Alpine Club

“ An Alpine Club is one that has for its field of operations a tract of country fulfilling the above conditions. And herein lies the difference between an Alpine and a Mountain club: while any mountain tract will supply the requirements of the latter, those of the former can only be satisfied by a region where there is a permanent snow line, above which snow and ice may be found throughout the year. ”

“ By virtue of its constitution, the Alpine Club is a national trust for the defence of our mountain solitudes against the intrusion of steam and electricity and all the vandalisms of this luxurious, utilitarian age; for the keeping free from the grind of commerce, the wooded passes and valleys and alplands of the wilderness. ”

“ Ye, who love not o'er the Gemmi on a kicking mule to ride;
You miserable creatures, who will never know true bliss,
You're not the men for Chamonix; avoid, avoid La Suisse!
THE ALPINE CLUB MAN. "Up the high Alps, perspiring madman, steam,
To please the school-boys, and become a theme."
Cf. Juv. Sat. x, v. 106.
We who know not the charms of a glass below Zero,
Come list to the lay of an Alpine Club hero;
For no mortal below, contradict it who can,
Lives a life half so blest as the Alpine Club man. ”

“ To say that any single one of these men was less careful and competent, or had less knowledge of all that pertains to the climber's craft, than we who yet survive, is obviously and patently absurd. Our best efforts must sometimes be seconded by the great goddess of Luck; to her should the Alpine Club offer its vows and thanksgivings. Indeed, if we consider for a moment the essence of the sport of mountaineering, it is obvious that it consists, and consists exclusively in pitting the climber's skill against the difficulties opposed by the mountain. ”

“ It is true that for many years previously members of the Alpine Club had been in the habit of spending some time every year in the district, but they had gone there more for the ice and the snow and for the enjoyment of the mountain scenery than for indulgence in extraordinary performances in the ghylls and on the rock faces. May we not call theirs the Golden Age? ”

“ Is it possible that Alpine Club men can climb as they do without breaking out into art, if they can use their fingers at all? Why, our club rooms are at this moment crowded and overcrowded with examples of the art of members. ”

“ Though the palm for Alp-climbing is not held by the Swiss themselves—one unkind critic has said that "in this as in all other things the Swiss show their invincible mediocrity"—and the Swiss Alpine Club was not the pioneer among climbing clubs, its work has been of very great value in safeguarding the Alps against desecration and Alpine climbers against accident. ”

“ They have as high a mountaineering qualification as any existing Alpine clubs. They attach importance to the capacity to lead a guideless party rather than to the bare fact that a man has climbed so many peaks. Each candidate is taken on a series of climbs by members of the club, who report to the committee on his general knowledge of snow and rock conditions, and his fitness, whether in respect of courage or endurance for arduous work. ”

“ It is a sermon worth the hearing, and compresses into a few terse sentences the objects, aims and possibilities of an Alpine Club, as a mold in which to form a nation's character and comprise within it all the high moral, scientific, artistic and literary attributes that go to make the life of a nation or of a man beautiful. ”

“ Foreign Alpine Clubs have for the most part held aloof. The Swiss have found enough to do elsewhere, and have not as yet chosen Val Bregaglia—politically a Swiss valley—as the 'gebiet' of one of the summer 'excursions' in which they contrive to combine so happily the features of a prolonged picnic and a mountain-battue. That practical, and in some respects energetic, body, the Italian Alpine Club, is only beginning to turn its attention to a district containing one of the few wholly Italian peaks of over 12,000 feet. ”

“ Societies for pistol-shooting and gymnastics, costumed and equipped, all having band and banners; armouries, boxing-gloves, single-sticks, list-shoes; foot races and flat-hand fights between persons in the best society; these things have taken the place of the former cap-hunts and the platonic cynegetical discussions in the shop of the gunsmith Costecalde.
And finally the club, the old club itself, abjuring bouillotte and bézique, is now transformed into a “Club Alpin” under the patronage of the famous Alpine Club of London, which has borne even to India the fame of its climbers. ”

