In resuming, after a halt, a frequent error is to start too fast.

Young climbers, like young giants refreshed with wind, rush off at top

pace. The re-start should always be slow--if anything slower than the

average pace before the halt. Gradually, as the circulation and organs

begin to readjust themselves to their work, the previous pace can be

recovered. But a halt is definitely making reparation for the past, not

accumulating a margin to waste in the immediate future.

When the energy of the party is running out, it is better to avoid

halts altogether. To break the rhythm in such case and relax the

mechanism is to make the resumption each time more difficult and the

recovery of an equal rate afterwards very improbable.

To lead and choose the line is definitely more fatiguing than to

follow. To save strength and maintain pace, during a long day, the

leader ought to be changed at regular intervals. This is too rarely

done.

[Sidenote: Some Notes on Hill Walking.]

There are one or two further points connected with walking up or down

hill which are matters of method rather than of manners, but which in

so far as they affect the individual comfort react upon the peace of a

party.

In walking uphill, the foot should always be placed so that the heel

rests on the ground. It is a beginner’s mistake to rush a hill and

spring from the toes alone. If the flex of the ankle is stiff--men vary

much in this respect--and the gradient is too steep to allow the heel

to drop, look out for any little stone or excrescence, however small,

to set it upon. If the path is very steep, and without stones, it is

more comfortable to set the foot slightly sideways, so that the heel

gets some support. This is often particularly useful at the turns of

the interminable zigzags on alpine paths, where the track is apt to

swoop up steeply round the bend. If the foot is thus placed slightly

aslant at every turn, it is ready to advance at once after the bend in

the direction of the new zag. A very slight economy, you may say: but

multiply it by several thousand zags in a day!

Always take the outside and easiest line round such curves in ascending

tracks.

The secret of all long grinds uphill is to set, and maintain, a regular

pace that becomes rhythmic from the first. The moment you get behind

a good hill walker, you will see the difference between his regular,

restrained swing, more of the whole body than the leg, and the uneven

jumping step, that seems each time to be a separate balancing effort,

of the inexperienced walker.

Do not take long steps uphill, or lift the foot high. Raise it by

slightly swaying the body across the firm leg and let the loose

foot swing forward with its own weight. A good hill walker, of the

‘tireless’ variety, always moves with a slight balance or sway.

Always ‘accept a slip.’ That is, if the foot slips back on a loose

surface, do not tire the muscles by a convulsive effort to stop it and

to keep your balance. Let the foot go till it stops of itself as the

topple of your weight, out of balance, comes upon it; and then swing

from that point with the other foot.

The effort you put into each step should be kept the same, whatever the

change in the angle of the surface.

If you are leading and doubtful of your pace, try to sing. So long as

you can sing or whistle two lines without panting or effort, you are

keeping within your measure.

On a zigzag uphill, do not take the apparent short-cuts. They are made

by men descending, and only waste strength and spoil rhythm.

On an open hillside, zigzag as if on a path, starting at the angle

which lets you comfortably get the heels down. For a step or two, if

there is no room to zag, you can walk with only the one heel down, and

the other foot springing from the toe; but not for more.

If circumstances make it imperative to go fast, lean well forward over

the feet, and as it were ‘tumble up’ the slope. This eases the work of

the heart. If you have to race, and legs and breath begin to give out,

make the hands do their share, and unashamedly pull the knees up to the

stride by the breeches. You can thus keep a long uphill stride at a

fast pace going long after the leg muscles, unaided, would have given

out.

In descending take the shortest cuts you like. There are two weak

points to look to: one the toes, and the other the muscles of the back,

which do most of the balancing. The toes are protected by well-fitting

boots and a well-placed foot. The back muscles are best indulged

by letting the shoulders go loose, as you do when jog-trotting on

horseback. This eases the effort of balance and the amount of holding

back and taut that the muscles have to perform. It also diminishes the

jar.

Except for grown men, of exceptionally strong ankles and knees, it is

best not to plunge ‘all-out’ downhill, leaping straight-legged from

heel to heel. The legs should be kept under control, and the feet

pointed down and kept well under the body. The knees should be bent,

tense, but not rigid; they will serve to take up all the jar, and act

as springs. The step resembles a dancing pace, with a bent knee.

Do not be shy of using the arms and hands, on trees, rocks or scrub, to

ease in any way the effort of balance and the leg-strain during rapid

descents. An ankle or sinew once wrenched is permanently weakened.

Long, hard road-tramping, with the leg swung straight, is not a good

preparation for climbing. It jolts and stiffens the muscles, and fixes

them in certain stereotyped movements. Good climbing guides are rarely

good or fast road walkers. A long trudge often breaks them down and

renders them unfit temporarily for severe climbing.

Standing about on the feet while the arms are being exercised merely

tires the legs, and does not strengthen them. Many guides, who work

hard at wood-chopping or in quarries during the winter, find their legs

are all to pieces when the season begins. The knees are especially

sensitive in this respect.

A climber’s leg machinery is a delicate engine of educated springs and

fine interactions. It can do a rough-and-tumble better than most, at

need, but it should be guarded for its special and exacting work, and

not battered or shaken out of gear unnecessarily.

Hill walking exercises and develops all the movements of foot, ankle,

knee and trunk which we use in balance-climbing on rock or snow. It

is the best training for the fine and precise motions that we need to

educate. There is no doubt of the soundness of a man’s climbing if he

is seen to be a light and tireless hill walker. He may not necessarily

be brilliant on rocks, but what he does he will do in good style.

If we wish to interest our young folk in climbing, the surest way is

to let them walk and run loose by themselves upon the hills in early

years. Rocks will meet them naturally, and if they are going to climb,

they will begin to climb them naturally as they occur, with the feet

and with the balance they have practised on their hill walks. To take

them to rocks too early, as to a gymnasium, is to spoil their taste and

deprive them of the chance of developing a personal enthusiasm and a

natural style. Every good mountaineer must rediscover the hills and the

passion for climbing them as of himself.

CHOICE OF DISTRICT

One consideration remains for the leader, if it has not been already

decided by the preferences of his party--that of the district he will

choose for the season. A few general principles may help to guide his

choice.

The tour may be either concentric, with ascents made from one or from

a succession of centres, or eccentric, in which case the party will

be moving forward and carrying its own luggage. The first is the more

luxurious, the second the more attractive, holiday. The choice depends

upon the character of the party and upon the weather of the season.

With beginners, in a good season, it is more instructive and

independent to move along a range, crossing passes and taking only

the climbs that come. The same progressive type of tour is the best

to follow in a really bad season, when the big peaks are out of the

question, for the time at least, and when there may yet be a delightful

holiday spent in wandering among the lower Alps below the cloud-level.

Even for those who may be ambitious of big peaks, this is a better

alternative than sitting cooped up with other murmurers waiting for the

impossible in high hotels.

On the other hand, in good but uncertain weather, if the party is

desirous of big climbs, and has to economize its time, it is better to

move by express routes from centre to centre, and to strike for the big

peaks without loss of days, when the good weather comes, and while it

lasts.

In more doubtful weather, when the days are playing at ‘alternates’

but the peaks are still possible on fair days, and when consequently

we are not forced down to the pleasures of low rambling, it is well

to climb still from centres, and from the hotel itself. If, indeed,

the party is aiming at a special peak, it should occupy the nearest

hut, and provision it as a centre, ready to start on the first clear

morning. But if, as is wiser in a bad season, it is wishful to take

anything that offers, it is even better to stay at the central hotel

below--since peaks enclosing a valley are often differently affected

by different kinds of weather--and the party is then in a position to

set out at once for whichever mass first becomes feasible. It can start

overnight, and so avoid the hut altogether. The fatigue and romance of

an all-night tramp are less prejudicial to the chances of a successful

climb on the following day than the depression of a dull and stiff

morning start after a comfortless night.

On the other hand, there is no more memorable experience than to

sleep out in the open air during a spell of settled weather, with

the stars for company and the first stir of wind before dawn as a

strange awakening. The man who wishes to taste the full pleasure of a

mountaineering day should sleep out whenever he can the night before,

and he should lie far enough from his companions to be able to feel

himself alone.

Possibly the pleasantest holiday of all is obtained by a combination

of the concentric and eccentric methods, according as weather and

inclination direct. To wander forward independent of times and plans,

and to make pauses when we wish for more prolonged assaults upon peaks

that tempt us, is a twofold delight. But it postulates leisure.

