Ice-Claws.
Any man who wishes to make big ascents is well advised if he begins early to learn how to use ice-claws (or crampons). It is not that we cannot climb without them, even as we could without nails in our boots, but that we can learn to climb more securely, and go faster and farther, with them.
Claws have been used by individuals for something like a century, but the conservatism of mountaineers long refused to recognize them as more than an individual eccentricity. It found itself able to draw a nice distinction between the ‘sporting’ character of the assistance given by a number of long spikes separately and laboriously screwed and unscrewed on the boot, and that of a similar number of spikes affixed by a single simple mechanism. It was not until the guides finally capitulated that the practice could grow at all general or that its extra security could become recognized as workmanlike. Claws were formerly assumed to be useless unless worn by every member of a party; an assumption that prevented their use by many amateurs who failed to carry their guides’ conviction with them. As a fact, even one expert furnished with claws can do much to assist the security and lighten the labour for his clawless party on difficult ice, by preceding them and helping or protecting them with the rope. Let no amateur, therefore, ever be discouraged from taking his own where he expects ice work. He will always be the happier himself, and may on occasions be able to point a prolonged moral to his party. Up to the present they have still been looked upon as an experiment, and men have been apt to get discouraged if they have taken them out once or twice and had no need for them. Sometimes they have then dropped carrying them; found that they could ‘get on all right without them’—as who cannot?—and so begun to exaggerate the labour of their portage and minimize their use. The habit has to be formed. It can become as natural to take them on a big ascent as to carry the axe, spare rope and shoes upon a rock climb.
I must premise, that claws postulate precise footwork. A slovenly habit they cannot correct, and may only confirm.
If we use claws neatly, we need no longer cut steps upon all the easier angles of ice or hard snow. We can walk straight ahead, up, down or along, without check for step-cutting or loss of rhythm. We can take foothold just as is most convenient for our balance as we move. Thus a good balance climber from the first moment gets all the advantage of the footwork he has learned upon rock: the labour of ‘finding his feet’ upon ice is reduced to a minimum. Again, claws increase our security, if we step accurately, when we are moving upon angles where, for reasons of steepness or other difficulty, steps may still have to be cut. In using slippery steps they permit of a confidence of movement, firm and continuous, similar to that which previous experience will have taught us contributed most to our security upon rock. In so far claws, even while we are learning, make for safer progress.
Their fashion has been fully dealt with, under Equipment. As to the character of claw which may be of greatest service, there exist divergent schools of thought; and each finds justification for its belief in the greater usefulness of its particular claw for some particular type of ice work.
In general, heavy claws are better for a heavy man, light for a light. Ten-point claws are better than eight for a large foot, and six-point claws are hardly worth their weight in carrying. A heavy claw, with long, sharp points, which suffer in contact with rock, is worth its extra weight if some big ice expedition is in prospect. At the same time, a good climber can, if he is prepared for the extra labour and for the more careful technique which their use requires, accomplish with safety all the ice work to be found on normal climbs with a lighter claw of slightly shorter points. This lighter, rougher type will be more useful to him for mixed ice and rock climbing, as he will be able to sacrifice its shorter and inevitably more blunted points with less regret, while he can retain the claw over every kind of surface. The necessity of constantly putting off and on the long, sharp claws on mixed climbing, to avoid turning their points, has the drawback of losing time, and, still more important, of changing the action of the leg and the feel of the feet. Consequently the rhythm of foot and leg has to adjust itself, after each change, to the new character of surface and movement. Whereas the claw which can be worn all day if the conditions demand it, regardless of rock or blunting surface, and which can be thrown away or resharpened when it has suffered sufficiently, while it may call for more skill and effort for its secure use on long, steep passages of hard ice, possesses the compensating advantage of keeping the action constant, without change to the feel of the feet, to the rhythm, or to the greater or lesser security of the tread.
On the other hand, the finer, heavier claw, by which I mean the claw of the Eckenstein pattern, has the merit of being the only claw at the present time in which both the metal is rightly wrought and the points are shaped and placed under the foot with any scientific regard for their use. It is also the only type which it is safe to wear on hard ‘black ice’; which, even if rarely, is occasionally found on big summits in the Alps or on sunless northern faces.
Of course the claw must be made exactly to fit the boot on which it is used, and it must fasten and take off easily and securely.
The theory of the use of the claw, with all the various positions of the feet required, can only be dealt with in a monograph to itself, and this has been already more than adequately done.[13] It is sufficient for the commencing mountaineer to know that he has to learn how to use claws, and that he cannot do so effectively without preliminary practice. This practice should be on a glacier, and under direction; no man really discovers what the claw will enable him to do until he has seen what confidence and skill can accomplish in the conquest of angle and of natural nerve revulsions. The movements are not entirely natural or self-suggesting, more especially those of descending or of traversing on very steep slopes. The masters of the art can walk, and sustain weights, sideways or straight upon their feet, up to angles of 70 degrees or more. An ordinary climber can learn to move with comfort on angles, of good surface, between 55 and 60 degrees.