Chapter I: Management and Leadership (3)

The Oberland offers the best opportunities for snow and ice work of almost all kinds. For this reason the Oberland is often the best choice in a moderately fine or uncertain summer when the snow has stayed late. The snow slopes of the gentler Oberland peaks are climbable when the big ridges of the Pennines or the Mont Blanc region are still closed to us by snow cloaks and cornices. On the other hand, in a bad summer the weather is usually at its worst in the Oberland, and the long snow wades may become intolerable, unless we are prepared to snatch a winter tour from a bad summer month by traversing the Oberland, with its high connecting glaciers and summits of easier angle, on ski.

Again, the comparative easiness of the ascents and the training they offer on ice and snow suggest the Oberland as a good choice for an introductory tour with beginners, and as an equally good choice for the preliminary week’s training in any later season. There is no better introduction, or reintroduction, to alpine work than practice on the ice of the Aletsch glacier, varied by ascents of the snow and small rock peaks in the vicinity.

The Pennines offer finer individual peaks, with greater names, and they are more specially adapted for those who prefer concentric mountaineering, with bigger single efforts and the company of their kind. Their variety of type and aspect makes them suitable for selection in ‘alternating’ weather. Often when other regions are closed up, and when even its neighbours are shrouded, personal idiosyncrasies will keep some single Pennine peak open for quick, comfortable ascent. The merit of the Pennines is their mixed general climbing. They have fewer great ice and snow climbs to offer than the Oberland or Mont Blanc, and their rock is inferior to the Aiguilles.

The Pennines of the west, more especially the Val d’Evoléna, have the pleasant characteristic of offering short, condensed and possible climbs in bad seasons, when the bigger peaks are unapproachable, and when the Oberland may be indulging its habit of making bad weather worse. They, too, are an excellent introduction to mountaineering; but their miniature attractions have a somewhat dangerous fascination for British climbers, whom they are apt to hold spellbound even in good seasons, and withdraw from hardier and greater enterprise.

In a fair summer, the Chamonix Aiguilles are the flame-points on the crown of great rock climbing. For length, and as a test of skill, they have no equal in Europe. They also include some magnificent snow and ice ascents. But it is their rock that marks them out as supreme. As a consequence, many British climbers make the mistake of going to them too soon, before they are equal to their demands. It is better to keep them as a great reward for labour when our developed mountaineering technique can enable us not only to overcome, but to enjoy the infinite variety of problems, and when we can feel not only participators in an ascent, but masters of ourselves and of the difficulties throughout their exceeding length. I have seen more than one of the most noted performers on British rocks and from the eastern Dolomites, men who could frolic up the Grépon crack, forced, from pure muscular fatigue, to ask for the rope before the Grépon summit was reached, and only rediscover the pleasure of the ascent of the Dru a full day after their return from the traverse.

To men who can get all that they want of difficult rock in our own islands, the Dolomites of the Eastern Alps present fewer attractions in sunny seasons. Their greater distance is a disability, and they offer small snow and ice practice. But in bad seasons they are an admirable last resort, and an escape to their warm, dry and coloured levels, or rather heights, may send many a party, disappointed elsewhere by ill weather of its alpine season, home in good health and firm muscle.

The great southern wall of the Alps, from Courmayeur to Macugnaga and farther, offers the greatest combined ice and rock mountaineering on the largest and most formidable scale. For those who know its secrets there is also the attraction of many smaller ascents, with the incomparable views as background. But it is not a region for bad weather, or for any but very competent parties.

Early in the season the Southern Alps, from Savoy and Cogne almost down to the Mediterranean, make an exquisite wandering-ground, all too little visited. In May and June we can often enjoy among them flowers, clear climbing and free wandering, long before their big northern brothers have shaken off their winter coats of snow and storm. They retain much of the undiscovered charm of the great Alps in earlier days, and a variety of beauty that can challenge comparison with the impressiveness of greater heights.

I have intentionally avoided mentioning those secluded and particular districts which it must be the fortune of all faithful mountaineers to discover for themselves, and where every enterprising party may gain the reward of its independence and experience in the certainty that it has found, at last and alone, the one perfect region, perfectly contrived, for all purposes of climbing and enjoyment.

INCIDENTAL DUTIES

[Sidenote: Hut Usages.]

Launched in his chosen region, and with his chosen comrades, the management of a leader has to observe, beyond his primary duty to his own party, one or two usages of an extraneous or incidental character.

