Mountain Craft

by Unknown

The Management of Guides

If or when a leader decides to take guides, he has to know how to manage them. I have already said that he is not now entitled merely to engage the best guides available, and then leave all the direction and responsibility to them. Few modern guides expect or deserve this. His abdication will be followed by starts on wrong days, amazing meals, more visits to huts than mountains, unaccountable retreats, and final disgust with guides altogether. His party, at the close, will have attained no harmony and have lived divided into two camps. The amateur members will have been the least considered; they will either have been dry-nursed or oppressed. The surrender of their leader’s functions to the guides will have left them with no authoritative channel through which to secure their proper share of responsibility and independence. They will have become discontented and adopted the conventional language of the lower criticism, abusing the guides for their tobacco, their peaty clothes, their drinking and want of enterprise; much as is still set forth in accredited climbing books of the ‘picture-me-then!’ class. The guides for their part, undirected and uninspired, will have fallen back upon their professional traditions and caution, meeting the unsympathetic atmosphere, which they do not understand, with taciturnity, aggravating interference or childish assertiveness. The whole blame will have lain with the leader. Just for a handful of silver he left them, renouncing his entire responsibilities because one or two of his party were to receive certain shillings in return for their skilled companionship. The party has had no leader, no focus for authority and opinion, and it could attain no success.

Guide Nature.

A guide is as much a human being as any amateur in the party. If it is necessary for the manager to have constant care of the health and morale of his friends, it is doubly so in the case of his guides. The average guide is a peasant, with the limitations that frame peasant virtues. His guiding motive is the struggle for existence under hard conditions. His winters are spent in wood chopping, hard work and keeping warm, with cards, wine and village gossip for distraction. His public is preponderatingly masculine: in many mountain villages the proportion of boys to girls is five to three. His winter society consists of a fluctuating population, crudely packed for the cold months, and dispersed in parasitic occupations during the summer; it has therefore not even a parochial sense of responsibility in the creation of its prejudices. All talk circulates round ‘francs.’ His short summer season is a succession of conflicts with varying degrees of incompetence, in a business in which his conscious superiority is seldom challenged. It is impressed upon him that his most paying accomplishments are an obliging manner and a smattering of spoken tongues. He has small occasion to measure himself against other men or get an idea of his own personal value, because the world comes to him in its most artificial form, and plays him only at his own game with a fantastic handicap. He is a child, with a precocious development on a special line which gives him his one standard for manhood in general. Outside his valley he has to fear the antagonism, even the petty violence, of any local trade union; inside it he has all a schoolboy’s fear of outraging some point of rigid local etiquette. There is no more of William Tell and the edelweiss post card in the material life of a Swiss valley than there is of Robin Hood and Merrie England in an agricultural village. If the guide turns back on an ascent, after hearing some incomprehensible patois from a fellow-villager the evening before in a hut, or if he refrains from bullying a surly official on our behalf, on whose good offices he may be dependent, or if he shows no active sympathy in our condemnation of a recalcitrant porter, who may be his wife’s cousin, we have no right to expect anything different. If after a gorgeous sunset and a romantic ascent he still cares more for our francs than our fellowship, it is perfectly natural. We should look for nothing else, if we had not fashioned our typical guide in youth from the narrative of the great literary pioneers, who still found here and there a sympathetic village unspoiled by hotels and tourists, or a natural son of the hills whose responsive courtesy could reflect, if it did not comprehend, the symbolical attributes, born of the realization of romantic success and physical well-being, with which the imagination of the contented employer invested his guide’s leadership. We too find a few such men. But we recognize them as exceptions, or as beings who visit us in their full splendour only in the roseate hours of reminiscence following on a great climb.

The guide as we know him is hill-born, hill-bred,—that is, a child, with a child’s capacity for becoming much what we make him,—a companion, a valet or a machine,—and with a child’s suspicion and shyness, which he hides under an appearance of professional reserve or a formal politeness.

The Right Footing.

A leader must not be content with either the polite manner or the professional aloofness. He must first get to know his man thoroughly, watch his reactions on a climb, and notice his weak and strong points, where he is confident from knowledge and where he is merely bluffing. From his movements or silences he will soon be able to deduce more than from his speech. He should avoid direct opposition or discussion during the actual climbing. The guide is as sensitive and as inarticulate as any other uneducated handicraftsman on points that touch his professional skill or caste pride, and ill-timed interference will drive him to the polite manner for his protection. It is a mistake, also, to allow the relationship to become too personal, to expect a guide to act as valet or to perform small menial services in bivouac or hotel. There are many offices which a guide performs as part of his business,—cooking and carrying and the care of the party’s comfort as a whole. But when an amateur has been indebted to his guide for putting on his putties in peace-time, it is impossible for him to resent being treated as equally dependent when the crises of battle take place. The relationship cannot be changed in a moment, much less in a crucial moment. The footing established in the valley, in the hut or on the long tramp, will remain the footing on the mountain side. Small hardships and small comforts have to be shared equally, that there may be an equal sharing of the big responsibilities of the campaign and in the decisions that go to meet difficulty or danger.

Start with your guide on a right footing, so that he sees that you recognize your duties towards him as much as his towards you. See that he gets decent food in the hotels; some head-waiters, portly with that authority which a tourist traffic inevitably confers, never learn to handle a guide as anything but a servant in your employment and something less in their own; but the guide is generally too loyal or too aloof in spirit to tell you so. Let him have what wine he desires: he will have to carry it himself. No good guide drinks to excess, some not at all. But fine-drawn men, not regularly nourished on meat, will frankly admit that failing such reserves the extra stimulus is occasionally really needed if some feat calling upon all their strength or endurance has to be carried through. A well-trained body, under primitive conditions, knows by instinct what particular nourishment it needs, and responds to its stimulus with startling suddenness. A good guide, on serious work, will never take more than nature tells him is required, whatever your opinion of that amount may be. Of course if he is a regular or irregular sipper in idle moments it is best to get rid of him. Be careful that he has not too much to carry; when there are several of a party, and each adds some trifle of personal luggage without knowing that the others may have done the same, the load often gets far beyond what the leader intended in selecting the provisions. His own food—he generally prefers his own of its kind—should be unrolled and seen to with the other packages. Sleepy hotel-porters, under the heading of “provisions for guide,” are apt to stuff in mosaics of strange meats; and again the guide is too polite to tell you: it is not manners to worry the gentlemen. This is just the distinction which on all accounts you have got to break down. Consider his comfort as that of any other member of the party during the day, without seeming to fuss or to be condescending. It is hopeless to try and make him ‘one of yourselves’; he has his own pride, and would shrug his shoulders over premature familiarity. But quiet consideration will gradually convert the relations into a pleasant mutual understanding. Take his sack as well as your own if he is leading and you judge the extra weight is taxing him unduly. Take your turn at leading in deep, soft snow. This is the only task of sheer endurance in which I believe good amateurs can outlast good guides. Look after his getting his food and a proper place to sleep in, unobtrusively, when you get down from a big climb to new quarters, no matter how tired you are. It is in your own interest for the morrow. If possible, laugh him out of the common trick of dropping behind and making a sort of tail to your triumph as you return into the village or meet another party. He is taught that this is good manners and will please your touristship; but it is really insulting to both, if a man has been your companion or leader during a great climb of united effort, to accept this mock tribute to your poor dignity when there is no longer any chance of going a step wrong. The transparent imposition impresses nobody you meet, and least of all yourself or him. In the valley let the guide see that, as between yourselves, you consider that the fellowship remains unaltered, that you do not barter your right to be treated as his equal as a mountaineer for the sake of posturing as his ‘Herr.’ At the same time accept, for the sake of his comfort and his opinion of your tact, the outward appearance of differentiation which his training has taught him to consider consistent with his position and yours in this valley and hotel life. You will soon find out what you can or cannot do. You cannot traditionally invite him to dinner at the same table with other strangers in a large hotel, but he will join you for coffee at your separate table. Let him pay for you as you go. The confidence will make him feel of the party, and has the advantage of getting you large reductions through his local knowledge! Once he recognizes you as a human being and you have found the way through the crust of his professional suspicion and local upbringing, you will know him to be very human also, with a temperament as easy as a child’s to understand and as difficult as a child’s to manage; loyal, sympathetic, often sensitive, and naturally honest. He enters more into your aspirations than he ventures to show. Without sentiment, without sharing your thoughts or being able to exchange a word about all the varied interests that make up your own different outlook, without even understanding your motives, you may yet, if you are fortunate, find him a man who will become your close friend, with whom you can share silence and danger and sorrow in a community of feeling that needs no speech. In contact with elemental realities, it is the essential personalities, not their different decorations of race or education, that count and that make contact.

Anyone who has followed me so far will probably be yawning, and asking, “Is this really all necessary in order to enjoy a mountain holiday?” It is not. If you want to follow a hunt, you have only to learn to stick on; if your object is to cross the Atlantic, you can do it in a liner; if you want just to do mountains, you can engage guides, behave like a gentleman, and you will have got your desire. But if you ever wish to realize the incomparably greater pleasures of hunting your own pack or sailing your own boat, you will have to set about it in a different fashion. Ask a platoon-leader or good company-officer what proportion of time he gave to the study and training of his men before an offensive. And then be assured that mountaineering is a pursuit in which, just as there is no limit to the ascending scale of pleasures which it offers, æsthetic and physical, so also there is no end to the progressive study and preparation it demands from those who would follow its higher walks.

The better a man knows his child-guide, the more he will know how to manage him, so as to get the best out of his mountaineering precocity. The happiest arrangement is no doubt to keep a careful eye open, during your preliminary years of training under the first professional, so as to mark down any enterprising young guides or porters. The young guide need not yet be an expert; it is for the amateur to give him the opportunity for developing his technical skill in their seasons of progressive climbing, while pari passu the amateur is establishing his own position in the partnership and perfecting himself in his own department.

The companionship of amateur and guide as friends is the ideal combination for great mountaineering wherever the ground permits of it. So soon as a second professional is added the amateur is in a minority; and no matter how close his personal association with his first guide, the professional comradeship, recalling the atmosphere of youth, may always override his influence for the day. A single amateur, therefore when he finds it necessary to take on extra help for a season or for some expedition, will do well to choose some young man, the most athletic possible, who has his name to make and is still only thinly crusted with professional tradition. His inexperience may keep him at least silent in the discussion of important decisions.

Before the Ascent.

