CHAPTER IV

ROCK CLIMBING

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.

Some men, and nearly all women, when they use the knee incline it inward across the front of the body, so as to place it on a hold with its point or outside surface in the direct line of ascent. This leads to a very constricted attitude. The lower foot cannot be brought up below in support to any hold on the direct line, and, after the lift, a pull on the rope or a violent effort will be necessary to recover the balance or get started off the knee again. The knee should be inclined outward away from the body, and should use a hold with its inside surface, to the right or left of the direct line of ascent. The spring off knee and shin from such a hold lifts the weight lightly in the direct line, with the body continuously close to the rock, and the lower foot can be brought up easily to a supporting hold in the direct line below the body, so as to relieve the knee. (Try the positions on the edge of a table or on a step-ladder, and the difference becomes clear.)

On very smooth slabs, when foothold fails, the knees and shins can be used to relieve by their friction a pull-up on the hands. If we are wearing shoes this is a rare case, as a soft sole can cling anywhere (and more safely) that a knee can. Such a friction-cling need necessarily be only for a short distance,--about the stretch of a man’s reach,--since the boot, as soon as it has reached it, will be able to use anything that has before been sufficient for the fingers to hold on by. There is only the one exception--the problem of a vertical or sharply inclined slab, offering us only a smooth narrow crack or a smooth sloping outside edge. The crack or edge may be good enough for the fingers, but too smooth or steep for a sideways boot toehold. In this case the whole outside surface of thigh, knee and leg come into play to give friction-holds on the slab, while the hands are shifted upwards in the crack or up along the edge. (The positions can be tried on a heavy door or gate, set on one corner and inclined steeply in the angle of a wall. For the one case the door must be sun-cracked!)

[Sidenote: The Hand.]

The hands and arms have to learn less than the legs. They are less important for anything but purely gymnastic climbing; they have more inherited instinct for their work; they are under the constant direction of the eye, and therefore do not need the same training in automatic movements to carry out anticipatory judgments.

The hands are always auxiliary to the feet and to the adjustment of the body. Their power only misleads into a bad style if they are used to the neglect of other parts of the machine. In continuous climbing they complement the lifting movement and assist the balance. Their service is for impulse, adhesion, occasionally for traction, but never, if avoidable, for suspension at rest. Footwork, not handwork, is the basis of balance climbing.

[Sidenote: Cling Holds.]

In steep climbing, where they come more into play, instinct directs them how to cling. But in taking finger-holds, especially for pulls, it must be remembered the hand is as fine a piece of machinery as the foot, and less protected. It can be easily cut or bruised, or the tips rendered callous so that they lose their sense of touch. 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. Abrasions on back or side of the hand, or on the inside of the wrist and forearm, are another matter. They almost inevitably follow upon the action of arm-levering and on the taking of press and push holds (afterwards described). Incidentally, also, frequent knee and shin scrapes and bruises are the signals of clumsy footwork and scrambling methods.

As a complement to the ordinary cling holds, when the fingers cling over an edge or knob and hold the weight in suspense, balance climbing based upon footwork enables us to make use of a whole group of invaluable ‘under’-holds. In these the hand, gripping palm upwards under a down-turned edge or point, is getting security and propulsion by pulling the body inwards against the upward thrust of the balance from the feet. The value of these holds depends upon our practice in balance climbing, which enables us to ‘compensate’ as between our hand and foot hold and to maintain a careful counterpoise of the hand-pull against the foot-thrust. We can use them with effect anywhere between the level of our eyes and our waist, according to our strength, and our ability to use them adds immensely to our ease in climbing vertical or overhanging rock. A cling ‘over’-hold on such rock pulls us inward, and adds blindness and body friction to the other forces working against us. A cling ‘under’-hold keeps body and eyes free at the length of our arms, bent or straight according to our convenience. Granite is rich in such fashion of hold, and on rough, catchy aiguille climbs many of us would use them by preference before the more obvious over-holds.

Cognate with the under-holds are ‘side’-holds, where the edge or point of rock projects and is grasped sideways. The principle of their use is the same as for the under-hold, except that the hand is turned sideways. Their commonest occasion is in the ascent of cracks, when the outward side-pull of the hand against the inside edge of the crack is set against the upward thrust from our foothold or knee-jam in the crack below, and our balance technique is occupied in compensating between them.

In cases both hands may be pulling against opposite sides of such a crack, and the compensation will then have to be made between the two arm-pulls instead of between the single arm-pull and the foot-thrust. To make any upward progress on such holds without any help from foothold or body friction calls for immense arm and finger power; but in connection with a foot-thrust or knee-jam the opposing side-pulls are often of use. A square-cut or rounded edge, without any projection, is sufficient to give good side-holding.

[Sidenote: Push and Press Holds.]

Instinct will tell us how to hang on to over-holds and pull up at the length of the arms. Practice in balance and footwork will teach us how to avail ourselves of the varieties of the more accommodating under and side cling holds. But the balance climber has to learn, for the yet greater convenience of his eye, the ease of his balance and the economy of his arm-power, to take his handholds as low as possible, and in co-operation with, not in opposition to, his foot-thrusts. He soon discovers that ‘push’ and ‘press’ holds are more powerful and accommodate themselves better to continuous upward progress in balance than any form of cling holds. I use ‘push’ of a direct upward thrust of the arm from a horizontal or inclined ledge or hold, and ‘press’ of a lateral or diagonal thrust against a vertical or inclined side-wall. (The first can be tried on any secure mantelpiece; the second, not so well, in any narrow passage.) The arm, for push holds, is used after the fashion of a leg; the hands are pushed, palm downward, on ledges at a height that will allow of the weight, with often the impulse of a spring or foot-thrust, being lifted on the straightening arms. The arms for this movement possess much of the strength and the ease in balancing usually attributed only to the legs. To lift the weight on a direct push is easier for many than to raise it by a long-arm pull. On push holds the weight of the body keeps the hands firmly in place; and a hold by thrusting friction, even if it be only on a rounded or sloping ledge, calls for less effort than to keep the same weight in suspension from the crook of a muscular finger round an ideal hold at the stretch of the arm. The strongest position for push holds is that with the fingers turned inward, the palms downwards, in front of the body, at a level anywhere between the waist and neck, according to the individual power of spring from the feet. But push holds outside the body are also useful; the fingers are then turned outwards, palms down. Either of these positions secures the help of the twisting arms as levers for retaining the balance during the upward movement.

Upon slabs or on rounded holds at awkward angles a very useful hand device is the combination of the push and cling holds. The wrist or forearm rests along or over some protuberance so as to secure a downward push hold, while the fingers are turned to cling across some edge of this hold and keep the arm from slipping off it. The arm would slip off the push hold but for the anchor of the fingers; the fingers would slip out of their awkward cling hold but for the friction anchor of the arm. Thus by a delicate compensation between the forearm pushing and the fingers clinging we obtain one sound combination hold out of two separately insecure holds. Ledges are more frequently rounded or inclined against us than square and convenient. The reinforcement of an arm push hold by a finger cling, or the giving of a right direction to a finger cling by the friction anchor of wrist or forearm, is therefore of constant service and deserving of all practice.

In press holds the flat of the hands is thrust sideways against a smooth surface of vertical or steep rock, which may be the retaining wall of a chimney, or a projecting leaf or corner. It is a help if the outer edge of the hand can rest against any seemingly valueless excrescence. With the hand so held the elbow has only to be lifted, and the arm becomes a lever, thrusting the balance inward, secured by, and itself securing, the friction of the hand. Two hands so pressed against any sloping surfaces can lift the whole weight. Pressed against vertical surfaces--the inside walls of cracks, for instance, too narrow to admit the body--they are sufficient to retain the balance, while the feet find any slight hold, or even only friction holds, to supply propulsion. How good the foothold must be to complement such handholds is a matter of practice in compensations.

Push and press holds with the hands, combined with the twist and leverage of the arms, in combinations innumerable, are the refinements of exceptionally difficult climbing. Their merit is the saving of muscular effort and the substitution for it of the mechanism of balance. Their use has inevitably grown out of the new fashion of footwork developed in balance climbing, grounded on the recognition that the more extended the body and the wider apart feet and hands are fixed, the less is the power and the greater is the effort of single movement, and therefore the greater the interruption to continuous rhythm. To keep the balance steady, the eyesight free and the rhythm constant, footholds and handholds must be taken at convenient distances well within the compass of the reach.

[Sidenote: In Cracks.]

In difficult crack climbing the extent to which pressure, the jamming of a leg, the touch of a calf or knee, or the twisting of a hand or forearm can be used to ease the muscular strain must be learned by practice. A fist or finger may be hooked in a smooth rift, or a foot slanted into a crack, with only friction attachment, and a slight twist to arm or leg converts either into a secure lever for lifting the weight. The clenching of the fist or the tightening of the muscles of a jammed forearm, or even the inflation of the chest, may at need serve the same purpose. The inexpert eye might see little difference between such movements and those of gripping or clinging. As a matter of fact, the difference is maintained even here. Where a grip climber aims at rest-points of pendent security, and struggles between them by muscular pulls, the balance climber is primarily concerned to keep freedom and continuity of movement. He is using the balance of the body, if only for fractions of a second, to relieve the direct weight on his arms or the indirect strain on his legs. His arms and legs are levers in converting proportionately slight muscular efforts into big continuous movements, making friction and the mere weight of the balancing body do a large share of the work. Consequently, to the expert eye, his body is seen to ascend on a line slightly farther out from the rock than the grip climber in the same place, and in a different sequence of attitudes. He will be avoiding at all costs the grip climber’s temptation to be too secure, to fix himself in attitudes or on holds from which he will have to emerge by direct muscular pulls. In corners or chimneys he will use a set of slighter and less attractive holds, if they exist, farther out, so as to keep his body free from friction against the rock. If such a set of holds is lacking altogether, he will be employing press holds with the hands, lever holds with arm or leg, twisted pressure-thrusts from his foot and ankle against one wall to his knee against the other--any device that will relieve him of direct pulls and will leave his body free to help him at any second with some balance adjustment. For, once the body is really jammed up against the rock or in a crack, arms and legs are usually working only against one another or against the friction of shoulders or thighs, and the mechanism can merely struggle and exhaust itself.

