trust in an “aluminium stove” weighing less than half a bottle of wine. With such a device, he explains:

a climber who has once enjoyed hot chocolate and fried sausages on a snow-field at 5 o’clock on a chilly morning, will never regret the loss of a bottle of thin red wine, or even his glass of Bouvier on the summit. We have always dispensed with wine altogether, and though I do not despise a glass of wine at one’s hotel in the evening, so far as my experience goes I think one actually climbing one is much better without it. Really the number of bottles that mark the route up many well-known mountains would almost suggest that some persons climb for the sake of drinking. I believe the guides are responsible for a large proportion of the bottles, and if they only knew how great an assistance these signposts are to the guideless climber, and how often the joyful cry of “broken bottle” has revived one’s spirits when doubtful of the route, I think perhaps they might drink a little less wine.

“Some persons climb for the sake of drinking”: there, Kirkpatrick said it out loud, or at least insinuated it. And so we come to the final repudiation of a great tradition – first questioned, then ridiculed and finally consigned to objurgation. After Hope and Kirkpatrick, few would dare to take a bottle of wine higher than the snowline, perhaps to sip an abstemious glass safely after returning from a climb. But let us pass on from this present-day pusillanimity and raise a pint to the Golden Age of alcoholic alpinism. For surely we shall never see, let alone toast, its like again.

References

Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: A Series of Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club, edited by John Ball, M.R.I.A F.L.S., President of the Alpine Club, Fourth Edition, London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859.

Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: Being Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club, edited by Edward Shirley Kennedy, M.A. F.R.G.S., President of the Club, Volumes I and II, London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862.

A F Mummery, My climbs in the Alps and Caucasus, London: T. F. Unwin; New York: C. Scribner's sons, first published 1895.

Geoffrey Winthrop Young, On High Hills: Memories of the Alps, London: Methuen & Co, first published 1927.

W. T. Kirkpatrick, Alpine Days and Nights, with a Paper by the late R. Philip Hope and a Foreword by Col. E. L. Strutt, C.B.E., D.S.O., London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1932.

J. Monroe Thorington, “A Feast of Many Courses”, American Alpine Journal, 1962

Fergus Fleming, Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps, Granta Books, 2001.

Pints, potions and glasses (2)

The disquisition continued: in which the risks attendant on drinking while climbing are acknowledged.

Those bottles weren’t just for bivouacs, though. During the Golden Age of alcoholic alpinism, they were equally apt to emerge from the havresac (sic) during the heat of the action. Here is J G Dodson, Member of both Parliament and the Alpine Club, tackling the Col de Miage in 1859:

We were feeling that raging thirst for inspiring which the High Alps can compete with the deserts of Mesopotamia. All the oranges, all the apples, were gone long ago; snow in the mouth brought no relief ; we must have some wine, we said to Cachat, as we paused with him to take breath at the foot of a vertical wall of rock, leaving Bohren and Couttet to go ahead and look out for a road. Cachat produced the last bottle from his store, which I put to my mouth, fondly expecting a good draught of St. Jean. It was strong luscious Muscat, one bottle of which our host had insisted on our taking, tepid with the heat of the sun and with being churned in a havresac: for all that, we drank it down like so much water, but it afforded little relief to one’s thirst. I looked at the ridge far above me, and bethought me of the bitter wish expressed shortly before concerning Mont Blanc by a gentleman toiling up it and in the agony of sinking into deep snow at every step, “You infernal mountain, I should like to have you rolled out and sown with potatoes!”

Dodson’s account appears in the Second Series of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers (1862) edited by that same E S Kennedy who chaired the Club’s inaugural meeting. Perhaps thanks to the emollient effect of the strong luscious Muscat, Dodson subtitles his piece as “A Day in a Health-Trip to the Glaciers”.

Health trip? I hear you snort: drinking while climbing is just plain dangerous. And nobody can deny that a certain degree of risk does attend this heady combination. Take the contretemps that befell one Charles Packe BA, while descending a gorge below the Portillon d’Oo in the summer of 1861:

Our stock of wine was carried in two skin bottles, with the exception of a solitary bottle of champagne, which Barrau had brought from Luchon, and which had already escaped such imminent risk of breaking, that I resolved not to give it another chance. Barrau, not at all unwilling to be relieved from his responsible charge, deposited the bottle in a natural wine cooler formed by the stream, but had scarcely done so when a sharp report announced an involuntary libation to the water nymphs of the place. The bottle had burst into pieces, and the champagne was lost to me for ever; but Barrau, with admirable presence of mind, immediately applied his mouth to a little runlet just below the scene of the catastrophe, and, I believe, pretty nearly recovered his full share of the champagne, though probably in a more diluted state than he would have chosen.

The Porte d'Oo
Illustration from Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, Volume II

Quite distinct from the danger of involuntary libations, the wine itself could be a source of embarrassment. The experience of J F Hardy on Etna in April 1858 may be taken as typical of such disappointments:

The Doctor had very kindly presented me with a bottle of wine grown upon the mountain; and although I had originally some idea of drinking it on the summit, I felt now that, as it was highly improbable that the rest of the party would be with me there, it would be more in accordance with good fellowship to attack it at once. I announced, therefore, to the group around me the prize I had got, and the treat I intended for them, and taking from my pocket that instrument which no wise traveller is ever without, drew forth the envious cork that separated us from the promised nectar. The bouquet was peculiar, perhaps volcanic; but I passed the cup round to each in turn, commencing of course, with my fair friend. It was received by each with solemnity befitting the occasion. There was silence. The draught was too exquisite to allow of words. My turn came to drink, and I drank.

Imagine then the dismay felt by the good Reverend – for Hardy was a man of the cloth, as well as an AC founder member – when the promised nectar turned out to taste like something that “may be successfully manufactured by drowning a box of lucifers in a bottle of Cape”. 

"To enjoy the pleasant air of the peak ..."
Detail from above title page of Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers

Even during the Golden Age, some AC men did question the wisdom of imbibing while ice-climbing. Edward Schweitzer went so far as to interrupt his account of climbing the Breithorn in 1861 to “say here a few words on the injudicious habit of supplying guides and travellers with a heavy supply of food and wine”. And here, under the page rubric of “Injurious Effect of Brandy”, is what he says:

I so entirely subscribe to Professor Tyndall’s opinion, expressed in his admirable and classic work “On the Glaciers of the Alps” that I cannot refrain from repeating it here. He says, “Both guides and travellers often impair their vigour and render themselves cowardly and apathetic by the incessant refreshing which they deem necessary to indulge in on such occasions.” I observed how little food or wine Taugwalder took, and that he preferred the country wine to any stronger drink. This is the habit of all the best guides. With a roll and a piece of chocolate I have sustained myself on many a long climb, husbanding my strength by an even measured pace, and avoiding frequent draughts of water. A piece of sugar will often assuage the painful effects of burning thirst; a raisin or plum will do the same. When water is near, the addition of an effervescent powder is most refreshing but of all beverages, that which soothes me most, when much fatigued, is a slightly sweetened infusion of black tea, mixed with red wine in equal proportions. It is food and drink at the same time, and allays the irritation of the mucous membrane. Butter ought not to be omitted on a mountain excursion; with bread it is often preferable to stringy hard-fibred meat, such as is generally obtained. Brandy ought only to be used as a remedy in case of sudden indisposition. Nothing impairs the nervous powers so much as frequent potations of cognac and water; they give at first an increased feeling of activity, but, “false as the dream of the sleeper,” they assuredly leave the climber more enervated and less fit for work. A case of the kind occurred this season, and might have led to serious consequences. A young Englishman of about twenty-four years of age, the very picture of strength and health, made the passage of the Weissthor from Macugnaga. He was not much accustomed to severe mountain-climbing, and when suddenly confronted by dangerous slopes, he apprehended that his physical powers would not carry him through his appointed task, so he applied himself to frequent draughts of cognac and water, against the warnings of his guides. The result became soon apparent. They had to drag him up by ropes in an exhausted state, endangering in no slight degree the safety of his trusty conductors. In fact, as he told me himself, he had not a notion how he overcame the difficulties and gained the summit: he felt all the time in a helpless stupor.

Monte Rosa from the Gornergrat
Illustration from Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers

Schweitzer had a point of course: when the AC founder William Mathews ascended Monte Rosa in 1856 he was surprised “to see the porters throw themselves onto the snow, and one by one they dropped down exhausted and drunk . . . appearing on the mountain side in continually diminishing perspective”. But, since this was the Golden Age, Schweitzer was not one to take his own advice to excess. Just previous to the diatribe quoted above, he records that his party “partook of a small repast of bread and butter, cold meat, and a cup of Beaujolais”.

Such concerns nothwithstanding, mountaineers who embraced the true spirit of the Golden Age were apt to minimise the obvious risks of alcoholic alpinism. Here, for example, is the Reverend J F Hardy again, this time atop the Lyskamm, one of Zermatt’s trickier four-thousanders, in August 1861:

For somewhat more than half an hour we feasted our eyes with this magnificent panorama, till some one complaining that he felt cold, there was a general cry for more of the Sibson mixture. Perren, who knew the difficulties that were yet to come, was for drinking no more till we were fairly off the aréte; but his prudent counsels were laughed to scorn by the others, who declared it would be a sottise to bring wine to the top of a mountain, and then carry it down untasted. After all two bottles among fourteen were not likely to affect our steadiness very materially; and the slight stimulant would probably do more good than harm. At all events the mixture was taken as before; and then at half an hour after noon commenced the really anxious part of the expedition— the descent of the aréte.

The “Sibson mixture”, Hardy explains, was a “delicious beverage”, invented by the eponymous member of the party and consisting of “red country wine and Swiss champagne combined in equal proportions”. Small wonder that Hardy was fondly remembered by his AC colleagues as “a genial, cheery companion”.

To. conclude: the sorry decline of alcoholic alpinism.

Pints, potions and glasses (1)

A three-part disquisition, in which we celebrate the Golden Age of drinking and mountaineering.

Nobody who reads Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, a collection of the earliest effusions "by Members of the Alpine Club", can fail to be impressed by their capacity. Not just for adventure – so much can be taken for granted in the protagonists of this heroic era – but for their consumption of alcoholic beverages. Yes, you read that right: drinking while climbing was more than merely acceptable; in those days, it was de rigueur.

For this was the true golden age of alcoholic alpinism. Strictly speaking, of course, the term “Golden Age” refers not to the potations but only to the pioneering climbs between Alfred Wills’s ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 and Edward Whymper’s conquest of the Matterhorn in 1865 – the phrase was coined by the controversial W A B Coolidge, an Oxford don-turned-mountaineer who doubtless enjoyed his port at High Table.

Yet alcohol stood at the very heart of this alpinistic enterprise. Paging through the inaugural volume of Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers (1859), for example, we find a “W. Mathews, Jun.” gearing up at a village in the Val de Bagnes for an attempt on the Graffeineire, or Grand Combin:

Our next step was to settle the commissariat for the three days’ march. We took six loaves of bread, a quantity of excellent cold chamois, a piece of cheese, chocolate, sugar, and ten bottles of sour white wine. Wine is always a heavy and troublesome thing to carry, but it is not easy to dispense with it, and I have always found a mixture of wine, snow, and sugar a very refreshing beverage at great altitudes. Simond was greatly dissatisfied that there was no vin rouge; “ Le vin blanc,” said he, “coupe toujours les jambes” – a result which happily we did not experience.

Now William Mathews (1828–1901) was not just any old toper. He too was at the very heart of the enterprise, having first proposed the formation of an Alpine Club in a letter to a climbing colleague in February 1857, the year after his bibulous investigations in the Val de Bagnes.

The Finsteraarhorn from the southeast
Illustration from Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers

Matters moved along during an ascent of the “Finster Aarhorn” in August 1857 by William Mathews, his cousin St John Mathews, John Ellis, E S Kennedy and J F Hardy – who wrote up the trip for Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, not omitting details of the commissariat:

We woke on August 12th to find the clouds all swept away, and as brilliant a morning as we could desire. In the highest spirits we ate a hearty breakfast, and then descended to the kitchen to arrange about provisions. Wine in abundance, one bottle of brandy, afterwards rashly increased to two, roast mutton, roast veal, ham, sausage, cheese, bread, figs and raisins, were put together, one after the other, till the pile looked big enough to feed an army, and the corresponding arithmetic amounted to seventy-four francs. Later in the morning the guides expressed a desire for “noch ein wenig Brod und Fleisch,” and the result of our consenting to this request was that the bill was increased to 114 francs, whence I presume that the word “wenig” does not exactly correspond to our English “little”, nor do I think it would have been a difficult matter to prove, from the character of the additions which were actually made to our store, that the phrase “Brod und Fleisch” includes things potable as well as things edible.

The supernumerary bottle of spirits soon took the anticipated toll on the least reliable of the party’s guides:

He had already, in my opinion, had more cognac than was good for him, but being somewhat flustered by our objurgations, he now drew frequent and copious draughts from the dangerous flask.

Leaving two of the guides behind on a col, the party reached the summit at 11.53 – the first to do so for sixteen years – and celebrated their triumph appropriately:

A very small modicum of brandy tempered with snow was then administered to each (wine would have been better, but it would not have been possible to carry a sufficient quantity through the final climb), and we sat down to enjoy the magnificent scene around us.

In fact, they did more than enjoy the scenery, for it was during this same expedition that Mathews and his friends resolved to form what was to become the world’s first Alpine Club. And we may depend upon it that the fateful decision was adequately lubricated.

Ascent of the "Schwarze Glacier"
Illustration from Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers

During the following autumn, ad hoc gatherings ensued at Mathews's house near Birmingham, leading to the founding of the Alpine Club itself on 22 December 1857 at a dinner meeting chaired by E S Kennedy. If only we still had the wine list from that illustrious occasion at Ashley’s Hotel in London….

Now steady on, I hear you objurgate, the Alpine Clubbists were by no means the first to bring beverages into the mountains. And this one must concede. And while we’re at it, let us dispel any inference that such drinking was just a guy thing: when Henriette d’Angeville (1794–1871) climbed Mont Blanc in 1838, one of the first women to do so, her commissariat included “18 bouteilles de vin de St. Jean, 1 bouteille d’eau-de-vie de Cognac, 1 bouteille de sirop de capillaire, 1 baril de vin ordinaire.”

A view of Mont Blanc from the Jardin
Illustration from Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers

Then there was Albert Smith (1816–1860), the impresario who put on a show about Mont Blanc in London that ran for 2,000 performances over six years. The script was inspired by his ascent of the mountain in 1851 when, between them, his four guides and twenty porters had to carry sixty bottles of vin ordinaire, six of Bordeaux, ten of St George, fifteen of St Jean, three of cognac and two of champagne, to say nothing of other liquid refreshments supplied by the Hôtel de Londres at Chamonix.

After all, nobody in their right mind would drink the local water in those days. And, while we’d now buy our beers and wines at an alpine hut, those Golden Age pioneers had to carry up all their victuals to some high-mountain cowshed or bivouac à la belle étoile …

(Next: the risks attendant on alcoholic alpinism are acknowledged)

Tozan: in mountains begin responsibilities

Book review: an Aussie hiker-turned-mountaineer makes an eloquent case for questing the Hyakumeizan.

Heck, everyone knows what the Hyakumeizan are – the Japanese mountains spotlighted in a book published by a struggling ex-novelist in 1964. It’s a rare spirit, though, who can explain what compels thousands of otherwise rational folk to climb all one hundred summits at such a vast expense in time, money and boot-leather.

One who can explain is William Banff. In his recently published book, the Kansai-based English teacher sets out his starting position on the very second page:  

Ah, life in Osaka, for half a decade I’d dabbled in its delights, content to drift rudderless on a sea of all-you-can-drink booze, every so often running aground on islands of illicit pleasure, where I would allow myself to remain, happily marooned, until I felt the tentacles of commitment begin to wrap themselves around my ankles….

Until, that is, he did commit himself. Flicking through a little-thumbed Lonely Planet guide, he happened across the Hyakumeizan and felt their call. Making a start in 2007, he took time off work with the aim of climbing the full set by Christmas. That didn’t quite work out, but he still managed to complete his century over the following two years, tracking his progress in a series of blog posts – which are worth revisiting for their excellent photography.

In turn, the blog posts paved the way for a book, published this year as Tozan: A Japanese Mountain Odyssey. For those who have read the blog, the book is much more than the sum of the posts. By adding a sense of perspective to the whole campaign, not to mention a lot of detail, it makes one of the most eloquent cases for Hyakumeizan hunting that I’ve so far read.

Your reviewer first heard about this project from Willie himself, over lunch in Osaka. The book would be self-published, he said, so that he could say things the way he wanted to say them, without being censored by editors, publishers or monitors of the politically correct. And, by ****, he has made good on his promise.

