Higher glaciers, and the higher reaches of glaciers covered with snow, are the most complex of all mountain problems, and their unravelling is the final test of mountaineering. They demand for their duality of difficulty the mastery of snow and ice technique in combination; and for their associated risk a fourfold measure of precautionary skill; for on them we expect to encounter the ordinary risks of snow superimposed upon the hidden, and therefore magnified, possibilities of danger on ice. The great icemen, those who can disregard a late descent after a long day, and by memory, or by the ice instinct which is the emanation of recollected experience, are able to lead a tired party unerringly through the fantastic, often invisible entanglements of a snow-covered glacier system, intensified by sunshine, their own faculties unimpaired by darkness, fatigue or danger, are masters of the craft; and they are few enough for us to give them ungrudgingly the title of genius.
The peculiar risks of snow glaciers force upon us a reconsideration of the numbers proper for a party.
Solitary climbing is never justifiable on any type of expedition which involves either snow or ice; in fact anywhere where the increase in the so-called objective risk makes it impossible to observe the super-precautionary conditions which must always limit a lonely climber’s performance,—as elsewhere enumerated.[15] An expert on claws may pass a day alone on a dry glacier, with the knowledge that he is taking some definite risk. But anyone who ventures alone on snow-covered glacier, whatever his skill, is giving to everybody, except himself, a proof that he lacks the most important part of a mountaineer’s mental equipment.
The question as it affects a single climber is simple. With the consideration of the justifiability of a party of two venturing on snow-covered glaciers, the complications begin. A party of two, I have said elsewhere, if they are experts, is the ideal party for most rock climbing. For most normal mountaineering which includes straightforward ice work the addition of a third to a strong party adds little except a moral security, and diminishes the complete harmony in rhythm and pace. On clear ice slopes the additional protection is small. If, as between two men, one has not been able to check the other’s fall, the third man will very rarely be able to stop the slip of both the others. On snow slopes, except to share the mechanical labour or in certain exceptional cases, already mentioned, to participate in the corrective anchoring, two good mountaineers should not need reinforcement. But on snow-covered glacier, where hidden crevasses come into question, not only are two insufficient but even three may find themselves hard put to it if two of them have to pull out the third from a bad crevasse.
Some mountaineers have maintained, and in print, that it is never necessary to fall into crevasses; that in every case a man with good eyesight, knowledge of glacier signs and unfailing observation (all of which the leader of a party of two must possess for any type of climbing) can always distinguish their unseen presence and locate their line. This view is nearer the truth than the large number of climbers who have never learned or never cared to use and train their senses would be prepared to admit. In nine cases out of ten the crevasse is really perceptible. But there is the tenth case, with which all men who climb must on occasion have to deal, where there has been no visible sign, and where the crevasse is discovered too late or is only escaped by accident. And further, there is also the supernumerary case when the crevasse is visible, but when its crossing must yet be risked, as the milder of several critical alternatives, and the consequences accepted.
As the matter must still be considered one for discussion, and it is of real moment to clear the ground for a sounder tradition than at present regulates our diverse doctrine and chameleon practice, I shall mention a few instances of what I have called the tenth case.
In a recent alpine season a mild winter and a long hot summer produced conditions of snow sub-surface entirely unfamiliar. Crevasses had opened below long-established snow slopes of unimpeachable aspect. Their coverings had become tenuous and fragile, but until mid-August the upper surface of old snow presented no appearance of subsidence or change. No eyesight could have prevented the falls that resulted. Such a state of snow cannot be unique, or confined to the Alps; and, in fact, the same phenomena, in a less subtle form, may entrap less experienced mountaineers almost any season—guides as well as guideless amateurs. Moreover, even where the crevasse shadow would normally be visible, failing light may trick the best eye, a level sun may dazzle, or low mist may wipe out all sign; and then our expert may go through as easily as another. Few even of the most experienced guides but have suffered the experience. Some have been through; others have had their following drop through where they had passed unsuspecting; yet others have only averted the break by good luck or corrective gymnastics.
