CORRECTIVE METHOD
Mountain craft has for its object to get us up and down mountains
without mistakes. All our training aims at reducing continually the
limits within which our mistakes might occur. But human beings are
fallible, and mountains are perverse. Mistakes will still be made; and
it is our business to learn how to remedy them, as well as how to avoid
them. Our corrective technique must seek to prevent mistakes developing
into disasters; and, a further step, guide us to a right conduct when
the disaster can no longer be prevented.
Climbing accidents have a theatrical appeal, because of their dramatic
circumstance, and the world at large has an exaggerated notion of their
frequency. Compared with other active sports, in which the element of
danger is tacitly accepted as part of the fascination, climbing has a
singularly clear record. Aviation, hunting, sailing, football--their
toll of fatal accidents is accepted almost without comment. Only
in mountaineering does the sudden and spectacular suggestion of
annihilation make the isolated accident flare like innumerable stars in
the imaginative public eye. And yet of British mountaineers not one per
cent are killed climbing.
HUMAN FALLIBILITY
Although fatal accidents are extremely rare, falls, slips and missteps
are common,--as common, and as a rule no more harmful than falls out
hunting or skating. There are falls from over-confidence, falls from
inexperience, and falls from pure accident in all active sports. It
lies with the experience and skill of the party to prevent such a
climbing fall being anything more than an interruption. It were better
avoided altogether: but climbers are not all perfect at their start,
and mountains may be perverse; and it is only sensible to recognize
that mistakes must occur in spite of all precaution, and to study how
to deal with their effects.
A safe mountaineer climbs without stumble, but he is also always alert
to check some one else’s incipient slip. The management of the rope
has prevention of accident as its first object. But correction of the
consequences is its second.
[Sidenote: Giving Warning.]
When men are moving singly, up or down steep rock, a fall that can
injure should be impossible for anyone but the leader or last man.
If the ordinary precautions are observed, a slip of a few inches is
the most that can result. But although we may count upon each other’s
alertness, we must give the rope, and ourselves, every chance. If
we feel a hold giving or muscles failing, we must give warning at
once, and then hang on for just the extra second--nearly always
possible--which will allow our friend above to brace every muscle to
meet the direct pull, or to intrude his utmost ‘spring’ between the
rope and the belay. There exists a superstition that to fall silently
is to fall courageously. The man above is sure to hold--“that’s his
business”; whereas our own concern, in such extremity, lies only with
our own dignity. But even in falling we remain a member of the party,
and we have no right to indulge a personal gratification. And so a
quick ‘Look out!’ and the fraction of a second’s hang-on, which are
enough to secure the concentration not only of the anchor-man but of
all the rope, must be counted as our bounden duty.
The same obligation holds good in the case of a party all moving
together along a ridge, or up or down an easy climb. If one man feels
his foothold or his balance going, he has always the instant’s time to
shout a warning before his weight can come on the rope. The man behind,
if there is one, will have had his eyes on him and will be ready; it is
the man in front, with his back turned, whom he has to consider. This
front man will, if he is climbing soundly, have been all along taking
holds with his margin of resistance in mind. He will also have been
noting, if not using in rapid passage, all the points for a possible
anchor of the rope. The instant’s warning will enable him to brace as
he stands, without looking round, or to fling the rope round a point
to support himself before the jerk comes. In such climbing the rope is
never quite taut between climbers, and there will be the run-out of the
length of rope slackened by the man falling to add to the interval of
time which his shout should have given for preparation.
The last man on the rope, when all are moving together in ascent or
descent, has a special obligation to give this timely warning, since no
one has him in view. The instant he hears the warning or the scrape on
the rock, every man braces his muscles, and, if possible, anchors his
rope. A practised ear distinguishes at once between the ordinary clean
scrape of a climbing boot and the scuffled scrape of a slip, or the
snap of a breaking handhold. On a thoroughly united rope it sometimes
seems as if a premonition of the imminent slip must have reached a
good climber in front, even before the sound, some consciousness of an
interruption in the current of sympathetic action, so sure has been
the anticipation and swift the check. But a man who has himself passed
a passage has already a half-realized idea of the sort of trap it may
present, even if he himself evades it, and his quickened senses are the
sooner prepared for the nerve-thrill that precedes the actual warning
by as much as thought can out-distance sound.
[Sidenote: Easing the Check.]
If a climber has had no warning, or for other reasons cannot at once
brace into a secure position, he should let the rope slip through his
hand until he has had time to adjust his balance. This is one of the
occasions when gloves are a help. The first touch will tell him if
he can hold fast at once or must let the rope slip for the moment.
Very few falls on places where a party is able to move together are
absolutely clear, or come with the full jerk of the whole weight at the
start. This is especially the case on snow, where friction also checks
the pace. I have had on several occasions the man above or below me in
a steep snow or ice couloir fall out of a breaking step while we were
all descending together. On an occasion when the man below me slipped,
my first effort to check the rope told me that I was not firm enough.