The principles of management are the same, whether the amateur is alone or with friends, and whether the guides are old friends or comparative strangers taken on for the season or even the day. Your concern is primarily with the guide’s state of mind, so that he may make the best use of his skill. If your object is merely an ordinary ascent, it is still important that the leading guide should be kept in the right mood, both because of the greater contribution to the social pleasure of your party if things go rightly, and because, if checks of weather or of circumstance arise, as they always may, you have then neglected nothing that can contribute to a successful continuance of your climb. If your intention is something beyond the ordinary, your task of preparation is more difficult. For the greater the technical difficulties of a climb, the larger must be the technical expert’s (or guide’s) share in deciding whether they can or cannot be overcome. The idea of the ascent has generally first to be made the guide’s own by subtle suggestion at convenient moments. If you have got him up out of the valley in good health and spirits, you have still the danger of the hut to meet, where the patois of local guides, should your plan leak out, will affect his next day’s humour fatally, even if it does not turn you back at once. In view of this danger it is sometimes best to treat your attempt as an ‘exploration’ only, until you are safely off on to the lower glaciers, otherwise you may find, when you wake in the hut, that the ‘wrong rope’ has been brought or ‘the weather’ is miraculously portentous. A mountaineer may hear these and similar whispered euphuisms, which are the preliminary to retreat, passing between a ‘prompted’ guide and his expostulating employer any night in any full hut. He will not feel it his business to intervene on behalf of another employer unless he is very sure of his ground. After all, the guide may have good reason to mistrust his employer’s competence, and have chosen this polite way of saving his life or comfort in anticipation. But the leader will be wise if he takes good note of the machinations, and of all their meanings, for his own protection in like case. Of course this kind of excuse may, in cases, be dictated by actual cowardice and not only by hut talk. My disregard of this possibility lost me one of the finest climbs I have planned. After all the gambits of hut excuses, ‘weather’ and ‘rope,’ had been countered, and we were actually on the mountain, my single guide, of fine reputation and great name, at the first sight of our formidable final ridge developed a ‘sprained wrist.’ It was a forlorn hope, which put an end to our association, and proved the downward turning-point in a promising career.

I must instance one other weakness that comes into special prominence in the bivouac or hut under the influence of other guides or of those fluctuations in mood to which the peasant is very subject in the prospect of some formidable climb. Very few guides know anything about ‘weather’ except a few local signs. But they will make use of their supposed instinctive knowledge to the utmost if they feel lazy in the morning or nervous of the undertaking. Possibly the ‘head-shaking’ is half genuine, as a guide has a child’s fear of two things chiefly: a cloud and a falling stone. But the leader must not be imposed upon, and must use his own judgment about starting. I remember once in a bivouac, literally under a huge stone, beside the Mer de Glace, twice sending out quite a decent guide to see if his ‘cloud-bank’ was thinning. On the third occasion, when I asked if there were really no stars visible, he murmured drowsily, “Only two now,” and snuggled down to sleep again. It is unnecessary to add that the guide and the party were wafted out of the gîte on the wind of the unspoken and ate their breakfast on the run.

I recall these instances only to emphasize the necessity of a close observation of character, so that flaws may be discovered in time, as well as the weak points shielded past the times of contact with external influences.

On the Mountain.

Once the climb is begun the task of shepherding is simpler; there are only the effects of untoward or premature mountain incident upon mood to guard against. But even so, occasionally, the effect of other parties on the same climb may have to be reckoned with. Their presence often extends the debilitating effect of ‘hut’ promptings to the mountain side. If the feeblest of several parties on a mountain turns back, it requires a serious effort to prevent panic, and the fear of later valley criticism, from inducing a general retreat. To relieve your guide of this chance you may have to make it very audibly apparent to the other parties that it is you, and not he, who are insisting upon the advance.

Similarly, a guided party ahead of you, which may happen to take even an obviously wrong route, will exercise a paralysing attraction upon your leading guide’s mind. It is overpowering if the two guides are acquainted. Once on a famous ridge of the greatest of Swiss peaks, when the guide of the party ahead of us chose the traditional but, on the day, the more dangerous of two lines, I had to say firmly that I should retreat rather than take the risk, before my own admirable guide could shake off the spell and consent to try the demonstrably better alternative route. Incidentally I may add that we had the satisfaction of sitting and watching from a secure ledge the sensational struggles of the other party for fully half an hour before they caught us up again. On the other hand, if the party ahead is led by a ‘foreigner’ or enemy guide, you may have to look out for the repellent effect upon your own guide, who will be only too ready to break off on any freakish alternative line which may give him the chance of cutting out his rival in front.

These cases illustrate a particular danger; but as a rule once the climbing commences the good guide is best left as much as possible to his free devices. Your authority must encourage the idea that in tactics the technical expert’s responsibility becomes greater, and that in details the leading guide conducts the operations without question or dissent.

Fine Shades.

If he has been judiciously nursed on to his mountain, a good leading guide will be equal, unaided, to all ordinary situations and to exceptional ones according to his ability. But if your climb proves to belong throughout to the exceptional class, you must remain on the watch, ready to employ in time those fine shades of management to which alone nerves and muscles working near their limit respond. A good first man on the rope, guide or amateur, is always an emotional subject, though his self-control may conceal his inward fluctuations. The leading guide’s mood in the early morning hours of climbing will frequently be clouded by his sense of the serious work before him and the threat of responsibility it shadows for him. If difficult problems present themselves before he has warmed to his work, as they are apt to do on a severe climb, or before he has realized the support of the harmonious working of the party behind him, his mood will exaggerate their difficulty and the discouraging prospect of a long day of such problems. If you can then lift him over the crucial point without risk to your party, your pains and study will have been well justified. You must not give direct orders. A guide who will hurl himself against anything because he is told to, against his judgment, is a bad guide, or at least one whose temper and discretion are spoiled for the day. Nor must you abuse the power of indirect suggestion which your study of your man will have given you. A guide’s instinct on technical points is an invaluable asset, and it may be harmed if it is tampered with tactlessly. You must first make up your own mind whether his objection to proceed is really based on genuine instinct or is only the outcome of a depressed and cumulative mood. And here your knowledge of the man and your observation of his condition before the crisis will help you even more than your examination of the obstacle which is checking him. Once you have decided that his objection is only due to mood, it is your business to bring him into the right key again; to make him feel that, while you realize the seriousness of the problem, yet your judgment, unbiased by the infection of gloom, is cheerfully confident that his skill can surmount it. Undue cheerfulness or obviously pretended confidence will defeat your object by merely making him think that you are out of touch with the situation or unaware of the gravity of the decision. Both words and tone, therefore, need very delicate choosing. The clouds must be given both time and a constant gentle impulse to clear off. Once the black hour is past, as it passes with most men as they warm to their work, the point comes, sooner or later, when every good guide catches fire. The amateur can then relax much of his attention even on a severe climb, enjoy the fun and attend to the lighter problems of mere climbing. A day comes back to mind, the occasion of a first ascent of the snow slopes of a famous peak, when weather and evening company had alike contributed to oppress the wayward spirits of a peasant guide. Every form of inducement, ‘exploration,’ ‘a nearer view for the next day,’ had had to be employed in turn in order to coax a gloomy morning progress up the glacier, over the bergschrund and up the initial ridges. And then suddenly, and fully a third of the way up the ascent, a Napoleonic attitude with outstretched arm appeared in silhouette against the snow wall above us. We heard a cheerful shout, “Who follows me to-day will reach the summit!” And we knew that all need for nursing on our part had ended for the day.

Remember that however well things are going, unforeseen circumstances may always upset humour, and that you must be always looking out for its effects. You have to bring your party up, for each round with the unforeseen, at the top of its climbing form. A guide in the lead must be relieved of all anxiety about the performance of the rest of the party; his judgment of the succeeding problems must be kept clear of bias from extraneous considerations. He must feel that the whole party is in tune behind him, and is confident in him, or he will not be free to put out his best powers.

Mood or circumstance may, however, on occasion prove too much for your management, and then you need not hesitate to take over the lead yourself for a while. It is well for this, and for many other reasons, to have accustomed your guides to the idea of your leading. When this extreme course is taken, it should be done quietly and, if possible, under pretext of trying some alternative line of your own. So soon as the guide’s humour readjusts itself, as it will all the quicker for watching your mistakes, the lead can be as quietly surrendered again. I remember a new ascent we made upon a formidable rock peak. Our excellent guides, overawed by the terrific threat of the sections far above us, tried prematurely to prove the whole climb impossible, by taking a fancy line early in the day which obviously led to a hopeless impasse. As it is the huntsman’s privilege and duty, when scent is overrun, to make the cast and lift the pack on to the right line again, we exercised it from the tail-end of the rope. Our ultimate success helped us to a mutual forgetfulness of the incident.

The Terms of the Association.

If you are climbing alone with a guide, of course either goes first as may be convenient at the moment. This should be taken for granted. Whether the your party contains guides or not, you should always insist on taking your share of leading and encourage other amateurs to take theirs. It is good for your climbing to do so, it is far the best fun, and it promotes a proper footing with the guides. A guide has no prescriptive right to the pleasantest place. Only where the climbing is difficult, or danger is involved, the best man must lead; and this may mean more usually the guide. It is a mistake for an amateur, however brilliant, to let himself appear to be competing with a guide on his own ground. The guide will always be politely admiring of brilliance, but he is really only concerned to know that an amateur climbs safely, and equally safely all the day. The common good is better served by your appearing to take his superiority in the technical field for granted, and confining your attention to deserving the command you intend to exercise in the field of general responsibility. It is a sign that you are beginning to take your proper position, in your own sphere, when your guides cease to assure you that you are climbing, like a ‘chamois’ or a ‘devil.’ But a young mountaineer is apt to feel injured that guides take so much longer in learning to pay him the first real compliment, the admission by their acts and not their speech that he has learned to go ‘safely.’ I remember in early days bitterly resenting being coddled on a short rope down an ice slope by two guides with whom I had just been sharing a sensational day, during at least four hours of which, if I had slipped, no effort of theirs could have saved the party. A guide, until he is trained by a good manager, never unlearns the most deep-rooted tradition of his caste. For him all amateurs alike remain the amateur, that is, a thing to be watched over, so long as the mountain remains a mountain, that is, a thing up which the guide leads. For years after he has forgotten to bother about his amateur on difficult places, where he has other things to think about, a return to familiar ground will recall to him the familiar tradition, and he will begin again to coddle his employer exasperatingly. And for seasons after he has unlearned this habit, a guide will continue to prefer the ‘backing up,’ in a bad place, of a second-rate professional to that of the best amateurs in the Alps. Perhaps this is natural; the two natives can calculate on each other’s actions and reactions more closely their co-operation must always be more instinctive and consequently more reassuring to one another.

