Bad weather, rain, and especially wind, will start volleys in unaccountable places at the most inconvenient times. After storm or heavy rain, even secure lower paths may be raked by a dropping fusillade. But such passing exuberances have also their comfortable aspect. The bruises that surprise us by their appearance on sheer hard crag, where no stone had any business to fall, or the intimidating fragments on the glacier below our firm and promising rib, may be merely such a single past morning’s effervescence or the excesses of a solitary thunderstorm.
Other surprise stones may be due to the passing of goats or chamois above—a rare case in the Western Alps—or more frequently to the presence of other parties. These are a very definite and constant danger, especially on loose faces like the Matterhorn ascent from Zermatt, where half a century of clumsy climbing seems only to have augmented the supply of mountain ammunition available for daily use. It can only be avoided by keeping off these routes, or by making sure of starting first. If we succeed in so doing, we must remember our mountain manners. On any route where stones are likely to fall, no party, however expert, has the right to increase the risk for others below by racing ahead. Unless our line takes us well out of range, we must wait, in ascending or descending, before crossing any passages where there is a prospect of our dislodging loose stones, until the party below is temporarily sheltered or near enough to suffer small damage from the event. We may expect the same consideration from our forerunners, or make ourselves clamorously audible until we secure it.
Stones loosened by the party upon itself, by rough grip climbing, by sitting while descending, by a rope carelessly managed, and so on, are matters for the correction of climbing technique, and cannot be rated, either mentally or vocally and emphatically, as risks from external causes.
But there is still always the familiar terror of the single stealthy stone, that shoots out for a solitary venture on the blandest of mixed rock and ice climbs, sliding soundlessly or skipping venomously on a sharp edge. It can only be countered by the warning of an alert leader and by prompt dodging.
The throwing of stones from the tops of peaks or cliffs is happily confined, apart from a few classical recorded cases, to tourists in our own islands. It is not done by mountaineers; and the method of impressing its serious dangers upon the offenders may be left to the emotional coefficient of the party imperilled to elaborate.
If, in spite of all precautions, a falling stone, or a fall of stones, threatens us, our position at the moment decides our action. In the case of a rock avalanche, whose minatory sound is unmistakable, we shall hear it before we see it; there is nothing to be done but to crouch and get what cover the rock will afford, especially for the head, without trying to locate it. If it is a single stone, or a few stones, sight and not sound will be giving us the warning (unless the risk is already past), and it is best to wait, with back or side turned towards the stone, and watch over our shoulder. A stone falls surprisingly slowly to the eye; its course can be followed, and dodged most effectively at the last second, if it is not in any case aimed to miss us. In dodging or taking cover from stones, the rope must not be forgotten. It is little less serious for the rope to be caught by a large stone falling than for one of the party. To run is often more dangerous, for other reasons, than to stand still. Most guides are terrified of falling stones. They are the one risk external and unaccountable which they cannot train themselves to meet, because no skill can foresee them. Some part of their allied dread of bad weather is due to the increased risk of stones it brings: “A terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, ... or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains, these things made them swoon with fear.” The majority of guides will shout and start skipping indiscriminately in panic. Men who do this must be brought sharply to their senses. An effective, if possibly fallacious, argument is to point out that a stone by falling on a particular line has enormously reduced the chance that another will fall on the same line again.
This argument does not apply to the case of stones which converge from wider areas above, to fall through a particular gully or couloir. A mountaineer, if he finds himself in such a conduit, had certainly better get out of it as quickly as may be safely possible.
If it is absolutely necessary to cross a couloir where falling stones may be expected, or heard, it is best for the party to cross singly, unroped. But if crossing unroped involves a more immediate risk than the chance of a stone striking, not more than two men should remain on the same rope together. One man should cross the couloir alone, with plenty of rope loose for a spring forward or backward to safety, while the other anchors under shelter. If there are three men on the rope, the two end men should cross first, each with plenty of rope; the middle man follows last, with the same allowance. This reduces the danger for the middle man. To be caught by stones in a couloir on the middle of a rope held at both ends is to be trapped. There is no time for the man at either end to release his rope, or, even were that possible, to discover towards which side the middle man intends to escape.
On the whole, considering the amount of stones that fall in the Alps, especially on frequented peaks, the amount of stones that are dislodged by inexperienced climbers on one another on our own cliffs, and the amount of recent stones that litter all mountain bases, and that must have fallen some time, it is astonishing how few and how slight have been the injuries they have caused.
Snow Slides.