The Unseen
The investigation of the unseen is a chief concern of mountaineers in new regions. But it can also be of service to the expert, in examining even a peak he knows well, to ascertain for him the condition of its invisible side on a particular day.
As I have said before, it is possible only to indicate where signs may be sought, and what relative differences the expert eye may discover and convert into information.
The mountaineer, after inspection of the near side of a ridge or summit in a big range, wishes to supplement this knowledge by the discovery of the character or general formation of the unseen side. He wishes to know whether it will give him snow of easier progress, or a subordinate ridge for better assault or descent; also whether he can look for clear rock on the far side, to assist his ascent of a ridge unfavourable in its visible aspects, or whether he must be prepared for ice slopes.
The first conditions for the inspection are experience, good glasses, clear sunlight and no recent snowfall. Also, if he wishes to confirm or increase the detail of his observations, he must be prepared to spend a whole day of good light, with the sun aiding him from different points in the sky.
As he looks over and across his high ridges from some distant view-point, in good sunlight, the mountaineer is able to distinguish several different kinds of sky, according to the different character of the unseen surfaces from which the sunlight is being reflected upward on to clear atmosphere or on to low clouds.
The Snow Sky.—This he will find has a distinguishable tint, identifiable by the practised eye, as different on a given day from the normal coloration of the sky above as is the light reflected from different qualities of steel, or from silver as compared with electroplate.
If the sky seen over his ridge is purely a snow sky, of uniform appearance, it is just to assume that the unseen side of the ridge consists of large snow slopes, and rises at a comparatively gentle angle, since we know already that upon broad surfaces, at a steep angle, snow can only rest while it remains new and adhesive.
If, again, the sky above is purely a snow sky, but is traversed by a band of slightly modified quality or tone, leading away from the eye, there will exist on the far side a correspondingly inclined great snow ridge, from one side of which the sun, in a given position, will be reflecting high light, but from the other, lower. By repeating the observation at different times of day, so that the light will have fallen and been reflected from different directions, we can confirm the existence of such a ridge, and may be able to locate its position and determine its magnitude with some accuracy.
A second and characteristic appearance is visible on the sky above the unseen side, if this far side consists of two large snow fields divided by a long rocky ridge extending away from us. We then have a snow sky divided by a band of sky which is not catching any reflected higher light, and which we may assume to be a ‘rock’ sky.
The Rock Sky.—If the whole expanse of the sky above is seen to have a uniform and normal tone with no local alterations, such as would be produced by partial snow reflection, then the unseen side will consist of a large wall of rock—probably, in such case, steep rock.
Under favourable conditions, a very practised observer may detect in a uniform rock sky a band of slightly modified tone going away from the eye on the far side. This will be produced by another great rock ridge extending in the corresponding direction. By watching the sky above this ridge, and observing the differences produced by the reflections of light at different hours from its different aspects, we may even be able to discover to our satisfaction whether the invisible ridge is all rock or has one side covered with snow.
The Ice Sky.—Dry glacier or large fields of ice betray themselves upon the sky in a slightly greyer tinge, distinguishable more by contrast than by an absolute tone from a snow sky under the same conditions.
There is also a ‘water’ sky—the unmistakable look in a sky which is reflecting great unseen sheets of water; but its identification is more familiar and of more service to arctic or desert travellers than to mountaineers.
Apart from these larger sky signs there are some more local indications that are of particular value to the climber. The appearance of the sky as seen across the ridge will in most cases give us evidence of a mixed character—that the unseen side is partly rock, partly snow. It is thus essential to know, if we propose to use the ridge we are prospecting for our ascent, whether the rock just over or on the ridge is bare or ice glazed, and whether the snow discovered on the far side rises up to the edge of the ridge or leaves a crest of clear rock.
If there are bare rocks close up to the edge on the unseen side, these will be at certain hours heated by the sun, and a hot current of air will be ascending. The skyline above will have a wavering appearance, showing a band of darker tint between the ridge and the normal sky.
If there is snow close up on the far side, the air will not be disturbed, and the skyline will be steady and clean.
If the rocks beyond are free from snow but glazed with ice, the skyline will remain undisturbed, but it will have a brilliant glistening appearance in strong sunlight, like a strip of polished blue steel. This last indication, if the eye can learn its significance, may often be of service on climbs where the unseen mountain structure is already known, but when there is uncertainty as to the actual condition of the rocks on the day. Many fruitless ascents might have been saved if the ice glazing on such unseen sections of a ridge could have been detected in time.