At home it is natural to base our calculations upon an estimate of a

climb every day. Only when we are faced with the facts on the spot, the

distances, portages and weather, do we recognize that we are lucky if

we can make two or three good climbs a week. We must allow two days for

each big climb, and leave a margin for the off-days. Younger heads or

less experienced legs must be taught this last doctrine for their own

good. The more practised will more easily recall that contrast is the

essence of enjoyment, and that the days of hard going on ice and heated

rocks are only fully realized and remembered if they are relieved by

occasional lapses into tranquil lounging in the grassy valleys, amid

the cool temptations of lemon-ices and clinking teetotal glasses.

If the party, having settled its general plan, has no preference for

any particular district, it may be guided, in the Alps, by a few broad

distinctions as between the best known districts.

The Oberland offers the best opportunities for snow and ice work of

almost all kinds. For this reason the Oberland is often the best choice

in a moderately fine or uncertain summer when the snow has stayed late.

The snow slopes of the gentler Oberland peaks are climbable when the

big ridges of the Pennines or the Mont Blanc region are still closed

to us by snow cloaks and cornices. On the other hand, in a bad summer

the weather is usually at its worst in the Oberland, and the long snow

wades may become intolerable, unless we are prepared to snatch a winter

tour from a bad summer month by traversing the Oberland, with its high

connecting glaciers and summits of easier angle, on ski.

Again, the comparative easiness of the ascents and the training they

offer on ice and snow suggest the Oberland as a good choice for an

introductory tour with beginners, and as an equally good choice for the

preliminary week’s training in any later season. There is no better

introduction, or reintroduction, to alpine work than practice on the

ice of the Aletsch glacier, varied by ascents of the snow and small

rock peaks in the vicinity.

The Pennines offer finer individual peaks, with greater names, and

they are more specially adapted for those who prefer concentric

mountaineering, with bigger single efforts and the company of their

kind. Their variety of type and aspect makes them suitable for

selection in ‘alternating’ weather. Often when other regions are closed

up, and when even its neighbours are shrouded, personal idiosyncrasies

will keep some single Pennine peak open for quick, comfortable ascent.

The merit of the Pennines is their mixed general climbing. They have

fewer great ice and snow climbs to offer than the Oberland or Mont

Blanc, and their rock is inferior to the Aiguilles.

The Pennines of the west, more especially the Val d’Evoléna, have the

pleasant characteristic of offering short, condensed and possible

climbs in bad seasons, when the bigger peaks are unapproachable, and

when the Oberland may be indulging its habit of making bad weather

worse. They, too, are an excellent introduction to mountaineering; but

their miniature attractions have a somewhat dangerous fascination for

British climbers, whom they are apt to hold spellbound even in good

seasons, and withdraw from hardier and greater enterprise.

In a fair summer, the Chamonix Aiguilles are the flame-points on the

crown of great rock climbing. For length, and as a test of skill, they

have no equal in Europe. They also include some magnificent snow and

ice ascents. But it is their rock that marks them out as supreme. As a

consequence, many British climbers make the mistake of going to them

too soon, before they are equal to their demands. It is better to keep

them as a great reward for labour when our developed mountaineering

technique can enable us not only to overcome, but to enjoy the infinite

variety of problems, and when we can feel not only participators in an

ascent, but masters of ourselves and of the difficulties throughout

their exceeding length. I have seen more than one of the most noted

performers on British rocks and from the eastern Dolomites, men who

could frolic up the Grépon crack, forced, from pure muscular fatigue,

to ask for the rope before the Grépon summit was reached, and only

rediscover the pleasure of the ascent of the Dru a full day after their

return from the traverse.

To men who can get all that they want of difficult rock in our own

islands, the Dolomites of the Eastern Alps present fewer attractions in

sunny seasons. Their greater distance is a disability, and they offer

small snow and ice practice. But in bad seasons they are an admirable

last resort, and an escape to their warm, dry and coloured levels, or

rather heights, may send many a party, disappointed elsewhere by ill

weather of its alpine season, home in good health and firm muscle.

The great southern wall of the Alps, from Courmayeur to Macugnaga and

farther, offers the greatest combined ice and rock mountaineering

on the largest and most formidable scale. For those who know its

secrets there is also the attraction of many smaller ascents, with

the incomparable views as background. But it is not a region for bad

weather, or for any but very competent parties.

Early in the season the Southern Alps, from Savoy and Cogne almost

down to the Mediterranean, make an exquisite wandering-ground, all too

little visited. In May and June we can often enjoy among them flowers,

clear climbing and free wandering, long before their big northern

brothers have shaken off their winter coats of snow and storm. They

retain much of the undiscovered charm of the great Alps in earlier

days, and a variety of beauty that can challenge comparison with the

impressiveness of greater heights.

I have intentionally avoided mentioning those secluded and particular

districts which it must be the fortune of all faithful mountaineers to

discover for themselves, and where every enterprising party may gain

the reward of its independence and experience in the certainty that

it has found, at last and alone, the one perfect region, perfectly

contrived, for all purposes of climbing and enjoyment.

INCIDENTAL DUTIES

[Sidenote: Hut Usages.]

Launched in his chosen region, and with his chosen comrades, the

management of a leader has to observe, beyond his primary duty to his

own party, one or two usages of an extraneous or incidental character.

If he is using huts, in the Alps or elsewhere, he should acquaint

himself with the rules, written or not, of hut usage. Most will suggest

themselves. To tidy up and leave everything in better order than he

usually finds it. If other parties are in the hut, to keep the axes

from cumbering the ground, and confine the wet clothes and wet boots to

harmless corners. To arrange provisions and the rest the night before,

so as to diminish the general confusion in starting by at least the

quiet exit of his own party. To disturb sleepers as little as their

customary assumption, that they are the only tired men who may, or

will, ever use the hut again, will generally allow. Not to break open a

hut or use any part of it for firewood except in desperate need; and to

pay somewhere, or somehow, for any inevitable or accidental damage.

There is a further duty, which he owes to the position of his own

party and to that of others also occupying the huts. If his party

are merely guests, they are dependent upon the courtesy of other

inhabitants for any treatment they receive more cordial in character

than the sufferance usually extended to uninvited guests. But if,

as every mountaineer in his chosen region should do, they have made

themselves members of the local organization, he should insist, without

demonstration, for the sake of sound hut tradition as well as for the

improvement in the morals and manners of the other occupants (supposing

they show themselves disobliging), upon the relations being those of

courteous equality. As between his own and other amateur parties this

insistence will rarely be needed; for the tradition of comradeship

among amateur climbers of all nations has seldom to be recalled by

remonstrance. But as between his own guides and other guides, or other

guides and his own guideless party, the footing sometimes calls for a

prompt clearing away of the stones. Local guides are apt to take any

advantage of a foreign or younger guide who appears. As is elsewhere

described, the mental attitude of a guide in hut or hotel becomes

generally that of the servant or dependent of his employer. He is no

longer the free man on the hills, who will be himself the first to

resent any incursion on the rights of his party. Once in the hut the

amateur, in his turn, becomes responsible for looking after his guide.

A guide’s hut manners prevent him making any fuss, even though his own

party’s interests are suffering; as, for instance, when he is deprived

of his precedence at the cooking-stove, or is left an unfair share of

the collective washing-up. Like a swan on a new reach of a river, the

young or stranger guide is very shy. He will often let himself be put

upon by some parochial swaggerer or bullied by a lazy senior of his own

valley. It is in our own interests, and the interests of the future, to

protect him.

Apart from the local or obstreperous guide, the worst offenders against

hut manners are not the guideless parties, who are usually anxious to

do as they would be done by, but the chance ‘professors,’ and other

cunning folk, who have discovered that alpine huts provide free summer

lodging for themselves and their families, or the erratic solitary

wanderers and grouped holiday trippers, who have never learned mountain

manners. With these types decided action, or the decided appearance of

passion, is sometimes the only course.

It is only courteous to use the hut books which are provided for

entries; even though the sight of our own names and objectives in other

company may offend our British habit of climbing hauteur, to which

we ourselves give the titular rank of modesty. The information has a

sentimental interest; it is required by the maintainers of the hut,

and, further, it may be of real service if anything untoward happens

and it becomes necessary to follow the traces of our party.

[Sidenote: Consideration.]

Outside the huts we have a duty also to the fragile paths, which lead

us to the glacier or the hut. They are easily depreciated by careless

use, especially in wet weather, by breaking away the edges, kicking

down boulders, slithering down inclines, etc.

Beyond the paths and the huts, there is a first law not to spoil the

mountains: to leave no traces of meals on the summits or hillsides.

Whoever discovers a portable contrivance for atomizing old bottles will

confer an incalculable benefit upon conscientious mountaineers.

