The skister’s equipment is really simple enough, but its various parts are not easily purchasable in England. The following manufacturers of ski showed exhibits at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897: Helmer Langborg, 6 Birger-Jarlsgatan, Stockholm (who also sells the various kinds of boots, goathair stockings, gloves, pjäxbands, &c.); L. H. Hagen & Co., of Christiania; L. Torgensen & Co., of Christiania (who also make arctic sledges); Langesund Skifabrik, Langesund, Norway (a very good exhibit); Fritz Huitfeldt, of Christiania (gold medal at the principal Norwegian show for ski). I give this list of names quite ignorantly, just as I copied them down. I have no knowledge about the estimation in which they are held, their relative expensiveness, or anything else concerning them. One or two of these firms issue priced catalogues, which, I suppose, may be obtained on application. Ski are also made and sold in Austria; they will be found advertised in the publications of the German and Austrian Alpine Club. Ski of this make are sold in winter at the chief Alpine centres, but they are very inferior to ski of Scandinavian manufacture.
Little need be said about how to learn the use of ski, but one or two hints, even from so poor a performer as the present writer, may be suggestive to an absolute novice. The first desideratum is to fasten the ski properly to the feet, so that the boards run truly with the feet, not with an independent motion of their own. The trouble at first is to keep the two ski constantly parallel with one another, and in the direct line of advance. People whose habit is to turn out their toes in walking, however slightly, will find themselves constantly impeded by that trick. To keep the ski parallel, the feet must be parallel. The motion is not one of walking but of shuffling. The ski are not raised from the ground, but merely pushed forward, the knees being kept bent, and the action resembling a sort of easy run. If the snow is in good condition, the ski will slide forward a little at the end of each step. The use of a staff or a pair of staves is to prolong the distance of this sliding. If a staff is used it is grasped in both hands and thrust into the snow on one side every time the foot on that side is advanced. If two staves are used, one in each hand, each is thrust back (like a walking-stick) against the snow, turn about, the left when the left foot is advanced, and vice versâ. Another way is to take three quick steps and to thrust with both staves at the moment of the fourth step. Yet another trick is to thrust with both staves at every third step; this changes the foot each time, but is more difficult. About four miles an hour is an average kind of pace on the flat with fairly good snow. Fifty kilometres in 4h. 20m. 17.5sec. was, I believe, the record for flat racing two or three years ago.
The ascent of hills on ski involves new problems. If the snow be soft enough for the ski to sink into it about half-an-inch, and if the slope be gentle, there is no difficulty in walking straight up. If the slope gradually and steadily steepens, there will come a point at which the ski no longer hold, but slide backward when the weight of the body is thrown upon them. The beginner must then zigzag, pressing the edge of the ski into the slope but, otherwise advancing as on the flat. This is easy enough; the trouble comes at the angles of turning, where his legs are almost sure to slide asunder, or he will tread with one ski on the other. In turning round, even on the flat, it is at first no easy matter to avoid fastening one ski down by treading on it with the other. You should begin turning by moving the foot which is on the side towards which you are going to turn; keep the legs well apart and make the rear ends of the ski the approximate centre of rotation. In turning round on a hillside it is easier to turn with the face, rather than the back, towards the hill. Another way of walking uphill in suitably soft snow is to turn the toes well out and lift each ski over the other; this is more difficult than zigzagging. In very steep places neither method can be applied; you have to advance sideways with the ski kept horizontal, an easy but slow method of progression.
Downhill the real fun begins, and the difficulty of maintaining the balance becomes serious. The weight must be thrown forward, the knees kept bent, and the staff, or pair of staves held as one, used as in glissading. The ski must be kept strictly parallel and close together, with one foot a little in advance of the other. The problem is to adjust the balance to every varying degree of slope and alteration in the slipperiness of the snow. Such alterations have to be foreseen and prepared for. The beginner must expect to fall often on hands and knees and to sit down with undesirable frequency when he least expects. He will find it much easier to fall than to rise again. He should practice glissading on a gentle slope, then on a steeper. Slopes that he finds too steep for direct descent can be negotiated by zigzags, but much time will be lost at the turns.
Whether ski could be advantageously used in summer in the Alps is doubtful. The ascent, still more the descent, of Mont Blanc between the Grands Mulets and the Vallot Hut would certainly be facilitated by them, but they are unsuited even for a broad snow-arête. Agreeable, however, as ski would be on any snowfield, and valuable as a protection against concealed crevasses, they are far too heavy to be carried by a mountaineering party for incidental use. Still they might be employed with advantage in certain places. For example, if a party of climbers were to make the Concordia Hut the centre for a week’s climbing, they could not do better than provide themselves with ski. Thus equipped, all the surrounding mountains, anywhere between the Lötschenlücke and the Oberaarjoch, would be brought within their easy reach. The new Monte Rosa Hut would likewise be an excellent ski centre, and so would the Becher Hut by the Übelthal Glacier in the Stubai Mountains of Tirol. For winter climbing in the Alps ski have already established their utility. I understand that several of the easy Oberland passes, such as the Strahleck, have been crossed on them, whilst at lower levels their value is even more obvious. Whether ski-running will ever attain in western and central Europe the rank as a sport which it holds in Norway and Sweden is a question that only the future can decide.
CHAPTER XII
GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS
Before taking leave of the reader it seems advisable to indicate briefly the general geographical results of our two seasons of exploration in the interior of Spitsbergen, and to state what is now known about the structure of the surface of one of the most interesting areas of arctic land. On Nordenskiöld’s chart, the best map of Spitsbergen existing at the time when we began our labours, both Garwood Land and King James Land are described as covered with “inland ice.” Now, if the phrase “inland ice” merely means glaciers, so that it may be correctly applied to the glaciers of any district of snow-mountains, such as the Alps or Caucasus, it is a useless phrase, and ought to be abolished. Most persons of whom I have inquired receive from it a different impression, and judge it to be descriptive of a complete and continuous icy mantle enveloping a whole country, as Greenland, for instance, is enveloped. In fact, Nansen, in his book on Greenland, always uses the term “inland ice” to describe the great interior ice-covering. “Ice-sheet” is apparently a better descriptive term for such a mantle, and I shall accordingly so employ it. The term “inland-ice,” being essentially vague, should, I think, be erased from geographical literature, or only used as an indefinite term for the land-ice of an unexplored region, the exact nature of which is unknown. As long as a flowing body of land-ice is contained within definite watersheds and mountain ranges, it is a glacier and not an ice-sheet. The juxtaposition of no matter how many glaciers does not form an ice-sheet, but merely a glacial area. It is necessary to be thus particular in definition because, as has been stated above, neither Garwood Land nor King James Land, nor any large part of Spitsbergen, except New Friesland and North-East Land, is covered by an ice-sheet. They are all merely glacial and mountain areas. The discovery of this fact is the principal geographical result of our second expedition. That it is a not unimportant result I now proceed to demonstrate.
