It may be instructive to consider in how far a training in British rock-climbing will help or hinder the aspirant to high adventure in the Alps or any of the world’s greater mountain masses. To the uninitiated, mountaineering is the dangerous, foolhardy, yet withal praiseworthy sport of the superman, heroic of physique and nerve, who gaily struts along the brinks of, or nonchalantly hangs over, awesome precipices and, disregarding all moral obligations, continually and with careless smile fences with death. In short, the untutored idea superficially conceives of a mountain as a thing of dark, frowning, rocky glories—a natural stage on which a superior type of acrobat displays his muscular agility. And so the term “mountaineer” loses its dignity and becomes synonymous with that of “rock-climber.” But the “white domes of frozen air” exist outside the poetic imagination, and mountaineering is not a simple but a complex science, and the proficient mountaineer is not only a rock-climber, but a snow-and-ice craftsman, an adept in the use of rope and axe, a pathfinder, something of a meteorologist, an organiser and, no less important, must have acquired the knowledge of how to conserve his energy, build up his powers of endurance and cultivate the proper mentality. To what extent can the various attributes of the composite being that is the true mountaineer be fostered amongst the crags and fells of the British Isles?
From the geological point of view, the rocks of the Alps may be divided into two classes, namely silicious rock and calcareous rock. The mountaineer will further subdivide these two classes into good, bad or indifferent; thus, in all, the climber in the Alps meets with six different types of rock. These might be multiplied according to degree, but for our present purpose such meticulous treatment is needless. As a general rule, the rock-climber in the British Isles encounters only the good silicious class of rock. Other classes are to be met with, but a glance at the list of the more popular and outstanding climbs, such as those on Kern Knotts, the Pillar Rock, and Lliwedd, would seem to show that they are more or less avoided. In time, this one-sided training inculcates bad habits of which the climber does not even know himself guilty. Of the many types of rock met with in the Alps, the good silicious brand is the most rare; so that there the knowledge of the one form and the inexperience of the other forms of rock are likely to prove quite inadequate, indeed even dangerous, assets. A school that teaches one to master only the safe is no sufficient school for the would-be mountaineer, and the British-trained climber will soon find that he has much to learn of rock-climbing in the Alps.
Again, stone avalanches are unknown in Britain. The only stones that fall there do so through human agency—the clumsy placing of a foot or hand, the careless use of the rope—and not through the working of the natural forces of sun and frost. When and where stone-falls may be expected to occur is part of the mountain lore that a mountaineer must acquire, and it will not be acquired, at first-hand at least, on the Cumbrian or Welsh hills.
It is often reiterated that Great Britain provides climbs of a higher standard than do the Alps. Disregarding the obvious limitations of the former (not least of these being that in Great Britain almost all the difficult climbs are ascents, and difficult descents are neglected), and the fact that they are, as it were, at the back door of one’s hotel, whereas the latter are approached only after hours of hard and fatiguing preliminary work which robs one’s strength of its edge, I should like to make a few simple comparisons from my own experiences. One morning in July, 1913, I climbed Kern Knotts crack twice, first without the rope and alone, then roped and as leader. The niche was gained by the crack below; the useful chock-stone above the niche was missing. No shoulder was used. During the afternoon I climbed the Eagle’s Nest ridge which still ranks, I believe, as one of the most difficult of British rock ascents. On this climb I trailed behind me a hundred-foot length of half-inch diameter rope, one end of which was tied round my waist. Nailed boots were worn on all three climbs. I came to the conclusion that Kern Knotts crack is shorter, less steep, requires less skill and knack, and is altogether considerably less difficult than the famous Mummery crack on the Grépon. It will not for one moment bear comparison with the Venetz crack on the same peak. The Eagle’s Nest ridge, though very difficult, is undoubtedly less trying than the first buttress on the west ridge of the Bifertenstock.
Photo A. I. I. Finch.
Good, sound rock.
Facing page 264.