Some of these appearances may even be recognized in photographs, if they have been taken under the right conditions and left untouched. By watching a given section of ridge, while the sun is moving across the sky, all a sunny day, and by using a map at first to discover what the different sky signs as they become visible actually mean, and also how much they reveal of the unseen topography as displayed in the map, it is possible for some men to train their sight to discriminate fairly closely between a number of even more complex signs, and to ascertain actual details as to the character and direction of unseen walls and crests, the location of unseen snow summits, and the length of far ridges.
The process, in practical application, is of course throughout assisted, corrected, and its lines of observation suggested by the nearer features which the expert reconnoitrer already has in sight. For an observer who knows the forms usual in the type of mountain before him, and who has the local features, on the side visible to him, to indicate still more closely what he may look out for, the interpretation of the meaning of sky signs presents fewer alternatives, and the conclusions drawn from them can be far more detailed than would seem possible were his reasoning about the unseen based only upon one group of evidences.
Final success in reconnoitring depends upon our ability to put together, in order of their relative importance, all our assembly of large and small evidences. Experience is able to deduce the small from the large and to reconstruct the large from the small; and confirmation of the truth of our deductions, from the seen or the unseen, comes when two such lines of evidence meet: when the detail which we discover in a single quarter confirms the speculations that we have based upon our experience or on our interpretation of larger evidences, or when our induction from a number of small visible indications is proved correct by some revelation in a greater sky sign.
For a mountaineer who has to convert his observation of distant objects and signs, of a size altogether incommensurate with his own, into terms of a possible advance for his eight-foot reach or four-foot stride, no evidence is too big or too small;—and this especially because the big, in mountains, repeats itself in the small with timely consistency. A good mountaineer might almost claim to be able to construe a single favourable sky sign, under certain conditions, into the assurance of his atom-like advance up the infinite invisible detail of an unpromising-looking mountain giant.
Sunny days, patience and good glasses are first conditions for his task. The same glasses should always be used. A type should be selected that gives enhanced stereoscopic effect. Above all, the sight of the eyes must be equal, or corrective glasses should be worn. Many men never discover even what they ought to be able to see, until they learn that their eyesight is, if only slightly, astigmatic, and use spectacles for their reconnoitring.
Reconnoitring is not merely the preparation for a single day or for a particular climb. A mountaineer has to learn to see and to record all day and every day, not only distant signs for future use, but each and every detail of his surroundings. The detail may be forgotten, but its accumulation will gradually form in his mind a mass of general precedents and of knowledge of the characteristics of particular shapes and structures. This will remain with him, and will return instinctively to aid his judgment when some cognate detail presents itself to be interpreted as a piece of solitary evidence. As a last personal illustration, I may recall that one of the pleasantest new ascents in my recollection was the outcome of a simple reasoning from a detail in the seen to the memory of the unseen: the sight of a layer of excellent snow, covering for the time the usually bare slabs of one wall of a peak from which we were descending, revived the recollection that on a famous peak in another valley was a similar wall of identical aspect and character, as yet unascended on account of its normal impracticability. Without further examination we made the attempt upon it, and the speculation was confirmed in the cheeriest manner.
If care so constant that it dominates alike the exhaustion of failure and the more dangerous enervation of triumph is essential for our safe climbing, observation so continuous that it becomes unconscious is as necessary for our fortunate designing. Its habit may profit us by more even than by momentary success. For a mountaineer may read a sky sign only for the promise that it brings him of the morrow’s exercise; but he has learned to see it, and with the power of sight he has opened a new world of pleasure. It was the first scientific student of the form and reflection of clouds, of the structure and relation of hills, who was the first understanding prophet of their significance for art and imagination. The more we can learn to see or to reconstruct of the mountain forms visible or invisible about us as we climb, the more vividly will memory interpret their meaning for our lives when we are no longer among them. If we are of a mood to use both sight and its interpretation as servants of our spirit as much as of our performance, we may discover a reflection from the mountains that will permanently colour our thought. There is a reassurance no less for our journey through the years than for our march of a day in the perception that oncoming shadow, by its very quality of darker relief, can reveal to us some unsuspected and relenting aspect in the daunting precipice across our path; and a twofold message, for our mind even more than for our mountaineering, in “the light of the unseen snow-field, lying level behind the visible peaks, sent up with strange reflections upon the clouds; an everlasting light of calm aurora in the north.”
CHAPTER IX
MOUNTAINEERING ON SKI
BY ARNOLD LUNN
Winter mountaineering may be said to date from Mr. Moore’s crossing of the Strahlegg and Finsteraarjoch Passes in January 1865. The first big peak to be climbed in winter was the Wetterhorn, which was ascended in 1874 by the Rev. W. A. B. Coolidge and Miss Brevort; a few days later this party climbed the Jungfrau. These brilliant expeditions set a fashion which was, however, only followed by a select company of mountaineers, among whom a place of honour must be given to Mrs. Le Blonde. It was not until Paulcke crossed the Oberland at the end of 1897 on the ski that winter mountaineering began to be a popular sport. To wade up a big peak in deep snow on snow-shoes or on foot only appealed to a minority, but the number of those who were attracted by the chance of combining mountaineering with ski-ing steadily increased.
