On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills: Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell

by Henry S. Salt

Standing at the foot of the Napes, one finds in them a series of fanlike ridges and gullies, from one of which rises the famous Needle, subject of countless articles and photographs; and if it be holiday-season there will probably be one or two parties either climbing or prepared to climb. The Needle being far too slender to accommodate many cragsmen at once, the curious sight may sometimes be witnessed of one set of Needle-men, including more rarely a Needle-woman, gravely waiting their turn, while their predecessors are manœuvring in various postures on the rock. The sport of mountaineering, it may be remarked, differs from certain other sports in this, that, however exciting it maybe to those personally engaged, the mere onlooker is apt to find the spectacle rather tedious; nor is this surprising, when one remembers the large scale of the scene, and that the progress is slow in proportion to the severity of the ascent, a climber on the mountain-side occupying much the same position, relatively, as a fly on the house-wall. Still, there are many of us who would rather be spectators of such gymnastics than take an active part in them.

The crags overlooking Ennerdale, if less peculiar than the Great Napes, are also very impressive, and though long proclaimed “inaccessible” have now been assiduously explored and mapped out by enterprising climbers. A romantic interest, too, attaches to them, through the discovery made by Mr. W. P. Haskett Smith of “a sort of hut of loose stones, evidently the refuge of some desperate fugitive of half a century or more ago,” who is presumed, on somewhat imperfect evidence, to have been a smuggler,[15] but whom we should prefer to regard as a pilgrim of the mountains, a fugitive only from the cares and worries of an over-exacting civilization. Whether “Moses’ Sledgate,” the rather mysterious half-obliterated old track, which may be seen winding round the west side of the Gable, had any connexion, as Mr. Haskett Smith surmises, with the hermitage among the crags, must be left to the reader’s imagination; it seems more likely that the prosaic statement of another writer, that the path was formerly used for carrying slates from the Honister Quarries to Wastdale, is the correct one. However that may be, all climbers will subscribe to Mr. Haskett Smith’s praise of the Gable as “splendid to look at, splendid to look from, and splendid to climb.” It is, in truth, a mountain of mountains, and has the same intimate hold on the affections of the climber in Cumberland as Tryfan has in Wales.

From the Gable it is but a step—as mountains go—to the Pillar, of which the famous Pillar Rock is a dependency, and even those who are not “Pillarites” in the true sense will find a rare pleasure in scrambling around and about the Rock, which may be reached by the rough track known as the High Level, leading direct to its foot from the top of Black Sail Pass across the face of the fine northern front of the fell, in the course of which “traverse” they will follow the windings of several bold capes and green shady coves. The Rock itself, though somewhat dwarfed by the parent mountain when viewed from a distance, is a grand object from below, when one stands right under the great walls which form its northern buttress.

Of the many climbers who frequent the new hotel at Wastdale Head, now spoken of as “the Chamounix of the Lake District,” few probably remember the place as it used to be when the fine old dalesman, William Ritson, was the landlord, a bleak bare hostel, where the guests, whatever their personal inclinations may have been, led emphatically the simple life. It so happened that, in one of my early visits to Wastdale, I was staying there with a friend at the time when the Rev. James Jackson, the octogenarian known as “the Patriarch of the Pillarites,” was killed on the Pillar Fell, and the last evening of his life he spent with us at Ritson’s, narrating his own mountain exploits, and reciting the verses in which he celebrated them. It was the last day of April, 1878, and on the May morning the brave old man went forth to repeat his annual pilgrimage to the Pillar Rock; we saw him, and were probably the last to see him, plodding off with slow step in the early twilight. Two days later, when we were coming back to Wastdale from Buttermere, we heard shouts across Ennerdale, and climbing up the Pillar Fell, close to the east of the Rock, in a dense mist, we met a search party, and learnt that Mr. Jackson had not been seen since he started. Joining in the search, we peered and groped about the recesses of Pillar Cove, now dim and ghostly under a heavy pall of vapour; but it was not till the next day, when the clouds had lifted, that the body was found, as a dalesman expressed it, “ligging under the Pillar,” the fact being that he had met his death not on the Rock itself, but on a ledge of the steep brow above. It has been said that his vigour was unimpaired, and that the same accident might have happened to a boy, but to us, who were strangers to him, he gave the impression of much physical weakness, and, as the sequel proved, so far from being in a fit state to scale a dangerous crag, he was not capable of crossing the easy ridge which gives access to it. So strong is the fascination of the mountains, which can lure an old pilgrim of eighty-two years thus to sacrifice himself at their shrine!