A second or two were needed to allow myself and the man roped to me
above to get ‘planted.’ I partially checked the rope three times, and
had to let it go again at cost of hand and glove, before I felt the
rope from the man above tighten on my waist, and so knew that we were
ready to take the full jerk together, from our combined stances. The
intermediate checks had broken the impetus sufficiently to make the
final arrest easy. On another occasion in a steep couloir, when I was
descending first, the man above me slipped, and the last man on the
rope, then in mid-stride, was unable alone to check the slide at once.
He therefore let the rope rush through his hand until the sliding man
had spun down past me. Then, of course, my rope to him also came into
action, and, dividing the shock between us, we easily stopped the fall.
On rock, as a rule, such gradual checks are impossible. Fortunately
upon rock, in proportion as the need for an immediate check is the
more imperative, firm stances, with sound rock hand and foot holds and
complementary anchors round rock points, are more present and instantly
serviceable.
[Sidenote: Checking on Traverses.]
The middle men on traverses are adequately protected, and need only be
checked in the usual manner. But if a leader or last man falls, before
or behind us, on a long traverse, it is not sufficient merely to hold
firmly or to hold the belay. If we remain stoutly inactive, he will
have enough rope out to fall far enough for injury before the rope can
tighten, and far enough to risk a snap in the rope when the full jerk
comes. The rope must be snatched in as he falls, round the belay or
loose in the hands. If the fall is from our own level, or from only
diagonally above us, we can tighten the rope at once, and this serves
to give a sideways tug to the man falling, which lessens the force of
the final jerk as he swings in below us. During a fall of fifty feet
from a traverse on our level, there may be time to race in a fifth of
the length before the jerk comes. On such traverses, except in a party
of two, there will be usually some one else on our own level, or near
it, who will share the shock with us by tightening his rope on our
waist. If the third man is near enough to help in actually holding the
loose rope, or in belaying it as it comes in, so much the better. We
are the freer ourselves to rush in as much of the flying slack as time
allows us. If he is not near enough to help, we must be prepared, as we
cannot pull in and secure the rope at the same time, to let the rope
tear out again when the jerk comes, tightening and relaxing it through
our hands until we are certain that our balance has survived the shock.
The action of the party of two in like circumstance is considered later.
After the ‘fall’ of a man from above or on our level, or after the few
inches of downward movement, more properly termed a ‘decline,’ which
are all that a well-managed rope will permit to a man below us, it is
better to lower the man down to a good stance, rather than yield to a
universal inclination and attempt to haul him up over the ground he has
lost before he has recovered wind and nerve. It means less effort for
both.
[Sidenote: The Case of the End Men.]
A leader, or a last man down, does not fall. It is the first condition
of his hegemony that he must not. His fall from any height must
mean injury to himself, and may involve the whole party. In insular
climbing, where distances to hotels and rescue are small and easy
descents usually available, a man may, if he desires it, and his
second man allows it, take the chance of falling and hurting himself,
provided that his party is safely anchored. His injury then only
involves certain hours of delay and dangerous exposure for himself,
and such anxiety and fatigue to his friends as they may suffer in
finding help and in rescuing him. But in the Alps, to fall as a leader
is to fail lamentably and egregiously as a mountaineer. To fall, get
injured and survive in the Alps is more actually dangerous to the rest
of the party than to get killed. Its members must separate. One at
least must risk exposure and other objective dangers and stay with the
injured man. One, or two, if happily there are four in the party, must
face the peril of descent alone, probably late in the day, certainly
shaken by the accident, to seek help. The risks and difficulties of
mountaineering are increased tenfold for a lonely man, or for a party
returning thus shorthanded and unbalanced. More than once the partial
incapacitation of one climber has resulted in the death of one of the
friends who went to get help for him.
In big mountains we may not take chances, not even the youngest of
us. Rock climbers who have learned how to take their risks only for
themselves on our own hills, with open eyes and in no rash spirit, and
think to take them also only for themselves when they go to the Alps,
are all too commonly blind to their very different conditions and the
far graver collective effects of an individual blunder. An injured man
in the Alps means a crippled party. Those uninjured are handicapped in
time, combination and nerve to meet the consequent race with darkness
or the chances of night, and frost, and crevasse, and avalanche; but
they are forced to take these risks in double measure, at double pace,
and with reduced strength, disregarding most of the usual precautions
on their own account, if they are to give their injured companion a
chance of timely rescue.
[Sidenote: The Measure of Courage.]
A leader or a last man in the Alps absolutely must not fall. We may
accept the fact that daring leaders will take risks, and that accidents
can happen, provided every leader is aware of the distinction between
the risks which no man may allow himself to take for his party even
with their consent, and the risks which he may take for himself alone,
but which his friends will be ill-advised if they allow him to incur.
We cannot but be grateful for the spirit, though it is but human to
criticize the action, of men who find joy in a contest with forces
greater than themselves. Too often the profitable by-products of
successful courage are alone admitted as justifications for the spirit
in which adventure is undertaken. Deaths above the clouds or under
the water are taken as heroic incidents, excusable in the interests
of human progress. Deaths upon rock or under snow, inspired by the
like and often by an even more disinterested spirit of adventure, are
condemned as folly. Mountaineering must be judged by a spiritual, not
a utilitarian, standard. Courage, moral and physical, that has its
source in vigorous vitality and its goal in the extension of human
freedom, finds on the hills its hardiest school. It is a very wholesome
emulation that leads men, as their skill and power increase, to measure
them against ever-increasing natural difficulties. Our competition
with the mountains injures no other human competitor by our success.
