Winter climbing conditions - how much information is too much?

British winter climbing is in a strange place at the moment. We like to get away to the hills as an escape from "real life," and yet the world of climbing frequently mirrors the world around us even if we like to pretend that it doesn't.

Look around you. We live in an age of ubiquitous information, of instant answers, of a vast mass of knowledge that can be tapped or ignored at will. A modern climber is a creature of the modern era, and it would be strange to expect otherwise.

I'm generalising to an extent here, but in the past climbing was a more adventurous activity: uncertain, unpredictable, and more of an act of exploration than it is today. The sense of adventure remains strong, but the sport has changed beyond all recognition and modern climbers, particularly winter climbers, crave one thing above everything else: information.

The Information Age

O.G. Jones

The advance of the information age in climbing has been a long and slow one, arguably beginning in the 1890s when O.G. Jones wrote his first guidebooks to popular climbing areas of the UK. His motivations for doing this were to help climbers avoid wasting their time and to prevent fatal accidents ... noble goals, and yet he was widely criticised. The established climbing community resisted all attempts to democratize the sport.

The shape of things to come was set. Throughout the next century guidebook after guidebook was produced, covering more and more of the UK in greater and greater detail. As new routes were climbed the blank pages were filled in and even the climbing grades themselves became more precise, leaving less to discover yourself.

The information age is a two-pronged fork. On the one hand we have information about the climbs themselves: guidebooks, hut logs, club journals, eventually followed by online forums and route databases. On the other hand we have information about climbing conditions (mainly the concern of winter climbers, but also relevant to trad climbers as well).

The first category is well-developed in the year 2014. Guidebooks are bewilderingly comprehensive and virtually every climb in the UK is documented to within an inch of its life. The amount of information available online is similarly verbose, allowing climbers every possible opportunity to research their routes of choice before even seeing the crag or mountain. It can be argued that this wealth of information has encouraged the phenomenon of "honeypotting" (in which popular routes get mobbed by crowds while others lie neglected), but that's not really the issue I'd like to talk about in this blog.

It's the second category - the conditions information - that really interests me.

Tweeting from the Crag

Conditions are everything in winter climbing. Depending on conditions, an ice climb may be a glittering pillar of pure ice ... or a dank chimney dripping with water. Perhaps it's to be expected that winter climbers have an insatiable appetite for conditions data.

Since I started mountaineering in 2006 there has been a revolution in how climbers find out about the quality of the white stuff coating their chosen hill. Forums existed in 2006, of course - and word of mouth has always been with us - but new technology has enabled high-quality information to spread far more quickly and in greater volume.

The Scottish Avalanche Information Service provides perhaps the best online information about conditions. Updated daily during the season, at a glance you can get a good idea about snow conditions in most of the main climbing areas. It requires experience to use effectively but is one of the best tools available today. MWIS is another vital tool that provides weather forecasts tailored to the most popular mountain areas.

Blogs have really taken off and now it seems that every guide, instructor, and enthusiast has a blog (this is by no means a criticism; I love reading mountain blogs!) UKClimbing.com now has a winter conditions page detailing which routes have recently been climbed, and perhaps most significantly of all, climbers on Twitter utilise the #scotwinter hashtag to tweet live updates on snow conditions directly from the crag. Twitter is buzzing with climbers and when I'm stuck down south with no chance of getting to the mountains it can be a real boost reading about adventures almost as they happen. It all helps to build up an accurate picture of what's happening on the hill.

Good information can make the difference between a day like this...

... and one like this!

Information Overload?

All this information is hugely empowering. Once, mountaineers might have driven hundreds of miles to a mountain, perhaps using up their only holiday opportunity all winter - and with no idea of what they might find when they got there. In the days before guidebooks they might not even have known about any climbable routes, and they certainly wouldn't have had any idea about critical factors such as avalanche risk, snow quality, or cornices.

Of course, that's the very definition of "adventure" and I'm quite sure that such circumstances have produced fine outings on many occasions.

However, the chance of mishap is high and the margin for error slim. At best, the climbers risk disappointment if the mountain is stripped of snow and none of the routes are in condition. At worst, they risk death from avalanche.

Nowadays the climber has options. He or she can look up routes in a guidebook to judge their own skills in relation to the mountain. The climber can research a wealth of data online, from accurate weather forecasts to avalanche observations, from recent pictures of the mountain to tweets posted the day before from the same route. When used wisely and tempered with experience, the risk of disappointment or accident is reduced - and, arguably, the chance of having a memorable and safe adventure is increased.

