Reminiscences
Part 1. 1902 to 1909
by E. E. Roberts
Two world wars in a lifetime are a piece of bad luck, but never-the-less I have been fortunate to see Lakeland before it was swamped by crowds and motors: to visit the Alps before roads and hydro-electric schemes penetrated everywhere, and before the tramps up to the huts began to be replaced by ski-lifts and rope railways: to make some novel expeditions even in the Highlands: to find how little the Irish have explored their countryside and to come into potholing whilst there was still much to be done.
The Eastern Alps have long been developed and simplified, but the present day threat to the West is the steeplejack with his spikes—more generally called ‘ pitons’—and the wire cableway. A generation hence there may be a cable service to the Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn summits; helicopters will certainly reach some of the huts.
I am told that in the French Alps there is a spike on every tricky pitch nowadays. The Alps are vast and there are many faces hke the Dru and the limestone crags around Engelberg of which the steeplejack can have a monopoly if he will leave the grand climbs alone. The most advanced performers are using, instead of stirrups, short wire ladders—’ etriers’—to overcome over-hangs’ Where will this stop ? It is a dreadful thought that steeplejack practice may develop in pot-holes, with permanent staircases.
In summer holidays, long, long before the first war I learnt on the delightful hills behind Llanfairfechan that the hills were friends, that in cloud and shine water runs downhill to join other streams, that dangerous bogs belong to the lowlands, that wire fences and walls run continuously for miles, but we townsfolk were free from the mysterious terrors which affected the hillman Buchan, as he records in ” Memory Hold-the-Door” so amusingly, free to enjoy the friendly open spaces without grouse moors and deer forests. There were no scouts in those days, school and club camps were only then being pioneered. There were no organisations tempting young people with the best of intentions to districts positively dangerous. In fact, but for the pioneer minds we were mostly becoming a lot of’ cissies’ to use a modern expression, with the exception of sports and games. However, at nineteen I did live in a tent as an assistant officer at a ” Hugh Oldham’s Lads’ Club” camp and found that whilst other fellows could not sleep on a hard floor boarding, I could.
In the course of the next few years my brother Walter and I swept the Lakeland hills, walked from Coniston to Scafell Pike and back, did much scrambling and some rock chmbing. Also we walked from Salford to Liverpool by a quite interesting route.
My first day at Wasdale was New Year, 1902, and with three or four exceptions every New Year before the first war saw me there. In the summer I met that wonderful couple, Frank Payne and his wife. Payne had made an unsuccessful attack on the Teufelsgrat just before Mummery and had done some caving near Geneva. Full of the joy of life he was a most interesting talker and the inspirer and leader of novel expeditions. I also met the Reverend W. F. Wright who led us up the great pitch of’ B ‘ Chimney on Pikes Crag when it was sheeted with ice, the most incredible feat I have ever seen. Unhappily he was killed on the Grand Paradis with Merrion and others.
These were the years when Fred Botterill rose to fame with his climb of the slab on Scafell and later of the Pillar North West. He and Harry Williamson joined the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club in 1903, Payne came in 1907. They formed an alliance and carried out the amusing fifth descent of Gaping Gill in 1904 by cable with a minimum of tackle, i.e. without a winch. This does not mean that Botterill climbed the shaft as some people have supposed. The heroic rope ladder period was July, 1905 to 1908. The 1896 and 1903 descents were by cable. Payne and his friends put a beam across the end of the lateral passage, but I cannot find when the great baulk of timber which used to carry the pulley for the cable was put in. It was there in 1910 and I suppose, still is. Going down, the cable, as in Calvert’s account, was run round a bollard outside, which got very hot and had to be watered. Coming up was a fearful series of sawings as twelve or thirteen people hauled in on the rope and brought their men up very unevenly—one of them sea-sick! Matthew Botterill has described what it was like in Y.R.C. Journal, Volume V. (No. 18, page 310).
Payne and Mrs. Payne camped and hunted caves in 1905, first in Edendale and then, coming South, blundered on to Mere Gill Hole. This fired Payne beyond belief. At Easter 1906 he led me into the pot-holing and climbing game, and five of us camped two nights on Newby Moss below Long Kin. We spent a day carrying ropes—heavy ropes—over the moor towards Crina Bottom, and I did my first pot-hole—Gritstone Pot. These were the days of the only known ladder, the heavy 12-incher, and rope hauling was the only practical way for wandering about. Towards evening we found Boggart’s Roaring Hole which Payne had spotted, 150 ft. deep in all, with a 90 ft. second pitch. We got one man to the bottom, three hauling at the top and one in between trying to keep No. 6 from being knocked out by a stone.