An amateur must be content first to study the trade-winds of mountaineering, and then gradually try his wings on the more complicated cross-currents of its direction. Once he is qualified for his duties as manager, his old guides by habit, and any new guides by instinct or discovery, will soon concede him his full authority. With this as his fulcrum he will find it, in due time, easy to secure that both he and other amateurs of his party shall be left free to do their own share of the climbing on their own climbing merits, and only receive assistance (or what is intended for it) when they ask for it. When these terms are established it is happier for the party, and far happier as a permanent teaching for the guides. I was puzzled once to read in a hut book a notice that for the third year in succession the same gentleman had been forced to turn back by ‘wind’ at the same point of an easy ascent, although the book showed that on the same day other climbs on the mountain had gone well. Then we remarked that he had employed the same two guides on each occasion. They were earning their money, apparently, without undue exertion or interference in a permanent engagement. Possibly they may even have discovered that there is a humorous value in repetition! A few years later I heard of them as men of ‘unmanageable stiff-neckedness,’ and out of employment. But climbers will know of countless instances; and we must all have seen the village street tragedies of once famous guides drifting downward to chance engagements, trading on their names, irascible with their few patrons, still efficient, but spoiled, arrogant and accomplishing nothing.

The Rare Crisis.

No matter how well the guide’s temperament is analysed and his moods managed, every guide’s nervous system has a snapping point, when self-control may be momentarily lost. As I have said when speaking of amateurs, to some it comes sooner, to others later; but to the best guides, as to men of little or less education, it will come sooner than to the best amateurs. The crisis is a disagreeable one, and very rare. A thunderstorm, with its dangers that cannot be met by any skill, may produce it; a sudden fall of rocks or ice where they had no right to fall; or the shock of a realization of imminent peril. It will be always the unexpected. The amateur is then happy who has never weakened his influence by making mistakes outside his province or by exhibitions of his own temper or lack of self-control. If he has never given himself away under pressure of shock or disappointment or fatigue, then the greater the crisis the more effective will be his personal intervention. A few sharp words, startling but not angry, will prove with all good guides sufficient restorative. I have had occasion even to pay off an hysterical shouting guide on a mountain side before his frenzy,—the result of an uncontrolled temper and sudden panic,—yielding then to the fear of a solitary descent, died down sufficiently to make it safe to take him on the rope again. He was a bad guide, and dismissed on that account. But for the case of a good guide who has been tried too highly, the momentary correction will suffice, and the incident should not afterwards be recalled. I know of no other occasion which should justifiably tempt us into sharp speech or the exhibition of direct authority during an actual climb. The secret of maintaining control is never to appear to claim it.

The Reward.

In effect, an amateur is free now to take or not to take guides in accordance with circumstances and not with tradition. If he engages them, except as a beginner, it must be on the terms of mountaineer with mountaineer and not tourist with professional. He should get to know them as human beings, make friends of them if he keeps them, and treat them with the same tact as his other friends. In addition he has to give them the increased study and supervision which primitive temperaments, unknown antecedents, probable prejudices and possible personal value to his party deserve. His reward will be to find that his guided party remains free from many of the anxieties and disappointments with which other guided and guideless parties have to put up. He will find that the modern guide, if he has little of the demigod of last-century tradition, has the potentialities of any wholesome, hill-bred human being. He will also, if he has deserved it, discover that the better a man, guide or amateur, becomes as a mountaineer, the closer he grows as a companion; until a point is reached, in the fellowship of great ascents, when the distinction altogether disappears.

CHAPTER IV
ROCK CLIMBING

Rocks are the framework of mountains. Rock climbing is a joyous method of getting up attractive mountains by attractive ways. But it is possible to be a rock climber without becoming a mountaineer. It is possible to earn a reputation by leading climbs upon some special type of rock without becoming even a good rock climber. The good rock climber is the man who moves equably, speedily and safely up or down sound and unsound rock, of every description and of any degree of difficulty that is within his physical powers.

A man who knows rocks and their structure and can climb them with understanding is potentially a good mountaineer. He has opportunities now of perfecting his craft which did not exist for his predecessors. Each succeeding climbing generation can enter without effort or loss of time upon an inheritance of skill and knowledge that its predecessors won with tentative effort and slow discovery. During the last twenty-five years the standard of difficulty that can be accomplished with ease and safety by a rock climber of ability has gone up some 25 per cent. To this rapid advance the literature published on the subject has contributed. The majority of climbs have now been charted and described; their difficulties can be allowed for. The mystery and uncertainty of new discovery affecting the mind, and the novelty of new adjustments imposed upon the body are alike eliminated as complications from the fair field of achievement. The climber goes out to meet purely objective difficulties, with his mind informed and expectant and his body trained and anticipating. The novice, or the expert in a district new to him, guided by his reading, can economize his nerve and muscle for the more difficult passages, and, finding them the easier for this restraint, can pass on to always more exacting attempts with pleasurable assurance.

The presence in the hills of an increasing number of men who climb well and confidently has had even more effect than the publication of books and periodicals. Directed by advice, and by what is still more effective, by imitation, the beginner is no longer in danger of getting into habits of false positions and of false judgment, whether of the angles or of the character of rock holds. He grows up in an atmosphere where these matters are common knowledge, and he learns almost unconsciously.

The Theory of the Development.

Rock climbing in our modern sense is a young craft. The early mountaineers were drawn to the hills primarily by the attraction of exploration. Their principal interest was to find the best route to the summits. The snow slopes, to which the peasants and hunters who led the early ascents had been for generations accustomed, presented the natural means. Where snow failed and angles grew steeper they took to the ice walls and ice couloirs, since to their developing snow technique ice presented a more familiar alternative than rock. Steep, bare rocks were incidentally negotiated, but not from choice. The steeper, snowless rock peaks which offered no royal snow routes were thus naturally left to the last, and when the succeeding generation wished to find new outlet for the satisfaction of its own desire for discovery, it had to invent a new rock technique to solve the new problems.

The history has been the same in every form of sport or of adventure which has had the movements of the body and their perfecting in skill as basis. The passion for the sport that the many may possess engenders in the few who are better physically or nervously gifted a desire to heighten and prolong the sensation and to exercise their improving skill upon always more difficult variations. To the love of wandering in the mountains, shared by all mountaineers, is added the enduring pleasure to any healthy man of finding occasion for a higher self-realization, a more vital physical consciousness.

The evolution has been continuous; the generations, of course, overlap, and the different phases of mountain enthusiasm can still find their several satisfaction. For the explorer there are still the untrodden ranges. For those with means and time sufficient to indulge their love of climbing among the great Alps, the old snow ways of the mountains still remain sufficient in number and in sensation. But for the ever-increasing number of men whom circumstances limited to the lesser hills of our own islands or to the lower alpine ranges, the grass and snow ways began to prove too unexciting as their novelty became exhausted, and the rock peaks and the sheer rock faces of the Lake Fells, Skye or the Dolomites offered a new temptation. Rock surface, unlike snow, proved to be almost infinite in its variety and inexhaustible in its offer of novel routes. Consequently the development of difficult rock climbing in snowless regions like our own proceeded at a pace somewhat out of proportion to the leisurely progress of the art among the British frequenters of the greater Alps. Even among the guides it was only the few, fired by emulation or educated by their employers, who maintained a rate of improvement at all commensurate with that which was taking place in the average standard of amateur home rock climbing; I am speaking here purely of difficulty and primarily of ascents. In the art of continuous climbing, and of climbing down, the comparison, as will appear later, was not equally to the home climber’s advantage.

The principal agent in the change has been the study of the possibilities of balance in motion, and the training successively of the foot, the hand and the eye to secure a complete rhythmic movement of the body while climbing. The primitive belief, if we may make a deduction from the practice and recitals of early mountaineers, was that the body could not be balanced with safety unless the width of the foot had firm standing. Snow was found to satisfy this condition once the study of snow craft had taught guides and amateurs how to fashion a level tread, no matter what the angle of the snow slope. When the period of the great ice climbs followed, in the historical order of exploration, it became merely a question of discovering how to fashion a corresponding security of step in ice. When the new impulse developed for the undertaking of routes upon the rock peaks, a similar breadth and comfort of tread were at first looked for. Consequently the rock ascents of former days were limited in number and character by this condition. Of the hands little account was taken. A walking balance was the only rhythm recognized. We might almost call this the ‘walking epoch.’ But the new generation, inheriting an always improving mountain craft, with a new goal in view, could not long remain at this point. The problem of finding sound routes up the rock angles of unexplored peaks and faces had to be faced.

The great gullies or rifts in the rock walls offered the first natural lines of temptation. The shelter of their enclosing walls promised a comfortable reassurance to nerve, and even more to the eye, as yet unaccustomed, as I have shown elsewhere, to the direct view into empty space, above, below and on either side, without its customary rest-point for the assurance of balance. So began what may be called the ‘gully epoch,’ a cul-de-sac which for a decade shut in, with a few exceptions, all the efforts of our rock climbers. Since the level tread could rarely be obtained in these gullies, body, shoulders and arms were all brought into the service, in order that the feet might still be able to jam against the requisite breadth of foothold, even though in such places tilted at an angle. At angles where these sloping footholds failed, the stemming of the shoulders and knees between the vertical rock walls on either side was discovered to be a means of bridging gaps on the climb that would before have passed for insurmountable. The substitute of this rough friction and purely muscular effort for the walking balance of the exploring age exercised for a time a restricting influence, although the freer use it made of the body in general prepared the way for a better tradition. Climbers got up steeper cliffs by their new methods at the sacrifice of their education as mountaineers. By specializing on a convenient accident of mountain architecture, one which cramped their outlook and left them little opportunity for achieving rhythm or perfecting balance, they even unlearned something of the general mountaineering knowledge which had been acquired by the wider, milder practice of their predecessors. It was this departure, with its somewhat clamorous record, that introduced the period of widest separation between the old school of classical alpine mountaineers and the commencing school of island rock climbers, and which brought upon the latter the blast of, not unmerited, ‘grease-polarized’ criticism, that still whispers spasmodically and archaically. It deepened the rift that during this epoch the greater number of first ascents of the cliffs in England and Wales were made by means of those enticing gullies. For the classical mountaineers, trained in the Alps, when they took an occasional holiday in the Lakes or Skye, looked chiefly for the class of climbing which most closely recalled the varied types of ridges to whose structure they had been accustomed in Switzerland. Their successors, the Fell climbers, lacking their alpine training, yielded to the temptation of unexplored gullies, and for years enclosed our home climbing in these uncomfortable channels. Wales, with less potent climbers, followed the example. But Wales, with fewer gullies wherein to win fame, would appear to have been the quarter where the first bid was made for freedom. Almost simultaneously a similar change of view was taking place among the rock peaks of the Eastern Alps. Gullies are the natural lines for the descent of stones, water and snow rather than for the ascent of human beings. Of their nature ‘faults’ in the sound structure of the cliffs, intrusions of softer rock whose weakness water has discovered, their surviving walls present an undue proportion of unsound rock. These objections, combined with the gradual exhaustion of their temptation as new ascents, eventually forced our climbers to escape from their sunless recesses and to adjust their methods to less restricting requirements.