We climb in an era when information is readily available, but some of us still look back to simpler times and yearn for the uncertainty and adventure of days before we had such powerful tools. As a sport, climbing is inherently adventurous - but we live in times when technology and information threaten that sense of adventure.

The Next Phase: Real-Time Updates

The BMC has recently launched a new service enabling winter climbers to view live temperature data directly from Cwm Idwal, a popular ice climbing location in the Snowdonia National Park. The pilot service is very well-presented and climber-friendly. A little knowledge will allow potential visitors to judge whether or not the ice routes are likely to be in condition.

It's an interesting development and, when I read about it today, I asked myself if I would use such a tool. I sometimes enjoy the freedom of climbing without guidebooks, but I would never venture into the mountains without appraising myself of the avalanche and weather forecasts. I remain a 21st century climber despite my occasional fondness for tweed and nailed boots.

I must admit that I would use these sensor readings, even if part of me recoils from the clinical stripping-away of uncertainty and adventure.

It's a dilemma, isn't it? In the year 2014 it is seen as irresponsible to climb in winter without having checked weather and avalanche data. In the year 2024 will it be considered irresponsible without having checked your real-time temperature readouts on your Google Glasses (or whatever gadget we're all using in the future?)

The information age of climbing progresses, times change, and the boundary between adventure and common sense continues to move - but it moves ever in the favour of greater safety, more information, less uncertainty.

Just me and the snow - but for how much longer?

I don't really know what point I'm trying to make with this piece. Part of me looks back at the brave, foolish early years of climbing and yearns for the days when the mountains were empty and unknown and to climb was to be a genuine explorer. Part of me knows that change is inevitable and the sport of climbing is as subject to technological shifts as everything else. Part of me realises that if extra information can avoid disappointment or danger then it's almost certainly worth it.

But I wonder about a future where every mountain throngs with climbers, where we all wear Google Glasses which can calculate every axe placement and give live readouts on the probability of a slope avalanching. Is that the future we want for our most wonderful sport? The machines are already taking over in the fields of navigation and communication in the mountains; will they start replacing our common sense and experience as well?

I really don't have an answer for this. I don't see it as the thin end of the wedge, but rather a point in a long, long process. We can't resist the future but, for the moment at least, we have some choice over the extent to which technology intrudes into our adventures in the mountains.

What do you think? Do you welcome the introduction of real-time temperature sensors in climbing venues, or do you think we have enough information on conditions as it is? Sound off below!

Featured on The Gear - a great new website for outdoor enthusiasts

As outdoor enthusiasts we value objective, real-world recommendations on gear when looking to make a purchase. There are plenty of sites out there devoted to advertising outdoor gear, but all too often it isn't clear if the site was paid to advertise an item or if it has been recommended by a genuine user.

A new website has launched which I think will help to prevent that conundrum. The Gear features interviews with outdoor personalities of all kinds, focusing on the equipment they use on their adventures.

I think the format of this site is great because readers can see for themselves what other people have chosen to use in the hills. Interviewees aren't pressured or paid to promote particular brands.

I have been interviewed by The Gear and you can read my interview here. The website deserves to be a success so if you like what you see please share!

Constructing an ice axe of the Alpine Golden Age

I am already an active user of the mountaineering technology commonly in use between the 1890s and 1920s. I've climbed many mountains equipped with nailed boots and a long ice axe with a wooden shaft, sometimes taking on quite serious routes (by the standards of that era), notably my ascent of Bidean nam Bian's Central Gully in March 2011. However, I have no practical experience of the climbing equipment used by an even older generation: that of the Golden Age of Alpinism.

A hundred and sixty years ago, increasing Alpine tourism led to a number of wealthy Britons travelling to the Alps each year for the new sport of climbing mountains. In the early 1850s most of the big peaks of the Alps were unclimbed, and for a few years a relatively small group of men (and a few women) carried out a determined campaign of exploration like no other in history. The 4,000m peaks of the Alps were climbed and documented one by one. It was a remarkable era which was brought to an abrupt end by the 1865 Matterhorn disaster.

For a brief exploration of mountaineering technology used during this era, focusing on the alpenstock, please see Climbing with an Alpenstock.

The changing design of the ice axe

The Whymper ice axe

In the 1850s the ice axe as we know it today, with a horizontal adze, had not yet been invented. This design can be attributed to Edward Whymper, who made a small innovation in the 1860s that was to set the design of the ice axe in stone for the next hundred years. A horizontal adze allows easier cutting steps downhill and therefore gives a climber more flexibility in planning his route.

