A Born Mountaineer - The Ascent of Monte Rosa - "Climbs on Alpine Peaks" - Other Mountain Feats
Achille Ratti was a born mountaineer. In climbing as a youth the foothills around Desio and the surrounding countryside young Ratti had followed an inner need of his nature. This adventurous urge, common to all boys, found expression in the one sport open to him. For his first impressions were of the distant mountains. They lured and beckoned his awakening spirit. His will to accept challenges was early operative, whether they were challenges to his body or to his mind.
During the holidays at Asso young Achille had widened the range of his boyish adventures at Desio. Here he scaled the Palanzone, the Corni di Canzo and the Faggio di Barni. His inherent love of nature was reinforced by his interest in geology, the study of which he had begun at San Pietro Martire’s. When he was professor at San Carlo’s he continued his mountain climbing during the summer months and began to receive some recognition as a mountaineer to be reckoned with and to add laurels to the annals of Alpine sportsmanship.
It was while he was librarian of the Ambrosiana that he relieved the studies over the codices and the deciphering of the palimpsests by pursuing his favorite recreation when the summer months brought freedom to his restive spirit. Then he would pack up his cassock, and, clad in his Alpine togs, start off on his mountain hikes. These he prepared with the utmost care, familiarizing himself with all the previous records of other Alpinists, making exact notations of their difficulties and the most opportune sites for resting and for making observations. For Achille Ratti was always a man of precision in all that he undertook. He had the most personal and decided views about mountain climbing, firmly believing that mountains have moods that must not be defied; that they can be tamed and cajoled if properly understood; and that when the moods of the mountains and the weather are favorable, they can safely be trusted to co-operate with the climber.
His reports of his ascents of Monte Rosa and of the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, contributed to the Bolletino of the Alpine Club and to the Revista Mensile, are thrilling reading. The reader shares the zest of the adventurer and feels his honest pride of achievement in overcoming the challenging obstacles. He notes, too, how the mountaineer’s caution and prudence do not fail him in extremity. The admiration the reader experiences for the precision of procedure gives way to a desire to share, in so far as in him lies, the elation of a devout soul and his humility and gratitude in being permitted to behold those sublime glories on the heights. Achille Ratti indeed experienced the sense of nearness with the Creator of the Universe, and his soul was filled with wonder and worship and that peace that passeth understanding.
During the student years of his youth Don Ratti had not permitted his devotion to his books to extinguish his love of nature and the urge for physical prowess. A healthful harmony was thus maintained between mind and body that proved fruitful to the development of an unusually evenly-balanced temperament. This training may justly be said to exemplify that perfectly adjusted totality that was the ideal of the classic educators – Mens sana in corpore sano.
When the explorers of Mount Everest started on their quest, Pius XI (as Dr. Ratti had become) did not neglect to send them a message as evidence of his unforgetting and wistful interest in their undertaking. “May God, who dwells in the heights, bless your expedition.”
Although, with characteristic modesty, Dr. Ratti makes no reference to the incident in his record, the English mountaineer, Freshfield, states that he saved the life of a fellow climber in the ascent of the Glacier Paradiso (the highest point wholly within Italian territory). “On the glaciers our guide fell into a crevasse and would have perished had it not been for the presence of mind, skill, and strength with which Ratti held the rope and little by little succeeded in drawing him to safety.”
“There are few recreations which are more wholesome for body and mind, and more to be recommended, than a little mountain climbing,” writes Dr. Ratti succinctly in his exhilarating and graphic account of his successful feat of blazing a new trail on the eastern, or Italian side, of Monte Rosa.
Although this eastern climb had been successfully accomplished by two Englishmen, Taylor and Pendlebury, in the midsummer of 1872 under the serious hazards of continual avalanches, and three years later by a German, Herr Lendenfeld of Graz, Dr. Ratti felt with his lamented compatriot climber, Damiano Marinelli, of the Florentine section who fell a victim of an avalanche in 1881 in the couloir that now bears his name – that Monte Rosa was as much an Italian mountain as the Matterhorn is Swiss and that its conquest should be undertaken by Italian mountaineers.
