A man in sound condition, with his nerves and muscles trained, can acquire this mastery of balance in motion far more easily than would appear when it is thus set out. His body, at rest, instinctively assumes the right balance for a given position. He has only to train his eye to select holds ahead which will allow of a sequence of harmonic positions; to train his instinct to imagine beforehand what these positions will be; and to train his body to move from each one of these positions to the next, in balance and with an ordered and unbroken rhythm.
In this ladder of modern technique the first rungs of easier progress have been the relief to the hands and feet. A further step has been the relief to the knee, and incidentally to the clothes that cover it. It is now rare to see a good climber return even from a week of conflict with that most destructive of all rock, the Chamonix granite, in the tatters of tradition. In Wales, succeeding Mrs. Owens need no longer “mend them with stuff of various colours”: the dark returns for decency’s sake to Zermatt or Wasdale are adventures of the past. Even the style of clothes has something altered with the style of climbing. Practised climbers wear in all lighter materials, chosen for wind and water purposes more than for an armadillo-like power of resisting friction. The change in the knee is most significant. The armour plating of thicknesses has tended to disappear. The knee is usually innocent of patches and often left, in Tyrolese fashion, uncovered. The change is due to our change in style. While the foot still demanded broad holds, necessarily found at longer intervals, for its balance, the knee was constantly in requisition for an intermediate push up. While grip climbing obtained, the knee was more useful than the foot to jam with or to scrape downward against the rocks. It was also recommended for use in mountaineering manuals as a relief to those long strides and arm-pulls! Now the foot works for both. The knee is kept in reserve for cracks and rococo mantelpieces, in interrupted climbing, or for a friction hold on spaces of smooth slab to raise the body the few inches necessary to reach new handhold. Since the knee is useless even on such occasions unless it adheres firmly, the breeches should not get dragged or torn. In continuous climbing it only serves us for light balancing touches, when the hands are needed elsewhere.
Yet another step has been the setting free of the eyes to perform their proper functions of balancing and of selecting. This release has been the main factor in confirming the rapid improvement in modern technique. During the walking era, and still more during the gully and grip eras, the climber had generally to take what his hands, unaided by his eyes, found for him. A climber by balance or compensation keeps his head well away from the rock, at the maximum distance permitted by the necessity of keeping his body in balance above his moving feet. His eye is almost uninterruptedly free to trace out his general line above, to choose immediate holds and to exercise, even as he moves, a comfortable and leisurely discretion. He can see what he is doing all the time. To take one instance. On very steep rock that which has passed below the level of the knee is often already out of sight. A man who climbs convulsively, with his nose against the rock, has often missed the sight of some minute ledge to right or left of his line which alone offers a foothold from which his hands can reach above the next bare slab. Even if he afterwards finds it by the grope of his foot, it is too late for his eyes to estimate its security or shape. Similarly, he is unable to keep continuous watch ahead, and may often lose sight of a line of holds already marked from below; or he may overlook altogether some other easier line of holds which could have been reached by a timely divergence to right or left. Thus his chances of accomplishing a difficult climb are incalculably diminished.
And yet another step has been the economy in nervous and physical output. Rock climbs can now be repeated by the average modern climber with only about half the effort they cost their first conquerors, who did them by force of heart and muscle. They can keep, consequently, more strength in reserve. The interrupted continuity of our earlier struggle step and grip hold involved a disturbance of the balance and a break in the continuity of mental concentration. The recovery from every such movement put an extra strain upon both muscle and nerve. In the re-start after each ‘jam’ position, with its absolute arrest of rhythm of all kinds, the disturbance was even greater. Severe climbing of the modern standard demands controlled, continuous movements, so that the body’s adjustments may continue automatically, and that there may be no interruption in the co-operation of nerve and eye and brain.
The beginner must expect to find that balance climbing does not come to him as a first instinct. Swinging from the hands to every hold which may be visible, and struggling and jamming with the rest of the body anyhow, so as to secure safety and impetus, are the primitive movements proper to self-preservation and common to all muscular animals like men and monkeys. Much muscular instinct has to be unlearned to overcome this instinct, which is the reason that athletes who have accustomed themselves to reliance upon particular groups of muscles are generally bad climbers. But there is no more cramping fault than to yield to the muscular temptation, and to cling or jam when it is not absolutely essential to safety.
The rule holds good for easy or hard rock, sound or unsound. The sense of balance in motion has to be acquired, or, at the beginning of each climbing holiday, recovered. The lines of communication between toe and finger and eye, with the brain as clearing-station, have to be opened up or reopened. The ability to compensate, by the balance of the body, between hand and foot hold, and to relate the process to the task of selecting holds in anticipation with the eyes, has to be acquired or regained. Movement has to become rhythmic, and not convulsive.
The sense of comfort or ease in performing individual movements is the test of the degree of balance and rhythm acquired. The consciousness of comfort in continuous climbing movement is the assurance of a developed style. Easy rock ridges, of sufficient length, provide the best commencing practice. On them alone can practice rapid enough or continuous enough be obtained to convert what in the commencement must be separate efforts, each executed by a conscious effort of the will, into unconscious rhythmic movement as the habit of the body. The adjustment of the poise of the body and the judgment of the adjustment next required must become instinctive, otherwise an unexpected attitude forced upon us by the exigencies of the holds may upset the sense of comfort; and with the comfort goes the style; and with the style goes the security. The feeling of confidence is our test.
The Individual Standard.
If, and this happens to the most expert when out of training, a feeling of discomfort or mistrust intrudes, even for a flash, we are climbing beyond our standard. There is no error more fatal than the assumption that because we have once done a particular climb or perfected our skill to a particular rhythm, we can always and at once climb up to that standard again or recover our normal rhythm.
It must be repeated that the standard of difficult rock climbing has now been forced up to a point that practically represents the limit of human possibility. If we may assume that there is a minimum of handhold or foothold to which fingers or toes however powerful or prehensile can cling, and that there is a maximum angle above which human strength cannot force its way up rocks by friction alone, that minimum and maximum have now been attained. Men of abnormal physique, confidence and endurance have of recent years perfected their individual rhythm of skill to the point of being able to ascend without discomfort or violent effort rock climbs that present the maximum angle with the minimum of holds. Beyond that point lies, not danger, which for ordinary climbers begins some degrees earlier, but impossibility.