Rock-climbing in the English Lake District / Third Edition

by Owen Glynne Jones

We had heavy rücksacks to carry over to Wastdale that day, and decided to leave them at the foot of the climb, rather than suffer the inconvenience of dragging them up with us. We had eighty feet of rope, and needed it all near the top.

Our work started easily. Three obvious courses led in about thirty feet to a broad, grassy platform, from which the chimney made its proper beginning. Each of the three ways involved scrambling; they started a few feet to the left of the lowest part of the crags, and formed between them a very fair presentment of a gully entrance. But a glance upwards showed that, for some distance at least, we should have very little of the nature of a gully to guide us. From the platform sprang up the vertical wall that gives the central buttress its appearance of inaccessibility, almost unrelieved for several hundred feet. Our chimney commenced as a thin crack in the wall from the platform, only large enough for a hand to be thrust in, and so sharp-edged that one’s fingers were badly cut in climbing the first five yards. Then the crack seemed to widen gradually until from below it appeared sufficiently broad for wedging. Appearances would have been comforting but for the curious absence of retaining wall on the right-hand side of the crack. The left was excellent; on that side the rock stood out from the corner and formed the finest part of the great buttress. But the right wall was out clean away, leaving smooth slabs that were sure to give trouble when we should find the chimney too shallow for further progress.

I started up the thin crack, and found the strain very severe on the arms. When it became wide enough to support a knee it was possible to halt and prospect a little. The next ten feet up the crack were obviously most difficult, and a glance at the north side showed that it would have been easier to work up the right wall for twenty feet from the platform before traversing into the crack again. Ellis suggested that he should come up to my level by means of a slight fissure in the right wall, and steadied by the rope that I had flung over a small projection some six feet above his head, he managed to reach a shaky, sloping ledge of grass, and then to manœuvre the rope for my own passage to the same resting-place. We next worked upwards into the chimney, and kept close in it for twenty feet or so. There were good holds on the right until some small boulders and débris formed a little platform, over the edge of which we were able to pull ourselves.

The scenery about here was particularly impressive. Our resting-place was scarcely big enough for both, and a glance vertically downwards showed us the spot where we had commenced operations three quarters of an hour previously. The black depths of Goat’s Water formed a striking foreground to the view of Coniston Old Man across the valley, and it almost seemed as though the tarn could be reached by a stone falling from our tiny ledge. Up above us the crags loomed fearfully. They overhung considerably in places, and we saw that our only course was to follow boldly the line of our chimney till it abruptly terminated in the face. Fortunately the weather was good, the rocks dry and warm. To have attempted the chimney with much ice or water about would have been foolhardiness worthy of our wildest days.

From the ledge we found the climbing splendid, keeping up the slight rib of rock on the right that formed the nearly vertical boundary of the chimney. The holds were just sufficiently large to give ample support, especially when the back could rest on the opposite side of the crack. ‘Backing up’ is usually a very constricted performance, with but limited views of the scenery around. Here on Doe Crag it seems as though most of the mountain is cut away excepting those parts of obvious utility to the climber. We crawled round the rib when the crack became too thin, and worked up several feet of slabby rock until the appearances seemed to indicate that an actual gully was now about to manifest itself and commence a fresh run up the wall. We therefore traversed again to the left into a large recess, and after a little scrambling upwards found ourselves brought to a stop by a dead wall. The bed of our recess was loose and steeply sloping. Its sides were slightly iced, and considerable care was needed in settling securely down to consider the situation.

The wall was about twenty feet high and too smooth to climb. On each side of us were huge overhanging buttresses that projected considerably beyond the latter portion of our route. It was not manifest which of these would offer the best way of surmounting the wall, and it might be that neither was suitable. We could see that a traverse out of the difficulty might be made in the northern direction, but it was very exposed and it led too far away from our chimney.

Ellis braced himself firmly at the highest corner of the recess, and manipulated the rope with special care. I started working up between the two buttresses in a manner that recalled to us both the well-known picture of the Funffingerspitze chimney in Sanger-Davies’ book. When some twelve feet above him, it seemed safe to quit the left-hand side altogether, and a stride effected the change of style. But the return was now almost impossible, and in the anxious five minutes that followed I had time to repent the sudden resolve. The top of the wall was within reach, but it was fringed with loose grass tufts that scarcely seemed secure enough to offer purchase in the upward heave that I wanted to give myself. However, the time spent in hesitation was sheer waste, for at the end the pull-up was perfectly safe and easy, and a little wriggling over rock and steep grass brought me to a long terrace, that naturally suggested a halt for the second man’s advance. In good time his head appeared above the grass tufts that formed the limit of my foreground, and a few seconds later he was sitting at my side and speculating as to the length of the difficult piece. The whole climb so far had been veritably one single pitch; we had had no interval of comparative ease, and were now eager to find some temporary freedom.

That we found in perambulating our terrace. It was about a yard wide and fifty feet long, and gave evidence that our gully as such had practically terminated. We found it rather awkward clambering up the wall some thirty feet to another similar terrace. This stretched horizontally from the large ravine that now disclosed itself on our right, and across the face of the mountain towards the Great Gully. The former, we could see, involved some pretty climbing a hundred feet below us. At our level it was merely a scree-walk finishing at the highest part of Doe Crag.

Our route lay up the rocks above the terrace. Two narrow clefts offered choice. We took the one to the right, about fifteen feet long and sufficiently tough to make us remember the place. Then followed easy hand-and-foot work till we could distinguish the branch exit of the Great Gully. Down this we carefully picked our way, and then returned to gather up our belongings and make tracks for distant Wastdale. The round had taken three hours.

The Intermediate Gully.—We had a glorious afternoon for this climb. The previous night had brought us from town to Coniston, and we meant to give ourselves an easy day. But fearing that the weather might change we were tempted to seize the opportunity and start earnest business at once. Identifying the gully as the first to the right of the longest buttress of the crags, we entered it and began scrambling immediately. After five minutes of ‘staircase’ work, using both sides of the gully, we came to a point where the left wall overhung a little and the gully closed in. A flank movement was then effected on the right, over steep rocks and unreliable grass ledges, returning by a narrow traverse into the gully at a point forty feet higher. The second man came straight up, finding two pitches confronting him, both of which he thought we could have taken directly if time had allowed us to risk an attempt. We kept in the ghyll for the next two pitches, both of them fairly simple. A fine flat stone at the top of the second offered a good standpoint for the inspection of the overhanging wall that now faced us. The gully had shrunk again into the merest crack in the wall. My friend called it the extreme pitch of refinement. On our left a smooth right-angled corner that probably thought itself a branch gully led up to the ridge separating us from the Central Chimney. Again it seemed desirable to take to the right by a course that was at any rate feasible, although it took us away from our direct line of ascent. After fifteen feet of traverse the buttress looked accessible, but recollecting the poor holds that we had encountered in a corresponding situation lower down, we went further away still, descending slightly to a level platform where the leader could be belayed during his direct ascent of the wall. Fortunately the rocks were quite dry, as otherwise the work that followed would have been risky. At first the handholds were unsafe, but in ten feet our industrious cleaning away of the grass and earth disclosed an excellent cleft in the wall, safe and sound. Thence the way was pleasanter, swinging upwards towards the left again by immovable rockholds. We had several yards of a narrow ledge tilted upwards at 30° before entering our gully again, and arrived in it just below a little pitch of the type that tries the elbow.