Rucksack Guide - Winter Mountaineering
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About this ebook
handbook for the winter mountain. It offers concise guidance and
support for whatever situations you might find yourself in, including:
- technical skills: tips and reminders on the key techniques
- equipment: from choosing the right crampons to ice climbing
- navigation: various techniques to help in a range of weather conditions
- safety: essential procedures to ensure the safety of yourself, your party and others on the mountain
- emergencies: guidance on what to do in extreme situations.
The book is colour-coded for easy reference and all information is
presented in lists and tables, making it simple to understand in
testing conditions.
The Rucksack Guide series is adapted from Mountaineering: the essential skills for mountain walkers and climbers, the definitive handbook for hill walkers, climbers and mountaineers.
Alun Richardson
Alun Richardson is an International Mountain Guide, the highest qualification for worldwide climbing, mountaineering and exploration. He is an experienced guide and tutor and regularly teaches at the National Mountaineering Centres, and internationally. He is also secretary of the British Mountain Guides Association.
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Rucksack Guide - Winter Mountaineering - Alun Richardson
CONTENTS
Introduction
What is winter?
Weather
Snow and ice
Snowflakes
Rising air creates winter weather
Frontal lift
Orographic lift
Predicting snowstorms
Snowpack changes
Temperature gradients
Rounding
Detecting rounding
Faceting
The dangers
Melt-freeze metamorphism
Other forms of snow
Ice
Avalanches
What is an avalanche?
Reducing your chances of being caught
Predicting avalanche conditions
What creates avalanche conditions?
At home
From the valley
During the walk/climb
Avoiding avalanche-prone slopes
What is the angle of the slope?
What surface is the snow resting on?
What is the slope’s orientation to the sun?
Cornices
What is the slope’s orientation to the wind?
Assessing a suspect slope
Shovel test
Quick pits
Avalanche-prone slopes
What to do in an avalanche
Rescuing an avalanche victim
Avalanche myths
Cold injuries
Hypothermia
Symptoms
Treatment
Frost nip and frostbite
Frost nip
Deep frostbite
Winter route finding
Winter navigation
Whiteout conditions
Putting it all together
Planning for safe travel
Choosing a good route
Emergency shelters and snow holes
Snow holes
Digging the hole
Types of snow shelter
Survival shelter
Snow cave
Keeping warm
Fuelling up
Clothing
Protecting your hands
Keeping your body warm
Keeping your head warm
Looking after your feet
Boot and crampons
Boots
Boot compatibility
Crampons
Crampon compatibility
Front points
Sharpening crampon points
Crampon attachment
Equipment
Essentials
Rucksack
Eye protection
Helmet
Harness
Ski poles
Choosing an axe
Ice axe
Ice axe standards
The shaft
Weight
The head (pick and adze)
The spike
Mountaineering axes
The shaft
Weight and strength
The head
Technical axes and hammers
The shaft
Weight and strength
The head
Axe leashes
Length
Climbing leashless
How sharp should an ice axe be?
