Chapter IV: Rock Climbing (1)

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

The history has been the same in every form of sport or of adventure which has had the movements of the body and their perfecting in skill as basis. The passion for the sport that the many may possess engenders in the few who are better physically or nervously gifted a desire to heighten and prolong the sensation and to exercise their improving skill upon always more difficult variations. To the love of wandering in the mountains, shared by all mountaineers, is added the enduring pleasure to any healthy man of finding occasion for a higher self-realization, a more vital physical consciousness.

The evolution has been continuous; the generations, of course, overlap, and the different phases of mountain enthusiasm can still find their several satisfaction. For the explorer there are still the untrodden ranges. For those with means and time sufficient to indulge their love of climbing among the great Alps, the old snow ways of the mountains still remain sufficient in number and in sensation. But for the ever-increasing number of men whom circumstances limited to the lesser hills of our own islands or to the lower alpine ranges, the grass and snow ways began to prove too unexciting as their novelty became exhausted, and the rock peaks and the sheer rock faces of the Lake Fells, Skye or the Dolomites offered a new temptation. Rock surface, unlike snow, proved to be almost infinite in its variety and inexhaustible in its offer of novel routes. Consequently the development of difficult rock climbing in snowless regions like our own proceeded at a pace somewhat out of proportion to the leisurely progress of the art among the British frequenters of the greater Alps. Even among the guides it was only the few, fired by emulation or educated by their employers, who maintained a rate of improvement at all commensurate with that which was taking place in the average standard of amateur home rock climbing; I am speaking here purely of _difficulty_ and primarily of ascents. In the art of continuous climbing, and of climbing down, the comparison, as will appear later, was not equally to the home climber’s advantage.

The principal agent in the change has been the study of the possibilities of balance in motion, and the training successively of the foot, the hand and the eye to secure a complete rhythmic movement of the body while climbing. The primitive belief, if we may make a deduction from the practice and recitals of early mountaineers, was that the body could not be balanced with safety unless the width of the foot had firm standing. Snow was found to satisfy this condition once the study of snow craft had taught guides and amateurs how to fashion a level tread, no matter what the angle of the snow slope. When the period of the great ice climbs followed, in the historical order of exploration, it became merely a question of discovering how to fashion a corresponding security of step in ice. When the new impulse developed for the undertaking of routes upon the rock peaks, a similar breadth and comfort of tread were at first looked for. Consequently the rock ascents of former days were limited in number and character by this condition. Of the hands little account was taken. A walking balance was the only rhythm recognized. We might almost call this the ‘walking epoch.’ But the new generation, inheriting an always improving mountain craft, with a new goal in view, could not long remain at this point. The problem of finding sound routes up the rock angles of unexplored peaks and faces had to be faced.

The great gullies or rifts in the rock walls offered the first natural lines of temptation. The shelter of their enclosing walls promised a comfortable reassurance to nerve, and even more to the eye, as yet unaccustomed, as I have shown elsewhere, to the direct view into empty space, above, below and on either side, without its customary rest-point for the assurance of balance. So began what may be called the ‘gully epoch,’ a cul-de-sac which for a decade shut in, with a few exceptions, all the efforts of our rock climbers. Since the level tread could rarely be obtained in these gullies, body, shoulders and arms were all brought into the service, in order that the feet might still be able to jam against the requisite breadth of foothold, even though in such places tilted at an angle. At angles where these sloping footholds failed, the stemming of the shoulders and knees between the vertical rock walls on either side was discovered to be a means of bridging gaps on the climb that would before have passed for insurmountable. The substitute of this rough friction and purely muscular effort for the walking balance of the exploring age exercised for a time a restricting influence, although the freer use it made of the body in general prepared the way for a better tradition. Climbers got up steeper cliffs by their new methods at the sacrifice of their education as mountaineers. By specializing on a convenient accident of mountain architecture, one which cramped their outlook and left them little opportunity for achieving rhythm or perfecting balance, they even unlearned something of the general mountaineering knowledge which had been acquired by the wider, milder practice of their predecessors. It was this departure, with its somewhat clamorous record, that introduced the period of widest separation between the old school of classical alpine mountaineers and the commencing school of island rock climbers, and which brought upon the latter the blast of, not unmerited, ‘grease-polarized’ criticism, that still whispers spasmodically and archaically. It deepened the rift that during this epoch the greater number of first ascents of the cliffs in England and Wales were made by means of those enticing gullies. For the classical mountaineers, trained in the Alps, when they took an occasional holiday in the Lakes or Skye, looked chiefly for the class of climbing which most closely recalled the varied types of ridges to whose structure they had been accustomed in Switzerland. Their successors, the Fell climbers, lacking their alpine training, yielded to the temptation of unexplored gullies, and for years enclosed our home climbing in these uncomfortable channels. Wales, with less potent climbers, followed the example. But Wales, with fewer gullies wherein to win fame, would appear to have been the quarter where the first bid was made for freedom. Almost simultaneously a similar change of view was taking place among the rock peaks of the Eastern Alps. Gullies are the natural lines for the descent of stones, water and snow rather than for the ascent of human beings. Of their nature ‘faults’ in the sound structure of the cliffs, intrusions of softer rock whose weakness water has discovered, their surviving walls present an undue proportion of unsound rock. These objections, combined with the gradual exhaustion of their temptation as new ascents, eventually forced our climbers to escape from their sunless recesses and to adjust their methods to less restricting requirements.