Our conquest of them ends only in the conquest of ourselves. During
these last years by none has the sacrifice been made more willingly
than by our younger climbers. Their courage was that of the races from
which they sprang: to mountaineering they owed its discovery and its
training. We may not reproach it to the hills if the self-reliance
they teach leads, here or there, some high heart into danger, before
their harder lesson, of experience, has been learned.
And having said this, I must repeat that a leader in the Alps or big
ranges, before he takes a chance, must make certain that the risk will
be confined to himself, supposing such certainty can ever be attained.
When he has made as certain of this as he can--he must not fall!
[Sidenote: The Second Man’s Action.]
But still, miscalculation is possible and accidents may occur. A hold
may have broken, and an end man, leading or last, has fallen. In the
case of a fall, the second man’s duty is to the party, and only in so
far as the greater includes the less, to the leader. The leader has
endangered the safety of the whole rope, which lay in his hands, by
risking a fall; the duty devolves upon the second man to counteract the
further consequences and to take up the leader’s duty to the collective
security of the rope. No leader who deserves the position will have
fallen on any but difficult rock, where the party are moving singly and
where they are properly secured. His second man will therefore have him
either well belayed, or be in a position calculated to meet the chance
of his fall. On steep upward or downward climbing he will rarely be
able to pull in much of the rope as it rushes past. If he is alone on
the stance, he cannot take the chance, as a man often can on a traverse
where he is well backed up, of doing anything that will risk the final
jerk catching him unprepared. If he, too, falls, it is seldom that
others of the party can arrest the twofold fall. His corrective action
is practically confined to doing all he can to spring the rope, with
arm, hand or body, so as to lessen the chance of its snapping.
It is one of the more serious attractions of climbing two alone, that
the two men can divide all responsibility equally, and take their
chances happily together, without one of them ever being placed in the
painful position of choosing between two duties. In a party of two the
second’s duty is only to his leader. He shares in the decision to try
or not to try. If the attempt fails, and the leader falls, he holds him
or he falls with him. He can give himself wholeheartedly to his first
natural impulse, which is to associate himself entirely with the man
in danger. If it is the best chance for both, he will hold the belay,
and let the rope take its chance. But he is free to take a greater risk
for himself by attempting to rush in the rope or by hazarding more of
his direct intervention between the leader and the belay, if he thinks
that by so doing he can lessen the even greater danger to his leader
of the rope breaking. The decision, like all a second man’s decisions
about his duties, is difficult, and must be made like lightning; but in
a party of two it is at least not complicated by any hurried alteration
in the order of his duties, such as follows upon the fall of a leader
in a larger party. His first duty, in that case, is to the rest of the
party; the duty to the leader descending, with him, into second place.
[Sidenote: After a Fall.]
If a leader has once fallen, even if he is not physically injured,
he must be treated, for the time at least, as no longer in control.
The second, in consultation with the rest of the party, must decide
whether advance is still possible. No man’s judgment, nerve or temper
can be entirely unaffected by a fall, and even if the nerves appear
unshaken at the moment, a reaction follows later. Our object must be
to postpone this inevitable nervous reaction, both for the man and for
the party. If the leader is uninjured, action is the best restorative;
and I believe the wiser course often is to encourage him to resume the
lead, and so force himself to concentrate all his faculties upon his
immediate task, and on that alone. It requires some confidence to do
this; but if we know our leader, and have been justified in allowing
him to try the passage at all, it is best for him and best for us to
let him feel that our confidence is not diminished, and that he has
still a first duty, to bring his party through the difficulty. The
reaction will thus be postponed, at least as long as the necessity for
serious action continues, and may be put off altogether.
If the leader is really nervously shaken, he will know it at once
himself. He must then be rested, and the second takes over the lead.
But the preservation of the _morale_ and good spirits of the party,
including the leader, must be the first consideration. There should be
no hint of criticism, even of words or tone, in any rearrangement which
is decided upon. The affair should be treated at the time lightly, as
an incident. If the leader has blundered through inexperience or a
real defect of judgment, or if the second has grounds to think that
he is off his day or has been taking unjustifiable risks without
consultation, reasons which would make it unwise to trust him for the
rest of a severe climb, it should be quietly assumed that he does not
wish to continue leading. Any moralizing or implied reproof will only
hinder the recovery of equanimity in the case of an old hand; and in
the case of a less experienced man, or of one leading on his trial,
criticism is better left for some more leisurely occasion.
One coincident effect even of a slight accident may perhaps be
mentioned. A number of strong men, climbers among them, turn faint at
the sight of blood, especially, seemingly, in times of nervous strain.
They are often unaware of the tendency until the occasion arises. Even
if they foresee, they cannot overcome the attack; but they can give
warning. It has twice happened to me to see mountaineers of physique
and nerve faint in their steps, once on ice, once on snow, when a guide
had cut his hand in front. On the one occasion we had two minutes’
warning, on the other none.
