We may very properly call these mountains the British Alps, for besides that they are the highest in all the island, they are also no less inaccessible by reason of the steepness of their rocks than the Alps themselves; and they all encompass one hill which, far exceeding the rest in height, does so tower its head aloft that it seems not merely to threaten the sky, but to thrust its summit into it. It harbours snow continually, being throughout the year covered with it, or rather with an aged crust of snow; hencethe British name of ‘Craig Eryri,’ and the English “Snowdon.”
We may very properly call these mountains the British Alps, for besides that they are the highest in all the island, they are also no less inaccessible by reason of the steepness of their rocks than the Alps themselves; and they all encompass one hill which, far exceeding the rest in height, does so tower its head aloft that it seems not merely to threaten the sky, but to thrust its summit into it. It harbours snow continually, being throughout the year covered with it, or rather with an aged crust of snow; hencethe British name of ‘Craig Eryri,’ and the English “Snowdon.”
We smile at the hyperbole of these ancient writers, but even now, in these days of its utmost wrong, the natural sovereignty of Snowdon stands confessed; so truly imperial is its form, and so symmetrically do its superb ridges radiate from the parent peak. Its everlasting snow was a fable; but deep drifts may be seen as late as midsummer in its northern gullies, and in the winter months, when the zigzag tracks are deeply covered, it is often no easy matter, for any but trained climbers, to make the ascent from Capel Curig; there are times when the high cornice of snow, overlapping the brow of the ridge at the head of Cwm Dyli, offers a formidable barrier.
It was well that so noble a mountain, rich in legend and tradition, should continue to stir public sympathies[12]and draw pilgrims to its shrine; the pity is that the shrine itself should have been despoiled—not, be it noted,by thenumberof its votaries, which was great even before the middle of the last century, when the mischief was still undone, but by the hideous “accommodation” provided for them. It would not have been difficult, with a little care and forethought, to build a mountain hut in a sheltered place a few feet below the top of the ridge, where it would have been practically unseen; unfortunately what was done, about seventy years ago, was to erect some unsightly buildings on the very summit, and these have lately been enlarged into the present Summit Hotel, of which it need only be said, as was said of the nose of a certain philosopher, that “language is not vituperatious enough to describe it.” I never see the place without thinking longingly of the last scene in Poe’s story,The Fall of the House of Usher, where a certain accursed mansion obligingly topples over and disappears in a neighbouring tarn; might it not be hoped, then, that on some wild winter night, when these buildings are untenanted, they would be blown by a south-west hurricane over the edge of Clogwyn Garnedd into the waters of Glaslyn below? But such wishes, however pious, are unavailing; to take a cup of tea in the refreshment-room, in preparation for the advance to Crib Goch, is the wiser course.
It is pleasant to exchange the crowded mart on Snowdon for the space and solitude of Carnedd Ugain, its high northern shoulder which overlooks the Llanberis side; but thoughsolitude will now be ours, space must soon begin to fail us, as the broad expanse dwindles and contracts to a mere rocky curtain. A glorious ridge it is that we enter on, which under the two names of Crib-y-Ddysgl and Crib Goch, but in reality one and indivisible, runs with hardly a break for a full mile eastward, with Cwm Dyli on the right, and the still greater depths of Cwm Glas and the Pass of Llanberis on the left, until, after dipping to the grassy saddle known as Bwlch Goch, it rises again to the famous Pinnacles, and then narrows in once again, and more acutely, to the two summits, at a height of 3,000 feet. Though the whole “Red Ridge” from end to end is narrow, and a passage along it is apt to bring to mind the Gendin Edge inPeer Gynt—
Nigh on four miles long it stretchesSharp before you like a scythe—
Nigh on four miles long it stretchesSharp before you like a scythe—
Nigh on four miles long it stretches
Sharp before you like a scythe—
it is to the eastern section of it, between and adjoining the two cairns, that the main interest belongs, and hither for years past all lovers of the Welsh hills have aspired. Yet owing doubtless to the fact that every one who has written of Crib Goch has written of it in the terms of his own powers as climber, and these powers vary immensely, it is by no means easy to obtain a clear and trustworthy idea of it from the published descriptions. The old writers, for the most part, spoke of it as a place of terror, where it was foolhardy toventure, and where the least slip would be fatal; in the literature of the new school of rock-climbing, on the other hand it is treated like Striding Edge on Helvellyn, or Sharp Edge on Saddleback, as just a pleasant scramble, and it is said to be a moot point among cragsmen whether they could pass along it with their hands tied. So differently does a mountain present itself, according to the capacity and confidence of the mountaineer!
