THE MATTERHORN, AND ITS VICTIMS.
TheMatterhorn, or Mont Cervin, a peak of the Pennine Alps, fourteen thousand seven hundred and eighty feet high, is unique amongst the mountains of the Alps, for elsewhere throughout their length and breadth there is no single peak that approaches to it in massive grandeur of shape. Standing alone, apart from the neighbouring peaks, holding itself proudly aloof, as it were, from the common herd, it is truly a monarch among mountains. To look upon it is to realise at once the feeling of awe and reverence with which, even to this day, the peasants of the valley regard it—a feeling which in former years had perhaps more to do with its reputed inaccessibility than anything else; whilst other peaks whose ascent is now thought to be more difficult, were falling one by one before the early pioneers of the Alpine Club. In that time—with very few exceptions—even the boldest hunters of Zermatt and the Val Tournanche shrank from attempting the ascent, for time-honoured legends said that the Matterhorn was haunted, that evil spirits made it their trysting-place; and when the storm raged high, and the lightning played about its crags, danced and shrieked around it in unholy glee. Then, too, the Matterhorn has a history of its own, such as no other mountain save Mont Blanc possesses.
Every one who has read Mr Whymper’sScrambles amongst the Alps—a book which has probably done more to stimulate the love of climbing than any written before or since—knows how he alone—when other mountaineers tried and failed, coming back always with the same tale, that the summit was inaccessible—persisted that it could be reached; and how, though driven back many and many a time, he refused to accept defeat, till at length, after an expenditure of time and money which some would deem completely thrown away in such a cause, his indomitable perseverance met with its due reward. As Mr Whymper’s adventures in connection with the ascent of the Matterhorn have been already related in thisJournalunder the title ‘Ascent of the Matterhorn,’ January 10, 1880, we need only refer to them here in so far as is necessary for the sequence of the narrative.
There were several attempts made to ascend the Matterhorn previous to 1858; but the first known were those of the four Val Tournanche guides—Jean Antoine Carrel, J. J. Carrel, Victor Carrel, Gabriel Maquignaz, with the Abbé Gorret, in that and in the following year. These attempts were all made on the Italian side, from Breuil; and it does not appear that at any time a greater height than twelve thousand six hundred and fifty feet was attained. Very little definite information, however, has ever been obtainable on the subject.
The next attempt of which we have record was a remarkable one, for it was made by three brothers, the Messrs Parker of Liverpool,and without guides. The attempt was made in 1860 from Zermatt, and these daring climbers attacked the eastern face, looked upon at that time as quite beyond the powers of any human being to climb. They succeeded in ascending to a height of some twelve thousand feet, and were then driven back by bad weather. In the same year, another attempt was made from Breuil by Professor Tyndall and Mr Vaughan Hawkins, with the guides J. J. Carrel and Bennen; but they did not make much advance upon what had been done during the attempts of the Val Tournanche guides; and it is doubtful if a greater height than thirteen thousand feet was reached.
In 1861, the Messrs Parker tried again, but did not succeed in getting much higher than they did in the previous year; while on the Italian side, the two Carrels, J. A. and J. J., made another attempt, which was unsuccessful.
Then began the attempts of Mr Whymper, and from that moment until the last successful expedition, with two exceptions, his name was associated with all the attempts that were madeupon the mountain. The two exceptions were those of Mr T. S. Kennedy and of Professor Tyndall in 1862. The first was unique, as having been made in the winter—on the 7th of January. Mr Kennedy seems to have thought that the ascent might prove practicable in winter, if not in summer; but his experience was a severe one. A fierce wind, bitter cold, and a superabundance of snow, prevented his getting very far; and, like all the rest, he returned completely discomfited. The attempt of Professor Tyndall on the Italian side, in July of that year, was perhaps the nearest to success of any that had yet been made. He had two celebrated Swiss guides with him, Bennen and Walter; and he also took, but only as porters, three Val Tournanche men, of whom J. A. Carrel was one. This expedition was only stopped when within eight hundred feet of the top. Professor Tyndall came back so deeply impressed with the difficulties surrounding the ascent, that he made no effort to renew his attempt. In fact, he does not appear to have gone on the mountain again till he ascended it in 1868, three years after the first ascent had been made. Professor Tyndall’s want of success appears in great measure to have been due to the jealousy existing between the guides of the two rival nationalities, Swiss and Italian.
The first attempt by Mr Whymper was made from Breuil on the 29th of August 1861, the same day as the attempt by the two Carrels. Mr Whymper was accompanied by an Oberland guide, who proved a somewhat inefficient companion; and they failed to get higher than the ‘Chimney,’ twelve thousand six hundred and fifty feet above the sea-level. He made other five attempts in 1862, one in 1863, and two in 1865. In the ninth and last, he was successful.
