If a climber has to make a jump while on the rope, he must give notice first, and be sure that he has enough slack rope not to jerk his friends or spoil his own jump. Beginners and boys are apt to jump in unexpected places, and to forget that they have the rope on.
On boulders and such-like problems, wherever height and difficulty make the protection of a rope from above advisable, the climber should be roped on properly. To dangle a loose cord past him, as is so often done, is worse than useless. It tempts him to risky assays; and then, if he slips, it is utterly impossible for him to save himself by snatching at the rope.
An unroped man who calls for the rope is generally unable to free more than one hand to tie himself on. Therefore the loop, already tied, should be sent down to him, which he can work under his armpits seriatim. Failing a loop, he should twist the rope round his forearm; but never trust to the grip of the hand alone. If he is within reach, it is often easier to give him a hand than the rope. A hand-clasp is not strong enough for a sheer lift. Each man should grasp the other’s wrist; or they should crook and interlock their fingers. This last is a very powerful hold.
Every climber should know how to make the simple hitches for sending up sacks or axes on the rope. An undue proportion of the wasted moments of my own life have been spent in unravelling the labyrinthine ‘granny’ knots with which well-meaning friends have plotted to protect the ascents of their sacks.
The ‘stirrup’ and other marabout rope-tricks may be studied in rescue handbooks. The rope, as a support, precautionary, corrective or moral, cannot be too minutely studied; but as a means of evasive traction, or detached ætherial flight, it need not occupy the mundane climber.
CHAPTER VI
CORRECTIVE METHOD
Mountain craft has for its object to get us up and down mountains without mistakes. All our training aims at reducing continually the limits within which our mistakes might occur. But human beings are fallible, and mountains are perverse. Mistakes will still be made; and it is our business to learn how to remedy them, as well as how to avoid them. Our corrective technique must seek to prevent mistakes developing into disasters; and, a further step, guide us to a right conduct when the disaster can no longer be prevented.
Climbing accidents have a theatrical appeal, because of their dramatic circumstance, and the world at large has an exaggerated notion of their frequency. Compared with other active sports, in which the element of danger is tacitly accepted as part of the fascination, climbing has a singularly clear record. Aviation, hunting, sailing, football—their toll of fatal accidents is accepted almost without comment. Only in mountaineering does the sudden and spectacular suggestion of annihilation make the isolated accident flare like innumerable stars in the imaginative public eye. And yet of British mountaineers not one per cent are killed climbing.
Human Fallibility
Although fatal accidents are extremely rare, falls, slips and missteps are common,—as common, and as a rule no more harmful than falls out hunting or skating. There are falls from over-confidence, falls from inexperience, and falls from pure accident in all active sports. It lies with the experience and skill of the party to prevent such a climbing fall being anything more than an interruption. It were better avoided altogether: but climbers are not all perfect at their start, and mountains may be perverse; and it is only sensible to recognize that mistakes must occur in spite of all precaution, and to study how to deal with their effects.