Mere Gill completely revolutionised practice and it is amusing to remember that 20 years later Frankland and I, after a heavy carry from the road of four ladders and four ropes, did Boggart’s Roaring Hole in one hour, both down. The life-line for the 50 ft. gave us a loop to keep the life-line for the bottom 80 ft. well clear of the scree between.
After the second night in that delightful camp we moved on, for three nights by Rowten Pot (baggage going, of course, by road to Kingsdale by cart) visiting Mere Gill on the way. It was most impressive and as there were three waterfalls on the way to the first pitch, very wet indeed. The becks were too high for us to traverse the two Rowton Caves, but at Bull Pot all five went down two pitches with the help of pulleys and we left one man down the bigger third, then another down the big Jinghng Hole pitch, a complicated job. Up above Bull Pot I went into a crack so narrow that Payne never expected to haul me out, but I had the sense to stop when I realised the depth below.
The Climbers’ Club, inevitably centred on London, had done very httle to arrange Meets, but the 1907 New Year is famous for the Wasdale Head Meet arranged by Oppenheimer. Many men who were only names met for the first time. There was any amount of snow: I tried to get over from Grasmere against a terrible storm and, though I fought my way to Angle Tarn, at 3.30 p.m. it was obvious my reserve of strength would only carry me back to the Old Dungeon Gill. Soon after five Anthony, the huntsman, saw a moving snowman come into the hall and attacked it with a broom. What a change next morning ; brilliant sun and hard frost. With a quarryman companion the crossing to Wasdale was simple as the deep snow was in perfect condition and even required a few steps to be cut near Esk Hause. Beyond we realised the parties from the Wasdale Hotel were moving along the front of Great End Crag, and lower down I had my first acquaintance with Harry Williamson, beginning a happy friendship of many years. He became one of the live wires of the Club, and socially he and his wife, the sister of Fred Botterill, were quite a centre, many little groups enjoying week-ends at their Stainforth cottage. It was the base for the Hull Pot attacks and many others. Till after the war Williamson was seven years Vice-President and it was a sad thing that he drifted away.
Wasdale Head Hotel had been almost empty in 1906 except for F. S. Young and his boys of Bishops Stortford School, but in 1907 there were twenty or so men, Oppenheimer, E. A. Baker, Field, the Abrahams, Seatree, Barlow Minor, Botterill included. The evenings were extremely hvely, even apart from the famous bilhard table and the games of fives at which Prdfessor Dixon showed the most uncanny skill. Though the Climbers’ Club organised no more Meets at the New Year at Wasdale Head, the New Year gatherings became an institution, and one played fives in the evening to the point of exhaustion.
The following Easter, after the crowd had departed, I found myself at Wasdale with a Swiss, Hoessly, who had walked over from rooms at Eskdale and decided to stay the night. He was a fine and daring mountaineer, a lively card. Our second climb was the Needle, and G. F. Woodhouse coming along was staggered to see a man roping down from the top block. I gathered him in for Mere Gill.
Whitsuntide 1907 was Payne’s first Mere Gill camp. Besides us three there were only Clarke of Chesterfield, Williamson and of course, and most important, Mrs. Payne and Dorothy. It was expected that the cave entrance would be under water and the scheme was to put the beck into a wooden trough with a canvas pipe over the end. Then the pipe was to be pushed into the cave entrance and up the beck inside so that the bagged waterfall discharged into the passage and the Mere could lower its level. Unfortunately the difficulty was to keep the pipe over the end of the trough, the strain of the water invariably tearing it away. Williamson went down the climb into the water and found the cave entrance much deeper under the water than was expected and so the bank inside much higher. This was the coldest Whitsuntide ever, the infamous ‘ Cold Camp ‘, worse even than the Leitrim camp of ’52. Nevertheless Mrs. Payne fed us so splendidly we did not hesitate to tackle Hardraw Kin. Our methods were simple—hand fine and body line. Hoessly made through the waterfall the first descent of the pitch at the end, and we got him back though he had to use his teeth at the top on the hand line. I shall never forget the wind and cold on the wet tramp back.
At Easter Williamson had a large and jolly camp at Wasdale, and Hoessly and Boyd camped in the wood. We were some of the thirty-three who built the Robinson cairn on the Pillar High Fell. We added a new climb near the Pulpit Rock, Hazard and I did another in the fine rocks opposite the Pillar Rock West and Hoessly led us up a very difficult chimney adjacent. There was any amount of snow and I gained much kudos by leading up Slingsby’s Chimney on Scafell. To tell the truth the difficulties were above, below there was no ice in it, and I found that other parties had seen to it that there were two belays on the way. Above I had to cut a step in ice to reach a safe stance.
