"Mode of Travelling in the High Alps" (3)

"Serve him right" (original title)
From Mountaineering in the Badminton Library Series

Alpine advice from a founder of modern mountaineering

It is sometimes thought that for complete security, in case of the yielding of a snow bridge, the party tied together should be not less than three in number; in order that two may be available to draw out of a crevasse the one who may have fallen. 
 
But if the simple precaution of keeping eight or ten paces apart be observed by two travellers who are tied together, there is not the slightest risk incurred. The whole mass of snow covering a crevasse does not give way together, and a moderate amount of assistance from the rope will always enable the traveller to extricate himself. 
 
A good cragsman may go alone up and down the steepest pinnacles of rock; but, however strong may be the inducements to solitary wandering amidst the grand scenery of the high Alps, the man who travels without a companion in the snow region can scarcely be thought more reasonable than the supposed cab-driver alluded to in the last paragraph. 
 
Against the risk of slipping upon steep slopes, the rope is usually a protection as effectual as it is in the first case. There may be positions in which the footing of each traveller is so precarious, that if tied together a slip on the part of any one of them would probably cause the destruction of all. 
 
Such positions are, however, very rare, If indeed they anywhere occur. There are few descents steeper than that of the ice-wall of the Strahleck yet Desor recounts a case in which three travellers all slipping at the same time, were upheld, and saved from falling into the bergschrund by a rope sustained on the arm of a single guide who came last in the descent.

 Reference

 

From J Ball, “Suggestions for Alpine travellers”, Chapter XVIII, Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: A series of excursions by members of the Alpine Club, London, 1859.

 

"Mode of Travelling in the High Alps" (2)

Alpine advice from a founder of modern mountaineering

The real dangers of the high Alps may, under ordinary circumstances, be reduced to three. First, the yielding of the snow bridges that cover glacier crevasses; second, the risk of slipping upon steep slopes of hard ice; third, the fall of ice or rocks from above. 

From the first, which is also the most frequent source of danger, absolute security is obtained by a simple precaution, now generally known, yet unfortunately often neglected. The reader of this volume can scarcely fail to remark that, in the course of the expeditions here recounted, repeated accidents occurred, and that many of the best and most experienced Alpine travellers have narrowly escaped with their lives, under circumstances in which no danger whatever would have been encountered if the party had been properly tied together with rope. Sometimes that indispensable article is forgotten; more often the use of it is neglected in positions where no immediate necessity for it is apparent. 
 
A strange notion seems to prevail with some travellers, and occasionally among the guides, that the constant use of the rope is a sign of timidity and over-caution. But in the upper region, where the ice is covered with snow or neve, it is absolutely the only security against a risk which the most experienced cannot detect beforehand; and so far from causing delay, it enables a party to advance more rapidly and with less trouble when they are dispensed from the inconvenience of sounding with the alpenstock in doubtful positions. It is true that this latter precaution should not be omitted in places that are manifestly unsafe, but, at the best, it merely detects a particular danger without giving that confidence which the rope alone can afford. 
 
It may be hoped that before long the rope will be considered as essential a part of an Alpine traveller’s equipment as reins are in a horse's harness. A man who should undertake to drive a cab without reins from Charing Cross to London Bridge, would scarcely be looked upon as an example for spirit, even if he sat alone; but if he were to induce a party of friends to travel in the same vehicle, he would justly be accused of wantonly risking the lives of others.

Reference
 
From J Ball, “Suggestions for Alpine travellers”, Chapter XVIII, Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: A series of excursions by members of the Alpine Club, London, 1859. 
 

"Mode of Travelling in the High Alps" (1)

Alpine advice from a founder of modern mountaineering

This subject requires a few words of allusion to the difficulties and dangers incident to travelling in a region where excepting steep faces of rock, the surface is covered with snow or ice. These may at once be divided into two classes - the real and the imaginary. 

Where a ridge or slope of rock or ice is such that it could be traversed without difficulty if it lay but a few feet above the level of a garden, the substitution on either side of a precipice some thousands of feet in depth, or of a glacier crevasse, makes no real difference in the work to be executed, but may act intensely on the imagination of a traveller. 

The only means for removing this source of danger is habit; those who cannot accustom themselves to look unmoved down vertical precipices, and, in cases of real difficulty, to fix their attention exclusively upon the ledge or jutting crag to which they must cling with foot or hand, should forego the attempt to take part in expeditions where they will not only expose themselves to danger, but may be the cause of equal danger to others.

Reference

 

From J Ball, “Suggestions for Alpine travellers”, Chapter XVIII, Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: A series of excursions by members of the Alpine Club, London, 1859. 