Of the other ranges of the Lake District—Helvellyn, Saddleback, Grasmoor, and their kin—differing widely as they do from the Scafell group in their smoother contours and less savage rock-scenery, little need here be said; but there is at least one distinctive feature in which they excel, and that is the number and keenness of their “edges.” To a connoisseur in climbing, there is always a great attraction in the mountain which may be approached by a narrow stair—

The peak that stormward bares an edge

Ground sharp in days when Titans warred—

and herein is the unfailing charm of such otherwise formless masses as Saddleback and Helvellyn. Who, for instance, would ascend Helvellyn by that ponderous bank above Wythburn, when he might have Striding Edge for his upward path and Swirrel Edge for his return? And why should any one climb Saddleback by its toilsome grassy slopes, when an ideal course is offered him in Sharp Edge, overlooking Scales Tarn, and in Narrow Edge, which falls away with scarcely less sharpness from the highest summit? I have named the most famous of these edges, but many others not greatly inferior will suggest themselves; thus Fairfield may be delightfully taken by the narrow ridges of Cofa Pike and Hartsop Dodd, and even the bulky Grasmoor assumes an air of refinement, if scaled by the slim reef of Whiteside, or by the slender arm that it holds out to the promontory of Causey Pike. In old days these knife-edges were reputed difficult and perilous. “The awful curtain of rock named Striding Edge,” is De Quincey’s description of the chief ornament of Helvellyn; and Green, in describing his adventurous crossing of Sharp Edge on Saddleback, speaks of the necessity “either of bestriding the ridge, or of moving on one of its sides with hands lying over the top, as a security against falling into the tarn on the left or into a frightful gully on the right.” What was once a terror has now become a joy to the climber of ordinary powers, but to this day one may hear expressions of the old misgivings. A friend who had come over the edges of Saddleback told me afterwards that he had felt “sick with fear,” and I have heard a tourist on Snowdon, fresh from the passage of the Beddgelert “Saddle,” exclaim in solemn accents, “It is a thing to be done once in a lifetime, and no more.” In winter, however, all is changed, and these ridges are then made really formidable by the frozen snow-drifts, which can often transform a steep bank into a dangerous ice-slope, with a veritable razor-edge for its summit.

And here, though it is to the shrine of Scafell that we are on pilgrimage, a few words must be said in praise of Borrowdale’s other guardian height. “What was the great Parnassus’ self to thee?” wrote Wordsworth, addressing Skiddaw; and the rock-climber smiles at the question, for Skiddaw, having no rocks, is more attractive to the tripper than to the cragsman. Yet no true lover of mountains will fail to delight in Skiddaw, though it must be confessed that the ordinary way of ascent, leading along the dullest part of the range, which overlooks the treeless “forest,” does its utmost to make the mountain seem uninteresting. It is significant of the local apathy and lack of initiative, in dealing with mountain scenery, that a route which was originally chosen in the days when such ascents were made on horseback should still be the only recognized one for pedestrians, and that the tourist, after following the path up dreary slopes to the summit, should still retrace his steps by the same way—unless he is so fortunate as to be lost in the mist, and to gain a new experience of Skiddaw by some irregular and more exciting descent.

For the real charm of Skiddaw lies in its southern and western portions, facing Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite, and the descent, at least, should be made in this direction, over the great shoulder known as Carlside, from which one may turn right or left, along the narrow ridge of Longside, or down the lovely glen of Millbeck. It is from this point that one can best appreciate, at close quarters, the beauty as well as the bulk of Skiddaw. Every one who has been in Borrowdale is familiar with the clear-cut outline of the mountain, standing out so simple and shapely against the northern sky, and flanked on either hand by the wooded promontories of Latrigg and the Dodd—a picture which is in marked contrast to the notched and jagged battlements of Scafell—and there is certainly a wonderful symmetry in the massive buttresses, alternating with the deep-grooved glens, rounded off, like a piece of sculpture, in flawless lines. But, seen closer, the mountain reveals itself as a vast slope of varied colour and composition, smooth everywhere, but patched and streaked with long strips of shale, or grass, or heather, which hang down the great breast of the hill for many hundreds of feet with surprising steepness. At the top is a wilderness of stone, below it a green tract of turf or bilberry, merging into purple heather or wide fields of fern, and all so subtly woven and blended as to produce, especially in late summer and autumn, a rich combination of tints. The Millbeck Valley, in particular, divided by a pyramid-shaped buttress which juts out from Carlside, is then most gorgeously clad in a vestment of many textures and hues.