A WALK ON THE SALEVE

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4307, 16 March 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

A WALK ON THE SALEVE

(By C. H. Bedford in “Travel.”) j “I Bate Geneva, there are no mouu- ! tains. Can’t I get on?” is ; the cry I hear continually from , hurrying, perspiring tourists, who ; come to Switzerland with the fixed idea ’ that they will meet a playful glacier in ! every hy-street, arid walk "up an average ; snowpeak in the course of a forenoon’s i stroll. “Oh, ye of little faith,” and less ■ originality, why will you rush on, and ; ever on, like sheei> through a gap, mis- | sing so much that is charming and good I to look on and that is not seen and done | by the general herd? i As a matter of fact, there is climbing / to bo had within a stone’s throw of Gen- ; eva, or, more correctly speaking, within i | haif-an-hour’s tram ride, and climbing, i 1 moreover, far more suitable to the aver- ; age summer visitor to Switzerland than | the ascent of any of the higher peaks j of the Alps. ] I had been in Geneva several times before I found out the delights of the land I am about to describe—a land of

grey cliffs and jagged points, shelving ledges and green undergrowths, patched with sun and shadow, ii. land of little tracks running among trees to bare precipices, and pieces of rock jutting out from the cliffs—a land, above all, of winds and breezes and glorious views- A place to go alone to —a place to stay and have time in—the north face of the Sa-

feve It was a blazing day in July when I first visited this land of promise, and I started, after an early lunch, on a long exploring expedition. It was the hottest part of the day. and as we walked down the “Rue de Mont Blanc,” everything looked wdiite and shimmory, and the air above the lake danced and dithered iii the brilliant sun. Straight in front of us, hardly through the thick haze of heat, we could see the cliffs of the Saleve rising sheer out of the cultivated land of the plain, and streaked with soft, undefined stripes of grey-green wood and purple shadow.

A “little half-hour” in the electric j tram brought us to Veyrier, a quaint lit- i tie village nestling in the trees at the ; very foot of the mountain. Here our walk began in real earnest. Following the path to Monnetier, the picturesque village in the cleft between the Grand and Petit Saleve, we slowly ascended by zigzags, through woods of stunted oaks, and across shingly slopes of stones, washed down from the cliffs by countless ages of rain and snow, till, after 20 minutes or thereabouts of steep walking, we came to the foot of the cliff itself, and the “Pas do I’Echelle,” steps cut in the living mountain at the steep east end of the Grand Saleve, where the rick goes sheer down for nearly 1000 ft. The Saleve is a long hill, 4537 ft. high, or 947 ft. higher than Snowdon. From Monnetier a good road runs up the east side, by which one can ride on mules to the top. The top itself is a fair-sized plateau, nearly flat, and covered with short grass, where a few cows, with huge bells round their necks, and a goodly number of goats, herded by little brown barefooted children, pick up a living through the summer. There is, of course, the usual indif-

ferent cafe, but with this difference, that here one can sit and drink such drinks as the gods provide, and enjoy one of the finest views of the Mont Blanc range possible anywhere. On the north side the Saleve might have been cut down witß a rough knife. It is a high cliff of grey limestone, with broad, steep ledges or terraces of soil and rubble covered with low trees and

bushes, running across it iii parallel lines, and out up here and there with great rifts and gorges, particularly noticeable among which is the “Grande Gorge,” about three-quarters of a mile from the east end.

It was this side that we had resolved to explore, and as we looked from the top of the “Pas do I’Echeile” at its bold outline and towering crags fading away into the soft summer haze we forgot the heat, and started upwards with renewed enersy-

Aiter leaving the rocky steps the path turns sharp to the right, and runs near- I ly straight on into Monnetier; but at | this point we resolved to leave it, and j strike straight upwards to our right, so, j climbing over the fence which divides the j path from the little mountain railway, i with all its complicated arrangements of ] cogs and rails, we started up a steep j slope of thick, low trees and bushes. It was a fairly steep climb, and the undergrowth was so thick that w© could only get on slowly, helping ourselves with our hands, and not able to see where we j were going, as the bushes were just taller than our heads, but keeping always up, and up, till at last we came to a straight piece of jagged rock, almost perpendicular, over which we scrambled, and found ourselves on a broad ledge, with the straight grey cliff on one side, and the whole valley of the Rhone, Geneva, and the lake extended at our feet. As far as we could see we were about half-way up the mountain; but as the cliff hung over the ledge in a huge mass j of stone it was impossible to see up. j Away to the left, as we sat feasting our | eyes on one of the most beautiful views i I had ever seen, we saw that the ledge I ran upwards, getting gradually wider, | and finally ending in a narrow path run- j ning along through the stunted oaks i and”wiok-elms, which grow on the Saleve wherever there is a handful of soil anywhere among the rocks. . After a few minutes’ rest we started along this path, and never had I seen a more beautiful one. For some distance | it ran along almost straight through the ; trees, patched with deep shadow and , brilliant sun, and edged with moss and ! grasses, from which peeped many a tiny j purple cyclamen, with deep, glossy, j heart-shaped leaves; ahd here and there j a tall spike of blue campanula. _ It would have been almot impossible to know one was on a cliff 3000 ft. high, if one had not been reminded by a sudden glimpse of a blue, far-away world at i one’s feet, or a great grey shoulder of J the mountain far above one. Quantities of butterflies, many of which were new to me, flew about us, birds sang, and. crickets chirruped. We might have been in an ordinary wood, though as a matter of fact, the strip we were walking along was not more than .20 yards wide, from the bottom of the cliff on our left to the top of the one bn our right. Presently the trees ended suddenly, and the path again became a ledge, in some places only a few feet wide, jagged and broken, and running along the face of the cliff at different heights, till it again came out on another wooded terrace, almost identical with the last, and so on, and i on, always steadily rising, sometimes ; over lichen-covered rocks and crags, j seamed and s cracked ■with the endless j wear of time; sometimes through trees and shady woods, now nearly flat, now so steep that we bad to use hands as well as feet to get over some stiff corner or sharp rock, and so on, getting ever more and more rocky, and the trees fewer and farther between, till at last, after about j an hour and a half’s climb, we found j ourselves on a grey, craggy point about [• 500 ft. from the top, and looking over a great rift, that seemed to run from top i to bottom of the mountain. j For some time _we sat, hardly saying j a word. From this eerie perch the view * passes description. Immediately below j and around us, the gorge, with its gras- I sy slopes and clinging trees, here and i there huge precipitous cliffs and rocks, ! ruddy with the afternoon sun, and fal- i