The English were slow to follow the new fashion; the number of British ski-runners who have a long list of glacier ski tours to their credit is still small, but abroad hundreds of experienced mountaineers have explored the High Alps on ski, and abroad the advisability of using the ski in the High Alps has passed beyond the limits of discussion.
The time is coming when most alpine huts will be provided with ski. A steadily increasing number of mountaineers realize that such peaks as Monte Rosa or the Zermatt Breithorn provide excellent ski-ing at all months of the year, and that the trouble of dragging a light pair of summer ski to the summit is well repaid by a magnificent run down to the hut.
There is no month in the year in which the writer has not enjoyed first-class ski-ing, and there is no season in the whole alpine calendar in which ski cannot be used on the loftier snow peaks in the Alps. Ski have come to stay as an indispensable adjunct to mountaineering. To the rock climber the ski are perhaps mainly useful in bad seasons; if the weather in summer were uniformly good the enthusiastic rock climber would have little use for the ski. But long spells of bad weather are not unknown, and many a climber who has engaged a guide or a couple of guides for a month has spent a week, a fortnight, or in some cases even longer without climbing a peak. I venture to assert that if he took himself and his ski to a club hut he would at least have the satisfaction of making good use even of an afternoon’s fine weather. I remember once finding myself at the Egon von Steiger hut during bad weather. It snowed all day and all night, and cleared at ten o’clock the next morning. Two parties on foot attempted the easy Ebnefluh. Both were driven back after a very brief struggle with deep soft snow. Myself and a friend reached the summit on ski in more or less normal time, and enjoyed a wonderful run back to the hut, where the disgruntled foot-sloggers had spent the day.
Let the rock climber learn to ski, and when the big rock peaks are deep in snow he will be able to snatch a Monte Rosa or Breithorn from the first fine day. In bad seasons individual fine days are often sandwiched between two or three days of bad weather. Such isolated days are useless to the foot-climber but invaluable to the ski-runner.
Technique.
I cannot spare the space to explain the technique of ski-ing.[18] Here I need only attempt to dispel a lingering belief, that dies hard, to the effect that there is one technique for ordinary ski-runners and another for mountaineers. This curious superstition is the last relic of an exploded system of ski-ing taught by an Austrian called Zdarsky, the main effect of which was to encourage timid, slow and clumsy ski-ing. The ‘Lillienfeld’ ski were short, and made straight running very difficult and turning very easy. The Lillienfeld system taught people to ski very quickly by dodging all difficulties and encouraged a free use of the stick. It was a bad system, and is now quite discredited; but there still lingers a curious belief that the Norwegian style may be all very well for small mountains but is too dashing and insecure for the High Alps. As a rule, glacier ski-ing is far easier than ski-ing among the lower mountains; the most difficult of all ski-ing country is wooded country, such as extends for miles round Christiania, the home of the ‘Norwegian style.’ Let me therefore urge the reader to master the free Norwegian style, to make all his turns and swings without the aid of the stick, and to acquire a free and dashing style. The mountaineer even more than the low-level ski-runner should have complete control of his ski, and complete control is impossible unless you have learned to control your ski not by means of the stick, but by means of the ski themselves.
SNOW WAYS
JEAN GABERELL
There are a few occasions on which the use of the stick is permissible on tour; but it is so dangerous to begin by using the stick as a brake, that I would advise the beginner NEVER to use the stick until he has at least passed the ‘Third-class Test’ which is held from time to time in all ski-ing centres patronized by British runners.
Furthermore, though of course it is absurd to take risks in the High Alps, occasions often arise where speed means safety. With bad weather or night approaching, the man who can run fast stands more chance than the man who can not, and, consequently, the higher your speed consistent with safety the better your chances. Now, a high speed consistent with safety can only be maintained by those who have lost no chance on small expeditions of raising the speed at which they feel comfortable, and this, again, can only be achieved by running just a little faster than is quite comfortable.
