The Rare Crisis.
No matter how well the guide’s temperament is analysed and his moods managed, every guide’s nervous system has a snapping point, when self-control may be momentarily lost. As I have said when speaking of amateurs, to some it comes sooner, to others later; but to the best guides, as to men of little or less education, it will come sooner than to the best amateurs. The crisis is a disagreeable one, and very rare. A thunderstorm, with its dangers that cannot be met by any skill, may produce it; a sudden fall of rocks or ice where they had no right to fall; or the shock of a realization of imminent peril. It will be always the unexpected. The amateur is then happy who has never weakened his influence by making mistakes outside his province or by exhibitions of his own temper or lack of self-control. If he has never given himself away under pressure of shock or disappointment or fatigue, then the greater the crisis the more effective will be his personal intervention. A few sharp words, startling but not angry, will prove with all good guides sufficient restorative. I have had occasion even to pay off an hysterical shouting guide on a mountain side before his frenzy,—the result of an uncontrolled temper and sudden panic,—yielding then to the fear of a solitary descent, died down sufficiently to make it safe to take him on the rope again. He was a bad guide, and dismissed on that account. But for the case of a good guide who has been tried too highly, the momentary correction will suffice, and the incident should not afterwards be recalled. I know of no other occasion which should justifiably tempt us into sharp speech or the exhibition of direct authority during an actual climb. The secret of maintaining control is never to appear to claim it.
The Reward.
In effect, an amateur is free now to take or not to take guides in accordance with circumstances and not with tradition. If he engages them, except as a beginner, it must be on the terms of mountaineer with mountaineer and not tourist with professional. He should get to know them as human beings, make friends of them if he keeps them, and treat them with the same tact as his other friends. In addition he has to give them the increased study and supervision which primitive temperaments, unknown antecedents, probable prejudices and possible personal value to his party deserve. His reward will be to find that his guided party remains free from many of the anxieties and disappointments with which other guided and guideless parties have to put up. He will find that the modern guide, if he has little of the demigod of last-century tradition, has the potentialities of any wholesome, hill-bred human being. He will also, if he has deserved it, discover that the better a man, guide or amateur, becomes as a mountaineer, the closer he grows as a companion; until a point is reached, in the fellowship of great ascents, when the distinction altogether disappears.
CHAPTER IV
ROCK CLIMBING
Rocks are the framework of mountains. Rock climbing is a joyous method of getting up attractive mountains by attractive ways. But it is possible to be a rock climber without becoming a mountaineer. It is possible to earn a reputation by leading climbs upon some special type of rock without becoming even a good rock climber. The good rock climber is the man who moves equably, speedily and safely up or down sound and unsound rock, of every description and of any degree of difficulty that is within his physical powers.
A man who knows rocks and their structure and can climb them with understanding is potentially a good mountaineer. He has opportunities now of perfecting his craft which did not exist for his predecessors. Each succeeding climbing generation can enter without effort or loss of time upon an inheritance of skill and knowledge that its predecessors won with tentative effort and slow discovery. During the last twenty-five years the standard of difficulty that can be accomplished with ease and safety by a rock climber of ability has gone up some 25 per cent. To this rapid advance the literature published on the subject has contributed. The majority of climbs have now been charted and described; their difficulties can be allowed for. The mystery and uncertainty of new discovery affecting the mind, and the novelty of new adjustments imposed upon the body are alike eliminated as complications from the fair field of achievement. The climber goes out to meet purely objective difficulties, with his mind informed and expectant and his body trained and anticipating. The novice, or the expert in a district new to him, guided by his reading, can economize his nerve and muscle for the more difficult passages, and, finding them the easier for this restraint, can pass on to always more exacting attempts with pleasurable assurance.
The presence in the hills of an increasing number of men who climb well and confidently has had even more effect than the publication of books and periodicals. Directed by advice, and by what is still more effective, by imitation, the beginner is no longer in danger of getting into habits of false positions and of false judgment, whether of the angles or of the character of rock holds. He grows up in an atmosphere where these matters are common knowledge, and he learns almost unconsciously.
The Theory of the Development.
Rock climbing in our modern sense is a young craft. The early mountaineers were drawn to the hills primarily by the attraction of exploration. Their principal interest was to find the best route to the summits. The snow slopes, to which the peasants and hunters who led the early ascents had been for generations accustomed, presented the natural means. Where snow failed and angles grew steeper they took to the ice walls and ice couloirs, since to their developing snow technique ice presented a more familiar alternative than rock. Steep, bare rocks were incidentally negotiated, but not from choice. The steeper, snowless rock peaks which offered no royal snow routes were thus naturally left to the last, and when the succeeding generation wished to find new outlet for the satisfaction of its own desire for discovery, it had to invent a new rock technique to solve the new problems.