ling away in mighty points and ridges, till the trees among them turned from green to blue, and the shadows became ; purple and undefined through the great depths far, far down. As though seen through a faint blue smoke, the valley of the Rhone lay like a green map. with Geneva, its white houses and grey towers, shining in the sun. The Arve, immediately below us, made a silver streak all across the country, hero dull and steolly, there almost dazzling in its brightness, where the sun touched its waters, and was reflected as on a look-ing-glass, and, past all and above all, the lake itself, a great blqc jewel in a green setting, vivid in its colour- in the foreground, and gradually fading and dying away into the blue uncertain distance and melting into the sky at an invisible horizon. White, straight roads stretched in all directions from Geneva, veins from the heart of the valley, and a white puff of smoke told of a train speeding on its way north, but invisible at this height. Above us, the rocks ran in a huge amphitheatre round the top of the gorge, with a few trees arid patches of grass and mountain plants clinging here and there. Everything was still, except for the faint murmur of the wind in the tree-tops below- us, coming fresh and untainted, straight across the valley from the Jura Mountains on the other side, and the incessant cry of two hawks, which we had disturbed, and who whirled conj tinually round their nest on a rock jut--1 ting out from th« cliff opposite.

An ideal place tor climbing this gorge, i with its varied attraction of rock and i cliff and treed slopes; but though our ; time was getting short, we could nothoip ;• waiting and drinking in the view, as wo | saw- it then for the first time, beautiful ; beyond description. \Ve had still two hours to spare, so we decided, if possible, to climb down the gorge to the plain below, and so hack | to Veriez along the foot of the mountain j instead of getting up on to the flat top, i and coming down the regular road to Monnetier, wdiich had been out first plan. To begin with, the climb was nothing—steep stone slides, and tree-covered slopes, with an occasional hit of rock; but never anything really difficult or dangerous. Presently, however, wo found ourselves on the edge of a straight drop of several hundred feet, and had to make a long detour to the right, with two nasty rock corners, which would probably have been nothing to an experienced mountaineer, hut took us all our time to manage, and wo were both very glad we had good nails in our boots. After this little excitement, more loose stones, more trees, and more rocks, and then, to onr disgust, another impassable cliff, the bottom of which we could not i even see. I picked up a small rock, and j threw it over, silence followed for sonio : moments, and then, far below, the faint \ noise of the fall. Evidently this was I no c-ood, so wo turned still more to the ' right, where the trees seemed to grow i much lower down, and tried again. Wo i found that wherever there were trees |we could generally pass; hut that as ; soon as these stopped, the cliff became ! imclimbable; and eventually we wore 1 again stopped by an impassable height. ! An hour and a half of our time was 1 gene, and were not not yet half-way ( down, and as there seemed little prosi pect of our being able to get the rest i of the way that night, we decided, much against our will, that it would be beet to go back and follow our original plan. We were not in the best possible condition, and the climb back was long and tiring, with several nasty places to be negotiated, so by the time we got to our starting-place at the top of the gorge the sun was sinking, in a red glow behind the great purple masses of tho Jura Mountains, and the valley and lake were j rapidly fading out of sight in the shadow lof night. We did not wait long, but I toiled on over the last remaining rocks, j and threw ourselves, two dead dogs, on the grass at the top. A 10 minutes’ walk brought us to the j cafe, where we were met by a comely Scotch"' woman, who provided us with the needful quench to a thirst I, for one, would not have taken a sovereign for. It was nearly dark as we started homewards, but the huge snow peaks of Mont ; Blanc, Mont Maudit, and, farther to the I left, the “Aiguille Verte,” were turned sto pink and gold by the sotting sun. As ! we came down the road to Monnetier, | tho glow gradually died away, the stars I came out on© by one, and everything 1 faded gradually into the soft purple i blackness of night.

As we rounded the corner of the “Pas de I’Bchelle,” Geneva came into view, like a scene in a thousand lights twinkling and reflecting in t' lake, specks of red fire dotted all about the valley, and at our feet a tiny glowworm added its mite to the general efrect. So, working slowly home, through the warm night, with the cow bells jingling high up the hill, and the soft night breeze on our faces, we both came to the conclusion that we had never had a more enjoyable day.