The first impulse came from a few individuals whose exceptional physical advantages led to their discovery that they could trust to their fingers as securely as to the full tread of their feet or the jam of their bodies. The discovery enabled them to attempt places where there were no containing walls to be relied upon as support for the body if the feet failed—problems such as wide-angled corners and even what would now be called slab climbs. Finger and hand holds in their turn became everything; footwork was neglected. To some exponents the feet were useful only as auxiliaries, scraped downward indiscriminately upon the rocks to give some extra propulsion. It was the epoch of ‘grip’-climbing. Its merit, apart from fine individual achievements, was that, in its turn, it set the succeeding generation free to trust itself more confidently on to the open ribs and exposed rock faces. Bare slabs which had hardly been looked at were then found to be covered with firm holds, upon which the toe or the side of the boot could stand as firmly and advance far more rapidly; while hands and eyes were free to assist them to an extent unknown before. The balance of the body in continuous motion above the feet was, as it were, rediscovered, and an upright position became again possible. The hands returned to their proper function of aids to the balance, and the feet, climbing in natural positions, became again of principal importance. With the discovery that the underlying principle of all climbing movement is rhythm,—a rhythm of the whole body and not only of the legs, as in walking,—and that the basis of such rhythm is balance, and not grip or stride or struggle, rock craft moved into its proper place in the forefront of mountaineering qualifications.

Such in rough outline is the history of the last eighty years of climbing technique. We must allow for much overlapping of the epochs in so short a period, and for many notable individual exceptions; but in the main this summary represents where we were and where we are, and what happened on the way.

In classifying the stages of our climbing progress into epochs or compartments, I am doing no injustice to the achievements of the past. A chronicler must always face the dilemma whether to say that the great man by his example produces the general change of practice in the next generation, or whether to class him as the conspicuous anticipatory ripple of a general current of coming change. Very young climbers may be often only human in their criticisms of their contemporaries and in their faint patronage of the collective past; for no really enthusiastic mountain-lover ever in his heart believes that anyone else has ever owned the hills and discovered climbing quite in the sense that he has. But every climber who is on the way to becoming a permanent mountaineer is a keen student of mountain history, and the services rendered to the world’s mountaineering by the conservation of a body of central alpine tradition are never likely to be underrated. A good house rises higher than its foundations, but it rests upon them. The men who first ventured on the discouraging angles of buttress and gully and cleared the grass and earth from small holds performed greater feats technical and moral than the most outside variations which may remain to be done on the same rocks by their present-day successors. They had everything against them, even the atmosphere of their generation. They not only led the way to the steep rocks; they started the assault upon degrees and varieties of difficulty that forced upon their successors the cultivation of the superior technique which they now enjoy. The mountaineering world has a tenacious memory; we cherish the names and exploits of the heroic age; the feet of our gods were solidly shod, and we will admit no clay to be visible about them but that which was honourably collected in their stout tramping.

Balance Climbing.

The change in style from epoch to epoch was a considerable one, and it has not been brought to perfection in several climbing generations. To acquire a balance rhythm in motion the whole body has to learn a habit of continuous simultaneous adjustments. Both feet and hands must develop a very fine sensitiveness of touch, so as to inform us not only of the exact amount of security each is contributing at the moment, but also—a different matter—of the value of their leverage for initiating a fresh movement upwards. According to these messages the balance is continuously adjusted, so as to relieve or compensate any extremity that may require it. The feet need only a sufficiency of hold to carry the weight of the body at whatever angle it is being held in balance by the hands. The hands need only that amount of hold which will enable them to keep the body balanced while the weight is being thrust upward by the feet. The feet learn to move inevitably on to holds no longer seen, but previously selected by the eye. Simultaneously, the eyes are already occupied in choosing the next holds for hand and feet, guided in their choice not only by the compensating quality of the hold which the balance at the instant may demand for one or other of the four extremities, but also by the direction in which the next movement can most securely be made. A system of continuous compensations, partly drawn from the rhythmic balance of the moving body, partly from a corrective choice of succeeding holds, means a great saving of effort for the feet and hands.

The walking rhythm, of the first period, called for large, flat holds, and therefore for long strides between them. Between each hold the centre of gravity was thus forced out insecurely. The hands, when used, had the extra labour of dragging the weight inward against the outward thrust of the legs. The effort and the insecurity set a low limit to the angle of rock which could be conveniently ascended. The grip habit, of the middle period, demanded for its assurance sharp-edged cling holds, such as would enable the whole lifting movement to be executed by the hands alone. The body in suspension was thus wrenched inwards continuously, and sight and balance were interrupted. Rhythm on either method became impossible. On the other hand, a foot climber who climbs by balance or compensation appears to creep easily and continuously up the most severe slabs on an even line. His moving foot rarely lifts above the knee of his stationary leg, for he has his balance first to consider, and as he only needs small footholds at any angle to sustain it, he can find them at shorter intervals in greater abundance. His hands feel the almost imperceptible rugosities of surface with sensitive fingers, that press as often as they cling. His body moves upward, swinging out or in on a curve of balance with astonishing freedom, as the messages from hand, eye and feet are collated and complied with.

A man in sound condition, with his nerves and muscles trained, can acquire this mastery of balance in motion far more easily than would appear when it is thus set out. His body, at rest, instinctively assumes the right balance for a given position. He has only to train his eye to select holds ahead which will allow of a sequence of harmonic positions; to train his instinct to imagine beforehand what these positions will be; and to train his body to move from each one of these positions to the next, in balance and with an ordered and unbroken rhythm.

In this ladder of modern technique the first rungs of easier progress have been the relief to the hands and feet. A further step has been the relief to the knee, and incidentally to the clothes that cover it. It is now rare to see a good climber return even from a week of conflict with that most destructive of all rock, the Chamonix granite, in the tatters of tradition. In Wales, succeeding Mrs. Owens need no longer “mend them with stuff of various colours”: the dark returns for decency’s sake to Zermatt or Wasdale are adventures of the past. Even the style of clothes has something altered with the style of climbing. Practised climbers wear in all lighter materials, chosen for wind and water purposes more than for an armadillo-like power of resisting friction. The change in the knee is most significant. The armour plating of thicknesses has tended to disappear. The knee is usually innocent of patches and often left, in Tyrolese fashion, uncovered. The change is due to our change in style. While the foot still demanded broad holds, necessarily found at longer intervals, for its balance, the knee was constantly in requisition for an intermediate push up. While grip climbing obtained, the knee was more useful than the foot to jam with or to scrape downward against the rocks. It was also recommended for use in mountaineering manuals as a relief to those long strides and arm-pulls! Now the foot works for both. The knee is kept in reserve for cracks and rococo mantelpieces, in interrupted climbing, or for a friction hold on spaces of smooth slab to raise the body the few inches necessary to reach new handhold. Since the knee is useless even on such occasions unless it adheres firmly, the breeches should not get dragged or torn. In continuous climbing it only serves us for light balancing touches, when the hands are needed elsewhere.

Yet another step has been the setting free of the eyes to perform their proper functions of balancing and of selecting. This release has been the main factor in confirming the rapid improvement in modern technique. During the walking era, and still more during the gully and grip eras, the climber had generally to take what his hands, unaided by his eyes, found for him. A climber by balance or compensation keeps his head well away from the rock, at the maximum distance permitted by the necessity of keeping his body in balance above his moving feet. His eye is almost uninterruptedly free to trace out his general line above, to choose immediate holds and to exercise, even as he moves, a comfortable and leisurely discretion. He can see what he is doing all the time. To take one instance. On very steep rock that which has passed below the level of the knee is often already out of sight. A man who climbs convulsively, with his nose against the rock, has often missed the sight of some minute ledge to right or left of his line which alone offers a foothold from which his hands can reach above the next bare slab. Even if he afterwards finds it by the grope of his foot, it is too late for his eyes to estimate its security or shape. Similarly, he is unable to keep continuous watch ahead, and may often lose sight of a line of holds already marked from below; or he may overlook altogether some other easier line of holds which could have been reached by a timely divergence to right or left. Thus his chances of accomplishing a difficult climb are incalculably diminished.

And yet another step has been the economy in nervous and physical output. Rock climbs can now be repeated by the average modern climber with only about half the effort they cost their first conquerors, who did them by force of heart and muscle. They can keep, consequently, more strength in reserve. The interrupted continuity of our earlier struggle step and grip hold involved a disturbance of the balance and a break in the continuity of mental concentration. The recovery from every such movement put an extra strain upon both muscle and nerve. In the re-start after each ‘jam’ position, with its absolute arrest of rhythm of all kinds, the disturbance was even greater. Severe climbing of the modern standard demands controlled, continuous movements, so that the body’s adjustments may continue automatically, and that there may be no interruption in the co-operation of nerve and eye and brain.

The beginner must expect to find that balance climbing does not come to him as a first instinct. Swinging from the hands to every hold which may be visible, and struggling and jamming with the rest of the body anyhow, so as to secure safety and impetus, are the primitive movements proper to self-preservation and common to all muscular animals like men and monkeys. Much muscular instinct has to be unlearned to overcome this instinct, which is the reason that athletes who have accustomed themselves to reliance upon particular groups of muscles are generally bad climbers. But there is no more cramping fault than to yield to the muscular temptation, and to cling or jam when it is not absolutely essential to safety.

The rule holds good for easy or hard rock, sound or unsound. The sense of balance in motion has to be acquired, or, at the beginning of each climbing holiday, recovered. The lines of communication between toe and finger and eye, with the brain as clearing-station, have to be opened up or reopened. The ability to compensate, by the balance of the body, between hand and foot hold, and to relate the process to the task of selecting holds in anticipation with the eyes, has to be acquired or regained. Movement has to become rhythmic, and not convulsive.