If he is using huts, in the Alps or elsewhere, he should acquaint himself with the rules, written or not, of hut usage. Most will suggest themselves. To tidy up and leave everything in better order than he usually finds it. If other parties are in the hut, to keep the axes from cumbering the ground, and confine the wet clothes and wet boots to harmless corners. To arrange provisions and the rest the night before, so as to diminish the general confusion in starting by at least the quiet exit of his own party. To disturb sleepers as little as their customary assumption, that they are the only tired men who may, or will, ever use the hut again, will generally allow. Not to break open a hut or use any part of it for firewood except in desperate need; and to pay somewhere, or somehow, for any inevitable or accidental damage.

There is a further duty, which he owes to the position of his own party and to that of others also occupying the huts. If his party are merely guests, they are dependent upon the courtesy of other inhabitants for any treatment they receive more cordial in character than the sufferance usually extended to uninvited guests. But if, as every mountaineer in his chosen region should do, they have made themselves members of the local organization, he should insist, without demonstration, for the sake of sound hut tradition as well as for the improvement in the morals and manners of the other occupants (supposing they show themselves disobliging), upon the relations being those of courteous equality. As between his own and other amateur parties this insistence will rarely be needed; for the tradition of comradeship among amateur climbers of all nations has seldom to be recalled by remonstrance. But as between his own guides and other guides, or other guides and his own guideless party, the footing sometimes calls for a prompt clearing away of the stones. Local guides are apt to take any advantage of a foreign or younger guide who appears. As is elsewhere described, the mental attitude of a guide in hut or hotel becomes generally that of the servant or dependent of his employer. He is no longer the free man on the hills, who will be himself the first to resent any incursion on the rights of his party. Once in the hut the amateur, in his turn, becomes responsible for looking after his guide. A guide’s hut manners prevent him making any fuss, even though his own party’s interests are suffering; as, for instance, when he is deprived of his precedence at the cooking-stove, or is left an unfair share of the collective washing-up. Like a swan on a new reach of a river, the young or stranger guide is very shy. He will often let himself be put upon by some parochial swaggerer or bullied by a lazy senior of his own valley. It is in our own interests, and the interests of the future, to protect him.

Apart from the local or obstreperous guide, the worst offenders against hut manners are not the guideless parties, who are usually anxious to do as they would be done by, but the chance ‘professors,’ and other cunning folk, who have discovered that alpine huts provide free summer lodging for themselves and their families, or the erratic solitary wanderers and grouped holiday trippers, who have never learned mountain manners. With these types decided action, or the decided appearance of passion, is sometimes the only course.

It is only courteous to use the hut books which are provided for entries; even though the sight of our own names and objectives in other company may offend our British habit of climbing hauteur, to which we ourselves give the titular rank of modesty. The information has a sentimental interest; it is required by the maintainers of the hut, and, further, it may be of real service if anything untoward happens and it becomes necessary to follow the traces of our party.

[Sidenote: Consideration.]

Outside the huts we have a duty also to the fragile paths, which lead us to the glacier or the hut. They are easily depreciated by careless use, especially in wet weather, by breaking away the edges, kicking down boulders, slithering down inclines, etc.

Beyond the paths and the huts, there is a first law not to spoil the mountains: to leave no traces of meals on the summits or hillsides. Whoever discovers a portable contrivance for atomizing old bottles will confer an incalculable benefit upon conscientious mountaineers.

There is also an obligation not to spoil the mountains for others by heedless manners. This means not merely not to throw or kick stones on to other parties, or to pass them without their consent, which are matters that are regulated by positive mountaineering tradition, but also not to treat them ‘negatively’ when we meet them on the hills, as if we were all passers-by in the City at the luncheon-hour. I can call to mind still the annihilating stare of a lady whom I met on the top of the Weisshorn, because I ventured to remark about the weather without waiting for the introduction which there was no third party present in the vast panorama to perform; and again, two sterling Britons passing on a track in the highlands of Arcadia without greeting, because it transpired they did not feel that their slight degree of acquaintance was sufficient to cover a general conversation in which two other members of their parties, not similarly acquainted, would have had to be included! These are somewhat fine shades to preserve under primitive conditions, and foreigners are apt to misunderstand their respectable origin. It is better, on the whole, to be thought a cheerful idiot by our own countrymen if we hail their distant appearance on the chance of their belonging to a more sociable nationality, than to earn the reputation of racial surliness by allowing our shyness of what our own party may think to prevent us replying to the shouts of strangers of possibly more Gallic temperament. It costs little effort to make a cheerful remark to another party on the hills when we meet or pass them, and it saves an awkward restraint on both sides if we are fated to meet them afterwards again, in a hut or somewhere where we have to be together in harmony. In other countries we may safely imitate more demonstrative ways without loss of self-respect. A courteous manner and a ready explanation will take the edge of offence off many a decided course of mountaineering action, that may run us for a while beside or across the way of other human beings. It might even be better if we could introduce into our chance encounters on our own hills something more of a superficial cordiality, so as to acquire the habit of conveying to strangers less obscurely the undoubted fellowship we feel with all other pilgrims of the mountains.

