Scrambles amongst the Alps in the Years 1860-69

Edward Whymper

Published by Century Publishing , softcover, illustrated

INTRODUCTION
EDWARD WHYMPER'S `Scrambles'—as Scrambles Amongst The Alps In The Years 1860-1869 is generally known—has remained the world's leading story of mountain adventure since it was published in 1871. The tale itself, ending with the conquest of a unique peak whose first ascent was followed by tragedy, has an epic quality which is spiked through with the personal rivalry between Whymper and the Italian guide Jean-Antoine Carrel. Competition between the Swiss Vispthal to the north and the Italian Valtournanche to the south adds a touch of chauvinism. Whymper's studied prose, the work of a craftsman intent on dragging the last drop of emotion from his narrative, gives the book a special character; so do Whymper's dramatic—if sometimes over-dramatic illustrations.

Above all, there have remained in an undiminished glare the questions raised by the deaths of four able young men in a new sport which appeared to offer few practical compensations for the Bangers involved. 'Is it duty?' asked The Times in a leading article, 'Is it commonsense? Is it allowable? Is it not wrong?'

When the Savoyard guide Michel Croz and the Rev. Charles Hudson, the Right Hon. Lord Francis Douglas and the 19-year-old Douglas Hadow fell to their deaths after the first ascent of the Matterhorn on the afternoon of July 14, 1865, mountaineering was still a fledgling sport. Since earliest times men had indeed cross the Alps by the easier passes, and had even ventured on to the more accessible summits. But these excursions were made largely in the hope of finding less arduous trade routes across the mountains which separated the north European plains from Italy. In the 18th century, scientists such as the Genevese Horace Bénédict de Saussure, who encouraged men to make the first ascent of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps—by today's surveys 4,807 m. (15,772 ft.)—began to investigate physiological conditions above the snowline as well as the movement of glaciers of which virtually nothing was then known. Some of these early explorers relished the adventure of their journeys. All began to build up a body of experience which enabled them to move in the mountains with the maximum speed and the minimum danger. Only slowly however did the pleasure of climbing a mountain for the sake of the ascent itself begin to displace the demands of trade and science. There had, it is true, been Conrad Gesner, the Zurich naturalist who resolved in the sixteenth century 'to climb mountains, or at all event to climb one mountain every year partly for the sake of studying botany, and partly for the delight of the mind and the proper exercise of the body'. More typical, however, was Master John de Bremble, the medieval monk who, when crossing the Great Saint Bernard, prayed: 'Lord, restore me to my brethren, that I may tell them that they come not to this place of torment'.