Due mention is made in Dr. Ratti’s account of each attempt to tame the mountain from the eastern side – several of them successful since Marinelli’s sad end. In 1886 the Marinelli hut was opened with ceremony. This has since proved a boon for the night or nights which must be spent on the mountain, and it provided shelter for the party of four, including Dr. Ratti, who in the month of July, 1889, undertook by a new route to essay the hazardous climb.
By previous arrangement with Professor Luigi Grasselli, also of the Milan section, “dearest of friends and now my old and tried climbing companion.” Dr. Ratti wrote to Giuseppi Gadin, the Courmayer guide, asking him to be at Macugnaga by July 28th and promising to join him the following day. Ratti playfully states that he and Grasselli did not reveal their real intention to Gadin lest the entire expedition should fall through. But Gadin anticipated their motive and replied that he would be at Macugnaga on the 28th and predicted that if the weather permitted they would go up Monte Rosa.
Gadin brought with him a fellow villager, Alessio Proment, also an able and intelligent guide, who was to act as porter. None of the four men: Ratti, Grasselli? Gadin or Proment, had ever essayed the Dufour Peak (Monte Rosa) which of the Alpine peaks is second only to Mont Blanc; yet Dr. Ratti writes confidently that they knew their men and that the dangers which had been risked heretofore had been due to bad conditions of the weather and of the mountain.
They sought the reassurance that there were no hidden crevasses nor avalanches, and no fresh snow nor verglass on the rocks of the summit. For such conditions are indispensable for such an expedition, which cannot be achieved without hardship, but can be undertaken without real danger, explains Dr. Ratti simply.
The day of their arrival at Macugnaga had been preceded by a heavy squall which crossed the sky from north to south and went off on the Pizzo Bianco side. This meant, explains the author, a drop of temperature and the certainty of the removal of loose stone or serac.
When Monte Rosa revealed itself to Ratti and Grasselli on the road from Venzone to Prequartero it was a picture of entrancing splendor.
Around us was the fresh grass of the meadows and the woods, above us the canopy of heaven tinged with the most beautiful blue that was ever seen, of a truly crystalline purity and transparency; and in front the Alpine giant, inviting or defying – I hardly know which-with the immense extent of its snow and ice, with the mighty crown of its ten peaks rising to heights of 4000 to 4600 meters and more, sparkling and flaming in the rosy rays of the rising sun.
Here the observant mountaineer departs for a moment to describe the gold mines of Pestarena through which they passed. He notes the precautions the English employers provide for the safety of the miners, praising them for the devices they supplied Italian workmen who are “too often sacrificed to a murderous economy.” After leaving Pestarena, Gadin and Proment soon appeared as prearranged.
Gadin had arrived the day before and had left no stone unturned in reconnoitering the route they were to follow. He had climbed with Proment nearly up to the Pedriolo Alp, and had made the entire route to be followed from the Marinelli hut to the Dufour peak.
They reached the hut at seven in the evening after a six-hour climb from Macugnaga where they had visited the solitary little church, and the parish priest (who afterward watched their progress through a telescope until they were lost to view) had given them hospitality. Ratti says he was overcome by a terrible sleepiness just at the wrong time and that he found a few drops of ammonia “a sovereign remedy.”
The door of the hut was not securely closed and great banks of ice-encrusted snow blocked their entrance. Cold and tired, they were obliged to cut the ice away before they could gain access. Resting and refreshing themselves with hot bouillon, they went outside to forecast the weather.
Solemn silence reigned around, the stars shone brightly in the infinite azure, almost velvety sky? the huge masses of the mountains and their sublime summits towered in majesty about us, and their gigantic shadows stretched forth and intermingled on the white expanses of snow and ice.
