The chimney had been inspected by earlier climbers before I had ever heard of it. The uninitiated of Wastdale often lament the secretiveness of those who know where new things exist but who keep the knowledge to themselves. Nestor is very reticent, and it is to be counted unto him for righteousness that one Christmas week, after bad weather had deprived us of all the ordinary climbing, he announced to the engineer and me that there was a fascinating little thing, the fancy of an ‘off’ afternoon, lying conveniently close to the hotel, that he would show us how to climb. I was lying on the billiard table just then thinking of the different kinds of nothing. ‘Where is it?’ I asked. ‘In Tom Blue’ was the reply, and as this was yet but a name to me I wondered whether Tom’s blueness measured his difficulty. The engineer was enthusiastic, and declined to allow me to remain longer on the billiard table after hearing this news. So in the gentle rain we marched out of the inn that afternoon, and worked our way up the Styhead path till we had passed the little spring that crosses it near the zig-zag. There we saw the great rocks looming up on the left and were told that Tom Blue awaited us there. The steep slope leading up to our climb was strewn with huge boulders in chaotic confusion. We could either keep to these or else make for an interesting crack in the Lower Kern Knotts that stood directly in our way. To give us a foretaste we took to the crack, finding as usual that its aspect from a distance gave no clue to the wealth of useful detail in the shape of handholds. Then a few yards more of mercurial skipping from boulder to boulder and we reached a little terrace at the foot of the fine wall of the Upper Kern Knotts. Since that day a huge cairn has grown up on this terrace at an astonishing rate of development, to mark the beginning of the climb. Perhaps by the date of publication of this volume the cairn will have grown to rival the crags in height, the climb may be _viâ_ the cairn, and Kern Knotts Chimney blocked up for ever. But for the sake of the afternoon strollers from Wastdale we pray that this may not be. The ascent is apparently in two portions, the lower one being the easier. Actually there is a third pitch, the one of perhaps greatest intrinsic difficulty, starting at the top of the split buttress and quite unnoticeable from below. For this reason the climb must be regarded as deceptive; it is one thing to struggle up the middle pitch with the impression that the worst piece is being tackled, and quite another to find a part of exceptional severity higher up. With that portion impossible the only alternative is to descend again, and that does not commend itself to many men who climb more for amusement than for instruction.