The Greatest

by H. L. Stembridge

“A figure of glorious legend, a hero of a golden age, a living personality, full of life and vigour and joy, an active Yorkshire Rambler, and THE GREATEST.” The words are those of Ernest Roberts, a man not usually addicted to superlatives, and the figure to which he refers is William Cecil Slingsby. As 1976 is the centenary of Slingsby’s remarkable ascent of Skagastolstind perhaps it is an appropriate time to recount the climb briefly, for it has already been vividly described by Slingsby himself^[1], and then to write a few words about the man, his influence on our Club, and his impact on his contemporaries.

Slingsby first saw Skagastolstind from the Sognefjord in 1872 when he was twenty three. “I shall never, as long as I live, forget my first view of Skagastolstind, the grandest European mountain north of the Alps,” he wrote, “our guide told us it was the highest mountain in Norway, that it had not been ascended, and that no doubt this was impracticable. Can it be wondered that I determined, if possible, to make the first ascent?”

In 1874, accompanied by his cousin, he made the formidable first traverse of the Horungtinder, the only unexplored region of Jotunheim. The weeks spent in the mass of wild and rugged mountains seamed with glaciers acquainted him with the surroundings of Skagastolstind, and a return visit the following year increased this knowledge. So when Slingsby with his companions, Emmanuel Mohn and Knut Lykken reached the saeter at Vormelid in the Utladal on July 20th 1876 he had a clear picture in his mind of how they would attack the mountain on the following day.

Present day mountaineers in Jotunheim, accustomed to ease of travel, comfortable hotels and strategically sited Tourist Club huts, must find it hard to imagine the difficulties, dangers and hardships endured by those early pioneers. The lack of accurate maps, the often trackless valleys and lower slopes where a way had to be forced through juniper and dwarf birch, the danger of crossing swollen streams because bridges were a rarity, the discomfort of staying in saeters where beds were few and had to be shared with other people as well as fleas and where food was meagre in the extreme, deterred all but the most determined.

After an uncomfortable night at Vormelid, due partly to the hardness and narrowness of the bed which he shared with Mohn and partly to excitement at the forthcoming attack, Slingsby crept from under his sheepskin coverlet at three o’clock on the morning of Friday, July 21st. Despite his eagerness to be off, one thing or another delayed the party and it was seven before they left. It was not an auspicious start, the clouds were down and the weather unpromising. After a week’s continuous climbing Knut was tired and pessimistic and Slingsby had to carry far more than his fair share of food and equipment.

Vormelid is only 1,600 ft. above sea level and 6,200 ft. as the lark flies, below the summit of Skagastolstind, but they gained height quickly and soon reached a small combe headed by a large glacier, the Maradalsbrae. Here they turned west, crossed a buttress and dropped into another valley, where, because visibility was less than twenty yards, they built several cairns to guide them on their return. Climbing a second ridge, 3,276 ft. above Vormelid, they were, momentarily, above the clouds, and enjoyed a splendid view of the serrated ridges of the Midt Maradals and the Dyrhougstinder. For one brief moment they saw the summit of Skagastolstind rising remote, ethereal and apparently inaccessible from a sea of cloud.

The way ahead was far from straightforward. A scramble down 1,500 ft. of rugged crags and a painful mile over horrible debris to the flattened snout of the Midt Maradal glacier at the actual foot of the peak still left them 4,396 ft. below the top. Here they lunched in sunshine and for the rest of the day the weather was fine. Above them “a much steeper and wider glacier, descending like a cataract of ice from the heights of the eastern range skirted the south-eastern walls of Skagastolstind and ended abruptly at the top of a line of crags, 60 or 70 feet in height, over which the terminal seracs fell.”^[2] This glacier, which is believed to be the natural way to the summit, was subsequently named “the Slingsbybre.”

