CHAPTER XV

_DOE CRAG, CONISTON_

This happy hunting-ground for the rock-climber is within an hour’s walk of Coniston. It forms part of the range of hills that includes Wetherlam and the Old Man, but unlike these great neighbours it has hitherto been left untouched by miners and quarry-men.

From the Old Man we may look westwards across the upper end of Goat’s Water, and see the summit of Doe Crag almost at our level, some 900 feet above the lake. We are facing its grand precipices, and are in an excellent position to prospect the various gullies that cut deeply into the 500-feet wall of rock.

The first of these, as we glance from left to right, causes the greatest impression in the sky-line, but is of the least interest to mountaineers. It is an easy scree gully, possessing a rotten pinnacle that was first climbed by Mr. Slingsby in 1887. The second is generally known as the Great Gully. It is much longer, and includes a fair amount of genuine hard work in its ascent. At a distance it appears to have a Y shape, by reason of the two branches that diverge from a point about half-way up. The Great Gully was first climbed in July, 1888, by Messrs. Hastings, Haskett Smith, and E. Hopkinson, its first pitch being then taken by the ‘shallow scoop’ on the left of the great obstacle. Nearly a year later the brothers Hopkinson effected a direct ascent of the pitch by an ingenious utilization of the rope, to which we shall refer subsequently.

To the immediate north of the Great Gully we see a huge buttress that springs further down the scree towards Goat’s Water than any other part of the crag. The lower 300 feet of this buttress exhibit a nearly vertical gully that may escape detection altogether unless viewed in a favourable light. In the view on the opposite page it is well marked by the deep black shadow of the rocks on its south side. Apparently it joins a sloping gully that leads up to the sky-line; but in reality it finishes abruptly on the face, at a small grass platform that stretches a hundred feet across the buttress. It is now known as the Central Chimney, and was first climbed in April, 1897, by Mr. Godfrey Ellis and myself. In the first edition of this book, the chimney was erroneously identified with one of Messrs. Hopkinson’s ascents of April, 1895. The route cannot be recommended except to experts, by reason equally of the genuine difficulties in the chimney and of the exposed nature of the awkward situations in it.

The next gully to the right forms the northern boundary of the great central buttress. It is but slightly marked at the lower end and possesses serious difficulties in the first half. We shall call it the Intermediate Gully. It was first climbed in April, 1895, by Messrs. Campbell, and Edward, Albert, and J. H. Hopkinson, and described by the most experienced of their party as the severest climb he had done in the district. Mr. W. J. Williams and I went up it at Easter, 1898, when making a fairly complete survey of all these splendid, but practically unknown gullies.

The Easter Gully now needs localization. It comes next to the preceding and is easy to identify. It has a huge cave pitch near the bottom, then from a great hollow in the crags a vertical chimney springs up over a hundred feet in a right-angled corner; above this the gully divides into two branches, both of which give good climbing until we are nearly at the summit-ridge. Careful inquiry enables me to say that this was first climbed by Messrs. Haskett Smith and Robinson in 1886; they avoided a considerable amount of the trouble, inevitable in a passage of the lower half of the direct ascent, by working up the great buttress on the right, and by traversing back into the gully when the opportunity disclosed itself. The first passage of the gully by the extremely difficult second pitch, and thence directly onwards, was made on Easter Day, 1895, by Messrs. Otto Koecher and Charles Hopkinson, who, however, circumvented the comparatively simple cave pitch at the foot. They thought they were on entirely new ground; so did I when on Easter Day, 1898, Mr. W. J. Williams accompanied me over the first pitch, up a zig-zag course to left and right of the long chimney, and then along the direct finish to the summit.

The sixth and last great gully is known as the North Gully, to see which it is necessary to go well towards Goat’s Hause. Three huge boulders block up the middle and form the only pitch. The gully was formerly supposed to be Messrs. Haskett Smith and Robinson’s climb of 1886; actually it is the place where Haskett Smith was let down on a rope, and gave tribute to the grandeur of the region by remarking on its ‘terrific aspect.’ In 1895 a party went up what they called the North Gully, but they encountered no difficulty during their ascent, and it seems more likely therefore that they climbed a slighter ghyll between the real North Gully and the Easter Gully. They traversed into the latter above its difficult chimney. It is hard to say what exploration has been made here. Mr. Williams and I descended the gully in 1898, and halted there sufficiently to convince ourselves of the feasibility of its ascent. But whether the climb has ever been taken upwards throughout its whole length is an open question.

