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Mountain Structure - part 1
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Description of each major type of high-mountain structure and its relation to objective danger will assist the skier's search for a route that will best lead him past a mountain, or to its summit.
Gentle slopes: the valley and foothill.—A ski tourer knows the problems of gentle terrain full well. It is mentioned here merely because it provides a final good perspective of the mountain. From the valley the mountaineer can make his final careful appraisal of: 1) The prospective weather. If prospects are bad he may well ask "Is this trip necessary?" There is little point in climbing in storm today to a summit that will be in sunshine tomorrow. 2) The size of the mountain—its over-all height, the height of individual pitches, its remoteness. 3) The map. He can study his map and notes as they relate to the mountain he sees. 4) The route. He can make a general outline of his course, remembering that on the mountain proper he, like persons who can't see the forest for the trees, may not see the route for the rock. A sketch may help. 5) The time. An average yardstick: 21/2 miles per hour for horizontal, and 1,000 feet per hour for vertical distance. The time may be cut; on the other hand, horizontal and vertical speed drops to zero on Mount Everest. A good margin of safety contains a generous margin of time. 6) The equipment—mechanical and physical. A final check should be made in gentle terrain. Once the party is on difficult ground, failure of an ax may result in turn ing back; failure of a man must so result. Corridors: steep-walled valleys, canyons, ravines.—The steepness of corridor walls, as well as their height, accentuates a danger discussed more fully under Avalanches. Snow slopes along many streams may be perfectly free of avalanche danger, but the walls may extend up to where possibility of avalanche is great indeed. The skier must weigh the danger, study the canyon walls for signs of past avalanches, and see that his route skirts those signs if the danger is believed appreciable. If the wall is forested, there may be avalanche swaths cut through the forest, and piles of avalanche debris may fan out on the floor. Above timberline there may be cornices or hanging glaciers poised above the route, their threat just as real even though clouds conceal them. The threat may vary from that of a few thawing and falling icicles in a mild Western canyon to such Himalayan cataclysms as fall from 10,000-foot escarpments to sweep a mile out onto level glacier. If trouble is expected, the party has three choices: It can select a safe route variant. Failing in that it can travel the safest existing route at the safest time of day, and as quickly as possible to minimize the time of exposure. Finally, the party can turn back, realizing that retreat can be fully as much an indication of good mountaineering as the achievement of a summit. On Kangchenjunga, third highest peak in the Himalaya, an expedition that in two successive endeavors had spent 105 days cutting its way from camp to camp on the final tremendous ice ridge, was at last confronted by a snow-field looking as if it might slide—and turned back.
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