Climbing Tourists? Blame the bean counters

1 September 2004. A version of this article appeared in the Sunday Independent, Sports Active supplement, on 22 August 2004.

Summit of the Jägihorn (3,206m). This is reachable using a Via Ferrata, or cable/ladder route, which makes it accessible for everyone, or a great warm-up for a week of real climbing.

100 years ago, one guidebook brought mountaineering to the masses. A century on, reaching your peak is just a walk in the park. Just don't nod off in the hayloft.

In 1902, a young Englishman called Leonard Holmes set out for a climbing trip to the Alps. Unlike the great British climbers of the period, such as Edward Whymper, the first man to reach the summit of the Matterhorn in 1865, Holmes was not looking for glory. Instead, he was just the latest of an emerging breed that had proliferated in the mountains over the previous twenty years: the climbing tourist. Throughout the next century, armies of outdoor enthusiasts followed in Holmes' footsteps with the same intention: spending a few pleasant weeks in Switzerland, bagging some of the spectacular, if more straightforward, peaks of the Swiss Alps along the way.

Just over 100 years later, I am setting out with a group of British climbers with the same goal - a week's climbing and an attempt on a couple of the 4000m peaks around the Swiss town of Saas Fee. In my luggage I am carrying Holmes' guidebook, the 19th edition of Baedeker's Guide to Switzerland (or, to give it its full title, Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy and Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, by Karl Baedeker). It's an acquisition I made at an antique fair 10 years ago, but will it be of any use today? How much has the experience of a climbing tour in the Alps changed in the intervening century?

Karl Baedeker published his first guide book in 1835. In his research he was extraordinarily fastidious, to the point of mania. A traveller once recounted how, on a climb up the spire of Milan Cathedral, Baedeker repeatedly dipped his hand first into his jacket pocket, then into his trouser pocket. When challenged, the eccentric author explained that he was recording every 20 steps by moving a bean from one pocket to the other. On the way down, he would double-check his total by moving the beans, one by one, back to his jacket pocket.

Thanks to this meticulous attention to detail, Baedeker's guidebooks soon established themselves as indispensable companions for independent travellers. Although by 1902 the work had been taken over by Karl's son Fritz, the attention to detail of the original compiler was still evident. Mountain guides are listed by name, hotel descriptions include prices for breakfast and different grades of room, and treks are described in detail, complete with time taken to each waypoint. Anyone used to the "if-this-is-August-this-must-be-Koh-Samui" style of modern guidebooks would be left gasping at the sheer volume of information.

I imagined Holmes studying his Baedeker before embarking on the train to the coast from the old London Chatham and Dover Railway station. "The mountaineer should have a well-tried Alpenstock of seasoned ash," he would have read, "5-6 feet long, shod with a steel point, and strong enough, when placed horizontally, with the ends supported, to bear the whole weight of the body." If you fell into a crevasse, the alpenstock was intended to stop you disappearing completely. "Special attention should be paid to the boots," Baedeker continues. "For glacier-tours and mountain-ascents the soles must be supplied with nails, which, however, may be added on reaching the mountainous district." While this may have passed as enlightened advice in its day, I prefer a nice light aluminium ice-axe, proper crampons and a good modern nylon rope.

Baedeker also recommended "a change of flannel shirts, worsted stockings, a few pocket handkerchiefs… a pocket knife with a corkscrew, a leathern drinking-cup, a spirit-flask… and a piece of green crape or coloured spectacles to protect the eyes from the glare of the snow."

Like Holmes, we are based in Saas Grund, a dormitory village for the nearby and much larger Saas-Fee. If Saas-Grund were in the United States it would be a strip-mall; being in Switzerland it manages a few cute chalet-style buildings and a window-boxes, along with a selection of fairly unprepossessing hotels. 100 years ago, Saas-Grund was one of the many villages in the Swiss Alps to host English church services, which Holmes may have attended, perhaps more to meet other British travellers than out of any great religious conviction.