“ At all events there does remain this notable distinction—that, while the most eloquent writings of the most eloquent Alpine Club-man are as a rule deliberately and ostentatiously objective, the subjective literature of mountains—the literature in which we see the writer yielding to the influence of scenery, instead of lecturing about its beauties, existed long before that famous dinner party at the house of William Mathews, senior, at which the Alpine Club was founded. ”

“ The Club is growing fast, but not too fast. The only royal road to membership is by the "Associate" way of twenty-five dollars a year. It is a worthy way and an honorable for men whose circumstances will not permit them to qualify, by way of crag and precipice and glacier; and it is money invested in nationhood, yielding a far-off interest, not of tears but of noble, patriotic temper. For the Alpine Club of Canada will, more than any national sport in the Dominion, weld together the provinces in the bonds of brotherhood ”

“ Abroad, mountaineering has developed very 195 rapidly since the ’sixties. We have seen that English climbers, first in the field, secured a large share of unconquered peaks; but once continental climbers had taken up the new sport, our earlier start was seriously challenged. The Swiss, Austrian, and German have one great advantage. They are much nearer the Alps; and mountaineering in these countries is, as a result, a thoroughly democratic sport. The foreign Alpine Clubs number thousands of members. The German-Austrian Alpine Club has alone nearly ninety thousand members. ”

“ He was president of the club from 1878 to 1880, and took a prominent part in its affairs till the last year of his life: 'no one has on the whole done so much [for mountaineering and for the Alpine Club] because no one has continued his Alpine activity over so long a period.' He was also one of the founders (1898) and the first president of the Climbers' Club, an association formed with the object of encouraging mountaineering in England and Ireland. Besides numerous papers in the 'Alpine Journal' (vols, i.-xxii.) ”

“ What does the Alpine Club of Canada propose to do? Does it take itself too seriously? There may be learned cosmopolitan alpinists whose many years' experience of hardy holidays among the glaciers and upper snows of the mountain ranges of the world, would incline them to look with patronage, if not incipient scorn, upon an organized effort to popularize the exclusive sport. They might say that to popularize was to vulgarize. Not so. Mountaineering is too toilsome, too hard a sport, and demands qualities of mind and character quite other than vulgar. ”

“ Passing on to science: "What a chance the Alpine Club men have always had in the direction of science. They have had to examine the effects of rain and rivers, frost and fire, ice and snow. All the elements that have produced the present configuration of the earth's surface are familiar to them, and in fact to all of us who have climbed the Alps with our eyes open—a normal condition of the Club's eyes, whether its members are scientific or not scientific men. By no means all of our best climbers have cared much for the science of the Alps. ”

“ The Alpine Club has given an immense impetus to mountaineering among Canadians, and it bids fair to become a national sport. This it ought to be, considering that Canada has the two factors necessary — and a third which is more than a tertium quid, even ample railway transit over the long distance from east to west. The two factors are mountains and men. Her alpine territory covers an enormous area; her people are made of the flesh-stuff and soul- stuff that go to the making of mountaineers. ”

“ Why should not mountaineering become one of our national sports?
Not until November, 1905, did any positive movement towards organization begin. The response from all parts of the Dominion was a surprise, and ought to have been a rebuke to us who had loudly lamented Canadian indifference to a sport for which Nature had provided so vast a playground on our own immediate territory. We had awakened out of sleep, and would redeem the past by a vigorous mountaineering organization. But whatever the Alpine Club of Canada achieves of climbing, of discovery, of purely scientific work ”

“ VAL D'ESINO—THE GRIGNA—INTROBBIO—FORCELLA DI CEDRINO—VAL TORTA—AN OLD TRAVELLER—VAL BREMBANA—BRANZI—PASSO DI GORNIGO—GROMO—VAL SERIANA—BONDIONE—MONTE GLENO—VAL BELVISO.
The sharpest form of pain has in all ages been imagined under the figure of a man with the object of his most eager desire ever dangling before his eyes but out of reach. If—may the omen be void!—any of the Alpine Club should in another world ever realise the punishment of Tantalus or Dives, they will probably be placed opposite a peak cut off from them by some impassable gulf. ”

