PREFACE
This book is for mountaineers; and a mountaineer is not only one who climbs mountains, but anyone who likes to walk, read, or think about them.
I do not myself attach much value to mountaineering handbooks: an open-air pursuit can only be learned by practical attempt and from good example. I used to read them for the fun of surprising some hero of my youth as he strained his imagination to squeeze a grave principle out of a random holiday memory, and for the sympathetic pleasure of reconstructing for myself the real day of irresponsible adventure the recollection of which was bringing a thrill of forbidden joy to his mind before he composed his face to inflict it upon me in the form of an edifying three-line precept. I can read them now no more than I can read the ‘climbing accident’ type of fiction popular with magazines, which used to provide a less sensitive digestion with some acrid food for mirth. On the other hand I would still set myself to learn Chinese, if that would enable me the better to understand one more record of genuine mountain adventure or discover some unfamiliar attitude of the human mind towards the mountains and their symbolism.
I do not expect other mountaineers to read, or to refrain from reading, these opinions in a different spirit. Mountaineering, like other arts, has suffered much, for all its youth, from the limitations imposed by hasty tradition and by doctrine prematurely crystallized; and, as in other crafts, if ever a period comes that shall find the traditional rules too rigid to admit of a wholesome influx of new and original conception, mountaineering will cease to deserve the name of an art or craft, and become at best an ‘organized game.’
But the opinions as they stand may yet serve a limited purpose. Some men are born climbers. They will learn little about climbing from precepts. At the same time many of the finest climbers fall short of our ideal of safe method because they have never concerned themselves with the possible existence of any fundamental principles governing the various unrelated movements in which they delight; and so it comes that, though they may do nine things, by instinct, right, they do the tenth, by habit, wrong. For these climbers I am not without hope that the statement, made I believe here for the first time, of the principles which underlie all correct climbing motions, and which have been steadily emerging during fifty years of practical mountaineering, may not be entirely useless. If they find that nine spokes of their practice lead back to my hub, and the tenth does not, they may learn how to correct the tenth. If, on the contrary, they find that only one leads back to it, and nine radiate elsewhither, well then, no doubt they will decide that I am wrong.
But whatever we may be as climbers, no one of us is a born mountaineer. Mountaineering, in its wider aspects, can only be learned by experiment; and even the natural climber may be able to get some guidance from the collective expression of other men’s mountaineering experience.
Many efficient climbers, again, never bother themselves at all with mountaineering as a craft. They simply take its pleasures, and leave its responsibilities to guides or to chance. Mountaineering will profit, if they can be led to discover something of all that they are missing.
More of us are, in a sense, specialists; interested in one department alone, and neglectful or ignorant of the rest. For such of us there is some benefit in surveying, if only superficially, the immense field that a man must set himself to traverse who aspires to lead a party safely.
Yet another group, with whom I have a particular sympathy, who belong to the class of ‘made’ climbers rather than to that of ‘natural’ climbers, may often find that they have stuck fast at a certain point in their technique and are abandoning the prospect of improving further. Experience encourages the hope that they may be able, after learning something of the essential principles of method, to recast or amplify their own methods, so as to make further progress on sounder lines. Or they will discover that a man may be useful to a party as an expert in one of the less common but no less important branches of mountaineering craft. Their inferiority in a single department—for instance, rock climbing, in which excellence is often overrated as compared with other equally valuable qualifications—will then be seen in better proportion.
And those who are not climbers, but who are interested in or perhaps even resentful of the fascination which mountains exercise, may discover, if they have the patience, that mountaineering as it is now practised is no simple outlet for an athletic impulse, and no selfish indulgence in a game which has the demerit of risking lives often of notable value; but that it is a genuine craft, as well as a genuine enthusiasm; an education alike in self-development and in self-subordination; a discipline of character, of infinite variety in its demands and in its reactions upon strength, endurance, nerve, will, and temper, upon powers of organization as upon powers of dealing with men; a test of personality for which no preparation may be considered excessive, and a science for whose mastery the study of all our active years is barely sufficient. Of its rewards, in health, self-knowledge, æsthetic pleasure, and incomparable adventure, it is not the place to speak in a book of practical counsel.