Of course every leader must acquaint himself with the code of rescue signals now recognized in the mountains, by waving or flashing or shouting. But he should further consider it as more than discourteous to refrain from replying to any shout directed at himself or his party. It is impossible for him to know by instinct what is merely the salute of high spirits and what may express some more urgent need. Similarly, if one member of a party gets separated from the rest, and is out of sight, it is not sufficient for him merely to guide himself back secretly by their shouts; he should reply to each of their calls, and so indicate that he is approaching. It is oddly irritating to keep shouting for an unseen man, realizing that his silence may mean that he is getting more and more astray, and then see him walk round the next rock, reproving by his silent proximity both our growing anxiety and our clamorous waste of breath. Our co-Britons will never shout unnecessarily, and we should reply each time, and leave the interpretation to them.

[Sidenote: Some Night Notes.]

In using paths or tracks at night, if a light cannot be procured, it is worth while remembering that the instinct of the feet is often a better guide than the straining of the eyes to see. The feet, left to themselves, will balance naturally along the track, much as the original makers of the natural paths found it expedient to balance over the same ground. They will be able to keep the track better of themselves than if they are driven forward by an ill-balanced body along an ill-seen line. A leader following a track by daylight may often wonder in advance at small wanderings which seem to the eye unaccountable; but as soon as the body in balance reaches the spot, it follows their sequence quite naturally. Left to themselves, the feet and body will do much the same in the dark, and keep surprisingly well upon a track that is not arbitrarily interrupted.

In following a lamp, unless the leader holds it himself, his best place is not that immediately behind the lamp-bearer, which the selfish will press for. Detail and dim outline ahead are better seen from farther back in the line, where the actual glare of the lamp is hidden and the light is diffused over the way. The eye soon accustoms itself to half-light, but not to the dazzle of a flame.

(To procure light for a lamp, fire or pipe, especially in a wind, a familiar method may not be universally known. Part of the stern of a wax match should be unravelled and a few strands wound loosely round the head, so as to catch the first flare. To light a wood fire, in camp or hut, without paper, the wood should be shaved thinly upwards towards one end of a stick. The shavings should not be completely detached, but left curling up at the end like the flower on a stalk. Lit at this end, the stick easily burns and the fire follows.)

A compass and watch with radium points are always useful for all night hours or hut intervals.

If a path or track is lost in the dark, especially on snow-covered ground, the party should rope up at the full length of the rope, and make casts round the end man, who waits at a fixed point ’till it is, or may be, recovered. The motionless man at the fixed point acts as pointer for the original direction, and will prevent the complete loss of orientation in the circle of search.

In the dark on a track the increased risk from the axe-points before and behind us, as well as from our own, must be kept in mind, and extra intervals maintained.

Where there is no track, the last man on the rope should carry the radium compass and correct the direction, as in mist. Even without a compass he is the better able to keep a line, guided by the rope ahead.

A leader measuring the remainder of a climb against the coming of darkness must recollect that snow retains light very late--in summer, in fact, it rarely becomes quite dark. But the snowless lower slopes, which he will reach last, will be far darker. He must not be deceived, therefore, by the apparent amount of light still illuminating the higher snows, into taking things easily.

A party frankly benighted, if it has only a short distance to descend over ground known to be safe, supposing that a right route, not difficult to find, can be followed, does best to rope up. This has the merit of keeping the party together and in line, and confines the disturbances of falling over rocks and into holes to the person of the responsible leader.

If he gets benighted on higher ground, as in the Alps, or sees that he must necessarily become so, the leader should look about for a good bivouac before the light fails; not press on to the last and then take the chance of hurriedly finding a suitable shelter or ledge.

