Travel -
A Valley in, the Alps
[We publish on this page articles and notes which may help our readers in their They are written by correspondents who have visited the places described. We shall of the Travel articles published in our columns. Inquiries should be addressed to 99 Gower Street, W.C.1.—Ed. SPECTATOR.] plans for travel at home and abroad. be glad to answer questions arising out the Travel Manager, The SPECTATOR, Tin.: cattle with their picturesque armaillis or herds have all come down from the high summer pastures amid shouting and clanging of their many toned bells : they will graze now on the rich meadowlands about the village till the snow comes when they are led to warm stalls beneath the great hay barns far winter. Trees are almost bare, but the larch groves, valiant like spear heads, orange, golden, fox-coloured and amber, are still in flame on the slopes and here and there other patches of vivid autumn linger on the tawny hillsides. Snow has fallen down to timber line and these patches of the coloured dying season, beneath fields of glittering snow, and all against a solid sky of blue, make an effect that only the
all-the-year-round residents of Switzerland are privileged to enjoy. For, in fact, Switzerland has more strange and lovely contrasts of landscape in early spring and late autumn, when feNi visitors are about, than at any other time.
In another three weeks, perhaps before, all earth colours will be gone. We shall be knee deep in snow, in a strange and
delightful winter world, till March comes with daffodil, crocuA and gentian. Naturally we think of winter, but without apprehension, indeed, with pleasurable anticipation. We know from experience that it will not be a winter of our dis-
content, not a winter damp and grey and desolate, full of harsh east winds and fog, as were the winters of our earliest memories, but rather a time of radiant days and happy cloud- less skies, of still air, so keen and alive with frost, yet warmed and baked with sun, when, quite apart from the interest and excitement of winter sports, to be alive at all will be a joy to the senses.
The sun, we know, will be a spike of gold in the flawless turquoise of the sky and we shall remember how St. Francis praised God for " lo frate sole " seven hundred years ago. Nowhere is our brother the Sun so essential and so appre- ciated as here in these Alpine valleys in winter. Life, indeed, and the low temperatures would be insupportable without him yet I have never seen or heard a ski-runner stop to chant a canticle to his praise. A reticent, inarticulate race, which keeps its "laudes " unsung and hidden in the heart.
The coming of winter in our Alpine valley is full of wonder and delight. Just before the first serious fall of snow the valley will be filled with a curious opaque blue ; the pine woods on the mountain sides turn to the darkest indigo. An indescribable stillness settles down on the valley ; snow flakes will fall silently and sparely. Then as the big snow clouds gather and fill the valley snow falls thickly and heavily, perhaps for days. But one morning we shall wake to find the clouds have dispersed and formed into moulded" domes, or clung along the mountain sides. First one dazzling white peak, then another, will emerge through the clouds till soon the whole valley will lie white and glittering in the sunshine beneath the bluest of skies.
With the first fall of snow will come the first wave of winter sportsmen and women, swelling to a flood of visitors at Christmas, when the annual exodus to the Alps takes place.
How firmly winter sports (and especially ski-running) have become a permanent part of European winter recreation may be judged from a perusal of the 374 interesting pages of this year's British Ski Book, the official publication of the British Ski Club. Not only has ski-running developed enormously during these last years, but of the literature of ski-running there would seem to be no end. Ski-ing technique, the merits or demerits of " Telemark," " Lifted Stem," etc., are written about and debated with a keennessandevenastringency, which the schoolmen of the Middle Ages devoted to metaphysics. The uninitiated should be informed that there are two main ski-running schools or theories ; the one, the Nor- wegian, stresses the importance of straight running and jumping, for the very good reason that slopes in Norway arc for the most part not very steep, so that checking and turns are not so necessary as in Central Europe, and the other, the Central European school, whose habitat being the Alps with steep slopes, stresses, or is accused of stressing, turns as against straight running. No Ski Inquisition has yet been formed to curb the unorthodox, but I should not be surprised to read that this year our Viking ski-runners from Scandinavia had descended upon some Swiss heretical schools of ski- running and had there seized and burned the chief heresiarch at a stake made of the offending skis.
The ski has conquered everywhere and everyone. In the early days of winter sport, which the writer remembers well, we were confined to rink and track. The ski has altered all that. It has liberated us. It has opened up the whole winter world of the high Alps. A ski-er is lord of all he surveys : he can go where he will, if he be proficient. Further, the ski has brought about the development of winter moun- taineering. The state of mountains in winter above the normal snow line is much the same as in summer ; the weather is often just as good and reliable. The ski, by getting the climber over the lower slopes, often waist deep in snow, has enabled him to ascend the majority of the high peaks in winter, not, of course, on ski but with the help of ski. The ski has brought the sportsman and woman into close and intimate association with the high Alps in winter. No wonder this fine sport, calling forth skill and courage, has captured modern youth, and not only youth, for you may enjoy your skis long after that delectable age has passed away with les neiga
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