If the leader is selected, and in some situation finds himself unable to surmount a certain crucial difficulty, there should be no question of another member of the party taking his place. Numerous catastrophes have been due to this.
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| Climbing slabs on the Charmoz. Photo from G D Abraham, The Complete Mountaineer. |
The terrible fall of four experts on the face of Scawfell Pinnacle followed the change of leadership. Undoubtedly the right man was leading on this occasion. Why he changed places and allowed a less experienced companion to attempt the desperate ascent of the hitherto unclimbed pitch where he had failed is a mountain mystery which will never be solved.
There may be a temptation to forget this advice on easier climbs, but its soundness is undoubted at all times. The beginner should be orthodox on this point, and if his friends have the right spirit of true mountain comradeship, the happiness and success of his and their climbing career will be promoted.
Selfishness must be curbed. Once the rope is tied on, the party becomes a human unit with a purpose to overcome some of the strongest of Nature's forces. Every member must do his best, and the greatest joys of climbing are when, with the summit attained, each one feels that he has had a share in promoting success.
References
References
From George D. Abraham, First Steps to Climbing, Mills & Boon, Limited, London, 1923.
6 comments:
I found this wonderful set of high-res scans. Makes you wonder how often the belayer got jerked off his feet. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:G._P._Abraham
Stephen, thanks for reading and for discovering this wonderful trove of images - it's good to see the immortal O G Jones features in some of them. I am astonished at the photographic virtuosity of the Abraham brothers - how they managed with the equipment of the day to capture the climbing action while arriving at near-perfect compositions and lighting. How did they do that?
I deleted a comment, because I'd jumped the gun. Turns out at least seven of the Abe Bros books are on BOTH archive.org AND hathitrust.org. One more, Swiss Mountain Climbs [1911] seems only on HT. This modern item looks great, yet only for reading online: https://archive.org/details/cameraoncragspor0000abra/
Again many thanks Stephen for flagging up these resources - I didn't know that the Abraham brothers were so prolific in writing as well as photography - they obviously deserve credit as the forerunners of modern climbers who make their living this way (often F S Smythe gets the credit for being the first such professional, but clearly there were others before him). Incidentally, the two Abraham books I'm using came from a second-hand bookshop in the Kanda district of Tokyo. So their works got about the world. But they didn't stock "Swiss Mountain Climbs": perhaps the mighty Swiss Alpine Club library in Zurich can furnish a copy ....
The "Cameras on the Crags" that I linked above can be read, I found, with some home-grown digital enhancements. It's by Alan Hankinson, a prolific historical writer with several other books on/including the Brothers. Apparently he climbed, and lived in their bailiwick (d. 2007). Loved this by Owen Glynne Jones: "We composed our limbs to a photographic quiescence."
Stephen: many thanks for flagging up Alan Hankinson's "Camera on the Crags" - I see that it was reviewed by none other than John Cleare in the 1975 Alpine Journal. The review confirms that the kind of photography practised by the Abraham Bros. was not for the faint of heart. To quote:
"And to think that they were all taken with an old Underwood camera set up on a tripod. The camera was a wooden box, about a foot square, fitted with leather bellows and the inverted image focused on ground-glass under a dark cloth. Its weight would daunt even a modern alpine hard-man. The exposures were made on to glass plates 81, x 6 i inches whose sensitivity wassuchthat—onDinasMot—' the lengthy exposure was but half completed when the "sitter" slipped off his holds A s h l e y went on to remark that t h e plate was hopelessly ruined. And once in the Dolomites, emerging disoriented from beneath his dark cloth, Ashley stepped backwards off his ledge—only to be held by the rope. They were men in those days! "
Yes, indeed - to my delight, I see there is a copy of Hankinson's book, along with several Abraham titles, in our local library. So you may be seeing some more excerpts from this motherlode soon .... : )
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