The sense of comfort or ease in performing individual movements is the test of the degree of balance and rhythm acquired. The consciousness of comfort in continuous climbing movement is the assurance of a developed style. Easy rock ridges, of sufficient length, provide the best commencing practice. On them alone can practice rapid enough or continuous enough be obtained to convert what in the commencement must be separate efforts, each executed by a conscious effort of the will, into unconscious rhythmic movement as the habit of the body. The adjustment of the poise of the body and the judgment of the adjustment next required must become instinctive, otherwise an unexpected attitude forced upon us by the exigencies of the holds may upset the sense of comfort; and with the comfort goes the style; and with the style goes the security. The feeling of confidence is our test.

The Individual Standard.

If, and this happens to the most expert when out of training, a feeling of discomfort or mistrust intrudes, even for a flash, we are climbing beyond our standard. There is no error more fatal than the assumption that because we have once done a particular climb or perfected our skill to a particular rhythm, we can always and at once climb up to that standard again or recover our normal rhythm.

It must be repeated that the standard of difficult rock climbing has now been forced up to a point that practically represents the limit of human possibility. If we may assume that there is a minimum of handhold or foothold to which fingers or toes however powerful or prehensile can cling, and that there is a maximum angle above which human strength cannot force its way up rocks by friction alone, that minimum and maximum have now been attained. Men of abnormal physique, confidence and endurance have of recent years perfected their individual rhythm of skill to the point of being able to ascend without discomfort or violent effort rock climbs that present the maximum angle with the minimum of holds. Beyond that point lies, not danger, which for ordinary climbers begins some degrees earlier, but impossibility.

It is folly for beginners or for ordinary climbers, as it would be folly for these men themselves when they were out of practice, to attempt such climbs out of mere courage or conscious fitness, or because they have heard that they are frequently done. What one man has done in climbing every man cannot do. In many cases the final conquest of these particular climbs has been due to some accident of abnormal reach or other development such as no skill could acquire, superimposed upon a perfection of normal style. If the climbs seem to be repeated frequently, it is because, though the parties may be numerous and various, the leaders of those parties remain few and the same—men drawn from the small group of the super-climbers.

Again, ability to climb rocks of the modern exacting standard is even as much a matter of mental fitness as of bodily fitness, of continuity in nervous control as of physique. An instant’s failure of will or confidence, an instant’s interruption in the nerve communications, due to fatigue or over-tension, will disturb the delicate adjustments of balance as fatally as a broken leg. Several of the most serious accidents of recent years have been undoubtedly due to momentary suspensions of consciousness, breaks in the nerve communications, produced by over-exertion of the nerves as much as of the muscles. Before nerve and sinew are alike fit and in training they can establish no rhythmic co-operation with one another or with the brain. And in this condition they are all alike liable to error in estimating the amount of effort or of compensation they can justly expect from each other.

The pleasant custom of association among climbers has its drawbacks in this respect. Climbers are gregarious, if exclusive. They tend to form eclectic associations in certain centres at certain times. They re-form into different parties under the same leaders. Consequently a number of men may begin and climb for years without arriving at an idea of what they are individually worth, or of what would be their normal standard if left to themselves. They may do a number of the severest ascents and discuss them with an equal confidence, and yet remain ignorant of what progress they have made in their own standard of performance or in nerve control. A climbing party pools its ability and its confidence. The longer and closer its association, the less are its individuals conscious of how much they contribute and how much they draw from the collective power. A weak climber may climb on some such rope with satisfaction to himself and no obvious personal inferiority, while he is drawing all the time on the common stock contributed by his more capable associates. A leader similarly, well backed up by a good party, may get into the way of deceiving himself badly as to the extent to which his secure performance really derives from them. Instances are not wanting of the trap this may become. A weak or moderate climber thinks he can lead a moderate party up a climb which he may have done comfortably several times with his usual strong party of friends. Alone, he gets into serious difficulties. A good leader, over-confident from the habit of always feeling a sound party behind him, may attempt a difficult or familiar climb with too large a proportion of novices on his rope. The amount of ability pooled by the party behind him will no longer provide a margin of safety against accidents. The slip of one will involve others, and his individual contribution of skill cannot be sufficient to check the disaster.

No man is fit to lead on easy rocks until he knows exactly his own unaided normal standard. No man is fit to lead on difficult rocks until he can gauge not only his normal standard, but also, accurately, his standard of the day. The second is as important as the first, but it is almost universally disregarded in practice.

To lead rock climbs of the modern high standard of difficulty demands a high degree of initiative, imagination and nervous force, added to a suitable physique. First-rate leaders are, therefore, in a large majority men of highly strung nervous temperament; they are ‘built on wires.’ To have become great leaders they must have learned to dominate their wires completely. For such men, unusually aware of their normal standard, it is all the more difficult to consider or allow for accidental fluctuations in their physical or nervous condition of the day. But a particular climb may find even them either out of condition or suffering from an off-day. The off-day feeling, arising from countless causes, is one from which all mountaineers suffer; the more frequently, the more nervous their temperament, and therefore the more frequently in the case of this type of leader. If they disregard its presence or attempt to overtighten their wires to resist it, they run serious risks. The good climber must find compensation in the knowledge that the more he perfects his technique and rhythm of comfort, the less variation will he find in his normal standard; and the better he knows his normal standard, the less difficulty will he find in determining the fluctuations in his standard of the day.

The climber then must, from the first, learn to estimate his own performance irrespective of the contribution made to it by the rest of his party.

Solitary Climbing.

To secure this self-knowledge he need not climb alone. Solitary climbing has its own delights: of independence of movement and of remoteness from the whims of others; of a more intimate appreciation of beauties of sight and sound and incident, and of a sense of almost personal identification with the forces of nature, in their visible activity of movement and growth as in their passive compliance of line, colour and form with laws of slower change. The mystical moments in mountaineering, which are the source of its fascination for men of intellect and imagination, are found more easily in solitude. But these moments are to be experienced almost equally in solitary rambling or walking, and although their intensity is increased by the rhythm of climbing, the rhythm of mind and nerve and muscle working at the same high tension to the same deep tune, yet this superlative indulgence is only excusable for the supremely expert. To climb alone a man must know his own measure; he must be confident that he can allow for his standard of the day; he must restrict his ambition to climbing of a class well below the utmost he could manage with a good rope behind him; he must allow something more for the nervous effect of solitude; and he must remember that all rock climbing is subject to a large number of pure accidents,—a strained sinew, a falling stone, or a breaking hold,—whose effects can be corrected or at least minimized by a united party, but any one of which may prove fatal to a solitary climber. If he is confident that he can make all these allowances, he may go alone on rock if he so desires. The question of what further limits he ought to observe out of regard for the apprehensions of others, his own circumstances or his relatively greater value in some other sphere, is a matter for private or domestic decision, and is not for the consideration of mountaineering opinion.

As concrete instances of the degree of difference that should be made, I take a few examples from rock climbs familiar to British climbers. A man who could lead the Grépon or the Dru (so far as their rocks are concerned) would be justified on his skill, if he kept all the conditions, in attempting all but the most severe Lake or Welsh climbs single-handed. A man whose limit in leading a rope was the rocks of the Géant or the Moine, or who found the Réquin fatiguing, could only safely undertake alone easy rock climbs, the orthodox ridges in Skye, the moderate Napes ridges, the buttresses of Tryfan and so on. Any man who found comfort in the presence of the rope, even behind him, on such ridges and buttresses as these last, should never attempt, when he is alone, more than the scrambling incidental to mountain walking. Finished experts must discover their own personal code of differentiation. They have only to keep in mind the distinction between difficulty and danger, as climbers know it, and to remember that to the solitary climber every difficulty may be dangerous in result. I say nothing here about solitary climbing on snow or ice.

Beginners do not come under any of the categories which permit of solitary effort.

Initial Practice.

The introduction to climbing customarily inflicted upon novices is practice upon single rocks, low cliffs, quarries and erratic boulders, with or without the aid of a rope held from above. This ‘bouldering,’ or problem climbing, may serve to discover a talent or encourage an inclination, but it is of little use as commencing practice. The scrambles are short. They give no opportunity for a groundwork in rhythm or for balance in motion. If they are easy, they are done at once on the head or the heels, and no one the better. If they are more difficult, muscle can either manage them,—a bad error to commence with,—or, if muscle fails, the ground close below or the rope close above deprives failure and success alike of any training for the nerve or moral for the memory. Their real value is only for the expert, who has learned to treat every rock with the same respect, be it of five feet or of five hundred feet. They make fine riders upon special propositions, of toe or finger joint, once we have mastered the general principles; but beginners get more benefit from easy, continuous exercises on the simple rules—and ridges.

This practice is best begun as a member of a roped party of about equal capacity, and under the direction of a leader who will only allow the rope to be used as a protection, and not as a method of traction. The climber is then to a large extent insured against the consequences of his early blunders, which will give him some necessary confidence; he will get some profit from watching other methods, and he can devote himself to working out his own style. Imitation, conscious or not, will give him right position, and the collective movement will infect him with the beginnings of rhythm.

The Use of the Foot.

Hard Soles.

In balance climbing, footwork must be placed first. For footwork on rock the right footgear with the right sole is all-important. If we wear a nailed boot, it should be as light as is consistent with strength and the weight of the climber—that is, of the lightest alpine pattern.[10] Large men often like the heavy iron-clad boot for the impetus it gives to a longer swing on levels or downhill. But this is no recommendation in ascending rocks, where the weight of the boot alone, since it has to be lifted and swung an indefinite number of thousand times a day, is a wasteful drain upon the leg muscles. At the same time the boot must be strong enough to protect the foot against bruise or jar on all kinds of rugged surface, and the soles thick enough to be firm, otherwise in climbing with the toe or the side of the boot there is unfair strain upon the finer fabric of the foot. The welt, for rock work more especially, should not project, as this increases the strain upon foot and leg in toe and side-foot climbing. A heavy welted boot or one with stiff leather uppers crushes the foot and interferes with its delicate sense of touch.

The method of nailing the boots is important.[11] Rock climbers pursue different fancies of their own: some prefer a double line of small nails close to the edge, for a better stance on small ledges; some dislike the edge or wing nails, and prefer a single row of small sharp heads; and so on; but the chief thing for rock is to make sure that the edge-nails, whatever they be, are set well apart, so as to give a rough catching edge between each nail against a pull either way. On the toe this separation is not so imperative, and they can be set closer together for mutual protection and for a division of the strain, which, in their case, will chiefly be on the back of the nail and not on its sides. To edge the boot with overlapping nails, which may become a smooth bar, is ineffective, and even more likely to produce a slip on rock than if the sole were left altogether unprotected. One good rough nail rightly driven in and rightly placed is quite enough to ensure a perfectly safe stance under a well-balanced body; and on much modern slab climbing one nail-hold is all that is sought or obtained. The neater the action the fewer the nails needed.