The vast majority of climbers during the Golden Age of Alpinism used either the old combination of hatchet and alpenstock, or they used the "Chamouniard axe." The guides of Chamouni / Chamonix used ice axes with a vertical cutting blade, sometimes with an opposing pick which was used as an anchor or for chipping steps in solid ice. Vertical axes were very efficient for cutting steps uphill but very poor for cutting downhill - meaning that the party usually had to descend the mountain the same way they came up.

Here's what Murray's The Art of Travel (1872) had to say on the matter:

In the first place it is absolutely necessary that one of the cutters should be made in the form of a pick, as this is by far the best instrument for hacking into hard ice, and is also extremely convenient for holding on to a snow-slope, or hooking into crannies, or on to ledges of rock. 

For the other cutter we recommend an adze-shaped blade, and we are convinced that this is the form which will be found most generally useful, as being best suited for all the varieties of step-cutting. The hatchet-shaped blade used by the Chamouni guides is no doubt a better implement for making a staircase diagonally up a slope, but on the other hand it is exceedingly difficult to cut steps downwards with a blade set on in this manner; and as mountaineers rarely come down the way by which they went up, if they can help it, it is obvious that this objection to the Chamouni form of axe is conclusive.

Thus we see that by the early 1870s Whymper's design had begun to phase out the Chamouniard vertical axe.

Constructing a Chamouniard axe

I have decided to build myself one of these axes and try it out for myself to see how the technologies compare on the hill.

Firstly I need a head unit! I managed to find an old boarding axe / fireman's hatchet on Ebay with the right configuration of pick and axe blade:

As you can see, it was in fairly bad nick and my first job was to get rid of the (rotten) wooden handle, a job easily done with judicious use of fire and a chisel!

I then removed the rivets by sawing them in half and punching them through. I'm currently carrying out a cleanup operation on the steelwork, rubbing it down with glasspaper and steel wool and filing the pick to a square-cut point.

The next stage will be to select a suitable shaft for the axe. I'm going to look for a piece of ash between 4 and 5 feet in length. Watch this space for future updates!

Climbing with an Alpenstock

"It is a fact that everything which can be done with the alpenstock can be done also and better with the axe. No proper step can be quickly made with an alpenstock."
~
"[The alpenstock] has a long tang running into the wood ... and its termination is extremely sharp. With a point of this description steps can be made in ice almost as readily as with an axe."

The first quote is from Mountaineering by C.T. Dent, published in 1892. The second is from Edward Whymper's Scrambles Amongst the Alps (1871). By the closing years of the 19th century the alpenstock was rapidly fading from use: a relic of older times when mountaineering was a heroic business and specialist equipment did not exist.

In this article I'd like to discuss this humble item of climbing gear and hopefully go some way towards demonstrating its importance to the development of mountaineering as a sport.

What is an alpenstock?

Firstly, definitions! Nowadays the word "alpenstock" is used interchangeably with old-fashioned ice axes of the sort popular until the 1960s. Any ice axe with a shaft in excess of 75cm (especially one with a wooden shaft) is commonly called an alpenstock in the 21st century. However, this is factually incorrect.

An alpenstock is a simple wooden staff, an inch or less in diameter, capped at one end with a steel spike. The length varies between 4'6" and around 7', depending on personal preference. That's all there is to it!

Its function is primarily as a support or third leg to aid balance while climbing steep snow or crossing a glacier. The spike anchors the climber firmly to the mountain and can even be used to chip out steps in ice or hard snow.

"Alpenstock" is a German word; the French is baton, and English explorers often simply used "stick" or "fell pole" (although the German and French terms were also commonly used by Englishmen). "Alpenstock" was sometimes mistakenly pronounced "helping stick" by English tourists.

Some words from Edward Whymper on the subject of the alpenstock:

"When a man who is not a born mountaineer gets upon the side of a mountain ... he ultimately procures an alpenstock and turns himself into a tripod. This simple implement is invaluable to the mountaineer, and when he is parted from it involuntarily (and who has not been?) he is inclined to say, just as one may remark of other friends, “You were only a stick—a poor stick—but you were a true friend, and I should like to be in your company again.”

When were they first used?

