>A couple of years ago, I read, somewhere on the Web, an interesting >report on a British mountaineering expedition to Garhwal. They wrote >that as they were approaching the base camp, a dog followed them, and >sort of joined the expedition. Finally, the dog too reached the >summit. However, while descending it had trouble with footholds, and >would wait until at least one person reached a point below, so that >another person could pass the dog down to him. I found the account >rather interesting. On my first attempt at ice climbing, many many years ago, back when ice axes had long wooden shafts and were used to chop steps... We were in Central Gully in Huntington Ravine. One of the guys with us had brought his big german shepard. It was a big snow year. We only had to chop about 25 ft of steps on some low angle ice. I was expecting the dog to meet us when we got back. It scampered up the steps and joined us on the snow. It's natural crampons worked reasonably well. It had an interesting technique for descending, or rather not descending too fast/far. It would use people as a stopping/resting spot. You would be working down face out when a large dog would (gently) bump into the backs of your knees. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.

"Hal Murray" <hal-usenet@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net> wrote in message news:Yp-dnXVkEc9Q2XHbnZ2dnUVZ_j6dnZ2d@megapath.net... > > It had an interesting technique for descending, or rather not > descending too fast/far. It would use people as a stopping/resting > spot. You would be working down face out when a large dog would > (gently) bump into the backs of your knees. Reminds me of a dog whose owner I used to climb with. We weren't on ice, but this dog would take even the steepest descent gullies like a mountain goat; it would just sort of bound downward, its front legs would hit a ledge, and start to absorb the impact to slow down while its back legs were already reaching down below the ledge to catch the next one. But its body was pretty much in constant motion, sometimes unnervingly fast, right down the slope. And this was on terrain that us humans were turning around on to face the rock and downclimb. -s-