Climbers should visit Doe Crag more frequently. The rocks give magnificent sport, the scenery is more than ordinarily impressive even to the hardened cragsman, and there yet remains a great amount of exploratory work to be done. Only the gullies have hitherto been tackled. The buttresses are almost untouched.

THE GREAT GULLY.--The satisfactory part of this climb is that its greatest difficulty confronts us at the outset. Once the first pitch is accomplished we are perfectly certain that the combined skill of the party is sufficient to insure a successful ascent of the remainder. There is no gradual increase in the technical difficulty of the subsequent passages, to vex the soul of the conscientious climber with doubts as to the morality of advancing, when a critical position might be reached where descent is dangerous and further ascent beyond his powers. The first pitch is severe, and perhaps a little risky for the leader, but the remaining four are easy, and the method of tackling them obvious. This species of gully is suitable for those who tire quickly, or whose impressions of the work before them depend on the height they have attained. On the other hand, there are climbers who like to feel that there is always something serious looming ahead, who want the troubles to last them all through their climb, and rejoice in a _bonne bouche_ at the most elevated situation. Such lingering sweetness they can find in the Central Chimney, but not here; it is not surprising that many men are satisfied with one visit to the Great Gully, and never make for it a second time.

It takes us ten minutes to walk up from the lake to the entrance of the gully. Then a few yards of scree and broken rock lead into a cavern, below a chock-stone that offers much resistance to the direct passage up the pitch. A massive buttress encroaches on the left, and renders the gully almost narrow enough for both sides to be employed together; but close inspection shows that near the top of the pitch the walls are too far apart and the handholds too few. The climber does well to descend a few feet and prospect the buttress itself. This exhibits a safer route (see view on page 225). Close against the side of the vertical left wall the buttress shows a slight fissure, that starts from an easy grass platform and runs steeply up to a level some twelve feet higher than the top of the chock-stone. The difficulty lies in working up the corner, following the crack as much as possible, and taking sufficient care that the body does not swing away from the footholds. A stout individual is likely to feel handicapped at an awkward little ledge half-way up from the grass platform. The fissure can be followed straight up into the gully, but it is easier to contour round the buttress and on to the top of the true pitch. There is excellent belaying for an ascending party, the rope lying along the crack and gripping well at several points. It grips just too well for the safe belaying of the last man in a descent; he had better adopt the dangling method and work straight over the chock-stone. This latter direct route over the obstacle was tried once or twice before 1889, but without success. It was left to the brothers Hopkinson to show in that year that it offered a perfectly safe variation, though probably most climbers will agree that it needs more muscle than is wanted for the crack route. They clambered into the cave and thrust a rope through the small aperture in the roof. When a sufficient quantity had been poked up in that way, it fell over the front of the cave and was available for climbing. But it is very severe work to swarm up a thin rope; in this case there is slight assistance from the sides of the gully, and the transfer of hold from the rope to the rock comes when the arms are tired.

After this difficulty is passed, some yards of scree lead to the second pitch. The gully is narrow, and the block is produced by two boulders one above the other. There is no trouble in working through the cave and on to the lower block, whence an easy pull over the upper stone takes us again to a long line of scree of the impulsive variety. This part of the gully is pleasant only when snow is about, when the ankle-twisting propensities of the scree are not permitted full play.

We are near the point where the gully opens out considerably, sending a branch up on the right. But before that we have to mount two small pitches, the first taken straight up, the second by either right or left wall.

The branch exit on the right has no serious difficulties, but it abounds in loose holds that the climber may find hard to avoid. It leads on to the great middle buttress of Doe Crag, above all its dangerous parts, and within easy access of the summit. The direct ascent of the gully is interesting only at the last step, where a narrow chimney must be passed. Its right boundary is a long smooth slab, unusually deficient in holds. There are three or four wedged stones and the pitch is often wet, but by keeping close into the chimney and working up the right wall the trouble may be overcome. It is always possible, of course, to descend a little and climb out of the gully on the right.

