Unusual Rock
Unsound rock is counterchecked by an intensification of sound method. To unusual rock we retort by an extension of our usual method. It would exaggerate its importance to discuss its varieties in greater detail than has seemed sufficient in the case of normal rock. A few instances will serve to show that our principles remain, for all rock, unaltered.
Slate has an insidious surface. The exposed edges, or spillikins, of strata may always break under a pull, unless they have allowed us to grasp a sufficiency of thickness. But slate has a worse trick. In chimney climbing, if we are using the usually safe and gentle hold of a thrust with the flat foot, or a press or push hold with the hand, against even a wide, smooth surface, the upper skin may crack locally at an uncertain distance from the point of pressure and allow foot or hand to shoot into space; and this always, unless the thrust is applied exactly at right angles to the lie of the strata. Our only safeguard is to extend to push and press holds on slate our practice with pull holds in general, and keep the direction of the pressure constant through all our lifting movement.
Quartz ledges and bands, which are the grateful solutions of many of our cliff problems, are treacherous. Quartz brittles off, in crystals or in masses, in unexpected directions. We cannot test it adequately until our full weight comes upon it; when it may be too late. And so we never step on to projecting quartz, or scale the vertical face of a seam, unless we have hand or foot hold upon good rock above or below it. Happily, quartz seams are usually narrow. We prefer soft-soled shoes, which will distribute the pressure over the uneven facets. Boot-nails snap the projecting crystals or slide on the flat facets, especially after rain. The fingers similarly must take general holds, and not trust to salient prisms. The direction of the growth of the crystals can guide us in applying our pressures. A seam lying back at a steep angle sometimes leaves good rock holds along its edges, where quartz and rock have weathered at an unequal rate. A seam at a gentle angle as often provides a delightful traverse of escape.
Soft sandstone, which in quarries and elsewhere is frequently used as a practice ground, has its own fashion of soft crumbling and its own body of hardened adherents. Its outlines are recognizable, and in mountain masses we avoid it altogether. But those who attempt it locally must remember that it is peculiarly deceptive for footwork. Its ledges dissolve under a stiff boot. Sand shoes, or still better, boots, are the only wear. Beginners should look for lines of ascent where the subjacent heaps are still uncarted and propitious in the event of failure. Old sandstone, when it emerges, is firmer for the feet but offers little handhold, and makes very fatiguing climbing.
Chalk, and the methods of dealing with it, form a study by themselves. Chalk climbing provides the missing link between rock and ice technique. Those who frequent its cliffs use big claws and ice methods, and pronounce it to be an unrivalled training for ice work. Its occasional hard surface and its abundant projecting flints, whose security is in inverse ratio to their graspability, have to be treated with the measures of precaution proper to unsound rock.
Marble builds peaks of imposing outline, but its edges are not constructed with an eye to good foot climbing. Its surfaces, where exposed, slope against us; its slipperiness dictates the use of soft soles; while the rubble with which it is cumbered makes soft soles comfortless. It has appeared to me more often dangerous than difficult.
Old lava is as tiresome as quartz, and less often available as a last resource. Desperately hard for the feet, it yet snaps out in diamond cubes and litters with wrenching rubble its already jarring surface. I know of no sound climbs upon it.
Gritstone has its own devotees and a growing literature. Its climbs and their mosaic perils have all the charm of a well-executed miniature.
Limestone, as the layman uses the term, is deceitful, and offers ridiculously little good climbing in proportion to the amount of it that protrudes plausibly from the surface of Europe. One of the closest escapes I have experienced was from a spontaneous fall of limestone rock on a venerable and bland-looking western cliff. In the form of ‘dolomite’ it offers very agreeable sharp-edged dwarf-climbs even in our islands, and it is to be regretted we have so little of good stature.
In Quarries.
Scrambling in home quarries, on chalk, gravel, blue-stone,—all kinds of rock,—is excellent practice. The surfaces are, however, raw and untempered by time, and the crude fractures and ledges by which we climb are made by man and survive by no natural law of the fittest. No experience of rock structure can therefore suffice to allow of calculation upon their security. Each hold must be separately tested before use. The risk is generally out of all proportion to the height. A rope from above should be used on any passage of doubt.
Along Sea Cliffs.
