Mountain Craft quotes

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.

But the tradition still survives, and some oppressed parties will still awaken in the casual climber a wonder at the large amount of hectoring they will endure from their leader compared with the little which his methods enable them to achieve.

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.

The first few days of the tour, however, are vital.

Mountaineers are sound men, and have usually only two weak points, the feet and the stomach.

New boots or overwork attack the first; unaccustomed food, changing atmospheric pressures, and revolutionary hours of sleep, food and exercise upset the second. For the feet precautionary measures are the safest.

A cold limb should at once be rubbed; and, as a precaution, clothes should always err on the side of being too thick rather than too light.

The human body can endure great windless cold, but little cold wind.

With the chilling of the muscles the nerve and will-power diminish also. For the reactions of cold, local and general, a leader must be always on the watch.

It is better, if the situation is genuinely serious, to bring it down to a human level by blowing off a few words of violent commonplace expletive, than to leave it in that daunting remoteness of gravity for which words are inadequate.

The more crucial the occasion, the more does the nerve of the party centre in the leader.

Their confidence in his confidence is a more important asset than their confidence in his skill.

The more crucial the occasion, the more does the nerve of the party centre in the leader.

Their confidence in his confidence is a more important asset than their confidence in his skill.

The combined ability of a party, each one confident in the others and relieved of individual responsibility by his sense of the general confidence, goes further towards success in the solution of difficulties or the repulse of danger than the brilliant independent success which any …

Both men are so fully aware that their savage humour is ungrounded and absurd, that neither wishes to appear to be left alone in his folly.

Temper is the one permanent peril to all climbing parties, and it is never allowed for sufficiently, or openly treated in its true character as a largely physical phenomenon.

Men who have to live long together at great heights, as in the Himalaya, or in great solitudes, as at sea, know that its outbreaks are practically uncontrollable, and many an expedition has failed on its account alone.

Unless it be to men whom he is definitely initiating into the pursuit, a leader should not give advice or make direct suggestions; in fact, the less he fusses or appears to be consciously setting the tone, the better.

There is nobody so tiresome, in daily contact, as some one who is constantly being cheerful or tactful or managing.

Example is the leader’s medium for correction, in humour as in action.

in fact, the less he fusses or appears to be consciously setting the tone, the better. There is nobody so tiresome, in daily contact, as some one who is constantly being cheerful or tactful or managing.

Example is the leader’s medium for correction, in humour as in action.

He must see to it that no loophole is left for discord, in small arrangements as in small talk. For this reason it is helpful to let each man look after some department:

To take them to rocks too early, as to a gymnasium, is to spoil their taste and deprive them of the chance of developing a personal enthusiasm and a natural style.

Every good mountaineer must rediscover the hills and the passion for climbing them as of himself.

One consideration remains for the leader, if it has not been already decided by the preferences of his party—that of the district he will choose for the season. A few general principles may help to guide his choice.

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.

… may make the process of recovery longer each year by a few days, but he has not the handicap to contend with which threatens the big or heavily muscled man, who requires constant and intensive exercise to check the local degenerations which increase with time.

Climbing is one of the few exercises that can be continued well into what used to be deemed old age.

Trained nerve, tough sinew, supple muscle, experience in adjustments, in balance, in foresight and in economy of strength, compensate for the loss of youth, for its fire and spring.

A natural, but equally dangerous, reaction has followed, which condemns consideration of ‘times’ altogether, and advocates “idling on the great ridges” as the peculiar joy of the guideless or the true-hearted mountaineer.

Pace does not mean racing.

It means the adjustment of the length of the climb to the length of the day, and the adjustment of the progress of the of climber to the length of the climb.

Those who are loudest in the valley in their protest against climbing by the watch are the most often challenged or beaten by night in this, the most dangerous form of racing.

Getting benighted is not a pleasure, and it is rarely necessary.

It has been given a false halo of romance by the practice and the picturesque descriptions of a number of guideless mountaineers, who first render it inevitable by attempting what is beyond them, or by carrying great weights, and then seek to convince themselves and …

and to halt will disturb the rhythm and chill the muscles. It will aim at continuous steady going, and save its seconds and minutes over ground of easy movement, ready to spend time freely again so as to economize effort on more difficult passages.

Combination is the secret of saving seconds.

Consider for a moment the case of a roped party that has not learned the secret of pace, and is moving all together on easy rock.

