“Mountain photography” (7)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

Pictorial work: The greater part of this book is concerned with the production of competent record photographs. It is probable that a fairly general measure of agreement can be reached as to whether or not any particular print is a sound and straightforward piece of work approaching its aim of giving the observer as natural and realistic a rendering of the scene as possible, or whether it has achieved the limited objective for which it was intended, e.g. the rendering of distant detail, or the recording of exact proportions for the purpose of measurement. 

"Perfection of light and tone": the Biancograt by Andreas Pedrett.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

When photography aspires to be an artistic medium, differences and difficulties arise, for the camera is not an easy tool with which to secure that freedom of interpretation and personal expression which is supposed to be fundamental to art.

BERTRAM COX, F.R.P.S., puts the case very succinctly: "The photographer who is trying to produce something which shall have more than a transitory interest or value from the aesthetic point of view, might well consider how his position compares with that of the artist. First he has in his medium little or no opportunity for the exercise of any real creative ability. . . . Secondly, the photographer may become a master of his medium but even then its characteristics have been mainly determined by the manufacturer and are to a great extent inflexible. . . . What is left to him as a craftsman is the choice of selection from a variety of methods of arriving at slightly dissimilar results. Selection seems to be the only method by which he can work . . . he must be aware of what makes his selection worthwhile, and must be extremely critical for he has little control over problems of the elimination of the unessential."

Jingling Pot, Kingsdale, Yorkshire by E Simpson.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

Before looking at mountain country as a hunting ground for good pictures, it is useful to consider what means of selection are at our disposal, and what ideas it is necessary to have in mind in making a choice. A picture, whether it be a painting, a photograph, a woodcut or an etching, is primarily an arrangement of line and tone within a selected space, which aims to be complete within that space and to speak its meaning to the observer in simple terms of tone or line or colour, as the case may be. An oil painting is expected to show something of what artists call the "quality of paint", a watercolour seeks to convey ideas and form in terms of transparent colour laid over white paper, and not to imitate tones of the depth and brilliance possible in oils. Similarly a photograph should conform to its own conventions and will be most acceptable if it confirms that the worker has accepted the discipline of photography and yet created a print which owes as much if not more to the manner of its taking than to subject interest.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.

“Mountain photography” (6)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

The middle way: For all ordinary purposes the best position on a mountain is around "half-way up the one opposite". There at least the lens of normal focal length can reach up to the summits and down to the valleys, enabling good use to be made of the picture area, and giving good proportion of upper detail to lower.

Winter in the Tyrol by Paul Wolff.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

The idea of a half-way position is not a precise one: somewhere above valley level and below summit level is the viewpoint we need. In favourable circumstances a viewpoint only 50 or 100 feet above the valley floor may be enough to open up the foreground so as to give a much better picture than in the valley itself.

A glen in the Cairngorms by G B Kearey FRPS, FIPB.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner. 

For instance, it is well worth trying for views just off a road, which always occupies too much of the foreground, and this expedient of moving a little way up the hillside can usefully be adopted. With mountains of moderate height, backed by higher neighbours, something a little lower than half-way may be best, for then the summit can be placed against a background of sky, as the highest point of the picture, whilst if a higher viewpoint is used, the bigger peaks may be a little too prominent.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.

“Mountain photography” (5)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

The high viewpoint: Summit views are troubled with an embarrassment of riches. The great panoramas extend on every side. Fold upon fold of the hills, summits innumerable, enter our field of view to confuse the eye and the mind. 

Aiguille de Roc du Grepon and the Dent du Geant.
Photo by C D Milner from his Mountain Photography.

From great heights, the vastness of the scene as a whole reduces the mountain tops to mere detail and all but the nearest peaks are rather like the furrows in tide-washed sand. Everyone who has been to the summit of a mountain takes such photographs or at least buys picture cards of them. And how disappointing they are! In trying to show everything they show nothing.

The ice arete of the Brenva by F S Smythe.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

There are rare exceptions. Mountains of equal height with the viewpoint do not abate their dignity; from the DENT BLANCHE, the MATTERHORN still soars above its glaciers. In the COOLIN, SGURR DEARG seen from SGURR ALASDAIR still puts a bold front to us, and in Wales SNOWDON towers above the intervening wall of the GLYDERs when we stand on the top of CARNEDD DAFYDD.

But where are the hills that put up such a brave show from the valley? Lost in the moraines perhaps, or hidden in a cloud layer a thousand feet below. In Britain the minor peaks may look like undulations in moorland. CNICHT, occasionally compared by the romantic to the MATTERHORN, only has this appearance from the flats of PORTMADOC, and from SNOWDON it is a little difficult to see "if the grass is at all long". Yes, summit views are unkind to the small hills: the RIFFELHORNS, the LANGDALES and the CNICHTS. Pictorially it is never easy, and frequently impossible, to do much with the wide view of this kind, unless considerable help is given by cloud forms . . . which is quite another matter.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.

“Mountain photography” (4)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

Linear perspective: Mountains, even the minor hills of the PENNINE, are so big and usually so distant that impressions of scale and recession can only be assessed by other things, which are associated with distance and size. When there is obvious linear perspective in a scene the lines of a road converging to the horizon, or a similar line along the roofs of houses, we have no difficulty in perceiving distance. Even when the line is not obvious, we easily and subconsciously assess distance from the reduction in apparent size of well-known objects, such as houses, trees and men.

Unidentified waterfall and figure by Christof Croeber.

Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

In open mountain country obvious linear perspective is rare. It is occasionally seen in a mild form when rock faces are built in pronounced horizontal strata, as are the towers of the DOLOMITES. The occurrence of well-known objects is more frequent, and can usefully be employed in a photograph to give scale. The placing of a solitary figure in the foreground, however, usually large in relation to the picture space, does not give scale, but rather serves, by accentuating the small area of the distant mountain, to squash it.

On rappel: images by Ernst Baumann.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

Figures are most satisfactorily employed to give scale to the plane in which they are seen. With lenses of normal angle of view, however, the useful limit within which figures can be introduced to serve this purpose of giving scale, is easily reached. At 240 yards a man's figure would occupy only half a degree of arc, in a photograph covering perhaps 40 or 50 degrees, and thus would be so insignificant a part of the picture that he would be in danger of being overlooked, even if his outline were clearly recorded by the lens. 

In the Tyrol (?): photo by Fritz Heimhuber (?).
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

On the other hand, figures tend to draw too much attention to themselves and so, quite apart from matters of perspective, should not be allowed too near the camera, if their purpose is subsidiary. Between 40 and 100 ft. are useful distances within which a figure or a small group can help to give an idea of the vastness of a view.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.

“Mountain photography” (3)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

The question of costs: Whatever type of camera is preferred, the amount of money one can reasonably afford to spend is an important consideration. To go abroad on holiday equipped with only a cheap camera intended to give passable results in one's garden snapshots is to risk failure or disappointment in photographing scenes and events which would have been of permanent value.

Figure from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

On the other hand, to spend an undue amount on equipment does not of itself assure success. It is really surprising what quality can be obtained with cameras, which are neither modern nor expensive, by workers who know what they are doing. It is equally surprising what appalling results a £100 miniature can yield when not handled with the skill it needs and deserves.

The man whose pocket is limited (and whose is not in these days?) may need to plan his expenditure very carefully, and perhaps will prefer to spend at most £10 or so on a camera and accessories so as to leave a balance available for his transport to the mountains; in preference to exhausting his money on an expensive luxury outfit and so restricting himself to hills nearer home.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.

“Mountain photography” (2)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

Mountain districts abroad: Of all the greater mountain areas the most accessible to Britons are the ALPS themselves, stretching from France, through Switzerland and Italy to merge via the DOLOMITES and the Eastern Alps into the mountain mass of the Balkans. Before the war it was cheaper and quicker to visit SWITZERLAND from London than the Isle of Skye.

A ridge of the Tödi (Switzerland): photo by Andreas Pedrett.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner. 

For the better part of a century these districts have devoted themselves to the tourist traffic and though much of the scenery has been, so to speak, salted down into "beauty spots", yet the mountain areas are so great that much remains in an unspoilt and natural condition. At all levels, from the lakesides to the upper valleys and the last heights of rock and ice, the photographer will find no lack of subjects for his camera, and at all points there is adequate scope for little journeys off the beaten track, affording the chance of personal discovery of new and unusual viewpoints from which to photograph the hills.

Whilst the lower valleys, especially on the fertile and sunny southern slopes, are richly wooded in great variety, one might perhaps venture a complaint about the upper valleys which do not show great variety of tree growth. There is a certain sameness about them, as if they have been modelled according to a recipe of pine and fir tree, more pine tree with a little larch, picturesque chalets – and beyond all this rather "pretty" foreground, the glaciers and the peaks. Each valley represents minor variations on this excellent but restricted theme. Even RUSKIN, a great admirer and student of Swiss scenery, was compelled to become statistical in his consideration of this problem of pines, and to conclude that each valley must contain not less than five million.

Consequently, although many pleasant pictures can be made in the valleys in summer, the possibilities are fairly easily exhausted and then opportunities for striking photography are best sought at rather higher levels, where the trees thin out and the views open out a little more. Journeys to the many mountain huts will be productive of rich rewards. Most of these can be reached by little more than path walking - up rather steep paths it is true – but offering no difficulty to strong walkers and involving no dangerous glacier crossings or intricate route finding. In this way a night can be spent at higher levels, for the sake of the sunset and sunrise, neither of which is always visible in the deeply cut valley, and for the full views of the high snow peaks.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.

“Mountain photography” (1)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

Approach to the subject: First attempts in mountains are not likely to yield much more than a series of prints giving food for thought and consideration of what not to do next time. There is an absence of the clear-cut forms of the town, of strong light and shade, and a lack of familiar elements unless friends are taken in the foreground: when the mountain may immediately be compelled to adopt a very subsidiary role. "That's the summit of SNOWDON just under Mary's hat."

On the summit plateau, Mt Blanc (detail) - photo by F S Smythe.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

It is best to begin with subjects where the sun is shining from one side — then the shapes of the hills are revealed. To have the light coming directly from behind the camera will show a very featureless result, whilst to use contre jour with the sun more or less directly in front of the lens demands skilled attention. A pale yellow filter — quite pale — will help to keep the sky in its proper place, instead of glaring blankly along the top of the picture. Beyond this, other kinds of filter may only confuse the mind, until experience has been gained.

I do not think overmuch attention should be given to "correct" composition in the early stages. It is more important to find out what range of subjects can be well photographed so as to make prints of sufficient interest and contrast and to be able to secure a series of well-exposed, sharp negatives, which include what it was intended to include. When this is achieved it is time enough to think about the best arrangement, the special effects obtainable with filters, about striking schemes of lighting and about tackling subjects in conditions so adverse that in the early days no hope of success could have been entertained.