[Sidenote: On Slabs.]

Similarly upon slabs he will be selecting holds, not according to their size and obviousness, but according as they are arranged well within his comfortable span. He avoids at all costs getting ‘spread-eagled.’ The surest safeguard against getting stuck is to select the holds beforehand, and then be certain that your feet and hands use them as you designed. Let nothing tempt you to alter your plan once you are moving. This is the hardest lesson to learn. If you have any eye at all, your alteration will never be for the better. Whenever, as must occur in awkward places, your sight of the holds is interrupted, keep your head and stick coolly to your recollection. Many climbers get slightly flurried once they are ‘blind.’ They forget their plan, even the existence perhaps of the one hold that made the passage seem possible in anticipation. They revert to struggling and arm-clinging. Their agitation often takes the form of a combative recklessness. They feel they will fight it out with the holds they have got rather than descend and recover the safer line they planned. This liability to flurry may take years to master. Most of us have suffered from it; and notably in those attractive holes under chockstones or overhangs--holes so irresistibly tempting to thrust one’s head and shoulders into, but from which, blinded and out of balance, it is extremely trying to emerge. Notably, again, on those steep problem-slabs, where a single tempting hold has spread-eagled us helplessly and left us wondering how long the single nail will support us.

The only protection is foresight, a steady adherence to plan, and the resolution always to climb as far out as possible from the rock.

If the hands are allowed to pull the nose into the rock we are easily pounded. The protection is footwork and the flexible ankle. It is the business of the ankle to bend and stay bent at whatever angle may keep our body in safe balance and away from the rock, and to transmit our weight to the foot at just the right angle to hold it firm on its sloping stance. The farther out from the rock we can keep the weight, the steeper the apparent angle of foothold which it is safe to use. On steep slabs a very flexible ankle will often let the foot rest flat, getting an overlapping or friction hold on several rugosities of surface with its whole sole where a less practised ankle or a stiff-sided boot must trust to the less secure catch of a side-nail on one such roughness. Quiet movement is essential; to leave a slight hold hurriedly is as dangerous as to arrive on it clumsily. If you have to use a knee or hip or forearm as a friction hold, set it as gently and relieve it as lightly as if it were a single finger.

[Sidenote: Chimney Climbing.]

Chimney climbing is another occasion for too alluring rest positions and for tempting but over-close contacts. By a ‘chimney’ we usually mean a rift that will admit the body, as contrasted with a ‘crack’ which will not. The method of ascending between the vertical or steeply sloping walls of chimneys, wherein holds for ordinary foot and hand work are lacking, is usually called ‘back and knee’; more correctly it should be named ‘back and foot,’ as the knee need rarely be used. The position is with the back against one wall and the feet against the other, the legs bent or straight according to the width, and the thrust of the spine and shoulders providing the security. Here again the proper object is continuous movement, and such attitudes as may assist towards it. The temptation for the safety climber is to sit across the chimney, with the legs straight and almost at right angles to the body. The body is then wedged; it sinks slightly inside the clothes, which are fast to the rock by friction, and, while it is quite secure, presents also the utmost resistance to any upward impulse. The right position for the feet against the opposite wall is slightly below the body, as low as will allow of an easy upward impulse being given to the body without risk of the feet slipping. The hands and arms are stretched downward, past the body, with the arms bent and the palms flat against the rock behind. For movement upward, one foot is brought across from the opposite wall and thrust with the flat sole against the rock close under the body. The friction of the foot then allows the bent knee to be partially straightened, and the body raised. While it rises, and the shoulders thus come clear of the rock, the thrust of the arms and hands backward against the rock takes the place of the jam with the shoulders, and so keeps the foot against the opposite wall in its place. So soon as the lift is completed and the back is at rest against the rock again, the under foot that has been used is shot across to a higher position against the opposite wall, the hands move up, and the other leg comes across, to act as spring in its turn. The body is thus really ascending, poised, between the shifting pressures of the arms and feet, and is only taking instants of rest against the rock to allow them to take new positions. It is entirely wrong, but very usual, to walk up the opposite wall with the feet, and wriggle the shoulders up the near rock in accord. This is wasteful of clothes and of energy, and not so secure in its actual movement. For, on the right method, if the foot against the opposite wall shows an inclination to slip as the shoulders rise, the arms can thrust away from their wall and so apply extra pressure to keep the foot in place, even while they are still pushing the body upward; whereas, on the wrong method, the back has no such elastic margin; it cannot push across and downwards while it is itself moving up. In all such feats the more freedom that can be kept for movement, even at the cost of adopting more exposed positions and of bridging ourselves across intimidatingly wider angles, the greater in reality is the safety.

In narrow chimneys, too smooth for foot or hand hold and too narrow to allow of secure bridging with the back against the one wall, it is possible to move up with the feet pressed flat against the two walls, one on each side: one with the toe pointing up in front of us, the other with the toe down below us; the body is kept upright in the middle on the spring of the bent knees and supported by the pressure of the hands, placed like the feet one against each wall. In this fashion we can ‘rock’ up satisfactorily. But the method is only safe to practise with soft soles, and it is of course very strenuous.

Wherever possible we prefer to keep outside a chimney, or corner, altogether, and use our feet up the edges of its retaining walls. If we are forced inside, we adopt any sets of holds for our feet up the opposing walls, however wide a split they mean for the legs and however fearsome the depth may look between our feet, before we resort to the cramping, waterworn recess and the slower method of ‘back and foot.’ Balance climbers return, as it were, to the gully epoch only under protest and where footholds fail.

[Sidenote: Rib Riding.]

In clambering up sharp noses, flakes or ribs, where bodily contact with the rock is enforced, the same principle of keeping far out and aiming at continuous movement again holds good. To sit close astride, and claw up the rock by means of the thighs, elbows and hands, is customary, and seemingly safe; but the really safer method, because it admits of uninterrupted progress, is to keep the body away, and to grip with the sole and flexed ankle, or with the knees and sides of the feet, on either side of the rib, or to lock one leg diagonally across the edge so that the foot and knee press against its opposing facets. Meanwhile the hands, holding opposite ways, grip across the edge above. In such a position the body can sink at any instant, for rest, into contact with the rock, and can rise again from the feet, knees or shin without effort. It is useful to remember that when the friction of loosely clothed parts of the body is solely relied upon for hold (as when we are clinging close with thighs and body to a rib), the body always sinks slightly inside the clothes, and has so much the more difficulty in restarting a fresh movement.

[Sidenote: Wet Rock.]

It must be added that when rocks are wet, friction cannot be relied upon, and at the same time the security of foot and hand hold is greatly diminished. Wet rocks may mean slimy rocks, and always mean cold rocks. Cold soon chills the muscles, lessens the sense of touch, and notably impairs both the confidence and the power to climb. On a wet day it is well to carry some spare dry gloves. If, then, we have to make some particularly awkward balance or lift, and the fingers are wet and cold, a fresh glove will give us a few holds of better friction, until it, too, gets wet. In the Alps wet rocks mean glazed rocks, and we avoid them. In our own hills we accept wet rocks as part of the day, but we treat them with an extra degree of respect. Men in soft soles, on dry, hot rock in sunshine, can climb with complete and hilarious security places that rain and wind make it foolish to attempt. For most men the standard of possibility varies as much as 40 per cent. This is never sufficiently allowed for in youth. Fired by emulation, young climbers arrive in rain where their rivals have passed on sun-dry holds. “A rock is a rock; and, by George, it must go!” is their motto; and if their fortune is better than their knowledge, they accomplish a climb which substitutes a danger happily escaped for every difficulty reasonably mastered by their predecessors.

On the other hand, to accustom ourselves to find our rock climbs, and to climb their wet rocks under all conditions of weather, is necessary training. Provided we allow for the difference in permissible attempt, we risk little, in our small-scale home climbing, by persisting against moderately uncomfortable circumstances. We are the better able to endure them when they surprise us on more serious alpine expeditions. A little adverse circumstance restores much of their original difficulty and adventure to many fine mountaineering climbs too apt to be neglected by modern specialists because of their straightforwardness under sunny conditions. A man who can work cheerfully up an old-fashioned British rock climb against rain and wet holds is a sounder climber than the expert who will only do the supreme ‘inventions,’ and those only in fair weather for fear of spoiling his record. 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.

[Sidenote: Glazed Rock.]

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. It makes an unexpected and more dangerous appearance when a sudden fall of temperature freezes the mist, fine rain or thawing snow after its fall or as it falls on to the rocks, while we may be actually on them. I know of no more treacherous move in the mountain game or one which calls for more cautious, laborious and ingenious countermoving.

In Britain, as I have said elsewhere, we have to beware of it almost as much, in the winter and early spring months. It may follow a silver thaw, a cold fog or a mist on a change of wind. By starting our climbing early upon hoar-frosted rocks or fresh snow we may create our own glaze by hand and foot pressure. On really bad film-glaze nothing is sure for hand or foot hold; but a glove or soft sole (not rubber) has a better chance of ‘freezing on’ than a boot or cold finger. A thick sock, pulled over the boot, will help, or we _may_ take off our boots and climb in the safer stockings.

On steep glazing rock, and upon wet rock if its surface grows greasy with the moisture, continuous climbing becomes immediately interrupted climbing. We have to consider the chances of a hold failing or breaking or of a man slipping as increased some tenfold. We must take precautions as for unsound rock and protect ourselves with anchors, belays and the like. However easy the rock may normally be, glaze or grease introduces a new element of ‘danger,’ and the transparent threat forces us, if we are wise, to treat any moderate climb with the respect due to serious difficulty.

[Sidenote: Summary.]

