There remains one state, of whose nature and origin we at present know very little. It is generally called the ‘psychological’ effect of height; which it almost certainly is not. It has none of the bodily symptoms of mountain sickness; and I know no remedy for it, mental or physical. It is simply that certain men above certain heights appear to lose some portion of their nervous energy. Training or habit seem powerless to restore it. They become incapable of moving with the certainty or rhythm which are theirs at lower levels. You can watch the effects in tentative, slower movements, a visible effort in balancing, clumsiness with the rope, insecurity in steps, sometimes a vagueness or absence of mind, as if the vitality were running low. And yet the men will be most vigorous and competent mountaineers up to their limit of height. Liability to suffer from it appears to depend on no question of physique or of probabilities. As its result many fine climbers on lower hills never achieve marked success in the Alps, and many fine alpinists, including most guides, are failures, relatively, in the Himalaya. If we were to go high enough, we should probably find that every man has his limit of height, above which no training or habit would enable him to climb with his normal vigour or efficiency. But what concerns a leader in the Alps, or an explorer in higher ranges, is to discover which of his party is subject to it, and at what heights, and make his dispositions accordingly if he is planning an expedition or series of expeditions which will exceed this limit. Otherwise, just at those heights and in those situations where the greatest individual skill is called for and the least attention can be spared to others, he will find that the symptoms will begin to put in an unwelcome appearance. The mountaineer himself is rarely aware of his weakness; he probably explains it to himself as a touch of passing mountain sickness. It is only when he, or more probably his leader, notices that it recurs at the same height and that the symptoms are not physical or mental, but affect the mysterious half-way region that we must call ‘nervous,’ that the true cause suggests itself. A leader must watch every new member of his party, and if he finds that he has such a height limit, he must not take him above it, if the ascent is severe, or he must be prepared to give him much increased attention and shepherding until the limit is repassed on the descent.
Social Composition of the Party
The social and psychological conditions that regulate the relations of any collection of human beings associated for a common effort or pursuit are seldom taken sufficiently into account. The interaction of individual temperaments in mountaineering and the reactions of common mood under the stress of elemental conditions or of great physical effort have, in consequence, seldom been allowed for in anticipatory organization or made a matter for previous agreement, or for the acceptance of precautionary control. When the crises have arisen, it has been often, consequently, too late for remedy or for the exclusion of the dissonant elements. This must be my excuse for sketching these superficial classifications of nervous and mental states that are as positive in their influence upon the success or harmony of a mountaineering holiday as the possession or lack of a developed trapezius major or a sound digestion. Explorers of experience sometimes recognize the importance of choosing men for temper and temperament as much as for physique, and make their arrangements with this in view, in practice if not in their printed records. Mountaineering is done under much the same conditions; but its temporary, holiday character leads us generally, as we sit at home in the comfort of pleasant prospect, to overlook in our arrangements the almost primitive conditions of temper, health and fierce struggle under which we shall be living during our mountain association.
A mountaineer, in the composition and management of his party, cannot afford to neglect the action of health and condition upon temper, or of temperament and mood upon achievement. He must select men, therefore, not by their promise of the plains, but by what he knows or concludes will be their conduct under the harder test of the heights. If he has to take anyone on chance, he must be on the watch from the first, and, if he finds he has made a mistake, content himself with a less ambitious programme. In big mountaineering no man has more than a momentary margin. In less exacting work no man has a continuous margin of will-power, nerve and temper, to say nothing of skill, for more than himself and one other. Every party of more than two should contain two men of tried nerve—that is, of an experience that has learned to control the effects of shock or of fatigue upon the nerves. Every party, for its own peace, should contain one expert rock climber and one reliable iceman. A good second-man, or ‘backer-up,’ and a weight-carrier are invaluable assets. These parts may, of course, be doubled in a single individual. The ability to heal, or cook, or sing may be allowed to outweigh some minor defects—but not temper, clumsiness or a sluggish vitality.
A manager has also to remember that that party earns the best success which works with the most collective good-humour and good-will. With the object of maintaining the genial atmosphere that best resists local disturbances, mental or physical, one member of a party of three or four may well be either younger or less experienced than the rest. Rowing eights in training have discovered the merits of a mascot or protégé, whom the rest can look after and laugh with or at. No party of men or women can quarrel if there are children (not belonging to them) of their number. One considerably younger member of a party, or one younger in the sense that he or she is a novice to the work, and in so far is a child, gives the climbing group the pleasant sense of centring round some one as a common care. He is a permanent distraction. In moments of excitement, pleasure or fatigue, every member of such a party unconsciously puts himself first into the new-comer’s attitude of mind, and speculates how the sensation will present itself to him. The process provides our individual consciousness with an external interest that diverts us from the oppression of absorption in ourselves.
