The Magic Mountains of Europe

The Owl
Vol. 2, Issue 34
August 28, 2008
Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Inquiring Traveler,

I could romanticize the Alps of old that sold themselves dear to conquerors, missionaries, gentlemen-travelers and daredevils of all kinds. And I could moan about  today’s mass tourism. But I won’t. After all, the more accessible the Alps, the faster you get to the marvels of Italy.

Regards,

Editor, The Owl

Grand Tourists were less impressed by the amazing beauty of the Alps than by their forbidding peaks and passes. The formidable Matterhorn (to the left) was not conquered until 1865. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Great Cathedral of the Earth (part 2)

by Paul Lewis

While many grew to admire the beauty of the Alps from the comparative safety of a sedan chair or a cathedral roof, it was not until the 1850's that a serious interest developed in scaling their highest peaks.

A cluster of edelweiss, a typical and increasingly rare flower that grows at high altitude in the Alps. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

This was an interest pioneered by British visitors above all, drawing its strength from a love of adventure tempered with scientific interest in such Alpine phenomena as the formation and movement of glaciers, indigenous plants and animals, and curious facts—like water boiling at a lower temperature in higher altitudes).

In 1857 came the creation of the British Alpine Club, and, in 1859, the publication of its first guide to the mountains, titled Peaks, Passes and Glaciers. German and Austrian climbing clubs quickly followed, and in 1874 came the French Alpine Club, which, to the astonishment of the mountaineering world, admitted women.

In 1865 the British Alpinist Edward Whymper conquered the forbidding Matterhorn for the first time, although he lost four of his companions during the descent. And a few weeks later the formidable American lady Alpinist, Meta Brevoort, repeated this exploit.

When the last unclimbed Alpine peak, the Meije in the Dauphiné area of France, was finally scaled in 1877, the age of daredevil climbing drew to a close, to be slowly replaced by a new popular interest in the health and recreational benefits of visiting Europe’s snowy uplands.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the Mountain Cure

In 1864, Thomas Cook, the British father of modern mass tourism and an anti-alcohol fanatic, organized his first popular tour to the Alps. And around this time a growing number of health and sporting resorts sprang up along the Engadine valley and at Davos and St. Moritz. Here visitors skated, tobogganed or practiced the relatively new sport of skiing which was still being introduced from Scandanavia.

Others came to seek relief for tuberculosis and other chest complaints in the cold, clean mountain air after a German doctor discovered an absence of lung disease among Davos natives, and the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, popularized his discovery. There may be a connection between TB and literature.

Melting Rocks

Meanwhile, the Alps were being tamed and rendered irrelevant in another way as the railway companies drove tunnels through them, connecting up southern Europe directly with the north. This was difficult and dangerous work, however. Tunneling released the colossal pressure the mountains exerted on their underlying bedrock causing it sometimes to dissolve into liquid or explode in a shower of lethal shards.

Over 300 miners died in the construction of the St. Gotthard Tunnel, opened in 1882. It was followed by the Simplon Tunnel in 1905 and many more including the Mont Blanc and Grand St. Bernard tunnels completed after the Second World War.

The Alps had become a colossal chunk of Gruyere cheese. Travelers could simply speed through them in a comfortable train or hop over them in an aeroplane. They remained a playground for winter skiers and summer climbers. But they were no longer a barrier to anyone.