I have only selected for description a few conspicuous features of ordinary rock surface, which might illustrate the underlying principles of a good rock climbing style. Their detail is negligible except as illustration. Climbing situations are infinitely various, and men vary as whimsically in their personal adjustments. Long before he has reached the point of leading difficult passages, the climber will have got his own obstinate idea of how to apply the principles in detail to

## particular rock features.

For the benefit of the less instructed I would only repeat that rock climbing is best learned upon long and varied passages, away from the staccato allurements of boulders, trick climbs and belays. Style is the mastery of rhythmic movement, movement continuously secure and continuously effortless over every modulation of hold during a long day. When a climber can traverse a long ridge of average difficulties safely and quickly, stepping the edge by balance or dropping on either side as he goes and using balance holds with either hand, without check to his party, he is already a safe climber and on the way to be a sound mountaineer. If he proceeds to follow the craft into some of its more ingenious departures, it will only mean a more elaborate application of the same principles that he has already learned to practise: to trust to his feet; to make use of his ankles; to tread lightly and precisely; to keep the hands low; to choose holds in advance and stick to them; to move well out from the rock; to rely on balance rather than muscle; to make continuous, supple and eventually graceful movement his ideal; not to rest satisfied until he has acquired rhythm; and lastly, never to get flurried.

UNSOUND ROCK

While a climber is still only concerned with perfecting his own adjustments in relation to rock requirements, he will be unconsciously collecting a great deal of practical information about different types of rock. If he is of a curious habit, he will be led on to some superficial study of petrology or geology. But even if he have no memory for names or imaginative grasp of æons, he cannot help gradually amassing a quantity of empirical knowledge as to what kinds of holds to expect if a rock looks so and so in outline, whether to reckon upon finding chimneys or traverses or flakes if its main lines of cleavage or fracture are such and such, and what to allow for in detail according to his distant observation of the general structure and weathering. The discovery of the name of a prevalent rock will tell him what kind of climbing to prepare himself for in a particular district, or the sight of it when he gets there will guide him in the selection and management of his climbs. He may never have been able to master the difference between Tertiary and Secondary, any more than remember the order of the Popes of Rome, and yet have qualified himself insensibly for that most fascinating form of speculative discussion, the designing of new routes in known or unknown districts. On a lower but still more useful plane he will have learned to judge from its general appearance whether rock is sound or unsound, and from its closer aspect where to expect unsound intrusions upon good rock.

The increased information now available about our hills enables us to avoid rock faces of uncomfortable notoriety and to attack eccentric types with precaution. A large number of climbs, even whole mountain walls, that used to be popular on account of the attraction of their weathered angles, are now left for the same reason almost unvisited. But unsound rock cannot always be eluded, and a climber has to be ready to deal with short bands or intrusions of inferior rock on any climb which he does not personally know, and on many to which he returns for love of their sounder sections. Fortunately, according to the nature of rock, these intrusions are rarer and shorter on steeper rock, and any more considerable section will provide its own alleviation in a relenting angle, where the softer surface has disintegrated more rapidly than its firmer surroundings. This may, of course, mean an overhang, to the climber’s disadvantage. If not, it will at least offer him an easier angle for advance over its unattractive trespass. On unsound rock every merit that characterizes finished climbing by balance, or compensation, is emphasized. A novice should never be allowed to lead. A grip climber is a danger on the rope and a suicidal choice as leader.

[Sidenote: Semi-detached.]

On bad rock every hold is an object of suspicion, since almost all the holds will be liable to fail under one or another direction of pull. The obviously bad hold, the hold that comes away at the first touch, anyone will reject. But our object on unsound rock is to get over it; and for that purpose to use its holds for what they are worth rather than to start casting them down in an attitude of righteous indignation--and insecurity. With a caressing hand the good climber discovers what pull the hold is likely to be good for, and his judgment telling him the direction and amount of pull that his next movement will demand from it, he will avoid loosening it beforehand by any test not necessary for this movement. The grip climber, therefore, who puts half a dozen directions of strain upon each handhold in any one lifting movement, will make no progress at all on unsound holds. If he does not test them beforehand, in the end he will fall. If he tests them properly in all the directions that his lift will demand, he will remove most of the holds before he can use them. The balance climber, who has practised putting only that direction of strain upon a hold which his own next movement and the hold’s security agree upon, is in less of a quandary. For, except in the case of fragments which are already detached, and clearly ready to fall, nearly every surface accident which is still in attachment to the main rock will stand light additional strain in at least one direction. This, of course, varies according to the stratification of the rock and its fractures. As an instance, on a steep face the ordinary lines of fracture may be vertical and horizontal to the discoverable inclination of the strata. If the ‘hold’ is already detached from the rock on both these lines, and only resting on a support, it is useless. If, however, the excrescence is fractured at its base, horizontally, but attached to the rock behind, vertically, it will be good for a straight outward pull. It can also be tested, but it cannot otherwise be trusted, for a downward or diagonal pull. If it is detached from the rock behind, vertically, but still part of the rock below it, horizontally, it is sound for a direct downward pull, but not for any outward or cross strain. If the strata strike diagonally, and the cleavages correspond, _mutatis mutandis_, the same rules apply for the different directions of pull, permissible or not, upon their holds.

A climber has not only to make sure what direction of strain he may safely put upon a hold, but to keep this direction of pull or thrust constant all through his upward or downward movement, irrespective of the changing position of his body in relation to the hold.

The vital importance of climbing by compensating balances becomes then apparent. A climber who has trained his mechanism to the habit of translating the support of any hold that any one of his extremities engages, by means of the balance of his body, into movement in any direction he requires, has little difficulty in keeping the strain he puts upon a single hand or foot hold constant in direction. He can do so even while he is using its support to lift his weight through a succession of angles past and over the hold. It is, in fact, the process that he has had to learn for his ordinary ‘sound’ climbing, if he has become a balance climber of precision or pace. A clumsy climber, or one who depends on grip normally, is helpless when faced with handholds of this ‘one-direction’ kind. He may discover by test how he ought to use them, but the moment the lifting or lowering movement begins the habit of his mechanism will reassert itself, and he will change the direction of his pull as his body nears or passes the hold. Even if he maintains the direction by an effort of will at the moment, his body will not have been trained to carry out the mechanical conversions with sufficient power to overcome the pure difficulty of many a passage, altogether apart from its insecurity. He will be forced to fall back upon muscle or grip to finish his movement, and the hold may break.

A grip climber who normally neglects footwork is in even worse case on unsound rock, when he has to use, or test, such ‘one-direction’ holds with his feet. On unsound rock good footwork is, if anything, more important than good handwork. Only exactly the same strain may be applied by the less sensitive feet, when they take the place of the hands on the hold. Since the downward thrust of a foot can only be slightly modified in direction, this limitation must be remembered in selecting and testing a hold by the hand. Otherwise it may not be sound for the later and different requirements of the foot. Foothold is always the danger-point on unsound rock; and this constitutes the peculiar demerit of such rock for ‘climbing down,’ when the foot alone must test and lead. A climber, especially when he is descending, must never trust to his feet alone, but protect them by at least one tested handhold. A good rule to remember in all very exacting climbing is that never less than three extremities should have hold. On unsound rock the better rule is, never less than four. The dangerous moment comes when one hand or foot is in process of testing or shifting to a new hold. The movement must be made without jerk; the weight must be distributed between the other points according to their merit; and the direction of the pull, as tested and found secure on each hold, must be remembered. Hence our motion over unsound holds may be properly described as creeping. Every attachment must be light but tenacious, and one tentacle is only released when the others are secure. On insecure rock we are no longer concerned to keep the body as far out as possible. Our object is secure, not free, movement. Consequently, we move with the body as close in to the rock as is consistent with sight and its freedom from catching. If, then, one hold does break, there is less outward pull upon the others, and the body can sink instantaneously against the rock and help to sustain us by its friction.

[Sidenote: Detached.]

Small, loose fragments should be thrown well out from the cliff, or tucked away discreetly on ledges that need not be used. Large, loose fragments are best left _in situ_, and the word passed down the line of their presence, until the last man, if he likes, may remove them. Often a block or large stone, which is detached from the parent rock both behind and through its base, may yet afford very sound foothold for a good foot climber, supposing it is seen to be resting on a level and sufficient ledge. The same may be the case with pinnacles or splinters, partially fractured or jammed in cracks. Tested and tactfully used, they are often stable for a steady thrust or pull in one direction at least; but much depends upon the nature of their bedding.

Rock on walls and ridges facing south, in the Alps or at home, must be suspected of detached leanings, until its family connections are demonstrated by investigation. Holds which have been covered by verdure or subjected to the action of moisture in any form have to be judiciously proved. Rocks projecting from ice or snow--those pleasant oases towards which we steer with such relief to ease our step-cutting or snow-wading--must always be approached as unsound rock. If, on occasion, they prove our suspicions wrong, they have only proved themselves an exception to a melancholy rule.

Except on frequented routes, it is never safe to assume the security of big detached blocks, poised on ridges or choked in gullies, unless their fashion of support is absolutely demonstrable. They should be left to the last man to test. From all accounts rash leaders who neglected this precaution have escaped more often and more miraculously than their intelligence, at least, deserved. A leader, if he has any doubt, should avoid touching such blocks altogether. If, for all his caution, a block gives unaccountably, he must hang on to it for all he knows, until the men below have got what shelter they can. Nor must he forget the rope. If the block catches the rope in falling, the danger is as great as if it strikes one of the party.

Apart from these and other permanent idiosyncrasies, most normally sound rock surface will be found to have its times and places of weathering or weakness. We have to learn to recognize the symptoms, forgetting our prejudices in favour of old and trusted rock types, and treat their intrusion with all the delicacy and consideration of tread and touch which we owe to the small infirmities of tried friends.

In so far as they are, or were, rock, moraine and scree may be called unsound.

[Sidenote: Moraine and Scree.]

The occasional stone on a steep glacier is a find for a foothold; but the stones that coat the ice-core of moraine slopes are merely treacherous. If we have to traverse a few steps on such a slope, it is best to knock the stone out and tread in its ice-socket.

The summit edges of moraines often offer passable going, especially if previous parties have knocked off the final blocks. Their side walls, whether of stone or of stone and mud conglomerate, are the least scalable and most exasperating inclines in the mountain world. They are often even too hard to make steps in, and it is fatal to attempt short cuts upon them.