In the High Alps a reckless runner, who is always falling, is a danger to his companions and himself, but a man who is quite incapable of a fair speed is always a nuisance on tour, and may sometimes prove a danger. Steadiness is the first requisite in the High Alps, but speed is by no means unimportant. Any man with average balance and nerve, if he is properly taught, can learn to run steadily and to make slow turns on average snow at the end of a fortnight. To become a really expert ski-runner is, of course, another matter, but some of the finest ski-turns in the High Alps have been carried through with success by men who were not even third-class runners. Let the mountaineer learn to ski and take such chances as a snowy summer may afford. In a few hours he will begin to enjoy ski-ing, and his enjoyment will steadily increase with his experience. It is easy to become a third-class ski-runner, and very well worth while taking sufficient trouble to become a second-class runner. First-class ski-ing is, of course, not within the reach of all.
In order to make much that follows comprehensible to the reader, who, though a mountaineer, has yet to become a ski-runner, a short definition of the ski-ing turns and swings is necessary.
The object of every ski-runner is to approximate as nearly as possible in his course to a straight line between the point of departure and the goal. Obviously this ideal is impossible of attainment save on comparatively short open slopes, which can be taken straight. Hence the regrettable necessity of turns and swings which, unlike skating turns and swings, are not an end in themselves, and are only incidentally beautiful and graceful to execute and to watch.
There are three principal turns or swings: the Stemming turn, the Telemark, the Christiania.
Each of these turns can be used either as a stop turn (i.e. in order to stop more or less suddenly), or as a means of linking one tack to another. For instance, a slope may be too steep to take straight; in this case the good runner descends in a series of linked curves.
According to the condition of the snow, he will make these linked curves either by means of the Stemming, the Telemark, or the Christiania turns.
The Stemming turn is the easiest and slowest turn. It is the key to alpine ski-ing, and can be employed on snow on which a Telemark or linked Christiania would be either difficult or impossible. The beginner should try to combine Stemming with Christianias, to begin his turn as a Stem and to finish with a Christiania. This swing, which is sometimes called a Stem-Christiania or a ‘Closed Christiania’ (as opposed to ‘Open Christianias’), or by a natural abbreviation a ‘Closti,’ is the most generally useful of ski-ing swings.
The Lillienfeld system placed exclusive reliance on the Stemming turn and dismissed the other two as fancy tricks. This was absurd, for in many kinds of snow the Telemark or Christiania is much the more useful manœuvre. Either of these latter turns can be executed at a very high speed, whereas the Stemming turn cannot be done at a high speed.
The Telemark is mainly useful in deep soft snow or in soft breakable crust; in either of which the Stemming turn and the linked Christiania is difficult or impossible.
The Christiania, as a stop turn, is the safest method of stopping at high speed. Linked open Christianias are not easy to master, but are very satisfactory when mastered. Wherever a linked series of Christianias can be executed, linked Stem-Christianias are easier, and safer. The power to make a series of continuous non-stop turns with the Christiania marks out the expert; nothing is more beautiful than fast descent on glacier snow, film crust or crust slightly softened by means of a series of swift-running Christianias.
For the High Alps I consider that the Stemming turn and the Christiania should always be used in preference to the Telemark, excepting in very deep soft snow—rare in the High Alps—or in soft breakable crust.
The Telemark is a one-foot turn; all the weight is on the leading foot; consequently the Telemark is less powerful and less sure than the Christiania, which is a two-foot turn. Furthermore, the falls resulting from a Telemark which has gone wrong are more dangerous than from any other turn. From a faulty Christiania or Stemming turn one is usually thrown backwards or sideways against the slope; from a faulty Telemark one is often thrown on to one’s head or outwards from the slope. Further, the ski have a nasty habit of crossing behind in a badly timed Telemark.
To sum up: Use the stick as little as possible. Make all your linked turns by Stem-Christianias, except in deep soft snow or breakable crust, where the Telemark should be used. For a sudden stop use the Christiania in preference to the Telemark.
Equipment.
In addition to the ordinary mountaineer’s equipment, the ski-runner must have ski, sealskins, ski-sticks and repair outfit for ski.
I have no space to advise on the choice of ski, but I might warn the reader against the common illusion that ski for mountaineering should be markedly shorter than ski for short tours. They should be a couple of inches shorter, but very short ski should not be used save in the summer. I have used the longest size obtainable (2·36 in.) for quite long tours, and the next longest size (2·31 in.) in the High Alps.
Sealskin are detachable, and are fixed on to the ski to prevent the ski side-slipping while climbing a steep slope. Ski-ing boots are bigger than mountaineering boots. They should be nailed—lightly nailed, of course, but on no account entirely nailless. The nailless ski-ing boot is a superstition imported from Norway, where the hills are milder in gradient than in the Alps.
For all glacier tours crampons, or, to use another word, ‘ice-claws,’ should be taken. Eight-pointers are best, though good work can be done with six-pointers. The small four pointers are most insecure and uncomfortable.
For all further details as to equipment the reader may consult my book Cross Country Ski-ing.