The English were slow to follow the new fashion; the number of British ski-runners who have a long list of glacier ski tours to their credit is still small, but abroad hundreds of experienced mountaineers have explored the High Alps on ski, and abroad the advisability of using the ski in the High Alps has passed beyond the limits of discussion.
The time is coming when most alpine huts will be provided with ski. A steadily increasing number of mountaineers realize that such peaks as Monte Rosa or the Zermatt Breithorn provide excellent ski-ing at all months of the year, and that the trouble of dragging a light pair of summer ski to the summit is well repaid by a magnificent run down to the hut.
There is no month in the year in which the writer has not enjoyed first-class ski-ing, and there is no season in the whole alpine calendar in which ski cannot be used on the loftier snow peaks in the Alps. Ski have come to stay as an indispensable adjunct to mountaineering. To the rock climber the ski are perhaps mainly useful in bad seasons; if the weather in summer were uniformly good the enthusiastic rock climber would have little use for the ski. But long spells of bad weather are not unknown, and many a climber who has engaged a guide or a couple of guides for a month has spent a week, a fortnight, or in some cases even longer without climbing a peak. I venture to assert that if he took himself and his ski to a club hut he would at least have the satisfaction of making good use even of an afternoon’s fine weather. I remember once finding myself at the Egon von Steiger hut during bad weather. It snowed all day and all night, and cleared at ten o’clock the next morning. Two parties on foot attempted the easy Ebnefluh. Both were driven back after a very brief struggle with deep soft snow. Myself and a friend reached the summit on ski in more or less normal time, and enjoyed a wonderful run back to the hut, where the disgruntled foot-sloggers had spent the day.
Let the rock climber learn to ski, and when the big rock peaks are deep in snow he will be able to snatch a Monte Rosa or Breithorn from the first fine day. In bad seasons individual fine days are often sandwiched between two or three days of bad weather. Such isolated days are useless to the foot-climber but invaluable to the ski-runner.
Technique.
I cannot spare the space to explain the technique of ski-ing.[18] Here I need only attempt to dispel a lingering belief, that dies hard, to the effect that there is one technique for ordinary ski-runners and another for mountaineers. This curious superstition is the last relic of an exploded system of ski-ing taught by an Austrian called Zdarsky, the main effect of which was to encourage timid, slow and clumsy ski-ing. The ‘Lillienfeld’ ski were short, and made straight running very difficult and turning very easy. The Lillienfeld system taught people to ski very quickly by dodging all difficulties and encouraged a free use of the stick. It was a bad system, and is now quite discredited; but there still lingers a curious belief that the Norwegian style may be all very well for small mountains but is too dashing and insecure for the High Alps. As a rule, glacier ski-ing is far easier than ski-ing among the lower mountains; the most difficult of all ski-ing country is wooded country, such as extends for miles round Christiania, the home of the ‘Norwegian style.’ Let me therefore urge the reader to master the free Norwegian style, to make all his turns and swings without the aid of the stick, and to acquire a free and dashing style. The mountaineer even more than the low-level ski-runner should have complete control of his ski, and complete control is impossible unless you have learned to control your ski not by means of the stick, but by means of the ski themselves.
SNOW WAYS
JEAN GABERELL
There are a few occasions on which the use of the stick is permissible on tour; but it is so dangerous to begin by using the stick as a brake, that I would advise the beginner NEVER to use the stick until he has at least passed the ‘Third-class Test’ which is held from time to time in all ski-ing centres patronized by British runners.
Furthermore, though of course it is absurd to take risks in the High Alps, occasions often arise where speed means safety. With bad weather or night approaching, the man who can run fast stands more chance than the man who can not, and, consequently, the higher your speed consistent with safety the better your chances. Now, a high speed consistent with safety can only be maintained by those who have lost no chance on small expeditions of raising the speed at which they feel comfortable, and this, again, can only be achieved by running just a little faster than is quite comfortable.