Manual of Ski Mountaineering: Compiled Under the Auspices of the National Ski Association of America

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1942.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520349636

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MANUAL OF SKI MOUNTAINEERING

SKI-MOUNTAINEERING CAMP AT 11,000 FEET IN THE SIERRA NEVADA

Manual of

Ski Mountaineering

COMPILED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF

THE NATIONAL SKI ASSOCIATION

OF AMERICA

EDITED BY

DAVID R. BROWER

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

LEWIS F. CLARK, ALEX HILDEBRAND,

DR. JOEL HILDEBRAND, RICHARD M. LEONARD,

EINAR NILSSON, BESTOR ROBINSON

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES

1942

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON, ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT, 1942, BY

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

PREFACE

AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING in 1940 the directors of the National Ski Association authorized, and its executive committee subsequently adopted, uniform ski touring tests. The need for such tests had long been felt and had resulted in the establishment of many tests on a local basis, particularly by the Eastern Amateur Ski Association and the California Ski Association. Local experimentation had continued sufficiently to furnish a sound basis for uniformity. The immediate impelling motive was the need for proficiency tests which, with minor modifications, could be used for both recreational and military skiing; for this reason the actual content was developed in cooperation with the Army by the Advisory Committee on Equipment and Technique.

The purposes of the touring tests are four:

(1) To guide skiers in knowing what to learn in order to be sufficiently proficient to enjoy the sport.

(2) To measure touring proficiency in order that skiers may know for themselves (and others may judge them as well) whether they are capable of safely undertaking tours of varying difficulty.

(3) To create as a national military asset a personnel reservoir of skiers competent to travel and live on the snow. It is easier to train a skier to be a soldier than to train a soldier to be a skier.

(4) To encourage skiers to gain that measure of proficiency in ski touring as will both enable and induce them to undertake and enjoy with safety and assured competence ski trips varying in difficulty from simple one day tours to prolonged winter vacations among the most rugged mountain ranges.

It is not necessary to prepare a manual covering the fourth, third, second, and first class tests. Generally accepted standards of technique and performance serve as complete guides.

Only a portion of the technique underlying the skimountaineering test, however, has heretofore been reduced to writing, and even that portion is covered by articles and chapters scattered through numerous journals and books. A manual, being obviously necessary, was authorized by the National Ski Association at its 1941 annual meeting and the Committee on Uniform Touring Tests given the appropriate authorization for its preparation.

Although merging into each other by imperceptible gradations, and having many elements in common, three methods of camping on snow exist. The Arctic technique, based primarily on dog sled or its motorized equivalent, is intended for extreme cold and terrain that is not too rough. Many Arctic manuals describe it.

The technique for glacier-covered mountains is based on relaying of loads (or dropping them from airplanes) and a successive line of camps extending toward the summit goal. Many mountaineering books describe it.

In the mountain ranges of western United States a third technique has indigenously evolved. It emphasizes elimination of all dispensable equipment, the devising of items for multiple use, and the reduction of weight of every article. The result has been the reduction of the weight of a pack, whose contents are satisfactory for occasional temperatures of —30° F, to eighteen pounds plus 2% pounds of food per man-day and fuel if needed. In this manner both mobility and pleasurable ski touring are accomplished.

Because of the impracticability of preparing such a manual as a group effort without repeated conferences to eliminate personal predilections, a group of Sierra Club ski mountaineers residing in the San Francisco Bay region was asked by the Committee on Uniform Touring Tests to undertake its authorship.

This they willingly did. The manual was then submitted to the members of the Committee.

The appreciation of the National Ski Association is extended:

To the authors, for their strenuous work under press of time: David R. Brower, Alex Hildebrand, Dr. Joel Hildebrand, Milton Hildebrand, Dr. H. Stewart Kimball, Murray Kirkwood, Richard M. Leonard, Einar Nilsson [and Bestor Robinson—Ed.].

To Dr. Laurance M. Thompson and Dr. Millard Gump for assistance on the first-aid text, to Gerald Seligman, whose extensive book on snow structure has been an indispensable fund of information for the avalanche text, and to Kenneth D. Adam, H. C. Bradley, Frederic R. Kelley, William B. Rice, and Dr. Hervey H. Voge for suggestions.

To members of the Committee on Uniform Touring Tests for corrections and suggestions: David Bradley, Douglas M. Burckett, Charles M. Dole, Charles M. Dudley, Peter H. Hostmark, Roger Langley, Alfred D. Lindley, Rolf Munson, John E. P. Morgan, Bradford Washburn, Jr., and Walter A. Wood.

To the University of California Press for readily undertaking the publication of this manual.

To the skiers who will use the manual, recognizing that it does not purport to be exhaustive, authoritative, or definitive, and who send in their suggestions to this committee so that the next edition may be greatly improved and progress in the technique of ski mountaineering continuously stimulated.

