Ireland, on the east, is more fortunate; it possesses some fine firm stacks and cliffs. Parts also of the east cliffs of Scotland are excellent.
On Freaks.
Some regions are rich in incidental pillars, pinnacles, stacks, needles, pins, fingers, boulders, erratics (‘off-comduns’), Wellington’s Noses, Grey Ladies, Devil’s domestic utensils, or their fantastic like. It is difficult to connect the records of their (periodic) first conquests with any general principles except those forming the groundwork of a local literary reputation. A long rope over the summit would seem to be the preliminary to many such a climb, and statuesque photography its culmination. But between these extremes a peripatetic climber can find many joyous and gentle passages, where he may even remain anonymous if he goes armed only with such sound method as the type of rock suggests, and shod with soft soles. One experienced companion would be found of more service than many onlookers; and a tradition of classical mountaineering demands that the rope between two men should not pass over the summit before either has started. To save time, once, when we were crossing a series of smooth needles two of us agreed to climb continuously, in the hope that if the man descending on the far side of one needle slipped (as was the more probable) the man on its near side would be assisted to the summit more quickly by the rope; and so no impulse would be wasted. Unhappily, it was the rear man, ascending, who slipped, and at a moment when, owing to the length of the rope, the front man was already himself ascending the next needle. Neither, at all events, was left long in suspense.
Bouldering is the pleasantest of off-day distractions; but too many men allow themselves to spend the time on the merely difficult. Its use should be for safe exercises on rules of style. When you can climb an easy block without your hands, or balance up a wall with such light finger-hold that a friend can pass his hand under yours, or have discovered how to solve a shelf climb by a push hold and a twisting arm-lever, you have made a fair test that will be of future use. To wrestle up pure difficulty, such as you would not attempt in exposed higher climbing, by dint of muscle and strenuosity, proves nothing and does no good; it only reduces the restful value of the off-day. Our object on such unusual rock should be to extract from it the soundest practice for our usual method.
CLIMBING DOWN
It is more difficult to climb down than to climb up. So long as the majority of rock climbers continued to grip and struggle, they could find no pleasure in descending. The characters of our hills abetted the neglect. The labour of the day went in finding the steep climb and then forcing a way up it; there remained for the evening too great a choice of easy slopes to run down. Even in the Alps the habit followed the early rock climber; he was too ready to choose a peak “which would give plenty of sport on the ascent, and an easy snow-route down.” During our gully and grip epochs, when this self-imposed limitation was almost universal, rock climbing reached its furthest point of divergence from real mountaineering. The development of balance climbing perforce broke down the tradition. Climbing down had to be learned when really big mountaineering was attempted. Where mountains have no easy ways down, it is as important to be able to descend as to ascend. On new or difficult climbs the method and time-calculation for a return in case of failure call for more forethought than the ascent itself.
But beyond this, climbing down was discovered to have its own pleasure as motion. A good climber in training, and descending upon rock that gives continuous hold, enjoys a sense of swift restrained rhythm, and a rushing thrill through his own extremities, that has something of the pleasure of flying and a pleasure from quick light contacts that even flying does not possess. His hands and feet appear to adhere almost accidentally underneath him, like the spokes of a revolving rimless wheel. They move across a sound hold with his change of balance rather than check him at each contact. His eye has selected a whole succession of small holds ahead, or rather afoot. He balances down them as a complementary sequence. He does not ask of every hold that it should become the basis for a fresh beginning. ‘Touch and pass’ as contrasted with ‘grip and hang’ perhaps sums up the method.
Of course each hold must in itself be adequate to check and direct the passage of the body, otherwise momentum is acquired, and the method might be defined with justice as only a fine fashion of falling. The check is distributed over a series of holds, each of which serves only to retard the downward movement just sufficiently to direct it, with no acquired impetus, on to the next hold. The holds on such a passage complement one another. Each is used transiently but safely, because the action of the next is anticipated. The definite arrest-points of course occur, but they are selected by the eye at longer convenient intervals.
To read rock holds and their balance values ahead in this fashion requires a more practised eye and judgment than were needed merely to decide on the reliability of the next grip hold. It was this art of the longer glance, the practice of descending as a regulated movement rather than as a succession of stances and rests, which rock climbers neglected, and still too largely neglect. The shortness of our island climbs, as our young climbers increased in numbers and in ambition, drove them to the discovery of a rapid progression of more and more difficult variations. These climbs could not be ascended ‘continuously.’ The art of continuous up-climbing was almost forgotten, and with it disappeared any idea that continuous down-climbing need even be practised. The strenuous up-climb exhausted our interest in a particular series of problems; the prospect of a similarly ‘interrupted’ descent of the same places seemed rather boring; in fact, we preferred to run down an easy way, and begin upon a new ascent of new problems. Climbing down joined climbing continuously, up or down, in a limbo, from which it had to be desperately rescued when we went to the Alps or to regions of longer climbs.
Some years ago, on perceiving that the neglect was spoiling the style and achievement of climber after climber of the British school who came out to the Alps, I ventured to publish something of a protest. Happily this made a few important converts. And now it would appear that the evil spell is broken. No good cragsman would nowadays seem to be happy until he has done his fine rock climb both ways; a few are beginning to specialize upon descents. The admirable practice of traversing or ‘girdling’ great cliffs, which involves the ascent and descent of the steepest sections of many difficult climbs, has finally placed climbing up and climbing down on a footing of mountaineering equality. It may be said that this result was inevitable once balance climbing had come to its own. Once the eye and the body were set free from their confining and convulsive habit, it could not be long before hands and feet opened up the new ways of pleasure in moving downwards and sideways as readily as upward.