Modifying a pick’s shape
Walking on snow
Walking equipment
Using ski poles
Crampons
Techniques without crampons
Kicking steps
Descending
Glissading
Techniques with crampons
Flat-footing
Front pointing
Combination/American technique
Using an ice axe
Carrying your ice axe
Holding an ice axe
Cutting steps
Self-arrest
Moving together
Techniques
Open snow slope
Horizontal snow crests
Steep mixed ridges
Short mixed steps
Longer steps
Short roping on descent
Steeper climbing
Protection
Shock slings
Finding protection in mixed ground
Ice screw carriers
Ropes
Carrying protection
Snow and ice anchors
Snow anchors
Buried axe
Snow stakes
Deadman or snow fluke
Snow bollard
Ice anchors
Natural anchors
Ice hooks
Warhogs or ice pegs
Ice screws
Abalakov V-thread
Climbing on snow
Creating a belay and belaying
Quick belay methods
Stomper belay
Scottish belay
Boot axe belay
Steep ice climbing
Tackling a steep ice climb
Swinging your ice tools
Removing a stuck tool
Placing your feet
Putting it all together
Triangle technique
Advanced ice climbing
Moving over bulges
Traversing
Ice screws
Placing ice screws
Removing ice screws
Creating a belay and belaying on ice
Mixed climbing and dry tooling
Mixed climbing
Mixed climbing equipment
Climbing snowed-up rock
Hooking
The stein pull
Ice-choked cracks
Torquing
Appendix
Winter climbing grades
Scotland
Technical grade
Water ice and Alpine ice grades
Mixed route/dry tooling grades
Avalanche danger scales
Rucksack Guides
Other books in the series
Acknowledgements
eCopyright
INTRODUCTION
Winter Mountaineering is the fourth book in the Rucksack Guide series and covers the skills required to become a competent winter mountaineer. This handy book can be kept in your rucksack and will help you to gain the experience to mountaineer safely in winter anywhere in the world. It does not cover the technical aspects of navigation or alpinism (see Rucksack Guides to Mountain Walking and Trekking and Alpinism).
The Rucksack Guide series tells you what to do in a situation, but it does not always explain why. If you want more information behind the decisions in these books, go to Mountaineering: The Essential Skills for Mountaineers and Climbers by Alun Richardson (A&C Black, 2008).
For more information about the author, his photographs and the courses he runs go to:
www.alunrichardson.co.uk.
WHAT IS WINTER?
WEATHER
On a cold clear day, with firm snow, winter mountaineering can be safer than in summer. However, it can all change in a few hours and gale force winds, blizzards, zero visibility, avalanches and the numbing cold will soon sap your reserves.
Winter starts as the sun drops on the horizon and the Earth is warmed less effectively. In the Northern Hemisphere this allows the Polar Front to move south bringing colder air from the Arctic. From autumn, through winter and well into spring, the battle between the warmer moist air to the south, and the colder drier air to the north, produces the winter storms that bring the snow to the UK and North America. (See Mountaineering: The Essential Skills for Mountaineers and Climbers (A&C Black, 2008) or Rucksack Guide: Mountain Walking and Trekking (A&C Black, 2009) both by the author, for more information on how our weather is made).
The low pressure gradient within winter storms often creates strong winds of 160kph plus. Gusts of 70kph and above are difficult to walk in and the wind above 800m, especially in Scotland, is at least double the strength at sea level. The wind chill factor can make it feel even colder: +5ºC in a 50kph wind can feel like –12ºC on exposed flesh. The mountains in winter are serious places.
Aanoch Eagach traverse, Glencoe, Scotland
SNOW AND ICE
SNOWFLAKES
When the temperature of a cloud falls below 0ºC, tiny particles, such as bits of clay, encourage water to turn into ice crystals that then combine to form snowflakes.
A snowflake is a number of snow crystals that join together as they fall through air that is close to freezing. When the temperature is ideal for stickiness, and the wind is light enough not to break them up, the flakes can grow very large.
Varying temperature, moisture and wind conditions favour crystal growth in different ways (Fig. 1):
• Stellar crystals (1) The classic star-shaped snowflake
• Columns (2) New snow crystals in a six-sided hollow or solid prism
• Needles (3) Long, thin forms
• Plates (4) Thin, usually hexagonal crystals
• Graupel Soft hail created by water droplets that freeze to crystals forming round particles
• Ice pellets Form when rain falls through a very cold air mass
Fig. 1 Snow crystal formations
RISING AIR CREATES WINTER WEATHER
There are two ways air can rise in winter:
FRONTAL LIFT
When warm, moist air is lifted over cold air it cools, forming clouds, rain or snow. The warmer the air, the more moisture it contains, and the faster it rises and cools, the greater the snowfall. Therefore, air masses originating in warmer areas, such as the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, have a tendency for greater snowfall.
However, just because a cloud contains snow does not mean it will land as snow – rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow can all fall on the same place as the front moves overhead.
• When warm air extends to ground level, the snow