Soft Soles.

For a number of rock surfaces a soft sole serves better than a nailed boot. It permits of a sharper flex of the ankle, and restores to the foot much of the sensitive and prehensile quality of the hand. Its more flexible surface will cling to or over excrescences and flat planes upon which a boot could find little or no support. It enables the foot to be thrust toe-forward into narrower horizontal cracks or pockets, and toe-downward, for leverage, behind flakes split vertically. It is more secure upon steep, smooth slabs, in back-and-toe chimney climbing and upon delicate traverses. Its lightness and close fit give greater elasticity to the movements of the leg and greater exactitude to the placing of the foot. On the other hand, it has not the grip in the smooth angle of a vertical crack or corner that a hard sole has; in side-foot or toe climbing on narrow ledges of sheer rock it strains the foot unduly; it is treacherous on greasy or glazed rock, and absolutely useless on snow, ice, sharp rubble or in greater mountaineering. From my own experience I should say that there are few steep places that the ordinary rock climber meets where a nailed boot cannot be used as securely as a soft sole, but that there are many where the soft sole is more comfortable and reassuring. We have, of recent years, imitated Dolomite climbers more generally in their use upon abrupt crags, and when we have finally got over our prejudice against carrying extra footgear with us and bothering to put it on, there will be as wide a popularity for the soft sole, discreetly used, upon rock as the claw has at last begun to enjoy upon ice.

According to the texture and condition of the rock, soft soles of raw hide, thin leather, woollen cloth, canvas, flat or ribbed rubber, rope, and even the soles of bare feet of a naturally leathery quality, are all and each declared to be the best possible wear. It is impossible to assign them geographically and geologically in detail, and I doubt if anyone will carry with him all the types on the chance of using one quite correctly. The average rock climber, even though he knows the truth that on some rock boots with hard nails, and on others boots with soft nails, give the better grip, shows himself still discouragingly reluctant to carry even these two pairs with him in our own islands. I myself preferred a light rubber sole on dry difficult rock, and a rope or cloth sole on wet rough rock (not greasy), whenever the difficulty made it distinctly safer than a nailed boot. Rubber is less durable than rope, but it remains more evenly prehensile. The rope sole, recently used with great effect even in the greater Alps, gets hard and, still worse, hardens in patches that give a fickle tread.

For prolonged wear a soft-soled canvas boot is more comfortable than the traditional shoe.

Many rock climbers wear very thick stockings or several pairs of socks.[12] Their protection to the foot is greater than that of weighty or rigid boot leather, and, according as feet and boots vary in size from day to day, they allow of a corresponding addition or subtraction. But for pure rock work their thickness should never be allowed to interfere with the sense of touch in the toes. Any constriction round the ankle, by the boot, or round the knee, by the breeches, is for the same reason to be avoided. To check the circulation or to cramp a sinew or muscle is to interrupt the telegraphic messages upon which balance and safety depend.

Foothold.

The feet in all climbing should be placed lightly, and the swing of the leg kept under control. To aim the foot, as many do, from the thigh and knee, bang it in, and then leave it to settle itself on the hold, is to jar the foot and fatigue the leg. The movement should be precisely directed from start to finish, and no sinew slackened until the other foot has taken charge. In continuous climbing the position of the foot on the new foothold should be chosen with a view to its supporting the balance during the next movement up or down, and the foot must be placed exactly as the eye designed. If not, the balance will not rise true on the lift, and there will be a flurried hand cling and a clumsy foot shuffle until the right foot position is found. Small inexactitudes mean clumsiness and waste of power.

Good skating calls for the same precise adjustment of the feet in anticipation of the next movement of the body. But the closest parallel is to be found in good dancing. The motion of foot and leg in both dancing and continuous climbing is free yet under control, rhythmical and balanced to the appearance of ease, but precise; ready for the new position required for fresh movement, and yet keeping the body in balance during the momentary transference of weight. In both, the actual contact of the feet with the surface is always light. In either, a heavy or loose tread not only breaks the rhythm, so that the balance has to be recovered by an effort, but it destroys the sensitiveness of touch, and delays for a perceptible moment the beginning of the next movement. Dancing is, in fact, an excellent preparation for climbing. Good climbers are, or can be, nearly always good dancers. The account often given in joke of a fine climber that he ‘literally danced down the rocks’ is a truthful picture. A good dancer has to adjust the continuous motion of his feet and body over an even surface to the swift and varied rhythm of music. A good climber has only to keep true to his own rhythm; but he has the more difficult task of adjusting his continuous movement to the varied angles, checks and impulses of uneven rock holds. The more difficult the rock, the slower must be his rhythm; but slow or fast, each motion must remain equally exact and finished. The more precise he renders each movement, the safer will be his progress and the more polished will appear to be his style. All false positions, sudden convulsions or recoveries that will break the continuity of movement, have therefore to be avoided. In ascending upon a vertical line it is, for instance, obviously better to take footholds slightly to the right and left with either foot rather than immediately below the body. The knee thus turned sideways can be flexed without thrusting out the centre of gravity and interrupting the continuity. Again, as between two footholds that may offer, the one large and reassuring in promise but inconveniently placed, the other less comforting but at a happier interval, the latter is to be selected. The first would be sound, but would need two interrupted movements and a readjustment between them; the second will fit in with our continuous movement and be secure enough to reach and to leave again. Rock holds are not required for a permanent residence. The foot, the toe and the side nail are not looking for snug berths with a pension, but only for such security of tenure as will permit them to promote the career easily from one balanced movement to the next.

Anticipation.

Upon very steep rock, holds rarely occur in the convenient, ladder-like sequence that allows of a continuous lifting of the body in the same position and line. Each succeeding set of hand and foot holds may here require a new attitude for purposes of balance. For this interrupted type of climbing, however, it is just as important to remember that it is too late to begin to twist the body into the new position required by the new holds when already those holds have been reached. A climber who makes this mistake gets no help even from his slower rhythm, and looks to be spasmodic and insecure. All the more here a good climber should look beforehand what his new attitude will have to be on the new holds, and, like a skater, he should move his body into the new position while he is in the act of passing from the one set of holds to the other. In the case of an awkward step it is even admissible for him to go up and down to it, tentatively, before committing himself to it, in order to make certain that he will arrive upon the hold in the right position. He has then no need to readjust his feet or hands when the movement is complete and the next begins.

This fine point in style is invaluable to master; anticipation saves energy and assures safety on long or difficult rock climbs. The sinuous progress of the expert on an ‘interrupted’ passage is effortless as compared with the jerks and quick contortions of a less finished climber on the same place; and on long, easier climbs, where all are moving together, he is always the sooner ready to meet at any second the failure in his own case of a single hold, or to give the immediate check to the rope which shall correct a slip behind him. Even if he is in mid-movement when the call comes, in an instant of time his feet and hands can lock his balance into the new position already half attained, or they will bring him back with nicety to his last firm holds.

The Ankle.

In the mastery of balance climbing the ankle plays a very important part. So that the body may progress smoothly when the feet are clinging only to small or very inclined holds, the ankle must be strong enough and supple enough to support the weight at rest or in motion, no matter at what angle it may be bent, forward or backward or sideways. The extent to which the ankle can be flexed varies with the individual. Extreme in babyhood, the flexibility can be preserved by early and suitable exercise. Once it is lost, and the foot ‘set,’ it is very difficult to recover or increase it in later life. Those whose ankles will only flex city-wise may only envy the ease with which mountaineering peasants walk straight up steep inclines, getting their heels down each step, or coastal fisher-folk hurry safely on flat soles along slippery sea slabs at impossible angles. If your ankle won’t bend so far, it won’t. But what can be and has to be acquired is suppleness and strength in the ankle, whatever its flex, so that it will hold as securely when bent to the full as when straight, and will relate through its changing but steely arch the balance movement of the body above to the unshifting cling of the foot below. Like skating, ski-ing or crabbing on claws, walking securely with a flexed ankle has to be learnt by practice; and the first essential is confidence. Balance boldly on slabs. If you lean inwards, or seek support with the hand, you will never improve your ankle work. Such practice on ice with claws and practice on slabs with shoes or nails are mutually helpful. It is excellent exercise for the ankle and foot to practise doing ridge or slab climbs of progressive steepness without using the hands at all. The flex of the ankle, the bow of the leg and balancing power of the trunk muscles working together, can learn to do a great deal for which we are ordinarily too ready to use the hands. By educating ankle and foot to work alone we keep the hands in reserve for increasingly difficult passages. Often the ‘prop’ of a bent ankle above a side-foot hold gives us the second point of contact with the rock which is all that our balance requires. I have known of climbers whose standard improved markedly owing to a hand injury or arm wound. Compelled to develop their ankle and foot work, by the time the arm recovered they had learned a better ‘balanced’ style, and the fresh help of the hand came in as so much more gain in power. Careful hill walking or rock climbing in a light shoe is better training for the ankle and balance than walking in a heavy boot. The heavy boot restricts the flex and weakens the ankle by always supporting it. On all but rock surface it compels the surface to its service. On rock its rigidity and good side nails generally save us the trouble of flexing the ankle at all. In a light shoe the foot and ankle have to adjust themselves to the surface, and bend and adhere at any angle the hillside or the sloping rock may dictate. The ankle gets strengthened and suppled. Be it noted that the going must be ‘careful’; an unprotected ankle until it gets trained is easily turned or wrenched.

The Knee.

As I have said, the knee is not now so often used in good balanced climbing. Nine times out of ten when we use a kneehold it is from pure laziness, and eight times out of ten we immediately repent it, because it is quite three times as difficult and six times as painful to start again off a kneehold as off a foothold. Of course on stiff ‘mantelpiece’ work or in cracks we may have to use it, together with all other convenient projections of our frame. And, on occasion, in continuous climbing, if the hands are occupied with the management of the rope, and the foothold is too high to reach with sound balance, the knee can be used on a suitable hold as a quick half-way thrust between distant footholds. This avoids breaking our rhythm by an overlong reach up with the foot, or interrupting the party by dropping the rope in order to take hold with the hands.

Some men, and nearly all women, when they use the knee incline it inward across the front of the body, so as to place it on a hold with its point or outside surface in the direct line of ascent. This leads to a very constricted attitude. The lower foot cannot be brought up below in support to any hold on the direct line, and, after the lift, a pull on the rope or a violent effort will be necessary to recover the balance or get started off the knee again. The knee should be inclined outward away from the body, and should use a hold with its inside surface, to the right or left of the direct line of ascent. The spring off knee and shin from such a hold lifts the weight lightly in the direct line, with the body continuously close to the rock, and the lower foot can be brought up easily to a supporting hold in the direct line below the body, so as to relieve the knee. (Try the positions on the edge of a table or on a step-ladder, and the difference becomes clear.)