[Sidenote: Accidents.]
If a climber is injured by his fall, more severely than will allow of
his climbing unaided, surgical ministrations are the first necessity;
with these I am not dealing here.
The subsequent action must depend on the place and people. If it is
possible for the party to convey him at least as far as some sheltered
place where help can easily reach him, this should be done at any risk.
The chief danger is collapse following on the shock, and his period of
cold and exposure must be shortened even at the hazard of increasing
the local injuries by moving him.
On rock, if the party consists of four men, and one is strong, the
injured man should be slung on to his back by slings fixed round his
shoulders and thighs, and the rest of the party must assist the loaded
man with rope and hand. On easy rock men can act as the bearer’s
crutches, to take part of the weight. On steep rock where carrying is
practically impossible, especially if there are only two or three to
bring him down, he can be lowered over difficult places, suspended
in the triple-bowline chair or tied firmly and rigidly to the rope,
according as the injuries permit. If possible, two men should lower,
using ropes from different angles above, and one should guide from
below. If he is unconscious, his head should be supported by an extra
sling to the rope, with a coat as a cushion round which the extra sling
is passed. A broken leg should be bound with putties between ice-axes,
or to one ice-axe and then to the other leg. A broken arm should be
strapped with a puttie across the body.
On steep snow or ice, where carrying is impracticable, it is best for
one man to convert himself into a sledge, to lie on the snow, take the
injured man in his arms, and let himself be lowered on the rope, in
steady stages, down the slope.
As soon as the lower slopes are reached, one man should go off for
assistance (two, if possible, when glaciers are in question); and
meanwhile a stretcher can be made of cross-linked rope, or of boughs
or axes combined with rope. It is well to remember that carrying a
stretcher over rough ground is exhausting work, and not to spare men
in the rescue party. With a heavy man rapid shifts are necessary, and
twelve men have been found barely sufficient to bring down a heavy man
with a broken leg, in the dark, over some hours of broken ground. If
the ground is too steep for a stretcher, and too broken for lowering on
a slide, it is best to use a blanket or a web of rope; upon this the
man can be lowered sideways, stage by stage, the men on the under side
holding up their edge so as to keep the lie level. If the ground allows
of the stretcher being carried freely, but is still inclined, one or,
better, two men should act as a brake behind, pulling back on a rope
attached to the stretcher. During the descent, one man familiar with
the ground should be sent ahead to select the easiest line. A carriage
or car should be brought to the nearest point of the road or track. The
surgeon should have been already sent for by any available car or horse.
If it is impracticable to get the man down until the rescue party
arrives, by reason of the difficulty of the climbing or the weakness
of the party, one man at least must stay with him, and the other, or
more happily two others, must make all speed consistent with caution
to get assistance. An injured man must never be left alone. If the
descent is severe, the two most capable should descend; and they must
remember that even more depends upon their getting down safely than
upon their getting down quickly, and resist the insidious recklessness
and ‘it-can’t-be-worse’ spirit that affect the nerves of all men at
such times.
A code of signals, of shouts and lights, should be arranged, if not
already known. This is most important, and often forgotten. It is
wonderfully cheering to hear the human voice. Nothing serves better to
sustain the spirits and keep off dangerous lethargy or collapse than
the shouts which let the waiting men know that their friends are safely
down, and help assured, or which hearten them on the return long before
the rescue party can reach them.
With the same object, if the rescue party cannot start at once, lights
should be flashed at night from some point in the valley visible to the
waiting men. A single match is visible for miles.
The simplest code of call for help is six shouts or flashes in the
minute, followed by an interval of a minute’s silence. The reply,
signifying the call is heard and understood, is three shouts or flashes
in the minute, with a minute’s pause. But men do well to arrange, and
write down, a fuller code of communication before they divide on such
occasions.
Rescue parties, of guides or local people, are often slow in getting
under way. If they find they cannot get a sufficiently strong party
together at once, the friends or, if possible, some good substitutes,
should form an express advance party, taking the few first necessaries
and making the best pace they can. Of even more effect than their
physical restoratives will be the moral reassurance they bring that
the real rescue party is under way. Waiting and uncertainty materially
lower the nervous resistance to injury or exposure. The men most
concerned should not leave the dispatch and direction of the main
rescue party to the professionals or the local people alone, who will
always claim it as their business and, more from ignorance than lack
of sympathy, often treat it as a function to be lingered over and
discussed in all its details. Not infrequently in the Alps the first
men to volunteer will be the idle and unemployed, and therefore the
least competent. The officious local man, who may be only concerned to
see his name in print and get credit and shillings, is particularly to
be guarded against. Unless some first-rate men can be at once secured,
or another amateur be found to take charge, one of the original party
must stay behind to take command himself, and send his friend, with the
best auxiliaries available, to conduct the first party of reassurance.
It seems advisable to mention these details, as the natural inclination
of men who have been shaken by an accident and by anxiety is to
yield to well-meant pressure and leave the ‘speeding up’ of the
often dilatory rescue column to the local hotel-keeper or the first
discoverable guide; only concerned themselves, if they are fit, to
hasten back with reassurance to their waiting friends. But, of the two,
the first is the more urgent duty.
