Alpine notes and the climbing foot — Edition Insights

A Surgeon’s Eye on the Trail

Wherry’s medical training surfaces in unexpected places. When he notes that “the remarkable adaptation of the tiny infant’s foot for climbing and all-four progression is very well shown” in the photographs, he is not merely praising the photographer but grounding his observations in functional anatomy. Later, crossing the St. Theodule Pass, he remarks on the “hot and fatiguing walk through fresh snow” and the need for “dark glasses” against the glare—small details that a less observant writer might omit. His description of the St. Bernard dogs includes a skeptical aside: “Alas! to give up the cherished delusion that the dogs search for lost travellers in the snow!” He then quotes an older account of dogs guiding caravans, showing his willingness to correct popular myths with on-site experience.

The Mechanics of Movement

The “climbing foot” chapter, though not fully excerpted here, is clearly central to Wherry’s project. He includes photographs by Captain Abney of Swiss guides and by Mr. Stearn of an infant’s foot held in position “with my finger.” The preface frames these as practical aids: “similar notes, put into my hands when I began climbing, would have been read by me with avidity.” Wherry’s approach is that of a teacher who believes in precise, visual instruction. Even in the travel letters, he notes the condition of his guides—one “seemed rather out of condition” and brought along a nephew—and the logistics of roping “as in duty bound over the névé.” These asides accumulate into a quiet argument that successful mountaineering depends on physical readiness and disciplined technique, not just enthusiasm.

Negotiating Guides and Customs

Wherry’s interactions with local guides and officials reveal the social texture of Alpine travel in the 1890s. At St. Rémy, the muleteer “was anxious to know whether I had tobacco or cigars, and carefully hid his own modest packet before he led us to the Custom House.” The Italian guide on the St. Theodule route “begged to be allowed to bring along a boy, his nephew, who was to be no further expense to monsieur”—a negotiation that ends with the boy coming along anyway, “obtain[ing] a vast amount of pleasure at a small cost to his employer.” These vignettes are lightly comic but also practical: they show how a climber must manage relationships, currency, and local customs. Wherry presents himself as a seasoned traveler who knows when to yield and when to insist, a skill as important as footwork on ice.

Landmarks and Literary Echoes

Wherry weaves literary references into his route descriptions. He quotes Meredith’s The Amazing Marriage at length in the preface, where a character says, “Up in those mountains one walks with the divinities.” The quote serves as an epigraph for the whole collection, linking physical exertion to spiritual elevation. On the Great St. Bernard, he invokes Napoleon’s crossing and notes that “we lunch in the same room at Bourg St. Pierre.” These allusions are not mere decoration; they place Wherry’s own journey within a tradition of Alpine writing that includes military history and fiction. The reader is invited to see the landscape as layered with earlier stories, from Hannibal to the present day. Wherry’s own prose, however, remains grounded in the immediate: the “blue Italian sky” after the pass, the “cretins” in the Aosta valley, the “very fine view of the Matterhorn” at the end of a climb.

Wherry’s notes reward a reader who can tolerate digression and appreciate a writer more interested in accuracy than in literary polish. The letters were never meant to be a continuous narrative; they are dispatches from a working mountaineer who also happened to be a surgeon. Approach them as a series of field observations, and you will find unexpected insights into both the Alps and the craft of climbing at the turn of the century.

Wherry’s long train journeys home, scribbling about the Matterhorn’s spurs, reminded me of my own return from Norway, when the fjords dissolved into rain. His surgeon’s eye, our fisherman’s patience—both are ways of keeping a place close. I still feel that stillness when I recall Forest Scenes in Norway and Sweden: Being Extracts from the Journal of a Fisherman — A Reader’s Guide; it held the same quiet ache of remembering.