Mountain air

“ You know how the pebbles look beneath a clear running stream; and the things which we see through air in this state all seem to be similarly moving or quivering. It is easy then to imagine how masses of heated air would rise up from the side of a mountain-range which faces the sun,—that is, the southern side,—while on the other, or northern side they cast a soft shadow for leagues over the plains at their feet. ”

“ These hills divide two widely different climates,—forming an enormous barrier or boundary line between the two; the climates of the south and north here meet each other, without any intervening gradation of temperature, and destroy the equilibrium of the air, so that clouds are suddenly formed which rush together, and are again divided, or cling like a light veil around the lofty summit of the mountain,—blasts of wind rush in contrary directions among the high cliffs,—sudden gushes of rain pour down,—and the weather clears up and darkens with surprising rapidity. ”

“ And along with all these, think of the terrible precipices down which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers, and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of ice. All this outside the mountain! ”

“ The air as it rises in order to cross a mountain is cooled, largely on account of relief of pressure, and parts with a portion, possibly a large portion, of its moisture, which condenses on the mountain commonly as snow; on passing the mountain the air descends and is warmed by compression, and having less moisture than before, becomes a drying wind, which produces the sudden and surprising changes on the plains and valleys to the leeward. ”

“ Mountains also assist in the formation of clouds. When a wind laden with moisture strikes against a mountain, it is tilted and flows up its side. The air expands as it rises, the vapour is chilled and becomes visible in the form of clouds, and if sufficiently chilled, it comes down to the earth in the form of rain, hail, or snow. ”

“ For I believe that climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. ”

“ The Alpine climber on the top of the mountain has thus thrown off the best portion of his blankets, and receives a chill; while the gain of heat arising from his closer approach to the sun is imperceptible. Perhaps you will now be able to understand why eternal snow rests on the summits of the great mountains. They are chilled because they have not so many air blankets as the snug valleys beneath. ”

“ I make no doubt but that ridges of high mountains do often interrupt, stop, reverberate, or turn the winds that blow against them, according to the different degrees of strength of the winds, and angles of incidence. I suppose, too, that the cold upper parts of mountains may condense the warmer air that comes near them, and so by making it specifically heavier, cause it to descend on one or both sides of the ridge into the warmer valleys, which will seem a wind blowing from the mountain. ”

“ We had left all our blankets in the wagon, and the air was fast becoming cold, which is always the case in the neighbourhood of snowy mountains. This is easily explained. The atmosphere getting cool upon the peak, where it envelopes the snow, of course becomes heavier, and keeps constantly descending around the base of the mountain, and pushing up and out that air which is warmer and lighter. In fact, there was a sensible breeze blowing down the sides of the mountain—caused by these natural laws—and it had already made us chilly, after the burning heat through which we had been travelling. ”

“ After nightfall the air on mountain peaks and on hills and ridges soon becomes cooler than the air at the same elevation out over the open valley, due to contact with the elevated earth, which radiates heat and cools faster than the air. ”

“ Here is his recipe for mountain-climbing, written after he had made an excursion on foot to Valais in the Autumn of 1759:—
“I gradually realized that the purity of the air was the real cause of the return of that interior peace which I had lost so long. In fact on high mountains, where the air is pure and subtle, we feel a greater facility in breathing, greater physical lightness, greater mental serenity. Our meditations take on a peculiar character of grandeur and sublimity, proportioned to the objects surrounding us. ”

“ Sometimes in mountain regions you will see clouds gathering around the mountain peak, and staying there in spite of a strong wind blowing. You wonder how that is. It is cold up there, and the warm air, vapor-laden, climbing up the side of the mountain, reaching that cool region, makes clouds as fast as the winds can blow them away. ”

“ Riding carelessly along, and breathing the cool and bracing mountain air which came down from the slopes, I felt as only a man can feel who is roaming over the prairies of the far West, well armed and mounted on a fleet and gallant steed. ”

“ For reasons that will be further noticed, the fall in temperature in ascending mountain ranges is largely due to currents of air carried up from the lower region. In mountain countries an air-current, encountering a range transverse to its own direction, is mechanically forced to rise along the slopes, and thus raises large masses of air to a higher level ”

“ As we ascend a lofty mountain the air becomes colder and colder, and at a certain elevation we enter the regions of eternal snow. The vegetation that clothes the slopes undergoes a corresponding change, and at the margin of the snow we find plants resembling those of the arctic circle. ”

“ Relatively cold and heavy air drains down from the upper slopes by night, constituting the mountain breeze. By day the air in the valley is warmed and expanded, and as it is confined laterally by the sides of the valley it flows up the slopes, constituting the valley breeze. ”

“ Is there more of nature in such paltriness, think you, than in the valley and the mountain which bend to each other like the trough of the sea; with the flank of the one swept in one surge into the height of heaven, until the pine forests lie on its immensity like the shadows of narrow clouds, and the hollow of the other laid league by league into the blue of the air, until its white villages flash in the distance only like the fall of a sunbeam? ”

“ There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom,—paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness,—look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines ”

“ No matter how violent or how capricious the wind may be, the instant it approaches the spot where the chilly influence of the snow extends, the moisture it carries becomes visible, and then and there the cloud forms on the instant, apparently maintaining its form against the wind, though the careful and keen eye can see all its parts in the most rapid motion across the mountain. ”