Above it, his system will soon feel symptoms of exhaustion; below it, he gets no profit from the relaxation, and even suffers some prejudice to his energy in the loss of a sustained rhythm.

The pace of a party is the maximum rhythm of its weakest member.

A good mountaineering party moving continuously and in combination in the common time of its comfortable maximum rhythm will gain steadily on a less experienced rope, although it may allow itself longer definite intervals of “idling on the great peaks,” and spend even more moments …

The ‘K’ or ‘KK’ Jaeger shirts answer well. Their short ‘G’ pants also answer well. No undervest should be worn.

Remember, if you do not want to feel cold, avoid getting hot.

The proper place for the coat, except in very cold weather or on difficult work, is over the shoulders or in the sack, the sleeves being tucked through the shoulder straps. Even when starting very early do not pile on clothes.

In very cold weather, or if sleeping out, pass this tight twice round the stomach and fasten with safety pins. Carry two or three large silk handkerchiefs. The coat, sweater and a silk handkerchief will protect the throat enough.

Keep your stomach warm, as it furnishes the heat to the rest.

Carry a light waterproof cape. They are obtainable at Fritsch & Co., Zurich, made of Japanese silk—cost about 30s., weight about a ½ lb.

With the formalizing, even in details, of the route up every regular peak, the stimulus of romance and adventure has gone for them far more than for the amateur. The new generation finds its only outlet in the autumn chamois-hunting, if at all.

Its mountaineering is just business.

There are some rare and notable exceptions—perhaps as many in actual number as formed the chosen band of guides who led the early mountaineers in their pleasant comradeship of triumph—but they are attached in almost all cases for each season to affectionate and jealous employers, …

His opinion in his own sphere is invaluable; it has generally the additional weight of freedom from the enticements of romance and enthusiasm. The amateur in control should give it every consideration; but it does not relieve him of his own responsibility.

A first-class workman may make a very bad managing director.

On his side the good amateur has antecedents and opportunities, such as the guide cannot possess, for developing his initial advantages in his own peculiar department.

… well as all climbers who, because their modern balance technique has proved sufficient to carry them through a season or so of standard expeditions in fair weather, consider themselves fully qualified to exercise all the discretionary functions of management and leadership without first learning them.

Men are all beginners who have never discovered what a lot there is that they do not know.

There are men climbing in the Alps to-day who, finding that their first guide was inferior to themselves in pure cragsmanship, have dispensed with guides altogether; and a very slow progress in mountain craft and in achievement has been the result.

He has so much to learn that he should not try to rediscover it all for himself.

A genius who devotes years to rediscovering the first propositions of Euclid merely wastes time.

The last case is that of mountaineers of some standing, who either on account of marriage, or of years and a comfortable habit, or from the philosophical attitude of mind which succeeds the enthusiasm of youth and smiles at its ambitions while it still enjoys …

But in mountaineering the rigour of the game is essential to its good conduct.

A guide indulged is a guide spoiled.

An amateur indolently criticized may mean a position permanently falsified. Our small public opinion is not easily corrected. From the start, a right reputation is as essential for our social influence with the guides as it is vital for our mutual climbing safety.

I know of no other occasion which should justifiably tempt us into sharp speech or the exhibition of direct authority during an actual climb.

The secret of maintaining control is never to appear to claim it.

In effect, an amateur is free now to take or not to take guides in accordance with circumstances and not with tradition. If he engages them, except as a beginner, it must be on the terms of mountaineer with mountaineer and not tourist with professional.

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.

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 …

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.

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 well-used hand after a few days on rough rock gets if anything more sensitive; the fingers become ‘violin tipped’ with a certain prickle of sensitiveness.

A hold should be grasped like a nettle, firmly and almost finickingly, so that the skin does not shift afterwards or drag.

It is always a bad sign if the climber finds cuts on the insides of his hands. They have no business there. The sharpest of holds, if rightly gripped, can be used for the lift of the weight without puncturing the skin.

In this country the finest rock climbs, both scenically and as mountaineering training, are not the most difficult; rather than that they should be neglected, we should seek them and climb them on the wet days.

Glazed rock is its own prophet and policeman.

In the summer Alps we need only expect to find it after a snowfall, or where snow commanding rock may have been melted, run down and refrozen.

When halts are made it is important to see that the axes are put in safety, where they cannot be dislodged by forgetful movements.

A climber without his axe is like a lion-hunter without his rifle—and no tree to climb.

