Walking in the Alps. Kev Reynolds

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      The snow-laden Hohe Wand (3289m) above the Pfitscherjoch (Chapter 15)

      INTRODUCTION

      Extending in a huge arc from the Mediterranean coast near Nice to the low wooded hills on the outskirts of Vienna, the Alps are the world’s best known mountains. Over the past two centuries every peak, ridge and valley has been mapped and explored, every glacier measured, every natural beauty described, advertised and, in some way or other, exploited. Library shelves groan beneath the weight of books that record the range’s history, detail its geology, or recount tales of adventure on rockface and icefall illustrated with stunning coloured photographs, while guidebooks by the hundred, in who knows how many languages, provide all the detail required to move with a degree of confidence and safety from valley bed to snow-capped summit.

      Over 50 years ago J. Hubert Walker published his classic Walking in the Alps. This finely crafted book was directed at the British hill walker and mountaineer ‘of modest attainment’ who had not yet grown familiar with the greater heights of the Alps. It was a selective book, of course, both in the Alpine groups described and in the routes suggested, but it succeeded in everything the author set out to achieve. With the most elegant prose Walker unfolded the Alpine landscape so that it became as clear as if one were studying a series of photographs, and with instinctive skill led his reader into some of the loveliest of all valleys, onto hillsides that would display the finest views, and over passes that gave the greatest contrasts. Without preaching, and without stressing his own accomplishments, Walker gently advised where the best walks and climbs were to be had, and then made suggestions for filling a holiday of a week or more in a round that would provide a sense of achievement and enough memories to last a lifetime.

      For over three decades Walker’s book has been my Alpine bible. It has been, and still is, a constant source of inspiration and pleasure; there’s not a dull paragraph in it. But of course, in half a century the Alps have changed – by this I mean some of the mountains as well as valleys and villages. Glaciers are receding fast; some have disappeared completely. Some of the glens much loved by Walker have been flooded for hydro-electricity schemes. Once remote hillsides are now adorned with chairlift and cable-car, and bulldozed pistes scar mountain flanks where before only the chamois strayed. And with an explosion of interest in all forms of mountain activity, footpaths have multiplied and at times the busiest all-but resemble shopping malls in the run-up to Christmas. That is not to suggest the Alps are finished, played out, or ‘destroyed’ in their wild and pristine sense, as claimed by some activists at the sharp end of the climbing world, but there are certainly more honeypot regions now than Walker himself would have known. Penned a century and more ago, the description, ‘the Playground of Europe’ was never more apt than it is today. There are still wonderlands left, though, thank heaven; still a few permanently inhabited villages where no roads lead and where the only means of approach is by walking for a couple of hours or more. There are walkers’ passes and lonely alps virtually unvisited from one year-end to the next – yes, even in Switzerland – and trails to follow in mid-summer where you can find as much solitude as you wish. And the glory of the high Alps remains as fresh as it always has been. If you know where to look.

      Walker’s book continues to feed dreams. However, in order to make those dreams come true it needs updating to fit the Alps as they are in reality today. For several years I’d been assembling notes in order to do just that, when I received a phone call one day from Walt Unsworth (now retired) at Cicerone. ‘Do you know Hubert Walker’s Walking in the Alps?’ he asked. ‘We’d like to publish something along those lines, bringing Walker up-to-date but with wider coverage, and hope you’ll take it on.’ This, then, is the result. It’s a volume that, in trying to cover virtually the whole complex Alpine chain, attempts the impossible. From the start I acknowledge its failings for I know that before the ink is dry on the page, the occasional passage contained in this book will be obsolete, thanks to the evolution of Alpine development. I offer my apologies and beg the reader’s understanding.

      Like its namesake this book sets out to describe some of the loveliest Alpine regions from the point of view of the walker who is, after all, in the most favoured position to witness and enjoy mountain scenery in all its abundant variety. The motorist is divorced from all that is best in the Alps by being restricted to the highway. The non-active tourist is confined to mechanised means of uplift, the climber’s attention is for the most part taken up with the intricacies of his chosen route, while the downhill skier needs full concentration in the rush to get to the foot of the slope without accident. Only the mountain walker, the individual with good general fitness, a modicum of scrambling experience and an eye for the hills, can move far enough and at the right pace to enjoy the full range of wonders that the Alps so generously offer. This is the person for whom this book is written. It attempts to reveal the multitude of opportunities available. Not with precise route descriptions, a number of which may be found within available guidebooks mentioned in each chapter’s summary, but by giving a nudge in the right direction. Happily, detailed guidebooks do not exist for each and every individual district described, and I have specifically avoided giving too much information about some of my favourite areas about which little has been published, for it is good to retain that element of surprise that may only be experienced when you make a ‘discovery’ of your own. Hints will be found within these pages as to where some of these special places lie, but you’ll have to work them out for yourself, while other routes and multi-day treks are treated to rather more detail.

      In the early days СКАЧАТЬ