Besides the accidents which are produced by the classes of things which at times go away from us, such as holds, balance, or our common sense, there are other less evitable mishaps produced by the classes of things which at times come at us—stone falls, snow slides, or storms. Mountaineers are too sophisticated any longer to accept a naive statement, that our mishap has been due to one of these causes, as a complete exoneration.
Falling Stones.
Stones, indeed, form the most convincing excuse. Good mountaineers may use all their discretion to avoid lines where stones fall, but the casual stone, or the stone loosened by human agency, may yet overtake them.
A man hit by a stone falling from a height, even if he laughs it off, has nearly always received a greater shock than he realizes. His nerves will be vibrating for a time like strings, and we must be on the look out, especially if we are in exposed places, until we are certain that he is normal again. I have known a man grow faint ten minutes after a stone had struck him and left no apparent mark; and I have seen a guide slip half dazed from his steps a full minute after he had been hit by a spinning stone not the size of a button, which did not even cut through his hat.
But even the peril of irresponsible stone falls can be caged within narrower limits as our experience and our foresight increase. It is itself a small department of our science of reconnoitring to learn how to calculate their probability and recognize their signs. Couloirs and gullies are obvious funnels upon which wandering stones concentrate. In a snow or ice-backed couloir we must study the difference between the ominous furrows made by stones or those made by water. In a rock gully we have to look out not only for stones that may use it as a channel, but for all that its weathering walls may contribute on their own account, or that the changes of temperature, or even the disturbance of our own passage, may dislodge from the balanced accumulations. The surest signs are the absence or presence of stones on the glacier below a couloir, or the grey scars or bruises made by the cannonading stones on the rocks themselves. But these may only indicate stone fall at certain hours of the day. Big grooves in steep precipices and hollows between ribs, where stones may congregate, or featureless flat faces, where they may wander unconfined at their own wild will, are alike suspicious, and the bases of their cliffs must be inspected. Rock faces, corrugated with very shallow ribs and hollows, are particularly dangerous, as falling stones may ricochet unaccountably across the ribs,—stones harder to foresee and to dodge than direct falls. The edges of glaciers commanded by steep precipices are certain to be stone-shelled. Precipices commanded by glaciers—that is, by the small glaciers hanging high up on great peaks, which are often difficult to locate from below—have also their fixed hours; as soon as the ice feels the sun it begins to discharge its surface stones, and continues until the evening.
But without our own examination we need not condemn any face on general grounds or from hearsay. A number of fine mountain walls in the Alps have been unjustly condemned in their entirety for merely local weaknesses. Others offer salient ribs or lines sheltered by accidents of structure through the heart of suspected zones. Only inspection can say. We may presume steep faces to be more safe than those of easier inclination, because the rock should be sounder, and because chance stones ought to fall outside us if they do fall.
If we have been unfortunate in our reconnoitring, or if we have deliberately tempted fortune too far upon a suspected route, we may on occasion have to put our pride and our progress in our pocket and be content to sit out under a grateful rock screen until evening or shadow has chilled the vehemence of the stone barrage. It is better to risk a night out than persist in tackling a bad line at a bad time. An overhanging rock is a sure refuge. But we are also advised, if ever we see that sunlight is increasing the hostile fire upon some passage that we have to negotiate, to wait until a cloud has frozen up the ammunition sources. As I have never yet lighted upon a stagnant party while they were spending some portion of a climbing day in a pensive examination of the sky for this purpose, I must conclude either that clouds are as perverse as stone falls in the ill-timing of their arrival, or that men are as perverse as both in their pigheaded prosecution of a fair-weather programme.
Besides their customary routes, which we avoid by experience or as the result of examination, there are occasions both of place and time when stones fall unaccountably. Stones of large mass will fall at night; the melted snow freezes into the cracks, levers the stones from their attachment, and their weight does the rest. Stones, of smaller size but in larger profusion, will fall in the morning, as the sun again melts the ice in the cracks, which has already detached these lighter stones but kept them for the night frozen in position. During these morning hours, therefore, stones must be looked for on rock faces where they need not be expected during the rest of the day.
During all the hours of hot sunlight, slopes of mixed rock and snow, even of easy angle and harmless aspect, may become operative. Rock extruding from ice is generally more disintegrated, and much of its freshly exposed surface, temporarily cemented by frost, is liable to discharge in sunshine. Any slope of ascent which drains a wide stone-shed of such mixed character must be approached with caution.
Again in hot seasons, after snowless winters, whole regions of rock, gradually disintegrated under their normal covering of ice or snow, become exposed; and in such seasons stones must be looked for on the most respectable peaks. Impeccable cliffs, of traditional mountaineering approach, will be cinctured at their base, and not only there, by bands of discharging rock, remote from and disregarding the time-honoured waste-shoots.