BESTOR ROBINSON, Chairman, Committee on Uniform Touring Tests

Oakland California

January 5,1942

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

II. WARMTH

III. EQUIPMENT

EQUIPMENT FOR WEAR

EQUIPMENT TO CARRY

COMMUNITY EQUIPMENT

IV. WAX AND SKINS

V. WATER

VI. FOOD AND COOKING

VII. THE TECHNIQUE OF TRAVEL

ORGANIZATION

TECHNIQUE ON THE TRAIL

STORM, NIGHT, AND FIRE

TRAVEL IN STEEP TERRAIN

VIII. SELECTING A CAMPSITE

IX. SHELTER

TENT REQUIREMENTS

OTHER SHELTER

X. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON CAMPING

XI. SNOW FORMATION AND AVALANCHES

SNOW TEXTURE

STRATIFICATION OF SNOW DEPOSITS

EFFECT OF SLOPE AND GROUND SURFACE

AVALANCHE TYPES

DETECTION OF SNOW CONDITION

SUMMARY OF AVALANCHE CAUSES

PRECAUTIONS IN AVALANCHE TERRITORY

CONDUCT DURING AN AVALANCHE

AVALANCHE RESCUE WORK

XII. COMPASS AND MAP

XIII. FIRST AID

XIV. TRANSPORTATION OF THE INJURED

XV. THE SKI-MOUNTAINEERING TEST

CHECK LIST OF EQUIPMENT

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. INTRODUCTION

SKI MOUNTAINEERING is a cumbersome term. But what would more aptly describe the grand sport which results when skiing and mountaineering are blended? The arena for this sport is almost boundless, extending beyond the skiways, through timberline country where even the air seems to share the vigor of the peaks, where snows are tracked only by one’s chosen friends. Such is the terrain that mountaineering gives abundantly to the skier. What does skiing give to the mountaineer? What but wings to his slow- plodding feet? Hickory wings on which he can escape the bounds of method and precision that define the practice slopes on which he learned the mechanics of edging and body swing; wings which free him to travel, through the winter, across the snowfields that gather, cloudlike, on the distant mountainsides.

Now winter is usually mild enough for the practice-slope devotee. No matter what the weather, he is never so far from habitation that he cannot hasten indoors for warmth. If he is intent on using skis merely as a source of speed, he may ride the lifts and schuss where the going is steepest, relying on ski instructors and the ski patrol to correct his errors in technique, and on steam heat and stimulants to revive him when he dresses inadequately.

Winter is not so mild to the skier who would add to the pleasure of speed the joy of travel to snowclad horizons. In addition to a certain amount of skiing skill, he must know how to conduct and protect himself and, if need be, to care for others.

Perhaps he will prefer to learn how to do this in easy stages. Before venturing into the back country, he may wish to try some touring trail leading to a remote mountain ski hut or shelter. He will find that such facilities are, happily, ever increasing in number, and that they provide many— but not too many—of the comforts to which he is accustomed. Perhaps he will go no farther than the huts; even so, he will have learned far more of the rewards of skiing than his contemporaries who remain on practice slopes; these pages may be instrumental in adding to his learning.

Perhaps, however, he will want headier drink, a sort of stimulus that complete self-reliance alone can afford. His ingenuity, and, we hope, some of the technique expounded here, will bring to him a new capableness. He will want not only to look at an alluring horizon, but also to cross it. Then he will become a pioneer on skis—a ski mountaineer.

II. WARMTH

THE MOST important difference between summer and winter camping is the necessity, in winter, of maintaining warmth. For a short time before the winter camper turns in, a wood fire built on green poles laid on the snow, or the small gasoline cook stove in the tent, will make available some heat; but by and large, both on the trail and in camp, the human body must produce sufficient heat to maintain normal temperature. If the interior body temperature drops two degrees, intense shivering results, further lowering of temperature produces sluggishness and coma, and finally, at somewhere between 70° and 75°, death ensues.

We must then consider the human body as a heat-producing machine and determine (1) what can be done to increase the amount of heat manufactured by the body, and (2) what can be done to conserve this heat.

Production of body heat.—Å normal male adult at rest, as in sleeping or loafing, liberates approximately 75 calories of heat per hour. This can be increased appreciably by eating or by exposure to cold. The only other means by which skiers may increase heat output is muscular action.

Violent exercise will increase heat output as much as sixteen times.

Shivering, which is merely a form of muscular action, will if intense, increase heat output several times; in fact, it is nature’s method of preventing freezing. The digestion of food will increase heat production. The increase is prompt but brief for carbohydrates, much prolonged and higher for proteins, slow for fats.

Applying these facts to the technique of winter mountaineering, the following conclusions are apparent:

(1) There is no great difficulty keeping the body as a whole warm while vigorously exercising.

(2) If one is cold during the night, food is desirable.

(3) Vigorous shivering, though uncomfortable, is the most effective way of getting warm inside a sleeping bag.

(4) Another excellent method is to tense the muscles of the body strenuously; relaxing and tensing alternately until heavy puffing and warmth result.

(5) Hot drinks are fine only for temporary warming.

(6) To prevent freezing of hands and feet, warm blood must get to them. Tight shoes and mitts restrict circulation, and tend