The term mountaineering describes the experience of rock climbing. While some scholars identify mountaineering-related activities as climbing (rock and ice) and trekking up mountains other people are also adding backpacking, hiking, skiing, via ferrata and wilderness activities, and still others claim that
Winter Mountaineering Course Alps California Chamonix New Zealand Wales Courses Canada Europe Lake District Uk activities have indoor climbing, sport climbing and bouldering. However, to the majority of with the scholars, the definition of mountaineering is understood as climbing (which now identifies adventure climbing or sports climbing) and trekking (hill walking in 'exotic' places).
Hiking in the mountains may also be an easy form of mountaineering if this involves scrambling, or short stretches with the more basic grades of rock climbing, and also crossing glaciers.
While mountaineering began as tries to get to the highest point of unclimbed big mountains it has branched into specializations that address different factors with the mountain and includes three areas: rock-craft, snow-craft, and skiing, depending on whether or not the route chosen ends rock, snow or ice. All require experience, athletic ability, and technical knowledge to take care of safety.
Mountaineering is often called Alpinism, especially in European languages, which suggests climbing routes with minimal equipment in high and frequently snow and ice-covered mountains for example the Alps, where technical difficulties frequently exceed environmental and physical challenges. A mountaineer who pursues this more technical and minimalist kind of rock climbing might be called an Alpinist, although use with the term may vary between countries and eras. The word "alpinism" came to be in the nineteenth century to refer to climbing with regards to enjoying climbing itself as a sport or recreation, distinct from merely climbing while hunting or as a religious pilgrimage that had been done generally in those days.
The UIAA or Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme is the world governing body in mountaineering and climbing, addressing issues like access, medical, mountain protection, safety, youth and ice climbing.
Compacted snow conditions allow mountaineers to advance on foot. Frequently crampons are required to travel efficiently over snow and ice. Crampons put on a mountaineer's boots to deliver additional traction on hard snow (névé) and ice. Using various techniques from alpine skiing and
Winter Mountaineering Course Alps California Chamonix New Zealand Wales Courses Canada Europe Lake District Uk to ascend/descend a mountain can be a form of the experience on it's own, called ski mountaineering. Ascending and descending a snow slope safely necessitates the use of an ice axe and several different footwork techniques that have been developed in the last century, mainly in Europe (e.g. French technique and German technique). The continuing development of footwork in the lowest angle slopes to the steepest terrain is first to splay feet to some rising traverse, to kicking steps, to front pointing the crampons. The continuing development of ice axe technique in the lowest angle slopes to the steepest terrain is to use the ice axe first as a walking stick, then the stake, then to use the front pick as a dagger below the shoulders or above, and lastly to swinging the pick into the slope on the head. These various techniques may involve questions of differing ice-axe design depending on terrain, and in many cases whether a mountaineer uses a couple of ice axes. Anchors for your rope in snow are often unreliable, and can include the snow stakes, called pickets, deadman devices called flukes which can be fashioned from aluminium, or devised from buried objects that may have an ice axe, skis, rocks and other objects. Bollards, which can be simply carved away from consolidated snow or ice, also sometimes function as anchors.