The Weisshorn, 1861–2011

Vol. 40, No.3, July 2011
Printer friendly version of Newsletter

by Michael S. Reidy, Montana State University

"Individuality of observation can alone lead to a truthful representation of nature." —Alexander von Humboldt

The Weisshorn at sunrise, from an ascent of the Dom.

The Weisshorn at sunrise, from an ascent of the Dom. Photo by Dennis Duenas.

At 12:53 p.m. last August 19, I finished filming what turned out to be my last video of our ill-fated attempt to summit the Weisshorn, a majestic pyramidal peak in the Pennine Alps, not far from Zermatt in the Swiss canton of Valais. It was the third time we had stopped to document "the breakfast nook"—the small ledge where the first successful climbing party had eaten breakfast—only to realize, once we resumed climbing, that the true "nook" had to be higher up.

I was making short films to include as part of a video-tutorial for graduate-student transcribers involved in the John Tyndall Correspondence Project. Tyndall was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution from 1853 to 1887, and he published significant works in electro-magnetism, thermodynamics, sound, glaciers, and atmospheric phenomena, including the first experimental verification of the natural greenhouse effect. He was also a pioneering mountaineer, spending his summers clambering in the Alps from the mid-1850s until his death in 1893. As many of Tyndall's letters include references to the glaciers and peaks of the Pennine chain, my climbing partner Dennis Duenas and I had spent three weeks following Tyndall's footsteps, from his summer home in the Bel Alp to his ascents of the Breithorn and Dom. We also desperately wanted to document Tyndall's crowning achievement in mountaineering, the first successful summit of the Weisshorn. As ominous clouds rolled in below us, however, we reluctantly gave up the attempt, fifty-three minutes past our "absolute latest" turnaround time, and not even half way up the mountain.

Tyndall as a young man.

Tyndall as a young man.

I gratified myself that Tyndall had failed on his first attempt as well. So had Leslie Stephen, C. E. Mathews, and a host of other legendary Swiss guides and British amateurs. At 14,780 ft (4,506 m), it is a big mountain, with crevassed glaciers at the beginning, rock and ice bands in the middle, and a massive fifty-degree snow slope guarding its upper reaches.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the summit was deemed unreachable, and Tyndall's successful climb on his second attempt—August 19, 1861—was by far the most difficult route to have been accomplished to that date. He began with his guide J. J. Bennen and porter Ulrich Wenger in the small town of Ronda, bivouacked mid-way up (slightly below the present day Weisshornhütte), woke at 2:15 the next morning, and with a flask full of wine and a bottle of champagne, reached the summit in twelve hours. "The work was heavy from the first," Tyndall boasted, "the bending, twisting, reaching, and drawing up calling upon all the muscles of the frame."

The second successful summit, in August 1862, followed an even more exhausting route. Leslie Stephen—author of The Playground of Europe (1871), "An Agnostic's Apology" (1893), and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography—began several miles lower than Tyndall, made the ascent in under ten hours, and trekked back to Zermatt, adding twenty miles to his day.

The first and second successful summits of the Weisshorn were made by two of the top climbers in the Victorian era. They were also two of the most preeminent intellectuals of their day—outspoken agnostics and defenders of evolutionary naturalism in the post-Darwinian era. The height of their climbing came in the early 1860s, the same years in which they formulated their naturalism. Mountaineering enabled both to experience nature individually, to see its laws in action, in situ. They experienced deep time in the formation of mountains and the carving out of valleys, shallow time in the movement of glaciers, and in a single day could travel through all of Humboldt's vertical zones. Tyndall consistently performed experiments and compared observations made at different heights, deliberately formulating his research programs on his ability to climb vertically up the sides of mountains.

Top: from across the valley through the window of the Domhutte. Bottom: from the summit of the Breithorn.

Views of the Weisshorn.
Top: from across the valley through the window of the Domhutte. Bottom: from the summit of the Breithorn.

Yet, for Tyndall, and certainly for Stephen, there was always something more to nature than nature's laws. A mystery lay behind it that the mountaineer was in a propitious position to uncover. That mystery, moreover, was deeply personal. "Beside such might," Tyndall wrote in his journal after a day of climbing, "man feels his physical helplessness, and obtains the conception of a power superior to his own. His emotions are stirred. His fear, his terror, his admiration[;] he ends his survey breathing into the rushing cataract a living soul." In his own journals, Stephen echoed a similar spirit. Climbing, he believed, produced a "marvelously stimulating effect upon the imagination."

This is one reason why the Alps were so appealing to Tyndall, Stephen, and other evolutionary naturalists: it forced them to grapple with the mystery beyond life. It stirred their emotions, their fear, terror, and admiration; it focused impressions of the sublime. Both found in the Alps a panacea for their loss of faith. On the side of the Weisshorn, they experienced otherworldliness in a perfectly secular space, where their imaginations were allowed to ramble just as much as their bodies were allowed to scramble. In the mountains, in the midst of all of God's wonders, it was safe to be an agnostic.

There is, of course, selfishness imbedded in the sport of mountaineering. Both Tyndall and Stephen left behind wives and dear friends. I think this is one reason why Tyndall focused so heavily on science, turning the mountain into what he called "Nature's laboratory." He required a justification to climb. Even today, most mountaineers need similar additional inducement, whether environmental, spiritual, or cross-cultural. My historical interests in Tyndall and my role in the John Tyndall Correspondence Project offered me the justification to follow Tyndall to the Swiss Alps.

When writing my book on tides, it weighed heavily on me that I was writing so much about rivers, estuaries, and coasts that I had not personally experienced. I had not always achieved what Wallace Stegner called "a sense of place," a relationship with the contours of the land, its people and culture. The individuality of experience following Tyndall has helped me, in the most simple of senses, to engage more fully Tyndall's correspondence. As one of the members of the Tyndall Correspondence Project, I plan to edit the volume that covers the early 1860s, and my experience has enabled me to put known places to the many named spaces found in his letters. My growing familiarity with the physical geography of the region, moreover, has helped me train graduate-student transcribers, has enhanced my scholarship, and in a more complex way, has help me understand what Tyndall was actually searching for on the sides of mountains. It was certainly something more than science.

August 19 will mark the 150th anniversary of the mountain's first ascent. I will be there, participating in the local celebrations at both the Weisshornhütte and in the city of Ronda. Hopefully, by 12:53 p.m., Dennis and I will be nearing the snow-capped summit, and the furthest thought from my mind will be John Tyndall.

For more information on the John Tyndall Correspondence Project, including how you can become involved, please see the official web site (www.yorku.ca/tyndall) or email Jamie Elwick (jelwick@yorku.ca), Bernie Lightman (lightman@yorku.ca), or Michael Reidy (mreidy@montana.edu).

History of Science Society