Whenever there is no short or easy descent in near prospect, and night is at hand, it is always wiser to sit out for the few hours of darkness than to let impatience risk the chance of a sprained ankle or broken leg.

In selecting a rock for a bivouac in doubtful weather, he has to remember that unless the roof is absolutely concave, rain will trickle in and across the roof and make trouble even far within the shelter; also, that in sleeping on rock or sand or turf it is more important to comfort to secure a hole for the hip-bone than a pillow for the head of his charges.

Where only a ledge is available, the members of a party should rope together, to prevent anyone wandering away or slipping off in sleep. Song promotes warmth, and preserves harmony--in a sense.

[Sidenote: A Last Task.]

Of the management of the guides during the tour something is said in a later section. If he has employed them, the leader’s last task of management, one of regretful but presumably proud memory, will be to write up the guides’ books. His fashion of entry is governed by no tradition; which makes these books the more entertaining and varied reading during dim days in the huts. But if he does not wish to blush in later years over his early paragons and phrases, and desires to make the notice, as it should be, of some service to other leaders, he may be guided by one or two common-sense principles.

A mountaineer of experience, when he looks at a guide’s book before engaging him, looks first for the signatures he knows, then at the opinions about the guide which they underwrite, and makes his allowance for the opinions according to his knowledge of the mountaineering equation of the owners of the names. Secondly, he looks at what the man has done, both with the names he knows and with the names he does not know. The opinions of those whom he does not know he reads merely in relation to the actual climbs which the man is stated to have done with them. Thus, when we are writing, since our name is likely to be known but to few, especially among climbers of other races, it is of importance first to state clearly what the man has done with us, and under what conditions, of weather, party, etc.; more particularly, to state if he has ‘led,’ and what, or if he has come as second guide or porter. Then, for the benefit of our own race, who will know how to interpret the ‘atmosphere’ of an English testimonial even though they do not know our name, we may add an opinion of the man, written very carefully so as to be read in relation to that which we have stated he has done with us. For instance, if we have included several big snow climbs among our list, and then write our opinion that the man is a ‘brilliant rock climber,’ those who can read testimonials will know what to conclude about his icemanship. If we wish to guard against such a conclusion being drawn, and yet have had no opportunity of forming a clear opinion, we should add something conventional, such as that the man ‘had no opportunity to lead on snow,’ or that ‘the climbs must speak for themselves:--the conditions were perfect.’ At the end of a list of fine ascents to say only that a man is ‘willing,’ leaves us in the dark as to how far he took any real part. To say that he is ‘enterprising’ gives a clearer idea of his initiative. If the conditions of any climbs on the list are stated to have been trying, and the opinion adds that he is ‘safe and good-tempered,’ we have learned something positive to go upon. These are small instances. The comments should only be made with definite regard to what we have seen and what we state to have been executed in our employment. Unrelated generalities are valueless. Similarly, we must confine our appreciations to what our experience enables us to say with authority. It is better for this reason to refer our estimate to an absolute standard of merit, such as other mountaineers will understand, than to indulge our friendship by writing a character that means nothing to the initiated, and may get the man a place of responsibility with the uninitiated for which he is not fit. Our first duty is to other mountaineers. To say a man is a ‘first-class rock climber,’ if we feel ourselves competent to pronounce so much, is a definite classification; but to say he is a ‘first-rate rock climber’ is to err into the meaningless weakness of superlatives. To say he is a ‘fine iceman’ gives the guide the benefit of an authoritative reference to an accepted standard; but to say ‘there is no finer iceman in the Alps’ risks the calling of our own experience in question by those to whom our qualifications for making such a statement are unknown, and does the guide little good.

We are all inclined to think that our first good guide, or the man who has brought us well through a difficult situation, must be the finest fellow in the Alps; and in the moments of generous after-enthusiasm we are in a hurry to say so with an emphasis that we hope will convince a cold-blooded later reader that he is at least a very fine fellow. We produce the same effect better by stating exactly what he did, and our opinion of this rather than of him, leaving it to other leaders to draw their own conclusions about the man himself. We avoid then for the guide the peril of that natural revulsion towards an attitude of antagonistic criticism into which all northern humanity is prone to lapse in the presence of other people’s enthusiasm, and for ourselves the tolerant smile of the time and guide worn mountaineer.