Climbing the crags by way of a gully and a spur of smooth steep rock, they reached the right bank of the Slingsbybre where fresh bear tracks led them through an intricate maze of crevasses before disappearing. Above them the glacier narrowed and step cutting was necessary, through some seracs. Fortunately there was no danger from avalanches or falling stones. Nearing the top of the glacier, where it was about 500 yards wide, an enormous crevasse stretched from one side to the other. The western end was partially blocked with snow and Slingsby got across but a 12 ft. wall of neve on the far side repulsed two attempts to climb it, the snow being too soft to hold his axe. Retracing their steps they found a sub-stantial bridge close to the eastern edge and made good time up the steepening glacier until the debris from a snow avalanche enabled them to cross the bergschrund at the head and get on to the rocks.

They were 1,114 ft. below the summit, it was nearly 5 p.m., Mohn and Knut, neither of whose boots had nails, had found the glacier very trying and needed a rest. Slingsby, burning to get on, untied and climbed alone the 600 ft. snow slope that lay ahead. It was steep, partially frozen, and needed great care. In an hour he reached the col, later to be called Mohn’s Skar, 518 ft. below the top of Skagastolstind.

The sight before him could not have been more discouraging. The skar finished abruptly against a huge tower of gabbro, the “topknot” of the great peak, “a narrow face consisting of smoothly polished and almost vertical slabs of rock” which could not be turned to right or to left, “the first 150 or 200 ft. appeared to be the worst.”^[3]

He felt he was beaten, yet when Mohn and Knut eventually reached the skar he immediately appealed to them to join him in the attack. Both refused. Nowhere is Slingsby’s greatness as a man and a mountaineer more exemplified. The apparently insuperable difficulties stimulated and delighted him and he set off alone. It was no foolhardy enterprise for there were certain things in his favour, he was perfectly fresh, the weather was fine, the rocks were sound and the strata sloped the right way. Against this every ledge was veneered with ice which had to be chipped away meticulously.

Several times he was all but beaten but in little more than half an hour he was at the top, or what from below appeared to be the top, for a sixty yard long knife edge separated him from another summit a few feet higher. Guarded by three gendarmes and an awkward gap this edge caused him some trouble. Reaching the true summit he built a small cairn, placed his handkerchief in a conspicuous position under one of the stones and sat in sunshine enjoying the view. It was 6.53 when he began to descend the N. E. face, and the rocks to the skar, bereft of sun, were bitterly cold and difficult. His friends had already departed and his solo descent of the steep 600 foot snowslope, now frozen hard, needed supreme con-centration, but in less than an hour he joined them at the top of the Slingsby glacier.

All were weary but Slingsby, elated by the success of the venture, was freshest and he led the others through the intricacies of seracs and crevasses. The 1,500 ft. climb up the crags above the Midt Maradal Glacier taxed them severely but they reached the ridge in twilight at 11 p.m., the surrounding peaks still rose tinted by the setting sun. But it was dark by the time they reached the Maradal and impossible to avoid tripping over the roots of birches and junipers, however “we arrived at the saeter all right a little after 1 a.m. when we found the elder girl awaiting us. She soon got a roaring fire of birch logs going, made us coffee and liebig, and did all in her power to make us comfortable.

“Then we slept the sleep of the weary until the sun was high in the heavens”^[4] and no wonder! They had been going for eighteen hours and had climbed nearly 10,000 feet, almost entirely over untrodden and difficult terrain, culminating in a severe rock climb. Slingsby led throughout. “Such was the first ascent of what is usually called the finest mountain in Norway.”^[5] The climb will remain an epic so long as mountaineering stories are read or told^[6] and did much to stimulate the interest of Norwegians in their own mountains.

For Slingsby it was only a beginning and by 1904, when Norway, the Northern Playground, was published, he had spent fifteen seasons in Norway and there was hardly a mountain district that he had not explored. Nor were his expeditions confined to Norway. In the Alps where “he climbed for some dozen short seasons, generally without guides, he formed one of a now historic group who inaugurated a new era of difficult climbing.”^[7] His chief companions were Mummery, Collie and Hastings and they made many new ascents including the Dent Du Requin.

