The Mattertal is one of the major valleys branching off from the Rhone Valley in
the canton of Valais in southwestern Switzerland. The Matter Vispa River runs about 30 kilometers through the steep-sided,
narrow valley, flowing into the Vispa, which in turn joins the Rhone at Visp. Upstream lies the most famous village
of the Mattertal, Zermatt, which is ringed by soaring mountain peaks, including Monte Rosa (4554 meters), Dufourspitze (4634
meters), and, not least, the Matterhorn (4477 meters).
Marcia Lieberman's "Zermatt High"
Co-author of two excellent books, Switzerland's Mountain Inns and Walking Switzerland the Swiss Way,
Marcia Lieberman describes a recent excursion to Zermatt in the Boston Globe (2/04/01).
Rather than doing day
hikes and returning to the village at night, she and her husband decided to string together nightly stays in mountain inns
or huts. "A night at an Alpine inn high in the mountains and close to the glaciers offer a special experience," she writes:
"sunset gilding the snows, the undimmed brilliance of the night sky, and the camaradarie of fellow hikers."
Their tour began at the historic old inn at Fluhalp, overlooking the Findel glacier. "An hour's walk leads to
wild, lonely meadows, which look down upon the broad Findel glacier -- one of Zermatt's most impressive glacier views."
The
next destination was the Gornergrat, between the Findel and Gorner glaciers, a six-hour hike via the Riffelalp. Beyond Riffelalp,
Lieberman recommends a trail, signposted for Gagenhaupt, "which swings around the shoulder of the Gornergrat massif, passing
the tower of the Riffelhorn and several small lakes." They overnighted at the Hotel Kulm Gornergrat, built in 1907 at an elevation
of 9,900 feet.
Following a day of hiking near Schwarzsee, they moved next to the base of the Matterhorn massif, crossing
in front of the Zmutt glacier on the way to Schonbiel. "Of our entire tour," Lieberman writes, " only this hike has a section
that requires caution, where the trail proceeds along a knife- edge ridge of moraine." The view from the hut at Schonbiel
was remarkable--the Matterhorn's Zmutt ridge looms overhead, "hanging glaciers plunge into the river of ice below," and the
curved, frozen crest of the Dent d'Herens clearly visible.
The Lieberman's next hiking segment took in the Hohbalm,
a long transverse opposite the north wall of the Matterhorn. They walked 5 1/2 hours to the Bergasthaus Trift. The last
day of Lieberman's "Zermatt high" involved a four-hour hike on a good track up the Mettelhorn, a small mountain. After lunch
at the Berggasthaus Trift, they walked down to Zermatt in less than two hours. "We were tired but exhilerated by the exercise
and dazzled by the beauty we had seen all week."
Mark Twain experiences the Matterhorn (excerpt from A Tramp Abroad, 1880)
We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell began to ring
at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it takes the Swiss sinner a
good while to get the invitation through his head. Most church-bells in the world are of poor quality, and have a harsh and
rasping sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin, but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one that has
been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its excuse to exist, for
the community is poor and not every citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be any excuse for our church-bells
at home, for their is no family in America without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday
medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples.
We took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off toward
Zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village, glad to get away from that bell. By and by we had a fine spectacle on our
right. It was the wall-like butt end of a huge glacier, which looked down on us from an Alpine height which was well up in
the blue sky. It was an astonishing amount of ice to be compacted together in one mass. We ciphered upon it and decided that
it was not less than several hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid ice to the top of it--Harris believed it was
really twice that. We judged that if St. Paul's, St. Peter's, the Great Pyramid, the Strasburg Cathedral and the Capitol in
Washington were clustered against that wall, a man sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top of any one
of them without reaching down three or four hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do.
We were approaching
Zermatt; consequently, we were approaching the renowned Matterhorn. A month before, this mountain had been only a name to
us, but latterly we had been moving through a steadily thickening double row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo,
wood, steel, copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at length become a shape to us--and a very distinct, decided,
and familiar one, too.
We were expecting to recognize that mountain whenever or wherever we should run across it.
We were not deceived. The monarch was far away when we first saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him. He has
the rare peculiarity of standing by himself; he is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly shaped. He towers into the
sky like a colossal wedge, with the upper third of its blade bent a little to the left. The broad base of this monster wedge
is planted upon a grand glacier-paved Alpine platform whose elevation is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the wedge itself
is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its apex is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. So the whole bulk
of this stately piece of rock, this sky-cleaving monolith, is above the line of eternal snow. Yet while all its giant neighbors
have the look of being built of solid snow, from their waists up, the Matterhorn stands black and naked and forbidding, the
year round, or merely powdered or streaked with white in places, for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay there.
