Ski-runs in the High Alps — Context and Discussion

A Late Start and a New Mountaineering

Roget frames his entire project around a personal confession: he bought skis for his daughter to play with, then bought a rough pair for himself, imagining himself “as a Newfoundland dog, on the brink of the waves, ready to rescue a child from snow peril.” The self-deprecating image sets the tone. He was “born again into a ski-runner” only after equipping himself, and the book is the record of that second birth. The preface makes clear that Ski-runs in the High Alps is not a beginner’s guide—that role is filled by W. Rickmer Rickmers’s companion volume, advertised on the front matter. Instead, Roget’s work belongs to the “New Mountaineering,” a winter counterpart to the summer alpinism that had long defined Swiss exploration. He revisits familiar passes and peaks, but in snow, with skis, and with a different set of challenges: assessing avalanche risk, reading wind-carved snow, and managing the peculiar fatigue of cold-weather exertion.

The Finsteraarhorn Ascent: Observation and Lyricism

The excerpt from the Finsteraarhorn climb shows Roget at his most observant. He notes the “cross light effects,” silvery at one end and golden at the other, meeting on “that endless expanse of neutral white.” The rocky arête is described as “a lace ruff above its shoulder,” free from snow and ice because of the sun’s rays “percolating through the superimposed layers of dry air.” Such meteorological precision sits alongside a quoted passage from Arnold Lunn, who describes the summit as “the very hub of vast spaces of eternal winter.” Roget’s own prose then returns to the physical: the guides sleeping in the snow, the “alarming ski tracks” on steep slopes, the rope party arranged like a classical allusion—the Socialist, Achilles, Ulysses. The blend of technical detail, literary quotation, and wry characterisation gives the narrative a distinctive texture, part field report, part meditation.

Winter’s Transformative Atmosphere

Throughout the excerpt, Roget emphasises how winter alters the familiar Alpine landscape. The view from the Finsteraarhorn is “perfect, as only a winter view can be,” with a “vast sea of cloud” covering the plains. The winter atmosphere “toned down the harsh features whilst rendering the whole flawless panorama strangely distinct.” Mountains take on “wonderful bluish tints,” their crudities softened, their barren places made smooth. Roget captures a paradox: winter both simplifies and enriches. The cold air clarifies distances, while snow conceals the summer’s rough edges. He describes the cloud canopy as “a huge soft beast” filling the interstices of the vista, shot through with waves of light. This attention to atmospheric effects—light, colour, texture—suggests that Roget’s interest lies as much in perception as in physical achievement. The winter mountains are not merely obstacles to be conquered but phenomena to be seen and felt.

Readers approaching Ski-runs in the High Alps should expect a hybrid work: part personal narrative, part alpine observation, part anthology of quoted companions. Roget does not provide a systematic guide to routes or techniques; instead, he offers a series of winter excursions filtered through a reflective, sometimes playful sensibility. The book rewards those who read for the specific detail—the feel of a warm arête, the colour of a winter sky, the shape of a cloud—as much as for the arc of the climb. It is a record of a particular moment in mountaineering history, when skis were still a novelty in the high Alps, and when the mountains could still be seen anew.

Roget’s winter alps felt less like a guidebook and more like a quiet companion — someone who’d learned joy late and wanted to share the glow, not the route. It reminded me of another lingering read, Out and About London — Story, Setting & Ideas, where the city becomes a similar kind of slow, personal discovery. Both stayed with me like a half-remembered afternoon.