FOOTNOTES:
[13] Climb. Club Ann., 1912. Also, where there is danger of frost-bite to the feet, as in the Himalaya, the risk of a nailed boot is avoided by wearing claws over soft hide boots or strong wrappings. For the same reason it is better to wear warm ski-boots, with removable claws, rather than nailed boots in winter mountaineering in the Alps, where the ski-ing alternates with the climbing and a soft boot would be insufficient.
[14] See “Equipment,” p. [93].
[15] See “Rock Climbing,” p. [151].
[17] See “Mountaineering on Ski,” p. [424]. This chapter should be consulted for the more detailed study of snow phenomena required for winter and spring ski-ing. In “Snow Craft” I have limited myself to the conditions that a climber may meet with in the ordinary alpine summer season.
CHAPTER VIII
RECONNOITRING
Reconnoitring precedes in action the exercise of mountain craft. But as an art it is the gold cup in the sack mouth of a mountaineer’s equipment. Its effective mastery must rest upon his previous accumulations of practical experience. It may therefore, fittingly, be put in last.
In the Alps and nearer European ranges, maps and guide-books relieve the mountaineer of almost all occasion to apply his powers of observation to the interpretation of the Seen or the reconstruction of the Unseen. The majority of men who climb in the Alps or Britain get no practice in making even elementary deductions from scenic details within sight; and a number more, whose experience and observation have been sufficient to enrich them with what they would call an instinctive feeling about the meaning of topographical details which they can see, or about the probabilities of those which are out of their sight, have never, for lack of opportunity, been forced to resolve this feeling into precise conclusions.
Nothing but actual necessity, the need of providing for safe progress or comfort, will induce most men on a holiday to exercise or educate their observation. The loss is considerable; not only because a developed faculty of observing, and of reasoning from the observations, is in itself a valuable permanent possession, but because the neglect involves the failure to see much that is beautiful. If we are accustomed to wait until beauty imposes itself upon the eye, as in the end it will, and almost flauntingly, in large mountain scenery, we shall have already missed the discovery of the relations of line and colour and mass to which the beautiful effect is due, and we are fated to overlook much that is lovely and much that is interesting in regions where there is grace and interest in the smallest detail, but where detail escapes unperceived among the broad and salient features of familiar magnificence.
MOUNTAIN ARCHITECTURE
C. F. MEADE
On a more material plane, a man who aspires to lead a party must be able to ‘see,’ in the sense in which an artist or natural scientist ‘sees,’ and he must be able to make the necessary mountaineering deductions from his sights. A mountaineer who wishes to conduct an expedition efficiently in unexplored ranges must be able to do more: he must be practised in the art of confirming conjecture as to what is beyond his sight from ‘signs’ within view. For an expert of this sort it is fortunately sufficient to indicate what he can discover and how to set about it; fortunately, because ‘signs’ in practice are so modified by place, climate and season that no rules could be laid down without a page of exceptions to prove each one. One day of practical demonstration under guidance will reveal more of what we ought to see and how to see it than much tabulation. We may write of a ‘snow sky’ and an ‘ice sky,’ and a mountaineer who had them pointed out to him would recognize the difference; but we cannot with truth say “a snow sky is a whitish-blue, or shows as a white underside on a cloud,” or “an ice sky is a greyish-blue, and reflects in a shade of grey from a cloud,” because a different climate or region might anywhere contradict our colour definitions. But the distinction between the two would remain as a constant difference of tone under all identical conditions, and it would be perceptible to a trained eye.
Somewhat the same difficulty interferes with any accurate summary of more elementary signs to be looked for in reconnoitring,—signs whose discovery is, or should be, part of our daily alpine routine. Every mountaineer should know at a glance, in the right conditions of light, new snow from old snow, ice from crusted snow surface, open glacier from firn or névé. But who could learn to recognize the differences, under continually changing conditions of light, from his recollections of a written classification? The suggestions here made must be understood, therefore, only to affirm that between certain groups of surface appearances there are certain constant relative differences, whose presence, or absence, can always be ascertained in the right weather and light. They are intended to indicate a few lines of less obvious investigation, which the trained eye can pursue in examining aspects and details of mountains that are visible to everybody but not equally intelligible to everybody; and further, to outline a province of yet more difficult discovery—the collection of information as to aspects and details which are not even in sight.
It may now be assumed that until a mountaineer knows something of his craft by actual experience, the choice of a route up a peak need not be left to his unaided attempts at reconnoitring. Elementary mountaineering information is far more widely diffused, and practical climbing ability has become almost an inherited instinct. The method adopted by the Badminton on Mountaineering, and by various excellent manuals in imitation of it, first synthesized for us a sample peak or climb, resolved the attributed features into their simple elements again, and then directed us, with natural confidence, precisely how to deal with them. A method advisable for purposes of picturesque propaganda in earlier, darker days is of less service to a climbing generation whose acquired craft can be more generally trusted to know how to attack its peak, if it can once attain to only a small part of the certainty about the real character and the momentary condition of distant detail which these illuminating studies could happily assume. The path so well prepared by our predecessors for the straying or reluctant feet of the potential climber, and so entertainingly bordered with composite examples, need not be retrodden. Guidance in reconnoitring, to be of later use, must now wait for its opportunity further along the way, and be ready to pester the progressive competence and self-assurance of zealous mountaineers with the well-meaning but aggravating importunity of an elder walking companion: “Can’t you see that?” and, “What does it mean?” and, finally, “Well, then, I’ll tell you!”
Snow and rock and ice, as a triune element, alone concern us. What we need to find out about them is their respective angles, to know if we can get up at all; their several conditions, to ascertain if we can do so with or without danger or difficulty; and the degree of modification which their combination may be introducing, in order to decide if we can do so within the appointed time. For instance, our agreeable opinion of the angle of a rock rib will counterbalance our unfavourable view of the state of a snow face, which it relieves; or our optimistic impression of the snow in a couloir will free us from the gloom created by our sight of the angle and character of a rock wall, which it bisects. With a peak as such we are only concerned in so far as it presents to us a greater or lesser mass of favourable or unfavourable angles and superficial conditions. We take it that our climbing craft can get us up any mountain by any way visible or invisible. It is for our reconnoitring craft, first, to reject those alternatives which are interrupted by the angle of the impossible; secondly, to condemn the lines where it detects surface conditions or direct menaces which will introduce too large an element of danger; thirdly, to except the routes where it decides that harsh angle and poor condition in unrelenting succession combine to form too great a volume of difficulty to be humanly vincible in a single expedition; and lastly, if no agreeable or interesting remainder be left over, to use its utmost skill to determine whether some unseen aspect may not reveal sufficient of its character to encourage a hope that it will offer a more helpful line of attack.
The sum of the results of these investigations will of course add up differently with every peak, and any discussion of it in the abstract could only be hypothetical. The decision as to whether this sum in any concrete case represents a feasible or justifiable mountaineering attempt must take into further account the strength of the party proposing to make it, and must be therefore, for us, equally hypothetical. All that the grammar of reconnoitring can usefully define are the lines which investigation should follow in order to secure exact information about the elements which are the material for our calculations, and therefore the chief factors in our decisions. Snow, rock and ice are these elements; and their state, angle and influence upon each other in certain combinations form the only matter that need concern our examination on the spot,—or here.