In the event of death and not injury swift action is of less
importance. The mountaineer’s difficult task is then to get the rest
of his crippled party down safely. Peasants of all lands, accustomed
to the accidents of life and death, are insensitive to anything but
their familiar realism. Their help may be counted upon, but they cannot
be expected to show a very understanding sympathy. No later operation
should therefore be left to their charge without the supervision of one
of the party, or of a friend. The Press may be expected to become for
the time an extra burden; its curiosity is better eluded by carefully
worded anticipation than left to its own sensational inventiveness.
Violent death is savage in its reactions; and manners and taste, which
survive only as a thin glaze upon our semi-civilized communities,
evaporate at its first rumour.
Although I have thought it right not to exclude entirely some
suggestion as to dealing with cases of serious or fatal accident,
forty-eight out of fifty mountaineers may, and do, finish their career
without ever being actively concerned in one.
MOUNTAIN PERVERSITY
Besides the accidents which are produced by the classes of things
which at times go away from us, such as holds, balance, or our common
sense, there are other less evitable mishaps produced by the classes
of things which at times come at us--stone falls, snow slides, or
storms. Mountaineers are too sophisticated any longer to accept a naive
statement, that our mishap has been due to one of these causes, as a
complete exoneration.
[Sidenote: Falling Stones.]
Stones, indeed, form the most convincing excuse. Good mountaineers may
use all their discretion to avoid lines where stones fall, but the
casual stone, or the stone loosened by human agency, may yet overtake
them.
A man hit by a stone falling from a height, even if he laughs it off,
has nearly always received a greater shock than he realizes. His nerves
will be vibrating for a time like strings, and we must be on the look
out, especially if we are in exposed places, until we are certain that
he is normal again. I have known a man grow faint ten minutes after a
stone had struck him and left no apparent mark; and I have seen a guide
slip half dazed from his steps a full minute after he had been hit by a
spinning stone not the size of a button, which did not even cut through
his hat.
But even the peril of irresponsible stone falls can be caged within
narrower limits as our experience and our foresight increase. It is
itself a small department of our science of reconnoitring to learn how
to calculate their probability and recognize their signs. Couloirs and
gullies are obvious funnels upon which wandering stones concentrate. In
a snow or ice-backed couloir we must study the difference between the
ominous furrows made by stones or those made by water. In a rock gully
we have to look out not only for stones that may use it as a channel,
but for all that its weathering walls may contribute on their own
account, or that the changes of temperature, or even the disturbance
of our own passage, may dislodge from the balanced accumulations. The
surest signs are the absence or presence of stones on the glacier below
a couloir, or the grey scars or bruises made by the cannonading stones
on the rocks themselves. But these may only indicate stone fall at
certain hours of the day. Big grooves in steep precipices and hollows
between ribs, where stones may congregate, or featureless flat faces,
where they may wander unconfined at their own wild will, are alike
suspicious, and the bases of their cliffs must be inspected. Rock
faces, corrugated with very shallow ribs and hollows, are particularly
dangerous, as falling stones may ricochet unaccountably across the
ribs,--stones harder to foresee and to dodge than direct falls. The
edges of glaciers commanded by steep precipices are certain to be
stone-shelled. Precipices commanded by glaciers--that is, by the small
glaciers hanging high up on great peaks, which are often difficult to
locate from below--have also their fixed hours; as soon as the ice
feels the sun it begins to discharge its surface stones, and continues
until the evening.
But without our own examination we need not condemn any face on general
grounds or from hearsay. A number of fine mountain walls in the Alps
have been unjustly condemned in their entirety for merely local
weaknesses. Others offer salient ribs or lines sheltered by accidents
of structure through the heart of suspected zones. Only inspection can
say. We may presume steep faces to be more safe than those of easier
inclination, because the rock should be sounder, and because chance
stones ought to fall outside us if they do fall.
If we have been unfortunate in our reconnoitring, or if we have
deliberately tempted fortune too far upon a suspected route, we may
on occasion have to put our pride and our progress in our pocket and
be content to sit out under a grateful rock screen until evening or
shadow has chilled the vehemence of the stone barrage. It is better to
risk a night out than persist in tackling a bad line at a bad time.
An overhanging rock is a sure refuge. But we are also advised, if
ever we see that sunlight is increasing the hostile fire upon some
passage that we have to negotiate, to wait until a cloud has frozen up
the ammunition sources. As I have never yet lighted upon a stagnant
party while they were spending some portion of a climbing day in a
pensive examination of the sky for this purpose, I must conclude
either that clouds are as perverse as stone falls in the ill-timing of
their arrival, or that men are as perverse as both in their pigheaded
prosecution of a fair-weather programme.
Besides their customary routes, which we avoid by experience or as the
result of examination, there are occasions both of place and time when
stones fall unaccountably. Stones of large mass will fall at night;
the melted snow freezes into the cracks, levers the stones from their
attachment, and their weight does the rest. Stones, of smaller size but
in larger profusion, will fall in the morning, as the sun again melts
the ice in the cracks, which has already detached these lighter stones
but kept them for the night frozen in position. During these morning
hours, therefore, stones must be looked for on rock faces where they
need not be expected during the rest of the day.