Alpenstocks are the oldest mountaineering tools known to mankind, first used by shepherds, travellers, and anyone else venturing into steep terrain. They were probably used by Neolithic people and were certainly used by the Romans. When Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786, Balmat and Paccard were armed with alpenstocks and short hatchets--a combination that served mountaineers for over sixty years until the ice axe was invented in the 1850s. In the old days, the stick was used for balance and the hatchet was used to make steps where required.

Crampon - 1860s

It's worth highlighting the fact that crampons were commonly used in the Alps between the 1780s and the 1820s, but had fallen out of favour by the early 1840s and were not widely adopted again until the early 20th century. With spiked shoes, less emphasis was placed on cutting steps and therefore the hatchet was less frequently used. After crampons went out of fashion, climbers used hobnailed boots and were obliged to cut steps more often.

An ice axe - not an alpenstock!

The ice axe boasted greater utility in the form of a combined cutting blade and pick used to fashion steps in hard ice. It both enhanced and replaced the alpenstock. Although this process took time, by the early years of the 20th century the transition was almost complete.

A modern alpenstock

In the Alps, most of the glacier passes were first climbed by men wielding alpenstocks. Some surprisingly difficult mountains were also climbed in the pre ice axe era, for example the Jungfrau and Wetterhorn. This simple tool was of vital importance because it was cheap and ubiquitous, and added a modest degree of safety to the business of crossing glaciers and climbing mountains. It therefore helped propel Alpine exploration into a the limelight of popularity, and well into the 1860s it was perfectly normal to see mountaineers climbing major peaks the old-fashioned way, with stick and hatchet. Some climbers, for example Albert Smith, remained staunch opponents of the ice axe, claiming the traditional ways were better.

In Great Britain, the alpenstock enjoyed an extended spell of use. Ice axes were almost unknown in the Scottish mountains until well into the 1880s, although by the 1890s a growing emphasis on climbing (as opposed to mere hillwalking) led to the gradual adoption of the axe by British mountaineers.

In 2013, the ice axe is seen as an essential safety tool for all forms of winter mountaineering, and the alpenstock has been replaced by the telescopic trekking pole: a useful item for approaches and easy walks, but unsuitable for mountaineering.

An accident on the Matterhorn

In 1862 young Edward Whymper was carrying out a determined campaign to be the first man to climb the Matterhorn, Forbes' "impossible monolith" near Zermatt. In his classic work Scrambles Amongst the Alps we read this harrowing account of an accident that befell him while attempting to cross an icefield armed with nothing but an alpenstock and nailed boots:

"So I held to the rock with my right hand, and prodded at the snow with the point of my stick until a good step was made, and then, leaning round the angle, did the same for the other side. So far well, but in attempting to pass the corner (to the present moment I cannot tell how it happened) I slipped and fell. The knapsack brought my head down first, and I pitched into some rocks about a dozen feet below; they caught something and tumbled me off the edge, head over heels, into the gully; the bâton was dashed from my hands, and I whirled downwards in a series of bounds, each longer than the last; now over ice, now into rocks; striking my head four or five times, each time with increased force. Bâton, hat, and veil skimmed by and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks—which I had started—as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow had been the escape from utter destruction. As it was, I fell nearly 200 feet in seven or eight bounds."


What is it really like to climb with an alpenstock?

The author armed with his alpenstock

I own a short, lightweight alpenstock, constructed from a broom handle and steel spike. It's just over four feet in length and the handle end is wrapped with rubber self-amalgamating tape to provide a sturdy grip (not quite a period detail, but a very practical one!) I also chose to add a tether made from a short length of rope.

Although most of my historical climbing escapades are accompanied by my trusty vintage ice axe, I'm currently writing fiction set in an earlier period so it's only right that I should try out the older technique for myself! I've been on several outings with the alpenstock, although until now I have not found myself on hard snow or ice where stepcutting would normally be required.

Frankly, the idea of trying to chip steps with the point of an alpenstock isn't a very appetising one, and I can appreciate why the pioneers readily turned to ice axes when they became widely available. However, for general hill use the alpenstock is a great bit of kit. It's almost as light as a trekking pole. It doesn't fold shut, of course, but that's actually an advantage: what it loses in compactness it makes up for in rigidity, simplicity, and reliability.

I'm sufficiently comfortable using my alpenstock that I would be very happy using it on mountaineering ascents throughout the year in Scotland, but only on easy terrain and only if I have crampons with me. Of one thing I can be completely certain: for as long as mankind feels the need or inclination to climb mountains, some form of spiked staff will exist as an aid to balance.

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