 

A medieval mash-up

A tale of past and present hinges on an oddly assorted duo

But should an aspirant meizanologist be reading Japanese folk tales? If they happen to be those selected and translated by Royall Tyler, then the answer has to be yes. To quote the book’s blurb, Japanese Tales is a collection of 220 stories from medieval sources that opens “a window into a long-vanished though perennially fascinating culture”.

For the meizanologist, the window gapes wide at Tale 88. Entitled “The wizard of the mountains”, this tale comes from Konjaku Monogatari (Tales of Past and Present), a collection of about a thousand stories that dates back to around 1100 CE. It sketches the life of En-no-Gyōja, known to all readers of this blog as the founder of Japan’s syncretic tradition of mountain religions.

By this account, En-no-Gyōja was a late starter. At the age of 34, he turned his house into a temple, enshrining there an eight-foot tall image of Miroku that he’d made of clay. Then he went to live in a cave in the Katsuragi Mountains in Yamato Province, wearing clothes made of bark and eating only pine needles.

One day, from Ōmine, he caught sight of Shaka Peak from far off, and was struck by its unusual form. This mountain clearly had power. When he went to inspect it more closely, En-no-Gyōja found, hanging from a tree, a tall skeleton with a bell in its left hand and a single-pronged vajra in its right.

The discovery was explained when Miroku appeared to him in a dream. “For seven of your past lives you were an ascetic on this mountain,” the god explained. “The skeleton you found is your own. If you want the bell and the vajra, chant the Mantra of the Peacock King.”

En-no-Gyōja did as he was told, and soon acquired supernatural powers. The scene now shifts to Golden Peak in the Ōmine range. This sacred mountain was believed to have flown in from India, after breaking off from the mountain where the Buddha preached the Lotus Sutra. In 552, during the reign of Emperor Kimmei, it wafted thousands of leagues on a white cloud and landed in Japan.

Seeing how powerful Golden Peak was, En-no-Gyōja thought it should have a god who could help sentient beings toward salvation. To this end, after a thousand days of prayer, he enshrined Zaō Gongen there. He then coopted another god, Hitokotonushi, to build a stone bridge so that his followers could reach Golden Peak.

Understandably, Hitokotonushi jibbed at this forced labour, and denounced En-no-Gyōja to the authorities. This resulted in En-no-Gyōja’s famous exile to Ōshima in the province of Izu. Here he whiled away the time by flying to the top of Mt Fuji every night. But Hitokotonushi continued to intrigue against him at court, so that eventually En-no-Gyōja tired of living in Japan. So instead, he put his mother in a bowl and flew across to China, where he toured every sacred peak.

Accounts of En-no-Gyōja’s life often leave it at that. But the Konjaku Monogatari version adds a final twist. It seems that Monk Taichō, the pioneer of Hakusan, set out on a pilgrimage to the Katsuragi and Ōmine mountains. And there he found Hitokotonushi imprisoned within a mossy boulder. But when Taichō tried to release the refractory god, En-no-Gyōja suddenly appeared and scared him off. And nobody ever tried to free Hitokotonushi again.

To find En-no-gyōja and Taichō facing off in the same story is a surprise, at least to this blogger. Apart from worshipping different deities and climbing different mountains, they are traditionally assigned to different centuries, En-no-gyōja to the seventh and Taichō to the eighth.

Even more widely separated are the primary sources for their legends – En-no-ozunu, another name for En-no-Gyōja, appears as early as 797 CE in the Shoku Nihongi, an early imperial history. Whereas the best-known record of the Taichō legend dates back only to 1325, about six centuries after the Hakusan pioneer is supposed to have lived.

In terms of Western culture, this is a bit like finding Robin Hood suddenly shouldering his way into the court of King Arthur. For King Arthur is a very ancient legend, Robin Hood a much more recent one. Nevertheless, the mythical king and a thinly disguised Robin Hood did eventually show up in the same narrative. This was in T H White’s The Sword in the Stone, a novel published in the 1930s.

Like T H White, the author of the Konjaku-monogatari tale – or a predecessor – must have had a motive for mashing up two distinct stories. Unlike T H White’s case, though, it remains obscure who first brought Taichō into En-no-Gyōja’s story, or when or why. Was it perhaps because religious sects centred around Ōmine or Mt Fuji feared competition from the Hakusan faith? It would be interesting to find out more …

References

Royall Tyler, Japanese Tales, Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library, 2002

Ohmori Hisao (ed), Hito wa naze yama ni noboru no ka, Heibonsha, Autumn 1998

Mountain heritage

A Swiss exhibition celebrates the creative legacy of an alpinistic family

Centenaries are there to be commemorated. Some century-old stories by the Swiss alpinist and author Charles Gos have recently appeared in translation on this blog. Meanwhile, an exhibition at his home town in Switzerland is now celebrating the artistic oeuvre of the entire Gos dynasty. “Les Gos: une montagne en héritage” opened at the Médiathèque Valais at Martigny in June and runs until 16 January next year.