It was eleven at night when they lay down for an all-too-brief sleep, for Gadin called them after a two-hour rest, as they had previously arranged. To obviate the danger of avalanches they had decided to clear the Marinelli couloir by night in spite of the difficulties, before the sun could loosen the serac above as it melted the snow. Although avalanches are not frequent at this hour, Dr. Ratti, aware of the rule, says he himself had heard them active at one o’clock in the morning when he and his brave young friend, Daniele Corsi, had climbed the Pedriolo Alp to the Cima di Jazzi three years previously.
After fortifying themselves once more with their broth and hot wine, they put out the fire, carefully secured the door, and fastened themselves with the rope. Gadin advanced first, tied to Dr. Ratti, then Proment, and last, Grasselli. This was their position throughout the climb. Proment and Gadin carried the lanterns while they were on the rocks. But soon they reached the rim of the famous couloir. This they crossed diagonally, leaping into the snow below after Gadin who had passed his lantern back to Ratti. But the heavy covering of snow buried them up to their waists. They were forced to find more solid footing and this took them out of their course on their way to Imsengriicken looming up before them. Their progress was very much retarded by heaps of light snow, and later by the hardness of the ice which meant that Gadin had to cut steps earlier than they had anticipated. All day, in fact, the toughened, experienced guide painfully cut the path they had to ascend, never once relinquishing the task to the others. Dr. Ratti says in retrospect: “I am still amazed at his muscles of steel and his endurance.”
The couloir was found to consist of innumerable small gullies. This made their progress slow and very difficult. Apparently this phenomenon was a peculiar experience to them, for no mention of it occurs in any accounts of previous ascents. And it was for this reason that their crossing was so much more protracted than that of other climbers. They were compelled to go up and down these gullies, losing sight of the lantern before them, while Gadin was continually warning: Prenez garcie, Messieurs, c’est un mauvais pas. Thus they continued for an interminable time, always fastening their eyes on each step and at each pause gazing eagerly up at the Imsengrucken. This went on for an hour and a half and their progress was scarcely perceptible. The rocks appeared as remote and unattainable as ever. Ratti says his thoughts frequently turned to poor Marinelli and the grim accident that caused his death nearby.
“By God’s goodwill, we at last laid our hands upon the rocks and we felt like the shipwrecked mariner of Dante. . . .”
After a rest and a drink of coffee they continued climbing as straight as they could up the rocks onto a narrow ridge between the couloir and the upper glacier. Suddenly this ridge dropped into a gap which luckily was covered with a narrow snow arete which bridged the gap between the rock and glacier. They felt it was perfectly safe to attempt this slender bridge as its width was no more than the distance between the rope held by two of the men.
Gadin asked Ratti for the rope and as they waited breathless, ready to give him assistance, he made the traverse “with a truly admirable security and sangfroid.”
There was a halt of a minute or two, a halt that Don Ratti found tedious and which caused him to ask Gadin if he might proceed. Evidently the situation was serious indeed, for Gadin replied: Monsieur, je vous en prie, ne parlez pas; cela me dérange l’esprit.
Finally they all succeeded in crossing the gap and were on their way up the glacier between the Zumstein and the Dufour peaks. They found the glacier smooth and unbroken and free from crevasses, but this safe condition made their progress slow again for they were obliged to cut steps in the hard ice all the way. Sometimes climbing straight up, but more often advancing zigzag, after several hours of silent careful climbing they halted near the Bergsschrund, “in the shadow of a huge, massive wall of pure ice, whose brow projected and extended above our heads in a regular crystal canopy; a number of icicles hung down like a fringe of enormous diamonds from the outer edge.” Here, for the first time, they looked at their watches. It was 1 P.M. They had been climbing for twelve hours with no real halt except the quarter of an hour on the Imsengriicken. “We were entitled to a little rest,” says Dr. Ratti drily.
