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Extreme danger arises when snow balls between the crampon points so that little or no traction is obtained. Many fatal acidents have resulted. Since crampons are usually needed and used only on high-angle slopes of ice or very hard snow, full precautions against the event of a fall should be taken. To climb with crampons "instead of" an ice ax is like climbing with pitons instead of a rope or motoring with a steering wheel instead of a brake. Step cutting.—Perhaps there is no finer example of mountaineering than that afforded by the climber who can swiftly and precisely cut and use steps on a steep ice slope. Many are the complaints, in mountaineering literature, of those who have been forced to follow the lead of such a man, who would seem with few strokes to have cut many imperceptible steps and to have moved over them skillfully, hardly seeming to have poised in one long enough to ascertain that it would hold him. The ski mountaineer, however, would do well to start with steps that are more bucketlike. |
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