One of the most beautiful, and baleful, warnings in the Alps is the view out and across a golden sea of clouds washing up out of Italy or from the south. They often signify the Föhn. So long as the wind blows off the mountains, they will be kept below for the day; but once they begin to make breaches in the walls and surge over the battlements, a bad afternoon or morrow is in prospect. The change from their golden, fairy-like distant greeting to their wet, cold and gloomy embrace makes us reluctant to recall that they are really the same clouds we admired those hours before.
On large peaks there may be severe local storms even while the sky in general remains undisturbed. Rock peaks, for example the Matterhorn, are conspicuous offenders. A small blister of dark, steady cloud may imply a raging storm on the face below it. Not only at the moment, but as it affects the later condition of the mountain, the occurrence of these storms has to be reckoned with.
From a spell of covered or of broken weather we look for a clearing snowfall as our deliverance; and the more confidently if the wind has continued throughout to blow from a good quarter, north or east. If the fall is followed by clear days and three cold nights, we shall find our high ridges in perfect condition again. If the weather continues broken and therefore warmer, the snow will at least not have made things worse; it will have thawed rapidly. It is also worth remembering that in warmer, broken weather what has fallen as snow at one level may have been only rain at another, even at a higher, and the moment the clouds clear we shall, be able to profit by the calculation. I have known the same storm to have fallen as rain in the valley, snow on the slopes, and rain again on the high ridges.
Habit of the Season.
The habit of the season is always the first matter of study on returning to the hills. In a habitually fine season, it is safe to go up to a hut even on a bad day, on the fair chance of a fine recovery on the morrow. For the same reason, in a habitually bad season, it is too late to wait for the fine day, and then go up to the hut or out to the camp. A leader who braves the ridicule of the hotel and the gloom of the glass, and takes his party up to the hut, with hope undiminished by failure, on bad days in uncertain seasons, will catch each short break as it comes, and get a record of climbs that will shock his valley advisers. He must base his choice, as between the bad days, upon his observation of the habit that is governing the vagaries of the season. A very common feature, in unfavourable alpine months, is the alternations of possible and impossible weather occurring almost every day—a wet day, followed by a fine morning; a breaking afternoon, and again a wet day. It is thus most important to “get the alternate right,” and to correct the order of his going, if to ascend to the hut on each first fine day proves disappointing. In a recent so-called ‘bad’ season a party ascended thirteen peaks in three weeks, by getting their ‘alternates’ right at the start, while most parties got only four or five expeditions in the same time. Occasionally the alternate is one fine day, or fine half-day, in every three. To meet this habit, or to discover the order of the alternates in the first place, it is sound to take up two full days’ provisions to the hut, and to wait there for a day, if the first day fails to change. A fine morning will suffice for most climbs suitable for uncertain weather, and a party who have had courage, and faced the mist, and enjoyed the empty hut at night and a long fair morning’s climb, will often be granted the extra pleasure of meeting the usual crowd swarming up to the hut in the afternoon, attended by every sign of the regular return of clouds and rain.
Persistence.
The real principle is to keep on trying in unchancy seasons, and back up the effort by whatever weather instinct or opportunity of observation we may enjoy. In valleys continuously cloud-covered observation becomes uncertain; often the weather may be already clear at higher levels while it lurks in mist in the valleys. Instinct as much as judgment must then tell us if we may chance a start, on the probability that the cloud is really thin and the summits in sun. An attempt is always worth while if the party is getting depressed by a succession of days of idle cloud in the hotel. Chance often helps our predictions. The occasions when instinct or a momentary sight of the higher and important clouds has given the impulse, added to the occasions when a bold face has been assumed, in spite of a low blanket of mist round the hut or hotel, and a start has been ordered on the chance at the best of clear weather above and at the worst of a bracing tramp up and back, all taken together have made many a lasting reputation for miraculous weather wisdom. Some of the most enduring mountain memories are of days thus retrieved from weeks of ill weather, and spent upon sunny peaks projecting, with only a few isolated and lofty companions, from the seas of cloud that covered all the valleys and lower heights, and with them most of our less fortunate fellows.
Until we possess local weather knowledge, and have rather more to go upon than bluff, a climb should never be actually started in threatening weather, still less persisted in against bad weather; which is a different thing from insisting upon going up to the hut or to the base of the peak on the chance of a change.
Snow, and continued rain, which may mean snow at higher levels, must be accepted as definite bars to starting at all.
Cloud, however, is less justifiably used as an excuse for delay in leaving a warm hut on a dull morning. The personal bias in prediction must be allowed for before dawn. Guides, who are too often treated as infallible prophets, are as susceptible as amateurs, at this hour especially, to specious promptings from the spirit of comfortable inaction. They are apt to delay a start hour after hour, in a hut or camp, for the mist-bank to clear and the day to show its hand; and this with entire unreason. If the weather is going to clear at all, it will do so at the earlier hour at higher levels; and it is common sense not to lose valuable time. The sooner we go up the sooner shall we meet the sun, or find out that it is not there for the day.