The rest of the party preferred to mount the buttress by Collier’s route indicated in a previous paragraph. I think the hand-traverse has not been attempted since, and it is perhaps just as well. It is scarcely less than suicidal to try conclusions with this variation unless the climber has full confidence in his strength of grip, and unless he has already tested his powers of endurance of long-continued strain in the arms. But with the leader of the party already at the head of the pitch, no matter which way he got there, it involves no serious risk for the others to follow by this route. The last on the rope had better come up over the buttress. CHAPTER XVIII _NOTES ON REMAINING CLIMBS_ In this chapter it is proposed to deal summarily with a few remaining rock-climbs that have not yet been described. Some are rather awkward to reach, others are perhaps too slight to be worth the time spent in reaching them unless they actually turn up in the day’s march. One or two I have not visited, and am reluctant to accept the responsibility of guiding people up them. But What he thought he might require, He went and took--the same as me! is too general a motto among book-writers for me to hesitate long before incorporating other people’s notes, and the attempt will be made to acknowledge the source in each case. PIERS GHYLL.--This is a fine-looking ravine on the north side of Lingmell, occasionally visited by climbers. It has four or five comparatively easy pitches before the big bend, but at the point where the main gully is bridged by a great mass of rock the whole width of the ravine is occupied by a waterfall fifty feet high, and any attempt to force a passage up this pitch is peculiarly unsatisfactory unless a rainless season has much diminished the volume of water passing down. Such a season was that of 1893, and in April of that year Dr. Collier led the first party up the whole length of the ghyll. Even under those favourable circumstances the climb was very difficult, and no other party has succeeded in repeating the ascent. Dr. Collier tells me that the hardest bit is up the narrow pitch before reaching the great fall. The latter offers a choice of two or three routes. Piers Ghyll is conspicuous from a distance, and many a tourist knows the place. Hence it has a reputation of its own even as a climb, which it can scarcely be said to deserve. If, as Haskett Smith expresses it, it is in nineteen seasons out of twenty wholly impossible to get over the great obstacle, it cannot rightly be called a climb. The scrambling up to the bend is mostly unpleasant by reason of the water and the loose character of the rock. An exit can there be made up the wall on the right, but the friability of this wall makes its ascent positively dangerous except at one spot where a scree gully runs nearly to the top of the cliff.