BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Brenva Face of Mont Blanc
Brenva. By T. Graham Brown. (Dent 25s.)
ON the south-east side of Mont Blanc, there is a deep bay enclosed by the Peteret Ridge on the south, running up to Mont Blanc de Cour- mayeur, and the rib forming the old Brenva route to Mont Blanc on the east. Until 1927, the steep cliffs at the head of this bay had not been climbed, though the old Brenva route had been climbed by A. W. Moore in 1865. In A. E. W. Mason's novel, Running Water, there is a vivid account of an ascent of this route ; and Professor Graham Brown is not the first reader to have been thrilled and stimulated by Mason's vivid narrative. In 1926, Professor Graham Brown saw the Brenva Face-for the first time : why had it never been climbed ? he asked himself. True, the ascent was not one to be tackled light-heartedly : much of the face is ice, and avalanches from the ice-wall at the very top sweep down to the Brenva glacier. But the face is broken up by a number of vertical-rock-ribs, which, from the climber's point of view, resolve themselves into three possible routes. On the left, nearest to the Peteret Ridge, there is the Pear Buttress leading up to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur. In the centre there is another rock-rib leading up to thp Col Major, between the two summits. And on the right, nearest to the old Brenva route, there is yet another promising rock-rib, starting from a prominent rock called the Red Sentinel and leading direct to Mont Blanc itself.
These three possibilities did not reveal themselves to Professor Graham Brown all at once. When he went up to the Torino hut with Frank Smythe at the end of August 1927, it was with the intention of climbing the central rib (the Route Major). Smythe did not like the look of the final ice-cliffs at that season, and proposed a route nearer to the old Brenva route. A happy compromise led the party to attempt to force its way up the comparatively insignificant rock rib which became known as the Route dc la Sentinelle. After bivouacking at the foot of the Sentinelle (12,450 feet), the two set out at 5.30 a.m., Smythe leading. By 7.10 a.m. they had reached a point where they were safe from falling ice. Graham Brown now led up difficult rocks to 14,000 feet. Then came spells of step-cuffing: "The average angle of the slope was high and the backward views gave a grand feeling- of exposure." Shortly after 2.30 p.m., the party reached the summit of Mont Blanc and the new route was established.
The same party climbed the Route Major in 1928. It is a succession of rock pitches linked by snow-aretes, sometimes so narrow that the climber has to go astride. At one point, near the top, Smythe (wearing crampons) mounted on Graham Brown's back to climb a steep crack : the rock above was smooth with ice • and Smythe, after shouting a Warning, slipped back and landed half astride his companion. One crampon carried away Graham Brown's' side pocket, including pipe and tobacco; the other penetrated a leather jacket and did some damage. In the end, the passage was circum- vented; and after more trouble with overhanging rocks, the party arrived at sunset on the top of the highest, most inconvenient and least useful pass in the Alps.
It was too late to descend on the• far side ; and the party went over the summit of Mont Blanc to the Valor hut. It was not until five years later that Graham Brown was able to complete the pass, this time with Alexander Graven and Alfred Aufdenblatten as his companions. Meanwhile, Graham Brown had become keenly interested in the buttress to the left (the Pear Buttress). Other climbers were thinking about it, too. There was the Italian, Zanetti, who asked bluntly, "Have you tried the route on the left ? " No time was to be lost if Graham Brown was to have the pleasure of completing the triptych of routes on the Brenva Face ;' and on 3rd August, 1933, he set out from the Torino with Graven and Aufdenblatten at 12.20 a.m. At 1.20 p.m. they stood on the summit of Mont Blanc de Courmayeur.
The difficulties of that climb, and of other incidental climbs are admirably described by the author ; and the 72 photographs Which illustrate the book are as good as any mountaineering photographs that have ever been published. To the recurrent question, "Why do it at all ?" Professor Graham Brown gives no conclusive answer ; but he does something better : he conveys the fascination of a project as it grows in the mind, the excitement of translating it into action, and the quiet satisfaction that comes as one walks down the valley and looks back at the scene of efforts that were not directed against one's fellow men, but only against one's own limitations—efforts that were not an attack on the mountain, but a kind of tribute to it.
MICHAEL ROBERTS.
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