In ascending rocks the axe comes into use as a long claw-hand, where snow, ice, grass or heather covers the ledges and hides the holds.

The brilliant individual run or single score is impossible. The members of a party are combined for life or death. Their achievement is that of their united efficiency. Their progress depends upon their success in realizing complete harmony of thought and movement.

The rope is their nervous link.

There are few things more pleasing to watch than the co-operation of a good rope on a stiff rock climb. To the untutored eye the party may all appear to be doing different things—some pausing, some turning, some climbing.

On continuous climbing, pace cannot be achieved without this subconscious imitation. On difficult ‘one-at-a-time’ climbing, to fail to start or to follow with the correct hand or foot often means failure to follow at all where another has easily led.

There is nothing lowering in imitation.

Big climbing is not competitive puzzle-work. The man behind is in any case handicapped by the rope, and by his extra share of responsibility in guarding his leader.

that is, the more he associates his human mechanism, either as impulse or as check, directly with the active rope; and uses the rock, for anchor or indirect belay, as a protection behind him for the inactive rope and the rest of the party.

Between good climbers the rope serves as a telegraph wire.

So long as it runs free we can receive our call for help or reassurance and return our instantaneous touch or impulse down it with a response that is almost anticipation. Any rock interposition interrupts the one and delays the other.

Any request from a beginner for a ‘little pull,’ or for putting on the rope, must be always and at once complied with. Delay or reasoning may be dangerous, and will in any case shake confidence.

The rope is for protection, nervous as much as physical.

In ascending easy rock or in traversing easy ridges, all can be moving together, if the strength of the party allows it.

If he has a well-tried second, who knows too much about him to mind, he may let off steam to him.

A little mystery and silence are rather a good fault in a first man; men do not want to be over-enlightened before their turn comes.

But with a silent leader we are dependent upon a good second man to keep the party informed as to what is really happening.

During all the intricate manœuvres incidental to combined climbing, the watch on the rope may never be relaxed, and a few further hints as to its management may be useful to leaders and followers alike.

With a rope, as with a horse, anticipation is the secret.

Once it catches, or kinks, or entangles, the result is nightmare. Of its control, when men are moving together, I have already spoken: the perpetual glance, and flick, and swing, to keep it free, that must become subconscious.

Mountain craft has for its object to get us up and down mountains without mistakes.

All our training aims at reducing continually the limits within which our mistakes might occur. But human beings are fallible, and mountains are perverse. Mistakes will still be made;

Mountain craft has for its object to get us up and down mountains without mistakes. All our training aims at reducing continually the limits within which our mistakes might occur.

But human beings are fallible, and mountains are perverse.

Mistakes will still be made; and it is our business to learn how to remedy them, as well as how to avoid them. Our corrective technique must seek to prevent mistakes developing into disasters;

… muscles failing, we must give warning at once, and then hang on for just the extra second—nearly always possible—which will allow our friend above to brace every muscle to meet the direct pull, or to intrude his utmost ‘spring’ between the rope and the belay.

There exists a superstition that to fall silently is to fall courageously.

The man above is sure to hold—“that’s his business”; whereas our own concern, in such extremity, lies only with our own dignity. But even in falling we remain a member of the party, and we have no right to indulge a personal gratification.

Deaths above the clouds or under the water are taken as heroic incidents, excusable in the interests of human progress. Deaths upon rock or under snow, inspired by the like and often by an even more disinterested spirit of adventure, are condemned as folly.

Mountaineering must be judged by a spiritual, not a utilitarian, standard.

Courage, moral and physical, that has its source in vigorous vitality and its goal in the extension of human freedom, finds on the hills its hardiest school.

It is a very wholesome emulation that leads men, as their skill and power increase, to measure them against ever-increasing natural difficulties.

Our competition with the mountains injures no other human competitor by our success. Our conquest of them ends only in the conquest of ourselves.

During these last years by none has the sacrifice been made more willingly than by our younger climbers. Their courage was that of the races from which they sprang: to mountaineering they owed its discovery and its training.

The Press may be expected to become for the time an extra burden; its curiosity is better eluded by carefully worded anticipation than left to its own sensational inventiveness.

Violent death is savage in its reactions; and manners and taste, which survive only as a thin glaze upon our semi-civilized communities, evaporate at its first rumour.

Although I have thought it right not to exclude entirely some suggestion as to dealing with cases of serious or fatal accident, forty-eight out of fifty mountaineers may, and do, finish their career without ever being actively concerned in one.