There is also an obligation not to spoil the mountains for others by

heedless manners. This means not merely not to throw or kick stones

on to other parties, or to pass them without their consent, which are

matters that are regulated by positive mountaineering tradition, but

also not to treat them ‘negatively’ when we meet them on the hills, as

if we were all passers-by in the City at the luncheon-hour. I can call

to mind still the annihilating stare of a lady whom I met on the top of

the Weisshorn, because I ventured to remark about the weather without

waiting for the introduction which there was no third party present in

the vast panorama to perform; and again, two sterling Britons passing

on a track in the highlands of Arcadia without greeting, because it

transpired they did not feel that their slight degree of acquaintance

was sufficient to cover a general conversation in which two other

members of their parties, not similarly acquainted, would have had to

be included! These are somewhat fine shades to preserve under primitive

conditions, and foreigners are apt to misunderstand their respectable

origin. It is better, on the whole, to be thought a cheerful idiot by

our own countrymen if we hail their distant appearance on the chance

of their belonging to a more sociable nationality, than to earn the

reputation of racial surliness by allowing our shyness of what our

own party may think to prevent us replying to the shouts of strangers

of possibly more Gallic temperament. It costs little effort to make

a cheerful remark to another party on the hills when we meet or pass

them, and it saves an awkward restraint on both sides if we are fated

to meet them afterwards again, in a hut or somewhere where we have

to be together in harmony. In other countries we may safely imitate

more demonstrative ways without loss of self-respect. A courteous

manner and a ready explanation will take the edge of offence off many

a decided course of mountaineering action, that may run us for a while

beside or across the way of other human beings. It might even be better

if we could introduce into our chance encounters on our own hills

something more of a superficial cordiality, so as to acquire the habit

of conveying to strangers less obscurely the undoubted fellowship we

feel with all other pilgrims of the mountains.

Of course every leader must acquaint himself with the code of rescue

signals now recognized in the mountains, by waving or flashing or

shouting. But he should further consider it as more than discourteous

to refrain from replying to any shout directed at himself or his

party. It is impossible for him to know by instinct what is merely the

salute of high spirits and what may express some more urgent need.

Similarly, if one member of a party gets separated from the rest, and

is out of sight, it is not sufficient for him merely to guide himself

back secretly by their shouts; he should reply to each of their calls,

and so indicate that he is approaching. It is oddly irritating to

keep shouting for an unseen man, realizing that his silence may mean

that he is getting more and more astray, and then see him walk round

the next rock, reproving by his silent proximity both our growing

anxiety and our clamorous waste of breath. Our co-Britons will never

shout unnecessarily, and we should reply each time, and leave the

interpretation to them.

[Sidenote: Some Night Notes.]

In using paths or tracks at night, if a light cannot be procured, it

is worth while remembering that the instinct of the feet is often a

better guide than the straining of the eyes to see. The feet, left

to themselves, will balance naturally along the track, much as the

original makers of the natural paths found it expedient to balance

over the same ground. They will be able to keep the track better of

themselves than if they are driven forward by an ill-balanced body

along an ill-seen line. A leader following a track by daylight may

often wonder in advance at small wanderings which seem to the eye

unaccountable; but as soon as the body in balance reaches the spot, it

follows their sequence quite naturally. Left to themselves, the feet

and body will do much the same in the dark, and keep surprisingly well

upon a track that is not arbitrarily interrupted.

In following a lamp, unless the leader holds it himself, his best place

is not that immediately behind the lamp-bearer, which the selfish will

press for. Detail and dim outline ahead are better seen from farther

back in the line, where the actual glare of the lamp is hidden and

the light is diffused over the way. The eye soon accustoms itself to

half-light, but not to the dazzle of a flame.

(To procure light for a lamp, fire or pipe, especially in a wind, a

familiar method may not be universally known. Part of the stern of a

wax match should be unravelled and a few strands wound loosely round

the head, so as to catch the first flare. To light a wood fire, in camp

or hut, without paper, the wood should be shaved thinly upwards towards

one end of a stick. The shavings should not be completely detached, but

left curling up at the end like the flower on a stalk. Lit at this end,

the stick easily burns and the fire follows.)

A compass and watch with radium points are always useful for all night

hours or hut intervals.

If a path or track is lost in the dark, especially on snow-covered

ground, the party should rope up at the full length of the rope, and

make casts round the end man, who waits at a fixed point ’till it is,

or may be, recovered. The motionless man at the fixed point acts as

pointer for the original direction, and will prevent the complete loss

of orientation in the circle of search.

In the dark on a track the increased risk from the axe-points before

and behind us, as well as from our own, must be kept in mind, and extra

intervals maintained.

Where there is no track, the last man on the rope should carry the

radium compass and correct the direction, as in mist. Even without a

compass he is the better able to keep a line, guided by the rope ahead.

A leader measuring the remainder of a climb against the coming of

darkness must recollect that snow retains light very late--in summer,

in fact, it rarely becomes quite dark. But the snowless lower slopes,

which he will reach last, will be far darker. He must not be deceived,

therefore, by the apparent amount of light still illuminating the

higher snows, into taking things easily.

A party frankly benighted, if it has only a short distance to descend

over ground known to be safe, supposing that a right route, not

difficult to find, can be followed, does best to rope up. This has

the merit of keeping the party together and in line, and confines the

disturbances of falling over rocks and into holes to the person of the

responsible leader.

If he gets benighted on higher ground, as in the Alps, or sees that he

must necessarily become so, the leader should look about for a good

bivouac before the light fails; not press on to the last and then take

the chance of hurriedly finding a suitable shelter or ledge.

Whenever there is no short or easy descent in near prospect, and night

is at hand, it is always wiser to sit out for the few hours of darkness

than to let impatience risk the chance of a sprained ankle or broken

leg.

In selecting a rock for a bivouac in doubtful weather, he has to

remember that unless the roof is absolutely concave, rain will trickle

in and across the roof and make trouble even far within the shelter;

also, that in sleeping on rock or sand or turf it is more important to

comfort to secure a hole for the hip-bone than a pillow for the head of

his charges.

Where only a ledge is available, the members of a party should rope

together, to prevent anyone wandering away or slipping off in sleep.

Song promotes warmth, and preserves harmony--in a sense.

[Sidenote: A Last Task.]

Of the management of the guides during the tour something is said in

a later section. If he has employed them, the leader’s last task of

management, one of regretful but presumably proud memory, will be to

write up the guides’ books. His fashion of entry is governed by no

tradition; which makes these books the more entertaining and varied

reading during dim days in the huts. But if he does not wish to blush

in later years over his early paragons and phrases, and desires to make

the notice, as it should be, of some service to other leaders, he may

be guided by one or two common-sense principles.

A mountaineer of experience, when he looks at a guide’s book before

engaging him, looks first for the signatures he knows, then at the

opinions about the guide which they underwrite, and makes his allowance

for the opinions according to his knowledge of the mountaineering

equation of the owners of the names. Secondly, he looks at what the

man has done, both with the names he knows and with the names he does

not know. The opinions of those whom he does not know he reads merely

in relation to the actual climbs which the man is stated to have done

with them. Thus, when we are writing, since our name is likely to be

known but to few, especially among climbers of other races, it is of

importance first to state clearly what the man has done with us, and

under what conditions, of weather, party, etc.; more particularly, to

state if he has ‘led,’ and what, or if he has come as second guide or

porter. Then, for the benefit of our own race, who will know how to

interpret the ‘atmosphere’ of an English testimonial even though they

do not know our name, we may add an opinion of the man, written very

carefully so as to be read in relation to that which we have stated he

has done with us. For instance, if we have included several big snow

climbs among our list, and then write our opinion that the man is a

‘brilliant rock climber,’ those who can read testimonials will know

what to conclude about his icemanship. If we wish to guard against

such a conclusion being drawn, and yet have had no opportunity of

forming a clear opinion, we should add something conventional, such

as that the man ‘had no opportunity to lead on snow,’ or that ‘the

climbs must speak for themselves:--the conditions were perfect.’ At

the end of a list of fine ascents to say only that a man is ‘willing,’

leaves us in the dark as to how far he took any real part. To say that

he is ‘enterprising’ gives a clearer idea of his initiative. If the

conditions of any climbs on the list are stated to have been trying,

and the opinion adds that he is ‘safe and good-tempered,’ we have

learned something positive to go upon. These are small instances.

The comments should only be made with definite regard to what we

have seen and what we state to have been executed in our employment.

Unrelated generalities are valueless. Similarly, we must confine our

appreciations to what our experience enables us to say with authority.

It is better for this reason to refer our estimate to an absolute

standard of merit, such as other mountaineers will understand, than

to indulge our friendship by writing a character that means nothing

to the initiated, and may get the man a place of responsibility

with the uninitiated for which he is not fit. Our first duty is to

other mountaineers. To say a man is a ‘first-class rock climber,’

if we feel ourselves competent to pronounce so much, is a definite

classification; but to say he is a ‘first-rate rock climber’ is to err

into the meaningless weakness of superlatives. To say he is a ‘fine

iceman’ gives the guide the benefit of an authoritative reference to an

accepted standard; but to say ‘there is no finer iceman in the Alps’

risks the calling of our own experience in question by those to whom

our qualifications for making such a statement are unknown, and does

the guide little good.

