The Guide as Mountaineer.
A good guide is acclimatized, accustomed from his youth to the food, heights and discomforts of sleep. The necessary muscles have been hardened by years of practice. No average amateur, coming out for a few weeks each year and unaccustomed to manual labour, whatever his skill or talent, can hope to compare with him in endurance and consistent pace, be it in step-cutting for long hours on an ice slope or in facing struggle after struggle on an exhausting rock climb. The guide is inured to snowstorms and cold winds, and his fingers can usually outlast an amateur’s in clearing out and clinging to snowy holds or iced rocks. He possesses thus more powerful reserves against unexpected bad weather or against unforeseen difficulty or exertion continued for an undue length of time. He has also another advantage. Amateurs who attempt big climbs are accustomed only to climb with safe companions. They have had, therefore, little practice in dealing with unexpected slips in easy places. Even if they have trained their observation and protective movement by leading beginners on British rock climbs, the duration of the attention demanded has been short, and they have known where to be on their guard, and with whom. But in the Alps the larger part of the day is spent in traversing comparatively easy ground well within the power of the party, but where the height and position may always convert an inattentive stumble into a fatal accident. A guide has been accustomed to looking after the unaccountable vagaries of beginners and incompetents over long days on easy and difficult ground alike. In his association even with a strong party this survives as an instinct. He is not caught napping by the misstep into which even fine amateurs or other guides in his party may be entrapped at the end of a long day by fatigue, wind, darkness or over-confidence. A good guide has, thus, special initial qualities which make him a sort of insurance policy in certain very important respects. His gifts reduce the percentage of accidental risk present on every climb, and his consistency of pace and endurance ensures a larger margin of time for emergencies. He can also carry more. He brings to the partnership physique, endurance, professional technique and watchfulness, and a local instinct for time or weather. His opinion in his own sphere is invaluable; it has generally the additional weight of freedom from the enticements of romance and enthusiasm. The amateur in control should give it every consideration; but it does not relieve him of his own responsibility. A first-class workman may make a very bad managing director.
The Amateur as Mountaineer.
On his side the good amateur has antecedents and opportunities, such as the guide cannot possess, for developing his initial advantages in his own peculiar department. He has, or ought to have the superiority of the educated mind over the uneducated, of the liberal intelligence over the narrow, of contact with men, of reading, of the chance of learning principle and precedent from books and men instead of from small experience, and of the application of imagination and a trained mind to the acquisition of all the details of mountain craft. He can learn how to judge of the individual capacity of his amateur party and of their condition on the day. He can estimate the guide’s ability in his own line, by comparison, better than the guide can himself, and from knowledge of his character he can judge of the value of the guide’s opinion on technical points. In an important decision as to advance or retreat he is, consequently, in a better position to weigh the value of the party against the resistance of the mountain. In all that may be called the human department of mountaineering, the judgment and management of the men, the application of wider experience, of accepted general principles, of imagination and reasoning powers to the solution of particular problems, the good amateur is, or can be, the good guide’s superior. He has also the advantage of being able to make up rapidly, by means of reading, imitation and the progressive adaptability already mentioned, much of his inferiority to the guide in pure technique. In route finding and local knowledge he can run the guide close by availing himself of previous records, of maps (always a mystery to most guides), of local information, of the tracks or presence of other parties, and of the admirable climbers’ guide-books of all nations.
It is in fact no longer possible to designate climbing done under these conditions by amateurs of this class as ‘guideless’ climbing in the sense that climbing fifty years ago was entitled ‘guideless’ and looked upon as unjustifiable. It is therefore easily to be understood that a large number of modern mountaineers, conscious of the amount of the field that their own qualifications and those of their party can cover, prefer to be free from any professional check upon their enjoyment of the mountains.
The Question for the Leader.
If good leaders know the power of their companions, where they fall short of those of a guide and how they can be supplemented, and if they choose climbs within those powers so far as is personally or climatically calculable, they have a right to decide whether the balance of pleasure and efficiency is on the side of using or of not using professional assistance, with its merits and demerits. There is an immense area in mountaineering where the special superiority of a guide in the directions I have indicated has no opportunity of making itself apparent. For the majority of difficult rock peaks, which are by nature short, for the ordinary route finding up big mountains, for the endless variety of climbing on passes and in regions of the lesser ranges, a first-rate amateur can make himself as effective as a first-rate guide. He can climb exhausting rocks as brilliantly, provided it is not for as long; he can cut steps on the steepest ice only a little less fast, for a sufficient number of hours; he can be as watchful on all but the most fatiguing expeditions. If the leader and party are efficient and know and observe their limitations, no mountaineer in more than name will now criticize them for going without ‘guides,’ even if the occasional accident, against which no knowledge is security, may in the course of time select their ‘guideless’ party for its undiscriminating attack. A mountaineer who has qualified himself as a good leader of a party as well as a sound climber has earned the right to weigh the social disadvantage of taking a guide against the technical strengthening his presence will contribute, in relation to the character of the climbing he intends to undertake, and to make his own decision.
The Social Consideration.
The technical advantage of taking a guide has been explained; the social objection may be shortly stated. There is an inherent restraint upon the feeling of independence and holiday fun among a party of friends in the presence of some one of foreign speech and of different habits of thought and body; above all, of one who climbs with them for pay and not for their common pleasure. The association is intimate in climbing, and the atmosphere is inevitably affected, and the spirits checked, if any one of the party is not in key with the rest, does not use their shibboleths or is unable to laugh with their jokes. When a party consists of more than one amateur, and often in the case of only one, etiquette usually insists upon a second guide being taken. If there is a second guide, a division into two camps is formed—one felt if not expressed—which no geniality or linguistic ability can dissolve. The second professional is nearly always, by the nature of the case, an inferior, more bound by his caste and with less interest in, because less responsibility for, the success of the party. He will generally voice valley prejudices and professional doctrines which are enemies to enterprise and individual achievement, and he will form a sort of unreasoning counterpoise to any effect that less hampered amateur opinions might otherwise have upon the views of the first guide. Situations are thus created whose solution demands more tact and attention than a man on holiday feels disposed to devote to his sport. The possibility of their occurrence forces him to put a constraint upon himself, in view of contingencies, which is antagonistic to the complete comradeship of mountaineering. He cannot, as the leader of such a party, merge his identity, and therefore his authority, in the pleasant fluctuations of the common mood. The association of guides also throws upon him many small additional details of daily management, if he is going to get the best use out of them and keep them in good temper. His attention to health, food, personal variations and humour has to embrace a whole new and foreign group of traditions and idiosyncrasies of which he has small experience. He has not only to attend to these, but also to bring them into harmonious co-operation during all the incidents of the day with the preferences, conditions and peculiarities of his amateur members, and with their—to the guides—incomprehensible ideals of adventure and fun. Other things being equal, a leader who knows that his party is competent should be free, on the ground of the extra call their presence puts upon his management, to decide to do without guides.
The Technical Compensation.