Those who during the summer of 1888 visited Switzerland had very unusual opportunities for studying both the appearance and the effect of avalanches. It is, indeed, rare to see a huge mass of winter snow lying in the Rosegthal in mid-summer, and the remains of numerous other avalanches were that year still unmelted in many high-lying Alpine valleys. I wonder if the crowds who, out of curiosity, visited the snowy débris, knew anything of the various causes which formed the avalanche and launched it down the hill-side, or if they could tell to what class of avalanche it belonged, and at what time of year it is likely to have fallen.
Avalanches vary immensely in their characteristics, and can be classed under three headings according to their peculiarities. The different kinds of avalanches are as follows:—Staublawinen, or dust avalanches; Grundlawinen, or compact avalanches; Eislawinen, or ice avalanches. Dust avalanches are the most to be feared of any, for while the others fall according to certain well-known rules and at particular times of the year, the dust avalanches are erratic in their movements, uncertain in the periods at which they come down, and most terrible in their results. Dust avalanches consist of cold, dry, powdery snow, which falling on a slope of ice or hard snow, or even on a steep slope of grass, slides off on the slightest provocation.
Often, if a bit of overhanging snow falls on the upper part of the hill-side, or if an animal disturbs the newly fallen mass, or perhaps if a gust of wind suddenly detaches it from the surface on which it rests, the whole accumulation begins to move down, gently and quietly at first, and then with ever-increasing power and a deafening roar, uprooting trees, carrying away châlets and whatever happens to be in its course, and leaping like a huge stream of spray-covered water from precipice to precipice, till it makes one final bound across the valley, the impetus of its course frequently carrying it up for some distance on the opposite slope. The wind which accompanies such an avalanche is far more powerful than a raging hurricane, and it often levels trees and buildings, forces in windows and doors, and carries heavy objects to an incredible distance. One of the most remarkable performances I know of in connection with dust avalanches took place in the Engadine, when the wind preceding a huge mass of snow, rushing down the hill-side, blew five telegraph posts flat down, although the snow itself did not come within 500 feet of them.
“Constant readers” of the St. Moritz Post will remember that in an account of the avalanches of the winter of 1887-88 which appeared in the first number of the summer issue, it was stated that, on the occasion of the fall of two great avalanches into Saas-Grund, most of the windows and doors in the village were forced in from the pressure of air. While dealing with the subject of dust avalanches and the effects of the powerful wind which accompanies them, I may mention that Tschudi relates in his “Monde des Alpes” that such avalanches will sweep châlets and trees from the ground, and carry them, whirling like straws in a storm, through the air, dropping them at a distance of 400 feet. Châlets, filled with hay, and quite uninjured, have been found, it is said, some two hundred yards and more from the termination of the débris of an avalanche, the wind preceding which had blown them right across the valley.
In the year 1689 an enormous avalanche, which in the annals of the Grisons is spoken of as the most fearful one on record in the canton, came down from the heights above the village of Saas, in the Prättigau, and demolished 150 houses. Amongst the débris, which had been swept by the avalanche to a considerable distance, a rescue party discovered a baby lying safe and sound in his cradle, while six eggs were found uninjured in a basket close at hand.
Another sort of avalanche which can be roughly classed under the above heading is formed by the sudden descent of an overhanging mass of snow. The slightest movement in the air will often suffice to break the cornice, and it straightway comes rolling down the slope. Such avalanches are not usually much to be feared, though a notable exception to this fact was furnished on the Bernhardino Pass, when the mass of falling snow, overtaking the post in its passage, carried thirteen persons and a number of sledges over the precipice into the gorge beneath.
Dust avalanches are very frequently met with in summer after fresh snow by climbers amongst the higher peaks of the Alps-. It was an avalanche of this kind which caused the Matterhorn accident of 1887, and the account which Herr A. Lorria has given of the event is so realistic, and conveys so exactly to the mind what the nature of such an avalanche is, that I extract the following from the St. Moritz Post of January 28, 1888, for the benefit of my readers:—
“Gently from above an avalanche of snow came sliding down upon us; it carried Lammer away in spite of his efforts, and it projected me with my head against a rock. Lammer was blinded by the powdery snow, and thought that his last hour was come. The thunder of the roaring avalanche was fearful; we were dashed over rocks laid bare in the avalanche track, and leaped over two immense bergschrunds. At every change in the slope we flew into the air, and then were plunged again into the snow, and often dashed against one another. For a long time it seemed to Lammer as if all were over, countless thoughts were thronging through his brain, until at last the avalanche had expended its force, and we were left lying on the Tiefenmatten glacier. The height of our fall was estimated by the engineer Imfeldt at from 550 to 800 feet.”