With this veil, constant but always renewing, it subdues the barrenness and the aggressive angularity proper to their period of immaturity and change, and preserves for them the aloofness that is at once the protection and the charm of free-growing childhood.

It is a mistake to think of the Alps or the Himalaya as venerable because their heads are white: theirs are all the irrepressible impulse, the uneven humour, the unconscious cruelty and the overflowing vitality of froward but jolly children.

A mountaineer may be satisfied to nurse his athletic infancy upon home rocks, and he may be happy to pass the later years of his experience among the more elusive impressions and more subtle romance of our old and quiet hills.

and that, while moving, we are satisfied with a single point where the whole ten would not have seemed superfluous, had we halted to admire the panorama.

But holds, on ice as on rock, are not intended to be held in perpetuity.

The claw is not only useful upon steep ice: on hard repellent snow it spares us the penance of stamping or scraping steps. It is equally reassuring to foothold and nerve on ice-lacquered rocks, or on broken rock surfaces coated with wind-snow or glaze.

The projecting snow will interrupt communications and interfere with any simultaneous action in pulling from above and below. Nor can the man below, suspended in air, really do much to help.

Tie a rope round your chest and a bough; drop ten feet on it, and then try to pull yourself up it!

And a man in a crevasse is much worse situated for attempting juggling feats. The constriction of the rope alone will soon make him helpless and later unconscious.

I have known of difficult situations where even two men above proved insufficient for the complex task of retaining firm fixed anchors, clearing obstructions and pulling up.

In any case no mechanical device can be equivalent to the power of a third man, and two men can never be as safe as three.

Once this is conceded, we may admit that a number of good mountaineers will probably continue to hold the view that two is the best number for many sorts of climbing;

In certain cases, such as bridges and cornices, both snow and ice are in question, and the notes are then supplementary to those made under general ice craft.

To make snow steps is a matter of muscle and rhythm; to use them, one of balance and endurance; but to know how to avoid making them and where not to make them is the science of snow craft.

We may learn to identify snow states by description: nothing but experiment can teach us how to deal with them.

Only experience and touch can tell whether snow is or is not overcharged for the angle at which it is lying.

It is astonishing what a quantity of water snow will hold without moving; and again, what a trifle will set it falling or arrest it.

I have seen a whole quiet mountain face break into avalanches under the extra snow weight discharged during a few minutes of after-squall;

… less fatiguing for a heavy man to make his own steps, where he allows beforehand for the ‘give’ of the snow, than to stride out behind expecting a firm tread, only, in two out of three steps, to find the floor give way under him.

Irregular resistances are the negation of rhythm.

Unless he has the shortest legs of his party, the step maker must always shorten his normal stride on soft snow.

But these are just the situations which differentiate between good and bad mountaineers.

Danger is a matter for our individual judgment, and if a guide, however famous, makes steps at a level that seems to our mountain sense to allow too narrow a margin, we need never have the least hesitation in starting to make another line below.

The implied criticism is better than remonstrance.

and two, equally singular, the case of a party, which contains only one mountaineer capable of leading the return route, attempting in mist a climb whose difficulty will necessitate the expert going last on the descent—would the use of red paper seem to be justified.

Waste paper is inelegant, and makes an unimpressive substitute for hill craft.

But mist is a subtle enemy on glaciers, and we may sympathize with folk who meet it by tricks when they happen to have brought a box of them with them.

Glissading is an art that rewards the skilful.

For the inexpert, though the pleasure in its prospect never dies, the actual performance is more often productive of aching shins and wet clothes, than of birdlike exhilaration.

Stones, roots and hummocks intrude; and nowhere is a human being more helpless, once he has lost control, than on steep, slippery grass. If he once starts to roll, a broken arm or a bad shaking may be the least disagreeable consequence.

There have been more serious accidents due to slips on grass than on all the snow mountains of the world put together.

Reconnoitring precedes in action the exercise of mountain craft. But as an art it is the gold cup in the sack mouth of a mountaineer’s equipment.

Its effective mastery must rest upon his previous accumulations of practical experience. It may therefore, fittingly, be put in last.

If we can only make sure that the rock is sound, and fix a general line of ascent, the overcoming of the ‘impossibles’ or the ‘improbables’ in detail can well be left to the moment.

If we could map out a whole climb before we did it, much of the pleasure would be lost.