“ The position of mountains to one another, and their proximity or great distance from the sea, will give them a colder or warmer atmosphere, independent of latitude. Moreover, the same mountain may have a warmer climate on one side than the other; and of course the snow-line will be higher on that side which is the warmer, in consequence of the greater melting of the snow. ”

“ The clouds have lifted in the northwest, and I see the mountains in sunshine (all the more attractive from the cold I feel here) , with a tinge of purple on them,—a cold, but memorable and glorious outline. This is an advantage of mountains in the horizon; they show you fair weather from the midst of foul. Many a man, when I tell him that I have been upon a mountain, asks if I took a glass with me. ”

“ The sky to-day is mostly clear, with just clouds enough hovering about the mountains to show them to best advantage as they stretch onward in sustained grandeur like two separate and distinct ranges, each mountain with its glaciers and clouds and fine sculpture glowing bright in smooth, graded light. ”

“ I have thus far referred mainly to the drama of the sunshine; but more varied, more fascinating, more adventurous is the drama of the clouds, those mist mountains that come and go, forming ranges loftier than the hills, whiter than the snows, but endowed with the two-fold gifts of inaccessibility and evanescence. Them we can neither climb nor map. Clouds we have with us everywhere, but it is among mountains that we learn to know them, how they form and fade, mount aloft or drift asunder. The mountain clouds have a plainlier realised individuality than those that pass over cities and plains. ”

“ So the amazed spectators see wonderful changes in the appearance of the country; the mountain becomes a plain under the action of a sudden thaw; when the rain has filtered into the fissures of the great blocks and freezes in a single night, it breaks everything by its irresistible expansion, which is more powerful in forming ice than in forming vapor: the phenomenon takes place with terrible swiftness. ”

“ He who loves the mountain, will love it in the tempest as well as in the sunshine. To be enveloped in driving mist or cloud that obscures every thing from view—to be made aware of the neighbouring precipice only by the sound of the torrent that rushes unseen beneath you—how low down you can only guess—this, too, has its excitement. Besides, while you are in this total blank, the wind will suddenly drive the whole mass of cloud and thick vapour from the scene around you, and leave the most glorious spectacle for some moments exposed to view. ”

“ The stupendous heights are at times absolutely shrouded in smoke; the climb of twenty-seven hundred feet in thirty miles around the mountain shelves and through vast snow sheds (most expensive in their construction) , to emerge again into the light for a glance down the gorges into the glaciers, over and above to the lofty summits, is all the imagination can picture, and the traveler feels like a "mighty atom" in the midst thereof. ”

“ Here is a description of the Musur-dabaghan mountains:
'The top of the mountain rises to the sky. Since the beginning of the world the snow has been accumulating, and is now transformed into vast masses of ice, which never melt, either in spring or summer. Hard and brilliant sheets of snow are spread out till they are lost in the infinite, and mingle with the clouds. ”

“ Mountaineers take no chances on the ledges after dark. It is dangerous enough work to skirt narrow precipices in daylight; and sunset is often followed by a thick mist rolling across the heights in billows of fog. These are the clouds that one sees across the peaks at nightfall like banners. How does it feel benighted among those clouds?
A few years ago I was saving a long detour round the base of a mountain by riding along the saddle of rock between two peaks. ”

“ Now, we all know that snow and ice take a long time to melt; and thus Nature regulates and like a prudent housewife economises her precious stores. The rivers which she feeds continually, from silent snowfields and glaciers among her mountain-peaks, are the very arteries and veins of the earth; and as the blood in our 45 bodies is forced to circulate by pressure from the heart, so the rivers are compelled to flow by pressure from the great heart of the hills,—slow, steady, continuous pressure, not the quick pulses which the human heart sends through the body. ”

“ When seen from high altitudes, a mountain appears merely as a part of a vast panorama or a single element in a wild, limitless scene of desolate peaks, which raise their bare, bleak summits among the sea of mountains far up into the cold regions of the atmosphere, where they become white with eternal snow, and bound by rigid glaciers. ”

“ At length the mountain tops appear once more, white in a light covering of new snow, and, as the great masses of cumulus rise and disappear the sky appears of that deep blue-black color peculiar to mountain altitudes, while the sun shines out with dazzling brilliancy through the clear atmosphere. ”

“ Now, this serves very well to explain how mountains catch water-vapour, and condense it. They are, as it were, a cold looking-glass; and the hot breath of the plains, as it strikes their sides, 38 receiving a sudden chill, throws down part of the vapour it contains. On the higher parts of mountain-ranges the cold is so great that the water assumes the form of snow.
CLOUDS ON BEN NEVIS
Mountains, as every one knows, are colder than the plains below. ”

“ On all sides mountains rise to an altitude of from 11,000 to 15,000 feet, their skirts shaggy with pitch-pine forests, and scarred by deep canyons, wooded and boulder strewn, opening upon the mountain pasture previously mentioned. ”

“ At times, upon the crest of the Continental Divide, and at an altitude of from ten to twelve thousand feet, I have covered from three to five miles in an hour. And again, while breaking a snow trail, creeping up treacherous glacier ice, or edging along the ledges, I have often reversed the digits, taking several hours to gain a single mile.
Then, too, no trip is taken twice under the same conditions. The mountains are never the same: the weather, the wind, snow or rain conditions may alter decidedly the footing upon their slopes. ”

“ Because of the glaciers on these hills and the warmth of the summer in the valleys, this atmosphere seems like that of an eternal spring. Just to breathe it is a delight. Here the air strokes you into quietness till you forget the tearing hurry of life ”