On very smooth slabs, when foothold fails, the knees and shins can be used to relieve by their friction a pull-up on the hands. If we are wearing shoes this is a rare case, as a soft sole can cling anywhere (and more safely) that a knee can. Such a friction-cling need necessarily be only for a short distance,—about the stretch of a man’s reach,—since the boot, as soon as it has reached it, will be able to use anything that has before been sufficient for the fingers to hold on by. There is only the one exception—the problem of a vertical or sharply inclined slab, offering us only a smooth narrow crack or a smooth sloping outside edge. The crack or edge may be good enough for the fingers, but too smooth or steep for a sideways boot toehold. In this case the whole outside surface of thigh, knee and leg come into play to give friction-holds on the slab, while the hands are shifted upwards in the crack or up along the edge. (The positions can be tried on a heavy door or gate, set on one corner and inclined steeply in the angle of a wall. For the one case the door must be sun-cracked!)

The Hand.

The hands and arms have to learn less than the legs. They are less important for anything but purely gymnastic climbing; they have more inherited instinct for their work; they are under the constant direction of the eye, and therefore do not need the same training in automatic movements to carry out anticipatory judgments.

The hands are always auxiliary to the feet and to the adjustment of the body. Their power only misleads into a bad style if they are used to the neglect of other parts of the machine. In continuous climbing they complement the lifting movement and assist the balance. Their service is for impulse, adhesion, occasionally for traction, but never, if avoidable, for suspension at rest. Footwork, not handwork, is the basis of balance climbing.

Cling Holds.

In steep climbing, where they come more into play, instinct directs them how to cling. But in taking finger-holds, especially for pulls, it must be remembered the hand is as fine a piece of machinery as the foot, and less protected. It can be easily cut or bruised, or the tips rendered callous so that they lose their sense of touch. A well-used hand after a few days on rough rock gets if anything more sensitive; the fingers become ‘violin tipped’ with a certain prickle of sensitiveness. A hold should be grasped like a nettle, firmly and almost finickingly, so that the skin does not shift afterwards or drag. It is always a bad sign if the climber finds cuts on the insides of his hands. They have no business there. The sharpest of holds, if rightly gripped, can be used for the lift of the weight without puncturing the skin. Abrasions on back or side of the hand, or on the inside of the wrist and forearm, are another matter. They almost inevitably follow upon the action of arm-levering and on the taking of press and push holds (afterwards described). Incidentally, also, frequent knee and shin scrapes and bruises are the signals of clumsy footwork and scrambling methods.

As a complement to the ordinary cling holds, when the fingers cling over an edge or knob and hold the weight in suspense, balance climbing based upon footwork enables us to make use of a whole group of invaluable ‘under’-holds. In these the hand, gripping palm upwards under a down-turned edge or point, is getting security and propulsion by pulling the body inwards against the upward thrust of the balance from the feet. The value of these holds depends upon our practice in balance climbing, which enables us to ‘compensate’ as between our hand and foot hold and to maintain a careful counterpoise of the hand-pull against the foot-thrust. We can use them with effect anywhere between the level of our eyes and our waist, according to our strength, and our ability to use them adds immensely to our ease in climbing vertical or overhanging rock. A cling ‘over’-hold on such rock pulls us inward, and adds blindness and body friction to the other forces working against us. A cling ‘under’-hold keeps body and eyes free at the length of our arms, bent or straight according to our convenience. Granite is rich in such fashion of hold, and on rough, catchy aiguille climbs many of us would use them by preference before the more obvious over-holds.

Cognate with the under-holds are ‘side’-holds, where the edge or point of rock projects and is grasped sideways. The principle of their use is the same as for the under-hold, except that the hand is turned sideways. Their commonest occasion is in the ascent of cracks, when the outward side-pull of the hand against the inside edge of the crack is set against the upward thrust from our foothold or knee-jam in the crack below, and our balance technique is occupied in compensating between them.

In cases both hands may be pulling against opposite sides of such a crack, and the compensation will then have to be made between the two arm-pulls instead of between the single arm-pull and the foot-thrust. To make any upward progress on such holds without any help from foothold or body friction calls for immense arm and finger power; but in connection with a foot-thrust or knee-jam the opposing side-pulls are often of use. A square-cut or rounded edge, without any projection, is sufficient to give good side-holding.

Push and Press Holds.

Instinct will tell us how to hang on to over-holds and pull up at the length of the arms. Practice in balance and footwork will teach us how to avail ourselves of the varieties of the more accommodating under and side cling holds. But the balance climber has to learn, for the yet greater convenience of his eye, the ease of his balance and the economy of his arm-power, to take his handholds as low as possible, and in co-operation with, not in opposition to, his foot-thrusts. He soon discovers that ‘push’ and ‘press’ holds are more powerful and accommodate themselves better to continuous upward progress in balance than any form of cling holds. I use ‘push’ of a direct upward thrust of the arm from a horizontal or inclined ledge or hold, and ‘press’ of a lateral or diagonal thrust against a vertical or inclined side-wall. (The first can be tried on any secure mantelpiece; the second, not so well, in any narrow passage.) The arm, for push holds, is used after the fashion of a leg; the hands are pushed, palm downward, on ledges at a height that will allow of the weight, with often the impulse of a spring or foot-thrust, being lifted on the straightening arms. The arms for this movement possess much of the strength and the ease in balancing usually attributed only to the legs. To lift the weight on a direct push is easier for many than to raise it by a long-arm pull. On push holds the weight of the body keeps the hands firmly in place; and a hold by thrusting friction, even if it be only on a rounded or sloping ledge, calls for less effort than to keep the same weight in suspension from the crook of a muscular finger round an ideal hold at the stretch of the arm. The strongest position for push holds is that with the fingers turned inward, the palms downwards, in front of the body, at a level anywhere between the waist and neck, according to the individual power of spring from the feet. But push holds outside the body are also useful; the fingers are then turned outwards, palms down. Either of these positions secures the help of the twisting arms as levers for retaining the balance during the upward movement.

Upon slabs or on rounded holds at awkward angles a very useful hand device is the combination of the push and cling holds. The wrist or forearm rests along or over some protuberance so as to secure a downward push hold, while the fingers are turned to cling across some edge of this hold and keep the arm from slipping off it. The arm would slip off the push hold but for the anchor of the fingers; the fingers would slip out of their awkward cling hold but for the friction anchor of the arm. Thus by a delicate compensation between the forearm pushing and the fingers clinging we obtain one sound combination hold out of two separately insecure holds. Ledges are more frequently rounded or inclined against us than square and convenient. The reinforcement of an arm push hold by a finger cling, or the giving of a right direction to a finger cling by the friction anchor of wrist or forearm, is therefore of constant service and deserving of all practice.

In press holds the flat of the hands is thrust sideways against a smooth surface of vertical or steep rock, which may be the retaining wall of a chimney, or a projecting leaf or corner. It is a help if the outer edge of the hand can rest against any seemingly valueless excrescence. With the hand so held the elbow has only to be lifted, and the arm becomes a lever, thrusting the balance inward, secured by, and itself securing, the friction of the hand. Two hands so pressed against any sloping surfaces can lift the whole weight. Pressed against vertical surfaces—the inside walls of cracks, for instance, too narrow to admit the body—they are sufficient to retain the balance, while the feet find any slight hold, or even only friction holds, to supply propulsion. How good the foothold must be to complement such handholds is a matter of practice in compensations.

Push and press holds with the hands, combined with the twist and leverage of the arms, in combinations innumerable, are the refinements of exceptionally difficult climbing. Their merit is the saving of muscular effort and the substitution for it of the mechanism of balance. Their use has inevitably grown out of the new fashion of footwork developed in balance climbing, grounded on the recognition that the more extended the body and the wider apart feet and hands are fixed, the less is the power and the greater is the effort of single movement, and therefore the greater the interruption to continuous rhythm. To keep the balance steady, the eyesight free and the rhythm constant, footholds and handholds must be taken at convenient distances well within the compass of the reach.

In Cracks.

In difficult crack climbing the extent to which pressure, the jamming of a leg, the touch of a calf or knee, or the twisting of a hand or forearm can be used to ease the muscular strain must be learned by practice. A fist or finger may be hooked in a smooth rift, or a foot slanted into a crack, with only friction attachment, and a slight twist to arm or leg converts either into a secure lever for lifting the weight. The clenching of the fist or the tightening of the muscles of a jammed forearm, or even the inflation of the chest, may at need serve the same purpose. The inexpert eye might see little difference between such movements and those of gripping or clinging. As a matter of fact, the difference is maintained even here. Where a grip climber aims at rest-points of pendent security, and struggles between them by muscular pulls, the balance climber is primarily concerned to keep freedom and continuity of movement. He is using the balance of the body, if only for fractions of a second, to relieve the direct weight on his arms or the indirect strain on his legs. His arms and legs are levers in converting proportionately slight muscular efforts into big continuous movements, making friction and the mere weight of the balancing body do a large share of the work. Consequently, to the expert eye, his body is seen to ascend on a line slightly farther out from the rock than the grip climber in the same place, and in a different sequence of attitudes. He will be avoiding at all costs the grip climber’s temptation to be too secure, to fix himself in attitudes or on holds from which he will have to emerge by direct muscular pulls. In corners or chimneys he will use a set of slighter and less attractive holds, if they exist, farther out, so as to keep his body free from friction against the rock. If such a set of holds is lacking altogether, he will be employing press holds with the hands, lever holds with arm or leg, twisted pressure-thrusts from his foot and ankle against one wall to his knee against the other—any device that will relieve him of direct pulls and will leave his body free to help him at any second with some balance adjustment. For, once the body is really jammed up against the rock or in a crack, arms and legs are usually working only against one another or against the friction of shoulders or thighs, and the mechanism can merely struggle and exhaust itself.

On Slabs.