I have heard the story of an ardent pilgrim, by no means a cragsman, who had once braced himself, with some misgivings, to the crossing of Crib Goch, and was just entering on the most awkward bit of the journey, when he was met by another traveller coming from the opposite end. Pleased to think that he was about to receive, in his straitened circumstances, a word of encouragement from a fellow-climber, he was startled by the stranger breaking out into an almost passionate reprobation of the perils of mountain edges in general and in particular of Crib Goch. “I am now a married man,” he cried, “and it is not right, it is not proper, for me to be here.” My friend felt that there was a lack of reason in addressing these remonstrances tohim; but his own position, astride of a knife-edge, was not favourable for argument, and he was indeed so taken aback by the inauspicious character of the meeting that he sorrowfully renounced Crib Goch and retired the way he came.
In reality, though this “crib” offers no obstacle whatever to an active person who is quite free from giddiness, it is much narrower and more precipitous than any of the Cumberland “edges,” and for the ordinary climber, as distinct from the expert, needs to be taken with more care. Imagine yourself, reader, perched on the roof, so to speak, of a mountain—a colossal roof, some fifteen hundred feet above the valleys below, where for sparrow on housetop you have raven or buzzard—and, further, imagine the angle of this roof to be a ridge of spiky and crumbling rock, averaging a foot in width at the top, and dropping almost sheer on the north side into the hollow of Cwm Glas, while on the south it falls away in an extremely steep slope, which the timid would call a precipice, but which offers an abundance of friendly ledges and notches as foothold. Such is Crib Goch, and along this ridge you must travel to reach the higher cairn, whether you approach it, as I have described, in a descent from Snowdon, or more directly by a stiff climb up its eastern gable from Pen-y-Pas. In any case it has the distinction, among Snowdonian summits, of being accessible only to those pilgrims who are prepared to “climb.”
But if the glory of Snowdon lies in its shapely ridges, and of the Glyders in their wilderness of rocks, it is for the very different qualities of breadth and bulk that we admire the great mountain range of which the centreand crown is Carnedd Llewelyn. Look at a graded map of Carnarvonshire, and you will note that this conspicuous group, extending from the steep spur of Carnedd Dafydd, above the shore of Llyn Ogwen, to the sea-washed promontory of Penmaenmawr, comprises a much greaterextentof high ground—say, of over three thousand feet—than either Snowdon or the Glyders; and, owing to its larger area, its hidden recesses are wilder, more desolate, and more primitive, than any other hill-tract in North Wales. Sharp peaks it has none; but in places, as at the head of Cwm Eigiau or Cwm Llafar, there are huge crags and precipices, nor are there wanting grand ridges, such as the rocky isthmus that unites Pen Helig to Carnedd Llewelyn, or the high saddle between the two Carnedds themselves; but for the most part what impresses one in these mountains, as compared with those already described, is the greater spaciousness of their massive heights, and the greater openness of their outlook, both skyward and seaward.
For those who love such wilds, nothing is better than a long day’s wandering in the heart of this secluded district, whether the start be made from the Capel Curig quarter, or from Nant Ffrancon on the west, or from the Conway Valley on the east, or from the northern seacoast at Aber; in any case there is need of strong and steady walking to surmount the marshy slopes, the haunt of plover and curlew, by which the great Carnedd isencircled, and to place oneself on the high plateau above. The compass, too, will have to be brought into play, if there are clouds on the hills, for nowhere are mists more bewildering than on these vast moorlands, where there are no natural signposts for our guidance, and where the bare grassy spaces stretch away for miles without a distinguishing mark. The best of all these walks is that from Capel Curig to Aber, which takes us by Llyn Llugwy, the source of the Llugwy River, to Carnedd Llewelyn, and thence across the great flat tops to Y Foel Fras, and down past the little Llyn-an-Afon through a narrow glen to the sea.
For myself these strange lonely mountains, perhaps because I knew them earliest, have always had a peculiar charm; and I have found their fascination as strong in winter-time as in summer. Great as are the delights of Llyn Llugwy on a hot June day, I also think of it with affection as I have known it in December, lashed into fury by the winds, and its black waters in sharp contrast with the surrounding snow. What the temper of the wind can be in these uplands on a gusty winter afternoon, when it lifts up flakes of snow and ice from the hillside and flings them broadcast in blinding showers, only those will understand who have plodded to the top of Carnedd Llewelyn or Carnedd Dafydd at such season.
Enough has now been said, perhaps, to makeplain at least the leading characteristics of Snowdonia, as viewed from our central starting-point at Capel Curig. But what the pilgrim to these mountains can never make plain, for he has only half guessed it himself, is the deeper meaning which they have for him, the higher vision which he has caught from their stern companionship during his solitary rambles in their midst.