During all the hours of hot sunlight, slopes of mixed rock and snow,
even of easy angle and harmless aspect, may become operative. Rock
extruding from ice is generally more disintegrated, and much of its
freshly exposed surface, temporarily cemented by frost, is liable
to discharge in sunshine. Any slope of ascent which drains a wide
stone-shed of such mixed character must be approached with caution.
Again in hot seasons, after snowless winters, whole regions of
rock, gradually disintegrated under their normal covering of ice or
snow, become exposed; and in such seasons stones must be looked for
on the most respectable peaks. Impeccable cliffs, of traditional
mountaineering approach, will be cinctured at their base, and not only
there, by bands of discharging rock, remote from and disregarding the
time-honoured waste-shoots.
Bad weather, rain, and especially wind, will start volleys in
unaccountable places at the most inconvenient times. After storm
or heavy rain, even secure lower paths may be raked by a dropping
fusillade. But such passing exuberances have also their comfortable
aspect. The bruises that surprise us by their appearance on sheer hard
crag, where no stone had any business to fall, or the intimidating
fragments on the glacier below our firm and promising rib, may be
merely such a single past morning’s effervescence or the excesses of a
solitary thunderstorm.
Other surprise stones may be due to the passing of goats or chamois
above--a rare case in the Western Alps--or more frequently to the
presence of other parties. These are a very definite and constant
danger, especially on loose faces like the Matterhorn ascent from
Zermatt, where half a century of clumsy climbing seems only to have
augmented the supply of mountain ammunition available for daily use.
It can only be avoided by keeping off these routes, or by making sure
of starting first. If we succeed in so doing, we must remember our
mountain manners. On any route where stones are likely to fall, no
party, however expert, has the right to increase the risk for others
below by racing ahead. Unless our line takes us well out of range, we
must wait, in ascending or descending, before crossing any passages
where there is a prospect of our dislodging loose stones, until the
party below is temporarily sheltered or near enough to suffer small
damage from the event. We may expect the same consideration from our
forerunners, or make ourselves clamorously audible until we secure it.
Stones loosened by the party upon itself, by rough grip climbing, by
sitting while descending, by a rope carelessly managed, and so on, are
matters for the correction of climbing technique, and cannot be rated,
either mentally or vocally and emphatically, as risks from external
causes.
But there is still always the familiar terror of the single stealthy
stone, that shoots out for a solitary venture on the blandest of mixed
rock and ice climbs, sliding soundlessly or skipping venomously on a
sharp edge. It can only be countered by the warning of an alert leader
and by prompt dodging.
The throwing of stones from the tops of peaks or cliffs is happily
confined, apart from a few classical recorded cases, to tourists in
our own islands. It is not done by mountaineers; and the method of
impressing its serious dangers upon the offenders may be left to the
emotional coefficient of the party imperilled to elaborate.
If, in spite of all precautions, a falling stone, or a fall of stones,
threatens us, our position at the moment decides our action. In the
case of a rock avalanche, whose minatory sound is unmistakable, we
shall hear it before we see it; there is nothing to be done but to
crouch and get what cover the rock will afford, especially for the
head, without trying to locate it. If it is a single stone, or a few
stones, sight and not sound will be giving us the warning (unless
the risk is already past), and it is best to wait, with back or side
turned towards the stone, and watch over our shoulder. A stone falls
surprisingly slowly to the eye; its course can be followed, and dodged
most effectively at the last second, if it is not in any case aimed
to miss us. In dodging or taking cover from stones, the rope must not
be forgotten. It is little less serious for the rope to be caught
by a large stone falling than for one of the party. To run is often
more dangerous, for other reasons, than to stand still. Most guides
are terrified of falling stones. They are the one risk external and
unaccountable which they cannot train themselves to meet, because no
skill can foresee them. Some part of their allied dread of bad weather
is due to the increased risk of stones it brings: “A terrible sound
of stones cast down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping
beasts, ... or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains, these
things made them swoon with fear.” The majority of guides will shout
and start skipping indiscriminately in panic. Men who do this must be
brought sharply to their senses. An effective, if possibly fallacious,
argument is to point out that a stone by falling on a particular line
has enormously reduced the chance that another will fall on the same
line again.
This argument does not apply to the case of stones which converge from
wider areas above, to fall through a particular gully or couloir. A
mountaineer, if he finds himself in such a conduit, had certainly
better get out of it as quickly as may be safely possible.
If it is absolutely necessary to cross a couloir where falling stones
may be expected, or heard, it is best for the party to cross singly,
unroped. But if crossing unroped involves a more immediate risk than
the chance of a stone striking, not more than two men should remain
on the same rope together. One man should cross the couloir alone,
with plenty of rope loose for a spring forward or backward to safety,
while the other anchors under shelter. If there are three men on the
rope, the two end men should cross first, each with plenty of rope;
the middle man follows last, with the same allowance. This reduces
the danger for the middle man. To be caught by stones in a couloir on
the middle of a rope held at both ends is to be trapped. There is no
time for the man at either end to release his rope, or, even were that
possible, to discover towards which side the middle man intends to
escape.
