On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills: Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell

by Henry S. Salt

In a thick mist, such as is apt to enfold with extreme suddenness the hills of which I speak, perhaps not to release them for days from its shadowy grip, the careful use of a compass is almost a necessity, except in places where the landmarks are familiar and beyond mistake; for the transformation which the mountains undergo is surprising even to those who know them best; and if once the true sense of direction be lost, it is most difficult to recover it, especially on broad, smooth plateaus or hillsides where there are no sharp-featured rocks. In the ascent there is less likelihood of going astray, for there is but one summit, and by climbing we shall find it; but in descending there is always a greater possibility of error, with the chance, if we get on the wrong side of the watershed, of emerging some twenty miles away from home. The sensation of thus coming down on the reverse side of a mountain range is most perplexing, for at first sight, and until we can readjust our minds to the fact, everything seems confused, the quarters of the horizon have changed places, north is south, and we can hardly believe that our left is not our right. A friend of mine who was lost on Snowdon in a mist, made his way down, as he thought, towards Llanberis, with the intention of thence walking rightward to Pen-y-Gwryd; he reached a road which he took to be the pass of Llanberis, and duly turned to the right. Not until after he had walked some miles did he discover that he was well on the way towards Carnarvon, having descended, without knowing it, on the wrong side of Snowdon and into a different part of Wales.

To be lost in a fog is of course no uncommon experience among strangers who cross the fells. On one occasion (not strictly to be classed among “pleasures” of the heights), when descending from Scafell Pike to Langdale in furious storm and cloud, I met near Angle Tarn a wandering, one-eyed tramp, who presented about as miserable an appearance as human being could attain. The proverbial “drowned rat” would have scorned to exchange plight with him. He had been discharged, he told me, a few days before, from a hospital in a northern town, where they had taken out one of his eyes without consulting him, and with the remaining eye he was seeking his way to a relative at Keswick by the Stake Pass, from which he had hopelessly wandered. As we descended Rossett Gill together, for I took him back to Langdale, he confided to me that this was his first experience of a mountain, and he thought it would suffice till his death—an event which, but for his happening to meet our party, would probably not have been long delayed.

A strange effect is produced, when one is descending, if the clouds are descending too; for the deepening mist then makes the delay in reaching sunlight seem endless. Down and down we go, and the gloom is still beneath us, until we begin to wonder, like the first voyagers on the Atlantic, whether we are sinking into some bottomless abyss from which it may be impossible to re-arise; it becomes a burden and nightmare to the mind; then at last there is a darkening of the vapour in one spot, and far below we see the jet-black water of a tarn, or a bit of brown mountain-side across the glen.

More inspiriting is the effect of climbing through and above the clouds, as one sometimes can do, until one looks down from an upper land of sunshine on a sea of mist below, from which the rocky peaks and promontories emerge like islands. It occasionally happens, when some high ridge is bathed in cloud on one side and in sun on the other, that a climber, standing on the edge of the gulf, will see a small circular rainbow projected on the mist, with his own head forming the centre of it—a rare and curious experience for the wayworn pilgrim, thus to find his image, like that of a saint, with a halo round his head, emblazoned on the mountain vapours! Who shall say that the modern pilgrim is not blessed, as his forerunners were, with celestial apparitions? The first time I saw this phenomenon was on the ridge of Ben Nevis. I have also seen it from Blaven, in Skye, and from the top of Scafell, looking down into the cloud-filled chasm of Mickledore.

Not less marvellous are the transformations of the clouds themselves, when, after a spell of storm, they break up under triumphant sunshine and drift disbanded along the slopes. I remember how once, descending from Tryfan after a wet and dismal day, and returning across the low grassy moorlands to Capel Curig, I witnessed that strange form of mountain mirage recorded by Wordsworth in “The Excursion.” The corner of the valley above Llyn Ogwen was filled with dense mists, which came seething and boiling out of the hollow like steam from a cauldron, and as they broke up into small wisps and wreaths, under combined wind and sunshine, gave an extraordinary appearance to the northern front of Carnedd Dafydd, which was enveloped in a maze of billowy vapour, until it was impossible to distinguish rock from cloud or cloud from rock, and the illusion was exactly that which the poet has described:

Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks and emerald turf,

Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky,

Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed

…

In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapped.