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.