Pictures at an exhibition

On a rainy August afternoon, we are welcomed into the exhibition by larger-than-life portraits of a talented quartet. These show Albert Gos (1852-1942), the mountain painter and his three sons, François Gos (1880-1975), the eldest and likewise a painter, Charles Gos (1885-1949), the writer, and Emile Gos (1888-1969), the photographer who made the very portraits we are looking at.

The Gos family

All four men loomed large over the alpine culture of their time. As we turn into the exhibition, an expansive panorama by Albert meets our eyes.

Landscape by Albert Gos

He learned his craft between 1870 and 1872 at the Geneva School of Art under Barthélemy Menn (1815-1893), who introduced the principles of plein-air painting into Swiss art.

Albert Gos en plein air

After absorbing that teaching, Albert Gos ran with it. Preferring to paint in the open air, he left the school before graduating. He concentrated on painting mountains, particularly in the Bernese Oberland and the Valais Alps.

Importantly, he could make a decent living with these works. This mattered even more after 1878, when he married Jeanne Monnerat. François, the first of five children, arrived two years later (there were also two daughters). The couple settled first in Geneva before moving to Clarens, a village near Montreux.

The Matterhorm painter

During his most productive decade, the last of the 19th century, Albert was justifiably known as the “Matterhorn artist”. Indeed, one of these paintings features in Charles Gos’s story “Gladys”.

Landscape by Francois Gos

A painting by François Gos hangs close to his father’s work. Modest in scale, its style is a touch more modern than Albert's, as if the artist had imbibed at the same sources as Félix Vallotton (1865-1925). François studied for five years at the Geneva School of Arts and Crafts and at the city’s art academy before, like Vallotton, moving to Paris. Unlike Vallotton, however, Emil had to work in a factory as a decorative artist.

Poster by Francois Gos

On returning to Switzerland, he gave drawing lessons in Clarens. In 1910, he settled in Munich, and later spent three years in Holland before returning to Geneva, making a living with illustration, sculpture and writing, as well as painting. Travel posters were a forte. In 1913, he helped to start up an art school in Lausanne. Like his father, he showed a predilection for the mountain world, both as a climber and a painter.

Charles Gos, alpinist and author

Charles Gos, after studying in Lausanne and Paris, established himself as an author and journalist, focusing on military affairs and alpinism – mostly the latter in his short stories and novels: Pres des névès et des glaciers (1912), La croix du Cervin (1919), Propos d'un alpiniste (1922), Alpinisme anecdotique (1934), and Solitude montagnarde (1943).

In 1918, he married Edmée de Coulon, who died in 1930. In 1934, he took over the management of the mountain books department at the Victor Attinger publishing house in Neuchâtel. He remarried in 1947, and a son was born two years later.

Mountain photography by Emil Gos

The Gos brothers climbed at a high standard, often without guides. Charles Gos knew everybody in the world of alpinism, from the local guides to the prominent climbers who visited the Alps from abroad. He was elected a member of the Alpine Club in 1935, and once secured a half-hour audience with the “climbing pope”, Pius XI. And this without the benefit of a Catholic upbringing - the Gos family came from a sternly Protestant background.

For his part, the youngest son, Emile Gos, completed an apprenticeship as a photographer in Montreux, in the workshop of Rodolphe Schlemmer (1878-1972). He continued his training in German-speaking Switzerland, in Paris, Munich and London before moving back to Clarens and later starting his own studio in Lausanne. In 1939, he married Claire André, who gave him two children.

Making a living with studio portraits and newspaper photography, he left a more durable legacy in landscape and mountain photography – sampled in the exhibition by a compelling slide show of his medium-format images.

In 1922, he filmed his brother Charles’s short story about the Matterhorn cross (“La Croix du Cervin”). This was one of the first films to be shot in the high mountains. Alas, only fragments of the original footage have survived.

Filming La Croix du Cervin

On the way out, we pick up a copy of the well-produced brochure that accompanies the exhibition (CHF 20, including both French and German versions of the text, with photos).

