A party of three should have 150 feet of rope, or else our awkward tactics in letting the rope down to the ghyll would have to be repeated. Perhaps the long run out for the leader will prevent this route ever becoming popular. It is a great pity that there is no resting-place half way up the wall. With icy conditions it would be criminal to attempt the open face. Yet the climb is one of the very best in the district, and I shall always look back with pleasure to my first introduction to this side of Scawfell Pinnacle.
We hurried down Deep Ghyll by the traverse above both pitches. One of us rushed down too jubilantly, and ill repaid the kindly attention of the other party, now below us, by a profuse shower of stones. With thoughts of all the possible consequences of this indiscretion, we picked up our cameras and strode more sedately down to the others and to Wastdale.
Scawfell Pinnacle from Lord’s Rake.—A very fine expedition was undertaken in December, 1887, by Messrs. C. Hopkinson, Holder, H. Woolley, and Bury. Their note on the day’s sport is quoted almost in full: ‘Three of the party, led by Hopkinson, made an attempt on the Deep Ghyll Pinnacle from the entrance to Lord’s Rake. They succeeded in climbing 150 to 200 feet, but were stopped by a steep slab of rock coated with ice. From this point, however, a good traverse was made to the first gully, or chimney, on the left. They forced their way up this gully to the top of the chimney. At the top there was a trough of ice about 30 feet long, surmounted by steep rocks glazed with ice, which brought the party to a stop. They descended the chimney again and returned to Wastdale, unanimously of opinion that the day’s excursion had afforded one of the finest climbs the party had ever accomplished.’
So we may well think, and it is a great pity that the icy conditions of the rock prevented their direct ascent into Slingsby’s chimney. The gully they entered and almost completely ascended, is marked plainly in the general view of the Scawfell Crags from the Pulpit, and at first sight appears to run up continuously to Slingsby’s chimney. Actually, however, it finishes on the side of the nose or pinnacle of rock a few feet lower down, and I believe this pinnacle could be ascended from it by either side. What this earlier party found impossible in the Winter of 1887, Mr. G. T. Walker and I in April, 1898, favoured by the best of conditions, were just able to overcome. We had spent a long and exciting day in the neighbourhood, and were descending Slingsby’s chimney late in the afternoon, when we were suddenly struck with the idea of descending the fissure behind the nose and prospecting the face of rock between it and Deep Ghyll. A rough inspection of the first fifty feet below us proving satisfactory, we hastened down Steep Ghyll and traversed across to the top of the first pitch in Deep Ghyll. In spite of the late hour I could not refrain from a trial trip on the edge of the great Low Man buttress. At the point where the earlier party found the direct ascent barred by smooth ice on the wall, and decided to traverse off to the gully on the left, we had a council of war. It resulted in my throwing down my boots to Walker, and then crawling up fifty feet of, perhaps, the steepest and smoothest slabs to which I have ever trusted myself. This brought me to a tiny corner where I essayed to haul in the rope attached to my companion. But he also had to remove his boots and traverse to a point vertically below me before he could follow up in safety. We were now some distance to the left of the edge of Deep Ghyll, and straight up above us we could distinguish the crack where our new route was to terminate. Getting Walker to lodge firmly in a notch somewhat larger than mine, six feet away on the Steep Ghyll side, I went off again up another forty feet of smooth rock, aided by a zig-zagging crack an inch or so in width, that supplied sufficient lodgment for the toes, and a moderate grip for the finger-tips. After both had arrived thus far, we were able, with extreme care, to reach the side wall of the nose itself, and at a point, perhaps, fifty feet from its crest we turned round its main outside buttress and found ourselves in a spacious chamber with a flat floor and a considerable roof, the first and only genuine resting-place worthy the name that we found along our route. We could look straight down Hopkinson’s gully, and would gladly have descended into it and ‘passed the time of day’ with a little speculative scrambling thereabouts. But darkness was coming on apace, and we had yet a most awkward corner to negotiate before finishing our appointed business. Standing on Walker’s shoulders I screwed myself out at the right-hand top corner of our waiting-room, and started along a traverse across the right face of the nose. The toes of the feet were in a horizontal crack, the heels had no support, and the hands no grip. It was only by pressing the body close to the wall, which was fortunately a few degrees away from the perpendicular, and by sliding the feet along almost inch by inch, that the operation could be effected. It was with no small sense of relief that the end was reached in a few yards, and a narrow vertical fissure entered that gave easy access to the top of the nose. Then we put on our boots again and hurried.