If “angry grandeur,” as has been said, is the feature of the Carnarvonshire mountains, that of the Cumbrian Fells may be described as friendly grouping. Unlike the proud oligarchies of Snowdon and the Glyders, we see here a free and equal democracy, a brood of giant brothers, linked together with rocky arm in arm, and with no crowned heads claiming marked predominance over their fellows. It is collectively, rather than singly, that the Lake mountains impress us. “In magnitude and grandeur,” says Wordsworth, “they are individually inferior to the most celebrated of those in some other parts of the island; but in the combinations which they make, towering above each other, or lifting themselves in ridges like the waves of a tumultuous sea, they are surpassed by none.”[13]
The sense of greater friendliness and accessibility of which we are conscious among these hills may be due partly to this cause, still more,perhaps, to the influence of the Lake writers, who have so largely created the sentiment with which the fells are begirt; we feel “at home” there in a degree not known to us either in Wales or in Scotland. It has to be remembered, too, that the Lake District, in contrast to Wales, is a land without a past, the cradle of a fortunate race which has had no troubled record of wars or rumours of wars, but an almost unruffled exemption from “history”; and this, again, may tend to strengthen the feeling of serenity associated with these heights, even in the minds of those who have undergone many buffetings from their storms.
But this feeling must be a modern one, for the earliest visitors, as we have seen, were affected rather by the terrors than the charms of the mountains, so that the very bridle-paths seemed as precipices to them, and we find one old traveller sagely remarking that “there is something unmanly in conceiving a difficulty in traversing a path, which, we were told, the women of the country would ascend on horseback, with their panniers of eggs and butter.”[14]Of all writers, the best qualified, by his love of the mystic and sublime, to give expression to the awe which the fells once inspired, was De Quincey; and in hisMemorials of Grasmerehe has drawn a highly coloured, yet in spirit very faithful pictureof a region rather vaguely apprehended by him, where, as he says, far beyond the “enormous barrier” of his own Easedale, “tower the aspiring heads, usually enveloped in cloud and mist, of Glaramara, Bowfell, and the other fells of Langdale Head and Borrowdale.” And here it may be remarked that though much poetry, of a far-fetched kind, has been written about mountains, the mountains are still waiting for their poet, at close quarters. In Wordsworth’s “Excursion” certain aspects of the fells are wonderfully portrayed, and in Scott’s “Helvellyn,” and that canto of his “Lord of the Isles” where the Coolin Hills are the theme, we have true mountain idylls; but on the whole it has to be confessed that the poets have written about mountains as if they had never set foot on them, but had been content to take the panoramic “views” of them from afar. Even Wordsworth’s prose account of his ascent from Seathwaite “to the top of the ridge, called Ash Course,” makes one suspect that his real acquaintance with the hills was very slight; indeed his corruption of the guide’s pronunciation of “Esk Hause” (the typical name of the central saddle of the Scafell range, at the head of Eskdale) into the absurdity of “Ash Course,” shows that he had but little sympathetic knowledge either of the nomenclature of the hills or of the dialect of the hillsmen.
There is much insight, however, in Wordsworth’s selection of the Sty Head as the pivotof the Scafell group. “From a point between Great Gavel and Scafell,” he says, “a shepherd would not require more than an hour to descend into any one of the principal vales by which he would be surrounded. Yet, though clustered together, every valley has its distinct and separate character.” The truth of this will be owned by every one who has personally studied the district. If we take Scafell Pike, with the Gable and Bowfell, as a single mountain, we have the common centre from which there radiate at least seven important glens—Borrowdale, with its gorgeous colouring and variegated effects of rock and turf, leafage and river; the grave and simple beauty of Buttermere; Ennerdale, wild and primitive, its Pillar Rock rising like a pulpit in the midst; Wastdale, plain to the verge of ugliness, even as an unfurnished room is plain, yet full of the sense of the great heights that wall it round; the solitude of upper Eskdale, with its mighty waterfalls and mountain pools; the more sociable Duddon, and the pastoral greenery of Langdale. Surely nowhere else in Great Britain can we stand on a hill-top with seven such valleys at our feet! As a single starting-point for scaling each and all of these hills, the choice would rest either on Wastdale or on Seathwaite, the little hamlet at the extreme head of Borrowdale, noted as “the rainiest place in England,” which means only that when it rains there it rains with a will; they are so placed that there is hardly asummit in the district that cannot be reached by a strong walker from these points.
Of the four chief groups which the hills of Lakeland assume—Skiddaw to the north, Helvellyn to the east, Grasmoor to the west, and to the south the range of Scafell—the last named is by far the most alluring both to the nature-lover and to the climber, for it is much wilder, rockier and more precipitous than the rest. Looking at a raised or tinted map of the district, we might conceive this rough mountain mass to be a great birdlike figure swooping north-eastward, to dip its beak in Derwentwater; with Glaramara for its down-stretched head and neck, with Great End for its elevated shoulder, from which are extended in sweeping curves to right and left the two superb “wings” of Bowfell and the Gable; with the Pikes as the ruffled plumes of the mighty back, and Scafell as the dark high-spread tail. Such, we may imagine, is the great stone eagle that flies towards the pastures of Borrowdale.