When we read in a guide’s book, returning like an echo from the records we wrote in our own earlier and romantic days, that ‘there is no greater rock climber in the present generation, a born iceman, an intuitive route-finder, a delightful companion and an unrivalled cook,’ we turn on hastily to another reference, with yet a half-sigh of good cheer and thankfulness for the assurance that one more very young climber has started wholeheartedly on our pleasant mountain ways.

WEATHER

There is one variable which belongs to the mountaineering rather than to the human division of the problems with which management has to deal. The weather is the background, foreground and middle distance of all big mountaineering. A change can upset the nicest adjustment of a climb to the strength of a party or to the length of a day. Every climber keeps one eye on this irresponsible neutral, which may at any time turn the scale of the campaign against him.

As a result, no mountaineer will endure, and no leader can afford, not to be thought a good weather prophet, even though the reputation be confined to his own mind. In reality, so unaccountable are changes in the hills, any fame acquired for infallibility must be the result of a large share of good fortune. The happy confidence in his own forecasts, that every leader owes it to his party to display, can only be based upon a few broad considerations, and upon bluff. No previous appearance of a mountain sky can be taken as sure ground for certain prophecy. A particular wind or ‘sign’ may mean totally different weather in two adjacent valleys; or the whole doctrine of the winds may be unaccountably reversed in an exceptional season. In the Alps, for instance, a north wind usually means clear, brisk, settled weather; a west wind, the continuance of unsettled weather; a south wind, a succession of storms that come and pass. But the seasons from 1909 to 1912 will provide instances of the north wind blowing continuously through alternate days of excessive and moderating rain and snow, and of the south and west winds attending an unbroken season of hot sunshine.

A leader, therefore, besides his groundwork of elementary knowledge, has to make himself acquainted with local signs of wind and weather in every season and in any new district; with such details, for instance, as that in the Zermatt valley “the weather comes from the west,” or that in Courmayeur we watch the south and west and do not bother with anything north of the range. Further, that in the Oberland a north-west wind brings storm, but a north-east wind brings clearing weather; that bad weather follows closely on a wind blowing over Col Theodule and round the west of the Matterhorn, but that a wind over Col du Lion and round the Matterhorn to the east is a fair-weather sign. He has to discover the relation which the prevailing wind bears to the weather conditions of a particular season or month. The one thing he can count upon is the habit that weather establishes in the Alps during two summers out of three of remaining one thing or the other for a continued period, once it has started, and of returning to this ‘habit of the season’ whenever there are not evident signs that it means to recommence or continue a spell of change.

The scientific study of weather, and its prediction by the barometer and thermometer, are matters for a whole book, and the authoritative textbooks are available. Instruments larger than of pocket size are something of an encumbrance to a climbing party, although I have always made an exception in favour of the pocket aneroid, because of the excellent humour with which it blesses its possessor whenever its statements and those of the atmosphere or the map happen to coincide. I limit myself here to recalling briefly some of the visible, ordinary and less esoteric ‘signs’ which have proved of common use in my own experience, more especially in the Alps.

[Sidenote: Clouds.]

Clouds form our principal sign. It is important to remember that clouds, while they continue to retain their original form, whatever that may be, will inflict no rain on us. It is their changes, when they alter, that we watch, and we predict rain or not according to their character during and after the changes.

We distinguish between the upper strata of clouds, whose character and direction are important as giving us the eventual direction of the wind and the more permanent character of the weather, and the lower strata, which have only a meaning for the day or hour, and are not prophetic.

In general, clouds in the east alone are a fair sign; clouds in the west, especially dark clouds, mean rain soon.

High-travelling cirrus clouds portend rain. In the Alps, where the winds are our real prophets, a distinction is introduced: cirrus, high and fast on a south or south-west wind, has its usual meaning; but cirrus on a north, east or south-east wind may accompany or, more rarely, precede good weather. Castellated cirrus is always a bad sign, and, where the horizon can be seen, the appearance of cirrus in bands lengthening up towards the zenith (cirro-stratus) is an unwelcome event. Dappled cirrus, the so-called ‘roses’ of the south and the ‘sheep flocks’ of the north, implies a change of wind and weather. As the presence of high cirrus, upon which the change of wind can produce the dappling, usually means, in the mountains, that uncertain or bad weather has been preceding the change, the dappling is most often, and with justice, taken as a good sign. If, however, the weather has been dull, with merely clouds of heat, and the wind has been good before, the change portended will be probably for the worse.

Cumulus clouds, when they tower rapidly, and more especially when they ‘topple over,’ or show a tendency to do so, are signals of a change to rain. A sure method of observing cumulus is to watch some small portion of the cloud for a space of time. If it grows larger, the sign is a change for worse weather; if it ravels out and disappears on the warm air round it, the sign is for good, and the cloud can be disregarded.

Stratus, the long stratified bands of cloud at any height, means bad weather, and the tendency of cirrus or cumulus to stratify is ominous.

The edges of clouds tell us much of their import: harmless if they are filmy and ravel out on the warmer air; suspicious if they are hard, heavily outlined or charged.

An approaching rain-cloud in action is recognizable by the vertical or slanting lines in the air below it, or by the ‘torn lace’ on the lower edge. A hail-cloud shows heavier lines. A snow-cloud carries fuller, harder marginal protuberances, and may be lighter in tone. Heavy cumulus of this cumbrous sort may often surprise strong sunlight by a sudden snow-break. Usually we go by temperature and height in predicting if a ‘wet’ cloud will break in rain or snow.

High ‘mare’s-tails’ betray wind, and predict rain according to their direction.

‘Fish’ clouds pointing east and west usually mean foul weather; pointing north and south, fair weather.

Black wisps of cloud before sunrise, especially in a clear sky, mean early rain. Lighter-toned wisps at this hour have no signification. But if the lower edges of cloud-films are charged and dark, looking like ink which has run down into the borders of blotting-paper, we look out for rain.

Long fingers of cloud radiating from a peak portend storm, particularly if any one of them betrays the typical thunder-curve. Thunder on a peak means snow, so we must look out for a cold and electric day.

Thunder-clouds are easily distinguishable. Their form is always similar. The duplicated outline in the masses of cloud above and below, the connecting darker neck between, and the leaf-like and invariable curve of strength where the neck runs out into the profile line of the upper mass, are sufficiently distinctive. A little further observation will enable their lines of system and the probable direction of their movement to be located. The lower mass of cloud may, in cases, be absent, but the truncated ‘neck’ and the leaf-like ‘curve’ will always enable us to identify them.

[Sidenote: Wind.]

Even more than the clouds, once we have discovered the habit of the year and the local signs, the winds are our firm basis for forecast. The north wind in the Alps is usually for good, though in a bad season of habit it may, if long continued, bring snow. The south wind is always fraught with suspicion, until it justifies it. It brings a succession of storms, but leaves fine intervals. The west wind, if continuous, means the continuance of unsettled weather, with an inclination to preserve whatever may be the habit of the year. It is perhaps the most forcible and trying of winds to encounter on the ridges exposed to it. The east wind is infrequent and rarely long continued. Its portent is favourable. The south-west wind means rain to follow. A change from north to north-west threatens rain. A change from south-west to north-west--generally a wind on its way to becoming a north wind--means a change for the better in bad seasons. South-east, and especially north-east, winds share the good qualities and projects of the east wind.

The current of the Föhn is recognizable by its accompanying oppression of warm-parched, or in cases of warm-moist, atmosphere, and by its depressing effect upon our spirits. It is a harbinger of evil of all kinds. Its own forerunners are often a massing of heavy-bordered clouds accompanied by a threatening vividness in all visible coloration. The Föhn is said to be able to infect, or more probably alternate with, any wind from any quarter; but we know of it in summer usually in the south or south-west winds. In the south it is ‘dry,’ in the south-west it is ‘wet,’ Föhn. Its presence ruins the best-directioned wind; it underthaws the snow dangerously and spoils our tempers inexplicably.

Sudden gusts and round-the-compass winds are of ill omen. As between cross-currents of wind, at different levels, the higher alone is worth attention. Valley currents, particularly those off glaciers, are only misleading.

The simple sky signs, familiar not only in mountains, give us further assistance.

[Sidenote: Signs in General.]

A red sunrise is bad; a red sunset good. Sunrise on a grey sky means a fair day; sunset on a grey or pale yellow sky means a rainy day, on a bright yellow sky a windy day.

A ‘high dawn,’ the sun showing first over a vapour belt, is an ill sign; a ‘low dawn,’ the sun leaping from the horizon, a good sign.

If the distant sky at dawn, especially to the west, is low and dark, there will be breaking weather by noon.

A dark blue sky tells of wind, and probably rain to follow; a light blue sky is of fair weather.