It's a mercy indeed that Willie didn’t submit his manuscript to any gentlefolk publishers – you could imagine them fainting dead away after hitting just the first barrage of expletives. But, here’s the thing: if they were to read their way onwards, these gentry would find themselves reaching for their smelling salts less and less often. And, as we shall see, there might be a good reason for that.

Yet not even the genteelest of publishers could object to Willie’s nature writing, a vital attribute for any book that aims to distinguish one mountain from another. Here he is marching across the Oze marshes towards Hiuchi-ga-take:

Up before the crowds, I strode the boardwalks into a golden sunlit mist, crossing paths with a mere handful of lone hikers and photographers on my way north. Dewdrop-laden spiderwebs shone like diamond necklaces in the long marshland grasses that masked the slow northward creep of the waters beneath. In places where the water deepened, the grasses would part to reveal blue, waterlily-dotted pools …

But it’s as a raconteur that Willie really hits the ball out of the park. Take the episode in what purports to be the Kobushi-ga-dake chapter, where he describes himself sneaking into the woman’s section of a pharmacy in a bid to buy nylon stockings. It’s all the fault of an ex-US Army colleague who advised as follows:

“Yeah man.” He sucked the life out of a can of black coffee. “My old sergeant swore by ‘em. Nylons are the best way to stop blisters caused by new boots. ‘Wear ‘em under your socks. They reduce friction,’ he said. ‘But if I catch any of you m***********s puttin’ on lipstick, there’ll be hell to pay!’”

Fukada Kyūya, the original Hyakumeizan author, famously described mountains as people. Where Willie excels, though, is describing people as people. And it is these pen portraits of hut wardens, taxi drivers and fellow hikers that give life to vignettes such as the one above. Suffice it to say that this reviewer hasn’t LOLed as much since reading Will Ferguson’s Hokkaido Highway Blues.

As David Lowe notes in his excellent review over on Ridgeline Images, Tozan is a long book – it handsomely outhefts Hokkaido Highway Blues. It is also just as well produced; self-publishing no longer means shonky. On the contrary: as a physical book, Tozan is more elegantly presented than the products of many so-called publishing houses. What kept me turning over the 500-plus pages, though, was a sense of development. There is more here than just a series of amusing anecdotes.

Willie starts on his Hyakumeizan campaign as a self-confessed mountain neophyte. This opens the door to a picaresque catalogue of foul-ups and faulty planning. But by his 47th summit – fittingly, this is Mt Fuji – he’s starting to get the hang of things. He can still miss the right trail but, whereas “A couple of weeks earlier, I would have howled to the heavens in fury … I’d harnessed an inner calm which allowed me to maintain some semblance of even temperament.”

This is just as well, since Willie embraces a rigorous climbing ethic. He steels himself to reach the true highest points on mountains such as Rishiri-dake, Daisen and Asama, all of which involve a degree of personal risk. On Hodaka, he and his companion save the life of a lost hiker by sharing their tent with him. By mountain 57, which happens to be Myōkō-san, he’s starting to ask himself “Who will I be when I walk out of the mountains?”

So what does he learn during his Hyakumeizan campaign? Camping below Mountain 100, Ōdaigahara, Willie answers the question like this:

I’d set out with no preconceptions of finding myself or any of that belly button-baring nonsense. But I had learned lessons – it was impossible not to. My Japanese had improved – a bit, I suppose. I’d visited some spectacular places. I feared the outdoors less yet respected it more. I’d learned to listen to my gut. I could push myself when previously I may not have, but hold off when something unfathomable didn’t feel right …

Not only that but he gets his life sorted too. Starting out as a fancy-free bachelor, he ends the book with a wife, a kid and Lego spilt all across the rug in front of the sofa. Now can the One Hundred Mountains really do all that for a man? Readers, you will have to pick up the book and decide for yourselves.

And then, be warned, you may be inspired to pick up your pack and follow in Willie’s bootprints. Like he says, “The first steps are the hardest, and things won’t necessarily go to plan, but it’s no good rotting in a nursing home forgotten by your kids with nothing but job performance reviews to reminisce over, is it?”

Mate, you couldn’t put the case for the Hyakumeizan fairer than that.

References

William Banff, Tozan: A Japanese Mountain Odyssey – Willie Walks, Bozu Books, 2024.

Will Ferguson, Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan, Canongate Books Ltd, 2000.