In a holiday party of four, which is the best number for serious guideless climbing, enabling the break into the ideal pairs for rock climbing, and the safer combination for glaciers, one member may well be an ‘infant’ or beginner of this sort; but if such an element is included the ‘breaking’ must be confined to very safe passages. In a party of three, provided that two are thorough experts, and one of these possibly a first-class guide, and provided that no severe climbing is contemplated, maleficent psychic influences may be combated by the inclusion of our less responsible third. If serious work is in prospect, the third must be at least strong and efficient; in fact, in parties of less than four, considerations of skill or experience must always take precedence of purely social qualifications. In a party of two, for rock climbing, both must be, primarily, expert, and our social selection must be confined to this class. For glacier work any party of two, even though, socially, they speak with the tongues of angels, must always be unsound. The popularity of the party of two as a rock climbing combination compels us continually to reconsider its suitability under new aspects. As a social companionship the association of two friends, equally expert, is ideal. The association of two friends, one of them less expert but equally competent to share in the responsibility for a joint decision, is quite defensible. But it must be remembered that any external feeling strong enough to interfere with the complete concentration of a leader upon his climbing reduces the efficiency of his normal standard and still more of his standard of the day. His feeling of a particular responsibility for an individual, other than his general responsibility to a party, may act as a dangerous distraction. A man, therefore, who climbs alone with a novice, a younger person or a pupil, towards whom he is in a position of personal trust, handicaps himself to an extent that should forbid him to attempt any but absolutely safe and elementary climbing. The usual risks, even of merely external chance, which he may take lightly for himself or for a second companion of equal discretion, he may not take for his charge; and the cheerful consent of an inexperienced comrade to ‘share’ in taking such a chance cannot be considered as relieving the single expert of any part of his exclusive responsibility. If he has the sense of it constantly in mind, the feeling turns to anxiety in moments of crisis, and interferes with his coolness of judgment and with the nervous harmony upon which his skill depends; at more ordinary times its presence materially biases his ordinary mental and physical climbing habit. If, on the other hand, he undertakes such a charge, and then does not keep it in mind in all his decisions and actions, no one will consider him to have been a happy choice for the responsibility entrusted to him.
Where the sense of responsibility is further complicated by an emotional relationship its debilitating effect is increased. It is a commonplace of all active undertakings that relationship is irreconcilable with cool command and undisturbed performance. Similarly, a father climbing alone with his child or children, a husband climbing with his wife, cannot preserve the nervous concentration or the emotional detachment indispensable for an unsupported leader. Whatever their normal ability as mountaineers, in such a companionship both their discretion and their execution must be subject to a hundred distracting influences. The disturbance, even the danger, of an emotional state in a member of a party has already been indicated. In these cases, however, it is the leader, whose business it should be to correct, who is the man affected; and, further, in a party of two so constituted, where the leader alone is morally or by nature responsible, no other can compensate for his abnormality or qualify the effects of his state or of his action. In my view no mountaineer should ever climb alone with anyone less competent for whom he must be held responsible either by relationship or by delegated authority; unless the climbing is so short and so safe that he can be sure of always safeguarding his charge against the ill consequence of any and every form of ‘accident’ however remote or unlikely. Practically this means that, except for simple ‘bouldering’ or elementary, separate ‘pitch’ climbs, without the addition of a second fully competent mountaineer all parties of this description are unsound.
In larger parties it is wise to give full value to social considerations in selecting the members, since we can always secure, by addition or subtraction, that any element of weakness introduced by relationship or private responsibility is balanced by a greater proportion of mountaineering skill. But for combinations of two our first business is to make absolutely certain that each man is equally competent, in his own and his friend’s eyes even more than in the eyes of the world, to take his full share of responsibility. We may then, if we will, treat the separate contributions of skill as a collective whole, and not quarrel with an expert who takes a less expert companion, provided he be competent and responsible, if by so doing he secures a wider field for his social choice.
Walking Manners
There are several points of what may be termed walking manners, common to all types of long mountain walking and not only to climbing, whose observance contributes a great deal to the individual peace of mind during the early and late hours of a long alpine day. Men when they are off the rope, or who have never been on a rope, almost universally neglect them, and are blind to the cumulative effect upon a tired companion’s temper or upon their own humour. Every one thinks he can walk, and most men never bother to discover why the excellent companion of the Sunday afternoon ramble proved a failure on a long walking tour.