In Mr Whymper’s ninth and successful attempt the united party consisted of Lord Francis Douglas, Mr Hudson, Mr Hadow—a friend of Mr Hudson’s—and the guides Michel Croz and the two Taugwalders, father and son. They started from Zermatt on July 13, 1865, and camped out above the Hörnli ridge. The weather was fine and with everything in their favour, next day, they climbed with ease the apparently inaccessible precipices, and reached the actual summit at 1.40P.M.
In the account of the expedition which Mr Whymper has given to the world, he graphically describes the wild delight which they all felt at a success so much beyond their hopes, and how for a full hour they sat drinking-in the sweets of victory before preparing to descend. It is almost needless to re-tell a story which we have previously related, and which is so well known as the terrible tragedy which took place during the descent—how Mr Hadow slipped, struck Croz from his steps, and dragged down Mr Hudson and Lord Francis Douglas; how the rope snapped midway between Lord Francis Douglas and old Taugwalder; and how Mr Whymper and the two Taugwalders watched, horrified, whilst their unfortunate companions slid rapidly downwards, spreading out their hands in a vain endeavour to save themselves, till they finally disappeared over the edge of the precipice, falling a distance of four thousand feet on to the glacier below! The bodies of Messrs Hudson, Hadow, and Croz were subsequently recovered, and now lie buried in the graveyard of the Zermatt village church; but of Lord Francis Douglas, nothing could be seen. Beyond a boot, a pair of gloves, and the torn and bloodstained sleeve of a coat, no trace of him has ever since been found. What became of his body is to this day a mystery.
It is strange how the memory of this the most dramatic—if it may be so termed—of all the accidents which have ever happened in the Alps is still indelibly impressed on the minds of climbers, guides, and amateurs alike. It is the commonest thing to hear it discussed, and the theories put forward as to the cause of the rope giving way where it did are various and ingenious. Unfortunately for the reputation of old Taugwalder, the report of the official investigation held by the local authorities after the accident has never to this day been made public. As a consequence, old Taugwalder has suffered irretrievably from a report mischievously circulated by his fellow-villagers to the effect, that at the moment of the slip, he sacrificed his companions to save himself, by severing the rope! And in spite of Mr Whymper’s assertions that the thing was impossible, there are some who still persist in maintaining that he cut it. The suspicion under which he laboured so preyed upon his spirits that he quitted the scene, and for many years never returned to his native village. The younger Taugwalder became one of the leading guides of the valley.
Thrice again has the Matterhorn been the scene of death in a terrible form. In 1879, the mountain claimed two more victims. In the one case, an American, Dr Moseley, disregarding the most ordinary precautions, slipped and perished horribly, falling a height of some two thousand feet, on to some rocks a little way down the Furggen Glacier. Dr Moseley, accompanied by Mr Craven and the well-known Oberland guides, Christian Inäbnit and Peter Rubi, left Zermatt on the night of August 13, with the intention of making a one-day ascent of the Matterhorn. Both gentlemen were members of the Alpine Club, and mountaineers of considerable experience. The summit was reached successfully at nine o’clock on the morning of the 14th; and after a short halt, the descent was commenced. Dr Moseley, who was a skilful rock-climber, and possessed of great confidence in his own climbing powers, soon after passing the most difficult bit of the mountain, complained that the rope was a considerable hindrance; and notwithstanding the remonstrances of Mr Craven and the guides, insisted on detaching himselffrom the other members of the party. At some little distance from the old hut, the party had to cross a projecting ledge of smooth rock. Rubi crossed first, and planted his axe so as to give Dr Moseley a firm foothold; but Dr Moseley, declining the proffered assistance, placed his hand upon the rock and endeavoured to vault over it. In an instant, his foot slipped, his axe flew out of his hand, and he fell on to some snow beneath, down which he commenced to slide on his back. The snow was frozen, and he dropped on to some rocks below. With a desperate effort, he turned himself round and tried to grasp the rocks with his hands; but the impetus attained was too great, and he fell from rock to rock till lost to his companions’ sight. The body was subsequently recovered; and from the terrible nature of the fall, death must have ensued long before the bottom was reached.
Here was a case of a valuable life absolutely thrown away, for, had Dr Moseley remained on the rope, the accident would never have happened. It was the same over-confidence that cost the life of the Rev. J. M. Elliott on the Schreckhorn, and it is to be feared will cost the lives of others yet, if the warning conveyed by the fall of these two accomplished mountaineers continues to be disregarded. There was another circumstance, too, which had a bearing on the accident, and which is an additional proof of a want of carefulness on the part of the unfortunate man—his boots were found, on examination, to be almost entirely devoid of nails, and were, therefore, practically useless for mountaineering purposes.