For the opinions on technical points, and their elaboration in theory, I must be held alone responsible. Where the multiplication or repetition of detail may appear tedious, it has been inserted for the better illustration of some underlying principle, or to provide the more material for the future settlement of some point still under discussion among mountaineers. Those who disagree with the methods recommended may still make use of the advice, much as I should do in their case, treating it as yet another statement of an individual point of view, such as may at least act as a serviceable standard of comparison for their own practice.
Our object will be gained if the suggestions are found to provide a basis for more general discussion and thought, an available condensation of a good deal of theory floating and partially formulated among modern mountaineers of experience, and something of a book of reference and reminder for those who may not have known, or cared to admit, that there was so much about which they ought to form an opinion.
In the innovation of giving a prominent position to considerations of personal management and leadership there has been a special purpose. For reasons not difficult to assign, most manuals dealing with the practice of active pursuits have been in the habit of ignoring the dominant influence that is exerted upon all combined action by the psychological factor, and the extent to which changing conditions of mood and humour, and the more stable divergences between the individual temperaments of men acting in association, must contribute to success or failure. The accentuation of the human problem, as it presents itself in mountaineering, has therefore been intentional. In mountains, where personality counts before everything, men are forced back upon their elemental selves; they become very different beings from their drawing-room semblances, and unless they allow for this in the adjustment of their relations on the hills, they can achieve only the mediocrity of performance, the barrenness in results, or the complete break-down which are the common fate of all ill-constituted parties, for exploration, for mountaineering, for warfare, or for any other active adventure that depends for its success upon effective combination.
Mountaineering, in its modern development, involves a large number of matters for arrangement which cannot be classed under the headings of technique or of specific equipment for climbing; such as methods of travel, care of health, choice of districts in less-known countries, special routes of access, and details of topography and equipment peculiar to any particular district chosen. Most of these vary in detail in the different ranges.
It has, therefore, seemed most convenient to deal with the special conditions which characterize a number of the regions now most frequently visited in separate chapters, each chapter devoted to one of the great ranges. These chapters have been undertaken by experts who will be recognized as speaking with authority by mountaineers of every school and nationality. Their intention is to give just the amount of practical information which we all need, and which we find it so hard to procure, when we are in process of making up our minds what region we will visit; and to add sufficient indication of where we may find all the more particular information which we shall require when once we have decided upon our region.
Captain Farrar’s suggestions on Mountain Equipment, Mr. Arnold Lunn’s on Equipment and Method for Mountaineering on Ski, Dr. Wollaston’s on the Care of Health, and Mr. Sydney Spencer’s on Photography, apply, generally speaking, to all mountaineering regions and to all organized expeditions. To Captain Farrar’s advice the suggestions on Outfit made in the regional chapters are complementary, dictated by the special conditions of the district or of the season.
Besides that which is owing to innumerable contributors to discussions which have extended over many years and exercised a variety of languages, I have to acknowledge a very special debt of gratitude to Mr. H. V. Reade, C.B., for his helpful suggestions and careful revision; to Captain Farrar, D.S.O., for constant encouragement and a characteristically kindly criticism; to Mr. Oscar Eckenstein, for having most generously placed at my disposal the notes of much accumulated experience and illuminating inductive theory, and for having provided me with information and reminder in several of the less-known branches of mountaineering; and to Mr. Sydney Spencer, Mr. Charles Mead, and Professor Norman Collie, F.R.S., for a group of illustrations, which may be found to lighten the practical detail of the text and serve as reminders of the beauty, the mystery, and the strangeness of the mountain world into which—safely and superficially or masterfully and understandingly, according to the degree of our preparation—the study of mountain craft purposes to enable us to penetrate.
June 1914
Six years ago these papers were sent in for publication. For my own share in them I made the decision, then, with some reluctance. In mountaineering there is always something new to learn, and they might all too soon need correction or amplification.
But the chance of battle which delayed their appearance has, in the event, confirmed the resolution. My colleagues have brought their regional contributions up to date: I have added the substance of the notes jotted down during my last climbs in July 1914; and I can now let the opinions go with much less hesitation, since from the annual demonstration of their deficiencies by their most obstinate critic they must, in future, be exempt.
G. W. Y.
June 1920