In winter, when a fall of snow takes place on steep mountain-sides, scores of such avalanches may be seen dropping like shining threads down the cliffs. The face of the Eiger seen from Grindelwald in early spring is often fringed with tiny cascades of snow, while the rocks of the Wetterhorn[4] send down avalanches almost incessantly on the first sunny March morning after a snowfall.
The huge avalanches which, after a severe winter, summer visitors to Switzerland see lying in high Alpine valleys, covered with dust and stones, and with great trunks and branches of trees frozen into them, belong to the class of avalanches known as Grundlawinen, or compact avalanches. They usually fall from year to year in the same track, and come down, according to the warmth or severity of the season, during February and March. One year I saw a very large one fall in the Züge, near Davos-Platz, as late as the 3rd May.
In order for a really large compact avalanche to form, something more than the steep slope which is the birthplace of dust avalanches is necessary. The most dangerous formation of a hill-side, as regards compact avalanches, is the following. First, there must be, high up on the mountain, a collecting basin or valley, sloping somewhat downwards, in which a large amount of snow can accumulate. Secondly, leading from this basin must be a treeless slope, not too steep, on which snow will lie unless urged down by a considerable disturbance from above. In some seasons, when but little snow falls, no avalanche will take place under the conditions described. In others, when storm after storm has piled tons of snow in the upland valley, the warm, dry föhn wind will cause the mass to become detached from the earth on which it rests, and suddenly the entire winter’s store will come dashing down towards the valley, forming an avalanche such as visitors to the Engadine in the summer of 1888 saw in the Rosegthal and Beversthal.
These compact avalanches are composed, by the time they reach the end of their course, of stones, earth, roots and branches of trees, all frozen together by the heavy, wet snow in which they are encased. A story is told of a man who was overtaken on the Splügen by such an avalanche, and though he escaped from death, part of his coat was so firmly frozen into the icy mass, that he could not get it away. It is very remarkable that a person buried at a great depth in an avalanche of this kind can distinctly hear every word that those who are trying to find him may utter, though it is impossible for them to hear his cries.
The snow of an avalanche has the same power as the ice of a glacier in the preservation of whatever animal matter may be embedded in it. On one occasion the bodies of a chamois and her young one were found in an avalanche in Tyrol in a fit condition for food, on its melting two years after it came down, its huge size having prevented its disappearance the first summer.
These huge Grundlawinen come down, as I have already said, in the same track season after season; it is therefore reasonable to suppose that the inhabitants of districts peculiarly exposed to such avalanches would try and control their snowy invaders by every means in their power; and, in truth, this is just what is done to a certain extent, though a neglect of the most obvious precautions prevailed in the country till quite within recent years. Even now one is often astonished at the amount of unnecessary damage which the Swiss will calmly allow an avalanche year after year to do, till they suddenly awake to the fact that a wall or two across the couloir (or avalanche track) may make the whole difference between their being able or not to cultivate a certain sunny meadow in the valley, which has hitherto been plentifully strewn with stones and other débris regularly every spring.
It is a well-known fact that by far the best preservative against avalanches is a thickly wooded slope, and the Swiss authorities, fully recognising this, have of late years caused a very large amount of replanting to be carried out, and are most stringent in their rules regulating the cutting of trees. By great trouble and care being taken concerning the forests, Switzerland could be freed to a large extent from the destruction wrought by avalanches.
In many places travellers will notice avalanche-breakers, in the form of triangular stone walls, which have been erected to protect whole villages, or individual houses or churches. There is an avalanche-breaker of this sort at Frauenkirch, near Davos-Platz, where the north wall of the church is constructed so that, should an avalanche sweep down upon it, the surface exposed to its full fury being pointed in shape, tends to divide and turn aside the snow directly the point comes in contact with the avalanche. Similar breakers may be seen attached to several houses in the same and other neighbourhoods. Fences or stone walls across steep slopes, or stakes driven into the ground at intervals, are also a very efficient hindrance to the descent of avalanches. Visitors at St. Moritz have doubtless noticed the contrivances of this sort on the slope descending from the Alp Laret to the Cresta Fussweg; they are well seen by any one standing on the high-road near the Bär Inn (famed for the quaint caricature fresco portraits on its exterior of the late Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone).
It is marvellous to notice how weak an obstacle will hold back the largest avalanche before the snow is set in motion, and yet once the great mass is launched down on its destructive career, it sweeps all before it.