We are all inclined to think that our first good guide, or the man who

has brought us well through a difficult situation, must be the finest

fellow in the Alps; and in the moments of generous after-enthusiasm we

are in a hurry to say so with an emphasis that we hope will convince

a cold-blooded later reader that he is at least a very fine fellow.

We produce the same effect better by stating exactly what he did, and

our opinion of this rather than of him, leaving it to other leaders to

draw their own conclusions about the man himself. We avoid then for

the guide the peril of that natural revulsion towards an attitude of

antagonistic criticism into which all northern humanity is prone to

lapse in the presence of other people’s enthusiasm, and for ourselves

the tolerant smile of the time and guide worn mountaineer.

When we read in a guide’s book, returning like an echo from the

records we wrote in our own earlier and romantic days, that ‘there

is no greater rock climber in the present generation, a born iceman,

an intuitive route-finder, a delightful companion and an unrivalled

cook,’ we turn on hastily to another reference, with yet a half-sigh of

good cheer and thankfulness for the assurance that one more very young

climber has started wholeheartedly on our pleasant mountain ways.

WEATHER

There is one variable which belongs to the mountaineering rather than

to the human division of the problems with which management has to

deal. The weather is the background, foreground and middle distance of

all big mountaineering. A change can upset the nicest adjustment of

a climb to the strength of a party or to the length of a day. Every

climber keeps one eye on this irresponsible neutral, which may at any

time turn the scale of the campaign against him.

As a result, no mountaineer will endure, and no leader can afford,

not to be thought a good weather prophet, even though the reputation

be confined to his own mind. In reality, so unaccountable are changes

in the hills, any fame acquired for infallibility must be the result

of a large share of good fortune. The happy confidence in his own

forecasts, that every leader owes it to his party to display, can only

be based upon a few broad considerations, and upon bluff. No previous

appearance of a mountain sky can be taken as sure ground for certain

prophecy. A particular wind or ‘sign’ may mean totally different

weather in two adjacent valleys; or the whole doctrine of the winds may

be unaccountably reversed in an exceptional season. In the Alps, for

instance, a north wind usually means clear, brisk, settled weather;

a west wind, the continuance of unsettled weather; a south wind, a

succession of storms that come and pass. But the seasons from 1909 to

1912 will provide instances of the north wind blowing continuously

through alternate days of excessive and moderating rain and snow,

and of the south and west winds attending an unbroken season of hot

sunshine.

A leader, therefore, besides his groundwork of elementary knowledge,

has to make himself acquainted with local signs of wind and weather in

every season and in any new district; with such details, for instance,

as that in the Zermatt valley “the weather comes from the west,” or

that in Courmayeur we watch the south and west and do not bother

with anything north of the range. Further, that in the Oberland a

north-west wind brings storm, but a north-east wind brings clearing

weather; that bad weather follows closely on a wind blowing over Col

Theodule and round the west of the Matterhorn, but that a wind over Col

du Lion and round the Matterhorn to the east is a fair-weather sign.

He has to discover the relation which the prevailing wind bears to the

weather conditions of a particular season or month. The one thing he

can count upon is the habit that weather establishes in the Alps during

two summers out of three of remaining one thing or the other for a

continued period, once it has started, and of returning to this ‘habit

of the season’ whenever there are not evident signs that it means to

recommence or continue a spell of change.

The scientific study of weather, and its prediction by the barometer

and thermometer, are matters for a whole book, and the authoritative

textbooks are available. Instruments larger than of pocket size are

something of an encumbrance to a climbing party, although I have

always made an exception in favour of the pocket aneroid, because of

the excellent humour with which it blesses its possessor whenever its

statements and those of the atmosphere or the map happen to coincide.

I limit myself here to recalling briefly some of the visible, ordinary

and less esoteric ‘signs’ which have proved of common use in my own

experience, more especially in the Alps.

[Sidenote: Clouds.]

Clouds form our principal sign. It is important to remember that

clouds, while they continue to retain their original form, whatever

that may be, will inflict no rain on us. It is their changes, when they

alter, that we watch, and we predict rain or not according to their

character during and after the changes.

We distinguish between the upper strata of clouds, whose character and

direction are important as giving us the eventual direction of the wind

and the more permanent character of the weather, and the lower strata,

which have only a meaning for the day or hour, and are not prophetic.

In general, clouds in the east alone are a fair sign; clouds in the

west, especially dark clouds, mean rain soon.

High-travelling cirrus clouds portend rain. In the Alps, where the

winds are our real prophets, a distinction is introduced: cirrus,

high and fast on a south or south-west wind, has its usual meaning;

but cirrus on a north, east or south-east wind may accompany or, more

rarely, precede good weather. Castellated cirrus is always a bad sign,

and, where the horizon can be seen, the appearance of cirrus in bands

lengthening up towards the zenith (cirro-stratus) is an unwelcome

event. Dappled cirrus, the so-called ‘roses’ of the south and the

‘sheep flocks’ of the north, implies a change of wind and weather. As

the presence of high cirrus, upon which the change of wind can produce

the dappling, usually means, in the mountains, that uncertain or bad

weather has been preceding the change, the dappling is most often, and

with justice, taken as a good sign. If, however, the weather has been

dull, with merely clouds of heat, and the wind has been good before,

the change portended will be probably for the worse.

Cumulus clouds, when they tower rapidly, and more especially when they

‘topple over,’ or show a tendency to do so, are signals of a change to

rain. A sure method of observing cumulus is to watch some small portion

of the cloud for a space of time. If it grows larger, the sign is a

change for worse weather; if it ravels out and disappears on the warm

air round it, the sign is for good, and the cloud can be disregarded.

Stratus, the long stratified bands of cloud at any height, means bad

weather, and the tendency of cirrus or cumulus to stratify is ominous.

The edges of clouds tell us much of their import: harmless if they are

filmy and ravel out on the warmer air; suspicious if they are hard,

heavily outlined or charged.

An approaching rain-cloud in action is recognizable by the vertical

or slanting lines in the air below it, or by the ‘torn lace’ on the

lower edge. A hail-cloud shows heavier lines. A snow-cloud carries

fuller, harder marginal protuberances, and may be lighter in tone.

Heavy cumulus of this cumbrous sort may often surprise strong sunlight

by a sudden snow-break. Usually we go by temperature and height in

predicting if a ‘wet’ cloud will break in rain or snow.

High ‘mare’s-tails’ betray wind, and predict rain according to their

direction.

‘Fish’ clouds pointing east and west usually mean foul weather;

pointing north and south, fair weather.

Black wisps of cloud before sunrise, especially in a clear sky, mean

early rain. Lighter-toned wisps at this hour have no signification. But

if the lower edges of cloud-films are charged and dark, looking like

ink which has run down into the borders of blotting-paper, we look out

for rain.

Long fingers of cloud radiating from a peak portend storm, particularly

if any one of them betrays the typical thunder-curve. Thunder on a peak

means snow, so we must look out for a cold and electric day.

Thunder-clouds are easily distinguishable. Their form is always

similar. The duplicated outline in the masses of cloud above and below,

the connecting darker neck between, and the leaf-like and invariable

curve of strength where the neck runs out into the profile line of the

upper mass, are sufficiently distinctive. A little further observation

will enable their lines of system and the probable direction of their

movement to be located. The lower mass of cloud may, in cases, be

absent, but the truncated ‘neck’ and the leaf-like ‘curve’ will always

enable us to identify them.

[Sidenote: Wind.]

Even more than the clouds, once we have discovered the habit of the

year and the local signs, the winds are our firm basis for forecast.

The north wind in the Alps is usually for good, though in a bad

season of habit it may, if long continued, bring snow. The south wind

is always fraught with suspicion, until it justifies it. It brings

a succession of storms, but leaves fine intervals. The west wind,

if continuous, means the continuance of unsettled weather, with an

inclination to preserve whatever may be the habit of the year. It is

perhaps the most forcible and trying of winds to encounter on the

ridges exposed to it. The east wind is infrequent and rarely long

continued. Its portent is favourable. The south-west wind means rain

to follow. A change from north to north-west threatens rain. A change

from south-west to north-west--generally a wind on its way to becoming

a north wind--means a change for the better in bad seasons. South-east,

and especially north-east, winds share the good qualities and projects

of the east wind.

