Moving up from hill walking

From the outside the progression looks smooth: walking, then scrambling, then winter, then mountaineering, each a bit harder than the last. It is not smooth. Two of the steps are small and two are large, and they are not the two people expect.

Going from lowland walking to serious mountain walking is a large step, and it is almost entirely about judgement — weather, navigation, time. Going from mountain walking to easy scrambling is a small one, because the ground changes but the decisions do not. Going from summer to winter is the largest step in the whole sequence, because the consequences of an ordinary slip change completely. And going from winter walking to mountaineering is moderate, and mostly about ropes.

Scrambling is ground steep enough that you use your hands, without being steep enough to count as climbing. The British Mountaineering Council calls it the middle ground between walking and climbing, and notes that all scrambles involve some degree of rock climbing because both hands and feet are in use.

The sentence worth carrying away from their account is the counterintuitive one: scrambling can be more serious than rock climbing, particularly in the higher grades, mainly because people attempt it with less protection or none at all. A climber on a route of the same difficulty is roped and placing gear. A scrambler on that ground frequently is not, and the fall is the same fall.

A hill you have walked twenty times becomes a different place under snow, and the difference is not that it is colder. It is that the surface no longer holds you by friction, so a slip becomes a slide, and a slide on a slope with anything below it is the mechanism behind a large share of mountain accidents in winter.

That is why winter is the step where instruction stops being optional in practice. The skills involved — using an axe, walking in crampons, judging what snow will do — are physical, they are performed under consequence, and there is no way to acquire them from a page or a video and then test them safely on your own. Everything else in this progression can be picked up by going out with better people. This part is what courses exist for.

The other change is daylight, and it is underrated because it sounds administrative. A route that takes eight hours in June takes ten in February because of the ground conditions, and there are six hours of light to do it in. Time becomes the binding constraint on almost every winter day, which is why winter parties start in the dark and why turning round is a much more frequent outcome.

Honest tests, in order:

• Can you navigate in cloud, without a phone? — Not "do you own a compass". If the answer is no, the next step is a navigation course rather than anything technical, and it is the highest-value thing you can do.
• Have you turned round on a day you wanted? — The habit matters more than any skill, and somebody who has never done it has not yet been tested on the decision that counts.
• Are you comfortable on exposed ground with your hands on rock? — If exposure is the problem rather than the moves, more scrambling in summer is the answer, and it is a pleasant answer.
• Have you been taught to use an axe and crampons, on snow, by somebody who watched you? — If not, that is the step, and it is a course rather than a purchase.