In traversing along scree slopes, if the scree is small, the one thing to remember is to ‘accept the slip’; to place the foot lightly and let it slip till it stops; not to make convulsive efforts to recover it, or to keep the foot up to the same line of traverse. If the foot slips too far on steep scree, lean inward on the axe or stick, which is held point inward across the body. To ‘rush’ scree on anything but the downgrade is merely to waste energy and time. In ascending or traversing take short steps; tread always for a particular stone, and do not brown the mass of stones vaguely with a loose foot.

In travelling up or along big scree or moraine, balance and a sustained rhythm are the thing to aim at. On flat-stone moraine, step for the middle of the stone; on round or cornered stones, ‘dance’ from one upper edge to the next. Rather than break the rhythm, if no good hold, or possibly only an insecure-looking block, presents itself for the next foot, slacken the knee and put no weight on the leg while you are using the loose block; skimmer over it with the dropped leg of a horse at a big bank, and trust to the next step to bring you up again. If you balance lightly and move fast, a moving foothold is all but as good as a fixed one.

On moraine the axe is always our third leg of balance. On long moraines, or in traversing up or across scree slopes, it saves labour in the task of choosing stones to follow close behind another man, and let the swing of his feet draw yours mechanically on to the footholds he has used.

To descend light scree is one of the chief rewards of a long climbing day: to descend big scree one of its worst penances. The method falls more properly under the section devoted to Glissading.

UNUSUAL ROCK

Unsound rock is counterchecked by an intensification of sound method. To unusual rock we retort by an extension of our usual method. It would exaggerate its importance to discuss its varieties in greater detail than has seemed sufficient in the case of normal rock. A few instances will serve to show that our principles remain, for all rock, unaltered.

Slate has an insidious surface. The exposed edges, or spillikins, of strata may always break under a pull, unless they have allowed us to grasp a sufficiency of thickness. But slate has a worse trick. In chimney climbing, if we are using the usually safe and gentle hold of a thrust with the flat foot, or a press or push hold with the hand, against even a wide, smooth surface, the upper skin may crack locally at an uncertain distance from the point of pressure and allow foot or hand to shoot into space; and this always, unless the thrust is applied exactly at right angles to the lie of the strata. Our only safeguard is to extend to push and press holds on slate our practice with pull holds in general, and keep the direction of the pressure constant through all our lifting movement.

Quartz ledges and bands, which are the grateful solutions of many of our cliff problems, are treacherous. Quartz brittles off, in crystals or in masses, in unexpected directions. We cannot test it adequately until our full weight comes upon it; when it may be too late. And so we never step on to projecting quartz, or scale the vertical face of a seam, unless we have hand or foot hold upon good rock above or below it. Happily, quartz seams are usually narrow. We prefer soft-soled shoes, which will distribute the pressure over the uneven facets. Boot-nails snap the projecting crystals or slide on the flat facets, especially after rain. The fingers similarly must take general holds, and not trust to salient prisms. The direction of the growth of the crystals can guide us in applying our pressures. A seam lying back at a steep angle sometimes leaves good rock holds along its edges, where quartz and rock have weathered at an unequal rate. A seam at a gentle angle as often provides a delightful traverse of escape.

Soft sandstone, which in quarries and elsewhere is frequently used as a practice ground, has its own fashion of soft crumbling and its own body of hardened adherents. Its outlines are recognizable, and in mountain masses we avoid it altogether. But those who attempt it locally must remember that it is peculiarly deceptive for footwork. Its ledges dissolve under a stiff boot. Sand shoes, or still better, boots, are the only wear. Beginners should look for lines of ascent where the subjacent heaps are still uncarted and propitious in the event of failure. Old sandstone, when it emerges, is firmer for the feet but offers little handhold, and makes very fatiguing climbing.

Chalk, and the methods of dealing with it, form a study by themselves. Chalk climbing provides the missing link between rock and ice technique. Those who frequent its cliffs use big claws and ice methods, and pronounce it to be an unrivalled training for ice work. Its occasional hard surface and its abundant projecting flints, whose security is in inverse ratio to their graspability, have to be treated with the measures of precaution proper to unsound rock.

Marble builds peaks of imposing outline, but its edges are not constructed with an eye to good foot climbing. Its surfaces, where exposed, slope against us; its slipperiness dictates the use of soft soles; while the rubble with which it is cumbered makes soft soles comfortless. It has appeared to me more often dangerous than difficult.

Old lava is as tiresome as quartz, and less often available as a last resource. Desperately hard for the feet, it yet snaps out in diamond cubes and litters with wrenching rubble its already jarring surface. I know of no sound climbs upon it.

Gritstone has its own devotees and a growing literature. Its climbs and their mosaic perils have all the charm of a well-executed miniature.

Limestone, as the layman uses the term, is deceitful, and offers ridiculously little good climbing in proportion to the amount of it that protrudes plausibly from the surface of Europe. One of the closest escapes I have experienced was from a spontaneous fall of limestone rock on a venerable and bland-looking western cliff. In the form of ‘dolomite’ it offers very agreeable sharp-edged dwarf-climbs even in our islands, and it is to be regretted we have so little of good stature.

[Sidenote: In Quarries.]

Scrambling in home quarries, on chalk, gravel, blue-stone,--all kinds of rock,--is excellent practice. The surfaces are, however, raw and untempered by time, and the crude fractures and ledges by which we climb are made by man and survive by no natural law of the fittest. No experience of rock structure can therefore suffice to allow of calculation upon their security. Each hold must be separately tested before use. The risk is generally out of all proportion to the height. A rope from above should be used on any passage of doubt.

[Sidenote: Along Sea Cliffs.]

Sea cliffs have many votaries. It is perhaps ungrateful to class them as unusual rock, but their unfamiliar conditions, their wave-polished and often undercut bases, their summits artificially sculptured and constantly strained and fractured afresh by the fall of the cliff below, exclude them from a normal category. Their charm lies in their variety of rock, revealed in forms pensive, brooding, surprised, jovial or defiant, upon headland, island and stack. There are few more exhilarating scrambles than the granite outcrops of Cornwall, set in green seas, surf-spray and sunlight. The upper end of the coast of Sutherlandshire alone provides eight or nine different varieties of rock, and therefore of ascents. The whole island of Sark can be circumambulated at about the mid-height of its cliffs.

Traverses are the peculiar property of sea cliffs, which are often awkward or impossible of approach from their base for more direct ascent. Whole days, in fact if it were desirable a whole holiday lifetime of delightfully varied traversing at different levels may be had along the cliffs, high or low, of the west coasts of Scotland and of its islands, of Ireland, of England, and of parts of Wales. The north coast of Ireland has attractive sections alternating in this instance with pinnacles and scarps of decadent blends. Usually the return from such traverses can be made in the evening up a gully, by which we resume, if we wish, on the morrow. As a last resource in difficulties there is always the sea for a header of escape.

Rubber soles are the best wear; or, for some varieties, raw soft hide with the hair on, as worn in the west of Ireland; but rubber is, of course, treacherous on wet or weedy tidal rocks. This fact should be remembered in our stimulating races with the waves for the foot of a promising crack.

During the novitiate even hardy heads must beware of the intimidating, often vertiginous, effect produced by the constant movement of water below the feet. Both the sound and the motion are found to react almost unconsciously upon toughened climbing nerves.

The cliffs of the east coast of England consist too often of subsiding clay and water, or of a hard pebbly conglomerate; but they provide at least unusual climbing.

A good earth glissade can occasionally be found down their rifts; and every section affords opportunity for a cautious scramble or an ingenious trick route. On the harder earth and pebble mixtures there is sometimes occasion for step-cutting practice. The cliff edges frequently overhang, and present all the dangers of unseen cornices if approached from above, and more than their difficulties if reached from below.

Boots are best on these east cliffs. Vertigo is unknown, since the waves are all too rarely in close proximity to the cliffs!

Ireland, on the east, is more fortunate; it possesses some fine firm stacks and cliffs. Parts also of the east cliffs of Scotland are excellent.

[Sidenote: On Freaks.]

Some regions are rich in incidental pillars, pinnacles, stacks, needles, pins, fingers, boulders, erratics (‘off-comduns’), Wellington’s Noses, Grey Ladies, Devil’s domestic utensils, or their fantastic like. It is difficult to connect the records of their (periodic) first conquests with any general principles except those forming the groundwork of a local literary reputation. A long rope over the summit would seem to be the preliminary to many such a climb, and statuesque photography its culmination. But between these extremes a peripatetic climber can find many joyous and gentle passages, where he may even remain anonymous if he goes armed only with such sound method as the type of rock suggests, and shod with soft soles. One experienced companion would be found of more service than many onlookers; and a tradition of classical mountaineering demands that the rope between two men should not pass over the summit before either has started. To save time, once, when we were crossing a series of smooth needles two of us agreed to climb continuously, in the hope that if the man descending on the far side of one needle slipped (as was the more probable) the man on its near side would be assisted to the summit more quickly by the rope; and so no impulse would be wasted. Unhappily, it was the rear man, ascending, who slipped, and at a moment when, owing to the length of the rope, the front man was already himself ascending the next needle. Neither, at all events, was left long in suspense.

Bouldering is the pleasantest of off-day distractions; but too many men allow themselves to spend the time on the merely difficult. Its use should be for safe exercises on rules of style. When you can climb an easy block without your hands, or balance up a wall with such light finger-hold that a friend can pass his hand under yours, or have discovered how to solve a shelf climb by a push hold and a twisting arm-lever, you have made a fair test that will be of future use. To wrestle up pure difficulty, such as you would not attempt in exposed higher climbing, by dint of muscle and strenuosity, proves nothing and does no good; it only reduces the restful value of the off-day. Our object on such unusual rock should be to extract from it the soundest practice for our usual method.

CLIMBING DOWN

It is more difficult to climb down than to climb up. So long as the majority of rock climbers continued to grip and struggle, they could find no pleasure in descending. The characters of our hills abetted the neglect. The labour of the day went in finding the steep climb and then forcing a way up it; there remained for the evening too great a choice of easy slopes to run down. Even in the Alps the habit followed the early rock climber; he was too ready to choose a peak “which would give plenty of sport on the ascent, and an easy snow-route down.” During our gully and grip epochs, when this self-imposed limitation was almost universal, rock climbing reached its furthest point of divergence from real mountaineering. The development of balance climbing perforce broke down the tradition. Climbing down had to be learned when really big mountaineering was attempted. Where mountains have no easy ways down, it is as important to be able to descend as to ascend. On new or difficult climbs the method and time-calculation for a return in case of failure call for more forethought than the ascent itself.