The current of the Föhn is recognizable by its accompanying oppression

of warm-parched, or in cases of warm-moist, atmosphere, and by its

depressing effect upon our spirits. It is a harbinger of evil of all

kinds. Its own forerunners are often a massing of heavy-bordered clouds

accompanied by a threatening vividness in all visible coloration. The

Föhn is said to be able to infect, or more probably alternate with,

any wind from any quarter; but we know of it in summer usually in the

south or south-west winds. In the south it is ‘dry,’ in the south-west

it is ‘wet,’ Föhn. Its presence ruins the best-directioned wind; it

underthaws the snow dangerously and spoils our tempers inexplicably.

Sudden gusts and round-the-compass winds are of ill omen. As between

cross-currents of wind, at different levels, the higher alone is worth

attention. Valley currents, particularly those off glaciers, are only

misleading.

The simple sky signs, familiar not only in mountains, give us further

assistance.

[Sidenote: Signs in General.]

A red sunrise is bad; a red sunset good. Sunrise on a grey sky means a

fair day; sunset on a grey or pale yellow sky means a rainy day, on a

bright yellow sky a windy day.

A ‘high dawn,’ the sun showing first over a vapour belt, is an ill

sign; a ‘low dawn,’ the sun leaping from the horizon, a good sign.

If the distant sky at dawn, especially to the west, is low and dark,

there will be breaking weather by noon.

A dark blue sky tells of wind, and probably rain to follow; a light

blue sky is of fair weather.

All over bright or gaudy colours at sunrise or sunset, and all hard

outlines, foretell rain and wind. Delicate colours, well-blended tones

and filmy cloud edges are fine-weather prophets.

Rings round the sun or moon, and vivid twinkling stars in the later

night, are bad signs. Clear nights of cold, and calm and quiet stars

before dawn, are good.

Heavy dews and the falling of the wind at sunset are good signs.

The clearness and nearness of distant hills, except just after rain, is

a bad sign; but here we may distinguish between a clear landscape when

we face towards the sun, which is an ill sign, and a clear landscape

as we stand with our back to the sun, which is quite usually a fair

sign.

Ascending mists on hillsides are bad. Mists in valleys at evening,

clouds lifting at sunset, and hilltops smoking their pipe of evening

peace, are good.

Warm airs as we pass up the lower alps or through the pinewoods mean us

well; but warm nights on the height and in the hut, or the sickly puffs

of warm breath that meet us from the large crevasses as we start up the

glacier before dawn, are omens of ill weather.

Early rain, ‘rain before seven,’ has no serious meaning; it rarely

lasts.

Early white mists should never frighten us from starting, but we must

judge them by feel, texture and direction of movement. An early ominous

mist has a different quality, and lies differently from a simple mist

of the hour.

During the day feeling or instinct is still our principal guide as

to the durable character of changes or of threats of changes. More

especially we go by the feeling of the wind. With a good wind, local

clouds may be disregarded. The eye learns to distinguish between the

heavy leaden-edged look of an increasing mist, and the peculiar silvery

wet aspect, markedly round its edges, of a mist that is in process of

absorption in warm atmosphere.

One of the most beautiful, and baleful, warnings in the Alps is the

view out and across a golden sea of clouds washing up out of Italy or

from the south. They often signify the Föhn. So long as the wind blows

off the mountains, they will be kept below for the day; but once they

begin to make breaches in the walls and surge over the battlements, a

bad afternoon or morrow is in prospect. The change from their golden,

fairy-like distant greeting to their wet, cold and gloomy embrace makes

us reluctant to recall that they are really the same clouds we admired

those hours before.

On large peaks there may be severe local storms even while the sky in

general remains undisturbed. Rock peaks, for example the Matterhorn,

are conspicuous offenders. A small blister of dark, steady cloud may

imply a raging storm on the face below it. Not only at the moment, but

as it affects the later condition of the mountain, the occurrence of

these storms has to be reckoned with.

From a spell of covered or of broken weather we look for a clearing

snowfall as our deliverance; and the more confidently if the wind has

continued throughout to blow from a good quarter, north or east. If the

fall is followed by clear days and three cold nights, we shall find our

high ridges in perfect condition again. If the weather continues broken

and therefore warmer, the snow will at least not have made things

worse; it will have thawed rapidly. It is also worth remembering that

in warmer, broken weather what has fallen as snow at one level may have

been only rain at another, even at a higher, and the moment the clouds

clear we shall, be able to profit by the calculation. I have known the

same storm to have fallen as rain in the valley, snow on the slopes,

and rain again on the high ridges.

[Sidenote: Habit of the Season.]

The habit of the season is always the first matter of study on

returning to the hills. In a habitually fine season, it is safe to go

up to a hut even on a bad day, on the fair chance of a fine recovery

on the morrow. For the same reason, in a habitually bad season, it is

too late to wait for the fine day, and then go up to the hut or out to

the camp. A leader who braves the ridicule of the hotel and the gloom

of the glass, and takes his party up to the hut, with hope undiminished

by failure, on bad days in uncertain seasons, will catch each short

break as it comes, and get a record of climbs that will shock his

valley advisers. He must base his choice, as between the bad days,

upon his observation of the habit that is governing the vagaries of

the season. A very common feature, in unfavourable alpine months, is

the alternations of possible and impossible weather occurring almost

every day--a wet day, followed by a fine morning; a breaking afternoon,

and again a wet day. It is thus most important to “get the alternate

right,” and to correct the order of his going, if to ascend to the hut

on each first fine day proves disappointing. In a recent so-called

‘bad’ season a party ascended thirteen peaks in three weeks, by getting

their ‘alternates’ right at the start, while most parties got only four

or five expeditions in the same time. Occasionally the alternate is one

fine day, or fine half-day, in every three. To meet this habit, or to

discover the order of the alternates in the first place, it is sound

to take up two full days’ provisions to the hut, and to wait there for

a day, if the first day fails to change. A fine morning will suffice

for most climbs suitable for uncertain weather, and a party who have

had courage, and faced the mist, and enjoyed the empty hut at night and

a long fair morning’s climb, will often be granted the extra pleasure

of meeting the usual crowd swarming up to the hut in the afternoon,

attended by every sign of the regular return of clouds and rain.

[Sidenote: Persistence.]

The real principle is to keep on trying in unchancy seasons, and

back up the effort by whatever weather instinct or opportunity of

observation we may enjoy. In valleys continuously cloud-covered

observation becomes uncertain; often the weather may be already clear

at higher levels while it lurks in mist in the valleys. Instinct as

much as judgment must then tell us if we may chance a start, on the

probability that the cloud is really thin and the summits in sun. An

attempt is always worth while if the party is getting depressed by

a succession of days of idle cloud in the hotel. Chance often helps

our predictions. The occasions when instinct or a momentary sight

of the higher and important clouds has given the impulse, added to

the occasions when a bold face has been assumed, in spite of a low

blanket of mist round the hut or hotel, and a start has been ordered

on the chance at the best of clear weather above and at the worst of a

bracing tramp up and back, all taken together have made many a lasting

reputation for miraculous weather wisdom. Some of the most enduring

mountain memories are of days thus retrieved from weeks of ill weather,

and spent upon sunny peaks projecting, with only a few isolated and

lofty companions, from the seas of cloud that covered all the valleys

and lower heights, and with them most of our less fortunate fellows.

Until we possess local weather knowledge, and have rather more to

go upon than bluff, a climb should never be actually started in

threatening weather, still less persisted in against bad weather; which

is a different thing from insisting upon going up to the hut or to the

base of the peak on the chance of a change.

Snow, and continued rain, which may mean snow at higher levels, must

be accepted as definite bars to starting at all.

Cloud, however, is less justifiably used as an excuse for delay in

leaving a warm hut on a dull morning. The personal bias in prediction

must be allowed for before dawn. Guides, who are too often treated

as infallible prophets, are as susceptible as amateurs, at this hour

especially, to specious promptings from the spirit of comfortable

inaction. They are apt to delay a start hour after hour, in a hut or

camp, for the mist-bank to clear and the day to show its hand; and this

with entire unreason. If the weather is going to clear at all, it will

do so at the earlier hour at higher levels; and it is common sense not

to lose valuable time. The sooner we go up the sooner shall we meet the

sun, or find out that it is not there for the day.

Even a stay in a hut is more tolerable than confinement in an hotel.

For this reason, and to save the time and patience spent upon going up

and down from the hut, as well as to be on the spot to catch the right

day, it is often pleasanter to stay up at the hut, and send down a

porter each day for provisions. We are then ready when the change comes

in uncertain seasons.

Snowfall, however, with its hopeless prospect and unpleasing chilly

presence, will suffice to send us down without question. Continued snow

will send us yet further; unless we can arm ourselves with the short

summer ski. In that case we may still refuse to admit defeat, and mint

golden days out of the ashes of a heartless season.