Similarly upon slabs he will be selecting holds, not according to their size and obviousness, but according as they are arranged well within his comfortable span. He avoids at all costs getting ‘spread-eagled.’ The surest safeguard against getting stuck is to select the holds beforehand, and then be certain that your feet and hands use them as you designed. Let nothing tempt you to alter your plan once you are moving. This is the hardest lesson to learn. If you have any eye at all, your alteration will never be for the better. Whenever, as must occur in awkward places, your sight of the holds is interrupted, keep your head and stick coolly to your recollection. Many climbers get slightly flurried once they are ‘blind.’ They forget their plan, even the existence perhaps of the one hold that made the passage seem possible in anticipation. They revert to struggling and arm-clinging. Their agitation often takes the form of a combative recklessness. They feel they will fight it out with the holds they have got rather than descend and recover the safer line they planned. This liability to flurry may take years to master. Most of us have suffered from it; and notably in those attractive holes under chockstones or overhangs—holes so irresistibly tempting to thrust one’s head and shoulders into, but from which, blinded and out of balance, it is extremely trying to emerge. Notably, again, on those steep problem-slabs, where a single tempting hold has spread-eagled us helplessly and left us wondering how long the single nail will support us.

The only protection is foresight, a steady adherence to plan, and the resolution always to climb as far out as possible from the rock.

If the hands are allowed to pull the nose into the rock we are easily pounded. The protection is footwork and the flexible ankle. It is the business of the ankle to bend and stay bent at whatever angle may keep our body in safe balance and away from the rock, and to transmit our weight to the foot at just the right angle to hold it firm on its sloping stance. The farther out from the rock we can keep the weight, the steeper the apparent angle of foothold which it is safe to use. On steep slabs a very flexible ankle will often let the foot rest flat, getting an overlapping or friction hold on several rugosities of surface with its whole sole where a less practised ankle or a stiff-sided boot must trust to the less secure catch of a side-nail on one such roughness. Quiet movement is essential; to leave a slight hold hurriedly is as dangerous as to arrive on it clumsily. If you have to use a knee or hip or forearm as a friction hold, set it as gently and relieve it as lightly as if it were a single finger.

Chimney Climbing.

Chimney climbing is another occasion for too alluring rest positions and for tempting but over-close contacts. By a ‘chimney’ we usually mean a rift that will admit the body, as contrasted with a ‘crack’ which will not. The method of ascending between the vertical or steeply sloping walls of chimneys, wherein holds for ordinary foot and hand work are lacking, is usually called ‘back and knee’; more correctly it should be named ‘back and foot,’ as the knee need rarely be used. The position is with the back against one wall and the feet against the other, the legs bent or straight according to the width, and the thrust of the spine and shoulders providing the security. Here again the proper object is continuous movement, and such attitudes as may assist towards it. The temptation for the safety climber is to sit across the chimney, with the legs straight and almost at right angles to the body. The body is then wedged; it sinks slightly inside the clothes, which are fast to the rock by friction, and, while it is quite secure, presents also the utmost resistance to any upward impulse. The right position for the feet against the opposite wall is slightly below the body, as low as will allow of an easy upward impulse being given to the body without risk of the feet slipping. The hands and arms are stretched downward, past the body, with the arms bent and the palms flat against the rock behind. For movement upward, one foot is brought across from the opposite wall and thrust with the flat sole against the rock close under the body. The friction of the foot then allows the bent knee to be partially straightened, and the body raised. While it rises, and the shoulders thus come clear of the rock, the thrust of the arms and hands backward against the rock takes the place of the jam with the shoulders, and so keeps the foot against the opposite wall in its place. So soon as the lift is completed and the back is at rest against the rock again, the under foot that has been used is shot across to a higher position against the opposite wall, the hands move up, and the other leg comes across, to act as spring in its turn. The body is thus really ascending, poised, between the shifting pressures of the arms and feet, and is only taking instants of rest against the rock to allow them to take new positions. It is entirely wrong, but very usual, to walk up the opposite wall with the feet, and wriggle the shoulders up the near rock in accord. This is wasteful of clothes and of energy, and not so secure in its actual movement. For, on the right method, if the foot against the opposite wall shows an inclination to slip as the shoulders rise, the arms can thrust away from their wall and so apply extra pressure to keep the foot in place, even while they are still pushing the body upward; whereas, on the wrong method, the back has no such elastic margin; it cannot push across and downwards while it is itself moving up. In all such feats the more freedom that can be kept for movement, even at the cost of adopting more exposed positions and of bridging ourselves across intimidatingly wider angles, the greater in reality is the safety.

In narrow chimneys, too smooth for foot or hand hold and too narrow to allow of secure bridging with the back against the one wall, it is possible to move up with the feet pressed flat against the two walls, one on each side: one with the toe pointing up in front of us, the other with the toe down below us; the body is kept upright in the middle on the spring of the bent knees and supported by the pressure of the hands, placed like the feet one against each wall. In this fashion we can ‘rock’ up satisfactorily. But the method is only safe to practise with soft soles, and it is of course very strenuous.

Wherever possible we prefer to keep outside a chimney, or corner, altogether, and use our feet up the edges of its retaining walls. If we are forced inside, we adopt any sets of holds for our feet up the opposing walls, however wide a split they mean for the legs and however fearsome the depth may look between our feet, before we resort to the cramping, waterworn recess and the slower method of ‘back and foot.’ Balance climbers return, as it were, to the gully epoch only under protest and where footholds fail.

Rib Riding.

In clambering up sharp noses, flakes or ribs, where bodily contact with the rock is enforced, the same principle of keeping far out and aiming at continuous movement again holds good. To sit close astride, and claw up the rock by means of the thighs, elbows and hands, is customary, and seemingly safe; but the really safer method, because it admits of uninterrupted progress, is to keep the body away, and to grip with the sole and flexed ankle, or with the knees and sides of the feet, on either side of the rib, or to lock one leg diagonally across the edge so that the foot and knee press against its opposing facets. Meanwhile the hands, holding opposite ways, grip across the edge above. In such a position the body can sink at any instant, for rest, into contact with the rock, and can rise again from the feet, knees or shin without effort. It is useful to remember that when the friction of loosely clothed parts of the body is solely relied upon for hold (as when we are clinging close with thighs and body to a rib), the body always sinks slightly inside the clothes, and has so much the more difficulty in restarting a fresh movement.

Wet Rock.

It must be added that when rocks are wet, friction cannot be relied upon, and at the same time the security of foot and hand hold is greatly diminished. Wet rocks may mean slimy rocks, and always mean cold rocks. Cold soon chills the muscles, lessens the sense of touch, and notably impairs both the confidence and the power to climb. On a wet day it is well to carry some spare dry gloves. If, then, we have to make some particularly awkward balance or lift, and the fingers are wet and cold, a fresh glove will give us a few holds of better friction, until it, too, gets wet. In the Alps wet rocks mean glazed rocks, and we avoid them. In our own hills we accept wet rocks as part of the day, but we treat them with an extra degree of respect. Men in soft soles, on dry, hot rock in sunshine, can climb with complete and hilarious security places that rain and wind make it foolish to attempt. For most men the standard of possibility varies as much as 40 per cent. This is never sufficiently allowed for in youth. Fired by emulation, young climbers arrive in rain where their rivals have passed on sun-dry holds. “A rock is a rock; and, by George, it must go!” is their motto; and if their fortune is better than their knowledge, they accomplish a climb which substitutes a danger happily escaped for every difficulty reasonably mastered by their predecessors.

On the other hand, to accustom ourselves to find our rock climbs, and to climb their wet rocks under all conditions of weather, is necessary training. Provided we allow for the difference in permissible attempt, we risk little, in our small-scale home climbing, by persisting against moderately uncomfortable circumstances. We are the better able to endure them when they surprise us on more serious alpine expeditions. A little adverse circumstance restores much of their original difficulty and adventure to many fine mountaineering climbs too apt to be neglected by modern specialists because of their straightforwardness under sunny conditions. A man who can work cheerfully up an old-fashioned British rock climb against rain and wet holds is a sounder climber than the expert who will only do the supreme ‘inventions,’ and those only in fair weather for fear of spoiling his record. In this country the finest rock climbs, both scenically and as mountaineering training, are not the most difficult; rather than that they should be neglected, we should seek them and climb them on the wet days.

Glazed Rock.

Glazed rock is its own prophet and policeman. In the summer Alps we need only expect to find it after a snowfall, or where snow commanding rock may have been melted, run down and refrozen. It makes an unexpected and more dangerous appearance when a sudden fall of temperature freezes the mist, fine rain or thawing snow after its fall or as it falls on to the rocks, while we may be actually on them. I know of no more treacherous move in the mountain game or one which calls for more cautious, laborious and ingenious countermoving.

In Britain, as I have said elsewhere, we have to beware of it almost as much, in the winter and early spring months. It may follow a silver thaw, a cold fog or a mist on a change of wind. By starting our climbing early upon hoar-frosted rocks or fresh snow we may create our own glaze by hand and foot pressure. On really bad film-glaze nothing is sure for hand or foot hold; but a glove or soft sole (not rubber) has a better chance of ‘freezing on’ than a boot or cold finger. A thick sock, pulled over the boot, will help, or we may take off our boots and climb in the safer stockings.

On steep glazing rock, and upon wet rock if its surface grows greasy with the moisture, continuous climbing becomes immediately interrupted climbing. We have to consider the chances of a hold failing or breaking or of a man slipping as increased some tenfold. We must take precautions as for unsound rock and protect ourselves with anchors, belays and the like. However easy the rock may normally be, glaze or grease introduces a new element of ‘danger,’ and the transparent threat forces us, if we are wise, to treat any moderate climb with the respect due to serious difficulty.

Summary.

I have only selected for description a few conspicuous features of ordinary rock surface, which might illustrate the underlying principles of a good rock climbing style. Their detail is negligible except as illustration. Climbing situations are infinitely various, and men vary as whimsically in their personal adjustments. Long before he has reached the point of leading difficult passages, the climber will have got his own obstinate idea of how to apply the principles in detail to particular rock features.

For the benefit of the less instructed I would only repeat that rock climbing is best learned upon long and varied passages, away from the staccato allurements of boulders, trick climbs and belays. Style is the mastery of rhythmic movement, movement continuously secure and continuously effortless over every modulation of hold during a long day. When a climber can traverse a long ridge of average difficulties safely and quickly, stepping the edge by balance or dropping on either side as he goes and using balance holds with either hand, without check to his party, he is already a safe climber and on the way to be a sound mountaineer. If he proceeds to follow the craft into some of its more ingenious departures, it will only mean a more elaborate application of the same principles that he has already learned to practise: to trust to his feet; to make use of his ankles; to tread lightly and precisely; to keep the hands low; to choose holds in advance and stick to them; to move well out from the rock; to rely on balance rather than muscle; to make continuous, supple and eventually graceful movement his ideal; not to rest satisfied until he has acquired rhythm; and lastly, never to get flurried.