But beyond this, climbing down was discovered to have its own pleasure as motion. A good climber in training, and descending upon rock that gives continuous hold, enjoys a sense of swift restrained rhythm, and a rushing thrill through his own extremities, that has something of the pleasure of flying and a pleasure from quick light contacts that even flying does not possess. His hands and feet appear to adhere almost accidentally underneath him, like the spokes of a revolving rimless wheel. They move across a sound hold with his change of balance rather than check him at each contact. His eye has selected a whole succession of small holds ahead, or rather afoot. He balances down them as a complementary sequence. He does not ask of every hold that it should become the basis for a fresh beginning. ‘Touch and pass’ as contrasted with ‘grip and hang’ perhaps sums up the method.

Of course each hold must in itself be adequate to check and direct the passage of the body, otherwise momentum is acquired, and the method might be defined with justice as only a fine fashion of falling. The check is distributed over a series of holds, each of which serves only to retard the downward movement just sufficiently to direct it, with no acquired impetus, on to the next hold. The holds on such a passage complement one another. Each is used transiently but safely, because the action of the next is anticipated. The definite arrest-points of course occur, but they are selected by the eye at longer convenient intervals.

To read rock holds and their balance values ahead in this fashion requires a more practised eye and judgment than were needed merely to decide on the reliability of the next grip hold. It was this art of the longer glance, the practice of descending as a regulated movement rather than as a succession of stances and rests, which rock climbers neglected, and still too largely neglect. The shortness of our island climbs, as our young climbers increased in numbers and in ambition, drove them to the discovery of a rapid progression of more and more difficult variations. These climbs could not be ascended ‘continuously.’ The art of continuous up-climbing was almost forgotten, and with it disappeared any idea that continuous down-climbing need even be practised. The strenuous up-climb exhausted our interest in a particular series of problems; the prospect of a similarly ‘interrupted’ descent of the same places seemed rather boring; in fact, we preferred to run down an easy way, and begin upon a new ascent of new problems. Climbing down joined climbing continuously, up or down, in a limbo, from which it had to be desperately rescued when we went to the Alps or to regions of longer climbs.

Some years ago, on perceiving that the neglect was spoiling the style and achievement of climber after climber of the British school who came out to the Alps, I ventured to publish something of a protest. Happily this made a few important converts. And now it would appear that the evil spell is broken. No good cragsman would nowadays seem to be happy until he has done his fine rock climb both ways; a few are beginning to specialize upon descents. The admirable practice of traversing or ‘girdling’ great cliffs, which involves the ascent and descent of the steepest sections of many difficult climbs, has finally placed climbing up and climbing down on a footing of mountaineering equality. It may be said that this result was inevitable once balance climbing had come to its own. Once the eye and the body were set free from their confining and convulsive habit, it could not be long before hands and feet opened up the new ways of pleasure in moving downwards and sideways as readily as upward.

We have made a great step in advance: we practise climbing down as an art in Britain, but we have still a long way to go in developing our practice of ‘continuous’ climbing, down even more than up. I have seen the start of many of our finest island rock climbers in the Alps, men whose feats on difficult rock still stand unsurpassed, and I have never seen one who, when he came out, was even the equal of a good average guide in continuous going on moderate or steep rock, especially in descending. These men quickly recognized their defect when they saw the styles contrasted, and set themselves to correct it. But others, who have gone guideless and never enjoyed the opportunity of comparison, have continued even in the Alps their interrupted method and, consequently, have achieved a degree of performance in no way equal to their real standard of climbing ability. A very illuminating instance was that of one of the greatest of our rock pioneers, whose style was as finished and deliberate as his enterprise was remarkable. After many years of climbing in our islands, with an unrivalled record, and of climbing guideless in the Alps, with practically nothing to show for it, he spent one season, later in life, with a fast first-class guide. As a result he, admittedly, changed his whole habit, and subsequently climbed with an accomplished continuity that without diminishing his security multiplied his amount of performance three and four fold.

Climbing down requires more practice than climbing up, because the mechanism of the body is contrived more conveniently for upward movement, and because we have eyes in our head and not in our toes or heels. The eye has to learn to select its holds from awkward angles. The hands and feet have to learn accurately to follow the eye’s choice, in movements mechanically more difficult to execute. Consequently in descending the inclination to grip and hang becomes even stronger than in ascending, and until the right attitudes become instinctive it requires some resolution to force the body steadily outward until it is in balance over its footholds and is not depending from the hands.

Once the natural impediments are mastered the gain to pace and to security which we obtain from our balance and foot method soon makes even the memory of our desire to cling strange. The muscular strain is less. We are free to use the friction of the body, in any part, to regulate the pace or suggest direction. The body descends naturally on to firm positions on the feet, and stands ready without readjustment of balance or holds to give any assistance required to the man below on the rope.

It is on continuous descending, and on the management of the rope this involves, that the improvement in our method has had most effect. The principle of descent in balance is to keep face outwards or face sideways as long as possible. In such positions our eye commands both the whole rope and the rock almost continuously, and we can decide at any instant whether we should proceed, or pause, or tauten the rope on the man below.

It is almost startling to see a first-class mountaineer come down steep rock, as last man, in a series of well-timed rushes, while he still protects the continuous descent of his less expert front-men. He never allows the rope to slacken. He keeps the safety check while the man in front is moving; but in any intervals his lightning rushes make up the necessary ground.

In descending, a slight tension of the rope is sufficient to check a weak climber, whereas in going up he would have required a hard pull; and a light guide or a quick amateur, judging his moments well, can ‘anchor’ and secure the safe descent of a whole rope of heavy-weights below him, and yet never check their progress while he interpolates his own flights of descent.

[Sidenote: Positions.]

In descending, so long as is conveniently possible, and practice alone discovers how much longer the position is tenable than appears to us at first, the face should be kept turned outward.

So soon as the outward position becomes insecure, that is, when nothing but holds for the heels present themselves and the balance is felt to be thrust out by the steepness of the rock beyond the feet, thus throwing a clinging strain upon the hands, the body should be turned sideways to the rock.

Only as a last extremity, on perpendicular or overhanging rock where the eye is no longer of use to find footholds, should the face be turned in to the rock, in the position most natural for ascending.

[Sidenote: Facing Outward.]

In the face-outward position the action of the feet remains still that of the balance step. For easy movement footholds should be selected, if the choice offers, outside, to right and left of the vertical descending line, rather than directly below the body. The legs are used as tense springs to break the jar. In fact, the motion is that of ‘dancing down.’ The heels are little used; the toes and sides of the feet take the holds, much as in ascending. The hands have to find their hang holds or pressure holds at the level of the thighs or knees. For the hang holds the knuckles are turned backwards, on either side of the body, and the fingers grip the rock much as in ascending. For the pressure holds the heels of the hands are pressed downward on to the ledges, close to the sides, and rest in the position of a reversed push hold. It should be remembered that this last fashion of hold, always the most tempting in starting a descending movement, becomes useless and even dangerous because of the outward thrust of the arm, so soon as the waist has sunk below the level of the hands. For this reason, before lowering down on this hold we must make sure that the reach for the leg to the next foothold will be short.

In the face-outward position the hands can be relieved of much of their effort in holding by the backward or sideways pressures of the calf, of the back of the thigh, or even of the elbow or shoulder, against the rock. A twist of the firm knee in a convenient angle of the rock, or a sidelong ‘steady’ with the heel of the firm foot against the back or side of its rock hold, gives us often balance enough to allow the other foot to descend without using the hands at all. This is what is really happening in the ‘rushing’ movements alluded to above. The expert is using any and every part of him, from ankle to elbow or shoulder, for friction and balance touches while his feet descend; and consequently he has both hands free to tighten or pull in the rope as he goes, even in mid step. The eyes, since they can see uninterruptedly, guide the feet accurately. Elbows, legs, thighs, etc., by judicious touches help out the balance and relieve the hands to a large extent for other work.

[Sidenote: Facing Sideways.]

The sideways position, which is admirably adapted for balanced climbing, is still all too seldom practised. Climbers instinctively turn face inward the instant the holds get small or the rocks steep. But to turn sideways is safer, because the eye can see both holds and rope, and the body is in a good position to adjust itself for anchoring; it is better suited to the normal lie of holds, because holds rarely occur in vertical sequence on rock, and a diagonal descent is often possible where direct descent is interrupted; and it is more in balance. For in the sideways position the single hand employed takes the natural hold, such as it is accustomed to use in ascending: either a cling hold, or even more often a lower push hold reinforced by an inward curving of the arm towards the rock as a lever. The outer hand is left free to manage the rope or to use the axe. The feet fall naturally into position on the ledges, with the side of the foot, and not merely the toe, on the hold. The flex of the knee and thigh works parallel to the face of the rock; and neither the bending of the knee, as happens while descending face inward, nor the curve of the flank, as in descending face outward, can get in the way of an easy lowering of the body above the firm foot. The climber also, as he leans out to the full length of one arm, is far more free to prospect his descent in advance. Lastly, while actually more comfortably balanced, a man so descending is in a better discretionary position to adopt any alternative attitude, face inward or outward, by a half turn on the foot, according as his larger range of vision advises.

In traversing the big ridges or crossing the great rock faces of the Alps a large proportion of the climbing must be done in this sideways attitude. Economy of effort, ease of balance, and the carriage of rope and axe in a free hand demand it. The technique is one that it is essential to master, and once acquired it will be found to become the normal position for pace and comfort in descending.

[Sidenote: Facing Inward.]

It is the exception when the conditions make it imperative to turn the body face inward. The occasions are the descent of vertical or rounded convex surfaces, of overhanging ‘cave pitches’ and the like, where the holds do not permit of an upright or balanced position, and where the legs have to be swung in underneath and out of sight in order to find the next holds for the feet.