I am speaking here only of weather in the Alps. In more distant

and less hospitable ranges, where the base camp and the rescue of

civilization are more remote, the same persistent course cannot be

maintained in face of continued bad or changeable weather. In small

climbing, as in Britain, we need not regard weather at all. It enforces

all the observation it deserves by the definite limits which wet or

snowy rocks put upon the degree of difficulty which it is safe or

comfortable for us to attempt, and by the temporary discomforts and

restrictions that wind or snow inflict upon our daily expeditions.

TRAINING

[Sidenote: The Framework.]

If any layman in anatomy has ever kept his fingers on trunk or sides

while walking down or up hill, he will have been astonished at the

amount of work that is done by groups of muscles wholly remote from

the calves or thighs upon whose development he has proudly relied.

Suppleness and an even development of hardened muscle all over the body

are what tell in climbing, not local bulges. Most men are designed by

nature to develop most spring, suppleness and strength at a point of

general muscular development which will never earn their portraits a

place beside the corrugated limbs of the gentlemen on the hoardings.

Of course a naturally big-muscled man must remain big-muscled. But it

is the quality of the muscle that counts. Whatever there is, large or

small, it has to be spun into fine silk. Any effort to develop unduly

some group of muscles, in arm or leg, will even prejudice the ease

with which a man can recover in training the harmonious control of his

machinery at its best, and the artificial muscle is apt to degenerate

into fat when he goes out of training. A man, evenly developed

according to his potential strength, even when he goes out of training

has little difficulty in preserving a level, if lower, plane of general

fitness and suppleness; and when the time comes for winding up or for

relaxing, his condition moves evenly and easily up or down, and he is

ready, in a few days if he is young, in rather more as time goes on, to

climb again at his best.

To keep in moderate training out of season, any regular exercise in

the open air is sufficient which exercises different parts of the

apparatus of the body in their relation to one another, and which holds

the attention. Monotonous repetitions of particular muscular movements

are of little service. They bore the mind and weary the nerves; and it

is the interworking of his nerves, muscles and will that a climber has

to train. If he is prevented by circumstances from getting open air

exercise, he may find fencing the most effective, concentrated and

lasting indoor practice which he can fit conveniently into his working

day. An hour’s hard fencing with both hands, comprising exercises, free

play and a cold douche to finish, uses every muscle and connection of

the body to the full, but risks no local strain. For in fencing every

movement must be supple and yet controlled; the whole system is kept

concentrated, and at full tension, upon movements minute, quick and

fine. The training in rapid adjustments and lightning reactions is

invaluable to the climber, and its unboisterous character makes it

possible of continuance without prejudice well into old age.

If he can face them, dancing and skipping are admirable exercises to

the same end. Tree climbing, or even haystack climbing, where possible,

are also fine climbing practice. Swimming and sculling exercise organs

and muscles smoothly and develop them evenly. Swimming has no equal

as an exercise for growing strength. It runs no risk of violent local

strain, and it cannot be continued beyond the point of wholesome

fatigue. In all its varieties and attendant circumstances it combines

more educative merits than any other form of open air sport.

My own view is that the development of special groups of muscles

is best left for the climbing days themselves to effect. ‘Morning

exercises,’ before the cold bath, are excellent to get the circulation

right, and better than nothing for climbers whose day allows them no

more wholesome outdoor activity. Among special exercises I should put

first those that strengthen the forearm and fingers, for ‘gripping’;

those that build up the muscles of the trunk, which have the greatest

share of work to do in climbing; those that train the body to balance

easily up and down on one leg, for balance; and those (if there are

any but wood chopping) which prepare the shoulders and trunk for the

movement of step cutting. But the working in easy combination of

groups of muscles is what the climber aims at. Excessive exercise

of independent groups is apt to militate against quick muscular

interaction. It is well, therefore, to make movements in combinations,

and constantly to vary them. This helps to keep the attention

concentrated. So does a looking-glass. Boredom invalidates the whole

effort. Each movement should represent a separate effort of the will.

[Sidenote: The Organs.]

For a climber the lungs and heart must be the chief care. The action

of walking uphill, the lifting of foot and arm continuously and with

effort, make a sustained extra demand upon these organs especially. In

climbing they have to supply the fuel consumed in muscular effort, and

to throw off the poisonous residue, in greater quantity than in normal

action, and at an increased pace. The effects of the extra effort,

shortness of breath, fatigue, exhaustion, even, in cases, suffocation,

are symptoms of the failure of the heart and lungs, in varying degrees,

to maintain the equilibrium between the supply and discharge of fuel.

The muscle cells and the lungs are being starved of their substance,

and the acids are accumulating too rapidly to be naturally got rid of.

The heart is consequently enfeebled, the lungs get choked, and the

exhaustion increases progressively. The severe muscular strain of a

difficult rock feat is in this way doubly exhausting. The local tension

is consuming the muscle cells at an abnormal rate, and therefore

putting an excessive demand upon the heart and lungs to keep them

supplied; and at the same time the contraction of all the great muscles

of the trunk, involved in the local effort, is compressing the great

organs from outside, and thus impeding their action in producing the

increased supply required. Hence the ‘panting’ of an untrained climber

after any severe rock passage, however short the effort.

Now, both heart and lungs can learn by practice to perform their normal

functions at more than double their normal rate, and yet to maintain

the equilibrium in the supply and discharge of fuel such as is needed

to allow them to continue their free action.

Hence a climber is concerned to accustom his heart to accelerate,

without enfeebling its action and thus diminishing the amount of fuel

which each pulsation is supplying. Also, so to exercise his lungs that

a number of breathing sacks, not usually employed, may be ready and

accustomed for easy use whenever the extra call may be put upon them.

By practice a number of dormant lung sacks, as well as those in normal

use, may be actually increased in elasticity and volume, so that the

lungs as a whole will be prepared to receive a far greater quantity of

‘breath,’ whenever that may be required for a greater effort.

The training for the heart is a regular and increasing graduation of

effort, developed in healthful exercises such as walking, running,

swimming, wood chopping, etc., and practised until even a violent or

long-sustained effort can be made without panting or discomfort.

The training for ‘breath’ is deep breathing; from the bottom of the

lungs, and through the nose as much as through the mouth; practised

either in the course of natural open air exercise, or, almost as

effectively, by slow inhalation and exhalation, for a few moments each

day, in the best air obtainable. To increase the capacity of the lungs

is to increase the chest measurement, that healthful vanity which

mountaineering, above all exercises, flatters. Contrary to our ideas

as boys, this is effected from the inside, by breathing, and not from

the outside, by arm exercises, etc. ‘Chest’ exercises, indeed, help

to make supple the ligaments of the outside framework, and so permit

of a greater elasticity in the breathing cells within. Otherwise they

are only of use in so far as they demand, or are accompanied by, deep

breathing.

[Sidenote: Will and Nerves.]

A climber has also to remember the very active share that his will

power must take in difficult or prolonged mountaineering. He depends

upon his will to supply to a large extent the impulse, physical and

moral, when nerves and muscles begin to show signs of unwilling

service. Among some of the greatest of mountaineers, will has to a

notable extent supplied the place of physique. They have climbed

on their ‘vitality,’ as we say; on the success of their will in

maintaining the impulse to movement long after the muscles have

protested their inability to continue the rate of consumption of energy.

The impulses of the will are communicated physically. Their

transmission exhausts nerve-fibre as materially as muscular action.

As the muscles tire, the messages from the will quicken and increase.

The nerve transmitters get irritated, and finally revolt. As a result,

we have the frequent mountaineering symptoms of ennui, irritation,

conscious fatigue and, in extreme cases, of complete nervous incapacity

to resolve upon making another step. But the nerves call for a truce

before the muscles are actually exhausted. The muscles, male fashion,

invariably protect themselves by retaining some reserve of energy, if

only a way can be found of exacting it. Some new interest or excitement

may do this; the messages are then switched on to other nerve-lines,

the congestion of monotony is relieved, and the will resumes control of

the communications, to the extent of obtaining whole hours of further

effort from the striking muscles.

But training offers us a surer way of postponing or avoiding these

strikes. The body is animated in two fashions from the spinal nerves:

by the messages that pass through the brain--I speak as a layman--and

by those which serve that mysterious but autocratic regent of our

habits, the ‘subconsciousness.’ Under the latter are grouped all our

automatic actions, and the more actions we can qualify for admission

to its extremely select group of well-ordered subjects, the fewer

sequences of orders will the dictator-brain have to promulgate on

their account, and the less congested will be the nerve-lines of

communications. Walking, for instance, is, with most people, a

subconscious action. Once the impulse to step out has been given, the

legs will continue to walk automatically so long as the look or feel of

the familiar smooth surface continues to suggest the familiar reflex. A

change of surface may disturb and therefore make the effort conscious;

otherwise the walking can be maintained without fatigue for a much

longer time than the same group of muscles could have held out had they

been performing some unfamiliar action, and therefore been under the

direction of conscious impulses.

