Rocks and Fells

David Allan Robertson, Jr.

Neither indeed is there any hill or hillocke, which doth not containe in it the most sweete memory of worthy matters.

Coryat : Crudities (1611)

LET’S look away for a moment from these Gothic Ablaut Verbs and these mislineations in the quarto Lear. There are other books on these shelves: Whymper and Tyndall, Mountain Craft and The Fight for Everest. There are pictures on the walls, too: Chamonix, Zermatt, Tyrol. What memories and plans they conjure up! A month ago was that rainy Sunday, and the drive from Princeton up to Arden Cliff. Three months ago we were gazing out from a height near the Ballon d’Alsace toward the great rampart of the Bernese Alps. A year ago…

Just a year ago the Christmas Meet of the Cambridge University Mountaineering Club was starting, at the Climbers’ Club cottage at Helyg, in the shadow of Gallt yr Ogof, on the road between Capel Curig and Bethesda. It was a splendid introduction to Welsh climbing. Some twenty other undergraduates, from various Cambridge colleges, were there. Of these about six remained for a whole fortnight, as officers of the Club and permanent leaders. The other dozen, of whom many were as new to Wales as I was, gave way after a week to a dozen newcomers.

We had a memorable time of it, indeed. It mattered not one bit that the bunks creaked abominably and that there simply was not room before the several fires to dry all the clothes in which we came home drenched. Some were so far oblivious of such considerations that they even took to bathing at seven in the cold, dark stream outside. What did matter was that we grew used to seeing the lights of that cottage as we came plunging down the drifts in Cwm Tryfan at the end of good, long days, or as we came trudging back along the road from Ogwen, talking of mountains and Cambridge and all else under the sun that mattered to us.

The Welsh mountains are extraordinarily pleasant, even in the persistent blizzards which we encountered, limiting our exertions to some of the more obvious routes. One day two of us, after reaching the Heather Terrace which gives access to the climbs onthe E. face of Tryfan (whose looming mass we came to love), abandoned successively the Pinnacle Rib, the N. gully—and a plain walk over to Glyder Fach ! Another day five of us turned back from the Snowdon Horseshoe before we had attained even the summit of Crib Goch. If we had known them (our Welsh had been limited to hymn-singing at Capel), we surely would have thought then of the lines George Borrow quoted in Wild Wales:

Oer yw’r Eira ar Eryri,—o’ryw

Ar awyr i rewi ;

Oer yw’r ia ar riw ’r ri,

A’r Eira oer yw ’Ryri.

These, being interpreted, apparently mean :

Cold is the snow on Snowdon’s brow,

It makes the air so chill ;

For cold, I trow, there is no snow

Like that of Snowdon’s hill.

Of course some climbs did go. The Milestone Buttress was a favorite for everyone. One or two parties wriggled up the Monolith Crack. Bochlwyd was beseiged ; and the Gribin Facet, too, drew several parties. We tried the Home Climb there, without complete success. Another day four of us enjoyed a wintry expedition to the Bristly Ridge of Glyder Fach. As I recall, few climbs classed normally as more than “D” were carried through. The categories in the excellent Climbers’ Club guidebooks are as follows: Easy, Moderate, Difficult, Very Difficult, Severe, Very Severe. There are additional refinements.

I well understand old Thomas Churchyard’s sentiment in The Worthines of Wales (1587) :

No ayre so pure, and wholesome as the Hill.

Certainly it was good to see Wales soon again, to be arriving (in a fabulous engine known as the White Knight) at the Gorphwysfa, Pen-y-Pass, for a memorable Easter week-end with Geoffrey Winthrop Young's annual party. This time there was the best of weather, as well as the best of good fellowship—and again the Welsh mountains were around us.

Most of the thirty or so present went on Good Friday to Lliwedd, that classic cliff, marked by the nails of climbing pioneers. Our particular two ropes went up (we think) the Roof Route, down Route II and up the Slab Climb to the top. Tryfan drew some of us back on Saturday, to the Pinnacle Rib ; on Sunday, the Parson’s Nose attracted our attention. On this lazy latter day,from secluded vantage-points, we gleefully watched the dozens of trippers parading around the Horseshoe, lines of tiny moving silhouettes against the sky. On Monday many of the party travelled to Cwm Silin, a Pen-y-Pass stamping-ground between Snowdon and the sea, where the Ordinary Route, the Righthand Climb and the Outside Edge were climbed by various ropes. Meanwhile some had revisited Clogwyn du’r Arddu.

