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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Use of the Foot.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.