In an essay on climbing that I wrote at the time, I said it was a sport that made all others seem trivial. ‘New climbs or new variations of old climbs are not made in a competitive spirit, but only because it is satisfactory to stand somewhere on the earth’s surface where nobody else has stood before. And it is good to be alone with a specially chosen band of people—people that one can trust completely. Rock-climbing is one of the most dangerous sports possible, unless one keeps to the rules; but if one does keep to the rules it is reasonably safe. With physical fitness in every member of the climbing team, a careful watch on the weather, proper overhauling of climbing apparatus, and with no hurry, anxiety or stunting, climbing is much safer than fox-hunting. In hunting there are uncontrollable factors, such as hidden wire, holes in which a horse may stumble, caprice or vice in the horse. The climber trusts entirely to his own feet, legs, hands, shoulders, sense of balance, judgment of distance.’ The first climb on which I was taken was up Crib-y-ddysgel. It was a test climb for beginners. About fifty feet up from the scree, a height that is really more frightening than five hundred, because death is almost as certain and much more immediate, there was a long sloping shelf of rock, about the length of an ordinary room, to be crossed from right to left. It was without handholds or footholds worth speaking of and too steep to stand upright or kneel on without slipping. It shelved at an angle of, I suppose, forty-five or fifty degrees. The accepted way to cross it was by rolling in an upright position and trusting to friction as a maintaining force. Once I got across this shelf without disaster I felt that the rest of the climb was easy. The climb was called The Gambit. Robert Trevelyan, the poet, was given this test in the previous season, I was told, and had been unlucky enough to fall off. He was pulled up short, of course, after a few feet by the rope of the leader, who was well belayed; but the experience disgusted him with climbing and he spent the rest of his time on the mountains just walking about. ♦ “Crib-y-ddysgel” replaced with “Crib-y-ddysgl”