Here, if it is more than the question of a step or so, there can be no question of the whole party moving together. The rope is therefore dropped from the hand, since both hands will be needed to lower the whole weight during the movement. As soon as the feet can find hold, the balance should be readjusted upon them, and the eyes set free to look round again and prospect. Even though it may appear to be more comfortable and safe to continue in a jammed or face inward position after it ceases to be absolutely indispensable, the inclination should be resisted. The longer the duration of the face inward descent, the longer must continue the interruption to the advance of the whole rope.

It is one of the principal objections to this position, which is individually safe enough, that it necessitates an interruption and break of rhythm for the party. Climbers, from an instinct of safety, turn into it too frequently, and continue it too long, in places where a sideways descent if the problem be a slab, or a face outward straddle if it be a steep chimney, would be the correcter and quicker method. It is not only retarding in its effect on the rope, it is always slow in actual performance. Men move into it ponderously and reluctantly if they have been face outwards before. They continue in it slowly, because they cannot see and are using clinging methods; and a natural reluctance to take the slight risk of turning round again before they have reached a large ‘turning’ stance makes them keep the position usually longer than the difficulties demand. Meanwhile the whole party waits.

If a man is a practised sideways climber he can turn into this face inward attitude when necessary, and out again the moment he finds balance foothold, with a minimum of check to the rope. From a sideways position he has only got to bring round his other hand, and he is ready to climb face inward for as long as he has estimated will be needed.

[Sidenote: Down Chimneys or Cracks.]

In jamming down chimneys or cracks the face outward or sideways positions are always to be preferred. The eye, free to select, can generally find footholds close or far out on the side-walls, which would be invisible to the face inward position. If these holds fail, the jam with outstretched arms, or knee or thigh or shoulder against the containing walls, is still always safer for a man in the outward and sideways attitudes, unless he be on an absolute overhang. At the same time, since his hands are free in descending sideways or outwards, he can still manage the rope even in his moments of descent, and so save any check to the progress of the party. Whereas in the face inward position the hands are useless except for holds. I have seen a guide serpentining down a crack of this sort, face outward, by the pressure of his shoulders and thighs against the walls alone. The fact that he was free to watch the party even while he moved down enabled him to anticipate the slip of a climber below; and he took the whole pull upon one quick outward pressure of his knees and arms against the side walls. An average climber, with the slightest of holds for his feet, in this attitude can hold practically any usual weight. It is a question of balance and judgment.

[Sidenote: The Rope in Continuous Descent.]

To secure the safety of the party on the descent a right position will do much. A man who climbs face outward or face sideways is ready mechanically to take a very considerable and sudden strain. But a right use of the rope over the accidents of the rock will enable him to do still more. On steep or unsound rock we are always on guard against the unexpected slip or the breaking hold. Therefore, while on the rope, we note at every step how we are placed to take a jerk. If we are all moving together down steep rock we note, as we pass, every corner or point round which we could with a single motion of the hand throw the rope as an ‘anchor’ in case a man below us slipped. If we are all moving quickly, and therefore presumably a safe party, we need not do more than note them. But if the party is weak, or we are moving interruptedly, then, no matter how easy our own sector, we should not only note but use points suitable for the anchor.

It must be remembered that such anchoring on a descent is designed to assure the balance of the stationary man, in case of a sudden jerk; and only indirectly to support the man descending below. The actual pull of a slip, if it comes, should be taken up on the arm, but never directly on the rock anchorage. It is useful for every one to practise this cursive anchoring on any descent which is too steep to allow of the party moving really rapidly together. There will be time then to swing the rope over and off the points as we pass them, without check. Once the trick is acquired, the eye will go on instinctively always selecting the anchors, but the actual movements we can discontinue. Habit will at once make the movements actual again wherever expedient,--on all descents of medium difficulty, or on easy descents where a slip might have dangerous consequences, such as the edge of a lofty ridge, or an easy gallery above a sheer wall.

[Sidenote: The Doubled Rope.]

It is a sound general rule that a climber has never been justified in going on up where he finds that he cannot get down without fixing a rope. Now that good cragsmen consider nothing mastered unless it has been climbed both ways, the occasions for the fixed rope are or should be rare. But there are exceptions, and in such cases we use the ‘doubled rope.’

The first would be the case of a party descending by a line which they have not previously ascended, or which has never been ascended or descended at all--a not infrequent experience in making new traverses of peaks. In this case a doubled rope may be the only method of descending a holdless passage. But when he employs it in such places a climber is again taking a serious responsibility, supposing that he judges it to be a place which he could not reascend. He must be certain from observation that the rest of the descent will go below, or he will be cutting off his retreat unjustifiably. If he cannot make sufficiently certain, the doubled rope should be left behind so that the reascent may be possible if a return becomes necessary.

The second exception is the change that is often produced by a change of weather. A fall of snow, or an ice-glazing on the rocks, may make a descent both difficult and dangerous where the ascent on dry rocks was sound. In this case constant use of the doubled rope may be the only chance of ensuring a safe descent. Such changes are not infrequent in the British Isles as well as in the Alps, and they are the most trying occasions in a mountaineer’s experience. A picnic ascent of an easy buttress may be, and has been in Wales, turned by a light shower of rain, freezing immediately into a coat of verglas on the rocks, into a dangerous duel of descent against darkness and difficulty; and a joyous frolic up the walls of an aiguille above the Mer de Glace, owing to a hailstorm that coated the rocks with freezing particles, has become a prolonged wrestle with fate, demanding painful hours where the ascent took minutes, and necessitating the descent of almost every foot of the thousand-metre wall by each man in turn on the ‘long rope’ or the ‘doubled rope.’

The third exception is when it is necessary for the last man to save time in a race with darkness. Then, after letting the rest down, he follows on the ‘double’ as fast as he can.

And the last is the rare case when it is expressly intended to force the descent of a passage which has defeated all attempts to ascend. In such case we use all the help that we need for safety.

The double rope can be used in these cases of difficulty or haste to assist the descent of every member of a party. Usually it is only to protect the last man.

The method of using the ‘double’ is to lay the rope round any point or knob which prevents it slipping off under an outward and downward strain, and from which it can be conveniently released by pull or flick from below. If such a generally comfortable point is not discoverable, a length of the rope should be cut off and knotted into a secure sling, which is wound in a triple coil round any excrescence good enough to hold it permanently secure. The triple coil cannot break under the friction, and allows the rope to play through more easily. The rope to be used is then passed through the sling.

Some climbers carry ready-made slings; others favour iron rings, which they slip on to the slings, and then pass the rope through the ring. The rope runs more easily, but I have never liked the practice. A ring can never be carried of sufficient size to use on more than a single thickness of rope, to say nothing of a safe triple sling. And not only is the single sling more likely to snap under the rub of the hard ring as we descend than under the more springy pull of another rope passed through it, but if left it is more likely to be a danger to the next party descending. Guides are always ready to use a finished-looking piece of mechanism, like a ring on a loop, without testing it fully, where they would be suspicious of a mere weathered sling of rope. The metal reassures just where it should warn them; for the ring, where it touches, will have rusted into and eaten the rope strands. The same point comes up under the heading of Pegs and Aids.

It must always be remembered that the use of the sling or ring involves unroping, which the ‘double’ on a good belay does not; and in so far it uses more time.

For short descents the last man can use the slack of the rope between himself and the next man as a double, provided he sees that, when doubled, it will allow him to descend as far as his next stance, and there leave him slack enough to flick it off the belay.

He should always use the double as a fixed rope, that is, it should never be paid out to him round the belay, as he descends, by the man below; nor should he ever attempt to pay it out to himself as he descends on the double. Either attempt will certainly fray the rope round the belay, possibly jam it, and probably jerk it off the belay.

For any considerable height it is better to use a spare doubled rope. In this case the last man can at once see if the two ends of the double reach to the next stance below. If no spare rope is available, the next man below may have to unrope, in order to leave the last man enough to double and descend upon.

If the descent is of exceptional difficulty, e.g. an overhang, a spare rope should always be used. The second, or climbing, rope round the last man’s waist is then held by the man below, as a protection in case the effort of clinging to the double exhausts the last man’s hands; or, still better, it also can be laid over the belay and paid out to him, lightly, as he descends. As it will then be sliding upon the fixed rope, and there will be no strain upon it, it will be the less likely to jam on the belay, fray or jump off.

To descend on the double the last man grasps both ropes in his hands immediately below the belay, drawing them taut before he starts to see that the belay is rightly arranged for the strain. He descends, using what footholds he can on the rock, or, failing them, by frankly swarming down. If he is unroped from his party, and using the only rope as a double, a protection in case of a slip is to tie both ends of the doubled rope to his own waist before descending. The arms in such descending should be kept bent. The most trying point is just before he reaches the stance, where the double ropes are resting on the ledge and are no longer kept taut by their own weight in suspension. If the climber is using one of the leg brakes below described, its tension will still keep the ropes taut for his hands. If not, and he is descending by hands alone, finding what foothold he can upon the rocks, he should get the man below to pull on the ends of the two ropes and keep them taut till he is down. If he is descending first of the party, and therefore there is no one below, a convenient device to the same end is to sling his sack down on the end of the ropes and leave it just suspended.

[Sidenote: Brakes].

Gloves protect the hands; but long descents are often too great a strain for amateur fingers, and the chance of their slipping or cramping cannot be risked. In this case one of the following leg brakes should be used. Experienced climbers always use them where footholds fail, for however short a distance.

_The Foot Brake._--This is the commonest device in gymnasium rope-climbing. The body is turned sideways to the rock, the double rope inside it. The twin ropes are caught up under the sole of the inside boot and out over the instep of the outside boot. The boot edges are clenched upon the ropes between them, and the amount of friction over the boots resulting allows the weight, with small effort of boot clenching, to slip in easy control down the ropes. The body is kept upright by the hands grasping the rope above.