In all this, of course, there will be happy accidents. The camera will, in spite of the inexperienced hand guiding it, occasionally produce something which gives the photographer a thrill of achievement, and spurs him on to attain the degree of skill which makes such rewards more frequent and certain.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.

“The Mountain” (2)

Continued: a walk around a once-famous historian’s riff on the Alps.

La Montagne is hard to categorise. It’s partly a travel book, in which the Michelets jointly write up their visits to various mountain resorts and hot springs. Then again, they sally forth into geophysics and botany, along the lines of what we’d now call nature or science writing. 

Amphitheatre of the forests.
Illustration from La Montagne. 

Here and there – see the chapter entitled “The Amphitheatre of the Forests" – they anticipate what we’d term ecological thinking. And some of their insights have gained mightily in resonance since they were first put on paper: this one, in particular, hits for distance:

It is on the brow of Mont Blanc, more or less overhung with ice, that we may read the future destiny and fortunes of Europe, the seasons of serene peace, and the abrupt cataclysms which overthrow empires and sweep away dynasties. (Part 1, Chapter III)

Mont Blanc and its glaciers.
Illustration from La Montagne.

Logically enough, the next chapter broadens the focus to “The European Water Reservoir”. Four of the great rivers of Europe, the Po, the Rhine, the Rhone and the Inn (the true Danube) are brothers, says Michelet, “springing from one and the same mass, the heart of the system, the heart of the European world”. In these Alps of Switzerland:

Water is life begun. The circulation of life, under an aerial or a liquid form, takes place upon these heights. They are the mediators, the arbiters of sundered or antagonistic elements. They make their harmony and peace. They accumulate them in glaciers, and then equitably distribute them among the nations.

The watershed of Europe.
Illustration from La Montagne.

Lunch is life sustained, I like to think. This one, comprising a belated cheese butty, is taken beside the Lai Grond, a little lake that on a windless day would reflect Piz Ela. 

The Lai Grond under Piz Ela.

As it is, a cold wind sends cats’ paws ruffling over the water, driving me smartly onwards. The mountain keeps frowning down, as if to chastise the arrogant thought of circumambulating him in a day.

The lake of Lucerne.
Illustration from La Montagne.

Switzerland's lakes and rivers get a chapter all to themselves in La Montagne. “No other country,” Michelet writes, “possesses these superb mirrors in such magnificence.” As you’d expect, the historian’s perspective breaks through here and there. The Danube, he notes, “formerly interposed its furious floods between us and Turkish despotism”.

A landscape in the Pyrenees.
Illustration from La Montagne.

The next few chapters draw on the personal experiences of the Michelets in their visits to hot springs in the Pyrenees and Apennine Italy. Then follows a kind of geophysical interlude with chapters surveying the state of nineteenth-century knowledge about the continents, the polar regions and volcanoes, before the couple revert to relating their holiday excursions, this time in the Swiss Engadine district. It’s all a bit of a hodgepodge…

The volcano of Taal.
Illustration from La Montagne.

So what is this book actually about? Labouring up the second pass of the day, I have little energy left to consider the question. Like the Michelets themselves when they put pen to paper, we must admit to being, if not clean past our youth, then with some smack of age in us…

The Tinzenhorn from the Pass d'Ela.

At 3pm, I haul myself up onto the Pass d’Ela (2,723m). Already the sun is leaning tendentiously towards the west, and I take a moment to appreciate how its slanting rays throw into razor-sharp relief the crumbling cliffs of Piz Ela and its neighbour the Tinzenhorn.

Piz Ela from the west.

The crumbling cliffs … now there’s a clue to the mystery of La Montagne. On their way to the high valley of the Engadine, the Michelets travel over the “The Pass of the Grisons”, better known today as the Julier. Throughout the journey, Michelet records – and one infers this has to be Jules himself, complete with capitals and an exclamation mark – “one idea was constantly recurring to my mind – THE DEATH OF THE MOUNTAIN!”

These thoughts, he explains, were triggered by the landslides and rubble chutes that abound along the high mountain roads. They are called lapiaz in the local dialect or, more picturesquely, the “cemeteries of the devil”. But it soon becomes clear that slope stability or otherwise is the least of the historian’s concerns. Rather, it’s the rot at the heart of the body politic that troubles him:

But what will be the end if this devastation, from the lower grades of and the vulgar lapiaz of egotism and moral barrenness, should extend further, and if the process of erosion gain upon the immense masses of the people, indifferent to all things, and deficient both in the desire and capability of good? There are moments when one dreads that such will be the case. 

Despairing cries are uttered from century to century. About 1800 Grainville wrote “The Last Man”. Sénancourt, Byron, and others, believed in the approaching end of the world. But, for my part, I think it immortal. At unforeseen points, and by unsuspected fibres which prove to be still youthful, it resuscitates itself. Wavering between so many objects in this present age, it still presses firmly forward in the path of science, and hence secures for itself another great chance of renovation. It will refresh its heart at the well-springs of Mind, and revive its moral flame at the source of Intellectual Light.

Late afternoon at the Piz Ela hut. 

Our own daylight cuts off abruptly as I cross over the base of Piz Ela’s north ridge. From here, it’s all downhill through the yellowing and umbrageous larch forests. It's a good thousand metres down to Bergün and its station. At least the fallen larch needles on the path will cushion the knee-jarring descent...

