Rock-climbing in the English Lake District / Third Edition

by Owen Glynne Jones

G. P. Abraham & Sons, Photos Keswick

THE EAST FACE OF THE PILLAR ROCK

From the Shamrock side we can get the best idea of the shape of the Rock. We have first the Pisgah rising out of the upper fellside, a pinnacle easily accessible and only forty or fifty feet high. Then to the right comes the actual Pillar Rock, the ‘High Man,’ separated from Pisgah by a narrow vertical cleft, the ‘Jordan,’ that renders the ascent from Pisgah almost an impossibility. At the Jordan two gullies meet; one up the east side, short and easy, the other up the west side, longer and more difficult.

The outline of the rock is marked by a notch to the right of the summit, where the Great Chimney finishes, and a little further northwards it shows a sudden drop to the level of the Low Man, the immense buttress that from below hides the true summit altogether. A cairn has been erected on the top of this buttress, and the outline to the right of this falls in one vertical drop of 400 feet to the foot of the rock. This is the great north wall. It is supported at the base by a minor buttress, the ‘Nose,’ that stretches across the full width of the north wall, and along the top of which, immediately below the precipice, an easy terrace takes us across to the Great Waterfall from a point near the foot of Walker’s Gully. From the eastern end of the traverse rises the Savage Gully, a well-marked cleft with sundry branches, reaching to the top of the Low Man.

On the western side the rock appears much more formidable. The chimney up to the Jordan looks black, and its crest is overhanging. The wall of the High Man itself is built up with long slabs of smooth rock, broken only by the smallest grass ledges, and its difficulties appear to increase near the summit. This side of the Low Man looks as inaccessible as the great north wall. Nevertheless a series of short gullies starting from the foot of the High Man lead obliquely up towards the left and offer a very easy route to the southern end of the Low Man, whence to the summit the climbing is but moderately difficult.

The best ways of reaching the Pillar Rock are given in full detail by Mr. Haskett Smith. It will here be sufficient to remark that from Wastdale the usual course followed is to ascend by the path towards Black Sail Pass until about ten minutes beyond Gatherstone Beck, then to make for the ridge on the left leading over Looking Stead and up to the summit of Pillar Fell. Thence a descent of 450 feet in a northerly direction brings us to the Pillar Rock. Sometimes Mosedale is followed straight up, and the steep slope climbed that leads to Windy Gap. Thence the ridge to the right takes us in twenty minutes of easy going to the summit of the Pillar Fell. Both these routes involve an unnecessary ascent of 450 feet, and the ‘High-Level Route’ was designed to avoid this waste of time and energy. Looking Stead is reached as before from Gatherstone Beck, and the wire fence followed up for a few minutes as far as the head of Green Cove. Here a cairn marks the spot where a rough path starts down the cove. We descend only fifty feet or so, and then turn round to the left and skirt along the north-east side of the fell. It is unsafe to attempt the traverse for the first time in a mist, but with clear weather the various cairns that mark successive points on the route can be easily discerned, and a half-hour’s walk brings us to the wide scree gully running down by the eastern side of the Shamrock. To reach the foot of the Pillar Rock is a simple matter. The photograph facing page 271 was taken across this scree, and it will be seen that the route down to the Nose is only a walk round the foot of the Shamrock. A broad, sloping corridor in the lee of a steep rock-wall further up the fellside, enables us to steer clear of the Shamrock cliffs and to reach their head without any hand-and-foot scrambling. Thence across the scree descending to Walker’s Gully we see Pisgah and the High Man, and with care we can now make the traverse to the foot of the Jordan Gully. There we are in a position to start any of the ordinary short climbs on the Pillar Rock. The west route can be reached by turning Pisgah on the left and descending the west scree for 300 feet. The long climbs up the north face are started from the Nose.

The Pillar Rock was first climbed by an Ennerdale cooper named Atkinson, who in 1826 ascended by the west side. The ‘slab-and-notch’ route on the east side, starting from the upper screes above Walker’s Gully, was devised by Messrs. Conybeare and A. J. Butler in 1863, though it would seem that the same side was successfully attacked a year or two before. Matthew Barnes, a Keswick guide, found a route across the eastern face to the Low Man, and thence back along the summit ridge to the highest point. He was climbing with Mr. Graves, of Manchester. Mr. W. P. Haskett Smith found in 1882 a direct way up to the High Man from the Jordan, and a second route straight up the wall a few yards to the east of the first. Two years later he reached the summit by a particularly hazardous course still further to the east, passing up close to the buttress whose lower end marks the start of the ‘slab-and-notch’ route. In the same year he made the first ascent by the Great Chimney on the east side. Mr. Haskett Smith named the first three routes the ‘West Jordan,’ the ‘Central Jordan,’ and the ‘East Jordan’ climbs respectively; the latter route is never undertaken, and the other two are often termed the ‘Left Pisgah’ and ‘Right Pisgah.’

For many years Mr. Haskett Smith made visits to the north face, endeavouring to reach the summit of the Low Man from the easy ledge at its foot. On the right his course was limited by the almost seamless wall of rock that gives the Pillar Rock its appearance of hopeless inaccessibility from Ennerdale. On the left the Savage Gully cut off all chance of traversing to the eastern side of the rock. The space between was strictly limited, and it narrowed as he climbed higher. Within thirty feet of an easy scree gully that obviously led to the summit of the Low Man, the only available course had dwindled down to a slender rib of rock in a dangerously exposed situation, much too risky to attack without guarantee of its feasibility.

In 1891 this climber, with Messrs. Hastings and Slingsby, succeeded at last in finding a way of descending into the Savage Gully at that point. Their leader then mounted its left wall and worked easily across to the foot of the scree gully. The others followed, and the ‘long climb’ up the Pillar Rock became an accomplished fact. No published detailed description of the route is known to the writer.