All over bright or gaudy colours at sunrise or sunset, and all hard outlines, foretell rain and wind. Delicate colours, well-blended tones and filmy cloud edges are fine-weather prophets.

Rings round the sun or moon, and vivid twinkling stars in the later night, are bad signs. Clear nights of cold, and calm and quiet stars before dawn, are good.

Heavy dews and the falling of the wind at sunset are good signs.

The clearness and nearness of distant hills, except just after rain, is a bad sign; but here we may distinguish between a clear landscape when we face towards the sun, which is an ill sign, and a clear landscape as we stand with our back to the sun, which is quite usually a fair sign.

Ascending mists on hillsides are bad. Mists in valleys at evening, clouds lifting at sunset, and hilltops smoking their pipe of evening peace, are good.

Warm airs as we pass up the lower alps or through the pinewoods mean us well; but warm nights on the height and in the hut, or the sickly puffs of warm breath that meet us from the large crevasses as we start up the glacier before dawn, are omens of ill weather.

Early rain, ‘rain before seven,’ has no serious meaning; it rarely lasts.

Early white mists should never frighten us from starting, but we must judge them by feel, texture and direction of movement. An early ominous mist has a different quality, and lies differently from a simple mist of the hour.

During the day feeling or instinct is still our principal guide as to the durable character of changes or of threats of changes. More especially we go by the feeling of the wind. With a good wind, local clouds may be disregarded. The eye learns to distinguish between the heavy leaden-edged look of an increasing mist, and the peculiar silvery wet aspect, markedly round its edges, of a mist that is in process of absorption in warm atmosphere.

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

Even a stay in a hut is more tolerable than confinement in an hotel. For this reason, and to save the time and patience spent upon going up and down from the hut, as well as to be on the spot to catch the right day, it is often pleasanter to stay up at the hut, and send down a porter each day for provisions. We are then ready when the change comes in uncertain seasons.

Snowfall, however, with its hopeless prospect and unpleasing chilly presence, will suffice to send us down without question. Continued snow will send us yet further; unless we can arm ourselves with the short summer ski. In that case we may still refuse to admit defeat, and mint golden days out of the ashes of a heartless season.

I am speaking here only of weather in the Alps. In more distant and less hospitable ranges, where the base camp and the rescue of civilization are more remote, the same persistent course cannot be maintained in face of continued bad or changeable weather. In small climbing, as in Britain, we need not regard weather at all. It enforces all the observation it deserves by the definite limits which wet or snowy rocks put upon the degree of difficulty which it is safe or comfortable for us to attempt, and by the temporary discomforts and restrictions that wind or snow inflict upon our daily expeditions.

TRAINING

[Sidenote: The Framework.]

If any layman in anatomy has ever kept his fingers on trunk or sides while walking down or up hill, he will have been astonished at the amount of work that is done by groups of muscles wholly remote from the calves or thighs upon whose development he has proudly relied. Suppleness and an even development of hardened muscle all over the body are what tell in climbing, not local bulges. Most men are designed by nature to develop most spring, suppleness and strength at a point of general muscular development which will never earn their portraits a place beside the corrugated limbs of the gentlemen on the hoardings. Of course a naturally big-muscled man must remain big-muscled. But it is the quality of the muscle that counts. Whatever there is, large or small, it has to be spun into fine silk. Any effort to develop unduly some group of muscles, in arm or leg, will even prejudice the ease with which a man can recover in training the harmonious control of his machinery at its best, and the artificial muscle is apt to degenerate into fat when he goes out of training. A man, evenly developed according to his potential strength, even when he goes out of training has little difficulty in preserving a level, if lower, plane of general fitness and suppleness; and when the time comes for winding up or for relaxing, his condition moves evenly and easily up or down, and he is ready, in a few days if he is young, in rather more as time goes on, to climb again at his best.

To keep in moderate training out of season, any regular exercise in the open air is sufficient which exercises different parts of the apparatus of the body in their relation to one another, and which holds the attention. Monotonous repetitions of particular muscular movements are of little service. They bore the mind and weary the nerves; and it is the interworking of his nerves, muscles and will that a climber has to train. If he is prevented by circumstances from getting open air exercise, he may find fencing the most effective, concentrated and lasting indoor practice which he can fit conveniently into his working day. An hour’s hard fencing with both hands, comprising exercises, free play and a cold douche to finish, uses every muscle and connection of the body to the full, but risks no local strain. For in fencing every movement must be supple and yet controlled; the whole system is kept concentrated, and at full tension, upon movements minute, quick and fine. The training in rapid adjustments and lightning reactions is invaluable to the climber, and its unboisterous character makes it possible of continuance without prejudice well into old age.

