Rock-climbing in the English Lake District / Third Edition

by Owen Glynne Jones

We halted for a moment above our cave-pitch and looked around at the crags. From a distant survey, such as that indicated in the photograph facing page 271, it is impossible to realize that so large an open space of easy ground can exist on the north face. But our opportunity for advance was strictly confined to one direction. Further westwards we could not go; the great wall was unassailable. To the east we could have perhaps traversed away until progress was barred by the narrow branch of the Savage Gully, which we had utilized lower down. The northerly direction of course led down the easy route, and the southerly pointed to an uncompromising extension of the great wall towards the Savage Gully.

We were led straight up the small scree to the split block, a huge boulder at the foot of the wall. The leader disappeared into a deep crack, and after a few moments appeared at the top of the block, having mounted by a secondary fissure that cut into the left portion of the boulder. The movement was quite unexpected, and Hill and I were rather startled at the aspect of things from the summit of the split block. It stood at the top of the narrow branch of the Savage Gully already referred to, and the view vertically down this branch was calculated to make us hesitate before taking the next step.

This was the Strid. Close up against the wall that blocked the head of the gully, a long stride was to be taken across to a narrow ‘mantelshelf’ on the other side. There was no difficulty in the step, but the consequences of any slip were so obvious that we were not surprised to learn how respectfully the Strid is usually regarded. The mantelshelf led us along under the wall for a few yards, and an upper ledge was mounted. We were now close to the Savage Gully again, and Robinson prepared to be let down into it on the rope. We were adopting the tactics of Haskett Smith’s party in the first ascent. Robinson was to climb down the wall of the gully by means of an irregular crack twenty-five feet long, using the rope to steady himself during the descent. At the foot of the crack he would be able to step into the bed of the gully, and thence, after mounting it for a few feet, effect an easy passage up the opposite side. He was then to unrope, and Hill was to let me down in the same way, there being plenty of friction between the rope and the rocks to enable him to hold my weight in case of a slip. When safely landed in the gully, I was to take the rope up to Robinson and wait the issue of events.

These went off without a hitch. The crack was difficult, though not impossible for one man to descend alone; but I am convinced that a man attempting the climb single-handed would be running great risk if he proceeded without some sort of belaying with a rope. The little story is well known of the youth who could not understand why he as third and last man of his party had to be left behind on the ledge; he had examined the crack and was certain he could climb down safely without support from above. Nay more, he insisted on demonstrating the fact, and when three-quarters of the way to the bed of the gully his feet slipped and his handholds failed. Luckily the others were able to prevent a serious fall, and the young man’s ‘climbing down’ was strictly metaphorical.

Robinson then rapidly swarmed up to the left of the gully, and, after mounting forty feet, traversed to the right into a long scree-shoot that ended abruptly some twenty-five feet vertically above our solitary companion on the ledge. Upwards the scree led straight to the summit level of the Low Man, and two of us were of course in a position to attain this point in a couple of minutes. But there was the third, to manipulate, and Robinson proceeded to take out a short, spare rope from his sack and expound the method of using the ‘stirrup.’

He tied a loop on to one end of his spare rope, large enough for a foot to be comfortably slipped therein, and flung that end down to Hill. I operated with the other rope, sending an end down for Hill to tie round his waist in the usual manner. The object of the process was to get the third man up with the least expenditure of energy on our part; in fact, to make Hill do all his own lifting. The wall was not so complicated in design as to render it impossible to haul him straight up like a bale of goods. But neither he nor I had till then seen an application of the stirrup-rope, and we had come out to be educated. There are many places where the method is well worth employing.

The operations commenced by Hill’s fixing a foot in the stirrup and lifting it a couple of feet as Robinson hauled up his rope. Then, with Robinson simply holding on firmly, Hill straightened himself on the stirrup, using it as a foothold, while I pulled up the couple of feet of slack in the waist-rope. Next it was my turn to hold hard as Hill raised his stirrup foot, and then Robinson’s to keep the foot firm while Hill lifted himself on to it. These two moves were repeated again and again alternately. All through the process the ropes were held as free from slack as possible, any upward movement of Hill’s engaged foot or body being responded to promptly by Robinson or myself respectively. It will be perceived, if the description is as clear as I want it to be, that all the actual lifting of Hill’s weight he managed himself during the straightening-out on the stirrup, and that we others were at most called upon to hold only his weight. Even this much stress on our hands we could avoid by partial belaying, though in that particular spot there were no entirely suitable projecting rocks that could be utilized as belaying-pins.

Bit by bit Hill worked up the wall, till at last his head and shoulders appeared over the rounded coping at our feet, and he scrambled on to the scree. Then we all sat down and Robinson told us tales about that particular locality. Among others he gave us one to emphasize the practical lesson we had just been having on the use of the stirrup-rope. A famous climber, indeed he was sometime president of the Alpine Club, and in a vague, traditional sort of way years before he had fallen some hundreds of feet down a vertical gully hard by, without coming to any harm except that of finding his name ever afterwards associated with the gully; well, this famous climber was coming up that same wall by means of the stirrup-rope, and the zealous operatives above more than responded to his slightest movements. He lifted his foot a few inches, they hauled up the stirrup-rope a few yards, and anticipating that he might find the alternations a little laborious, proceeded to pull him up by sheer strength of goodwill. Thus his attached foot appeared first over the edge, and the remainder of his person followed in some confusion. So, at any rate, the story went.

Sitting as we were with our faces towards Buttermere, the great wall bore away to the left, and our scree gully marked its eastern limit. A horizontal crack extended for several feet across the wall, starting from the top of the pitch below us. Only its end could be seen, but by carefully working down to the corner on the left, and looking across the face, we could see the way it cut clean into the rock. This was the notorious hand-traverse, by which it was just possible to reach our scree gully from the ledge below without the preliminary descent into the Savage Gully.

A few minutes’ halt and we continued our course. There was no doubt or difficulty in reaching the Low Man, and thence following the ridge to the junction with the West Climb. A quarter of an hour saw us at the High Man cairn, and another five minutes at the foot of the Central Jordan. The ropes were stowed away again in the sack, and Robinson rapidly strode across the screes and down the corridor behind the Shamrock. In a phenomenally short time we were crossing the Liza stream, and, without being allowed to halt, a bee-line was drawn for us over to Scarth Gap by our untiring leader. Luckily for his followers, the name of this pass, which is sometimes called Scarf Gap, reminded him of a very good story concerning another famous climber who went to an evening party without a dress-tie. We were told the story and recovered breath sufficiently to continue our journey to Buttermere. I wish now that I had not been so fatigued, so that I might have remembered the whole anecdote and given it here in all detail.