Though devoid, for the most part, of sharp peaks and ridges, and massive rather than graceful in their general form, these Cumbrian Pikes, like the Carnarvonshire Glyders to which in general character they are akin, have the charm of untamed wildness; you may clamber for weeks together over their desert of crags and coves, yet find their wonders inexhaustible. Seamed as they are in many places by deep “ghylls” and gullies, or carvedinto stark faces of rock, bristling with projecting “pinnacles” and “pillars,” the grandest sight of all they have to show is Mickledore Chasm, the great “door” which some primeval force has flung open between the Pikes and Scafell; and it is only when the range is approached from the east or the west that this vast natural fissure, thoroughfare for the winds of heaven, can be properly seen. The very heart of the mountain is reached when you stand on the ridge of Mickledore, with the cliffs of Scafell towering over you on one side and the Pikes on the other, for from this centre you can look down into Eskdale or Wastdale, or climb to either summit, as you choose; and here, in this huge hollow, is often a witches’ cauldron of the clouds, which come drifting up from either valley according to the whim of the wind, until they meet a contrary current at the top, and are piled up in swirling masses on one side of the ridge, while the other side, as if protected by some invisible curtain, remains cloudless and sunlit.
Next to Mickledore in interest is Piers Gill, the gigantic cleft, shut in by high walls of rock, which zigzags down the north slope of the Pikes opposite the Sty Head, rivalling the Welsh “Twll Du” in savageness and much surpassing it in beauty. Viewing it from the top of the Great Gable, one is reminded of a monstrous serpent—a stone serpent in the clutch of the stone eagle—writhing downwards from the crags of Lingmell; when enteredfrom below, it is found to be the wildest of the many rock-ravines, veritable cañons in miniature, by which these mountains are cloven, as witness the fine Crinkle Gill and Hell Gill on Bowfell, and the famous Dungeon Ghyll, “so foully rent,” on Langdale Pikes.
Turning now to the northern shoulder of the Pikes, the high promontory of Great End, we see around us an almost unbroken continent, with a stony isthmus leading eastward across Esk Pike to Bowfell, so shapely a peak when seen from the Windermere lowlands; and there are few finer walks than to follow these heights for their whole length, passing over Crinkle Crags to the Wrynose Pass, and thence, if time and strength allow, along the Coniston Fells to the Old Man. On the other hand, the leftward wing from Great End, after dipping to the Sty Head, rises steeply again to another chain of summits, the first of which is no less glorious a goal than the crown of the Great Gable.
For, after all, it is neither to Scafell, nor to Bowfell, nor to any lesser fell, that the mountain lover looks, when, after long absence, the well-remembered phalanx of heights—the “tumultuous waste of huge hill-tops,” as Wordsworth so fitly termed them—again unfolds itself to his gaze. He looks to the Great Gable. In so far as the Cumbrian Hills can be singly appraised, the Gable is the summit to which there clings the strongest sentiment, by virtue both of its noble and arresting outline,and of the grand rocks and ridges by which it is so powerfully flanked. Its name is somewhat ill-chosen, perhaps, for the likeness to a gable is hardly to be discovered except from the south; from other quarters the impression is rather that of a great round tower, or dome, a majestic sight when seen from a few miles’ distance, belted with clouds, or looming up in dark relief against an ominous sky. Nor, when one approaches it more closely, is there any sense of disappointment. “It’s a strange place, is Gable,” said my Wastdale shepherd, and such will certainly be the judgment of those who have roamed in all weathers about its shivered and rock-strewn sides. Of the ordinary ascents, the least inspiring is that usually chosen, from the top of the Sty Head Pass; it is far better, if you come from Seathwaite, to follow the little beck, beloved of the water-ousel, which joins the stream that flows from the Sty Head Tarn, and having thus gained the saddle between the Great and the Green Gable, to skirt the northern verge of the mountain overlooking the Ennerdale precipice, till you reach the broad top; or, if Wastdale be your starting-point, you can ascend by a still more fascinating route, up the long grassy ridge known as Gavel Neese.
Close to the cairn, at the top, is the small rock-cistern in which there is a “perennial” remnant of rain-water, idealized by several writers, following Wordsworth, into a pure andcelestial lymph. “Even in the driest summer,” says theHistory of Cumberland(1883), “the sparkling liquid gushes forth from the little fount.” In truth the pool, at its best, is but stagnant and brackish, and owing to the habits of some tourists is now often polluted with bits of food or newspapers; so that no worse punishment need be invoked on those who pen such fictions than that they should themselves be forced to slake their thirst with its waters. There is the less need to romance about this “fount” because the three real streams that have their source on the Gable are peculiarly fresh and sweet; in fact, there is hardly a more charming little torrent than Gable Beck, which goes singing down into Wastdale on the left of the Neese as you ascend.
