But the solution of the difficulty was of the simplest character. A few feet from the corner the smooth right wall was split by a single crack that passed up at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees and terminated at a notch that broke the clean-cut outline of the rock facing us. From the notch it certainly seemed as though nothing could be done further, even if we got so far. Nevertheless, we were assured that when once we were there all doubts would vanish, and we should have the easiest hundred feet of scrambling in the whole day’s expedition. The crack was the famous _Stomach traverse_; it was reached as long ago as 1884 by Haskett Smith in his early exploration of the north face; and the name, which had only recently been given to it, was intended to show how the passage was supposed to be tackled. One of Willink’s illustrations in the Badminton, showing an intrepid cragsman crawling along a ledge from left to right, is sometimes criticised as an exaggeration of the difficulties that rock-climbers have to overcome. This traverse before us was not so easy as the one so cleverly depicted by the artist. It sloped upwards, and the ledge was not wide enough for the whole body. We were in no sense precariously placed, for the cleft enabled us to wedge with security; but the right half of the body was outside the leaf of rock on which we hung, and the right leg found no support on the vertical wall. Some twenty feet of wriggling brought us each in turn to the critical corner, and there to our amazement we had merely to get up and walk away. The wall we had passed was the last obstacle separating us from a long stretch of steep grass chimneys and broken rocks. These extend from the Nose at the foot of the crags up to the final difficulty, now only a hundred feet above us, and offer the easier route up the north face. Our own course by the Savage Gully was by far the more entertaining one, and under most conditions decidedly safer than the other. From the notch we could either walk straight up to the cave-pitch in the corner now facing us, or work easily round a rib of rock on the right and join the other route. We chose the former, and found the pitch decidedly stiff, the main trouble being to get satisfaction out of the diminutive hand-holds on the upper surface of the top boulder. However, it was time to be thankful for small mercies, and confidence carried us up safely.