_The Thigh Brake._--This is the most frequently used in the Alps, as rock descents are seldom entirely vertical or overhanging, and a sudden extrusion of rock under the feet when using the foot brake upsets the balance; whereas with the thigh brake the body can lie sideways against a projecting or convex curve of rock, and slide down the boss, swinging to the perpendicular again where it ends, without effort at balancing. The right method is to turn sideways to the rock, slightly raise the _outside_ thigh, pass the double rope under it high up between the legs, and grip the farther lengths of rope so passed with the outside hand, palm upwards. The inside hand grasps the tightened ropes above, with bent arm, at about the level of the head. The outside hand, by lowering or lifting the slack lengths below or above the level of the raised thigh, diminishes or increases the friction of the rope round the thigh, and so controls the pace. If a complete rest is needed, the outside hand merely brings up its double rope to join that held by the inside hand, and a very light clasp of the two hands together on the four ropes so united, aided by the almost total arrest of the rope passing under the thigh, easily stops the descent. It is a mistake, but a frequent one, to start the rope round the _inside_ thigh. Round the outside thigh is safer and more comfortable; and it leaves the inside leg free to use any foothold that turns up.

The same fashion of brake can be used under the foot instead of under the outside raised thigh. But this necessitates holding the leg very rigid, and makes it more difficult to balance. Nor does the rope run as smoothly under the boot as under the thigh.

_The Body Brake._--This brake, which has several variants, need practically never be used. The amount of friction introduced demands of a climber almost more effort to push his way down the rope in constricting jerks than he would use in swarming down it without a brake at all. The simplest form is to pass the double rope under both thighs slightly bent, back, across and in front of the body, and out, round and behind the shoulders, to the control of the outside hand.

_The Chair._--As I am dealing with these devices, a note upon this may not be out of place. Except for an injured man it can rarely be required in descending; although I have, on occasion, employed it for a beginner who could not be trusted to manage any form of brake that left anything to his discretion. But it may be found of use in excessively difficult passages of ascent, where the leader has only got through with great difficulty and where the possibility of a less brilliant member of his following having to be hauled up clear on the rope and remain suspended for a perceptible time makes it necessary to find some sort of attachment that will not suffocate him. Men vary in their resistance, but no man can hang clear, on a rope tied round his chest, for more than two minutes without partial suffocation and considerable pain. In ascending, both hands are needed for climbing, and no form of the usual descending brake is therefore suitable. The chair is formed by making two easy loops for the thighs opposite one another on the rope, secured by a sound central knot (triple bowline). Through these loops the climber passes his legs, as through breeches. If he then straightens his thighs, he can sit in easy balance in the loops; but as security against falling out backwards he should knot a scarf or cord round his body and make it fast to the main rope in front of him. In this chair he is perfectly free to climb and use his hands and feet so long as they help him; and when he slips off, he swings comfortably clear in his loops. He has only to remember to keep his body and thighs straight, so as not to sag backwards and downwards out of the slings. The men above do the rest. The chair is much used by bird’s-nesting cliff climbers, who desire to keep their hands free, and who may have to remain suspended for long periods.

[Sidenote: Springing the Rope.]

After the last man is down on the double rope comes the crucial moment, when the rope has to be run or ‘sprung’ off the belay from below. Nothing is more irritating, or of more frequent occurrence, than to find that the double rope, after running a certain distance round the belay, has stuck, and that a laborious and often hazardous reascent, trusting to its partial attachment, is necessary in order to release it. If the belay has been well chosen, or the sling well fixed, it ought to run without difficulty. To pull it off without hitch it is essential first to see that there is no knot in it, especially at the running end, where the fatal knot beloved of guides and many amateurs, for purposes of their waist-noose, generally lurks as a permanent threat.

The rope should be pulled round the belay slowly but continuously at first; any re-start implies a dangerous jerk that may entangle the loose end as it jumps about. The last ten feet are the danger, for the short, swinging loose end may at any second jam or catch round the taut rope in its dance. To break any slight friction or hitch, and give the end of the rope a springing release from its belay, these last few feet should be rushed with a sharp continuous pull by two or more of the party, who must then look out for their heads!

If there is not sufficient rope to allow of its being used as a double rope down the whole descent required to the next stance, it is possible to attach a ring to one end, and, putting the end with the ring round the belay, to pass the hanging rope through the ring, making a sort of running noose. The rope is then used as a single, not a double, fixed rope for descent. To loosen it afterwards, it is necessary at the start to tie an equal length of light cord to the ring. This is pulled from below, dragging the ring downwards and the rope after it round the belay. I have never liked the method, and never seen it work properly. It incurs all the disadvantages of the rope jamming, and of the single sling breaking, and gives only a single thickness of slight alpine rope to climb down. It is very rare that a climber cannot reach some sort of a stance by using all the rope he has, as a double, even if he has no spare rope. If he has, for security, to let the rest of the party down farther to some larger platform on the whole rope used as a ‘long rope,’ as last man he can usually find some half-way stance sufficient to let him pull the ‘double’ down after him. He can then refix it, or, failing a belay, descend the rest of the passage without the double, first roping on again to the men below, and directed and helped by their advice as to his holds.

[Sidenote: The Long Rope.]

It infrequently happens on big descents that weather conditions, giant slabs or deciduous holds make it necessary for a party while descending to move down greater distances, in order to find safe stances, than their allowances of rope will permit. Sometimes each member of the party will have to be lowered a hundred feet or more, not once, but several times in succession. This does not necessarily imply that no holds are to be found over all this distance, or that the individuals are not able to climb much of it unaided. But once unroping has become necessary, and the time it takes is lost in any case, it is quicker and safer to let each man down the full length of the whole rope at once, so as to reach some really secure stance where he can stay unroped in safety while the next descends. The whole object, then, should be to save as much time as possible. The best way is for two men to remain in charge of the rope above, one directing and lowering, the other anchoring and paying out. Neither of them need necessarily be attached to the rope, provided it is well secured. The moment the man below reaches safety he should untie, without losing a second. Meanwhile, the next man to come can already have tied on to the other loose end above, and be beginning his descent. While one man above holds him the other pulls up the loosened rope from the man who has finished descending. If the rope is long enough, and the men prompt and not ‘loose stone kickers,’ two men, at sufficient intervals, can be descending at the one time, on either end of the rope; while the two ropes are managed, one for each of them, by the lowerer and by the anchor man above.

(In descending easy rocks with two beginners or weak climbers, a variant on the same method serves excellently to save time. The expert ties himself on to the rope between them, and lets them both descend, at intervals, ahead of him. He holds both their ropes meanwhile, and he follows himself when they reach security. The same economical method can be used in ascending easy rocks with a like party.)

The last man, when the party has used the ‘long rope’ and the rocks baffle even _his_ skill in employing short, crafty ‘doubles,’ does best, if he has a good second, to keep him close to him when their turn comes to descend. He lets the second down to the nearest place he can stand at all, and uses a double or a shuffle down to him, helped by his directions or arms. Two good men thus weaving spells together, and keeping the cauldron bubbling, can shepherd one another down passages of toil and trouble where a last man would require constant ‘doubles’ to help him, but would conjure them in vain alone; and where the rest may have had to submit to the full witch-dance of a descent upon the long rope.

PEGS AND AIDS

Artificial aids have never been popular with us. If a climber does not feel safe in descending, he ought to practise on rock which he can climb, not spoil rock which he cannot with blacksmith’s leavings. If a security greater than rock can afford him remains his object, it would be more consistent to fix up a ladder or windlass at once. I am told that a delightful contrivance--a pulley or block--has been advertised, which enables the climber to haul himself up or down without effort. As to how we may fix the pulley to draw ourselves up, or unfasten it after we have descended, we have clearly only to adopt the method followed by Baron Munchausen when he descended from the moon on a short rope--and the thing is done!

For those who cannot climb down in Britain there is always an easy way round. The only two pegs I can recall having seen in our hills were left by two foreigners, and were not needed.

In big mountaineering there may be more excuse. A descent may have really become more difficult, even unsafe, owing to the coming on of darkness or the glazing of rocks.

In such case, pegs to hammer in and anchor to are a remedy for our failures, our failure to carry on, to adjust the climb to the day-length, or to watch the weather. Their use then is corrective, not auxiliary. My party has taken pegs three times in all, as a precaution, and used one once (on a new descent where the precise ‘impossible’ passage had been previously located). Pegs taken for this purpose should be short and sharp, and sheathed for carriage in pocket or sack. They should be made with a ring or eye to pass the rope through. They are smitten in and out as convenience and the rock dictate.

Pegs should never be left as memorials. Prongs and rings poked permanently into popular routes are more harmful than helpful. The mountaineer will not need them, and they may mislead him, as they usually follow the best lowering rather than the best climbing line. Where fixed irons are placed with fixed ropes attached, as on the Matterhorn or the Dent du Géant, they spoil the climber and the climbing alike. They attract feckless folks on to the peaks, and torment them with the rock-barrages of pantechnicon parties or the stonier sharp-shooting of daft solitary scramblers.

On the rock peaks of the Eastern Alps, however, the peculiar character of the climbing has created a different tradition. Already a large literature has grown up on the subject of mechanical contrivances for descents. Pitons and ring-pegs and slings are taken and used to an extent that almost relieves a climber of the need of considering his descent at all. A practice which is sanctioned by many fine cragsmen who have developed their methods to suit their own type of rock, and not ours, must be respected in its own territory. But just as among our own countrymen the over-use of the rope and of belays has contributed towards a diminution in individual responsibility and to an increase in ill-chosen associations, so also the opinion suggests itself that the over-use of pegs and other contrivances by our colleagues abroad has led to a recklessness in leading and a disregard of what we mean by collective safety and power, which have proved even more fatal in result than our own error. Recently among the best continental experts there have been indications of a change of doctrine. They are finding, as we did, that the neglect of the art of _climbing_ down is a definite bar to achieving success in greater mountaineering.

There would be no purpose in discussing the technicalities of a practice so little likely to be popular with us.

In ascending, a peg is no protection to a leader, although its insertion may tempt him perilously to go beyond what he should. His second man, 50 to 60 feet below him, can give him as much ‘safety’ with the rope as a rigid peg 10 to 20 feet down. If he has room to drive in a number of shorter-distance pegs, there should certainly be room for him to have up his second man. If he has got to run out more than the 50 to 60 feet before he can get a stance, it is useless to waste time driving in a peg; no rope light enough to run out in this way could be trusted to stand the jerk of a fall of any height upon a rigid bar or ring.