The human frame, in attaching itself at two, three or four points

to any ordinary surface, is capable of only a limited number of

positions. Holds upon rock or ice, suitable for use, not unnaturally

recur frequently in similar groupings upon the same type of surface.

Consequently, there are whole series of positions of the body and

limbs which are constantly repeating themselves in climbing. The more

of these subconscious associations which a climber can succeed, by

practice, in establishing, as between familiar sequences of holds and

automatic adjustments of his motions to their requirements, the fewer

calls will he have to make upon nerves and will, and the greater,

therefore, will be his endurance. It is largely on this account that

a climber, as he gets experience, finds that he can climb with always

decreasing effort. It is for this reason also that long, continuous

rock ridges, with oft-recurring situations, form the best initial

training for young mountaineers and the best annual reintroduction for

their elders.

A climber who can get away, if only for a day or so, at frequent

intervals, to rocks small or big behind his house or on convenient

hills, secures the best training for his balance, his nerves and

his muscles, not by attempting extravagant gymnastic problems, but

by practising, and always adding to, the number of his sequences of

familiar climbing movements. He must learn to perform these with such

facility that, finally, their execution becomes subconscious. On a

long climb ten out of every twelve situations will be familiar to

experience. Suitable training will enable him to meet these ten with

the right motions, without conscious effort, automatically. The nerves

and the will-power are thus economically kept in reserve for the

remaining two.

[Sidenote: Nerve.]

Many of us take a day or two at the beginning of the season to get

back our ‘nerve.’ We boggle at a bold reach, or feel inclined to

crawl where we know we should stride. This is not due to any fine new

sensitiveness to mountain danger, acquired during our civilized sojourn

in the plains; it has nothing to do with vertigo or effect of height.

It is simply lack of condition. By inaction we have allowed sets of

automatic motions to become unfamiliar. The will has, therefore, to

take charge, and does so tentatively, like a professor of metaphysics

left in charge of a class of elementary school-children. The nerve

communications are sluggish from disuse; the muscles are out of

control, and distrustful of what the arbitrary will may ask of them. We

become ‘nervous,’ and potter. This can all be avoided by reasonable and

light practice. Regular exercise of the heart, the lungs, the muscles

and the nerve-lines of communications, with occasional repetitions of

our groups of familiar subconscious motions, will maintain a general

level of fitness even out of training. If the machinery is kept working

smoothly, we can soon get it going at high pressure again, and can

return to top condition without any local strikes or nerve signals.

The final tuning up to meet the call of the mountain holiday will then

proceed easily, of itself, in action. For a man whose system is set,

and who practises a consistent habit of living, the amount of actual

exercise required during the intervals to preserve his elasticity is

usually small, and tends to diminish. This is one of the compensations

of advancing years.

[Sidenote: Height and Reach.]

No man by any pleasing afterthought can add to his height; although by

suppling his shoulders and lengthening by exercise his trunk muscles

he can extend his apparent upward reach. The stride of the tall man

before us over soft snow; the long-armed man’s careless caress of a

salvation hold well beyond our reach; the inimitable and perpetual

rhythm maintained by the Agile Gibbon of the Zoological Gardens, on the

security of his four whiplash limbs,--these are natural advantages,

whose injustice we may challenge but not compete with. Their regretful

contemplation suggests, however, the possible usefulness of a warning,

and some consolations.

A man of great reach, whose span from toe to upstretched finger

approaches or exceeds eight feet, has one undoubted advantage on

difficult rocks, where holds are rare and precious. If his legs are

long enough to allow him to sit across the smooth sheer walls of a

chimney or to straddle it on small footholds, he has yet another. But

he must expect to suffer from the drawbacks incidental to height. A

tall man may be weak in the body muscles, with less suppleness and ease

of balance, or, if he is muscularly developed all over, his weight is

apt to increase with time out of all proportion to the suspensory power

of his fingers on small holds. If he is tall, slight and sinewy, his

strength of arm and hand is rarely proportionate to his greater weight,

or equal to the greater expenditure on leverage which height requires

of arms in balance climbing. If he is tall, muscular and heavy, this

weakness pursues him in the same ratio. If chimneys are narrow, he

is too long to ‘bridge’ them securely; if the holds are tricky and

slight, he finds greater difficulty and effort in ‘folding up’ so as

to use them, and in keeping his centre of balance well in and above

his feet. It is a consolation for a short or slight man that great

experts in climbing are to be found among men of every build, with a

preponderance in favour of those of medium height and of sinewy and

supple rather than of big muscular development. The outside feats of

rock climbing, the abnormal climbs made by a few men in recent years,

undoubtedly require abnormal strength of finger and arm, not seldom

accompanied by great size of hand. But these men have also possessed

an equal development of strength and rhythm in body and leg; their

all-round design has been abnormal. When, as in one or two cases, their

exceptional physical development has been assisted by great height

or great reach, without loss to rhythm or balance or to the sterling

quality of supple sinews, the perfection of the climbing machine has

been attained.

For the normal climber to imitate the performance of these men is to

incur a proportion of danger, the measure of the interval between their

abnormal reach and power and his own, expressed in terms of all too

distant or too indefinite rock holds, such as no sane man has the right

to risk from any emulative or competitive feeling.

Every climber has to recognize that there is an absolute upper limit

to that which it is physically possible for a body of his design, when

developed to its utmost, to perform. If he concentrates upon an even

and efficient training of his own measure of power, and climbs always

well within his confident capacity, he will have the gratification, as

time goes on, of finding that his improving knowledge of himself, added

to his increasing experience, enables him, little by little, to reduce

the margin between his own achievements and the humanly impossible.

By a pleasing accident in rock structure, rock is either utterly

impossible, smooth or stratified at gigantic intervals, or its

cleavages and intrusions, and consequently its holds, occur at

intervals within the average man’s reach. While a tall man has,

therefore, a greater choice of holds, qualified in his case by a

greater effort in using them, a shorter man has only to perfect his

skill, and to profit by his lightness and balance, to be able to keep

level with him in performance on all normal rock. Again I except

the superman climbs, which are climbs made by exceptional men upon

exceptional accidents in rock structure.

As a further compensation, peculiar to advancing years, a lightly

built man who lives healthily finds less difficulty in recovering

a condition of hard training and in keeping up his standard of

achievement. Failure in wind or increase in weight may make the

process of recovery longer each year by a few days, but he has not the

handicap to contend with which threatens the big or heavily muscled

man, who requires constant and intensive exercise to check the local

degenerations which increase with time.

Climbing is one of the few exercises that can be continued well into

what used to be deemed old age. Trained nerve, tough sinew, supple

muscle, experience in adjustments, in balance, in foresight and in

economy of strength, compensate for the loss of youth, for its fire

and spring. An old climber of the balance school can mountaineer in

the front rank until the last, and, by a happy compensation which no

other interest enjoys, when the deterioration of the body finally

begins and the natural powers fail, the desire for the fiercer emotions

of difficult climbing contentedly diminishes. In their place the

inexhaustible mountains discover a whole range of subtler sensations;

returning for our feet the echo of lost rhythmic movements perfected

by complacent memory, and using even the shadows of our sunset years

to throw into relief treasures both of human and picturesque interest,

which were unnoticed or hurried over in the daylit enthusiasm of

athletic youth.

PACE

Pace is a matter of vital importance in mountaineering of any

magnitude. Unfortunately, guide-books of recent years, by recording

the ‘best times’ taken on ascents for future guidance, have given

a certain amount of encouragement to racing for records and so to

competitive climbing. A confusion has thus been produced between pace

and racing in the minds of many sound mountaineers. The mere mention of

the word ‘pace’ provokes them to a protest against record-breaking. A

natural, but equally dangerous, reaction has followed, which condemns

consideration of ‘times’ altogether, and advocates “idling on the

great ridges” as the peculiar joy of the guideless or the true-hearted

mountaineer.

[Sidenote: Adjustment of Time.]

Pace does not mean racing. It means the adjustment of the length of the

climb to the length of the day, and the adjustment of the progress of

the of climber to the length of the climb. A certain amount of ground

must be covered in all great ascents, and there are only certain hours

of daylight in which to cover it. No mountaineer is competent who

cannot relate in advance the measure of daylight at his disposal to the

measure of the distance to be traversed, and keep to that measure in

action. Only the men who know how to save time upon this calculation

have it to spend upon hours of luxurious rest and interval. There is

nothing more fatal to pleasure or to safety than to realize, perhaps

too late, that the race with darkness and benightment has begun. Those

who are loudest in the valley in their protest against climbing by the

watch are the most often challenged or beaten by night in this, the

most dangerous form of racing.