In the other case, a death occurred under circumstances which are happily without a parallel in the annals of mountaineering. Two members of the Basle section of the Swiss Alpine Club—a body in no way connected with our own Alpine Club—engaged three guides—J. M. Lochmatter and Joseph Brantschen, both of St Nicolas, and P. Beytrison of Evolena—to take them over the Matterhorn from Breuil to Zermatt. They left the first-named place on the morning of August 12, and in the afternoon reached the hut which the Italian Alpine Club have built at an elevation of some thirteen thousand feet, amidst the wildest crags of the Matterhorn, intending to sleep there, and cross the mountain to Zermatt in the course of the following day. During the night, the guide Brantschen was taken ill, and by morning had become so weak as to be quite unable to move. Now, under these circumstances, it might have been supposed that Brantschen would have been the first consideration; but the two Swiss gentlemen thought otherwise. Instead of at once abandoning the expedition, and sending down for help to Breuil, after a brief consultation they announced to Lochmatter their intention of proceeding to Zermatt, and ordered him and Beytrison to get ready to start. They were conscious of the fact that Brantschen had become dangerously ill, and appear to have demurred at first, but weakly gave in on their employers insisting. A blanket was thrown over the sick man, a little food placed beside him, and then the party filed out of the hut, and the door was shut. It is possible that in their leaving Brantschen they were scarcely alive to the consequences of their act; it is to be hoped, at all events, that they were not; but from the moment that the hut was left, they deliberately condemned the sick man to at least thirty-six hours of absolute solitude. In fact, by the adoption of this course, the nearest succour—at the pace of the party—was nineteen and a half hours off, whereas Breuil would have been only eight. They crossed the mountain safely, but being bad walkers, did not reach Zermatt till half-past one the following morning. They then caused a relief party of guides to be sent out; but it was too late. On reaching the hut, the unfortunate man was found to be dead. The conduct of his employers did not escape criticism both at home and abroad.
There have been accidents on the Matterhorn since 1879; but although in more than one instance there has been a narrow escape, only once has any further life been sacrificed.
Within a few days of the first ascent of the Matterhorn, on July 18, 1865, J. A. Carrel and Bich succeeded in reaching the summit from the Italian side, by a feat of rock-climbing scarcely equalled for daring in the annals of mountaineering. Since then, ascents of the Matterhorn have multiplied year by year; but for every one ascent by the Italian route, there must be twenty at least by the Zermatt. In fact, the former route is scarcely adapted for any but good mountaineers. The Matterhorn has also been climbed from the Zmutt side; but this route has never become popular. The first traveller to ascend the Matterhorn from Breuil was Mr F. Craufurd Grove, the present President of the Alpine Club; and of other remarkable ascents may be mentioned those of Miss Walker, accompanied by her brother and Mr Gardiner—Miss Walker being the first lady to climb the Matterhorn—of the Misses Pigeon, who were weather-bound for three days in the hut on the Italian side; and in descending to Zermatt, after crossing the summit, were benighted, and had to remain on the open mountain-side till daybreak; of Messrs Cawood, Colgrove, and Cust, who made the ascent from Zermatt without guides; of the ill-fated expeditions in which the lives of Dr Moseley, the guide Brantschen, and Mr Borckhardt were lost; and of Mr Mummery and the late Mr Penhall, who each discovered a new route from the Zmutt side.
The Matterhorn has likewise been ascended in the winter; as the writer can assert from experience, having accomplished the feat—such as it was—in the days when it had not become the everyday affair that it is now. With two guides, one of whom was the well-known Joseph Imboden of St Nicolas, I arrived at Zermatt one fine afternoon in August, resolved upon a one-day ascent of the Matterhorn. A start was to be made at midnight; and soon after that hour, we were picking our way over the stones which paved the deserted village street in the darkness of a moonless night. Leaving the village behind us, we commenced to ascend through the meadows beyond the village, Imboden leading, and never for a moment pausing, although, in that uncertain light, it was difficult to distinguish a track of any kind. We reached the barren Hörnli Ridge, and as we commenced to traverse it, the sky grew lighter with the dawn of day. We wereclose to the foot of the Matterhorn now, and it loomed upon us, towering high into the sky, and seeming to my eyes one mighty series of precipices from base to summit. There was a solemn grandeur about the scene which seemed even to have its influence upon my companion, for not a word was spoken as we strode on towards the mountain. But when once we were upon the rock itself, I found that the difficulties which I had pictured to myself as likely to arise had little existence in fact; the series of precipices resolved themselves into a rocky surface, much broken, and yielding capital hand and foot hold everywhere. The incline, too, was very much less steep than it had appeared at a distance. No difficulty indeed presented itself; and climbing upwards rapidly, in two hours from the Hörnli we were at the hut which in those days was generally made use of for passing the night previous to an ascent. This hut is built beneath the shelter of an overhanging cliff, on a narrow rock platform, and its position does not give one an idea of security. It is cramped, and when I saw it, was very dirty, and indeed looked altogether so uninviting, that I congratulated myself on having avoided a night in it. We found the stove useful, though, for cooking our breakfast. This hut has now been superseded by a larger building, erected lower down the mountain. We finished our breakfast, and set out once more.