“ But the idea must not be gathered from the descriptions of the dangers of mountaineering that it is a sport suitable only for the exceptionally sturdy. Any one with fair physique who has not reached old age can join an Alpine Club and enjoy Alpine climbing, so long as actually dangerous and freak ascents are avoided. Mr. Symonds, who went to the Alps apparently a hopeless invalid, was able to enjoy Alpine climbing, and has given in prose and verse some fine pen-pictures of its joys ”

“ But more than that, anything that the skilled Alpine climber does must be virile and strenuous. Therefore you have thoughtful, imaginative, strenuous, virile literature as the natural literature which comes from the Alpine Club. (Hear, hear) . It has been—I was going to say my duty—my pleasure to look once more at some of the literature which Alpine Club men have put forth to the world, apart from descriptions of mountaineering efforts. ”

“ I have told this somewhat unsavory story in all its unsavoriness as a warning to others, the moral being that a party including ladies should never plan for a night in an Alpine Club hut unless they are assured of having it to themselves. Mountaineering is not all poetry, and there might be terrors encountered beside which crevasses and avalanches become attractive. ”

“ We do not ask or expect many artists to devote themselves to the new country which has been discovered by the Alpine Club above the belt of black and white barrenness which was once thought the typical scenery of the Upper Alps. ”

“ It is said sometimes by unreflecting persons that such institutions as the Alpine Club are responsible for the misfortunes and calamities that have arisen from time to time, and may still arise. But there has been a good example set if recruits would only turn to it; for the mountaineers in the old style, speaking of a generation that climbs but little in these days, did what it is the fashion now to call their “work” thoroughly—too thoroughly and completely, perhaps, to please altogether their successors. ”

“ The club has expanded, developed and increased its membership. But, notwithstanding all this, the essential old bond of union—the love of the mountains—remains as it always has been, and the club has been constantly true to its traditions on the lines which you, the founders, laid down, and which you, the early members, so successfully developed. (Hear, hear) . It has been said often that it is with a feeling of regret that one finds one's mountaineering is coming to an end. ”

“ A reliable guide-book, too which will include instruction on the details of mountaineering, will be published for the
benefit of any who come to climb in the Canadian Alps. There is nothing quixotic about the Alpine Club of Canada: it is a sane, sober institution, organized by sane, sober men. As indicated, its mission is manifold. The education of Canadians to an appreciation of their alpine heritage, is of itself a raison d'etre. The Canadian Rocky Mountain system, with its unnumbered and unknown natural sanctuaries for generations yet unborn, is a national asset. ”

“ There is no qualification, social or mountaineering. These great national clubs have a small subscription; and with the large funds at their disposal they are able to build club-huts in the mountains, and excellent meeting places in the great towns, where members can find an Alpine library, maps, and other sources of information. They secure many useful concessions, such as reduced fares for their members on Alpine railways. ”

“ Systematic mountaineering, as a sport, is usually dated from Sir Alfred Wills’s ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854. The first ascent of Monte Rosa was made in 1855. The Alpine Club was founded in London in 1857, and soon imitated in most European countries. Edward Whymper’s ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 marks the close of the main period of Alpine conquest, during which the craft of climbing was invented and perfected, the body of professional guides formed and their traditions fixed. ”

“ On the whole it would seem to be good policy on the part of the Swiss Alpine Club to seek to extend its membership and to encourage in other countries similar "democratic" climbing organisations, with the idea of spreading as widely as possible the sport of mountain-climbing in the Alps, not in 145its highest phase of very difficult and dangerous ascents, but in a moderate form available to people of moderate strength and moderate means. ”