[Sidenote: Benightment.]

Getting benighted is not a pleasure, and it is rarely necessary.

It has been given a false halo of romance by the practice and the

picturesque descriptions of a number of guideless mountaineers, who

first render it inevitable by attempting what is beyond them, or by

carrying great weights, and then seek to convince themselves and the

world that the consequent night out on a lofty ledge or glacier forms

an essential and agreeable part of mountaineering. It is neither. On

a rare occasion it may be unavoidable, as the result of unforeseen

circumstances, bad weather or altered conditions coming on too late

to allow of the proper alternative, which is to turn back in time. If

benightment is frequently incurred, it is a sign of some grave defect

in mountaineering judgment. As a habit it is folly.

By daylight the climber has the hundred chances of activity, warmth and

sight in his favour. At night he is the passive and blinded recipient

of any evil chance that storm, cold, wind, illness or accident may

bring him. To be on a mountain unprepared at night is to increase the

percentage of danger incalculably; and stars, sunrise and sunset can be

enjoyed without its unaccountable risk.

Most European mountains are of a height to be climbed, with a

reasonable calculation of pace, in a single day. When they are beyond

this range, huts are to be found, or a bivouac can be contrived. The

night out by intention at the beginning of an ascent has more than the

romantic pleasure, because none of the dangerous discomfort, of the

night out by miscalculation at its end. This reasonable anticipation

presupposes a precise estimate in advance of the pace required, as well

as of the length of the climb. Such an estimate does not mean fixing

such and such hours for so much of the ridge, and so much time for

every halt, which is slavery; but it implies a general preconsideration

of what ground must be covered and within what general divisions of

time certain fixed points should be reached in order to allow of a safe

return by daylight.

Pace is the regulation of the progress, and of the halts, of the party

in relation to these general fixed points.

[Sidenote: Weight Handicaps.]

To carry unnecessarily heavy loads as a precaution against cold or

hunger in case of benightment--a very common custom--is to increase

the actual probability of the event by further checking the rate of

progress. It is better to go as light as possible, with the minimum

of portable protection sufficient to preserve life in case of

ill-fortune, and to concentrate all the energy upon a timely conquest

of difficulty, such as will ensure a return before night. The muscles,

not unduly weighted, must see to it that there is always a margin of

time in hand upon the estimate, to allow for unforeseen checks.

With regard to this there is another common error. Those who confuse

pace with racing, picture a party rushing breathlessly over easy and

difficult alike, and panting at their rest-points watch in hand. As a

reaction from the picture, they themselves make the long, easy passages

that constitute the major part of most ascents the occasion for a

relenting rather than a quickening of pace; with the result that they

have no margin of time for the unforeseen or the unexpectedly difficult

passages.

A party that does good times takes each passage at the maximum pace

consistent with comfort, allowing for its degree of difficulty. It has

consequently always time in hand to allow of leisurely exploration,

when found expedient, and of a more careful overcoming of the real

problems when they occur.

[Sidenote: Continuous Going.]

Pace means the continuous progress of a party over the whole length of

a climb, allowing reasonable variations for more complicated passages

or for halts. It will be found that a party that does good times rarely

hurries. It is, after all, human, and it dislikes being pressed. Nor

has it any need to be. An experienced party starts slowly--more slowly,

usually, than less expert climbers. It knows that pace to be good must

be effortless, and must become mechanical, and that the muscles must

be given time to get warm and work up to their automatic rhythm. Once

this rhythm is attained it will, for the sake of good progress, avoid

alike both hurrying and frequent halting. To hurry will interfere with

the bodily functions, and react upon heart and lungs and will; and to

halt will disturb the rhythm and chill the muscles. It will aim at

continuous steady going, and save its seconds and minutes over ground

of easy movement, ready to spend time freely again so as to economize

effort on more difficult passages.

[Sidenote: Combination.]

Combination is the secret of saving seconds. Consider for a moment the

case of a roped party that has not learned the secret of pace, and is

moving all together on easy rock. Inattentive to a common rate, one man

lags, one goes unevenly, there is constant check or turning round to

talk, each with its break of continuity of rhythm. On a three hours’

traverse of broken ridge half an hour will have been lost only in

disentangling the rope on such interrupted, uneven going. The leader,

at the end, will be vexed at the shorter time given in the guide-book,

and expostulate, with justice, “Why, I was hurrying all the time!”

Or again, watch a party of average amateurs moving one at a time on

steep rock. The first man reaches his ledge, preens his plumes for

a second or two in the sun of his success, possibly discusses it in

detail with his second man below, looks round for a hold or belay,

takes a position, alters it, and shouts, “Come along.” The second

calls, “Are you all right?” The first man is disturbed, readjusts

his body, gets back to the old position, and says “Yes,” or “Half a

moment.” Thirty seconds or more will be gone before the second man can

start. He reaches the ledge, does not take note of the first man’s

position for holding before it is surrendered to him, and has to

rediscover it anew, all with the same delay; and another half-minute is

gone. If this performance is repeated, as it will be, several hundred

times in the day, by one or more of a party, two invaluable hours at

least will have dropped completely out of the allowance of time for

the climb! The party will remember that they did their actual climbing

fast; on their return they will look up the better ‘times’ of the book,

and abuse their predecessors for ‘racing,’ for ‘dangerous pace,’ etc.,

whereas the only difference has been that their predecessors saved,

while they wasted, innumerable, all-important, intervening seconds.

[Sidenote: Halts.]

Continuous progress is the essence of pace. While a party is in motion,

the effort should be directed at keeping the pace constant, not at

hurrying it. There will then be larger margins for completer rests at

the proper halting times and places. Time can also be saved during

halts. It is a great mistake to hurry men over their food; a due

allowance of time should be made both for food and rest. But the time

of rest should be used for resting. Too much of it is usually lost, and

more than intended is often taken, in standing about at the beginning

of a halt, or by slackness at the end: one man has misplaced his axe;

another finds out for the first time that his puttie wants rewinding;

and so on. Once the time allowed for the halt is over, the packing and

restart should be brisk and immediate. Rest intervals are assuredly a

part of the day’s measure, but dawdling at their edges is time lost

from the climbing hours, not time added to the resting.

[Sidenote: The Maximum Rhythm.]

Moving slowly is not less effort than moving reasonably fast. The

muscles in movement generate their own warmth, which is the body’s

energy. Muscles when in training can consume and create their own

energy at more than their normal rate without more effort. The maximum

pace for a man is the highest rate of effort at which his system will

carry on its functions without demanding direct impulses of will

from the brain, and without generating more waste matter than it can

naturally consume and discharge. Each man has his maximum rhythm,

which varies according to his condition. Up to this maximum he can

climb, when in training, without feeling increased fatigue. Above it,

his system will soon feel symptoms of exhaustion; below it, he gets

no profit from the relaxation, and even suffers some prejudice to his

energy in the loss of a sustained rhythm.

The pace of a party is the maximum rhythm of its weakest member.

A good mountaineering party moving continuously and in combination in

the common time of its comfortable maximum rhythm will gain steadily on

a less experienced rope, although it may allow itself longer definite

intervals of “idling on the great peaks,” and spend even more moments

on its difficult passages. The margin in time which it will save

will serve, on a well-calculated day, to see the party of sustained

pace down to easy going before darkness. The one party will be home

to dinner; the other may be still struggling at midnight with the

quadrupling of difficulties night brings in its train, or sitting out

and relieving its feelings by accusing the former party of ‘racing.’

Gradual beginning, gradual acceleration and uninterrupted moving on

a steady top-gear of comfortable pace keep a party fresh, and leave

it free to appreciate the beauty of the day or of the climb. Its mind

is relieved of care as to a timely return, and it can enjoy a margin

of leisure, when it pleases, in pleasant exploration, in essaying

experimental routes or in the meditation that mimics slumber.

The real freedom to rest, to idle and to enjoy themselves where and

when they will, is only for those who have the measure of their day

well in hand, and who know that their collective pace, their maximum

rhythm of comfort, before it can rise to a rate of disagreeable effort,

has a point or two of pressure still to spare, to recover lost ground

or to meet emergency.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Except where it is expressly stated, or is plain from

the context, that the word ‘leader’ refers to the ‘first man’ on the

rope, it is used of the most experienced mountaineer of a party, the

one who exercises the functions of manager in matters of organization

or arrangement and of leader or director in the actual business of

climbing.

[2] See “Equipment,” pp. 82 and 86.

[3] See “Snow Craft,” p. 332.