Great caution was now needed. Not that the climbing was difficult or dangerous, but the gully had dwindled into little more than a slight indentation in a vertical wall, and each man had to move with the utmost deliberation. Holds were numerous, generally better on the left wall, but they were all rather wet. Soon we were engaged in a violent struggle with a small angular jammed block that barred our way. It seemed loose at first, but we proved its stability that afternoon by many minutes’ hauling and wrenching from below and above. The chief difficulty was to get the shoulders firmly fixed between the sides of the cleft above the jammed stone; with only the block to hold and no rest for the feet this manœuvre was very awkward to perform. Above this a few steps led to a narrow cave, which we climbed by its right edge and found to be a trying piece of arm work. Here the gully expanded into a large scree-bedded ravine with only two moderately easy obstacles between us and the top of the crag. To our left we could see the ledge that marks the end of the Central Chimney. Our own gully, looking backwards, seemed to be a vertical plunge straight down to the bottom, and as usual we caught ourselves wondering whether anything else could be called difficult after this.
We reached the summit in two hours from the start, and then skirting the lower edge of the crags from Goat’s Hause, we made note of each gully as we passed its foot. An easy scree shoot, followed by a buttress set back at a gentle angle, but with splendid practice on it; the North Gully with its awe-inspiring middle pitch like the great obstacle in Moss Ghyll; a branch gully leading into the North Gully; a second branch, looking rather interesting but lacking definition higher up; the Easter Gully with its double centre portion; the Intermediate Gully; the Central Chimney; and the Great Gully.
The Easter Gully.—The same party came two days later to examine this climb. The weather was very unsettled, and we were forced to the conclusion that the main central chimney was too wet to be approachable. The scrambling was easy up to the cave; then we worked up the vertical left wall by diminutive ledges till the level of the cave stone was ours, whereupon an awkward bit of traverse brought us safely out of the difficulty. We were in the great hollow, and were astonished to find that in addition to the main chimneys on the right and left centre, there were splendid branch gullies up to the ridges on either side.
I started up the left central chimney. It was dry, but its holds were fragile. In forty feet it divided into two parallel branches; that on the left was overhanging, and held a bunch of long splinters of rock forming a dangerous chevaux-de-frise, ready to fall at the slightest notice. So we left it alone, and looked to the right branch. For twenty feet it went very well, and there, where one man might safely wedge himself, it became practically impossible to mount any higher. My companion, therefore, came up while I worked out on the open face to the right. Without much trouble a small platform one foot square was reached, from which we proposed to mount the buttress that separated us from the right central chimney. I hesitated a long while before venturing on it; the place was assuredly difficult, we were not certain whether the upper portion would be feasible, and the strong wind, swirling mist, and intermittent rain sapped our courage and strength the more we deliberated.
The stiff work began with a scramble up into a grassy corner, fifteen feet above my platform. It was too small to enter, but from it sprang a narrow cleft to the right, very much like the well-known ‘stomach traverse’ on the Pillar Rock, but considerably harder to pass, and without an easy walk out at the further end. At its highest point the best course seemed to be up a vertical crack in the wall, and a stiff scramble here of ten feet brought me out on the head of the buttress. Here there was a chance of walking over to the right central chimney and finishing by the thirty feet or so that remained of its special difficulty. But that portion was naturally as wet as the lower part that we had purposely avoided, and we chose to cross the chimney and climb up its right wall.
CHAPTER XVI
COMBE GHYLL
Many a pedestrian walking down Borrowdale from the Styhead pass, looking backward at the fearful descent of some 1,100 feet of rough fellside, reaches a point in the valley where he experiences difficulty in recalling his track. For the valley between Gable and Seathwaite Fell is hidden, and his choice hovers between the combe below Sprinkling Tarn, walled in by Seathwaite Fell and Glaramara, and the upland valley that nestles between Thornythwaite and Rosthwaite Fells. His perplexity is increased when he notices that neither hollow satisfies the condition of background. The one is barred by the crags of Great End, the other by the steep wall of Raven Crag, a high dependence of Glaramara; whereas the Styhead pass as seen from Grange ought to show distant Scawfell as a background, and be easily recognised. One of these two hollows the climber will do well to identify.
Combe Ghyll is the name of the course that drains the north side of Glaramara, the stream making its way down the little valley that has already been described as lying between Thornythwaite and Rosthwaite Fells. At about the 1,000-feet level in the valley the land is flat and marshy; with little provocation the stream could produce a respectable lake, and the tourist in wet weather feels that such absence of deception would be to his advantage. Above this level the mountain rises abruptly, and the ghyll has to acknowledge two sources. That which sends its supply straight down the centre of Raven Crag was the first to be regarded as Combe Ghyll. But the other is longer and more obvious. Looking up from the marsh the watercourse is very distinct away to the left, though the climb is equally in evidence on the right. When a short time since three curious cragsmen (including the curious writer) penetrated to the recesses of this almost unknown country to find the climb that Messrs. Robinson and Wilson had discovered and christened as long ago as September, 1893, we were compelled by that name to tackle the east branch, but vowed at the same time to go later to the west. Our conscientiousness was praiseworthy, though mistaken, but as events developed themselves our mistake had happy consequences. We managed both ghylls, and were probably instrumental in preventing a nasty accident to a couple of would-be mountaineers whom we discovered in difficulties.
It was on a hot day in April. We had been disporting ourselves for photographic purposes in the Kern Knotts crack, and had sauntered down to Seatoller for some soda and milk to give grace to our jam sandwiches. Then we walked down the Rosthwaite Road as far as the bridge over the Derwent, and went across the opposite shoulder into the combe. It was very close down in Borrowdale, and we were glad to get out of the well of warm air and follow the water for a mile or so to the marshy upland. Here the walking was soft and pleasant. Water in our boots was no hardship, and we even hoped that there would be many waterfalls in our gully. Then came the dilemma and our decision to keep to the main stream. But the aspect of the Raven Crag gully on our right, as we skirted the boggy ground below us, was magnificent. Pitch rose above pitch apparently without any easy stretches, and the whole gully seemed to form just one vertical chimney in the rocks, five hundred feet high. Moss Ghyll itself is not grander than the Raven Crag gully as it appeared that afternoon to our longing gaze, and even now that the details of the latter climb are impressed vividly in my mind I can assure myself that it was one of the finest I have ever undertaken in Cumberland.