Now there’s time to think about where Jules Michelet was coming from. Born in 1798, at the apogee of the Directorate’s power, he dedicated much of his life to writing a book that a modern scholar has called “the cornerstone of revolutionary historiography”. So he was a republican born and bred. By the same token, his career prospered after the July Revolution of 1830, also known as the Second French Revolution, but faltered when Napoleon III came to power in 1852.

These vicissitudes echo through La Montagne. Reflecting on the various theories of mountain-building, Michelet points out that the French savants tend to favour “catastrophist” explanations while their English counterparts are mostly “uniformitarians”. The difference, he muses, must be down to the regular upheavals experienced in France, as compared with England’s relative social and political stability.

Mountain-building: A Himalayan landscape.
Illustration from La Montagne.

Nevertheless, Michelet is not wholly pessimistic about his continent’s future. In his final chapter, oddly entitled “Will our Era Succeed in Regenerating Itself?”, he opines that “our decay cannot be compared to the rottenness of some peoples of the past, such as the Byzantine, of whom sterility was the conspicuous and distinctive sign…”

Against such decadence, he holds up Switzerland as the “ever memorable cradle of European freedom”, whose past battles “prepared the liberty of the world”. As for the mountains, they have helped him “develop the heroic capabilities which we derive from Nature”.

Bergün/Bravuogn in autumn.
Image courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure.

By the time I stumble down into Bergün, my own capabilities feel as if they’re flat-lining. On the way to the station, as the few street lights start to flicker into life, I’m still thinking about Jules and Athénaïs Michelet. After a century and a half, their literary collaboration still has the power to charm. On the other hand, it'll be a while before their writing style comes back into fashion. And their book can't be described as anything other than a gallimaufry.

Yet even a gallimaufry can incorporate some rich ingredients. And the cantankerous old republican can sound surprisingly contemporary when he prognosticates about the future of Mont Blanc's glaciers, or frets about Europe’s political culture. If there were ever a time to take another look at his writings, would that not be now, I wonder….

But as Michelet says in his own final chapter, this is surely “enough for the day, enough”.

References

Jules Michelet, La Montagne (1868), translated by W H Davenport Adams as The Mountain, London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Paternoster Row, 1886. My copy came from Chris Bartle at Glacier Books in Pitlochry, Scotland. If you ask nicely, he might even be able to find another one for you.

“The Mountain” (1)

Walking around a once-famous historian’s riff on the Alps and liberty.

“He who ascends the mountain rises towards the light.” I’m reminded of this aphorism from a long-dead author as the trees start to thin out above Preda (1,789m), the highest rail station north of Switzerland’s Albula Pass.

What kind of trees? The slanting October sun backlights a particoloured forest of golden larches and gloomy Arolla pines. Yet I wouldn’t have noticed their cohabitation unless I’d just been reading The Mountain, a late work by the French historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874) and his wife Athénaïs (1826–1899). There’s surely a wistful note in their write-up of these very woods:

The whole life of the country has centred in two trees: the heroic and vigorous arolla, which, if left to itself, would endure almost forever; and the smiling larch, incessantly renewed, and its yearly verdure simulating eternal youth.

Landscape in the Engadine.
Illustration from Jules Michelet, La Montagne.

The remark comes halfway through a chapter subtitled “Decay of the tree and of man”. Michelet and his younger wife are travelling in the Engadine valley, just south of my hike for the day. Yet, although they are taking a vacation, little in the way of holiday gaiety imbues his writing. In this chapter alone, the historian ruminates on winter’s approach, the destruction of the region’s forests, and the inevitable retreat of mountain plants in the face of interlopers from the plains:

To this wild ancient order, which was in all things distinguished by original characteristics, strongly marked, will succeed the new order, much richer but less varied, and with one object exactly like another.

Decay of the mountain forest.
Illustration from Jules Michelet, La Montagne.

I allow myself ten minutes for a second breakfast on a sunny boulder just above the treeline – no more, as there are a good thousand metres to gain between Preda and the Fuorcla da Tschitta (2,830 m), and the latter is only the first of two alpine passes in the day’s plan.

Minutes after setting out again, I start up a magnificent fox, who runs up and over an old moraine wall to escape. When Michelet published La Montagne, in 1868, an icecap would have surmounted the peak ahead, but its moraines now embrace nothing but boulders and rubble.

The glaciers of Grindelwald
Title page of the English version of La Montagne (1886).

At least the glaciers have left some traces of their passing. It’s difficult to say the same of Michelet’s mountain book. An English translation, published by Thomas Nelson in 1886, seems to have done little to promote him abroad. Fortunately, Michelet had made his name decades before with his multivolume history of France. Even today, he is remembered as the first to use the term “Renaissance” in its modern sense of a cultural movement.

So what was Michelet doing, late in life, writing about mountains? The answer resides in the second Mme. Michelet. For theirs was a very literary marriage. The then Mlle. Athénaïs Mialaret started a correspondence with Michelet while she was tutoring the children of Princess Cantacuzène in Vienna, and married him in 1849, a decade after the death of his first wife. 

Inspiring in her husband an interest in natural history, Athénaïs worked with him on a series of books: La Montagne (1868) was the fourth to appear, after L'Oiseau (1856), L'Insecte (1857) and La Mer (1861). La Montagne appeared under his name only, but Athénaïs contributed at least two chapters, focusing mainly on alpine flowers.