After acclimatising for a few days, our first main target is the 4,010m Lagginhorn. With an economy of expression that I'm getting to know well, Baedeker explains the mountain "takes 5-6 hours" and is "difficult". We have the benefit of starting from the Almagell hut, which, at 2,894m, was built several years after Holmes' trip. Even so, waking at 4am and slogging up this unattractive Swiss peak merits Baedeker's description of "difficult".

Don't try and sleep in a Stadel - the grunting of the pigs does not "conduce to refreshing slumber"

The proliferation of huts in the Alps has certainly made the mountains more accessible; the Swiss Alpine Club now operates 153 of them. Initially modest offerings, providing climbers little more than a place to catch some fitful sleep before a pre-dawn start, today many offer flush toilets, coin-operated showers, a wide selection of food, even wine and beer. At the start of the last century, before the majority of these huts had been built, Baedeker thought it necessary to warn his readers against sleeping in Stadels, or farmers' huts, which dotted the high Alpine pastures: "Whatever poetry there may be theoretically in a fragrant bed of hay, the cold night-air piercing abundant apertures, the ringing of the cow-bells, the grunting of the pigs, the undiscarded garments, hardly conduce to refreshing slumber". He also advised climbers to carry a generous supply of wine or spirits. Cognac, he explained, could be mixed with glacier water to render it safe to drink, and when mixed with tallow and rubbed into the feet it would also prevent blisters. And if the traveller came down with a stomach bug, 15 drops of tincture of opium were part of the recommended cure.

Despite advances in climbing equipment, the Lagginhorn has become even more "difficult" and dangerous than it was back in 1902. The upper reaches of the mountain have, in human memory, always been snow-covered, even in summer. The heat-wave that hit Europe in 2003 put paid to that. The mountain's snow shell melted, and the final stretch to the summit is now an uncomfortable scramble over loose rocks, no longer safely frozen in place. Anyone who does not believe global warming exists should spend more time in the Alps.

Our second goal is the 4,027m Allalinhorn. According to Baedeker, it should be "8 hours, trying, but without difficulty for experts". Once again we are helped by the presence of a mountain hut built after Holmes' trip. In 1909 a group of British climbers donated funds for the building of the Britannia Hut (3,030m), which has subsequently been enlarged several times and is now a fairly luxurious affair. Waking at 3am for our attempt via the beautiful Hohlaubgrat route, we find the weather unwilling to cooperate. Swirling clouds scud past the windows, showering them with hail. In the tradition of the modern tourist climber, we are secretly pleased, snuggling back under the duvets - yes duvets! - in our communal bunk-bed for a few hours' more sleep.

By 7am, the sun has broken through and the mountains are looking majestic under a covering of fresh snow. We decide to try for the peak after all, but via a shorter route. The new Metro Alpin underground funicular railway whisks us up to 3,500m in a matter of minutes. From there it is less than two hours' walk to the summit. OK, so we still have to use ropes and crampons, but the most dangerous part is dodging the Swiss alpine ski team training on the glacier.

By the end of the week I am feeling a bit sorry for poor old Leonard Holmes. It isn't so much that our equipment is better than his, although of course it is. The main challenge in getting to the top of a mountain is lugging your own weight up, step by step, fighting fatigue and thin air, and that doesn't change even if equipment gets better and lighter. Instead, what makes our climbing exprience so much easier is the network of cable-cars and huts, most of which did not exist 100 years ago, and which cut out a lot of the tedious approach walking that Holmes would have had to undertake.

It also means that the modern climbing tourist is almost certainly less fit than Holmes. Within an hour of enjoying stunning views from the summit of the Allalinhorn we are back in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Metro Alpin. As we wash down a plate of Rösti with a glass of local Dōle, I can imagine the old boy, pack weighed down with spare flannel shirt, worsted stockings, leathern drinking cup and battered Baedeker, struggling up the glacier under the fierce alpine sun, hours behind us. Looking up, he spots us through the restaurant windows. I wave a greeting, one climber to another across the intervening century. Holmes doesn't wave back. "Bloody tourists," he is thinking.

Antique Baedecker guidebooks can be bought from any good antiquarian book dealer for around £20 upwards.

Michael Liebreich was taking part in Jagged Globe's Swiss 4000ers trip (www.jagged-globe.co.uk. His guide was Mac MacKay)