It is thus possible to reach the summit of the Scawfell Pinnacle by a route up the buttress quite independent of either of the great ghylls that flank it. A good variation that has yet to be performed in its entirety, though I believe that every section has been independently climbed, is that of the Hopkinson’s chimney, the nose, and Slingsby’s chimney. Further, that evening’s climb has convinced me that we could have safely reached Hopkinson’s cairn on the edge of Deep Ghyll, and that there is in consequence a most thrilling piece of work possible in the direct ascent of the buttress, the whole way up to the High Man from its base. Slight divergences are, probably, unavoidable in the lower half of the climb, but permitting these there now remain only about forty feet of rock hitherto unascended. It is worth while inspecting the view on page 73. The top of the nose is there plainly seen in profile 4⅜ inches from the bottom; our climb was roughly speaking up to the nose, by a vertical line drawn an inch from the left edge of the picture—somewhat less as it approached completion.
Upper Deep Ghyll Route.—Three days after the ascent recorded in the last section, I found that the sharp ridge between the Low Man and the summit of the pinnacle could be reached from the foot of the lowest pitch of the Professor’s Chimney. The suggestion is due to Dr. Collier, who told me some years ago that the only real difficulties are concentrated in the first thirty feet of the ascent. The climb is almost in a straight line, running obliquely up the Deep Ghyll face of the Pinnacle, and is best inspected from the west wall traverse. The first part overhangs considerably, and the holds are of the same character as those on the long slabs of the Low Man buttress, with a sort of absent look about them. But the rocks were dry and warm, in the best possible condition, and two minutes of deliberate movement led me out of danger. There is great variety just here, but the simplest course was to make for a slight chimney in the sharp ridge above my head. In twenty minutes the High Man had been crossed, and the starting-point reached by way of the Professor’s Chimney, but if a companion and a long rope had been vouchsafed on that occasion it would have been a pleasing undertaking to have tried the traverse along the wall to the firma loca of the second section in this chapter.
CHAPTER VI
GREAT END AND ITS GULLIES
As we walk up towards the Styhead Pass from Wastdale we may see well in front of us the long ridge of the Pikes monopolizing a goodly portion of the sky-line. The high dependence at the head of the valley we are skirting is Great End, a reasonable enough name for the north-east head of the range. It sends down a buttress towards the Styhead Pass that, at a closer view, is shown to be well separated from the main mass by a deep gully of some architectural merit. This is Skew Ghyll. It twists its way up to the ridge, and offers a pleasant variation route over to Sprinkling Tarn, whence a steep rise brings the tourist to the Esk Hause, the lowest point between Great End and Bowfell. The climber’s interest will be concentrated in the view of the long northern face of Great End, well seen from Sprinkling Tarn, and his experienced eye will notice at once that the face is marked by various gullies that invite approach. The whole ground has been thoroughly well examined from time to time, with the result that several gullies which from below or above appear to promise continuous climbing have proved to be deceptive in this respect. Yet there remain two that are always interesting, and a third that is at any rate popular as a winter course.
Seen from the tarn there are two gullies that cut the full height of the precipice from top to bottom. The lines of fresh scree that trail down from their lower ends show up plainly on the older débris that marks the decay of this mountain wall. They both slope downwards towards the left when seen from this point, and are both obviously provided with variation exits at their upper extremities. That to the left was formerly called Robinson’s Gully, but is now generally known as the South-east Gully. There has always been a lack of originality in the nomenclature of such places, and with several routes on the same mountain the christener’s wits seem driven to all points of the compass. The second gully is a hundred yards to the right of the first, and has long been known as the Great End Central Gully. It divides half way up into two well-marked portions, the right-hand route constituting the main bed of the gully, and terminating at a huge notch in the sky-line. The left-hand branch as seen from below appears to terminate blindly in the face, but actually it leads to a deep and narrow chimney cutting into the top wall within a hundred feet of the main gully.