Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone,
and his speed is inversely proportional to the number of his followers. We decided to split up into three equal parties of four, my men to lead up the main gully, the engineer to convey the second set up the middle course, and the more substantial residue to bear to the left, up a slighter branch that contains a very creditable cave pitch half-way towards the summit ridge.
Our work was easy at the outset. The gully was narrow and steep, but the snow was good, and small ledges on either side were utilized whenever the little icicle-clad pitches were too slippery for direct attack. Where the gully widened a little we could see the first serious obstacle in front of us—a vertical wall with a ragged ice-curtain flung over it in a most artistic way. It would perhaps have been possible to cut directly upwards, but the crowd of eager climbers behind could not be expected to fight against frostbite for an hour or so while the leader amused himself, and the obvious method of circumventing the difficulty had its own merits. The right wall slightly overhung; close below was a glazed rib of rock leading up at an easy angle to the top of the pitch.
PLATE III.
G. P. Abraham & Sons, Photos Keswick
THE GREAT END GULLIES (p. 90).
The height of BB is about 450 feet.
A Holmes’s (or Brigg’s) Cave Pitch.
B South-east Gully.
C The Central Gully.
D Cust’s Gully.
E Head of Skew Ghyll.
F Sprinkling Tarn.
c Left Branch of the Central Gully.
d Difficult Chimney.
Steadying myself against the wall, I started cutting slight steps up the thin ice on the rock, keeping as near to the corner as possible. Now and again the foothold felt insecure, but for the most part the ascent was safe, with slight probability of a slip into the snow below. The second man followed close up, and steadied my feet occasionally with an ice-axe. Then came a more gentle snow-slope, up which we could kick steps without effort; and while the second party were busy with the difficulties that we had just overcome, we reached the second pitch and hastened to leave it behind us. This was rather a harder task than we had yet undertaken. The gully was more open and its ice covering less extensive, but the pitch was higher and involved our climbing up to the centre from the right-hand wall, so as to reach the base of the big boulder that crowns the pitch. All this would have been easy with the rocks clear and dry, but we had to make our footholds on the flimsiest rags of ice, and the traverse to the middle demanded some long stepping with scarcely a hand to steady. On reaching the boulder I was compelled to crawl on all-fours round its front to the slope on the left-hand side of the gully, and then by cutting a dozen steps or so in the hard snow found myself in the wide part of the gully at the foot of the great divide. The others of my party followed on rapidly, and we shouted adieu to our companions beneath.