Its strange form, its august isolation, and its majestic unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the Napoleon of
the mountain world.
"Grand, gloomy, and peculiar," is a phrase which fits it as aptly as it fitted the great captain.
Think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal two miles high! This is what the Matterhorn is--a monument. Its office,
henceforth, for all time, will be to keep watch and ward over the secret resting-place of the young Lord Douglas, who, in
1865, was precipitated from the summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never seen again. No man ever had such
a monument as this before; the most imposing of the world's other monuments are but atoms compared to it; and they will perish,
and their places will pass from memory, but this will remain.
A walk from St. Nicholas to Zermatt is a wonderful experience.
Nature is built on a stupendous plan in that region. One marches continually between walls that are piled into the skies,
with their upper heights broken into a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold against the background of blue;
and here and there one sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top of a precipice, or a graceful cascade leaping
and flashing down the green declivities. There is nothing tame, or cheap, or trivial--it is all magnificent. That short valley
is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it contains no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator has hung it with His
masterpieces.
We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out from St. Nicholas. Distance, by guide-book,
twelve miles; by pedometer seventy-two. We were in the heart and home of the mountain-climbers, now, as all visible things
testified. The snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof, in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around, in a friendly,
sociable way; guides, with the ropes and axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung about their persons, roosted
in a long line upon a stone wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers; sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume,
and followed by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time, from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers
of the High Alps; male and female tourists, on mules, filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from wild adventures
which would grow in grandeur very time they were described at the English or American fireside, and at last outgrow the possible
itself.
We were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations;
no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine summits without
a guide. I was not equal to imagining a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him, while looking straight at
him at short range. I would rather face whole Hyde Parks of artillery than the ghastly forms of death which he has faced among
the peaks and precipices of the mountains. There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp;
but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it. I have not jumped to this conclusion;
I have traveled to it per gravel-train, so to speak. I have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure I am right.
A
born climber's appetite for climbing is hard to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a starving man with a feast before
him; he may have other business on hand, but it must wait. Mr. Girdlestone had had his usual summer holiday in the Alps, and
had spent it in his usual way, hunting for unique chances to break his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed
for England, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon him to climb the tremendous Weisshorn once more, for he had heard
of a new and utterly impossible route up it. His baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend, laden with knapsacks,
ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens of milk, were just setting out. They would spend the night high up among the snows,
somewhere, and get up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise. I had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it
down-- a feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude, could not do.
Even ladies catch the climbing mania, and
are unable to throw it off. A famous climber, of that sex, had attempted the Weisshorn a few days before our arrival, and
she and her guides had lost their way in a snow-storm high up among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to wander around
a good while before they could find a way down. When this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her feet twenty-three hours!
Our
guides, hired on the Gemmi, were already at Zermatt when we reached there. So there was nothing to interfere with our getting
up an adventure whenever we should choose the time and the object. I resolved to devote my first evening in Zermatt to studying
up the subject of Alpine climbing, by way of preparation.
I read several books, and here are some of the things I
found out. One's shoes must be strong and heavy, and have pointed hobnails in them. The alpenstock must be of the best wood,
for if it should break, loss of life might be the result. One should carry an ax, to cut steps in the ice with, on the great
heights. There must be a ladder, for there are steep bits of rock which can be surmounted with this instrument--or this utensil--but
could not be surmounted without it; such an obstruction has compelled the tourist to waste hours hunting another route, when
a ladder would have saved him all trouble. One must have from one hundred and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to
be used in lowering the party down steep declivities which are too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way. One
must have a steel hook, on another rope--a very useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low bluff which is
yet too high for the ladder, he swings this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top of the bluff, and then the
tourist climbs the rope, hand over hand--being always particular to try and forget that if the hook gives way he will never
stop falling till he arrives in some part of Switzerland where they are not expecting him.
Another important thing--there
must be a rope to tie the whole party together with, so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless chasm in a
glacier, the others may brace back on the rope and save him. One must have a silk veil, to protect his face from snow, sleet,
hail and gale, and colored goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy, snow-blindness. Finally, there must be some
porters, to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments, and also blanket bags for the party to sleep in.
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