Slingsby’s attempt on the Aiguille du Plan by its icy northern face with Mummery and Ellis Carr in 1892 was an almost superhuman epic. For a whole day Mummery cut up the grim ice wall and as darkness fell they sat out the night “on a frozen bracket in space”^[8] (There were no “pieds des elephants” or modern belays in those days) and Slingsby supported them until dawn. The following day they were forced to retreat and to Slingsby “fell the task—always exacting but trebly so after such a day and such a night—of recutting the descending ice steps for all a long day down the ice precipice.”^[9] Long afterwards Mummery wrote^[10] “I can see the swing of Slingsby’s axe as, through the day that followed, he hewed our way ever downwards … I can still hear him saying as we scrambled over the bad bit, a more than perpendicular wall of ice — It certainly is a glorious climb.'” “Slingsby, we know, would have said that with a smile in his beard and a rallying flash of his alert blue eyes upwards at the others on the ice slope.”^[11]

At home he eagerly accepted the challenge of British crags. Brought up in Craven he naturally served his apprenticeship on local gritstone edges like Crookrise and Simon’s Seat, but very soon graduated to the Cumbrian and Scottish crags, where at least two “Slingsby’s chimneys” testify to his pioneering spirit.

In Norway Slingsby used skis when hunting bears, (incidentally he hunted bears with Grieg) as they were used habitually by the Norwegians to get across country in winter. His alert brain saw the potential of ski-ing as a sport and he not only got the Norwegians interested but is believed to have been the first to take ski to Switzerland and start the sport there.

Few men impressed his contemporaries so much as Slingsby. He possessed that splendid combination of courage and strength with a passion for beauty and a chivalrous spirit that reminded them of the Knights Errant or the heroic figures of the first Elizabethan age. “He made a romance of living, but it was a romance built only of the finer realities that constitute chivalrous adventure . . . An ardent lover of his own country-side, its dales and rocks, its archaeology, traditions and dialect, equally appreciative of all natural beauty and good humanity wherever he may find it. He enjoyed good literature, painting and music with the same genuine enthusiasm. For a mountaineer he had the ideal equipment, a magnificent physique, exceptional hardihood, grace and ability, an unerring judgement and an imperturbable coolness and courage. Above all he had the gift of infecting others with his quiet confidence. No climbing accident ever happened to any party to which he belonged, no big expedition in which he shared ever failed of success.”^[12]

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Slingsby’s interest to the Y.R.C. He was made an Honorary Member in the year of the Club’s formation and elected President at the first Annual General Meeting. His ten years as President (1893-1903) were crucial, teething troubles were overcome and the Club’s status as a leading mountaineering club established. Although, in later years, he became President of the Climbers’ Club and the Fell and Rock Climbing Club, as a Yorkshire-man the Y.R.C. was his pride and joy “The welfare of the finest mountaineering club in England (excluding the Alpine Club) is of very special interest to me,” he wrote.

Slingsby was then at the height of his power, making great climbs in the Alps as well as Norway, his companions, the cream of the alpinists of the day. His enthusiasm was boundless and infectious. He gave the first public lecture organised by the club, it was on “Rock Climbing and Snowcraft”—and he got his friends to lecture in Leeds and created tremendous interest.

His outstanding articles in the early issues of the Y.R.C. Journal would make anyone want to climb in Norway and (12)—G. W. Young they helped to set the high standard which the journal has subsequently maintained. The editor was bombarded by him with suggestions; Slingsby might criticise or congratulate but he would always stimulate. “If the Journal were to fall off in a literary or sporting manner the Club itself would fall off,” or “I advise a good ‘cave’ paper . . . but not a single view of any finnicking, twopenny ha’penny rocks in Derbyshire or anywhere else.”

Fortunately the Club possesses many of his letters written as President. “The impression one gets from his letters is that of an exuberant personality bubbling over with boyish vitality and enthusiasm. His letters appear to have been dashed off in a whiteheat of energy, the bold flamboyant writing galloping all over the pages and almost off them.”^[13]

Slingsby died in 1929 aged 81. Although it is fifty years or more since he visited Norway his name is remembered and revered there wherever mountaineers gather. So also to mountaineers in Yorkshire, and particularly in the Y.R.C. he remains an inspiration, the GREATEST of us all.

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