The rocks of the Dufour looked very near. This proved to be one of those optical illusions which so frequently occur on the desert and on high mountains. Indeed, writes our mountaineer:
The same occurs in the great works of human art; the mountaineer who has seen San Pietro in Vaticano and Bernini’s colonnade, both of them so huge, yet so graceful and harmonious, so diverse in their separate parts, yet so easy in their grand simplicity to assemble under the eye in one comprehensive view – that mountaineer knows that here, too, it is ever in the imitation of Nature that our art shows closest kinship with that of God, the first Creator of all beautiful things.
But, such is the power of suggestion, they all felt confident that in a couple of hours they would reach the summit and find much-needed rest in the comfortable beds of the Riffel. With the stoutest of hearts they started off once more, and with admirable prudence they selected a route, not the shortest, but one not overhung with masses of ice and hence not subject to avalanches, as were those exposed to the rays of the sun. Every resource of hand and limb was called upon to climb even a few metres. At this point they seemed to the solitary priest of Macugnaga, gazing anxiously through his telescope, to be stationary for a long time. This route conquered, they cautiously ascended a snow slope which appeared very easy to the climbers. But as they proceeded the rocks receded; the summit arose higher and higher; the ascent became more and more difficult. The stern reality dawned upon them. They suddenly knew they had a long hard climb before them. The snow became lighter and they were no longer walking, but painfully stumbling. Afterwards Gadin admitted to Don Ratti that at this point he almost abandoned hope and seriously considered turning back to look for a place of refuge for the night. At last they reached die rocks! Keen and eager, they pushed on to the summit, for the sun was already sinking to the horizon.
We attacked the rocks by the ridge which runs down right above the Imsengriicken. It is easier to imagine than to describe the means by which we climbed the bare slabs and the masses of reddish gneiss which form the summit.
Suddenly Ratti heard a cry. He turned back and saw Grasselli’s axe “flying like an arrow from its bow” down the rocks and dashing off into the snow. There was nothing that could be done and the poor professor was obliged to use his hands on the cold rocks. His gloves were soon torn to shreds, resulting in severe frost bites which it took months to cure. All that evening and the next day he labored under this painful difficulty.
“The giant, being near defeat, began to assail us with his spite and vengeance,” writes Dr. Ratti. The wind was violent, blowing off their hats which were replaced by their woolen caps. At last, at 7:30 P.M. they were on the Ostspitze, on the summit of Monte Rosa.
I shall not expend a single word in description of that unforgettable instant, and of what we saw and felt. The memory of such moments speaks with unequalled eloquence to the elect; whereas no words could suffice or even be credible to others.
Monte Rosa is “a double tooth of rock” – the easterly is called Ostspitze, the other the Allerhochstespitze. They had made the former and reserved the latter for the morrow. The wind had become cruel. They hastened to descend to find a more tolerable position. A projecting rock thirty metres below offered a welcome protection from wind and avalanches, and they proceeded to make themselves as comfortable as they could in a very restricted space. “But,” says Dr. Ratti, “it was certainly not as good as the beds and the comforts of the Riffel – for people who had spent the day as we had.” While their shelter was perfectly safe, it was so small that no one could take a step in any direction. Sitting down, their feet hung in space; and it was necessary to constantly stamp to keep from freezing. This exercise the place afforded provided they were careful not to lose their balance.
The cold was so intense that their coffee, wine and eggs were frozen hard, making them unpalatable for either drinking or eating. Of course sleep was out of the question as their precarious foothold would have proved fatal if one of them had moved inadvertently. But, asks this deeply-stirred lover of Nature, “Who could have slept in the face of such a scene as we had before us!”
At that height – in the center of the grandest of all the grand Alpine theatres – in that pure transparent atmosphere, under that sky of deepest blue, lit by a crescent moon and sparkling with stars as far as the eye could reach – in that silence – Enough! [the writer breaks off] I will not try to describe the indescribable.
