Continuous progress is the essence of pace. While a party is in motion, the effort should be directed at keeping the pace constant, not at hurrying it. There will then be larger margins for completer rests at the proper halting times and places. Time can also be saved during halts. It is a great mistake to hurry men over their food; a due allowance of time should be made both for food and rest. But the time of rest should be used for resting. Too much of it is usually lost, and more than intended is often taken, in standing about at the beginning of a halt, or by slackness at the end: one man has misplaced his axe; another finds out for the first time that his puttie wants rewinding; and so on. Once the time allowed for the halt is over, the packing and restart should be brisk and immediate. Rest intervals are assuredly a part of the day’s measure, but dawdling at their edges is time lost from the climbing hours, not time added to the resting.
The Maximum Rhythm.
Moving slowly is not less effort than moving reasonably fast. The muscles in movement generate their own warmth, which is the body’s energy. Muscles when in training can consume and create their own energy at more than their normal rate without more effort. The maximum pace for a man is the highest rate of effort at which his system will carry on its functions without demanding direct impulses of will from the brain, and without generating more waste matter than it can naturally consume and discharge. Each man has his maximum rhythm, which varies according to his condition. Up to this maximum he can climb, when in training, without feeling increased fatigue. Above it, his system will soon feel symptoms of exhaustion; below it, he gets no profit from the relaxation, and even suffers some prejudice to his energy in the loss of a sustained rhythm.
The pace of a party is the maximum rhythm of its weakest member.
A good mountaineering party moving continuously and in combination in the common time of its comfortable maximum rhythm will gain steadily on a less experienced rope, although it may allow itself longer definite intervals of “idling on the great peaks,” and spend even more moments on its difficult passages. The margin in time which it will save will serve, on a well-calculated day, to see the party of sustained pace down to easy going before darkness. The one party will be home to dinner; the other may be still struggling at midnight with the quadrupling of difficulties night brings in its train, or sitting out and relieving its feelings by accusing the former party of ‘racing.’
Gradual beginning, gradual acceleration and uninterrupted moving on a steady top-gear of comfortable pace keep a party fresh, and leave it free to appreciate the beauty of the day or of the climb. Its mind is relieved of care as to a timely return, and it can enjoy a margin of leisure, when it pleases, in pleasant exploration, in essaying experimental routes or in the meditation that mimics slumber.
The real freedom to rest, to idle and to enjoy themselves where and when they will, is only for those who have the measure of their day well in hand, and who know that their collective pace, their maximum rhythm of comfort, before it can rise to a rate of disagreeable effort, has a point or two of pressure still to spare, to recover lost ground or to meet emergency.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Except where it is expressly stated, or is plain from the context, that the word ‘leader’ refers to the ‘first man’ on the rope, it is used of the most experienced mountaineer of a party, the one who exercises the functions of manager in matters of organization or arrangement and of leader or director in the actual business of climbing.