Reminiscing on the author of Sherlock Holmes’ ski touring adventure from the Swiss resorts of Davos to Arosa over 100 years ago. Words Nicky Holford
Published in the Telegraph – See Article HERE
At 6.30 am it’s barely light, but rather than retreating, the darkness seeping down the mountains in Davos, looks like an approaching storm. Backpack filled, I strap on my avalanche transceiver and find my guide Walter scanning a weather app on his phone. “We need to get going if we’re to reach the Furka pass before the storm sets in,” he says.
I wonder how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle felt at this point, as he dressed in his tweeds, setting off from Davos at 4am on a starlit night, in the light of the moon, with his lace-up ski boots slung around his neck and eight-foot long wooden skis over his shoulder.
I’m about to ski tour the exact same journey he took in 1894, crossing from Davos to Arosa over the 2,743m Furka Pass.
It would have been infinitely more intimidating in 1894 with none of the sophisticated equipment we have today such as weather reports, GPS and avalanche transceivers, not to mention ski lifts, and modern equipment.
Conan Doyle would have walked to the start of the climb, but Walter and I drive the short distance from my hotel and park in the tiny hamlet of Frauenkirch at an altitude of 1505 m. and a 15 minute drive from the centre of Davos.
As the crow flies it’s about 13 miles from here to Arosa. There’s a yellow hiking route sign pointing the way as we attach climbing skins to our skis and start climbing up a path leading to the forest and a scattering of cowsheds. Briefly the sun appears to linger on snow-laden branches sparkling like glitter. A small creek shimmers under a burst of sun. We shed a layer and skin up into the forest, side by side, chatting.
Conan Doyle would have found it much more arduous walking in the snow in his boots and he writes in the Strand magazine about plodding up the hill sides and floundering “into and out of soft drift up to our waists.” His companions on this expedition were two brothers from Davos, the Brangers who had once crossed the pass and were his inspiration. He is quoted in his description in the Strand as saying: “They are both men of considerable endurance, and even a long spell of my German did not appear to exhaust them.”
As we continue skinning my equipment and temperature seem right, although I’m glad I brought the extra jacket. At the start I really don’t have any idea how far the journey is for us non crows. Walter’s estimates it will take about five hours skiing and an hour for the descent depending on the conditions.
After an hour and a half we take refuge at a hut at Chummeralp. It’s by a white house with a shelter, where we stop for tea with ginger, which Walter has bought with him and chocolate which is my contribution. A couple of sacks on a bench make a seat and beautifully chopped and stacked logs line the walls. It’s the last building before the snow seems to fold in on itself, in an endless vision of white.
It must be here where Doyle describes a wooden cowhouse as “…. the last sign of man which we were to see until we reached Arosa.” It is also here I think, that first put on his snowshoes.
A crown of mountains frames the horizon as we leave any sign of civilisation and start to climb, leaving the fir trees below us as Walter breaks trail. Occasionally I can see as far as the valley. The gradient is much steeper now and I’m starting to breathe a bit more heavily. Walter tells me to breathe through my nose. “If you breathe out through your mouth, you are going too fast,” he says. No risk of that.
It’s slow progress and I think of Conan Doyle trekking this very same route, carrying his skis. At least he had some visibility as he describes how the sun cleared at 7.30 am and the glare of the snow being dazzling.
He first came to Davos when his wife, who was suffering from tuberculosis, was prescribed high-altitude care. Fit and determined, he was a cricketer, a golfer and goalkeeper for Portmouth Association Football Club, he became obsessed with the idea of skiing long before it was established.
He got his first pair of skis from his friend Tobias Branger, who saw the Norwegian skis at a trade fair in Paris in 1889, and ordered a few pairs of the 8 ft long boards for his shop in Davos.
To avoid ridicule from the locals they made their first attempts to ski under the cover of darkness. After trying the skis Doyle wrote in the Strand magazine, where his Sherlock Holmes stories were published, about his first skiing experiences, dismissing the dangers and explaining the difficulty of keeping your balance while sliding downhill.
There were no lifts when he enjoyed the sport, and he seemed to amuse the Swiss with his relentless efforts, climbing up Davos’s Jakhobshorn mountain in his boots carrying these heavy skis on his back then taking numerous falls on the way down. Once relatively comfortable on the Jakhobshorn he got the idea of the adventure to Arosa.
We are only two and a half hours into our climb and as I later find out almost up to 2400 metres the second leg up to Chummerhubel. Already I’ve stopped talking. I think Walter has noticed but he’s keeping up the pace, probably because the weather is setting in. The clouds are heavier and it’s starting to snow. The skyline and the snow are barely discernable. It’s as if there is nothing there, just a landscape of barely undulating white. It reminds me of the fog in one of Sherlock Holmes adventures, Hounds of the Baskervilles, and I stop my imagination taking over with images of Yeti’s appearing out of the gloom.
We climb a couple of knolls and at least the rocks give some definition. I stop to have a drink and soon Walter is a dot in the distance.