As they stood there absorbed each in his own thoughts in an awed quietude of spirit too profound to be broken by any word of theirs, the immense silence was suddenly ripped asunder by a mighty thunderclap. The rumbling terror held their awestruck attention as the avalanche rolled down the mountainside, beyond their sight. They knew that it grew in volume as it gathered momentum and mass on its downward destructive course. The reverberations shook the heavens. Again the lines of Dante, the supreme poet of the terrible aspects of nature, came to Dr. Ratti’s mind. It came down, he says, with a crashing sound full of terror, until it rested on the lower glacier.
Hanging there on their rock they beheld the sun arise . . . appearing in splendor between the summits its rays spreading like a fiery mantle over a thousand peaks, and creeping down a thousand slopes of ice and snow, lighting them up with a wondrous medley of splendid tints! It was enough to drive a painter mad . . .
At five o’clock in the morning they left their luggage, and, taking with them only their remaining axes and the rope, they again ascended the Ostspitze. With the greatest caution and after many trials for secure footing, they finally straddled the Ostspitze, and by crossing a narrow gully, reached the Swiss Monte Rosa glacier and came to the stone man of the Dufour Peak. It was 8:20 A.M. They had now reached an altitude of 4600 metres, only 170 metres less than the summit of Mont Blanc. Here they stopped long enough to swallow a little chocolate and to write a short report of the first all-Italian ascent of Monte Rosa, placing it in the bottle which they had found.
Abandoning the usual route on the Swiss side which was temptingly visible and inviting, and much easier than the one that had brought them thither, they returned to their gite and collected their belongings, hoping to recover the axe on their descent, the loss of which was becoming increasingly painful for Grasselli. Swinging their sacks onto their shoulders, they descended the same route by which they had come, deviating a little to look for the axe. Unsuccessful in their search, they climbed to the Col half-way between Dufour and the Zumstein peaks which they reached at 1 P.M.
Here they found one of the steepest snow slopes that Dr. Ratti ever saw. The wind was icy. They felt no desire to stop and enter into a long discussion as to procedure. Gadin led the way saying quietly to Dr. Ratti: Faites comme moi, Monsieur. Facing him, the guide dug his feet into the holes he cut as he proceeded backward. They all followed suit as if they were climbing down a ladder for what seemed to the author a very long time. Finally they reached the rock and soon came to a deep crevasse. Taking the whole length of the rope, Gadin first sat down on the slope above the crevasse, then slid down and finally leaped over the chasm. Each man followed his example and they all found themselves buried in the deep snow. By this manoeuvre Gadin achieved in a few minutes what it would have taken many hours to accomplish otherwise.
“When we reached the glacier we felt like people setting foot at last on a broad, comfortable highway, after wandering on paths of disaster.”
Thus they descended the rocks on the Dufour peak and crossed the pass between Dufour and the Zumstein peaks, a much shorter route than was ever taken before, but one far too difficult to be recommended. This was the first crossing of the Zumsteinjoch, the second highest pass in the Alps.
Not only was their party the first to effect the pass between Dufour and the Zumstein, but Dr. Ratti writes without reservation: “As regards our descent of the rocks of the Dufour peak, there can be no doubt that it was the first.”
In their descent of the Monte Rosa glacier on the Italian side and the Grenz glacier on the Swiss side, they became lost. “Ten glaciers have their stately rendezvous in the vast Corner basin/’ in what appears to be “a vast theatre of lifeless nature.” Gadin knew there was a path leading from the Riffelhorn and the Gornergrat to the Riffel hotel; but his eyes were by now half blinded by the snow and his memory appeared to fail him.
The sun passed the meridian, and reached the western horizon, and disappeared but no path!
“We passed from one glacier to another, we climbed up the moraine to reconnoitre the rocks of the Riffelhorn still no path!” Finally it became dark. They relit their one remaining lantern. They wandered aimlessly hither and yon in what looked like “a picture of chaos” but all their searches were fruitless. Proment made a reconnaissance but it proved of no avail. While they were in reality only a few rods from the Riffel hotel, they were obliged to pass another night in the open on the hard stones of the moraine. Although this was by no means comfortable, Dr. Ratti says wisely: “It was only right and reasonable to put a good face upon it,” for in recounting their blessings he says: “We had not met with a single real danger, not one serious incident had occurred, not a foot had slipped.”