The first impulse came from a few individuals whose exceptional physical advantages led to their discovery that they could trust to their fingers as securely as to the full tread of their feet or the jam of their bodies. The discovery enabled them to attempt places where there were no containing walls to be relied upon as support for the body if the feet failed--problems such as wide-angled corners and even what would now be called slab climbs. Finger and hand holds in their turn became everything; footwork was neglected. To some exponents the feet were useful only as auxiliaries, scraped downward indiscriminately upon the rocks to give some extra propulsion. It was the epoch of ‘grip’-climbing. Its merit, apart from fine individual achievements, was that, in its turn, it set the succeeding generation free to trust itself more confidently on to the open ribs and exposed rock faces. Bare slabs which had hardly been looked at were then found to be covered with firm holds, upon which the toe or the side of the boot could stand as firmly and advance far more rapidly; while hands and eyes were free to assist them to an extent unknown before. The balance of the body in continuous motion above the feet was, as it were, rediscovered, and an upright position became again possible. The hands returned to their proper function of aids to the balance, and the feet, climbing in natural positions, became again of principal importance. With the discovery that the underlying principle of all climbing movement is rhythm,--a rhythm of the whole body and not only of the legs, as in walking,--and that the basis of such rhythm is balance, and not grip or stride or struggle, rock craft moved into its proper place in the forefront of mountaineering qualifications.

Such in rough outline is the history of the last eighty years of climbing technique. We must allow for much overlapping of the epochs in so short a period, and for many notable individual exceptions; but in the main this summary represents where we were and where we are, and what happened on the way.

In classifying the stages of our climbing progress into epochs or compartments, I am doing no injustice to the achievements of the past. A chronicler must always face the dilemma whether to say that the great man by his example produces the general change of practice in the next generation, or whether to class him as the conspicuous anticipatory ripple of a general current of coming change. Very young climbers may be often only human in their criticisms of their contemporaries and in their faint patronage of the collective past; for no really enthusiastic mountain-lover ever in his heart believes that anyone else has ever owned the hills and discovered climbing quite in the sense that he has. But every climber who is on the way to becoming a permanent mountaineer is a keen student of mountain history, and the services rendered to the world’s mountaineering by the conservation of a body of central alpine tradition are never likely to be underrated. A good house rises higher than its foundations, but it rests upon them. The men who first ventured on the discouraging angles of buttress and gully and cleared the grass and earth from small holds performed greater feats technical and moral than the most outside variations which may remain to be done on the same rocks by their present-day successors. They had everything against them, even the atmosphere of their generation. They not only led the way to the steep rocks; they started the assault upon degrees and varieties of difficulty that forced upon their successors the cultivation of the superior technique which they now enjoy. The mountaineering world has a tenacious memory; we cherish the names and exploits of the heroic age; the feet of our gods were solidly shod, and we will admit no clay to be visible about them but that which was honourably collected in their stout tramping.

[Sidenote: Balance Climbing.]