DOE CRAG CENTRAL CHIMNEY.--This climb is known to very few people. Many are aware in a vague manner that there is splendid climbing on the great buttress of Doe Crag, but only one or two cragsmen have learnt where to go for it. So far as my own experience is concerned it was almost a matter of accident that brought me soon after Easter, 1897, to the foot of the Central Chimney. The previous day had been spent with Messrs. George and Ashley Abraham on Lliwedd, in the Snowdon district, and a tiresome cross-country night journey to Coniston had not tended to put the keenest edge on my hunger for adventure. My companion, Mr. Godfrey Ellis, and I were really intent on ascending by the ‘intermediate gully of terrific aspect,’ down which Mr. Haskett Smith had climbed in 1888. The Central Chimney certainly looked terrific, more so than anything else we could find about there. It was also reasonably intermediate, and we came to the conclusion that our gully was found. Later investigation showed that we had made a mistake, for Haskett Smith’s chimney is at the north end of the crags.

The Central Chimney attracted the attention of Mr. Slingsby in 1887, but apparently ours was the first ascent. Messrs. Broadrick have been up it since, and I have been advised by one of their party that the top of the chief difficulty is dangerously loose.

We had heavy rücksacks to carry over to Wastdale that day, and decided to leave them at the foot of the climb, rather than suffer the inconvenience of dragging them up with us. We had eighty feet of rope, and needed it all near the top.

Our work started easily. Three obvious courses led in about thirty feet to a broad, grassy platform, from which the chimney made its proper beginning. Each of the three ways involved scrambling; they started a few feet to the left of the lowest part of the crags, and formed between them a very fair presentment of a gully entrance. But a glance upwards showed that, for some distance at least, we should have very little of the nature of a gully to guide us. From the platform sprang up the vertical wall that gives the central buttress its appearance of inaccessibility, almost unrelieved for several hundred feet. Our chimney commenced as a thin crack in the wall from the platform, only large enough for a hand to be thrust in, and so sharp-edged that one’s fingers were badly cut in climbing the first five yards. Then the crack seemed to widen gradually until from below it appeared sufficiently broad for wedging. Appearances would have been comforting but for the curious absence of retaining wall on the right-hand side of the crack. The left was excellent; on that side the rock stood out from the corner and formed the finest part of the great buttress. But the right wall was out clean away, leaving smooth slabs that were sure to give trouble when we should find the chimney too shallow for further progress.

I started up the thin crack, and found the strain very severe on the arms. When it became wide enough to support a knee it was possible to halt and prospect a little. The next ten feet up the crack were obviously most difficult, and a glance at the north side showed that it would have been easier to work up the right wall for twenty feet from the platform before traversing into the crack again. Ellis suggested that he should come up to my level by means of a slight fissure in the right wall, and steadied by the rope that I had flung over a small projection some six feet above his head, he managed to reach a shaky, sloping ledge of grass, and then to manœuvre the rope for my own passage to the same resting-place. We next worked upwards into the chimney, and kept close in it for twenty feet or so. There were good holds on the right until some small boulders and _débris_ formed a little platform, over the edge of which we were able to pull ourselves.

The scenery about here was particularly impressive. Our resting-place was scarcely big enough for both, and a glance vertically downwards showed us the spot where we had commenced operations three quarters of an hour previously. The black depths of Goat’s Water formed a striking foreground to the view of Coniston Old Man across the valley, and it almost seemed as though the tarn could be reached by a stone falling from our tiny ledge. Up above us the crags loomed fearfully. They overhung considerably in places, and we saw that our only course was to follow boldly the line of our chimney till it abruptly terminated in the face. Fortunately the weather was good, the rocks dry and warm. To have attempted the chimney with much ice or water about would have been foolhardiness worthy of our wildest days.

