Rock-climbing in the English Lake District: Third EditionJones, Owen Glynne
General
Rock-climbing in the English Lake District: Third Edition
Jones, Owen Glynne
Lake District (England) -- Description and travel; Mountaineering; Rock climbing -- England -- Lake District
On the 27th of that month Messrs. Collie, Hastings, and Robinson made
a determined attack on the ghyll. The winter was exceptionally fine
and the rocks were clean and dry. They easily reached the Tennis Court
ledge, and thence traversed into the gully. Penetrating the cave below
the big pitch, Dr. Collie, who was leading, climbed up to the roof
and out by a small window between the jammed boulders. Thence, by the
ingenious expedient of hacking at a thin undercut plate of rock, he
exposed a small foothold on the wall that enabled him to traverse out
from the pitch and into a place of safety beyond. Thence to the top of
the pitch was an easy matter, and the remaining members of the party
quickly followed him. It has since been discovered that the hardest
part of the gully was yet before them. They, however, had practically
solved the main problem, and were contented to work out of the gully by
steep ‘mantelshelf’ climbing up to the left. The honour of the first
strict ascent of Moss Ghyll fell to Dr. Collier a few days later,
who climbed the ghyll from beginning to end under the impression that
the previous party had done the same. Dr. Collier was accompanied by
four others, and was emphatic in his opinion that the final chimney
represented the hardest part of the climb. Two days later he took
up Professors Marshall and Dixon, and from the former I obtained
sufficient information to start off one morning on my own account to
learn for the first time what Moss Ghyll was like.
It was distinctly a day of adventure, and I learnt a great deal
concerning the ghyll. The passage across the Collie step appeared
to me the most difficult, but the loose slabs over which one has to
walk adroitly were then covered with fresh snow. The famous step was
invisible, and I had to stoop and scrape in order to determine its
exact shape and position. At the first attempt on the traverse I
slipped, and fell into the snow-bed of the gully below. The result
was scarcely surprising, though eminently uncomfortable. But the
falling was, under the circumstances, almost part of the programme,
and a rope had been fixed in the interior of the cavern, passed out
through the ‘window,’ and then attached to my waist, to eliminate the
danger of plunging some 400 feet down to the foot of the gully. The
second attempt was successful, though I confess to a feeling of lively
apprehension as the critical point was being passed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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