Again, there is the case when the presence of the crevasse may be visible or suspected, but where its breadth is undiscoverable.[16] Or, again, where the bounds are discoverable, but where their criss-crossing may elaborate new risks. Suppose us to be two grave men making the descent of a hanging glacier. We find ourselves faced with the alternatives of returning up the peak, of sitting out possibly in deteriorating weather, or of taking the chance of unravelling one of those glacier cross-systems of spouting volcanoes, where the ice is heaped and beaten up into snow-covered vault and dome, and only the tinkle below our feet warns us that we are walking over the brittle cupola of some hidden St. Paul’s. One of us might be pardoned for breaking through here: and how shall one other extricate him?
A more frequent, ‘supernumerary’ case is that of the bergschrund, with its single bridge which we have to cross to get at our peak at all, or to get home before night. In the morning it may have been secure; on our return its security, or the reverse, has to be rediscovered ambulando. The experience is common enough, and few parties of two will be able to plead not guilty to having at some time taken the flying chance.
In these and similar cases precautionary and corrective icemanship can do much to reduce the risk for the party of two. But unless such a party climbs so as never to cross snow-covered crevasses at all, which is to postulate absurdity, some risk there must always be of a break-through. And if that once occurs, for a party of two the situation is ten times as serious as for any greater number. For if the fact that a man may excusably fall through may be considered established,—and I shall assume that it is, sufficiently at all events for practical mountaineers,—it is only a question of further fortune whether the crevasse is so shaped that one of the party of only two can rescue himself or even be helped materially by the second man. Several corrective devices have been suggested, such as wearing two ropes, keeping a hand-loop ready near our hand on the rope, etc.—devices which are now used in the confidence that they form a genuine safeguard. The intention of the double rope is that if one man falls through, the other will untie one rope from his waist, and fasten it to his axe, which he will drive in securely as a belay. The man below will then pull on this rope, and the man above on the rope still attached to him; thus securing that the two men will each be pulling separately to raise the one weight. The effectiveness of the double rope so used, however, assumes that the crevasse is one with open walls and clean firm edges, which will allow the second man first to anchor the one rope round his axe, and then move up and stand close enough to the edge to be able to pull in the second rope while his friend below does acrobatics up the anchored rope. But these are not the crevasses into which any observant leader of a party of two has any right to fall. Good men, if they fall, are trapped by snow-covered crevasses of indeterminate edges, or by the midway breaking of a visible but treacherous bridge. In such crevasses the fallen man will be under the projection of a lip of snow. He will be hanging free, probably unable to do more than touch the walls with his axe. The man above will have all he can do to hold on; he may not be able to find secure snow within reach into which to drive his axe for the belay; and his hands will rarely be sufficiently free to untie one waist rope, drive the axe and fix the rope to it, so that he can move up and clear away the overhang. The ropes will cut deeply into the snow lip with the weight; and the friction hold of the snow in which the ropes are embedded will militate against the effective pulling upon his rope by either man. If the two ropes are, as usual, tied to the waist, the one will probably have twisted round the other; both will be jammed in this position in the snow cut, and neither man will be able to distinguish on which rope he is supposed to pull. Even if they have been kept clear before, the cutting through the snow will twist the ropes and jam them, so that they cannot be used separately for pulling at all. The projecting snow will interrupt communications and interfere with any simultaneous action in pulling from above and below. Nor can the man below, suspended in air, really do much to help. Tie a rope round your chest and a bough; drop ten feet on it, and then try to pull yourself up it! And a man in a crevasse is much worse situated for attempting juggling feats. The constriction of the rope alone will soon make him helpless and later unconscious. The shock, the imminent peril and the cold will contribute to weaken him for the strenuous efforts required. Further, if the rope is tied, as it usually is, under the arm, the knot will work up under his shoulder and practically put one arm out of action. All the strength of the arm will be required for merely forcing down the knot and noose, so as to keep it under the arm-pit; the moment the arms are lifted to attempt a pull, the knot will force itself up and half-paralyse the one arm.