During Halts.
The rope, during halts or interruptions, should never be left lying about in a tangle. It may catch over points from which it will be difficult to release it. I remember an occasion on an Aiguille when it took a quarter of an hour to extract some loose lengths, which had jammed in a deep cleft of the slab on which we were standing.
Halts for lunch are full of dangers. Men begin to cross and recross each other’s ropes, for matches or for conversation, and at the end of the halt a maze presents itself which can only be solved by long, impassioned moments of general untying and reroping. It is better for the two end men to unrope for the halt, and leave their coils ready for easy resumption.
Two middle men can only get their rope twisted, not crossed. When a middle man finds, as often happens, that the ropes going backward and forward from his waist-knot have got twisted round one another and make a bunch at his waist, he has only got to lift the upper of the two ropes over his head and pass it under his feet the requisite number of times, to clear it. Once, after an eighteen hour traverse of the Dent Blanche by the Viereselgrat, we took a midnight halt on the glacier, and on re-starting found the rope inextricably interwoven between the five of us. The guides were tired, too tired to unrope, or to move eurhythmically; and the next ten minutes of frenzied gyrations, with the lanterns whirligigging round one another in the darkness among the crevasses, will remain a picture as precious as its moral.
Coiling.
At the end of a climb the rope should be carefully coiled up, so that the loops will run out without entanglement. To coil with the lay of the strands avoids kinks. We never know when next the rope may be needed in a hurry; and the unknotting evolutions, the passing of the long ends, etc., are more irritating before a late start than a late return.
During coiling, the loops should be caught up in the hand, with the lay, and laid against one another, but not allowed to cross. For most men, especially if they prefer to carry the rope round their chest, the most convenient length of coil is that made round the sole of the boot and the knee. Some prefer coiling round the hand and the elbow.
A convenient trick for finishing off such coils is to bind the loose end once or twice round the whole mass of coils near one end, and then thread it through the smaller of the loops into which the whole coil is thus divided. The loose end, so threaded, makes a comfortable shoulder-strap, by which the whole coil can be suspended over the back. This method of fixing the end is less trouble to undo than the more usual method—to twine both loose ends of the rope through and round and round the finished coil in opposite directions, and knot them where they meet. This forms a single firm hoop to hang over one shoulder.
For this single hoop, however, a still better way to finish is to make a half-hitch on the coil with one loose end, and then wind this one end in a spiral round the coil in the same direction as that of the spiral of the rope-strands. While winding this loose end, twist its strands tight with the fingers. Their inclination to untwist will keep the spirals clinging close round the coil.
Yet another convenient and quick method of coiling the rope, suitable for short intervals of disuse, is that of linking it in ‘chain knots’: short loops are successively pulled through one another in a continuous linking chain, and this is then swung over the shoulder. The rope should only be left in chain-knots for short periods.