On the whole, considering the amount of stones that fall in the Alps,
especially on frequented peaks, the amount of stones that are dislodged
by inexperienced climbers on one another on our own cliffs, and the
amount of recent stones that litter all mountain bases, and that must
have fallen some time, it is astonishing how few and how slight have
been the injuries they have caused.
[Sidenote: Snow Slides.]
Snow slides or avalanches are restricted in summer to more definite
danger-zones than are the errant stones. But when they come they are
less evitable and more overwhelming in action. Snow falls not only
according to the accident of its position, which is ascertainable, but
also according to the chance of its condition; and this is susceptible
to influences more numerous and more volatile than the comparatively
better delimited and more violent forces that produce the loosening and
fall of stones.
Again, if we are forced to cross danger-areas of stones or snow, we
have the better chance in the case of stones. Each falling stone only
occupies in its fall a fraction of the area of danger, and may be
eluded; but every inch of snow in an area of avalanche risk is alike
pregnant with danger. It is no longer a question of artful dodging
individually, but of an escape in time by the whole party, possibly
over a considerable extent of slope, all of it equally treacherous.
But snow makes these concessions to the skilful leader: its presence
can be located; its condition can be tested in advance. Experienced
reconnoitring beforehand may advise us to avoid a snow passage
altogether: precaution on the spot, a thorough testing of its holding
quality, gives us a second chance of eluding an unpleasing surprise.
But these safeguards are precautionary rather than corrective, and
belong properly to the province of prevention, that is of snow craft.
Correction becomes needful when we have been deceived in our craft,
and find ourselves by error, or perhaps by chance, on a risky snow
passage. The snow threatens to slide or to avalanche, because it is
either powdery and superficially slithery, or water-logged, or crusted
and detached below, or bedded deceitfully upon ice. Now, to continue
to trough horizontally across suspicious snow is equivalent to sawing
through a high branch, on which you are seated, between yourself and
the trunk. We must turn vertically up, or down, or follow as steep a
diagonal as we may. We make steps as far as possible apart, and we
tread exactly and lightly in each other’s. If there is firmer snow
below, we drive the axe to the head at each step, and loop the rope. In
extreme cases we may turn face inward, as the toe is less disturbing
than the heel or side-boot. Or we may have to clear away the snow and
make steps in the ice below. All as our craft dictates. On positively
dangerous snow there is much to be said for unroping, should we have to
continue long in equal insecurity. The rope can be little protection;
concerted action once a slide starts is impossible, and if the slide
embraces the footing of all the party, the individual chances of
survival are greater without it. But while admitting that there is a
case for unroping, I have never known a party do it.
If, in spite of all our discretion, the snow slide or avalanche starts,
any further chance of corrective action passes out of our hands with
the loss of our footing. A good deal has been written about what we
ought to do in an avalanche: cut the rope, adopt a swimming attitude,
roll sideways and so on. To anyone who has ever bathed in broken surf,
or felt the weight of even a thin film of snow sliding about his ankles
or on to his shoulders, all such nostrums will seem about as practical
as that delightful recommendation that we should all wear a red
appendage of trailing string, as a signal to those who search for us
in an avalanche. The vision of a line of sturdy mountaineers tripping
intricately across a snowfield like embarrassed macaws in pursuit
of each other’s scarlet tails may give us some pleasurable moments.
Possibly coloured air-balloons, to keep the string-tails floating
archly above our heads, might add to their picturesque efficacy.
A man in an avalanche can only act by instinct; and he will
instinctively struggle. If he keeps, or ends, upon the surface, it
will be due to the shallowness of the slide or the depth of his
good fortune. It is well to remember that a man, by an accident of
compression, may live for some time although overwhelmed and out of
sight under the snow; the survivors therefore must take the risk of
further snow falling and attempt the rescue work at once. The chances
of survival will always be greater in a slide of powdery snow than in
one of wet snow.
[Sidenote: Ice Fragments.]
Ice falls in fashions more fathomable than snow, over more limited
areas and by more discoverable rules. We may find ourselves forced to
pass below _séracs_ on glaciers. A _sérac_ may fall; but _séracs_ are
very obvious as well as beautiful, and the really capable eye is at
fault if it cannot foretell when one is likely to fall, within an hour
or two, and hurry out of its track. Even if it is too far above us for
inspection, there is plenty to guide us in the condition of the ice
near us and in the feel of the atmosphere. _Séracs_ are usually safer
than they look; and it is wiser, if we find ourselves unwittingly under
fire, to glide out of it quietly and competently than to rush into the
real frying-pan of a panicky flight. If there is opportunity, we get
rid of the rope; a man on claws, without the rope, has a much better
chance of dodging the _sérac_ that topples. Heavy step-cutting just
below a poised column had better be avoided; but I am half sorry to
record that the hallowed myth that it is dangerous to talk or breathe
loudly on such passages is not borne out by latter-day _séracs_. I
have shouted very loudly and clearly into the ear of a number of very
promising ones--of course from safe positions on their shoulders, and
not, like Lauener, from their ‘dangerous’ heads--without eliciting even
a nod of response.