On long horizontal or diagonal traverses on very steep rock, pegs may have a purpose, as a moral support to the leader; although, if he is free to hammer in pegs and loop ropes, it would probably be better for him to get on with his leading and get it over. On such a traverse also a peg may serve to carry the rope, and relieve the waist of some of the drag from the lengthening run-out.

A peg is really only ‘sound,’ in our sense, for ascending or traversing, if the rope over it is being ‘played’ by a human being. Then it may become an extra anchor or belay where natural belays may be lacking; it can secure a second man while he is looking after the leader’s rope, and enable him to protect the party below against the consequences of the fall of the leader above. The occasions are so rare when a little ingenuity cannot find or contrive a better stance and anchor out of the natural features than out of a driven peg, that pegs are seldom worth taking on this chance, except for some known difficulty.

Any man who feels when he looks at a passage that he wants more protection behind him than the character of the rock allows his second man to give him, should not attempt the passage at all. If he decides to take the risk, he should do so only on his own account, and unrope from his party. He can send the rope down afterwards, or, in the case of a traverse, leave them one loose end to hold. As a protection to the party it is even better to unrope than to drive in pegs to carry the lengthening rope; and as a protection to more than the _morale_ of the leader the peg is futile on such passages.

The times when it is justifiable to use pegs on a descent are the same as I have already mentioned in dealing with rope doubles: the intentional descent of that which has not or cannot be ascended, the retreats in worse conditions, or over glazed rock, and the races against time. The first is a praiseworthy exercise in gymnastics, for which rings, bars and poles may be taken and used according to taste; the last two allow of pegs or any other precautionary means we may have with us being used that may prevent defeat or miscalculation from becoming disaster.

I can imagine no other cases where a climber should not feel that he is confessing to incapacity or some misjudgment if he has to fall back upon pegs and aids to help him to come down what he, or some other man, has ascended. After one such experience, any conscientious climber would now set himself to practise climbing down, until he had remedied a very serious defect in his qualification to rank as a good mountaineer.

So long as a man depends upon his own hands and feet and his knowledge of the rock, he remains master of the situation. He has four chances always in his favour. Whereas, if he is swinging loose from an inserted artificial peg, he has only one chance; and that one neither so much under his physical control as his own fingers and toes, nor even as calculable in its efficiency as a natural rock-borne belay.

THE AXE ON ROCKS

[Sidenote: Its Carriage.]

The axe is only less useful on rocks than on ice and snow. It is at once a long third leg and a third claw hand of honourable service. Its correct carriage in walking is important, and must become instinctive. Guides carry it, and it is the best position, over the hollow of the elbow, like a gun, with the head under the shoulder, and so turned that the curve of the pick adheres upward along the shoulder-blade and only the balanced weight of the shaft rests across the forearm. The only absolute rule is that, whether carried in hand or over or under the shoulder, the axe should always be held with the spike end of the shaft pointing forward. Nothing betrays the beginner or the badly instructed climber so fatally as an axe swung with the head to the front and the spike out behind. Habit should be trained so as to avoid this false position as instinctively as that of carrying a gun with the muzzle pointing directly to the rear.

Much walking, and all climbing, in the Alps is done in single file. Even the chance that one of the file may in carelessness swing up his axe into the wrong position, on path or easy ridge, is a perpetual threat to the eyes and teeth of anyone following him, and its possibility, in the person of one ill-trained companion, is an irritation for the whole party to contemplate. It is one of the slight jeopardies to harmony which a leader is justified in directly correcting.

It is best for actual climbing on easy rocks to carry the axe on a wide, soft sling on the wrist. If then both hands are needed for holds, it can be safely dropped for the moment on to the sling, and jerked back again, cup-and-ball fashion, into the hand, without interruption or the waste of even an arm movement.

If a steeper, and short, passage occurs where the arm must be entirely free, and the axe on the wrist-sling would hamper movement, the sling can be thrust right up on to the shoulder. The axe then hangs behind the body and well out of the way of both arm and leg motions.

On rocks, whenever and wherever practicable, the axe should be carried in the hand. The machinations of an axe under control can be allowed for; but an axe swinging free from wrist, shoulder or back is a devil of stumbling and catching unchained. For this reason, the device, employed by most guides on long difficult passages or chimneys where the hands and shoulders must be kept free, of wearing a string loop attached to sack or rope, through which they pass the axe, is not sound. The axe is out of sight, loose and out of control. It is better to shove it through the loop of rope round the waist, where it is kept fairly rigid and its position can be allowed for. With a single movement it can be pulled to either side or behind, as convenience dictates.

It is useful to practise carrying the axe on British rock climbs, in order to acquire the instinct of its proper carriage for later indispensable service in the Alps. The alpine climber is never without his axe; and when he looks ahead at a rock section to select his holds, he subconsciously decides at the same time how he must carry his axe; in the left or the right hand, according as to which will be the outer or free hand; on the wrist, if it be only for a step or two; slung on his shoulder, for a longer passage; or thrust through his waist-rope on the left, right or behind, for a chimney or severe struggle.

If the rock problem is of great severity or length, it saves time in the end to tie all the axes on to a rope, and to send them up separately. So sent, they should be tied with a clove-hitch, not at the end of the rope, but so as to leave sufficient rope hanging below to guide them and prevent their catching. This also applies to sending up the sacks.

An axe of some ingenuity has lately been designed for use by a leader on difficult rock. This will take in half. On severe passages both halves can be packed into the sack for the time, or if the crack contains ice in places where there is no room to manipulate a long axe, the head half can be retained in the hand or in the waist-noose, and be conveniently used to make nicks in the ice or to serve as a claw-hand in minute cracks. It has stood some severe testing, but time has still to show if the convenience of the shortening is secured at too great a sacrifice of strength in the shaft to make the axe sound for long or heavy step-cutting.

The short axes popular with those modern climbers who rely exclusively upon their ice-claws, have a habit in rock climbing of working out of the waist-noose or sling and disappearing down the cliff at crucial moments. They are also of no use as the invaluable third leg on easy rock or in descending.

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.

[Sidenote: As an Extra Hand.]

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 pick can then either be driven in as a handhold--in which case it is important to remember that the axe must be held rigid in the position in which it is first driven in, whatever the subsequent alterations in the direction of the pull upon it--or it can be used to clear out the obstruction.

On bare rock, if the pick is driven into a crack and the shaft set firm against the rock below, the head can provide a useful handhold or foothold; it can be further secured if it is held in this position by a man below. As a pull handhold, with the pick hooked over an edge, in ascending rocks, it should be used with caution. The direction of the pull upon a handhold always tends to change, as the weight is raised near or past it; and an axehold can rarely be found of a kind to resist the outward or slanting strain as a climber raises himself. One or two guides in the Alps have perfected a remarkable trick that may be mentioned. When a vertical or sloping crack in a slab gets too small even to admit a finger, and all other holds are lacking, they force the point of the pick into the crack above their heads, and give a slight outward and upward twist to the shaft with the wrist, so that the point of the pick and its square edges are jammed slantwise and upwards in the crack. Holding the shaft rigid in this position, they then raise their weight by sheer strength inside the bent arm which holds the shaft, at the same time using whatever friction-holds they can find for their feet to help them. A second’s catlike clinging of the feet and of their free hand to the rock gives them just time to thrust the pick farther up the crack and twist it firmly in again. The feat is one that demands exceptional strength and skill, and it is only employed in circumstances from which the best amateur would retire without choice. But it is worth practising, if only to be held in reserve as a relief or extra security, when, on rocks less naturally desperate, a crack or a slab proves unexpectedly iced or nasty.

I have occasionally seen an axe-head made use of in the fashion of a ‘peg.’ Where a belay point was lacking, a climber has jammed his axe-pick in a crack, and anchored or belayed the rope over it. I never came upon such a contrivance without a distinct feeling of relief that, in once again avoiding ‘coming upon the rope,’ I had once again shirked being the first to make trial of the doubtful efficacy of this sort of belay.

In well-chosen spots, the familiar ledges or terraces where slopes of deep heather or grass cover the rock and leave no sure stance, the axe can also be used for belaying. The spike should then be driven in deeply, the shaft sloping away from the pull, and the rope be passed low down round its base, getting some extra friction upon the grass or heather immediately round the shaft. But these belays should be employed with discretion.

[Sidenote: As a Manx Leg.]

In traversing the crests of long ridges, with their constant rise and fall, and in descending easy or moderate rocks, the axe, well handled, is an invaluable telescopic third leg. The spike of the shaft reached forward or downward to some cranny or lower step beyond the reach of the foot, preserves the balance in free walking or during a long downward step. Its practised use enables the body to balance continuously and rhythmically in a walking upright attitude over broken crests or down angles and high steps of rock that would otherwise demand a constant effort of balance and much help from handholds.

Even in the hands of a beginner it prevents him from crawling where he should be learning to walk in the rhythm of balance. In so far as it makes for upright movement it is the first instructor in balance climbing on easy ridges and descents.

In descending sideways to the rock, the axe-head, short held on the ledges, can give relief to the continued drag on the hands. Or again, if either hand is occupied with the rope, the spike of the axe thrust down to a lower edge with the free hand gives balance for the next awkward descending step, and avoids the check to the rope that the search for handhold, and the turn of the body to use it, would produce.

In traversing or descending easy faces or ridges, the axe, held straight across the body with the spike towards the rock, can give just those touches which the balance in easy movement from time to time demands, especially when there is loose rubble on the passing footholds or their angle slopes inconveniently.

In dancing down or across loose scree or moraine, that last test of rhythmical leg movement, which becomes a step-dance of delight or a slow, unhappy crawl according as it is rightly or wrongly performed, the axe held in the same position makes at any moment, with a passing touch, a third leg for balance. But it is wrong and retarding to make a perpetual tripod with it, and to lose the rhythm of balanced movement by continually leaning upon it.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] See on Boots, “Equipment,” p. 80.

[11] See on Nailing, “Equipment,” p. 82.

[12] See “Equipment,” p. 83.

##