From the ledge we found the climbing splendid, keeping up the slight rib of rock on the right that formed the nearly vertical boundary of the chimney. The holds were just sufficiently large to give ample support, especially when the back could rest on the opposite side of the crack. ‘Backing up’ is usually a very constricted performance, with but limited views of the scenery around. Here on Doe Crag it seems as though most of the mountain is cut away excepting those parts of obvious utility to the climber. We crawled round the rib when the crack became too thin, and worked up several feet of slabby rock until the appearances seemed to indicate that an actual gully was now about to manifest itself and commence a fresh run up the wall. We therefore traversed again to the left into a large recess, and after a little scrambling upwards found ourselves brought to a stop by a dead wall. The bed of our recess was loose and steeply sloping. Its sides were slightly iced, and considerable care was needed in settling securely down to consider the situation.

The wall was about twenty feet high and too smooth to climb. On each side of us were huge overhanging buttresses that projected considerably beyond the latter portion of our route. It was not manifest which of these would offer the best way of surmounting the wall, and it might be that neither was suitable. We could see that a traverse out of the difficulty might be made in the northern direction, but it was very exposed and it led too far away from our chimney.

Ellis braced himself firmly at the highest corner of the recess, and manipulated the rope with special care. I started working up between the two buttresses in a manner that recalled to us both the well-known picture of the Funffingerspitze chimney in Sanger-Davies’ book. When some twelve feet above him, it seemed safe to quit the left-hand side altogether, and a stride effected the change of style. But the return was now almost impossible, and in the anxious five minutes that followed I had time to repent the sudden resolve. The top of the wall was within reach, but it was fringed with loose grass tufts that scarcely seemed secure enough to offer purchase in the upward heave that I wanted to give myself. However, the time spent in hesitation was sheer waste, for at the end the pull-up was perfectly safe and easy, and a little wriggling over rock and steep grass brought me to a long terrace, that naturally suggested a halt for the second man’s advance. In good time his head appeared above the grass tufts that formed the limit of my foreground, and a few seconds later he was sitting at my side and speculating as to the length of the difficult piece. The whole climb so far had been veritably one single pitch; we had had no interval of comparative ease, and were now eager to find some temporary freedom.

That we found in perambulating our terrace. It was about a yard wide and fifty feet long, and gave evidence that our gully as such had practically terminated. We found it rather awkward clambering up the wall some thirty feet to another similar terrace. This stretched horizontally from the large ravine that now disclosed itself on our right, and across the face of the mountain towards the Great Gully. The former, we could see, involved some pretty climbing a hundred feet below us. At our level it was merely a scree-walk finishing at the highest part of Doe Crag.

Our route lay up the rocks above the terrace. Two narrow clefts offered choice. We took the one to the right, about fifteen feet long and sufficiently tough to make us remember the place. Then followed easy hand-and-foot work till we could distinguish the branch exit of the Great Gully. Down this we carefully picked our way, and then returned to gather up our belongings and make tracks for distant Wastdale. The round had taken three hours.

THE INTERMEDIATE GULLY.--We had a glorious afternoon for this climb. The previous night had brought us from town to Coniston, and we meant to give ourselves an easy day. But fearing that the weather might change we were tempted to seize the opportunity and start earnest business at once. Identifying the gully as the first to the right of the longest buttress of the crags, we entered it and began scrambling immediately. After five minutes of ‘staircase’ work, using both sides of the gully, we came to a point where the left wall overhung a little and the gully closed in. A flank movement was then effected on the right, over steep rocks and unreliable grass ledges, returning by a narrow traverse into the gully at a point forty feet higher. The second man came straight up, finding two pitches confronting him, both of which he thought we could have taken directly if time had allowed us to risk an attempt. We kept in the ghyll for the next two pitches, both of them fairly simple. A fine flat stone at the top of the second offered a good standpoint for the inspection of the overhanging wall that now faced us. The gully had shrunk again into the merest crack in the wall. My friend called it the extreme pitch of refinement. On our left a smooth right-angled corner that probably thought itself a branch gully led up to the ridge separating us from the Central Chimney. Again it seemed desirable to take to the right by a course that was at any rate feasible, although it took us away from our direct line of ascent. After fifteen feet of traverse the buttress looked accessible, but recollecting the poor holds that we had encountered in a corresponding situation lower down, we went further away still, descending slightly to a level platform where the leader could be belayed during his direct ascent of the wall. Fortunately the rocks were quite dry, as otherwise the work that followed would have been risky. At first the handholds were unsafe, but in ten feet our industrious cleaning away of the grass and earth disclosed an excellent cleft in the wall, safe and sound. Thence the way was pleasanter, swinging upwards towards the left again by immovable rockholds. We had several yards of a narrow ledge tilted upwards at 30° before entering our gully again, and arrived in it just below a little pitch of the type that tries the elbow.

