Some of these appearances may even be recognized in photographs, if they have been taken under the right conditions and left untouched. By watching a given section of ridge, while the sun is moving across the sky, all a sunny day, and by using a map at first to discover what the different sky signs as they become visible actually mean, and also how much they reveal of the unseen topography as displayed in the map, it is possible for some men to train their sight to discriminate fairly closely between a number of even more complex signs, and to ascertain actual details as to the character and direction of unseen walls and crests, the location of unseen snow summits, and the length of far ridges.
The process, in practical application, is of course throughout assisted, corrected, and its lines of observation suggested by the nearer features which the expert reconnoitrer already has in sight. For an observer who knows the forms usual in the type of mountain before him, and who has the local features, on the side visible to him, to indicate still more closely what he may look out for, the interpretation of the meaning of sky signs presents fewer alternatives, and the conclusions drawn from them can be far more detailed than would seem possible were his reasoning about the unseen based only upon one group of evidences.
Final success in reconnoitring depends upon our ability to put together, in order of their relative importance, all our assembly of large and small evidences. Experience is able to deduce the small from the large and to reconstruct the large from the small; and confirmation of the truth of our deductions, from the seen or the unseen, comes when two such lines of evidence meet: when the detail which we discover in a single quarter confirms the speculations that we have based upon our experience or on our interpretation of larger evidences, or when our induction from a number of small visible indications is proved correct by some revelation in a greater sky sign.
For a mountaineer who has to convert his observation of distant objects and signs, of a size altogether incommensurate with his own, into terms of a possible advance for his eight-foot reach or four-foot stride, no evidence is too big or too small;—and this especially because the big, in mountains, repeats itself in the small with timely consistency. A good mountaineer might almost claim to be able to construe a single favourable sky sign, under certain conditions, into the assurance of his atom-like advance up the infinite invisible detail of an unpromising-looking mountain giant.
Sunny days, patience and good glasses are first conditions for his task. The same glasses should always be used. A type should be selected that gives enhanced stereoscopic effect. Above all, the sight of the eyes must be equal, or corrective glasses should be worn. Many men never discover even what they ought to be able to see, until they learn that their eyesight is, if only slightly, astigmatic, and use spectacles for their reconnoitring.
Reconnoitring is not merely the preparation for a single day or for a particular climb. A mountaineer has to learn to see and to record all day and every day, not only distant signs for future use, but each and every detail of his surroundings. The detail may be forgotten, but its accumulation will gradually form in his mind a mass of general precedents and of knowledge of the characteristics of particular shapes and structures. This will remain with him, and will return instinctively to aid his judgment when some cognate detail presents itself to be interpreted as a piece of solitary evidence. As a last personal illustration, I may recall that one of the pleasantest new ascents in my recollection was the outcome of a simple reasoning from a detail in the seen to the memory of the unseen: the sight of a layer of excellent snow, covering for the time the usually bare slabs of one wall of a peak from which we were descending, revived the recollection that on a famous peak in another valley was a similar wall of identical aspect and character, as yet unascended on account of its normal impracticability. Without further examination we made the attempt upon it, and the speculation was confirmed in the cheeriest manner.
If care so constant that it dominates alike the exhaustion of failure and the more dangerous enervation of triumph is essential for our safe climbing, observation so continuous that it becomes unconscious is as necessary for our fortunate designing. Its habit may profit us by more even than by momentary success. For a mountaineer may read a sky sign only for the promise that it brings him of the morrow’s exercise; but he has learned to see it, and with the power of sight he has opened a new world of pleasure. It was the first scientific student of the form and reflection of clouds, of the structure and relation of hills, who was the first understanding prophet of their significance for art and imagination. The more we can learn to see or to reconstruct of the mountain forms visible or invisible about us as we climb, the more vividly will memory interpret their meaning for our lives when we are no longer among them. If we are of a mood to use both sight and its interpretation as servants of our spirit as much as of our performance, we may discover a reflection from the mountains that will permanently colour our thought. There is a reassurance no less for our journey through the years than for our march of a day in the perception that oncoming shadow, by its very quality of darker relief, can reveal to us some unsuspected and relenting aspect in the daunting precipice across our path; and a twofold message, for our mind even more than for our mountaineering, in “the light of the unseen snow-field, lying level behind the visible peaks, sent up with strange reflections upon the clouds; an everlasting light of calm aurora in the north.”
CHAPTER IX
MOUNTAINEERING ON SKI
BY ARNOLD LUNN
Winter mountaineering may be said to date from Mr. Moore’s crossing of the Strahlegg and Finsteraarjoch Passes in January 1865. The first big peak to be climbed in winter was the Wetterhorn, which was ascended in 1874 by the Rev. W. A. B. Coolidge and Miss Brevort; a few days later this party climbed the Jungfrau. These brilliant expeditions set a fashion which was, however, only followed by a select company of mountaineers, among whom a place of honour must be given to Mrs. Le Blonde. It was not until Paulcke crossed the Oberland at the end of 1897 on the ski that winter mountaineering began to be a popular sport. To wade up a big peak in deep snow on snow-shoes or on foot only appealed to a minority, but the number of those who were attracted by the chance of combining mountaineering with ski-ing steadily increased.