Payne had camped at Christmas by Sprinkling Tarn and at Easter in Hollow Stones; he now led us to camp by Mere Gill at Whitsuntide and had much success. I got over to Ingleton from Whitby in the last of four glorious years there, walked up in the evening, and with a hand line climbed into Mere Gill. The cave was open ! With Boyd and two Swiss, Hoessly and Oechha, the three engineers from Old Trafford, we were only five. The snag of the rope hauling method is that there is usually terrific friction round corners, above and on the edge, which can only be avoided by a pulley, if it is possible to fix a beam. This was done on the first pitch and the life line held from below for the last man. A beam was fixed on the deeper second pitch hi the succeeding night attack in July. Y.R.C. Journal, Vol. II, page 312, relates how Hoessly and I were lowered into the magnificent one hundred yards canyon and reached the third pitch. The experiment was made of fastening the pulley to the victim’s waist, fixing one end of the life line, and so reducing the load to a half. It worked but the friction was still so great, Payne refused to reduce the hauling party to two. There were twelve or so in the night attack of July, and there was direct hauling over a pulley. Five reached the third pitch and the ledge below, but evidently the problem of getting men up had to be solved. The French go down by ‘ rappel.’ but usually keep secret the plan of return!
At this Whitsun Meet I was, for a time, the last elected member of the Y.R.C. and the Alpine Club, duly celebrated in champagne at the ‘ Hill Inn’ on the way home. I walked from Ribblehead to Hawes, lay down by the roadside very weary, and woke up in the dusk to realise Hawes was still a long way off. Next day a glorious eight miles to Aysgarth was my first vision of Wensleydale. Three weeks before I had been to my first Y.R.C. Meet and had seen Nidderdale and How Stean. The coming of the motor has taken the glory of the flora from the roadsides.
How did I get in the Alpine Club ? The first of four seasons, 1903, Forbes and I did eight peaks at Arolla and the Weisshorn with the guide Pralong, and two guideless. I did not get out one season, and in the next my brother and I had very bad weather. However, we got the Finsteraarhorn and went on to Arolla for three entertaining peaks, finishing at Fionnay. The third we had a very pleasant time at Zinal in spite of having to sleep on the floor at the Mountet Hut twice. On a misty, stormy day we struck some very fine chmbing on Lo Besso, but could not see to finish, in fact we were lucky to be able to find the right chimneys down. The Theytaz brothers, made famous by G. W. Young, then led us up the Grand Cornier, over the Zinal Rothorn to Zermatt in very quick time, and after a rescue by them on a day of storm, up the Matterhorn to the Shoulder. The day was good but the wind terrific and waiting had no effect.
The dehghtful walk up to Saas is now replaced by a motor road, but nothing can alter the astonishing effect of the mighty ramparts of the Dom range as you come out on the meadows of Fee. Zermatt has a railway and the walk up from Brigue has ever since been again a delight. The Partengrat and Weissmies with guide was long but glorious, the Rossboden Pass and by the alps direct to Simplon Hospice is varied exercise in route finding. I finished with Monte Leone, and had much conversation with the guide once we found we could get on well in German, three words at a time.
We brothers had learnt a lot by this time, and realised that in those days the British climber trained to accept bad weather as inevitable had a great advantage over the guides. Since the awful season of 1912 things have been very different and guides in many seasons have had to take a chance they would once have declined.
The fourth season, 1907, was not successful. After making a possible second ascent of a minor peak near the Grimsel we hired a guide and crossed the glacier to Ried. We spent a doubtful day at the Concordia and put in time going up the Faulberg. Sitting peacefully on top there was a flash and we were struck by lightning, or more probably, I am told, suffered a ‘ return shock.’ We bolted some yards and lay down in heavy rain, each with a sore spot on the top of the head. Our man just went to pieces, poor chap, and I had to force liim down by treading on his fingers, whilst Walter, behind, said ” It’s just like the Lakes,” as the water dripped from our clothes. Next day we could not start till the weather settled at 7.20. We had only done three minor peaks and in spite of soft snow there was a higher, the Mittaghorn, perhaps possible. At ten, in spite of the guide’s protests—’ Never have I been on the mountains so late’—we turned off to Ried. However, he worked well to get through some crevasses and after twelve it became a sheer plug for his crazy employers for the next two hours to win. At five we were off the glacier but it was an awful long way to Ried.
There a local guide took me up that superb peak, Bietschorn and then via the Tschingelhorn our man took us over to Lauter-brunnen, introduced us to an old guide of the first rank, Schlunegger, and left us. Schlunegger led us magnificently up the Wetterhorn and more so down to Rosenlaui. The snow was terrible on the glacier and he did not know the way to avoid the gigantic icefall which begins with a very big descent to a col above the Dossenhut, so we went down the right edge and the face of the Dossenhorn, a great lead.