But the chief glory of the Gable lies in the wild crags on its southern and northern sides. Much as climbers have written of the Great Napes, the huge outstanding stack of cliffs that seems to overhang the traveller between Wastdale and the Sty Head, scanty justice has been done to their strange and terrible beauty, which is enhanced by the fact that the whole front of the mountain from which they project is itself a precarious scree-slide of extreme steepness, so that in looking up to these impending arêtes one surveys them not from a flat base but from a shifty slope inclining at a sharp angle to the vale, and they have thus all the appearance of a greater precipice upstarting fantastically from a lesser one. Their nameof “Napes” is aptly bestowed, for they are united with the Gable by a narrow neck, where the green turf, streaked with red undersoil, is in bright contrast to the prevailing grey of the mountain.
Standing at the foot of the Napes, one finds in them a series of fanlike ridges and gullies, from one of which rises the famous Needle, subject of countless articles and photographs; and if it be holiday-season there will probably be one or two parties either climbing or prepared to climb. The Needle being far too slender to accommodate many cragsmen at once, the curious sight may sometimes be witnessed of one set of Needle-men, including more rarely a Needle-woman, gravely waiting their turn, while their predecessors are manœuvring in various postures on the rock. The sport of mountaineering, it may be remarked, differs from certain other sports in this, that, however exciting it maybe to those personally engaged, the mere onlooker is apt to find the spectacle rather tedious; nor is this surprising, when one remembers the large scale of the scene, and that the progress is slow in proportion to the severity of the ascent, a climber on the mountain-side occupying much the same position, relatively, as a fly on the house-wall. Still, there are many of us who would rather be spectators of such gymnastics than take an active part in them.
The crags overlooking Ennerdale, if less peculiar than the Great Napes, are also veryimpressive, and though long proclaimed “inaccessible” have now been assiduously explored and mapped out by enterprising climbers. A romantic interest, too, attaches to them, through the discovery made by Mr. W. P. Haskett Smith of “a sort of hut of loose stones, evidently the refuge of some desperate fugitive of half a century or more ago,” who is presumed, on somewhat imperfect evidence, to have been a smuggler,[15]but whom we should prefer to regard as a pilgrim of the mountains, a fugitive only from the cares and worries of an over-exacting civilization. Whether “Moses’ Sledgate,” the rather mysterious half-obliterated old track, which may be seen winding round the west side of the Gable, had any connexion, as Mr. Haskett Smith surmises, with the hermitage among the crags, must be left to the reader’s imagination; it seems more likely that the prosaic statement of another writer, that the path was formerly used for carrying slates from the Honister Quarries to Wastdale, is the correct one. However that may be, all climbers will subscribe to Mr. Haskett Smith’s praise of the Gable as “splendid to look at, splendid to look from, and splendid to climb.” It is, in truth, a mountain of mountains, and has the same intimate hold on the affections of the climber in Cumberland as Tryfan has in Wales.
From the Gable it is but a step—as mountainsgo—to the Pillar, of which the famous Pillar Rock is a dependency, and even those who are not “Pillarites” in the true sense will find a rare pleasure in scrambling around and about the Rock, which may be reached by the rough track known as the High Level, leading direct to its foot from the top of Black Sail Pass across the face of the fine northern front of the fell, in the course of which “traverse” they will follow the windings of several bold capes and green shady coves. The Rock itself, though somewhat dwarfed by the parent mountain when viewed from a distance, is a grand object from below, when one stands right under the great walls which form its northern buttress.
Of the many climbers who frequent the new hotel at Wastdale Head, now spoken of as “the Chamounix of the Lake District,” few probably remember the place as it used to be when the fine old dalesman, William Ritson, was the landlord, a bleak bare hostel, where the guests, whatever their personal inclinations may have been, led emphatically the simple life. It so happened that, in one of my early visits to Wastdale, I was staying there with a friend at the time when the Rev. James Jackson, the octogenarian known as “the Patriarch of the Pillarites,” was killed on the Pillar Fell, and the last evening of his life he spent with us at Ritson’s, narrating his own mountain exploits, and reciting the verses in which he celebrated them. It was the last day of April, 1878, andon the May morning the brave old man went forth to repeat his annual pilgrimage to the Pillar Rock; we saw him, and were probably the last to see him, plodding off with slow step in the early twilight. Two days later, when we were coming back to Wastdale from Buttermere, we heard shouts across Ennerdale, and climbing up the Pillar Fell, close to the east of the Rock, in a dense mist, we met a search party, and learnt that Mr. Jackson had not been seen since he started. Joining in the search, we peered and groped about the recesses of Pillar Cove, now dim and ghostly under a heavy pall of vapour; but it was not till the next day, when the clouds had lifted, that the body was found, as a dalesman expressed it, “ligging under the Pillar,” the fact being that he had met his death not on the Rock itself, but on a ledge of the steep brow above. It has been said that his vigour was unimpaired, and that the same accident might have happened to a boy, but to us, who were strangers to him, he gave the impression of much physical weakness, and, as the sequel proved, so far from being in a fit state to scale a dangerous crag, he was not capable of crossing the easy ridge which gives access to it. So strong is the fascination of the mountains, which can lure an old pilgrim of eighty-two years thus to sacrifice himself at their shrine!
