To use steps rightly calls primarily for good balance. A man must learn to walk in steps upright, merely resting his hand or axe point against the ice as he moves up or down from one step to the other. If he leans inward, or hangs on to axe or handhold, he becomes a danger to his party. The steps are not cut for the angle which his foot then makes with the ice; he may easily slip, and the faintest jerk of the rope will snatch his foot from the step. A man upright and balanced on his foothold at the right angle can take a considerable weight or jerk if he has but a second’s warning. A man on claws has double this power.
In using a step a climber has not only a duty to his own balance movement, but to every following member of the party. He must use it exactly as it is made, and leave it as he found it. The foot must arrive neatly and leave cleanly. A fractional mistread leaves for the next man an uncertain or blurred step, if it does not ruin its security. There may be no overtreading, and no twisting or turning of the foot on any step, except on the turning-steps which are designed for that purpose.
At the turning-step of a zigzag the climber twists round face inward on his toes. If the step is only cut for one foot, he must only use it with the one foot, pointing it in the direction in which the imprint indicates that the leader used it. Otherwise he will spoil the step and get the sequence of his feet wrong.
On steep ice our main difficulty is to pass the inside foot from behind to in front, between our outside foot on its step and the ice wall. Beginners and bad icemen are inclined to avoid this difficulty by shuffling from step to step with the outside foot always leading, protecting each change of foot with an axe hold. This is dangerous and ruinous to the steps. On the very rare passages where it may be found necessary,—for instance, on the few feet of traverse across the face of an ice-glazed rock wall, or across a vertical ice bulge in a couloir, where passing the foot is impossible,—the leader will have cut a continuous ledge, on which he intends the feet to be thus shuffled and without risk. Otherwise the inside foot must always be passed in front, whatever the difficulty; and the better a man balances and the less he leans inward and clings to the slope, the easier becomes the passing of the foot. Where the wall is so steep that to pass the leg and hip-bone means really a movement out of balance, the leader may be trusted to have made some handhold above, if only for his own protection.
On steep ice, men on claws have to be very careful in passing the inside foot, so as not to catch the prongs in the puttie or fastenings of the firm foot. On the other hand a man on claws, secured to the ice by his prongs and not merely by the friction of his sole, can flex his firm ankle far more freely outward and allow his inside foot room to pass.
In descending a very steep ice staircase, it is important not only to follow with the proper feet but to notice how the leader used the steps. Steps on a descending ladder are not infrequently cut with the intention that the inside foot should be dropped behind the outside foot as we stand sideways on a slope, and not passed in front of the standing outside foot and then dropped, as in the more usual movement for easier angles of descent. Step cutters should remember the device. It is not only easier, on occasion, to cut a step in this fashion vertically below and not on a descending diagonal, but it is mechanically an easier movement of descent, on a steep wall, to lower the inside foot thus behind the standing foot than to pass it in front.
On a diagonal descent, if the shorter legs of a following man find the steps are made too far apart for his descending balance, and he has no time to make fresh ones, he will sometimes find it safer to turn right round and descend the steps backwards, turning his other cheek to the wall. His outstretched toe can reach farther in this attitude. It is not sound for more than a few steps, and not dignified; but dignity must be sacrificed to security if the steps are already made and it is too late to protest, and it is better to arrive cleanly with the toe on a step, even the wrong way round, than to scrabble down insecurely, leaning against the ice with thigh or hand.
It is often asserted to be the business of the second man to ‘finish off’ the leader’s steps and enlarge them. This has grown out of the mistaken belief that large steps are safer than small, well-shaped ones. The bettering may, on occasion, be done by deliberate arrangement between two men. A return by the same route may be intended, when the larger steps will endure better through the heat of the day. Or if there are weaker icemen in the party it may save time to divide the labour of making the specially good and numerous steps they need. Otherwise the alteration is quite unjustifiable and improper. The best cutter presumably is leading, and he will have made the step of the right shape to start with. If it has been good enough for him to stand upon and cut ahead from, up or down, it is good enough for the party to follow upon. A second working-over of the step risks spoiling it. A patched step is never as good as a clean step, cut just to the right point and left raw for the kick of the foot to finish and to mould. If he does not spoil it, a second man by re-cutting postpones his real business, which is to emphasize the mould of the step still further by the right planting of his foot. If he has time to spare from his functions of anchoring the leader or the men behind, he can employ his hands better elsewhere. He may make additional handholds for balance on bad passages, or, by arrangement with the leader, introduce intervening steps, to save the leader time and to favour a weaker following. If he introduces steps, he must be careful not to upset the sequence of feet for which the leader is cutting the main line of steps. He may, also by arrangement, devote himself to breaking up and dispersing any large fragments of ice left about the steps, though not, of course, to clearing out the small stuff which is expressly left to take the imprint of the foot. He thus incidentally relieves his party’s bottled-up emotions by offering a fair target for the abuse from below which follows such clearing up, but from which the leading step-cutter must always be exempt. It is a graceful concession on a leading step-cutter’s part if, when he is doing his own clearing as well as cutting, he recollects that his following have heads as well as feet.
Men following on claws, in steps, nicks, or only claw-tracks, are freer to vary their sequence of feet or their fashion of using steps; the good hold of the prongs is more than a substitute for the nice fit of the correct foot to the mould of a step. But both for retention of rhythm and for security it is better as a rule to follow the leader’s tracks and save the time which must be spent in selecting new treads. This applies more especially to exposed hard ice where the rope is retained. Men moving without the rope may prefer to digress from the actual treads and find unbroken holding surface for their own claws. The leader’s general line should, however, be followed.
The Rope on Ice.