There is more to Pen-y-Pass. Near here, as I learned, Arthur lies sleeping in a cave, to be roused at last in a time of crisis; near here are the miraculous (and cold) lakes described by Giraldus Cambrensis in the Itinerary. Of things closer, one can hardly forget the leisurely discussions of plans after breakfast at Pen-y-Pass, the lunch-ledges usually late arrived at, the look of the mountains at evening, the talks over welcome dinner and in the smoking room after (pictures were here in profusion, and the Pen-y-Pass book, with records of previous years), the games, the movies, and G. W. Y. leading us all in singing:

There are days upon Lliwedd beyond all desire,

And conflict with cavern and crack.

There are thoughts of the songs by the smoking-room fire,

And talks after twelve in the Shack.

There is sunrise to hear of and sunset to see,

And the pipe on the P.-y-G. path—

Then beer from the pewter and, after your tea,

The riotous rites of the bath.

Late in June, after the end of term, came the Trinity Lake Hunt. Every year some twenty members of Trinity College— dons, B. A.’s and undergraduates—foregather at Seatoller, at the head of Borrowdale, for a week of a special sort of Hares and Hounds. Each morning, if the rain is not pelting down too hard, two are sent out with hunting horns, which they must blow at not too infrequent intervals, to reveal their whereabouts. After twenty minutes, the hounds pursue them, at paces varied to taste, over an area bounded by four passes : Sty Head, Black Sail, Scarth Gap and Honister. One learns the “compactly sublime” country of Great Gable and Ennerdale thus, and one finds the limitations of legs and lungs. In the evenings we settled down to talk or piquet or song, to the Pope’s piano-playing and the Master’s reports on the adventurous progress of Tarzan.

During the Lake Hunt, Sunday is traditionally an off-day. While some went off to investigate the flesh-pots of Keswick andothers set out on the long, long walk to Tilberthwaite by way of Glaramara’s heights, two of us trudged up the Sty Head Pass and out along the narrow, stony path on the flank of Great Gable. There was rain. We were held up by the second pitch of the West Kern Knotts Chimney; and, having watched another party turn back at the same spot, we shifted our attentions to the Chimney more usually climbed. After the six years that had passed since a first day of Cumberland rock-climbing, the route (except for one temporarily puzzling slab) seemed strangely familiar. Later we went on to ascend the ridge that rises just back of the Napes Needle—a pleasant climb, indeed, with most peculiar fingerholds at the start.

Then when the Lake Hunt was ended, I dropped over the Sty Head Pass yet once more in the rain, to join the nine other “Wastdale Wanderers” for a week of camping. Once or twice we thought our canvas community (not to mention the W'hite Knight and The Austin) would be washed away completely—washed away from the tree-dotted site by the stream beyond the little church, washed into Wastwater itself, perhaps. None the less, walking and climbing and singing, eating those good pancakes and that good porridge with brown sugar, sleeping what might be called the appropriate Wordsworthian sleep, we had inevitably the good time which we all had come together to associate with the British hills.

One day we spent on Great Gable. To the routes already accounted for, one rope added the Eagle’s Nest Ordinary. Two days later we were on Pillar, where we went up the so-called Ledge-and-Groove Climb. Unlike the hero of The Ascent of F-6, we did not linger to meditate of Virtue and Knowledge on the Summit of Pillar Rock ; but we did sit long on Looking Stead, on our way home that evening, to gaze at hills and fells for once quite free of mist and cloud. Another day found us on Scawfell, where we discovered the famous Collie Step in Moss Ghyll, and on the Pike, where we climbed the Wall and Crack.

On really bad days we walked, up and over soaking Kirk Fell, for example, or to Gatesgarth, near the edge of Buttermere, for tea. Once, in weather not unlike that which, on Scawfell, must first have inspired Coleridge’s Hymn Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni, the conviction of one that it would be a good idea (it was, of course) led us down Waterpipe Gully into Eskdale andhome at last under a beautifully clearing sky. I remember, too, how once three of us stopped happily on Green How, at a place near which the world we lived in seemed to end, so regular was the curve of the hill’s edge and so long. Nothing was visible beyond for a great distance, until the far, green valley and the buttresses at its sides, the long screes tumbling down to bottomless black Wastwater, the sea beyond. Our intermittent words were of Fortunate Isles, but our thoughts were surely wandering.