Great caution was now needed. Not that the climbing was difficult or dangerous, but the gully had dwindled into little more than a slight indentation in a vertical wall, and each man had to move with the utmost deliberation. Holds were numerous, generally better on the left wall, but they were all rather wet. Soon we were engaged in a violent struggle with a small angular jammed block that barred our way. It seemed loose at first, but we proved its stability that afternoon by many minutes’ hauling and wrenching from below and above. The chief difficulty was to get the shoulders firmly fixed between the sides of the cleft above the jammed stone; with only the block to hold and no rest for the feet this manœuvre was very awkward to perform. Above this a few steps led to a narrow cave, which we climbed by its right edge and found to be a trying piece of arm work. Here the gully expanded into a large scree-bedded ravine with only two moderately easy obstacles between us and the top of the crag. To our left we could see the ledge that marks the end of the Central Chimney. Our own gully, looking backwards, seemed to be a vertical plunge straight down to the bottom, and as usual we caught ourselves wondering whether anything else could be called difficult after this.

We reached the summit in two hours from the start, and then skirting the lower edge of the crags from Goat’s Hause, we made note of each gully as we passed its foot. An easy scree shoot, followed by a buttress set back at a gentle angle, but with splendid practice on it; the North Gully with its awe-inspiring middle pitch like the great obstacle in Moss Ghyll; a branch gully leading into the North Gully; a second branch, looking rather interesting but lacking definition higher up; the Easter Gully with its double centre portion; the Intermediate Gully; the Central Chimney; and the Great Gully.

THE EASTER GULLY.--The same party came two days later to examine this climb. The weather was very unsettled, and we were forced to the conclusion that the main central chimney was too wet to be approachable. The scrambling was easy up to the cave; then we worked up the vertical left wall by diminutive ledges till the level of the cave stone was ours, whereupon an awkward bit of traverse brought us safely out of the difficulty. We were in the great hollow, and were astonished to find that in addition to the main chimneys on the right and left centre, there were splendid branch gullies up to the ridges on either side.

I started up the left central chimney. It was dry, but its holds were fragile. In forty feet it divided into two parallel branches; that on the left was overhanging, and held a bunch of long splinters of rock forming a dangerous _chevaux-de-frise_, ready to fall at the slightest notice. So we left it alone, and looked to the right branch. For twenty feet it went very well, and there, where one man might safely wedge himself, it became practically impossible to mount any higher. My companion, therefore, came up while I worked out on the open face to the right. Without much trouble a small platform one foot square was reached, from which we proposed to mount the buttress that separated us from the right central chimney. I hesitated a long while before venturing on it; the place was assuredly difficult, we were not certain whether the upper portion would be feasible, and the strong wind, swirling mist, and intermittent rain sapped our courage and strength the more we deliberated.

The stiff work began with a scramble up into a grassy corner, fifteen feet above my platform. It was too small to enter, but from it sprang a narrow cleft to the right, very much like the well-known ‘stomach traverse’ on the Pillar Rock, but considerably harder to pass, and without an easy walk out at the further end. At its highest point the best course seemed to be up a vertical crack in the wall, and a stiff scramble here of ten feet brought me out on the head of the buttress. Here there was a chance of walking over to the right central chimney and finishing by the thirty feet or so that remained of its special difficulty. But that portion was naturally as wet as the lower part that we had purposely avoided, and we chose to cross the chimney and climb up its right wall.