Choosing a place protected from falling rocks from above, they went to sleep as the lantern flickered out and Dr. Ratti declares they slept peacefully “to the great benefit of our limbs which by now were entitled to feel fatigued.”
Later the author of Climbs on Alpine Peaks modifies and explains what he means by “real danger.” For dangers, as he points out, are naturally always present in such hazardous undertakings; but his confidence in the guide, in the conditions of the mountain and the weather, and the quality of the men of the party was such that, barring the unforeseen, there was reasonable certainty that they would come out of the experience unscathed. Yet truth compels him to state that “this expedition is one that does not allow of the least lack of strength or care.”
They were awakened by Gadin telling them Proment had found a path a little below them and they must join him at once. So, says the author, “we remounted the glacier and reached the Riffelberg.” It was high time, for Gadin’s eyes could have stood no more.
At the Riffel they were refreshed with new milk while surrounded by a group who had come to learn of their fate and who were filled with curiosity and wonder. Their non-appearance and delay had created alarm and so, after three-quarters of an hour of rest, they proceeded to Zermatt to soothe the anxieties of their friends who had telegraphed to Macugnaga.
Again Dr. Ratti’s praise of Gadin is unqualified, for he generously attributes their safety to his guide’s wise precautions which delayed, but did not prevent, their achievement. For no one has ever gone “to and fro, during the same expedition, on the ridge between the Ostspitze and the Allerhochstespitze, nor am I aware that the rocks of the Dufour peak have ever been descended by others on the Macugnaga side, nor that anyone before us had traversed the Col Zumstein.”
With the generosity of a truly great spirit Dr. Ratti gives unlimited credit to Gadin’s prudence and foresight for accomplishing this new feat of mountain climbing to be added to the annals of the Alpine Club.
Because Dr. Ratti felt that the opposition which the Marinelli hut had met with abroad was unjustified, he felt it his duty to defend it. It provides, he says, “a vantage near the tracks of the avalanches and enables the climber to watch the enemy at close quarters, and if he should be stirring in the night, to beat a safe and easy retreat, which would be, under those circumstances, not only wise and honorable, but, as I think, a matter of duty.” Although he does not feel that the hut assures success to the exclusion of other factors that must be taken into consideration, its advantages, though limited, are not trivial. Anyone who examines the east face of Monte Rosa from the Pedriolo Alp, or goes into the Macugnaga cemetery and sees the grim record of the Alpine dead, knows what dangers lurk there for the imprudent or unprepared, and what may at any time befall even the best prepared, when the avalanches and storms and crevasses exact their frightful toll.
Dr. Ratti, most human of priests and a genuine sportsman, ends his account of the conquest of Monte Rosa with his customary note of humility and reverence:
I am far from attaching to our expedition any importance other or greater than the relative one which it may receive from the goodwill of lovers of high mountains. I thank God that He has allowed me to admire at close quarters beauties which are certainly amongst the greatest and grandest in this visible world He has created.
It was in the year 1899, in his forty-second year, after he had achieved further fame as a mountaineer by his ascents of the Matterhorn and of Mont Blanc (the descent of the latter by the Dome Glacier being since known as the Via Ratti) that the last of Dr. Ratti’s climbing adventures was essayed. On the last day of the old year he was passing through Naples. The Neapolitan section of the Alpine Club was organizing an excursion to the crater of Vesuvius. Ratti was invited to represent the Milanese section. It was an exhilarating experience and Dr. Ratti gives a brief report of it in which he tells of the happy dinner party toasting Italian Alpinism which was anticipating the conquest of the North Pole by the Duke of the Abruzzi. Ratti had for a time considered participating in this expedition.