Mountain Craft

A party consists usually of from two to four climbers, exclusive of guides. A larger number inevitably divides into two or more units for mountaineering purposes. The management devolves upon the most experienced mountaineer. His selection as leader, in this sense, is more often than not tacit and unexpressed, especially among British climbers.

Over-management is fatal to the effective co-operation of a party; and a formal selection of a leader[1], or a precise insistence upon the performance of particular duties by individual members, may only disturb the pleasant relationship of friends on a climbing holiday. If a man is not felt to be qualified as leader by personality and experience, no vote will make him so.

Large or democratic parties, of equal inexperience, can carry out very delightful sub-alpine wanderings without leadership. If they attempt serious mountaineering, it is usually at the cost to their friends of sleepless nights and of expensive search parties.

Three things only are necessary for the salvation of a mountaineering holiday: good health, good fellowship and good climbing. These three conditions are mutually contributory and interdependent; and the last, the declared object of the association, is only attainable when the other two are secure.

It goes without saying that a good leader must be able to design and direct an ascent so far as the actual climbing is concerned; but he will discount beforehand half his chances of successful performance unless he has learned how to bring his party on to the glacier, at four in the morning, fit in health and on good terms with themselves and one another.

Physical Well-being.

Fortunately, in dealing with healthy men, special attention to the first condition of health is confined to the first two or three days of a tour.

A mountaineering party, when in action, is dependent for its good-humoured and hearty co-operation on more than the external interests of the climbs, however well selected beforehand and sustained, on more even than its good health and food, however well cared for. It has to be welded into a fine instrument: its temper is its strength; and its temper has to be kept at just the right heat. Hot words on occasions will do it little harm. Men in a state of primitive well-being are apt to become elemental in temper. A sudden crisis sets off a shower of sparks of language. These do no harm. No experienced man looks upon them as personally directed, or remembers them when the crisis is past. What has really to be guarded against is the effect of monotony in any form, even the irritating repetition of some small unconscious personal trick. Slight resentments become magnified grotesquely during the long hours of silent effort, especially of monotonous effort, on snow, glaciers or path. Any ordinary mountaineer will probably remember occasions when some trifling habit of a good friend, some unintentional or momentary lack of consideration, has taken advantage of the dull ending of a strenuous day to come back upon him irresistibly, and fill him unaccountably with sullen growing resentment. He may realize its foolishness, but, like the similar insistence of the refrain of some silly comic song, it becomes part of the mechanical movement in which his whole being is for the time absorbed.

Reaction.

On the first splendid glow of success, when the difficult ascent has ended triumphantly on the summit, there follows a phase of complete relaxation, of surrender to the simple realization of rest and physical enjoyment. It is a period of indescribable sensations, of imagination run riot, and of will and self-control alike in abeyance.

When the subsequent descent is begun it is at first, for many men, a matter of real difficulty to recover complete control of their machinery, and for the leader to reconstitute the different individuals into a single working unit. For a time the pace must be diminished, and the care redoubled. Precautions, of remonstrance and doubled ropes and moving singly, none of them possibly necessary in the same place with the party in working order must be put into force, until the normal condition is regained. The assumption that the state of mind makes no difference, and that a party can descend as securely the final slopes that it raced up light-heartedly in the bracing moment of success, is all too commonly made, and only too frequently regretted.

To take the last first, that of the tourists (and there are many of them), whose ambition it is to be taken up a big peak with a big name, without concerning themselves with learning anything of the craft. In such cases they do well to tie themselves between the strongest and most highly recommended peasants they can secure and leave everything to them. After the experience they will either desire to become mountaineers, when they will join the class of beginners, or they will desist. I should be the last to depreciate any manifestation of the spirit that has brought us all to the hills, but in this chrysalis condition their performance is not titularly mountaineering, and—it is bad for the guides! An occasion comes back to mind—an ascent of the Matterhorn on one of the two days upon which it was climbable in a bad season. Nine members of a far-western gymnastic club chose the same day for the one ascent of their lives. Each was led on a short rope by a more or less competent peasant. They climbed with a magnificent output of muscle. On reaching the summit, with its incomparable view and terrific memories, they looked neither down nor round, but joined hands in a circle facing inwards, and gave nine fearful and prolonged college yells. The bear-leaders, each gravely holding his separate radiating rope, stood contemplating them in a silent outer circle. The simple ceremony accomplished, each guide gave a solemn twitch to his spoke, or rather to his rope.