Crusted snow, where the surface has melted and refrozen, but too lightly to carry our weight, is the worst snow of all. When it lies at easy angles, it may be extraordinarily wearisome to cross. It just bears our weight until the body is fairly over the foot, then it gives and lets us through. At least the half of each lifting effort is thus lost, and each fresh step has to be made from a yielding basis uphill on to a hard one. Rhythm is impossible, and the prolonged aggravation is demoralizing. For which reason I have found soft snow the one test of sheer endurance in which good guides are inferior to good amateurs. We meet it not infrequently in our own islands, and welcome it then as good ‘alpine’ training.
For really bad crust there is no countermove, except strong thighs and a high flat-foot step. On crust of a better character, especially before sunrise, a shuffling step, which distributes the weight, often saves the foot from going through, or lets it sink to a less depth. On some crusted surfaces it is possible to slide cautiously along on the shuffle-step, where lighter men, walking ‘heel and toe,’ are going through at each stride. When the surface is too soft for even a shuffle to save us, the tread should be made with the whole flat of the sole, and not with the heel leading as is usual in road walking. Under the flat foot, as under a snow-shoe, the snow packs more quickly. To pivot upon the foot, before the weight comes upon it, widens the bearing surface.
Soft snow cannot be taken at a rush. There is a peculiarly clinging and binding quality in the snow of old avalanche debris. These are just the places where most folk start seven-leagued leaping. If we cannot restrain them, we make them take off the rope first. To be tied to a hop-o’-my-thumb when our leg has just entered binding snow, up to the thigh, at an acute angle to the pull is full of unpleasant possibilities. The wise man will continue even here to move lightly, and only as rapidly as balance and rhythm will allow.
On long monotonous snow wades, if we cannot get a good rhythm of legs or body, it is sometimes of use to supply its place by an artificial rhythm, counting the steps up to fifty and then pausing, or whistling, or following a tune in our head—anything that may introduce a rhythm, with rests, into the featureless vista of effort. The boredom that may afflict a party on snow is peculiar to itself. The even glare and the winding line of diminishing tracks hypnotize the eye and mind, and produce a conviction of exhaustion which is often in great part self-suggested. The wader feels that he absolutely cannot take another step. If counting fails, and other wiles and conversational red-herrings shrivel up in the silent white monotony, rest is the only cure. Sleep follows easily in such states, and a few minutes’ slumber often restores a man or a party surprisingly.
On long snow plods it is best to get rid of the rope whenever the absence of crevasses will allow. It but doubles the uneasy travail. If it has to be kept on, avoid spoken remonstrance when the man before or behind jerks you; let the rope do the talking. If you are leading, keep a small, loose coil in your hand, so that the man behind shall not drag you in mid-step. If you are last, you can always exercise a salutary, silent check. If you are in the middle, and you have, as is frequent in tired parties, an energetic leader trying provokingly to press the pace in front and the weakest member lagging slightly but protestingly upon your rope behind, the best way to protect yourself, inoffensively, is to take up both their ropes in your one hand, and so link their opposing pulls directly on to one another. You can thus maintain equilibrium with no further discomfort to yourself. When I was learning the craft in early years between two guides, or a guide and amateur of unequal endurance, I had many occasions for perfecting the device.
The use of ski upon snow is treated of separately. Whenever summer ski have been made as available as ice-claws, there can be no doubt that they will cancel out for us as much of the technical consideration of these penitential snow fields as claws have simplified for us the labour upon all the angles of ice.
Snow Slopes.
To make steps upon inclined snow is a matter of little difficulty. The direction and weight of the kick are suggested by the angle and texture of the surface. But to use them calls for more care than is usually given to the matter. On soft slopes it is a nuisance if the step stamper has a length of stride that makes each pace a slight effort for us. It is better to remonstrate at once: to shorten the pace by refashioning the step is to break rhythm for the whole line. Of course on easy slopes, if we are out of the rope, we go as we like, provided that we do not exhaust, by eccentric following, the energy which we should be reserving for our turn in the lead. But as the angle increases, or where the going gets more heavy, men of any experience fall into single file; and then to make missteps, to tread a step down at the heel, or to step outside the line, is to throw the whole march of those behind us out of gear, and to waste our own energy in repeating the leader’s work. It is impossible on snow not to be conscious of the leg swing of the man ahead. If he walks with the wrong foot for the trail, we are either drawn into his error, to our own inconvenience, or we resist the attraction with a conscious and tiresome effort. Our common rhythm goes. Worse than this, he spoils the steps for us. Nothing is more muddling, in ascending or descending snow slopes, than to find the steps broken or doubled. We bungle, and get the wrong foot for the leader’s tracks; our body as a result balances wrong for their angle of use. In coming down especially, a bad second man, who lets himself lollop carelessly into tracks or makes ‘tumble-steps’ on either side, confuses every one behind him as well as himself. The whole party will be wasting temper and strength in choosing between a maze of ‘joy’ tracks, or in remaking their own in despair, where they should have been following mechanically on a ready-made line.
In using steps on steep snow of uncertain stability, it is vital to tread right to the fraction of an inch. A tired man who steps a nail-breadth false on a descending ladder of this character will certainly cause some step to give, and endanger the general safety by a slide. He may explain that the step ‘broke away’; but the fault has been his. It is the ideal of all good climbers, although very few men can live up to it, to use steps as accurately and with as dancing and precise a foot at the end of a long day as they did at the beginning.
If a snow step on a steep slope looks insecure, as it often may on wet snow after several men have passed, it is best to tread slightly inside it and scrape down a shaving of fresh snow to strengthen the floor under the foot. But this intentional over-tread should never be made on the outside of a step. If a step has broken away and a new step has to be made, it should be trodden, similarly, inside the old one, over but not exactly in line above the broken step.