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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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