Eventually we stop for lunch. I go to take off my skis but Walter looks at me and I realise we are having lunch on our skis. I’ve barely got my sandwich out before he’s off again.
I find out later that, with the weather closing in, there was a point about two and a half hours in, where he had to decide whether to continue or not.
I imagine how different it would have been in sunshine when we’d be picnicking and putting on sun block. Indeed, Conan Doyle mentions the spectacular views in an article in the Strand where he writes about this expedition.
Such views on my trip are sadly lacking. Instead I have caught Walter’s sense of urgency and feel a gnawing fear as the blizzard picks up momentum. I start to call on inner resources.
Suddenly Walter announces that we have reached the hut at the Maienfelder Furka Pass. There is no sign and Walter circumnavigates what looks like a solid mound of snow and finds a small entrance. We have to dig to get in, the snow is so deep. Walter thinks that the original shepherd’s hut was probably there when Conan Doyle reached the pass. But it has since been rebuilt a few times. The standing hut today was rebuilt in 1985 after the old one was destroyed. There’s now a memorial plaque for a mountain guide from Arosa, Erwin Lamm, who died in an avalanche in the area on March 4th, 1994.
In the shelter we have a break and drink, chatting about families at home. It was windy outside with no visibility and we were in the clouds.
We leave the hut and cross the Maienfelder Furka.continuing briefly along a traverse to the Furka. The top of the pass is 2743 metres.
Then it’s time to take off the skins, and ahead lies a long, gentle gradient of deep untouched snow. With our goal, Arosa within reach, Walter estimates we are 45 minutes away, I make a few powder turns but my legs are not responding. With such bad visibility and tired legs we had to adapt our skiing to the conditions. There was hardly any contrast. We had fresh snow but the layers underneath were not very thick. In places where there had been a lot of wind such as around the Furka there was no solid snow layer, just fresh snow covering the rocks.
After 30 minutes we reach the forest above Arosa and see the nucleus of the resort in the distance through the trees. The snow is heavy going, and I am flagging. We make a wrong turn, and are too low, to cross the ravine in the Furggatobel so have to climb back up through the densely knit trees to where it is steeper to get to our route to the valley.
This last part of our trip leads down on the north edge of Furggatobel and from there to the Stausee Isel.
I’m virtually running on empty but I can see the lake, our final destination and feel a real sense of achievement.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his companions the Branger brothers reached the Furka Pass and saw the “toy town” of Arosa it was still too steep for them to put on their skis. It’s possible that they found themselves at the wrong part of the ravine and went straight down the ‘Tobel” another gully prone to avalanche.
Instead of skiing they made a makeshift toboggan with their skis lashing the straps together. “You can sink without skis,” says Walter, “or if you lose one can easily spend an hour looking for it.”
After navigating the last gully Conan Doyle and his companions did finish their descent to Arosa on skis, as Doyle is quoted saying that at one point his skis “flew away like a bow from an arrow.”
“I would guess that it took them at least three hours form the Marienfelder Furka and then another 40 minutes hiking up to Arosa,” says Walter. People back in those days were much fitter as they hiked much more on a daily basis.
I am very impressed that they were about to do that with the equipment they had.”
Conan Doyle managed the journey in seven hours. We were only a couple of hours quicker, probably due to the weather, and like the Doyle expedition, fortunately we did not have a small welcoming crowd peering through opera glasses.
Thankfully the audience who planned to witness his arrival arrived too late. Conan Doyle and his companions arrived at 11.30 am and headed off to the Seehof for lunch. The residents of Arosa convinced that he wouldn’t arrive until after 1 pm missed it all. “One can do very well without a gallery when one is trying a new experiment on skis,” he wrote.
Due to great foresight knowing I would be exhausted and in need of some pampering I had arranged to stay in the luxurious Tschuggen Grand Hotel. Arriving with no passport or luggage (which was following me by train) I checked in wearing ski gear and promptly lay exhausted on my bed.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle no doubt arrived in more style. However he did have a bone to pick with his tailor. “My tailor tells me that Harris tweed cannot wear out,” he wrote, adding: “He will find samples of his wares on view from the Furka Pass to Arosa.”
Nicky Holford’s trip to Davos and Arosa was arranged by Switzerland Tourism; (myswitzerland.com) flying with Swiss (swiss.com) from London Heathrow to Zurich (swiss.com). Starting from £140 midweek return with one checked bag.
All ski touring equipment and guide Walter von Ballmoos were arranged by the Full Moons shop in Davos; (fullmoons.ch) Ski touring equipment (including skis, skins, boots, avalanche transceiver, probe, backpack) costs CHF 95. Mountain Guide day rate starts from CHF 550.
In Davos she stayed at the Kongress Hotel (hotelkongress.ch) double room starts from CHF 160.
In Arosa she stayed at the Tschuggen Grand Hotel and award winning spa (tschuggen.ch) double room rates start from CHF 615