If he can face them, dancing and skipping are admirable exercises to the same end. Tree climbing, or even haystack climbing, where possible, are also fine climbing practice. Swimming and sculling exercise organs and muscles smoothly and develop them evenly. Swimming has no equal as an exercise for growing strength. It runs no risk of violent local strain, and it cannot be continued beyond the point of wholesome fatigue. In all its varieties and attendant circumstances it combines more educative merits than any other form of open air sport.

My own view is that the development of special groups of muscles is best left for the climbing days themselves to effect. ‘Morning exercises,’ before the cold bath, are excellent to get the circulation right, and better than nothing for climbers whose day allows them no more wholesome outdoor activity. Among special exercises I should put first those that strengthen the forearm and fingers, for ‘gripping’; those that build up the muscles of the trunk, which have the greatest share of work to do in climbing; those that train the body to balance easily up and down on one leg, for balance; and those (if there are any but wood chopping) which prepare the shoulders and trunk for the movement of step cutting. But the working in easy combination of groups of muscles is what the climber aims at. Excessive exercise of independent groups is apt to militate against quick muscular interaction. It is well, therefore, to make movements in combinations, and constantly to vary them. This helps to keep the attention concentrated. So does a looking-glass. Boredom invalidates the whole effort. Each movement should represent a separate effort of the will.

[Sidenote: The Organs.]

For a climber the lungs and heart must be the chief care. The action of walking uphill, the lifting of foot and arm continuously and with effort, make a sustained extra demand upon these organs especially. In climbing they have to supply the fuel consumed in muscular effort, and to throw off the poisonous residue, in greater quantity than in normal action, and at an increased pace. The effects of the extra effort, shortness of breath, fatigue, exhaustion, even, in cases, suffocation, are symptoms of the failure of the heart and lungs, in varying degrees, to maintain the equilibrium between the supply and discharge of fuel. The muscle cells and the lungs are being starved of their substance, and the acids are accumulating too rapidly to be naturally got rid of. The heart is consequently enfeebled, the lungs get choked, and the exhaustion increases progressively. The severe muscular strain of a difficult rock feat is in this way doubly exhausting. The local tension is consuming the muscle cells at an abnormal rate, and therefore putting an excessive demand upon the heart and lungs to keep them supplied; and at the same time the contraction of all the great muscles of the trunk, involved in the local effort, is compressing the great organs from outside, and thus impeding their action in producing the increased supply required. Hence the ‘panting’ of an untrained climber after any severe rock passage, however short the effort.

Now, both heart and lungs can learn by practice to perform their normal functions at more than double their normal rate, and yet to maintain the equilibrium in the supply and discharge of fuel such as is needed to allow them to continue their free action.

Hence a climber is concerned to accustom his heart to accelerate, without enfeebling its action and thus diminishing the amount of fuel which each pulsation is supplying. Also, so to exercise his lungs that a number of breathing sacks, not usually employed, may be ready and accustomed for easy use whenever the extra call may be put upon them. By practice a number of dormant lung sacks, as well as those in normal use, may be actually increased in elasticity and volume, so that the lungs as a whole will be prepared to receive a far greater quantity of ‘breath,’ whenever that may be required for a greater effort.

The training for the heart is a regular and increasing graduation of effort, developed in healthful exercises such as walking, running, swimming, wood chopping, etc., and practised until even a violent or long-sustained effort can be made without panting or discomfort.

The training for ‘breath’ is deep breathing; from the bottom of the lungs, and through the nose as much as through the mouth; practised either in the course of natural open air exercise, or, almost as effectively, by slow inhalation and exhalation, for a few moments each day, in the best air obtainable. To increase the capacity of the lungs is to increase the chest measurement, that healthful vanity which mountaineering, above all exercises, flatters. Contrary to our ideas as boys, this is effected from the inside, by breathing, and not from the outside, by arm exercises, etc. ‘Chest’ exercises, indeed, help to make supple the ligaments of the outside framework, and so permit of a greater elasticity in the breathing cells within. Otherwise they are only of use in so far as they demand, or are accompanied by, deep breathing.

[Sidenote: Will and Nerves.]