Mountaineering Routes

Articles In This Section:

· Mountaineering Routes

· Mountain Structure - part 1

· Mountain Structure - part 2

· Mountain Structure - part 3

· Mountain Structure - part 4

· Glaciers - part 1

· Glaciers - part 2

· Weather and Rock - part 1

· Weather and Rock - part 2

· Weather and Rock - part 3

· Weather and Rock - part 4

· Weather and Rock - part 5

· Weather and Rock - part 6

· Weather and Rock - part 7

The steeper and higher a mountain becomes, the more severe are the forces of nature that serve to tear it down. Wind, running water, changes of temperature, swift avalanches, slow-moving glaciers, ricocheting falling rocks—these elements are ever at work taking a mountain apart, reducing it to low-lying sediments which, in ages to come, will rise again to new heights. Much of the skill of the mountaineer is devoted, during the specific acts of tearing apart, to being somewhere else at the time. He must know the objective dangers of mountains—those which the mountain thrusts upon him; knowing them, he may avoid them. The better he knows their exact limits, the broader the routes of safe travel between them will seem to him, and the greater may be his accomplishment in mountains; more important esthetically, in an absence of unnecessary worry, he can enjoy his mountains immeasurably more.

It is assumed that the skier has already followed the principles of leadership, preparation, timing, and choice of route laid down in a preceding chapter, has thus been able to reach the base of a high mountain, and that he is now wondering what to do next. He may very well wonder what got into him to bring him to such a state of affairs; but that question cannot be answered here, and indeed has not been answered adequately in all mountaineering literature.