Of the other ranges of the Lake District—Helvellyn, Saddleback, Grasmoor, and their kin—differing widely as they do from theScafell group in their smoother contours and less savage rock-scenery, little need here be said; but there is at least one distinctive feature in which they excel, and that is the number and keenness of their “edges.” To a connoisseur in climbing, there is always a great attraction in the mountain which may be approached by a narrow stair—
The peak that stormward bares an edgeGround sharp in days when Titans warred—
The peak that stormward bares an edgeGround sharp in days when Titans warred—
The peak that stormward bares an edge
Ground sharp in days when Titans warred—
and herein is the unfailing charm of such otherwise formless masses as Saddleback and Helvellyn. Who, for instance, would ascend Helvellyn by that ponderous bank above Wythburn, when he might have Striding Edge for his upward path and Swirrel Edge for his return? And why should any one climb Saddleback by its toilsome grassy slopes, when an ideal course is offered him in Sharp Edge, overlooking Scales Tarn, and in Narrow Edge, which falls away with scarcely less sharpness from the highest summit? I have named the most famous of these edges, but many others not greatly inferior will suggest themselves; thus Fairfield may be delightfully taken by the narrow ridges of Cofa Pike and Hartsop Dodd, and even the bulky Grasmoor assumes an air of refinement, if scaled by the slim reef of Whiteside, or by the slender arm that it holds out to the promontory of Causey Pike. In old days these knife-edges were reputed difficult and perilous. “The awfulcurtain of rock named Striding Edge,” is De Quincey’s description of the chief ornament of Helvellyn; and Green, in describing his adventurous crossing of Sharp Edge on Saddleback, speaks of the necessity “either of bestriding the ridge, or of moving on one of its sides with hands lying over the top, as a security against falling into the tarn on the left or into a frightful gully on the right.” What was once a terror has now become a joy to the climber of ordinary powers, but to this day one may hear expressions of the old misgivings. A friend who had come over the edges of Saddleback told me afterwards that he had felt “sick with fear,” and I have heard a tourist on Snowdon, fresh from the passage of the Beddgelert “Saddle,” exclaim in solemn accents, “It is a thing to be done once in a lifetime, and no more.” In winter, however, all is changed, and these ridges are then made really formidable by the frozen snow-drifts, which can often transform a steep bank into a dangerous ice-slope, with a veritable razor-edge for its summit.
And here, though it is to the shrine of Scafell that we are on pilgrimage, a few words must be said in praise of Borrowdale’s other guardian height. “What was the great Parnassus’ self to thee?” wrote Wordsworth, addressing Skiddaw; and the rock-climber smiles at the question, for Skiddaw, having no rocks, is more attractive to the tripper than to the cragsman. Yet no true lover ofmountains will fail to delight in Skiddaw, though it must be confessed that the ordinary way of ascent, leading along the dullest part of the range, which overlooks the treeless “forest,” does its utmost to make the mountain seem uninteresting. It is significant of the local apathy and lack of initiative, in dealing with mountain scenery, that a route which was originally chosen in the days when such ascents were made on horseback should still be the only recognized one for pedestrians, and that the tourist, after following the path up dreary slopes to the summit, should still retrace his steps by the same way—unless he is so fortunate as to be lost in the mist, and to gain a new experience of Skiddaw by some irregular and more exciting descent.