To the resources of rock technique no rock that is sound, and not obviously absurd, is impossible, either by attack or turning movement.

He must think for himself and study for himself. In summer the real business of climbing usually begins when the glacier or the summer snowline is reached, but in winter a ski-runner can kill himself in an avalanche within an hour of the hotel.

Snow craft begins in winter at the hotel door.

The careful study of snow is a fascinating branch of nature study. More can be learned from books than the reader might imagine.

It steadily improves. In sheltered places the crystals gradually grow in size so that sometimes you find large leaf-like formations, which rustle under the ski like autumn leaves.

Such snow is a dream of paradise.

Powder snow is the ideal running surface. It is equally good for straight running and for swings. In deep soft powder the Telemark is the best swing, but in fairly compact powder any turn or swing is easy and safe.

In other words,

“The milder the frost the better the crust.”

This rule is important. It often happens in spring that one has to start down before the sun has produced a surface melting. Again and again the first thousand feet or so of descent have been spoiled because the crust was too hard and slippery.

The conditions that are produced by Föhn are, however, spring conditions rather than winter conditions; for Föhn, though by no means uncommon in winter, is at least abnormal, whereas periods, more or less prolonged, of Föhn weather may be regarded as normal in spring.

The peasants have a saying that, if the Föhn did not blow, the good God and the warm sun could do little with the snow.

Certainly but for Föhn Switzerland would still be covered with glaciers.

The peasants have a saying that, if the Föhn did not blow, the good God and the warm sun could do little with the snow.

Certainly but for Föhn Switzerland would still be covered with glaciers.

Föhn, strictly speaking, should be used only for the warm dry wind that blows from the south, and which has been the cause of so many fires. The fire of Grindelwald was caused by this type of Föhn.

The dampness in the air saturates the snow with moisture and increases its weight. During a severe Föhn you will often see huge ground avalanches almost as destructive as those that fall in spring. When the Föhn is blowing ski-ing is always extremely dangerous.

Fortunately, it is also extremely unpleasant, or fatal avalanche accidents would be more frequent.

The dry Föhn (see p. 418) is much less dangerous. Unless it is very pronounced, it will hardly affect northern slopes in winter, though it may convert a south slope, usually covered by hard crust, and therefore safe, into soft wet and dangerous snow.

III. The Wind-slab.—

The wind-slab is the most treacherous of all avalanches, the most difficult to foresee, and the most incalculable in effect.

Falling snow is usually accompanied in the High Alps, and often accompanied in the lower regions, by wind. If the wind is powerful, the falling snow is driven over exposed ridges in whirlwinds, and comes to rest on the lee-side and in sheltered hollows.

An avalanche does not start by a kind of snowball action. It starts with a sharp crack, and the sudden sliding away of a deep layer of snow.

Watch snow sliding off a roof and you will understand that an avalanche is very sudden and overwhelming.

Almost every avalanche leaves a clean line of cleavage behind—a wall of snow which is exactly as deep as the avalanche at its birth.

None the less, if it be permitted to state a preference, I for one should give my vote to May months.

Contrast is the greater teacher, and May is the month of contrasts.

I think of moments when one stepped on to a high ridge after hours among the burning snow-fields of May, and looked down, with a shock of surprise, on to the valleys dressed in a green that was different, transfigured, miraculous—a green that the valley-dweller …

The soft film gave an excellent purchase and prevented the ski side-slipping helplessly as one began to turn, for the ski cut in under the film and peeled it away.

Until a man has skied down from some glacier pass at dawn on film crust he has yet to learn the best that ski-ing can yield.

That run from the Oberaarjoch stands out as one of the finest runs of my life. The great charm of film crust is that fast running can be combined with absolute safety, for a dangerous fall is almost impossible on this surface.

Guides are often dreadfully impatient, and have the greatest objection to spending a long time on the summit of a peak.

Many guides seem to regard summit views with studied malevolence, and very few guides really understand spring snow.

If, as often happens, the arrival on the summit occurs after midday, it is absurd to spoil a perfect descent by running down in the afternoon. The amateur must exercise reasonable restraint and insist on waiting.

The cook-house should be made within a very short distance of the Europeans’ tents, as it rains more often than not at the time of the evening meal.

A good ‘boy’ is one who has a fire going to make tea while the camp is being pitched.

At a base camp latrines should be constructed, and at a temporary camp the men should be instructed to go to a certain definite distance.

