Next to this performance came a famous walk. On June 17, 1876, Mr. Jenkinson—who afterwards compiled a splendid guide-book to the Lakes—did a remarkable walk. He was a man of middle height, sturdily built, and a grand walker. His action on the level was easy, while his dexterity among screes and boulders was something to marvel at. Mr. Jenkinson left Keswick at twelve midnight—a lovely night with bright starlight—and soon after 3 a.m. was standing at Styehead Tarn, with Great Gable looming over him. To the top of this (from the tarn a climb of 1,519 feet) and back again occupied little over an hour, after which he took the path for Eskhause and Scawfell Pike. Before 7.30 he was on the highest ground in England. The mist, which had for awhile threatened to descend, became dense, and for three hours the famous walker wandered round Eskhause, endeavouring to reach Bowfell by way of Hanging Knott. Just before 11 a.m. he reached the summit, after which the steep descent into Langdale Fellhead prepared him for a tramp to Wythburn. After about an hour’s stay at this village he climbed Helvellyn, and, by way of the Vale of St. John, Saddleback. From here he crossed Skiddaw Forest, but could hardly keep up for sleepiness. At a gamekeeper’s house he rested awhile, and, naturally, resumed his walk sleepier than ever. The summit of Skiddaw Mr. Jenkinson never had more than a hazy idea of scaling—he often joked that he saw it as in a dream—but two hours later he walked into Keswick. The total climb, twenty-five hours in duration, was fifty-three miles in length; the total footage scaled, 12,249 feet; and the fatigue equal to eighty-two miles level.
Mr. Jenkinson’s walk created quite a stir, and ere long another champion arose in Leonard Pilkington, who had tramped from Liverpool to Windermere, a distance of eighty-four miles, in twenty-one hours, and also proved his quality on the fells. With Bennett, the Dungeon Ghyll guide, he passed over Bowfell, Scawfell Pike, Great Gable, Skiddaw, Saddleback, Helvellyn, and Fairfield in twenty-one hours thirty-four minutes, between 2 a.m. and 11 p.m. Mr. Pilkington says of this walk: ‘We were both perfectly fresh at the finish, and had we come straight through, instead of having supper at Grasmere, we should have saved at least an hour—we could easily have done the journey in twenty hours; but having finished the mountains, and with so much in hand, we did not think of it.’ This tour necessitated climbing some 12,900 feet, and walking a distance of sixty miles, approximating in fatigue to eighty miles on the level.
October is not an ideal month for a scamper across the fells; yet at this time of year Messrs. Robinson and Gibbs, the Lorton walkers, essayed to surmount the whole of the giants of Cumberland in twenty-four hours. On the stroke of midnight, Thursday, October 27, 1893, these gentlemen started from Keswick. A strong wind blew from the north-east, and the sky was too cloudy for more than mere gleams of moonlight as they walked up Borrowdale. By 2.10 a.m. Seathwaite was reached, the wakeful sheepdogs making music as the climbers passed towards Great Gable. The dull roar of Taylor Ghyll Fall, and the rattle of the fierce wind on the higher levels, alone disturbed the hush of night. Snow-laden clouds swirled past them as they wound up the gully between the Gables, the air became bitter, a white mantle three inches thick covered the ground, and above a dense mist blotted out completely the summit. At 3.55 the top of the Grand Old Monarch was reached, and the Styehead Pass descended to. From the top a course was struck across the rough north-western face of the Scawfell Range, under Skew Ghyll, over a shoulder of Lingmell, and up to Lord’s Rake, where in the closing days of 1893 Professor Milnes Marshall fell to his death.
In this cleft the scene was wild in the extreme. Snow lay thick, and outside its shelter the gale boomed and moaned among the great crags above. The scene was bleak and wintry; the faces of the rock which were too abrupt for the snow to lie on were crusted with ice. From the top of the first reach of the Lord’s Rake Messrs. Robinson and Gibbs struck off along the grassy ledge which gives easy access to Deep Ghyll. Here a sudden gust of wind loosened a stone high on the crags above, and they cowered under a rock as, with a crash and a bound through the air, it whizzed past into the dark recess immediately below.
The snow now became thicker, having been drifted into this wild ghyll by the wind, and on the steep bits near the top it was frozen sufficiently for them to kick their toes into the almost perpendicular slope, and go up it ladder fashion, holding on as best they could to insure safety. As the pair emerged on to the plateau on the top of Scawfell at 6.10 a.m. the mists began to roll away, and the first streaks of dawn were viable in the east. Across the Mickledore, a fearful, rock-split chasm, lay Scawfell Pike, to reach which involved a descent to Broad Stand and a scramble along the ice-coated ledges. Mr. Robinson says of this portion of their experience: ‘We were not prepared to find the climb in a more dangerous state than it was last year in midwinter, but such it was; and the alpenstocks we had provided ourselves with were without the usual spike in the end with which to roughen the ice to make a foothold. I took off the rucksack which held our lunch, and, with an arm through one strap while my friend held on to the other, kicked off the ice from ledge to ledge.’ Truly a risky mode of progression, when a single slip would have had irretrievable consequences.
The top of the Pikes was reached at 7.10 a.m., and thirty-five minutes later the couple were on Great End. On the fells on every side the gale was harrying the powdery snow. The tracks over the passes were obliterated; a landmark here and there stood above the shifting plains of white. Weird, dangerous, and black the crags stood over their setting of whitened scree—a prospect which cannot be described.
By this time the climbers must have been in a comfortless state. Their clothes, damped by perspiration and half-molten particles of snow, would long since be frozen to their backs. What that means only those who have experienced it can know. Bowfell, with one foot in Westmorland and the other in Cumberland, was next in the line, and here the ground, covered with shale and masked with snow, became extremely dangerous. The summit was found at 8.30 a.m., after which, skirting the Langdale side of Hanging Knott, Rossett Ghyll was descended to, and the tramp over miles of bog to Wythburn begun. This valley was reached by 12 a.m., and an hour and twenty minutes later the ascent of mighty Helvellyn was commenced.
Thirlspot at 4 p.m. was the next point in the tour. After passing through the Vale of St. John, a halt was made for tea at Setmabanning, as the moon was not yet up and it had begun to rain. But at 6 p.m. the plucky climbers started for Blencathra. The night became intensely dark, the clouds denser, and the wind more and more furious. Messrs. Robinson and Gibbs chose the narrow ridge approach by Threlkeld to the mountain, as this afforded some shelter at first, but on reaching the open the violence of the storm was fearful; only in the short lulls was progress possible. Yet by 8.30 p.m. the summit was reached, and the walkers plunged across the moors for Skiddaw.
After getting one-third of the way up this their last peak, they found that, though strength was still sufficient, time was not left to finish. the ascent and reach Keswick ere another day. Accordingly, at 9.50 p.m. the finest pair of climbers the Lake District has ever seen turned back on the Glendaterra, reaching Keswick at 11.25 p.m. in extremely strong condition, considering the day’s exertion.
Of the closing stage of the walk Mr. G. B. Gibbs says: ‘It seems to me possible that we had quite sufficient time on leaving Threlkeld at 6 p.m.’ to finish the attempt, ‘but the darkness and very high wind, which caused us to take two and a half hours over the ascent of Blencathra, instead of one and a half hours (as we did four days later), made a loss of a very valuable hour. Further, the force of the wind as we rose from Skiddaw Forest was so great as to compel us to believe that progression would be on hands and knees when we got to the top, and produced a conviction that under these conditions we could not go the whole round within the day of twenty-four hours.’