If the balance is once lost upon ice, and there is no prospect of an early arrest on a softer surface lower down, it is best to turn on the back, keep the head and hands off the ice, and force the point of the shaft back under the arm-pit and into the ice, so that the weight dragging on the shaft may gradually arrest the progress. The body must be kept head upwards; the legs, if slightly apart and rigid, will help to check the pace by friction and by the rugosities encountered by the heels.
If in such case the ice slope has been badly chosen, and the fallen glissader perceives that the only hope of avoiding a fall over rock is to stop the slide at all hazards, the risk must be taken of turning over on the face. The head of the axe must then be gripped with both hands, so that the adze-blade rests just over the right shoulder, and the pick-point is ground into the ice with the whole weight. It is useless to attempt to force in the pick if the axe is held only by the shaft, or at the stretch of the arms above the head. The axe at arm’s length will be torn from the hands the moment the pick touches the ice.
These two methods of arrest can also be turned to account in checking falls on steep and hard snow, or snow with a crusted or icy surface.
On Snow
Even more on snow do the positions for glissading vary with the angle and consistency of the surface. The expert glissader changes from one attitude to another, as the feel of his feet on the changing surface suggests, without loss of balance or even a check to the pace.
Positions.
The axe should be grasped as for ice-glissading. The knees should be bent, slightly or more according as the surface is slow or fast, forming a convenient arch of balance for the body. The bent leg acts as a strong spring to absorb jolts, and it is more quickly and powerfully adjustable to the changing demands of balance, when the body is in rapid motion, than the straight leg. To keep the knees straight is impracticable on all but perfectly uniform ‘show’ snow slopes. Those who have at times advised it have been influenced by some pictorial ideal which had small regard for the mechanism of the body or for the conditions of the glissade in action.
The body should not be bent forward or crouched, as is done in ice-glissading, but held upright or inclined slightly backward, so as to form a continuous and concordant arc with whatever may be the curve of the leg at the moment. The lower end of this curve will always be bent more sharply at the flex of the knee; but in proportion as the knee is more or less bent, the graceful inclination backward from the hips will vary correspondingly.
The shoulders, especially that above the hand on the shaft, should be braced well back, and the head inclined a little forward, for better sight. The tendency to let the shoulders stoop forward and the body sag downward into a sitting position has to be resisted on snow surfaces. It is a false position, that follows inevitably on an attempt to keep the knees straight; and it is as bad a beginner’s error as the inclination to sit forward and not back when learning to jump on horseback. The fact that it has been suggested as the ideal attitude, both in description and in illustration, may have been responsible for the large number of mountaineers who have never become more than ‘axe riders’ in snow-glissading. Sagging and axe riding are necessary in ice-glissading, where we do not attempt to balance on the feet, but depend for safety and steering upon the axe brake. On snow the good glissader aims at reducing friction and riding by balance. To sag or use the straight knee throws us back upon the axe for balance and for our steering. Straightened knees mean the weight on the heels and the toes up; but if the weight is more on the heels than on the toes, steering with the feet is impossible.
The feet should be kept close together, with the toes pointing down the slope, so as to reduce friction and facilitate foot-steering. If the surface for a space gets icier and rougher, the feet are allowed to separate slightly, so as to secure the balance on their wider base and brake the pace by the angle that the two outward-pointing toes make with the direct line of descent.