Finally, it may be appropriate to quote the advice given by a distinguished traveller, the late Mrs. Bishop:

“Never take anything you can possibly do without.”

To this we might add another counsel: Take everything you are likely to require, and leave things behind when they can no longer be carried.

Our experience was that young unmarried men were to be preferred.

The others got home-sick.

A mountaineering expedition to Spitsbergen might lay out its plans on many different lines, but, broadly speaking, there are two main choices between which to select.

I feel convinced, however, that an enterprising party of three or four climbers could spend a season in Spitsbergen and have an excellent time at not more than twice the cost of a corresponding season in the Alps, and possibly for a good deal less.

Ingenuity, adaptability and enterprise will be essential. After all, for what kind of travel that is worth while are they not?

Note.—The foregoing was written before the war. Recent commercial developments have made Spitsbergen much more easy of access.

As to more general conduct: Refrain from whistling. Do not bathe naked before natives.

Never lose your temper except on purpose and with a definite object.

Never allow your servants to be familiar or to enter your tent with their shoes on. Do not laugh or joke with your men unless you are master of the language. If you do, you may be as broad as possible, especially with Gurkhas.

In the case of a single big mountain, the method of attack will be in the nature of siege operations; and in this case a siege train, in the form of Piedmontese guides, makes for success.

Still, a siege is dull, and to get the full pleasure out of a trip in the Himalaya, amateurs and not guides are the best companions.

The difficulty is to get them for an absence of several months from England.

Travelling facilities have much improved during the last few years. The steamboat service from England is better, but more remains yet to be done in this respect.

The North Sea has not improved, and never will.

A quickened train service from Christiania to Throndhjem shortens the journey up to the romantic north by a good day. The completion of the picturesque Bergen to Christiania railway has revolutionized travel in many ways, both good and bad.

The 120 miles’ length of the Lofoten Islands are also built up of granite and gabbro.

The first view of these islands gives a sensation of exaltation and joy. And their colour!

It is the same formation as the Coolin, and the same influences are at work.

Sixty-five miles farther north the Stedtind, or Anvil peak, a monolith with one diagonal crack across the face, rises 5200 feet out of the sea.

Probably it is the most hideous mountain monster on our planet. Yet there are only 15 feet of especial difficulty to be crossed when the ascent is made from the back. True, but these 15 feet are highly sensational!

There are still left unclimbed in this region other gruesome peaks which await mountaineers capable of taking the initiative.

down the main axis of the ridge and downwards on each side. In years of little snow, consequently, scores of quadrangular masses of névé and ice are left, on every side of which are deep square-walled crevasses.

Woe betide the party which descends such a ridge without using the greatest care.

Few men may have experienced these conditions, but those who have will always retain a lively memory of them.

… is not necessary to repeat, to mountaineers, that most Englishmen who have climbed in Norway return again and again, to a country which has still much of the romance of exploration, and, for them, the sympathetic interest of an historical connection with their racial consciousness.

I myself like to believe that we, who take our pleasures on the mountains—and the more grisly these mountains are the better we like them!—have inherited the passion from our ‘Norsk ancestry,’

who, as we gather from an old Saga, indulged in the sport of cliff climbing nearly one thousand years ago.

While distance lends enchantment, it also, not infrequently, presents difficulties.

The mountaineer, probably more than most people, realizes this as, beside his winter fire in England, he sees through the smoke-rings of evening pipes alluring visions of the pine-clad Rockies, of the lonely Caucasus, of the giant Himalaya, of the high Andes and of the …

And this very desolation provides the Pyrenees with peculiar difficulties: there the mountaineer will find himself almost completely alone; there are few guides, few climbing parties, few huts, no good climbing centres, no good maps, and seldom any detailed descriptions of routes.

He will have to be dependent on himself and himself only, and it is in this that their appeal and their value lie.

The portion of the Pyrenees which will most interest the mountaineer is that which lies between the Vallée d’Aspe immediately to the south of Pau, on the west, and the Val d’Aran, immediately beyond Luchon, on the east—a distance of some 70 miles.

A prismatic compass with a protractor and an aneroid will be found very useful for ascertaining the exact position of the party.

A passport should on no account be forgotten: the Customs officers and frontier police give little serious trouble, but occasionally they are apt to assert themselves, and in this case a passport has a most soothing influence upon them.

If no member of the party knows Spanish, a conversation book would be of use. A small knowledge of French is essential, and in each Spanish village there is usually some one who knows French and will act as interpreter.