Accidents to ski generally happen when one is on the move on difficult and dangerous ground. It is absurd to expect that the difficulty or danger will abate while you take off your rucksack, sit down, and strap on your climbing irons. Remember that you are on the move and that your impetus will carry you on, if not immediately checked by nails gripping the ice. That, too, is the reason why a short, light bamboo will not do; it is a fine-weather weapon and quite the thing on easy snows. On rough ground you want something with a substantial iron point, a weapon of some weight and strength which can support your body and help in seeing you home should your ski be injured. A good runner would never put his stick to unfair uses, such as riding and leaning back.
If on going downhill you find yourself landed on ice, the essential thing is to be able to keep on your feet first, to your course next. A stout stick with a sharp point will then be sorely needed, and if you have been careful to fasten on to your ski-blades an appliance against skidding or side-slip, you will find it much easier to steer and keep to your course. On the whole, it is wiser on iced surfaces which are steep—and these are generally not extensive—to carry one’s ski.
There ought to be an ice-axe in the party, but this ice-axe should be carried by a professional and used by him. Nobody can cut steps or carry safely an ice-axe without some apprenticeship, and this it is impossible to go through in severe winter weather.
The principal glacier routes of Switzerland have been proved over and over again to be free from any particular risk or danger arising from winter conditions. The ratio of risk is the same as in summer. Consequently, select the best known routes, which are also the most beautiful and ski-able. Take with you, as porters and servants rather than guides, men who have frequently gone over those routes in winter with some Swiss runner of experience. This is important, because many guides, particularly the most approved summer guides, are creatures of routine, and will take you quite obdurately along the summer routes, step for step and inch after inch. Now, this is wrong and may lead to danger. The ski-runner must dominate the snow slopes. His place is on the brow, or rather on the coping, not at the foot of the slopes along which the summer parties generally crawl.
When going uphill for several hours consecutively, as it is necessary to do in order to reach the Alpine huts, an artificial aid against slipping back is indispensable. When going uphill the ski support the weight of the runner and keep his feet on, or above, the snow. But they do not distinguish between regressive and progressive locomotion. The whole of the work of progression falls upon the human machinery. Under those conditions the strain put on the muscles by continuous or repeated backsliding is objectionable. The use of a mechanical contrivance is made imperative by the steepness of the slopes and their great length.
Another point is that when running downhill, say, from the Monte-Rosa Sattel to the Bétemps hut, it is never advisable to pick out the shortest and quickest route, which means the steepest run possible. High Alp ski-running demands the choice of the longest course consistent with steady progress and with an unbroken career along a safe line of advance. The watchword of the good runner will always be—at those heights and distances where so much that is ahead must remain problematical—move onward on curves, so as to approach any obstacle by means of a bend, admitting of an inspection of the obstacle, if it is above the surface, before you are upon it, and which, if it is the running surface which presents a break, even a concealed one, will prevent your hurling yourself headlong into the trap.
OBERGABELHORN, FROM DENT BLANCHE.
To face p. 29.