A belated party returning crossly at night down the breakers of a big glacier whose surface has thawed only to be refrozen later to a polished, leg-racking ice-slide, will save temper and re-roping and time if the men stop to put on their claws. Two midnight descents of the Mer de Glace in this condition, without claws, are among the most penetrating and undignified of my remembrances.
On the steep sides of moraines, or on new snow lying on grass, claws, if they happen to have been brought, save much back-sliding. On slippery rock surfaces, such as snow-slimed slate and the like, I have found light claws of constant use.
Finally, we need not take off our claws, if they are light ones, for every rock section of a climb where rock and ice are alternating. On much easy soft rock they are of assistance; and even in steep climbing, if once the novelty of the feel is mastered and the foot has got accustomed to the precautionary tread that protects the points, claws have often a positive value greater than the mere effort we save by not removing them.
To learn how to use claws, however, does not relieve us of the necessity of learning how to make and to walk in ice steps. Nor (although this is a matter of more personal opinion) do claws in my view justify climbers on big expeditions in substituting the small ice-axe recommended by some of the great authorities upon claws, and only intended for making an occasional step or for holding on, for a good step-cutting axe, which has also the potentiality of the third leg on general climbing.
In practice on dry glaciers it is both profitable and amusing to experiment in manœuvring on exceptional angles, or in walking up between the vertical walls of crevasses. Such practice is good for confidence and for training, and it is even of use to discover how comparatively easy claws make it to get out of crevasses, or similar impasses, without relying on the rescue of the rope alone. A climber on claws, for this reason, can take a measure of liberty in solitary climbing that would be folly for a man without them to allow himself. No doubt, if amateurs were able to keep constantly in practice, and had not each season to stop climbing when they have barely reached their best, they would learn to move with equal freedom on angles of this character at great heights. But as a matter of experience no holiday mountaineer can entirely acquire the same feeling of confidence and security if his ice slopes are subtended by dangerous mountain walls or are situated on exposed tracts. Fatigue, diverse air-pressures and, above all, the psychological effect of height contribute to handicap him in venturing on claws risks which he would laugh at on a twenty-foot wall on a glacier. Consequently we find that most mountaineers on very steep, hard ice at great heights prefer to cut steps to aid their claws. In mountaineering on a big scale we usually begin to feel this need when the angle of the ice approaches anywhere near to our limit of average performance upon claws in glacier practice. It is more our sensation than the angle of the ice slope which forces step-cutting upon us. And there is yet another common occasion for steps. On ice which is covered with snow, where without claws we should clear away the snow and make a step in the ice, it is of course similarly open to us to clear it away and step simply with the claw on the exposed ice. But, as a matter of fact, it is generally the practice in such case to make a nick for the claw. Unless the nick is made, the mass of snow round the clearing prevents the foot from being placed conveniently and from providing a sense of security commensurate with the sensational situation. Thus to secure a good reassuring claw hold we should have to clear away an additional quantity of snow, and we may just as well make a nick-step at once. A step in ice when claws are worn need only be a nick for a proportion of the prongs. It takes less labour and art to fashion than a step for a boot.
Again, ice at great heights is occasionally covered with a rotting coating, or crust, through which the prongs cannot reach to the good surface below. Here clearing the rotten ice will in any case be necessary, and, for the reason given above, it is more comfortable and as quick to cut through it and make a step at once.
Where, also, ice is really hard ‘black ice,’ it has an iron quality of surface, through which the prongs have to be driven with real force; and they make clean, hard holes from which we have the feeling they might slip out, as if from smooth metal sockets. Without steps, at steep angles, balance on such ice is a very delicate matter, as this is a branch of claw technique in which the Alps give us little practice. The nerve of most men will call for auxiliary steps. But whether steps are made or not, on such ice the rope must always be retained.
For the average man, therefore, it is still needful to know how to fashion and how to walk in ice steps; both for use on the brief intervals of ice and snow on climbs where the amount of difficult rock and the small proportion of ice in prospect have suggested leaving the claws behind, and for occasions, of which some have been mentioned, that arise out of exceptional mountain or personal conditions.
Cutting Steps.
We have then to learn how to cut and use steps on ice, at high angles, in awkward places, or when complicated by certain conditions. Claws cover the rest of the ice field.