The next six days were spent solo with Schlunegger in the huts. Up in the train to Eismeer station from Grindelwald, across the glacier to the Bergli Hut, one day confined there, third day improving, over to Concordia, fourth day with heavy loads of food in bitter cold to the Jungfrau, bergschrund the only small difficulty, 2.30 a.m. to 8 a.m. Monchjoch noon, top 2 p.m. What an honour ! ” You come last, you are quite good enough.” I did not like it but came down the ice steps easily. Bergli 5.30, Terrific crowd, little rest.
The aim of this season had been first of all the Jungfrau, and to do it I had walked all round the mountain. Fifth day, a fine descent to the Schwarzegg Hut, Schlunegger led through crevasses and whenever I put my foot in one he blew me up. People did not do such things. Sixth day, a superb climb of the Schreckhorn, six and a half hours bitterly cold. Another party failed to get up. Again I came down last. We were back at 12.30, under four hours, with a leisurely return to Grindelwald.
By the end of 1908 I knew quite a lot of the Y.R.C. Williamson had had me over to climb on Almscliff, the pride of Leeds. I had seen the pioneer Skye camping party off. In fact I had found my spiritual home and come in touch with other people who wanted to climb in the Alps. Fred Botterill arranged for me to go with him and his friend J. M. Davidson, of Liverpool, but fell out. In the end I met Davidson and E. A. Baker, with whom I had climbed once, at Lausanne to climb at first with guides, the Ogis, with whom Davidson had done something novel near Kandersteg.
We climbed the Adler Pass ridge of the Rimpfischorn and traversed the Zinal Rothorn and the Obergabelhorn, then we started guideless over the Col de Valpelline on the High Level Route to Chamonix. The climbing went well and these glacier traverses were magnificent, but we rapidly acquired experience, e.g. the Paraye Hut, being Italian, had an iron door, locked. Happily it had been burgled via a window! No cutlery, etc.— solution in the last five minutes next morning—in a table drawer.
Baker was older than we were, a man with a British reputation, so that we wondered at first if we could stand up to him, but he started too old and found the big peaks and long days a strain, so at Mauvoisin our very faithful friend was content. Davidson and I went on to carry a glorious guideless partnership right up to the first war. Via Champex we found ourselves at the Col d’Orny with a day of cloud before us. No point in stopping, due West lay the Col du Tour over a flat glacier of one and a half miles. Might as well go on down to Chamonix. The going was good, but after a time steeply uphill. We could see nothing but our steps behind and when we saw rocks it was fully clear we were somewhere high on the Aiguille du Tour. Back to the hut till the morrow, ruminating on a mystery. I doubt if it was solved until a glorious day revealed the Col du Tour South-West and our track nearly to the top of the Aiguille. The Swiss map had been left for the Vallot-Barbey map; the Mont Blanc range runs North-East so the map is ‘ skewed.’ The makers had been good enough to put on it two thin grid lines, but we had not noticed them. Ever since I have held strong views on ‘ skewed ‘ maps. The first thing I do with one is to put a good strong N-S line across. We could only avenge ourselves by making the finer passage of the Col du Chardonnet.
Next summer I came to the Montanvert with Oppenheimer and Fox. The weather was bad and we began forcing Aiguille du Tacul immediately after deep snow. We certainly learnt respect for such conditions and were lucky to spot the place in the dark where the path home starts from the Mer de Glace. Davidson joined us and we crossed to Courmayeur and traversed’ Mont Blanc from the Dom Hut. The meat went bad on the way, but I could see nothing to stop us cooking part of it. However Oppenheimer saved my life by hurling it down the precipice! On the way home Davidson and I had the energy to climb to and cross the glacier above the Pierre Pointue. I shall never forget that leisurely walk in the moonlight along the excellent path, and then to Montanvert, twenty hours out.
On the way to the Charmoz Traverse we were nearly demolished by a fall of serac and then we found our learning of the face of the peak. Like Mummery before us we found the ice chimney up which Oppenheimer led brilliantly and so to the nick, but we had been wrongly advised that a spare rope was unnecessary and so were beaten.
Our eventful day on the Geant has been described by Davidson, Y.R.C. Journal, Vol. VII, No. 23, page 1. The reviewer of that number in the Manchester Guardian deplored the article coming first. Did he consider the yarn about people in a conducting cage of snow being struck twenty times by lightning as fiction? I take it as internal evidence he had not read it. I was there and felt the discharge pass down the snow. But the frightful tiling was to see the great slab smash to bits above Oppenheimer’s head on the most dangerous scramble to the foot of the great peak. The slope is deceptively easy, but never go unroped and trust nothing. Two brilliant mountaineers have been killed on it.