Their joint authorship may account for La Montagne’s uneven style. While Jules Michelet likes to sum matters up in a pithy maxim, as above, Athénaïs tends towards the effusive:

The peerless spring-anemone bent downwards, attired in a fairy garb of pale lilac. Her hour had already passed. She lay, as it were, asleep in the dream of a happy moment. Long, soft, airy, and electric silken folds falling over her head, enwrapped her maternal bosom. In this first apparition of the Alp I greeted a sweet and charming soul, which revealed to me the presence of God in a wilderness of desolation.

Pushing through a wilderness of desolation left behind by a vanished corrie glacier, I come up on the first pass, the Fuorcla da Tschitta (2,830m), well before noon. 

Piz Ela from the Fuorcla da Tschitta.

Any sense of self-congratulation crumbles when two women skim up from the opposite direction. Kitted out as trail runners, they have already despatched two thirds of this 26-kilometre circuit around the massive dolomitic bulwark of Piz Ela (3,339m). Since I am shod more traditionally in Vibram-soled boots and carry a pack with a heavy old-school DSLR, I need to get a move on. October days are short…

(Continued)

Survival story (2)

Concluded: How Herbert Bruckmüller got himself out of a hole in the Austrian Alps.

On Bruckmüller’s fifth day in the sinkhole, after four freezing nights, the weather took a turn for the worse. A storm blew up. Fearing hypothermia, he hadn't slept since his brief nap immediately after falling into the sinkhole. In addition to doing countless push-ups to keep warm, he had rebuilt his stone pyramid well over 300 times. And he’d kept jumping for the hole in the doline’s ceiling, always in vain. Little remained of his initial confidence that he would somehow be able to get out. Assailed by panic attacks, hallucinations, and depression, he was slowly losing his will to live.

The Totes Gebirge massif in winter.
Photo by courtesy of Wikipedia.

Yet still he kept trying. He built his pyramid a bit higher by sacrificing everything he could spare: cans of food, soft drinks cans both full and empty, the latter filled with sand, and finally his empty food box and his hiking boots. He thought he could leave these behind because he had light canvas hut shoes with him.

To steady his pyramid of stones, he wrapped it in strips cut from his bivvy sack and all the remaining rope and tapes he had. Despite these efforts, the pyramid remained shaky. But this time, unexpectedly, he managed to climb it without a collapse. Now he was higher than he’d ever managed to climb before. And now he felt he could risk a jump to the left, where the holds were better. He’d not dared try this before since, if he failed to grab the holds, he would have fallen straight back into the deep shaft.

And this time his jump worked. Bruckmüller was able to grab the holds, and then chimney his way out of the doline. It was ten in the morning. After more than 85 hours in the sinkhole, he was finally free—but still far from safe. It was rainy and cold, he was completely drained, and shod only in canvas shoes. Blinded by the daylight, despite the cold rain, he lapsed into a doze, from which the cold awakened him after about an hour. Now he had to get himself warm.

He thought the quickest refuge would be the Pühringer Hut. Going the other way, to the Tauplitzalm, he would have had the wind at his back, but the path there is longer, and he assumed the huts there were closed. The direct descent would have been the quickest, but because he didn't know the way, he didn't want to risk it in his weakened state.

On his way, he heard a helicopter but couldn’t understand why anybody would be flying in this weather. He couldn't have known, of course, that the Pühringer Hut had already closed, and that the mountain rescue team was wondering whether he had even spent the night there. To find out, the hut's warden was flown up. The entry in the hut’s register was clear: Bruckmüller had indeed spent the night at the hut and given his destination as the Tauplitzalm. So the would-be rescuers flew back to the valley and planned a new search for the morrow.

Bruckmüller made slow progress against the storm. The storm turned into a blizzard, and it started to get dark. Without a torch—he had used up his batteries in the doline – he finally reached the Pühringer Hut three hours later, in knee-deep fresh snow. But the hut was locked. Also shut up was the winter room, which had recently been given a lock to prevent misuse. His disappointment was immense but he didn’t feel like forcing his way in. So he continued down to the huts in the Elmgrube, which he hoped were still open. But these huts too he found locked.

With the help of his spare headtorch, which he’d managed to warm up in his pocket, he left a short message on a bit of tissue paper. Then he continued his descent. He knew the way well enough to fumble his way down in the dark. Where the path ran next to Lake Lahngang, he had some small stones ready so that he could throw them lakewards and tell by the splash if he was in the right place. It was long past midnight when he finally reached the wire cables at the Drausengatterl and thus the forest. Losing his way here, he crawled on all fours through the pines until he found the path again.

The descent from the Pühringer Hut into the valley is about ten kilometres long, a never-ending up and down on rocky mountain slopes. When Bruckmüller arrived in the village of Schachen am Grundlsee at around seven o'clock that morning, he had been walking or crawling almost continuously for over 20 hours since his self-rescue from the doline. The light was already on at the Schacher farm when he stumbled through the door. It was warm in the kitchen. He was given hot tea and after that they took him to hospital. There at last he was able to sleep.

Thanks to his overall fitness, Bruckmüller came out of his ordeal surprisingly well. He suffered no lasting frostbite, and went home after a few days in hospital. But his near-death experience took time to process. As a result, he couldn't sleep in the dark for weeks. Whenever he woke up at night, he thought that he was still in the doline, triggering a panic attack. Later, he wrote up his adventure in a book entitled "Why Can't You Fly?"…

References

Translated and adapted from Pit Schubert’s Sicherheit und Risiko in Fels und Eis, Band II, Munich: Bergverlag Rother, 1. Auflage 2002.