Sea cliffs have many votaries. It is perhaps ungrateful to class them as unusual rock, but their unfamiliar conditions, their wave-polished and often undercut bases, their summits artificially sculptured and constantly strained and fractured afresh by the fall of the cliff below, exclude them from a normal category. Their charm lies in their variety of rock, revealed in forms pensive, brooding, surprised, jovial or defiant, upon headland, island and stack. There are few more exhilarating scrambles than the granite outcrops of Cornwall, set in green seas, surf-spray and sunlight. The upper end of the coast of Sutherlandshire alone provides eight or nine different varieties of rock, and therefore of ascents. The whole island of Sark can be circumambulated at about the mid-height of its cliffs.
Traverses are the peculiar property of sea cliffs, which are often awkward or impossible of approach from their base for more direct ascent. Whole days, in fact if it were desirable a whole holiday lifetime of delightfully varied traversing at different levels may be had along the cliffs, high or low, of the west coasts of Scotland and of its islands, of Ireland, of England, and of parts of Wales. The north coast of Ireland has attractive sections alternating in this instance with pinnacles and scarps of decadent blends. Usually the return from such traverses can be made in the evening up a gully, by which we resume, if we wish, on the morrow. As a last resource in difficulties there is always the sea for a header of escape.
Rubber soles are the best wear; or, for some varieties, raw soft hide with the hair on, as worn in the west of Ireland; but rubber is, of course, treacherous on wet or weedy tidal rocks. This fact should be remembered in our stimulating races with the waves for the foot of a promising crack.
During the novitiate even hardy heads must beware of the intimidating, often vertiginous, effect produced by the constant movement of water below the feet. Both the sound and the motion are found to react almost unconsciously upon toughened climbing nerves.
The cliffs of the east coast of England consist too often of subsiding clay and water, or of a hard pebbly conglomerate; but they provide at least unusual climbing.
A good earth glissade can occasionally be found down their rifts; and every section affords opportunity for a cautious scramble or an ingenious trick route. On the harder earth and pebble mixtures there is sometimes occasion for step-cutting practice. The cliff edges frequently overhang, and present all the dangers of unseen cornices if approached from above, and more than their difficulties if reached from below.
Boots are best on these east cliffs. Vertigo is unknown, since the waves are all too rarely in close proximity to the cliffs!
Ireland, on the east, is more fortunate; it possesses some fine firm stacks and cliffs. Parts also of the east cliffs of Scotland are excellent.
On Freaks.
Some regions are rich in incidental pillars, pinnacles, stacks, needles, pins, fingers, boulders, erratics (‘off-comduns’), Wellington’s Noses, Grey Ladies, Devil’s domestic utensils, or their fantastic like. It is difficult to connect the records of their (periodic) first conquests with any general principles except those forming the groundwork of a local literary reputation. A long rope over the summit would seem to be the preliminary to many such a climb, and statuesque photography its culmination. But between these extremes a peripatetic climber can find many joyous and gentle passages, where he may even remain anonymous if he goes armed only with such sound method as the type of rock suggests, and shod with soft soles. One experienced companion would be found of more service than many onlookers; and a tradition of classical mountaineering demands that the rope between two men should not pass over the summit before either has started. To save time, once, when we were crossing a series of smooth needles two of us agreed to climb continuously, in the hope that if the man descending on the far side of one needle slipped (as was the more probable) the man on its near side would be assisted to the summit more quickly by the rope; and so no impulse would be wasted. Unhappily, it was the rear man, ascending, who slipped, and at a moment when, owing to the length of the rope, the front man was already himself ascending the next needle. Neither, at all events, was left long in suspense.
Bouldering is the pleasantest of off-day distractions; but too many men allow themselves to spend the time on the merely difficult. Its use should be for safe exercises on rules of style. When you can climb an easy block without your hands, or balance up a wall with such light finger-hold that a friend can pass his hand under yours, or have discovered how to solve a shelf climb by a push hold and a twisting arm-lever, you have made a fair test that will be of future use. To wrestle up pure difficulty, such as you would not attempt in exposed higher climbing, by dint of muscle and strenuosity, proves nothing and does no good; it only reduces the restful value of the off-day. Our object on such unusual rock should be to extract from it the soundest practice for our usual method.