Hitherto, the work had been quite easy; but now came something stiffer, our first experience being on an ice-slope at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees, overhanging the route by which we had ascended, and by which, had any false step been made, we should have returned somewhat hastily. A party that had gone up the day before spared us any step-cutting, for they had done their work so satisfactorily that quite a staircase remained for our use. We reached the top of the slope in safety; a knife-edge of snow led us to the right, and almost immediately we found ourselves upon the most difficult bit of the mountain, the northern face. Rounding the edge of the mountain, you look down, and below you, the face of the cliff falls away steeply, till it terminates in a drop of three thousand feet or more. Above, rises perpendicularly almost a succession of knobs of rock, overlapping one another, and more or less coated with snow and ice. The position may be rendered exciting enough to please any one by the addition of one or two incompetent individuals to the party.
Our progress was slow but steady. Imboden would scan the face of the cliff, climb up a few feet, and when firmly fixed, call to me to follow, the operation then being repeated with the second guide. We sighted the summit at fifteen minutes past eight; and in less than two hours after leaving the hut we were on the highest point. The summit varies much, differing in shape with each successive season; and when we were there, it was a ridge of snow, narrow in places, broader in others, though nowhere was it possible to walk three abreast. We had a glorious view; but in this respect the Matterhorn is perhaps inferior to some of its neighbours, notably to Monte Rosa and the Dom.
During the descent, Imboden exercised even greater care, and we reached the hut again safely. From there, we made our way leisurely down to Zermatt, where we arrived soon after three o’clock in the afternoon, after an unusually quick ascent, thanks to the splendid weather and the easy state of the northern face, which, while it cost us only two hours, has sometimes given a party seven hours or more of hard work. On the way down, Imboden pointed out to me two blanched fragments of rope trailing from the rocks far up on the northern face. They were left there by Mr Whymper after the accident, and marked the spot close by where it occurred. There they remained as cherished relics till last year, when a traveller sent his guide to cut them down and bring them away. It is sad to think that it was an Englishman who was guilty of this wanton act.
As far as the actual ascent of the Matterhorn goes, it is far from being the formidable affair which it was once considered to be; but at the same time it is certainly not an expedition to be recommended to every one. It is not that the ascent is dangerous in itself, though some may have their own opinion about that, but it cannot be too strongly insisted on that, under certain conditions, it ought not to be attempted. Every experienced climber knows how weather can affect a mountain, and how ascents which, under ordinary conditions, are easy enough, are apt after bad weather to become difficult—sometimes impossible; and for a party of novices, with possibly guides not of the best class, to attempt the Matterhorn in a bad state is to run a risk such as no one in the pursuit of pleasure is justified in running.
The latest accident upon the Matterhorn, up to date of writing, has perhaps more than any other Alpine accident illustrated the folly of attempting great mountains without a proper mountaineering training beforehand. On the morning of the 17th of August, at threeA.M., a party, consisting of Messrs F. C. Borckhardt and T. Davies, with Zermatt guides, Peter Aufdemblatten and Fridolin Kronig, left the lower Matterhorn hut, and in fine weather reached the summit about nineA.M.Soon after leaving it, the weather, with one of those sudden changes which must always more or less constitute a danger in Alpine climbing, became very bad, and it began to snow. The progress of the party was very slow, for neither of the two gentlemen seems to have been a good walker, and both were exhausted; and by seven o’clock that same evening they had only reached the spot near where Dr Moseley made his fatal slip. Here they halted. It continued to snow all that night and till past noon on the following day, by which time travellers and guides were reduced to a pitiable condition. And now comes the saddest part of the story. Of the party, Mr Borckhardt was by this time the most helpless, and as such, ought to have received the greatest consideration; but the guides persuaded Mr Davies that the only chance of saving their own lives was to leave their helpless companion, and make a push to the nearest point whence help could be obtained. At that moment, it so happened that a rescue party was on its way from Zermatt, and they met it about half-way down to the hut. On hearing of the abandonment of Mr Borckhardt on theopen mountain-side, the relief party pushed on to his aid with all haste; but it was of no avail; they only arrived to find that the unfortunate gentleman was past all human help.