The change in style from epoch to epoch was a considerable one, and it has not been brought to perfection in several climbing generations. To acquire a balance rhythm in motion the whole body has to learn a habit of continuous simultaneous adjustments. Both feet and hands must develop a very fine sensitiveness of touch, so as to inform us not only of the exact amount of security each is contributing at the moment, but also--a different matter--of the value of their leverage for initiating a fresh movement upwards. According to these messages the balance is continuously adjusted, so as to relieve or compensate any extremity that may require it. The feet need only a sufficiency of hold to carry the weight of the body at whatever angle it is being held in balance by the hands. The hands need only that amount of hold which will enable them to keep the body balanced while the weight is being thrust upward by the feet. The feet learn to move inevitably on to holds no longer seen, but previously selected by the eye. Simultaneously, the eyes are already occupied in choosing the next holds for hand and feet, guided in their choice not only by the compensating quality of the hold which the balance at the instant may demand for one or other of the four extremities, but also by the direction in which the next movement can most securely be made. A system of continuous compensations, partly drawn from the rhythmic balance of the moving body, partly from a corrective choice of succeeding holds, means a great saving of effort for the feet and hands.

The walking rhythm, of the first period, called for large, flat holds, and therefore for long strides between them. Between each hold the centre of gravity was thus forced out insecurely. The hands, when used, had the extra labour of dragging the weight inward against the outward thrust of the legs. The effort and the insecurity set a low limit to the angle of rock which could be conveniently ascended. The grip habit, of the middle period, demanded for its assurance sharp-edged cling holds, such as would enable the whole lifting movement to be executed by the hands alone. The body in suspension was thus wrenched inwards continuously, and sight and balance were interrupted. Rhythm on either method became impossible. On the other hand, a foot climber who climbs by balance or compensation appears to creep easily and continuously up the most severe slabs on an even line. His moving foot rarely lifts above the knee of his stationary leg, for he has his balance first to consider, and as he only needs small footholds at any angle to sustain it, he can find them at shorter intervals in greater abundance. His hands feel the almost imperceptible rugosities of surface with sensitive fingers, that press as often as they cling. His body moves upward, swinging out or in on a curve of balance with astonishing freedom, as the messages from hand, eye and feet are collated and complied with.

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

It is folly for beginners or for ordinary climbers, as it would be folly for these men themselves when they were out of practice, to attempt such climbs out of mere courage or conscious fitness, or because they have heard that they are frequently done. What one man has done in climbing every man cannot do. In many cases the final conquest of these particular climbs has been due to some accident of abnormal reach or other development such as no skill could acquire, superimposed upon a perfection of normal style. If the climbs seem to be repeated frequently, it is because, though the parties may be numerous and various, the leaders of those parties remain few and the same--men drawn from the small group of the super-climbers.

Again, ability to climb rocks of the modern exacting standard is even as much a matter of mental fitness as of bodily fitness, of continuity in nervous control as of physique. An instant’s failure of will or confidence, an instant’s interruption in the nerve communications, due to fatigue or over-tension, will disturb the delicate adjustments of balance as fatally as a broken leg. Several of the most serious accidents of recent years have been undoubtedly due to momentary suspensions of consciousness, breaks in the nerve communications, produced by over-exertion of the nerves as much as of the muscles. Before nerve and sinew are alike fit and in training they can establish no rhythmic co-operation with one another or with the brain. And in this condition they are all alike liable to error in estimating the amount of effort or of compensation they can justly expect from each other.

The pleasant custom of association among climbers has its drawbacks in this respect. Climbers are gregarious, if exclusive. They tend to form eclectic associations in certain centres at certain times. They re-form into different parties under the same leaders. Consequently a number of men may begin and climb for years without arriving at an idea of what they are individually worth, or of what would be their normal standard if left to themselves. They may do a number of the severest ascents and discuss them with an equal confidence, and yet remain ignorant of what progress they have made in their own standard of performance or in nerve control. A climbing party pools its ability and its confidence. The longer and closer its association, the less are its individuals conscious of how much they contribute and how much they draw from the collective power. A weak climber may climb on some such rope with satisfaction to himself and no obvious personal inferiority, while he is drawing all the time on the common stock contributed by his more capable associates. A leader similarly, well backed up by a good party, may get into the way of deceiving himself badly as to the extent to which his secure performance really derives from them. Instances are not wanting of the trap this may become. A weak or moderate climber thinks he can lead a moderate party up a climb which he may have done comfortably several times with his usual strong party of friends. Alone, he gets into serious difficulties. A good leader, over-confident from the habit of always feeling a sound party behind him, may attempt a difficult or familiar climb with too large a proportion of novices on his rope. The amount of ability pooled by the party behind him will no longer provide a margin of safety against accidents. The slip of one will involve others, and his individual contribution of skill cannot be sufficient to check the disaster.

No man is fit to lead on easy rocks until he knows exactly his own unaided _normal_ standard. No man is fit to lead on difficult rocks until he can gauge not only his normal standard, but also, accurately, his _standard of the day_. The second is as important as the first, but it is almost universally disregarded in practice.

To lead rock climbs of the modern high standard of difficulty demands a high degree of initiative, imagination and nervous force, added to a suitable physique. First-rate leaders are, therefore, in a large majority men of highly strung nervous temperament; they are ‘built on wires.’ To have become great leaders they must have learned to dominate their wires completely. For such men, unusually aware of their normal standard, it is all the more difficult to consider or allow for accidental fluctuations in their physical or nervous condition of the day. But a particular climb may find even them either out of condition or suffering from an off-day. The off-day feeling, arising from countless causes, is one from which all mountaineers suffer; the more frequently, the more nervous their temperament, and therefore the more frequently in the case of this type of leader. If they disregard its presence or attempt to overtighten their wires to resist it, they run serious risks. The good climber must find compensation in the knowledge that the more he perfects his technique and rhythm of comfort, the less variation will he find in his normal standard; and the better he knows his normal standard, the less difficulty will he find in determining the fluctuations in his standard of the day.

The climber then must, from the first, learn to estimate his own performance irrespective of the contribution made to it by the rest of his party.

[Sidenote: Solitary Climbing.]

To secure this self-knowledge he need not climb alone. Solitary climbing has its own delights: of independence of movement and of remoteness from the whims of others; of a more intimate appreciation of beauties of sight and sound and incident, and of a sense of almost personal identification with the forces of nature, in their visible activity of movement and growth as in their passive compliance of line, colour and form with laws of slower change. The mystical moments in mountaineering, which are the source of its fascination for men of intellect and imagination, are found more easily in solitude. But these moments are to be experienced almost equally in solitary rambling or walking, and although their intensity is increased by the rhythm of climbing, the rhythm of mind and nerve and muscle working at the same high tension to the same deep tune, yet this superlative indulgence is only excusable for the supremely expert. To climb alone a man must know his own measure; he must be confident that he can allow for his standard of the day; he must restrict his ambition to climbing of a class well below the utmost he could manage with a good rope behind him; he must allow something more for the nervous effect of solitude; and he must remember that all rock climbing is subject to a large number of pure accidents,--a strained sinew, a falling stone, or a breaking hold,--whose effects can be corrected or at least minimized by a united party, but any one of which may prove fatal to a solitary climber. If he is confident that he can make all these allowances, he may go alone on rock if he so desires. The question of what further limits he ought to observe out of regard for the apprehensions of others, his own circumstances or his relatively greater value in some other sphere, is a matter for private or domestic decision, and is not for the consideration of mountaineering opinion.

As concrete instances of the degree of difference that should be made, I take a few examples from rock climbs familiar to British climbers. A man who could lead the Grépon or the Dru (so far as their rocks are concerned) would be justified on his skill, if he kept all the conditions, in attempting all but the most severe Lake or Welsh climbs single-handed. A man whose limit in leading a rope was the rocks of the Géant or the Moine, or who found the Réquin fatiguing, could only safely undertake alone easy rock climbs, the orthodox ridges in Skye, the moderate Napes ridges, the buttresses of Tryfan and so on. Any man who found comfort in the presence of the rope, even behind him, on such ridges and buttresses as these last, should never attempt, when he is alone, more than the scrambling incidental to mountain walking. Finished experts must discover their own personal code of differentiation. They have only to keep in mind the distinction between difficulty and danger, as climbers know it, and to remember that to the solitary climber _every_ difficulty may be dangerous in result. I say nothing here about solitary climbing on snow or ice.

Beginners do not come under any of the categories which permit of solitary effort.

[Sidenote: Initial Practice.]

The introduction to climbing customarily inflicted upon novices is practice upon single rocks, low cliffs, quarries and erratic boulders, with or without the aid of a rope held from above. This ‘bouldering,’ or problem climbing, may serve to discover a talent or encourage an inclination, but it is of little use as commencing practice. The scrambles are short. They give no opportunity for a groundwork in rhythm or for balance in motion. If they are easy, they are done at once on the head or the heels, and no one the better. If they are more difficult, muscle can either manage them,--a bad error to commence with,--or, if muscle fails, the ground close below or the rope close above deprives failure and success alike of any training for the nerve or moral for the memory. Their real value is only for the expert, who has learned to treat every rock with the same respect, be it of five feet or of five hundred feet. They make fine riders upon special propositions, of toe or finger joint, once we have mastered the general principles; but beginners get more benefit from easy, continuous exercises on the simple rules--and ridges.

This practice is best begun as a member of a roped party of about equal capacity, and under the direction of a leader who will only allow the rope to be used as a protection, and not as a method of traction. The climber is then to a large extent insured against the consequences of his early blunders, which will give him some necessary confidence; he will get some profit from watching other methods, and he can devote himself to working out his own style. Imitation, conscious or not, will give him right position, and the collective movement will infect him with the beginnings of rhythm.

[Sidenote: The Use of the Foot.]

[Sidenote: Hard Soles.]

In balance climbing, footwork must be placed first. For footwork on rock the right footgear with the right sole is all-important. If we wear a nailed boot, it should be as light as is consistent with strength and the weight of the climber--that is, of the lightest alpine pattern.[10] Large men often like the heavy iron-clad boot for the impetus it gives to a longer swing on levels or downhill. But this is no recommendation in ascending rocks, where the weight of the boot alone, since it has to be lifted and swung an indefinite number of thousand times a day, is a wasteful drain upon the leg muscles. At the same time the boot must be strong enough to protect the foot against bruise or jar on all kinds of rugged surface, and the soles thick enough to be firm, otherwise in climbing with the toe or the side of the boot there is unfair strain upon the finer fabric of the foot. The welt, for rock work more especially, should not project, as this increases the strain upon foot and leg in toe and side-foot climbing. A heavy welted boot or one with stiff leather uppers crushes the foot and interferes with its delicate sense of touch.

The method of nailing the boots is important.[11] Rock climbers pursue different fancies of their own: some prefer a double line of small nails close to the edge, for a better stance on small ledges; some dislike the edge or wing nails, and prefer a single row of small sharp heads; and so on; but the chief thing for rock is to make sure that the edge-nails, whatever they be, are set well apart, so as to give a rough catching edge between each nail against a pull either way. On the toe this separation is not so imperative, and they can be set closer together for mutual protection and for a division of the strain, which, in their case, will chiefly be on the back of the nail and not on its sides. To edge the boot with overlapping nails, which may become a smooth bar, is ineffective, and even more likely to produce a slip on rock than if the sole were left altogether unprotected. One good rough nail rightly driven in and rightly placed is quite enough to ensure a perfectly safe stance under a well-balanced body; and on much modern slab climbing one nail-hold is all that is sought or obtained. The neater the action the fewer the nails needed.

[Sidenote: Soft Soles.]

For a number of rock surfaces a soft sole serves better than a nailed boot. It permits of a sharper flex of the ankle, and restores to the foot much of the sensitive and prehensile quality of the hand. Its more flexible surface will cling to or over excrescences and flat planes upon which a boot could find little or no support. It enables the foot to be thrust toe-forward into narrower horizontal cracks or pockets, and toe-downward, for leverage, behind flakes split vertically. It is more secure upon steep, smooth slabs, in back-and-toe chimney climbing and upon delicate traverses. Its lightness and close fit give greater elasticity to the movements of the leg and greater exactitude to the placing of the foot. On the other hand, it has not the grip in the smooth angle of a vertical crack or corner that a hard sole has; in side-foot or toe climbing on narrow ledges of sheer rock it strains the foot unduly; it is treacherous on greasy or glazed rock, and absolutely useless on snow, ice, sharp rubble or in greater mountaineering. From my own experience I should say that there are few steep places that the _ordinary_ rock climber meets where a nailed boot cannot be used as securely as a soft sole, but that there are many where the soft sole is more comfortable and reassuring. We have, of recent years, imitated Dolomite climbers more generally in their use upon abrupt crags, and when we have finally got over our prejudice against carrying extra footgear with us and bothering to put it on, there will be as wide a popularity for the soft sole, discreetly used, upon rock as the claw has at last begun to enjoy upon ice.

According to the texture and condition of the rock, soft soles of raw hide, thin leather, woollen cloth, canvas, flat or ribbed rubber, rope, and even the soles of bare feet of a naturally leathery quality, are all and each declared to be the best possible wear. It is impossible to assign them geographically and geologically in detail, and I doubt if anyone will carry with him all the types on the chance of using one quite correctly. The average rock climber, even though he knows the truth that on some rock boots with hard nails, and on others boots with soft nails, give the better grip, shows himself still discouragingly reluctant to carry even these two pairs with him in our own islands. I myself preferred a light rubber sole on dry difficult rock, and a rope or cloth sole on wet rough rock (not greasy), whenever the difficulty made it distinctly safer than a nailed boot. Rubber is less durable than rope, but it remains more evenly prehensile. The rope sole, recently used with great effect even in the greater Alps, gets hard and, still worse, hardens in patches that give a fickle tread.

For prolonged wear a soft-soled canvas boot is more comfortable than the traditional shoe.

Many rock climbers wear very thick stockings or several pairs of socks.[12] Their protection to the foot is greater than that of weighty or rigid boot leather, and, according as feet and boots vary in size from day to day, they allow of a corresponding addition or subtraction. But for pure rock work their thickness should never be allowed to interfere with the sense of touch in the toes. Any constriction round the ankle, by the boot, or round the knee, by the breeches, is for the same reason to be avoided. To check the circulation or to cramp a sinew or muscle is to interrupt the telegraphic messages upon which balance and safety depend.

[Sidenote: Foothold.]

The feet in all climbing should be placed lightly, and the swing of the leg kept under control. To aim the foot, as many do, from the thigh and knee, bang it in, and then leave it to settle itself on the hold, is to jar the foot and fatigue the leg. The movement should be precisely directed from start to finish, and no sinew slackened until the other foot has taken charge. In continuous climbing the position of the foot on the new foothold should be chosen with a view to its supporting the balance during the next movement up or down, and the foot must be placed exactly as the eye designed. If not, the balance will not rise true on the lift, and there will be a flurried hand cling and a clumsy foot shuffle until the right foot position is found. Small inexactitudes mean clumsiness and waste of power.

Good skating calls for the same precise adjustment of the feet in anticipation of the next movement of the body. But the closest parallel is to be found in good dancing. The motion of foot and leg in both dancing and continuous climbing is free yet under control, rhythmical and balanced to the appearance of ease, but precise; ready for the new position required for fresh movement, and yet keeping the body in balance during the momentary transference of weight. In both, the actual contact of the feet with the surface is always light. In either, a heavy or loose tread not only breaks the rhythm, so that the balance has to be recovered by an effort, but it destroys the sensitiveness of touch, and delays for a perceptible moment the beginning of the next movement. Dancing is, in fact, an excellent preparation for climbing. Good climbers are, or can be, nearly always good dancers. The account often given in joke of a fine climber that he ‘literally danced down the rocks’ is a truthful picture. A good dancer has to adjust the continuous motion of his feet and body over an even surface to the swift and varied rhythm of music. A good climber has only to keep true to his own rhythm; but he has the more difficult task of adjusting his continuous movement to the varied angles, checks and impulses of uneven rock holds. The more difficult the rock, the slower must be his rhythm; but slow or fast, each motion must remain equally exact and finished. The more precise he renders each movement, the safer will be his progress and the more polished will appear to be his style. All false positions, sudden convulsions or recoveries that will break the continuity of movement, have therefore to be avoided. In ascending upon a vertical line it is, for instance, obviously better to take footholds slightly to the right and left with either foot rather than immediately below the body. The knee thus turned sideways can be flexed without thrusting out the centre of gravity and interrupting the continuity. Again, as between two footholds that may offer, the one large and reassuring in promise but inconveniently placed, the other less comforting but at a happier interval, the latter is to be selected. The first would be sound, but would need two interrupted movements and a readjustment between them; the second will fit in with our continuous movement and be secure enough to reach and to leave again. Rock holds are not required for a permanent residence. The foot, the toe and the side nail are not looking for snug berths with a pension, but only for such security of tenure as will permit them to promote the career easily from one balanced movement to the next.

[Sidenote: Anticipation.]

Upon very steep rock, holds rarely occur in the convenient, ladder-like sequence that allows of a continuous lifting of the body in the same position and line. Each succeeding set of hand and foot holds may here require a new attitude for purposes of balance. For this interrupted type of climbing, however, it is just as important to remember that it is too late to begin to twist the body into the new position required by the new holds when already those holds have been reached. A climber who makes this mistake gets no help even from his slower rhythm, and looks to be spasmodic and insecure. All the more here a good climber should look beforehand what his new attitude will have to be on the new holds, and, like a skater, he should move his body into the new position while he is in the act of passing from the one set of holds to the other. In the case of an awkward step it is even admissible for him to go up and down to it, tentatively, before committing himself to it, in order to make certain that he will arrive upon the hold in the right position. He has then no need to readjust his feet or hands when the movement is complete and the next begins.

This fine point in style is invaluable to master; anticipation saves energy and assures safety on long or difficult rock climbs. The sinuous progress of the expert on an ‘interrupted’ passage is effortless as compared with the jerks and quick contortions of a less finished climber on the same place; and on long, easier climbs, where all are moving together, he is always the sooner ready to meet at any second the failure in his own case of a single hold, or to give the immediate check to the rope which shall correct a slip behind him. Even if he is in mid-movement when the call comes, in an instant of time his feet and hands can lock his balance into the new position already half attained, or they will bring him back with nicety to his last firm holds.

[Sidenote: The Ankle.]

In the mastery of balance climbing the ankle plays a very important part. So that the body may progress smoothly when the feet are clinging only to small or very inclined holds, the ankle must be strong enough and supple enough to support the weight at rest or in motion, no matter at what angle it may be bent, forward or backward or sideways. The extent to which the ankle can be flexed varies with the individual. Extreme in babyhood, the flexibility can be preserved by early and suitable exercise. Once it is lost, and the foot ‘set,’ it is very difficult to recover or increase it in later life. Those whose ankles will only flex city-wise may only envy the ease with which mountaineering peasants walk straight up steep inclines, getting their heels down each step, or coastal fisher-folk hurry safely on flat soles along slippery sea slabs at impossible angles. If your ankle won’t bend so far, it won’t. But what can be and has to be acquired is suppleness and strength in the ankle, whatever its flex, so that it will hold as securely when bent to the full as when straight, and will relate through its changing but steely arch the balance movement of the body above to the unshifting cling of the foot below. Like skating, ski-ing or crabbing on claws, walking securely with a flexed ankle has to be learnt by practice; and the first essential is confidence. Balance boldly on slabs. If you lean inwards, or seek support with the hand, you will never improve your ankle work. Such practice on ice with claws and practice on slabs with shoes or nails are mutually helpful. It is excellent exercise for the ankle and foot to practise doing ridge or slab climbs of progressive steepness without using the hands at all. The flex of the ankle, the bow of the leg and balancing power of the trunk muscles working together, can learn to do a great deal for which we are ordinarily too ready to use the hands. By educating ankle and foot to work alone we keep the hands in reserve for increasingly difficult passages. Often the ‘prop’ of a bent ankle above a side-foot hold gives us the second point of contact with the rock which is all that our balance requires. I have known of climbers whose standard improved markedly owing to a hand injury or arm wound. Compelled to develop their ankle and foot work, by the time the arm recovered they had learned a better ‘balanced’ style, and the fresh help of the hand came in as so much more gain in power. Careful hill walking or rock climbing in a light shoe is better training for the ankle and balance than walking in a heavy boot. The heavy boot restricts the flex and weakens the ankle by always supporting it. On all but rock surface it compels the surface to its service. On rock its rigidity and good side nails generally save us the trouble of flexing the ankle at all. In a light shoe the foot and ankle have to adjust themselves to the surface, and bend and adhere at any angle the hillside or the sloping rock may dictate. The ankle gets strengthened and suppled. Be it noted that the going must be ‘careful’; an unprotected ankle until it gets trained is easily turned or wrenched.

[Sidenote: The Knee.]

As I have said, the knee is not now so often used in good balanced climbing. Nine times out of ten when we use a kneehold it is from pure laziness, and eight times out of ten we immediately repent it, because it is quite three times as difficult and six times as painful to start again off a kneehold as off a foothold. Of course on stiff ‘mantelpiece’ work or in cracks we may have to use it, together with all other convenient projections of our frame. And, on occasion, in continuous climbing, if the hands are occupied with the management of the rope, and the foothold is too high to reach with sound balance, the knee can be used on a suitable hold as a quick half-way thrust between distant footholds. This avoids breaking our rhythm by an overlong reach up with the foot, or interrupting the party by dropping the rope in order to take hold with the hands.