For the real charm of Skiddaw lies in its southern and western portions, facing Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite, and the descent, at least, should be made in this direction, over the great shoulder known as Carlside, from which one may turn right or left, along the narrow ridge of Longside, or down the lovely glen of Millbeck. It is from this point that one can best appreciate, at close quarters, the beauty as well as the bulk of Skiddaw. Every one who has been in Borrowdale is familiar with the clear-cut outline of the mountain, standing out so simple and shapely against the northern sky, and flanked on either hand by the wooded promontories of Latrigg and the Dodd—a picture which is in markedcontrast to the notched and jagged battlements of Scafell—and there is certainly a wonderful symmetry in the massive buttresses, alternating with the deep-grooved glens, rounded off, like a piece of sculpture, in flawless lines. But, seen closer, the mountain reveals itself as a vast slope of varied colour and composition, smooth everywhere, but patched and streaked with long strips of shale, or grass, or heather, which hang down the great breast of the hill for many hundreds of feet with surprising steepness. At the top is a wilderness of stone, below it a green tract of turf or bilberry, merging into purple heather or wide fields of fern, and all so subtly woven and blended as to produce, especially in late summer and autumn, a rich combination of tints. The Millbeck Valley, in particular, divided by a pyramid-shaped buttress which juts out from Carlside, is then most gorgeously clad in a vestment of many textures and hues.
Not less delightful, though for the most part unknown, is the descent by Longside, a sharp spur, quite unlike the general character of the mountain, which runs out north-westward from Carlside and culminates in Ullock Pike; from which point, looking across a wild glen, one has the most impressive of all near views of Skiddaw, sinking from cope to base in a colossal steep of bare screes, which by its very monotony baffles the eye of the spectator and cheats calculation as to its height.
I will say, then, that Skiddaw, albeit despisedof climbers, is as well worth knowing, in its own distinctive character, as Scafell itself; but those who would know it must seek it not by the beaten track but by the pathless solitudes where the raven still flies undisturbed. Approach it in the right spirit, and Skiddaw will open its heart to you, and you will learn that it is none the less a great mountain because you cannot break your neck upon its slopes.
“What pleasure lives in height? the shepherd sang.” Only a very lovesick shepherd, who had his own reasons for praising the valley at the expense of the mountain, could have asked a question so foolish; for the pleasures of the heights are manifold and beyond count. Let us consider a few of these pleasures, just those cheap and simple ones which are in the reach of anybody who, without aspiring to be a skilled rock-climber or Alpinist, is drawn by his love for our English or Welsh hills to spend long days among their solitudes, and to cope with the difficulties, such as they are, of weather and season in planning and effecting his ascents—the choice of routes, the fording of streams, the avoidance of precipices, and the keeping of the right course in dense and blinding mists.
Equipped, then, with a modicum of food, with map, compass, and field-glasses, we sally forth emancipated from all that usually deadens us to the direct messages of Nature. For it is one of Nature’s citadels that we are scaling,and we know not in which of her varying moods we shall find her; but we know that in these uplands all her moods are beautiful, and that it is not the fair-weather climber that is privileged to comprehend them best. Here, at least, is a region where in all seasons, and in all weathers, not a sight or sound but brings contentment to the mind.
It has been remarked by Elisée Reclus, in his charmingHistory of a Mountain, that of all forms of travel to travel upwards is the most instructive, for by climbing a few thousand feet we enjoy more novel experiences than in a lateral journey of as many miles, and it often happens that the first experience of the climber, as of the aeronaut, is to find himself in the country of the clouds.
As we start up the valley, perhaps, the “white horses” of last night’s rain-storms are still racing down the slopes, and our staircase of mingled grass and rock bears the shadow of the dense cloud overhead—a scene of unrelieved dreariness to those who are unaware of what glories it may be the gateway. Toiling upwards, we reach the swirling fringe of vapour, which closes gradually round us and wraps from us all view of the familiar landscape below. Still on and up we press, till, as we set foot on the higher ridges, the magic of cloud-land begins; for lo! what in the ordinary light of day were mere rocks and buttresses are changed now and magnified into mysterious shadowy forms, looming dimly out upon usfrom the mist, until we half wonder whether the compass or our own memory has misled us, and we have strayed into some strange unmapped district where the air is thick with phantoms. Often and often have I had such thought, when beclouded on the great rocky plateau of the Glyders or Scafell Pikes, or groping my way along one of the narrow “cribs” of Carnarvonshire or one of the Cumberland “edges”; and I do not think that any one imbued with the love of mountains would exchange these hours of cloudy surmisings for all the crystal skies that give the “views”, so desired of tourists, from the top. Not that I would undervalue the exhilarating sensation—unlike anything else in life—of reaching the summit of a mountain; but to the true mountaineer all other interests are subordinate to the fact of the mountain-presence itself, even if that presence be veiled, as it often is, in remorseless drift of rain-cloud.