The balled structure of a compact avalanche, which those who visit it within a few weeks of its fall will have remarked, is caused by the damp snow having rolled over and over till the circular form of its particles resulted. I remember an enormous avalanche of this kind which fell near Bouveret (Vaud) at the end of March 1886. It came from the Gramont, and rushing some 4000 feet down the mountain, dashed across the railway and the road, and ended its course in the lake. It fortunately came down at night—which seems odd, till one remembers that the slope from which it descended faced north—so no accident resulted, and the following afternoon all Montreux flocked across the lake, to wonder at the high walls of the cutting which had been made to allow the trains to pass, and to pelt each other with the snowy balls which had rolled hither and thither amongst the violets and primroses of spring.
Grundlawinen often attain a mass of 100,000 cubic metres (Heim, “Gletscherkunde”). The great “Raschitsch” avalanche near Zernez (Lower Engadine), which fell on April 23, 1876, across the high-road into the river, was 168 metres wide, 12 metres thick, and 300 metres long, 600,000 cubic metres in bulk, and the tunnel cut through to allow the traffic to be carried on was 75 metres long. This avalanche was much exceeded in dimensions by the one which fell in February 1888 near Glarus-Davos, of which the snow-tunnel was upwards of three hundred feet in length, and over twelve feet high. This avalanche is noted throughout Switzerland, and is known as the “Schwabentobellawine.” It only falls in very snowy seasons, but when it does come down, it is of enormous size.
In the year 1888 it carried away a road-mender, whose body was only discovered some three months later; it was found on the right bank of the Landwasser, having evidently been blown across the river by the wind preceding the avalanche.
Avalanches have sometimes caused disastrous floods by falling into the beds of rivers and damming up the water. On January 29, 1827, Süs suffered from a similar occurrence, the Inn being completely blocked up for several hours during the night, and the water flooding the village in consequence. It would be wearying to give more than these few examples of the effects of Grundlawinen, we will therefore pass on to the subject of ice-avalanches. These must be a tolerably familiar sight to most persons who have travelled in Switzerland, judging by the crowds who, day after day throughout the summer, sit outside the little inns of the Wengern Alp or Kleine Scheideck, dividing their attention between their luncheons and the thundering falls of ice from the glaciers of the Jungfrau.
Ice-avalanches are quite different to both the other kinds, inasmuch as they always fall from glaciers.
As my readers doubtless know, a glacier moves downwards day by day, sometimes an inch or two, sometimes as much as two feet. Well, many glaciers, after quitting the snow-beds by which they are fed, suddenly find themselves at the top of a precipice. Under these circumstances, as they are unable to stand still, there is but one thing for them to do, viz., go over; and as ice, though plastic, is by no means so to the extent that treacle—to which glacier ice has so often been likened—is, it is obvious that a slice will break off the advancing tongue of the glacier, and come thundering down the rocks, to form material for another glacier below, or, if the quantity is insufficient, to melt gradually away. Now, this form of an ice-avalanche is known in endless varieties to the mountain-climber, but perhaps the most frequent thing of the kind which he meets with is the fall of séracs (or icy pinnacles) during his passage through an ice-fall.
Those who have visited the upper part of the Morteratsch glacier will recollect ice-falls such as I have referred to; the one, that of the Pers glacier, the other, the so-called Labyrinth, coming down from Piz Bernina; and fine ice-avalanches are often seen falling from the ice-cap of Piz Morteratsch. The séracs passed through in making the passage of the Col du Géant from Chamonix or Courmayeur are also apt to tumble about at inconvenient times, and many other glaciers are conspicuous for these particular features.
Perhaps the best position in Switzerland from which to view ice-avalanches is the Wengern Alp, from whence the glaciers which cling to the Jungfrau can daily be seen dropping tons of ice down the scarred slopes, a white cloud hanging for several minutes over the spot where a great piece of ice has been ground to powder by its fall.
Even the proverbially safe Mont Blanc contrives occasionally to allow one or two of the ice-pillars which fringe the Dôme du Gôuter to overbalance and dash right across the Petit Plateau below, over the very track by which parties make the ascent. It is odd that this bombardment has never hitherto caused an accident on Mont Blanc, though when one bears in mind the hundreds of stones which are annually kicked down the Matterhorn regardless of the number of people on whose heads they may descend, and that there, too, no fatal accident has resulted from that cause, one feels sure that a special providence watches over the inexperienced class of intrépides who throng Mont Blanc and rush in scores up the Cervin.[5]
Ice-avalanches have occasionally done immense damage when large falls have taken place into inhabited valleys, as, for instance, when part of the Bies glacier came down, and the wind preceding it overthrew Randa. This circumstance is so well known, being so often referred to in guide-books, that I will not enter into details here. Full particulars can be found in Dr. Forbes’s work, “A Physician’s Holiday.”