Only one other case suggests itself where falling ice might be classed
as an external or objective risk; and that more because the extent of
its danger-zone is undiscoverable than because its position, or the
probability of its fall, is concealed from ordinary foresight. In a
snowy season, with alternates of melting sun and freezing wind, the day
comes when the rocks of a peak or ridge are armoured with ice plates
or ice spears. If we traverse unsuspectingly below such walls, an
hour’s sunlight may expose us, in the middle of our enjoyment of our
postponed fine day, to a raking and dangerous fire. The missiles may
come shooting over the edge of any innocent, black jut or buttress far
above us. The only course is to watch, and dodge, and make carefully
for open country. That what has fallen once cannot fall again in the
same place is even more true of these ice plates than of stones. For
our mischance, also, we may have to blame ourselves as much as the
mountain. Rocks in such a state generally betray some gleam of their
ice armour to a heedful examination, and as the chance of such a
condition occurring should have been suggested to us by the kind of
weather that produced it, we ought to have been able approximately to
locate the peril beforehand, and avoid its zone.
[Sidenote: Evil Weather.]
Thunderstorms or blizzards may produce direct catastrophe. Of a
blizzard we should have had premonitory signs; and if we are caught in
it, we must just fight through it, and we may not afterwards justly
blame the mountains. It is a foolish pride which thinks to show
hardihood by persisting wilfully, among big mountains, against the
threat or oncoming of evil weather.
But thunderstorms may take us unawares; and then our only refuge is
retreat. Their chief menace lies along the edges of ridges and on
outstanding points. If a storm threatens, we must get off the ridges
and away from pinnacles as quickly as possible, even if it may mean
cutting down an ice slope. Sometimes our first warning may be an
electric shock, coming out of a dark and windless silence or through a
warm oppression of slow-falling and separate snow-flakes, and thrilling
us helplessly from heel to hair. If there is no other sign, and in the
heart of the worst storms there is no flash and no thunder, the singing
of our axes and the hissing crackle of the discharge from every point
of the ridge will give warning that it is well to go elsewhere. We are
generally advised to get rid of our axes. If we are on a big peak, this
will mean our seeking scanty shelter not very far below the ridge where
the storm caught us. Personally, I prefer to keep my axe, and use it to
climb well down one of the flanking walls. While we remain on the ridge
or near it, all points, including ourselves, are potential conductors,
and it is awkward to get far down without an axe. We once came on a
whole grove of axes abandoned on a summit. When we saw, later, the
angle and the condition of the snow slopes that this party had been
driven to descend without their axes, to escape from the storm, we
realized what frightening things men can do if they are only frightened
enough.
Thunderstorms apart, the perils of bad weather are indirect, and give
us time to use precautionary rather than corrective skill. A very
strong wind may of course blow us right out of our steps. I have only
seen this actually happen once, to a light-limbed mountaineer, who
pitched very neatly on the ice steps ten feet lower down. Ordinarily
we cling on as we can, and evade the direct blast by moving on to the
other side of a ridge. Wind will also pelt us with stones and icicles
in unexpected places, or lacerate our faces with snow particles. But
its principal effect is usually upon men’s nerves, who get ‘rattled’
and lose their collective rhythm. Continuous loud noise always
interrupts communications, and breeds flurry or confusion. It is worth
while taking shelter behind rocks, if only for a minute or two at
intervals, to steady the nerves again.
Mist and fog can only harm us if our craft fails. We meet them by
compass and the sense of direction. Wind can make a gracious exception
to its usual offensiveness, and help us in mist. If we have noted its
direction, and have observed that it is a constant and not a gusty or
spinning wind, we can keep a straight course by keeping it always on
the same cheek. Again, when he is approaching the crest of a ridge or
a pass, what mountaineer has not had cause, in mist, or even in sun,
to welcome the little rushes or breaths of wind that tell him the edge
is near and assure him of his direction? After a weary plough up foggy
snow terraces or a harsh struggle on mist-wet rocks, these soughs seem
like the mountain, too, sighing with our relief, or like the end of our
travail surprising our mournful faces with a kindly but derisive ‘pooh!’
Earthquakes are natural perversities outside the sphere of ordinary
mountaineering prevision. Among mountains their danger is indirect
or subsequent. They injure a number of good rock routes, and after
a series of shocks we may expect some grievous deterioration in the
condition of rock pinnacles and faces. Large masses will have been
precariously loosened, and our ledges will be littered with poised
blocks and cranky rubble. The peaks affected may require markedly
cautious climbing for some seasons, until time and weather shall have
tidied down the surfaces again. Some years ago certain of the Chamonix
Aiguilles had to be left unvisited for a time on this account. As to
how we should meet the uproar of the eruptive moments, it is difficult
to suggest an approved method. A mountaineer of reputation relates
how an earthquake caught him on the precipitous north face of the Dent
du Géant; and how that proud pinnacle rocked so portentously that his
feet were flung free, and he only saved himself by swinging perilously,
like a pendulum, from his handholds. It is reassuring to feel that
such exceptional circumstance does generally select the exceptional
man, and that it invariably finds him inspired to deal with its crises
imaginatively. For upon such natural inspiration it would be difficult
to improve by devising any more formal code.