An article by the art historian Maéva Besse points out that, in its day, the Gos family was by no means unique in passing the torch of mountain culture from father to son. On their own doorstep, there were the Töpffers and the van Muydens of Geneva, whose artistic productions spanned two generations. And, over in Chamonix, the Tairraz and Gay-Couttet clans presided for even longer in the world of mountain photography.

Even so, the truly golden age of the mountain artist may have ended with the first world war. From the biographical sketches given in the exhibition brochure, one surmises that François and Emil Gos had to scrabble harder than their father to eke out a living from mountain art.

Writer with a saturnine streak?

As for Charles, his fiction dwells frequently on human fallibility and the dark side of mountaineering, even while recreating the glittering social and alpinistic scenes of the belle époque. And one non-fiction work concerns itself entirely with mountain accidents. This might signify no more than a saturnine streak in the author's personality. Or was he oppressed by a sense that the civilisation he grew up in, and its genial ways of living, were sliding into the abyss, never to be retrieved?

References

Exposition: Les Gos: une montagne en héritage, Médiathèque Valais - Martigny, Av. de la Gare 15, 1920 Martigny, Suisse.

Website of the Gos family: Une famille d'artistes

The case of Séraphin Mochay, alpine guide (4)

Concluded: a tale by Charles Gos from the belle époque of alpinism

"When I came to, slumped against the rock, the sun was tinging the peaks, and my nemesis was still there, lying motionless on the snow. A shiver ran through me and my head throbbed feverishly. "At the twelfth shooting star, you will cut the rope!" The hideous thought flashed back into my mind. Should I die with the dead man, or cut the rope? Die with the dead? The sacrifice would be useless; so cut the rope! But can a guide cut the rope, the bond that ties him to his guest?"

Climbers on a ridge: photo by Marcel Ichac (1906-1994)
Source of photo: John Mitchell Fine Paintings

"Yet that is what I did. With one hand grasping the granite, I opened the largest blade of my military knife with my teeth, and slowly cut into the rope where it was wound tightly around the rock. The strands snapped apart one after the other, and then came a sudden rasping noise as the rope whipped through the air, and Herr Bartmann's body plunged away head-first, his arms splayed out, his legs flailing limply. The rest you know. I spent a second night on the ridge of the Dent Blanche, half-frozen and starving, shattered by that night of horror, and the next evening I arrived in Zermatt, completely speechless, still with the end of the cut rope tied around my waist. Then they took me to court, sentenced me to two years in prison, and stripped me of my guide's diploma, disgraced me. Am I a murderer, a coward, for having cut a rope that tied me to a dead man?"

The smuggler fell silent. Sharing the same fellow-feeling, we stretched out our hands to him. He squeezed them with emotion, but made no other move. He stared at the fire, seeming to see the tragic spectacle dancing in the flames. Two large tears beaded on his eyelashes, trickled down his weatherbeaten cheeks and lost themselves in the hairs of his moustache. After a long time, he seemed to shrug off the visions that were creasing his forehead.

“Now come on, old Séraphin, your conscience is clear, get a grip and stand up. Gentlemen, goodbye. I'm sorry if I've bothered you with my nonsense, but you know how these things get to you, and thank you for your kind hospitality – it was very good of you.” He heaved up his heavy bundle, lit his pipe again, looked up at the lowering sky, and vanished into the gloom.

The sound of his footsteps faded into in the distance. We talked for a while longer, our voices hushed, as if the story we’d heard had stayed with us, casting its shadow of anguish over the company. Then we said good night to each other and huddled into our sleeping-bags.

From time to time, the fire flared up again, rekindled by the wind slipping through the cracks. Or sparks jetted out, lighting up the cave. The embers crackled dryly from time to time. Haunted by the smuggler’s story, I could not sleep, replaying in my mind all the scenes of this eerie drama as it had unfolded, high on the Dent Blanche. The guide clinging to the wall, his eyes stark, his hands bloodied, the rope stiff as a steel cable scouring the snow, and pendant from it, the dead man lolling on his back, the corpse slowly but inexorably dragging the survivor down to his death. The heavens are remarkably calm, a-glitter with stars. The Milky Way is up there, a broad thoroughfare for souls on their way to paradise - and sometimes a shooting star streaks silently by. The guide counts eleven of them, at the twelfth, he will cut the rope - the rope that binds him to a dead man.

At the foot of the smugglers' pass, a solitary figure is laboriously climbing the slope, bent double under his heavy burden. The glows of dawn start to paint the mist-wracked sky and, who knows, the customs officers may be lurking among the rocks on the ridge, their rifles at the ready. Or could it be the avalanche slope that is primed, ready for its plunging ride into the abyss.