Peter “Pit“ Schubert (1935-2024) was known as Germany’s “Sicherheitspapst”: the country’s doyen of mountain safety. After graduating in mechanical engineering in Frankfurt in 1961, he worked for 15 years in the aerospace industry, before dedicating himself full-time to mountain safety research with Germany’s alpine federation, the DAV, in 1978. 

He’d founded the DAV Safety Commission in 1968 and worked as its safety director from its inception until his retirement in 2000. From 1973 until 2004 he was also a member of the UIAA Safety Commission, the last eight years as its president. 

Schubert focused primarily on accident research, evaluation and prevention as well as basic research, for example, material testing both in the laboratory and in the field, and belaying theory as well as the standardisation of mountaineering equipment.

Survival story (1)

In which Herbert Bruckmüller gets himself into a hole in the Austrian Alps.

Dolines perforate the limestone karst regions of the Alps. They are sinkholes with roofs that have partly or completely collapsed. In summer, trees and bushes may cover the smaller holes, concealing their danger. In winter, when their mouths are snow-covered, dolines can be as lethal as a glacier’s crevasses – the only difference being that skiers usually rope up on a snowy glacier, whereas in sinkhole terrain, they usually go unroped. 

Snow-covered doline on the Schrattenfluh, Switzerland.
Image courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure. 

And dolines can lurk anywhere in the karst country. Few places are more riddled with them than the Feuertal valley in Austria’s Totes Gebirge (Dead Mountains), where seventy sinkholes have been counted in an area of ​​just over eight square kilometres. And was here that Herbert Bruckmüller, an experienced mountaineer from Altmünster in the Salzkammergut region, got himself into a trap.

A lengthy period of good weather came to an end in October 1996. Over a long weekend Bruckmüller planned a solo traverse of the Totes Gebirge mountain range from the Almsee to the Tauplitzalm. Having arranged with his partner that she would pick him up by car at his end point, he went up to the Pühringer Hut. In the evening, the first clouds arrived from the west; the weather was forecast to worsen over the weekend.

Herbert Bruckmüller.

Photo courtesy of Oberösterreichische Nachrichten.

Next morning it was raining. Since Bruckmüller had already done this route three times, and didn't mind a little rain, he left the hut as planned. He carried food for five days and five litres of drinks, as well as spare clothing, a bivvy sack, two headtorches, a compass, and all the other kit needed for a high-mountain traverse.

With a backpack weighing 15 or so kilos, progress was slow. There is no distinct trail up on the plateau, only marker poles that are not always easy to follow in summer. About halfway across, darkness fell. Walking onwards in this rugged terrain didn’t seem advisable. So Bruckmüller looked for a place to bivvy. In a hollow, he put down his backpack to get out his headtorch. When he picked up the pack again, its weight swung him around – and he tumbled backwards into the mouth of a sinkhole.

After falling five metres, Bruckmüller landed abruptly on a ledge. Fortunately, his backpack had taken the impact, while his rolled-up sleeping mat protected his head. Only his back hurt a bit. Compared with what might have happened, he’d got off lightly. Bruckmüller then crawled into his bivouac sack and fell asleep. Three hours later, the cold woke him. He wanted to look around, but realised that he had lost his headtorch in the fall. He took his spare lamp out of his backpack, switched it on, and saw a room-sized space, about four metres high, with a hole in the ceiling about one and a half metres wide and two and a half metres long, overgrown with mountain pines. It looked as if he’d broken through the cave’s roof.

Next to the four metre-wide terrace onto which he had fallen was a deeper shaft, at the end of which was a hole leading even further down. That's where his headtorch had disappeared. He climbed down into the shaft and sealed it with two boulders and spare clothes to prevent more of his possessions from falling down it. 

Cave formation in the Feuertal, Totes Gebirge.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Next he started to think how he could get out of the dungeon. He tied the rope that he always carried to a stone and threw it upwards out of the hole, hoping that the stone would catch on something. But this just didn’t work. Whenever he pulled the rope in, the stone just fell back into the cave, time and time again.

To lengthen the rope and give himself a better chance, he used the scissors on his pocketknife to cut his anorak into a three centimetre-wide strip. But, no matter how many times he tried hurling the stone upwards, it wouldn’t catch.

Next he thought of filling his bivvy bag with stones to use as a platform from which he could reach the hole. But there weren't that many stones in his prison. So he couldn’t build his stone platform pyramid high enough. Climbing back down into the deep shaft, he then levered out more stones with his pocketknife, carrying them in his backpack up to the terrace. To save his headtorch battery, he did this work more or less in the dark.

Still he kept failing in his attempts to reach the cave’s mouth by jumping from the stone pyramid. Since he had to build a rather narrow pyramid due to the lack of stones, it kept collapsing when he jumped, or just as he was trying to clamber up it. Then, if any stones had rolled back down into the shaft, he had to retrieve them. To avoid a nasty plummet when he fell back from a jump, he made all his jumps facing away from the deep shaft, but the handholds were worse in this direction.

Meanwhile, Bruckmüller’s partner had phoned the police when he’d failed to call. So the search began that very night. Tirelessly, Bruckmüller kept rebuilding his stone pyramid after each unsuccessful try. To stave off hypothermia, he stayed awake the entire following night, the second in his dungeon. He started rationing his provisions, reckoning that he could hold out for ten days if need be. At the same time, doubts started to creep in as to whether he could free himself by then.

On the third day after his fall into the doline, a cold front moved in. Clouds shrouded the mountains. Now dozens of mountain rescuers and police officers, with helicopter support, were searching all possible routes. Without success. No one passed Bruckmüller's doline. And if they had, no one would have noticed the small opening.

Bruckmüller kept rebuilding his stone pyramid after each failed leap. Whenever he heard a helicopter pass over, he threw stones through the hole, a move he soon regretted. The stones hadn't been seen, and he would need more of them for his pyramid. He was a kilometre west of the nearest marker, and nobody knew he was there. 

Worse still, since another mountaineer had reported seeing him on the ascent to the Rotgschirr, the search was shifted to the northern edge of the plateau. Would-be rescuers also flew to the Rotgschirr’s summit to check the summit register to see if Bruckmüller might have signed it. He had not, but the searchers did find a sock – which had nothing to do with Bruckmüller. Now the hunt continued with dogs from the place where the sock had been found – needless to say, without success.

Some of Bruckmüller's mountain friends then decided to make their own search. Before they set out, they consulted three clairvoyants. One "saw" nothing at all. The second "saw" him huddled up. The third "saw" him at the Ofenloch, hence on the plateau and not at its edge (which was indeed the case, though not exactly). Bruckmüller's family and friends gained new hope.

The next day, his fourth day in the sinkhole, clouds hid the peaks and snow was falling above 2,000 metres. His friends searched the area around ​​the Ofenloch, but in vain, because Bruckmüller's doline was more than two kilometres away.

For his part, Bruckmüller kept rebuilding his stone pyramid, futile though this seemed. Yet still he would not give up. Fortunately, he could not know that, this same evening, the searchers had called off their operations because "there was virtually no hope left of finding the missing man alive." When Bruckmüller's friends arrived at the Pühringer Hut after their unsuccessful search and found it locked because the innkeeper had already gone down into the valley, their very last hopes faded….

(Continued)

"Enjoy tackling difficult tasks" (2)

Continued: how Nakamura Teru paved the way to winter climbing and economic independence for women.

In the hardscrabble years after the war’s end, Nakamura translated school textbooks for the occupying forces, and also worked as an interpreter for a US Army court. In 1949, she became a legal and political advisor for the Kantо̄ Civil Affairs Division, but soon resigned. As Japan’s economy revived, the business world was again beckoning.

Nakamura Teru (l.) leads a women's expedition to New Zealand in 1961.
Image from the interview by Ogura Nobuko (in the driver's seat).

 
In the early 1950s, she joined LaBelle, Japan’s first lingerie manufacturer. Soon afterwards, her eye was caught by a magazine article about a fashion institute that was part of the City University of New York. Writing directly to the course directors, she was accepted for a six-month management course but “became so engrossed” that she ended up studying sales promotion and design as well, spending two years abroad. “I think my husband's understanding made that possible,” she later said 

After returning to Japan, she became a fashion advisor and designer for three companies, and also started her own company, Duchess, to sell lingerie of her own design. 

On the summit of Mt Sealy in 1961.
Image from the interview by Ogura Nobuko.

And she kept climbing. Sometimes, she was the first woman to climb certain Japanese peaks. In 1961 (aged 57), she led an all-women's expedition to New Zealand, comprising mainly “old girls” of the Waseda University Mountaineering Club. Over about five months, the five women climbed Mounts Sealy and Walter in the South Island, as well as Egmont and Ruapehu in the North Island. They were warmly welcomed, and played a role in promoting goodwill between the Japanese and Kiwi mountaineering communities.

On the summit of Mt Damfool in 1961.
Image from the interview by Ogura Nobuko.

In 1970, Nakamura’s husband Nobuhiko passed away from cancer. Deeply affected by her loss, she was also involved in a traffic accident. “However, after recovering, I began to live life positively again,” she later recalled. In 1979 (at 75 years old), she went trekking in Nepal for three months, and after returning to Japan, published a book explaining how anybody could follow her example. In 1988, now aged 84, she was an advisor to an expedition to the Indian Himalaya but, starting to feel her limitations, decided it was time to give up mountaineering. 

Visiting Ed Hillary in New Zealand, 1961.

The following year, in 1989, she accepted an offer to take care of Japanese exchange students in Adelaide, sold her house in Hayama and moved to Australia alone. After living there for 10 years, she returned to Japan in 1999 and died in 2009 at the age of 104.

One March, a few years before Nakamura passed away, two of her climbing companions from the New Zealand trip came to visit her at her care home in Yokosuka. One of them, Ogura Nobuko, later wrote up Nakamura’s reminiscences in an online interview on which this post has heavily relied. This is how Ogura-san concludes: 

In late March, when we heard that the cherry blossoms were blooming earlier than usual, I met with Tо̄ya Keiko, a member of our group, at Zushi Station … We talked with Nakamura-san in the lounge on the third floor. For a 101-year-old, her eyesight, hearing, and mental acuity were all excellent, and I could sense the dignified spirit of someone who had lived life so positively. Even now, she enjoys flower arranging and calligraphy, and she reads English and Japanese newspapers every day. She is interested in social issues and cares about young people these days. In the early Showa era, amidst societal discrimination against women, she learned English, became a successful professional woman, and climbed mountains despite various hardships, paving the way as a pioneer in many fields. She was a remarkably calm and quiet person, yet possessed an incredible vitality that seemed to be hidden within her. During the visit, [those of us] who had been with her on the New Zealand expedition, shared our memories. We mentioned how she had been a strict but supportive mentor, pushing us to become truly international figures … It was a day that truly reinforced her constant messages: "Enjoy tackling difficult tasks, because anyone can do easy ones," and "If you truly want to do something, you can usually accomplish it." 

References

Kawasaki Yoshimitsu, Yama to Keikoku illustrated history of Japanese mountaineering (目で見る日本登山史), Yama to Keikoku-sha, 2005. 

Miyashita Keizо̄, Nihon Arupusu: Mitate no Bunkashi, Misuzu Shobо̄, 1997.

Ogura Nobuko,* “元気に100歳 本気でやれば、何でもできる 101歳の人生記録”, downloaded April 2016. 

*Ogura Nobuko (b. 1932) was a member of the New Zealand expedition led by Nakamura Teru in 1961. In her student days, she was a member of the Waseda University Mountaineering Club – the first woman ever to join the much-storied association. In 1975, inspired perhaps by Nakamura’s example, she founded a mountaineering club, the Shiran-kai (“purple orchid society”), primarily for women in their 60s and 70s. The club’s premise is that hiking keeps you young. To that end – and to provide mental stimulation – Shirankai members take it in turns to organize and lead hikes. “Once you have this experience, you naturally develop empathy and consideration for others, as well as independence and judgment skills,” Ogura-san says. 

More about the Shiran-kai (Japanese language)

"Enjoy tackling difficult tasks” (1)

How Nakamura Teru paved the way to winter climbing and economic independence for women.

But how could we have forgotten Nakamura Teru? In Yamakei’s illustrated history of Japanese mountaineering, there she stands, flanked by two companions, every bit as tall and confident as the president of Japan’s first climbing club for women should be. The photo was probably taken a few years after she made her name as the first woman to scale Mt Fuji in mid-winter.

Nakamura Teru (centre) at the Iwabara ski resort, early Showa era.
Image by courtesy of the Yamakei illustrated history of Japanese mountaineering. 

She topped out on Japan’s highest mountain on New Year’s Day in the second year of Shо̄wa (1927), after starting from Gotemba on the previous day. As was her usual practice in the mountains, she climbed not with men friends – which she thought improper – but escorted by a professional guide and “gо̄riki” (porters). On the party’s return, journalists were waiting for her at the mountain’s foot.

Nakamura Teru and her guides at a shrine before climbing Mt Fuji.
Image by courtesy of the Yamakei illustrated history of Japanese mountaineering. 

The year of her Fuji climb helps to explain why Nakamura’s achievements might be missed, at least in a too casual sweep of Japan’s mountaineering history. Her climbing days came a decade or so after those of the Taishо̄-era “otenba” (tomboys) yet too soon to profit from the social freedoms gained by the post-war generations. So she was born too late to be a mountain pioneer, like Murai Yoneko, but too early to be a Himalayan mama-san, on the lines of Tabei Junko.

But she did pave the way towards economic independence for women. Indeed, she had little choice in the matter. After Teru was born in 1904 in Yūbari, Hokkaido, her father’s mining business failed and her mother moved the family first to Kitakata in Fukushima, where Teru started primary school, and then Tokyo. Since they got no financial support from Nakamura’s father, her mother started a small boarding house while making kimonos, helped by her daughter after school hours.

Nevertheless, Teru managed to start learning English at an early age – unusual in those days – and later attended a typing school to learn English typing. These skills led to a job with a trading company, where her salary soon exceeded that of a university graduate. After work, she went to the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) to learn English shorthand. She also became a Christian around this time. Later she moved to the Ford Motor Company subsidiary in Japan, where she worked for almost a decade and a half.

Nakamura Teru at Matsumoto station after a ski trip.
Image by courtesy of the Yamakei illustrated history of Japanese mountaineering. 

Nakamura started mountaineering in the early 1920s, and climbed Mt Fuji when she was 22. The following year, she went back and made her famous winter ascent. As she said in an interview much later:

Anyone can climb Mt Fuji in the summer, but I really wanted to challenge myself by climbing it in winter. If I want to do something, I can't hold back; I immediately think, "Let's try it, whether I can do it or not!" Winter mountaineering is a battle against the snow. More important than reaching the summit is dedicating yourself wholeheartedly to the mountain itself. Because I was the first woman to do it, I gained a lot of attention, and even received an offer from a film company.

Climbing with guides and porters would take Nakamura only so far. In 1931, she helped to found what was probably Japan’s first mountaineering club for women, the Tokyo YMCA Sangaku-kai. After a decade in which the club typically carried out two or three long traverses in the northern or southern Japan Alps every year, the club formally ceased to exist during the second world war. But its former members continued to meet up for many years afterwards.

Members of the YMCA mountaineering club on Kaikoma in 1932.
Image by courtesy of the Yamakei illustrated history of Japanese mountaineering. 

As for Nakamura herself, she kept on climbing in winter – and writing about it too. The cultural historian Miyashita Keizо̄ quotes from an article she wrote for the mountaineering magazine Tozan to Ski in 1933 about a trip to the Ushiro-Tateyama range:

I sometimes gain a sense of peace even from the bitter north wind that whirls up the powder snow and buffets my body, just as if it were a zephyr from Botticelli. For what better raiment can the mountains have than snow. Like Eloise’s wedding robe, snow evokes a sense of solitude, while in the moonlight it recalls the chilly beauty of Ophelia's winter weeds.

At the age of 33 Nakamura donned a wedding robe herself, changing her name to Satо̄, and leaving her job at Ford Japan. “I married relatively late, but that was because I loved my job and due to family circumstances,” she said in a post-war interview. Her husband’s work took them to Pusan in Korea yet Teru’s English skills were not left to languish – at one point during the war, she was asked to work as a spy....

(Continued)