On The Hills And Elsewhere
The Editor has received surprisingly little news as to the doings of the Club during 1929, evidently owing to the bad weather both in the Alps and Britain during the main holiday season. In the Alps the weather is said to have been the worst on record, worse even than 1912, and people returned home in despair, but Die Alpen states that September was fine.
The week following the unfortunate Gaping Ghyll Meet was, in the Editor’s experience, one of the most trying he has experienced in this country. It was impossible to get dry. Ireland and Scotland had a bad time after the weather broke, but it is stated that the weather during August improved and was dry in England. In the Highlands, however, the deer-stalking season is reported as the worst ever, not only from incessant rain, but from lack of light. This pronouncement came as no surprise to one who recalled a week of it.
The doings of the Corsican and Norwegian parties are dealt with in two articles of this number.
F. S. Smythe, at New Year, ascended the Mönch, Gespensterhorn, and North Eiger Joch (first in winter). An attempt on the Eiger failed. In the summer he did little and returned home.
W.M. Roberts climbed the Tschingelhorn, Gspaltenhorn, Wilde Frau, and then became involved in continuous bad weather.
Botterill was as usual yachting off the Highlands, and for six weeks had no day without rain. In the Coolins he and Cooper did the Dubhs, Alaisdair, and down the Sgumain ridge, and had one good day on Alival in Rum. “ If you cannot set off for the Highlands before June 30th, don’t go at all. As for N. of lat. 58°, June 30th is too early, and July 1st too late.”
Bentley Beetham is known from mention in foreign periodicals to have made another expedition to Morocco at Easter, 1929, and he has been out there again this year. No doubt we shall presently have from his pen a book on the Atlas.
A Cook’s Tour.—F.H. Slingsby, giving the mountains a miss, went with his sister to Palestine and Cyprus. They stayed a week in Jerusalem, an absorbingly interesting medley of old and new, East and West, and visited the Dead Sea and Hebron. The country round consists of reddish limestone moors, fertile in the valleys. The Dead Sea water shows from the Mount of Olives as a light green, with the mountains of Ammon and Moab a palish blue in the distance beyond.
Motoring to Nazareth they visited the Crusaders’ castle of Athlit, one of the last to be lost to the Saracens, and a cave which is in process of excavation by Miss Kitson Clark’s party. Thence to steamy Tiberias, and so into Syria past the long range of Hermon, over Anti-Libanus to the ruined temples of Baalbek, over Libanus to Beirut, and across to Cyprus.
Landing at Famagusta, they moved on to Kyrenia on the north coast (good bathing), and returned through Nicosia, the capital, by car over Troodos, where there is a hotel half an hour’s walk from the highest point of the island, 6,000 ft., to Limasol. From Troodos at sunrise can be seen almost the whole of Cyprus. Cyprus is a pleasant island, but not another Corsica. The two ranges run east and west; the northern range is the lower but more attractive, its limestone crags being occasionally crowned by castles.
As first the Lusignans, put in by Richard I., and then the Venetians held this island, there are many ancient buildings of Northern French and other European types, but the presentday Christians in Cyprus being mostly of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Cathedrals and Abbeys of Lusignan times are now mosques, barns, or ruins.
Kangchenjunga.—The mountaineering event of 1930 has been the attack on what is now considered to be the second highest peak of the Himalaya, 28,222 ft. A determined attempt was made on Kangchenjunga in 1929 by a Bavarian party which spent weeks cutting, and even tunnelling, on an ice ridge, but could not attain 25,000 feet.
In February, 1930, a second party, recruited from Britain, Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, sailed for India, led by Dr. Gunter Dyrhenfurth, a German geologist, of the University of Zurich. It included F. S. Smythe, who acted as correspondent for the Times, and M. Kurz of the Swiss Survey, and was joined in India by G. Wood-Johnson, and two transport officers, Hannah and Tobin, all three of whom appear to have accomplished wonders in handling the natives and keeping the expedition supplied in Nepal.
The 1930 expedition came within a little of being swept away altogether by an ice avalanche of prodigious volume, which wiped out the step-cutting work of days and days, and took toll of one life. The difficulties of Kangchenjunga proved so great, that in Smythe’s opinion it is for another generation to solve them.
A second route proved equally hopeless, but Smythe and several others succeeded in the ascent of Jonsong Peak, so far the highest mountain top which has been attained. The expedition thus returned home with very definite results, among which is the benevolent attitude of the Maharajah of Nepal, at the moment, towards high mountaineering.
We must express our pleasure at the issue, fortunate on the whole, of an attack which has been compared to war, and our thankfulness that the losses were not greater. It is probable that the aim of following Himalayan expeditions will be to pick out those giants which give most possibility of ascent. Neither K2 nor Kangchenjunga are among these.
We expect a lecture from Smythe during the winter, and no doubt an English translation of the book of the expedition, to which he will certainly contribute, will be forthcoming. He is organising an expedition to try Kamet next summer after the monsoon.
The Alps in 1930.—The weather in the greater part of the season was described as very uncertain, but the last week of August and the first of September were exceptionally brilliant and remarkably calm.
We are glad to hear that W. A. Wright’s health is sufficiently restored for him to go out again. He did the Cima del Largo, Passo Casnile, and Piz Sprazzo Caldera.
W. M. Roberts and the Editor did the Mettelhorn and Strahlhorn. In a week at Binn W. V. Brown and the Editor did the Grampielhorn, Cherbadung, Ofenhorn, and almost but not quite, Hüllehorn. Only the Mauvaise Poupée was added, but Brown and Humphreys also did the Hohstock.