For it may be admitted that mountains, like some other objects of human affection, are apt to subject their lovers to a chilling ordeal, days and weeks of repeated denials and disappointments, until at times the most ardent may despond; or if one present himself as a returned prodigal, seeking instant favour after absence, he may but find, as Thoreau expressed it, that there has been killed for him “the fatted cloud.” But to the faithful there will come at last, quite suddenly and unexpectedly perhaps, a moment which makes such graciousamends that all past unkindnesses are forgotten. You are standing, it may be, on some high ridge or summit, drenched with rain, buffeted by winds, and wondering if perchance any sign is to be vouchsafed to you. The mist floats by in thick interminable volume. But see! What is that small dark rift in the grey monotonous curtain? Wider and wider it grows, until it is framed there, like a magic stage among the clouds, and through that gap, where a moment before you saw but twenty paces, you may now see as many miles, a fair expanse of valleys, lakes and rivers, with the sea gleaming in the background. Another moment, and it is gone—to be restored again, and withdrawn again, in quick succession—a shifting scene more glorious than ever eye has witnessed, save in the region of clouds or dreams.
In a thick mist, such as is apt to enfold with extreme suddenness the hills of which I speak, perhaps not to release them for days from its shadowy grip, the careful use of a compass is almost a necessity, except in places where the landmarks are familiar and beyond mistake; for the transformation which the mountains undergo is surprising even to those who know them best; and if once the true sense of direction be lost, it is most difficult to recover it, especially on broad, smooth plateaus or hillsides where there are no sharp-featured rocks. In the ascent there is less likelihood of going astray, for there is but one summit, and byclimbing we shall find it; but in descending there is always a greater possibility of error, with the chance, if we get on the wrong side of the watershed, of emerging some twenty miles away from home. The sensation of thus coming down on the reverse side of a mountain range is most perplexing, for at first sight, and until we can readjust our minds to the fact, everything seems confused, the quarters of the horizon have changed places, north is south, and we can hardly believe that our left is not our right. A friend of mine who was lost on Snowdon in a mist, made his way down, as he thought, towards Llanberis, with the intention of thence walking rightward to Pen-y-Gwryd; he reached a road which he took to be the pass of Llanberis, and duly turned to the right. Not until after he had walked some miles did he discover that he was well on the way towards Carnarvon, having descended, without knowing it, on the wrong side of Snowdon and into a different part of Wales.
To be lost in a fog is of course no uncommon experience among strangers who cross the fells. On one occasion (not strictly to be classed among “pleasures” of the heights), when descending from Scafell Pike to Langdale in furious storm and cloud, I met near Angle Tarn a wandering, one-eyed tramp, who presented about as miserable an appearance as human being could attain. The proverbial “drowned rat” would have scorned to exchange plight with him. He had been discharged, he toldme, a few days before, from a hospital in a northern town, where they had taken out one of his eyes without consulting him, and with the remaining eye he was seeking his way to a relative at Keswick by the Stake Pass, from which he had hopelessly wandered. As we descended Rossett Gill together, for I took him back to Langdale, he confided to me that this was his first experience of a mountain, and he thought it would suffice till his death—an event which, but for his happening to meet our party, would probably not have been long delayed.
A strange effect is produced, when one is descending, if the clouds are descending too; for the deepening mist then makes the delay in reaching sunlight seem endless. Down and down we go, and the gloom is still beneath us, until we begin to wonder, like the first voyagers on the Atlantic, whether we are sinking into some bottomless abyss from which it may be impossible to re-arise; it becomes a burden and nightmare to the mind; then at last there is a darkening of the vapour in one spot, and far below we see the jet-black water of a tarn, or a bit of brown mountain-side across the glen.
More inspiriting is the effect of climbing through and above the clouds, as one sometimes can do, until one looks down from an upper land of sunshine on a sea of mist below, from which the rocky peaks and promontories emerge like islands. It occasionally happens,when some high ridge is bathed in cloud on one side and in sun on the other, that a climber, standing on the edge of the gulf, will see a small circular rainbow projected on the mist, with his own head forming the centre of it—a rare and curious experience for the wayworn pilgrim, thus to find his image, like that of a saint, with a halo round his head, emblazoned on the mountain vapours! Who shall say that the modern pilgrim is not blessed, as his forerunners were, with celestial apparitions? The first time I saw this phenomenon was on the ridge of Ben Nevis. I have also seen it from Blaven, in Skye, and from the top of Scafell, looking down into the cloud-filled chasm of Mickledore.
Not less marvellous are the transformations of the clouds themselves, when, after a spell of storm, they break up under triumphant sunshine and drift disbanded along the slopes. I remember how once, descending from Tryfan after a wet and dismal day, and returning across the low grassy moorlands to Capel Curig, I witnessed that strange form of mountain mirage recorded by Wordsworth in “The Excursion.” The corner of the valley above Llyn Ogwen was filled with dense mists, which came seething and boiling out of the hollow like steam from a cauldron, and as they broke up into small wisps and wreaths, under combined wind and sunshine, gave an extraordinary appearance to the northern front of Carnedd Dafydd, which was enveloped in a maze of billowy vapour,until it was impossible to distinguish rock from cloud or cloud from rock, and the illusion was exactly that which the poet has described: