Prarayé
by H. G. Watts
It was already past midday by the time we crossed the river and got on to the Bertol track. The morning had been spent in Arolla packing rucksacks, buying provisions, sending off luggage to Zermatt and paying Follonier’s bill at the Hotel de la Poste. Such operations are time-consuming.
There was some doubt as to where we had to leave the track, but we cut off to the right after the first zig-zag, crossed a steep scree slope and found the line of cairns. Packs were heavy on the long trudge up the Arolla glacier. The north wind blew colder and colder on our backs and we got into mist near the top, so roped up and went on on a compass bearing.
We reached the Col de Collon (3,117 m.) at 5.30 and crossed into Italy, passing immediately under the Mitre de l’Evèque which we had climbed the previous week. We soon passed a forlorn looking hut, the Rifugio dei Principe di Piedimonti ; further down the moraine the way was hard to find, being in Italy it was not clearly marked and obviously very infrequently used. However, by following the indications of the map and keeping well to the left we avoided a steep descent down a couloir and found the path zig-zagging down a cliff.
It was getting dark when we came to the first cow chalets. Here we met a couple of peasants, they spoke only Italian so conversation was restricted, but we gathered that Praraye was about three quarters of an hour down the valley and to the left. We plodded on in gathering darkness across very rough country with no sign of a path till we heard a shout to our left and Peter Mayo appeared. He had gone ahead, reached the village, and made arrangements for a meal, and beds at the so-called ‘hotel.’ Then he had nobly come out again to guide us in.
Soon we were all seated round the table in a warm and cosy little room looking for all the world like a Lakeland farmhouse dining room. An old lady, Madame Blanc, and her daughter waited on us, bringing us soup, omelette and delicious Barbera wine. Madame explained that the hotel was really closed, it had been damaged during the war, but she and her daughter kept some of the bedrooms in order for mountaineers, feeding them in their own farmhouse. She also explained, to our dismay, that she only had a licence to sell milk, coffee and wine, but was not allowed to sell food. The frontier guards, who had nothing else to do, watched her carefully to see that she did not break the law.
We were all very tired so soon rolled into the reasonably comfortable and scrupulously clean beds in the old hotel, disturbed only by the voices of several families of Italian squatters who had taken possession of the lower floors.
The next day was clear and fine, so we loafed, explored the valley and were shown by Peter Lloyd how to make Sherpa Chupatties over a pine-wood fire with maize flour and butter. There was a little anxiety over food supplies, we had calculated on being able to stock up in Prarayé, not knowing that the ‘village’ consisted only of the old hotel, a ruined chapel and Madame Blanc’s farmhouse. So while we enjoyed the sunshine two members of the party nobly took the track three hours down the valley to find eggs and bread. They came back with a dozen eggs but the bread was so stale that teeth wouldn’t go into it.
It was a long hot climb next morning to the Col de Livoume. This is at the head of a pleasant green hanging valley with a little lake on one side, to the south west of Prarayé. The Cime de Livourne, to the right of the col, is approached by a steep ridge of rotten looking rock. Peter Lloyd, Jim Graham and Peter Mayo decided to try it while Basil Goodfellow, his son Terence, Peter Bell and I tried a peak to the left of the col called Redesan.
Redesan proved to be most excellent rock and a pleasantly exposed ridge of just the right length, we thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the climb and the half hour in the sun on the summit, from which we could just make out the other party on the top of their peak. On the way down die valley the peasants gave us milk warm from the udder in exchange for Cadbury’s chocolate, and we swam in the little lake. But the only two consecutive fine days of the worst season for 30 years were finished ; at 5.30 the clouds rolled up the valley and within half an hour it was raining.
After supper, again soup, omelette and four bottles of the excellent Barbera, Madame showed us the Visitors’ Book, which went back to 1900. It was a great delight to us to find that E. E. Roberts and J. M. Davidson had signed it on August 16th, 1908.
Prarayé is a very lovely district, isolated and accessible only by a footpath up the Valpelline or over the high passes. There are beautiful flowers, fine waterfalls and a local industry—cheese making. But the hydro-electric vandals are already busy spoiling it, a dam is being built three miles down the valley, which will be flooded to within half a mile of the hotel, and a motor road is to be made. So, although no doubt the hotel will be rebuilt and modernised and will no longer be just a doss-house for mountaineers and half full of Italian squatters and their families, the peace and solitude of the valley will be no more.
It rained all night ; had we not asked Madame to get us breakfast at 4.30 we would have been tempted to stay in bed. However after stiff porridge and tea, and jam out of spoons because of the shortage of bread, we saw a patch of blue sky above the Dent d’Herens and set forth in spotting rain at 6 o’clock.
Three hours’ march up the Valpelline brought us to the icefall on the Tsa de Tsan glacier, and another half hour across ice slope and scree to the ruins of the Rifugio Aosta, wrecked by an avalanche in 1951 and, in true Italian fashion, not yet repaired. Traces of occupation and remnants of food showed that it had evidently served as a bivouac to unfortunate people who had arrived there not knowing of its destruction and too late to go elsewhere. While we ate a second breakfast an impressive mass of ice fell down the glacier with a roar.
We left at 10 o’clock up a faint track which led us on to steep and rotten rock in a wide couloir to the right of the glacier. Half an hour of struggling up this and we emerged on to a long snow slope up which we trudged for another half hour, the snow getting deeper and the slope steeper till we reached the rocky face below the Col de la Grande Division. Here we roped and had 20 minutes’ rather unpleasant rock climb to the top of the col. The rock was crumbly and plastered with new snow, there was a thick mist and it was cold.
At 11.50 we emerged at the cairn on the col, and during the ten minutes’ halt for drinks and sugar and bringing circulation into chilled fingers the sun began to break through the mist and we could just see the Tete Blanche ahead of us. Going due north on a compass bearing up a gentle slope in a foot of new soft sticky snow we crossed back into Switzerland at 12.45 on the Col de Valpelline (3,600 m.). At that moment the mist cleared, revealing the Dent
Blanche covered with new snow and with magnificent clouds swirling round it and going on down towards Zermatt winding their way round the Weisshorn, the Rothorn and the Obergabelhorn. 111 It had taken nearly seven hours of hard work to reach the col but it proved once again that, with a proportion of experienced men in the party, it is often worth while starting out even in the most unpromising weather.