As if to drown these reveries, the murmuring of the streams pouring from the Valsorey glacier grew louder in the night.

References

This is an excerpt from Project Hyakumeizan's centennial translation of the third story in La Croix du Cervin (1919), a collection of alpine fiction by Charles Gos (1885-1949). Translation (c) Project Hyakumeizan. This was the story that, in the words of an alpine historian, "greatly agitated the guides of Zermatt".

The case of Séraphin Mochay, alpine guide (3)

Continued: a tale by Charles Gos from the belle époque of alpinism

It happened on the Dent Blanche. I was climbing with a German client, Herr Bartmann, and I assure you I’ve not forgotten his name. We’d already done some tours together and we got along well. This year, the Dent Blanche was in very bad condition: fresh snow powdered the rocks and we had a lot of snow: the ridges were all corniced. The climbing had been difficult and we’d only reached the summit at two o'clock in the afternoon. To tell the truth, I was a bit apprehensive about the descent because of the soft snow, but we were young, we had the bit between our teeth, and we wouldn’t have given up the climb for anything in the world.

The Dent Blanche: detail from a photo by Gabriel Loppe (1825-1913)

After a short rest at the top, we started down. High up, everything went well, but as we descended, the wet snow sloughed away in small avalanches or clogged up the rock. For safety's sake, we moved very slowly. At five o'clock in the evening we turned the Grand-Gendarme. I remember the time, because the accident happened twenty minutes later. Then we doubled up the rope to come down the middle of the slabs where the Lochmatters came to grief in eighty-two, together with their English client. This was now a sheet of snow-covered ice, into which we had to cut steps. It was hard work, but my guest carved them out like a real mountaineer. Spikes of rock poked out through the ice, marking our passage. The pitch wasn’t so difficult, but it was dangerous enough.

My guest was then twenty meters below me, on a good stance. He was waiting for me to join him and watching the ropework. Suddenly, just as I turned towards the cliff to go down, I got a violent jolt on my back, as if I’d been grabbed by a brutal hand that meant to toss me out into space. I fell a few feet, scraping down the wall, terrified – surely I was gone. But my hands instinctively went for a rocky edge, where I was able to stop myself. The rope was still pulling me viciously, stretched like a steel bar, but I couldn’t see anything below.

“Herr Bartmann! Herr Bartmann!” I yelled, “What’s happening? Get a grip and hold on!”

No answer. I yelled down again. Still nothing.

After five minutes in this position, I couldn't take it anymore. My legs were shaking and my torn-up fingers were stiffening, slowly letting go of their hold.

For the second time, I knew I’d buy it if I didn’t do something. This was nightmarish! By some extraordinary effort, I managed to get up on the slab I’d been hanging off, and the first thing I saw, to my horror, was my guest, hanging on the rope like a sack, head lolling back, arms hanging out, face towards the sky. My first thought was that he was dead. Or, if he’s just passed out, I thought, it wouldn’t be long before he came round again.

“Herr Bartmann! Herr Bartmann!” I shouted again. But what had happened? Will we ever find out? Anyway, gentlemen, as I said on the day I was sentenced, nothing had fallen on us, not a stone, not an ice-block. Herr Bartmann must have had some sort of attack and slumped over, without saying a word.

A thought struck me: I swung the rope, but the body just trembled a bit and then was still; I tried again, and it was the same. So you can see how I was placed. It was absolutely impossible for me to do what had to be done to rescue my guest – either haul him up to me, or let myself down to him. Oh, this corpse who was dragging me into the abyss! For a moment, I thought I’d go mad. I screamed, I sobbed, I groaned... An hour passed, the most terrible hour of my life. My strength was fading, and I all but let myself fall rather than draw out the agony. Then I managed to hitch the rope around a rock. I thought I was almost saved. Evening came, then night and its solemn silence amid the peace of these great white glaciers and the serried mountains!

It was a beautiful summer night, crowded with stars. I could see everything very clearly – and how my life would end, as a bundle tied to a rope lying the snow. Well, sirs, one curious detail comes back to me: I counted eleven shooting stars that night, as they arced over me through the dark sky, so bright but so quick to snuff out that they somehow touched me to the heart. And I said to myself that, when I saw a twelfth shooting star, I would cut the rope. But I never did see a twelfth, as I then fainted away.

(To be concluded)

References

This is an excerpt from Project Hyakumeizan's centennial translation of the third story in La Croix du Cervin (1919), a collection of alpine fiction by Charles Gos (1885-1949). Translation (c) Project Hyakumeizan. This was the story that, in the words of an alpine historian, "greatly agitated the guides of Zermatt".