Mountaineering Routes : Page 305

Summit, peak, crest, spire, dome, pinnacle, needle.— The ski mountaineer can choose his own appropriate name for the top. Here the prime objective danger, provided the top is not too pointed a pinnacle or needle, is the weather. But here the mountaineer can best observe the weather coming his way, and can hurry or linger accordingly. If the mountaineer is fortunate he may bask in such weather as described by Mummery on the Matterhorn, when he held out a match and the flame did not waver. His thoughts may swagger with Halliburton's on the same summit ("At last I can spit a mile"), or he may feel, with Young, the need of the "ability to smoke, and consequently to sustain his part in the effortless silence which characterizes the true comradeship of mountaineering." Solitude may affect him as it did Samivel's mountaineer: how much more beautiful it is if there is someone to talk to about it. Perhaps the climber will have none of the published reactions, and will prefer his own. If the weather forbids him to remove a mitt to get a match, much less try to light it, he is likely