Esk Buttress, Scawfell Pike

By C. D. Frankland.

Norman Neruda’s synopsis of the history of a severe climb applies all the world over, even in our own little playground. At first the Central Buttress of Scawfell was regarded as impossible. This was in Jones’s day. Then four brilliant cragsmen showed that its ascent was just possible, but hardly justifiable even for them. Two more ascents maintained its reputation for difficulty indeed, but showed it to be safe. This year Dr. M. M. Barker, a member of the Fell and Rock Club, a most efficient and successful school for young climbers, took only two hours to show that the once redoubtable Central Buttress has become a pleasant summer afternoon’s excursion for a lady.

The same fate probably awaits that unrepeated tour de force of Bower, Esk Buttress. Its vague reputation of unjustifilability, which made it a climb of interest for many years, has already been dissipated. During our Easter meet in Eskdale, 1924, a party of us had been looking at the wonderful Flake. (It is an easy trip for a roped party of experience, and worth while when climbing Keswick Brothers’. From the top of Botterill’s Slab the Cannon Rock juts out in sight. The way lies by this mark, and a visit is recommended. The rock scenery is very impressive.) As we were passing along Rake’s Progress we met Holland and Speaker running over the Scawfell routes in preparation for the recently published guide. Their devotion was inspiring, and when they asked us to undertake the survey of Esk Buttress, we literally jumped at the idea, not through audacity, but through ignorance. Late as it was, with lunch still in the wrong place, we set out forthwith to supply the missing paragraph. Had we known what we were undertaking we might not have started, as we did, at 6 o’clock in the evening.

Esk Buttress is on Dow Crag, and those who have seen this shoulder of Scawfell Pike on the Eskdale side will hardly wonder at the description quoted in Haskett Smith’s little book “polished as marble and 160 perpendicular yards in height.” We approached from the direction of Mickledore, passed Broad Crag Tarn and caught sight of the profile as we rattled down the scree. The tall stem of a giant liner came to my mind. It seemed, silhouetted against drifting white cloud, to be surging headlong forward. It is an exhilarating sight, unless one has lightly offered “to go and do it now.”

However, we hurried to the foot, changed into rubbers, and began an exciting struggle with typical Eskdale overhangs, and for two and a half hours we lived, like Pascal, with an abyss on the left.

The two preliminary pitches were soon passed, then a pink and grey wall, flinty and textureless, had to be crossed in order to avoid the first overhang. The holds were too much like the business end of teaspoons turned on edge to be comfortable. They were camouflaged by weather stains so as to be almost invisible, they were lubricated with desiccated mossy matter, but they just served. A long, slanting, upward traverse led to an extensive, but very steep, heather slope. A big stone served for an anchorage, and here Hilton joined me. This ledge can be reached without difficulty from the right, but we were not aware of this at the time.

The next pitch resembles the arrow-marked buttress on the Gillercombe climb both in style and length of run.

A sturdy bush of juniper disputes the start of the fifth pitch, where a quasi-hand traverse is taken on the left. A slightly wider upright crack of Gimmer type, thirty feet long, can be climbed to a return traverse. The landing is small hut good. For fifty more feet the difficulty eased, but it was climbing against the clock.

A vertical wall rose up before us with a rock shelter, admirably adapted for a benighted party. We looked coldly past the suggested implication at a twisted crack which offered a strenuous means of scaling the wall. Overboard went all thoughts of style. Some twelve feet up was a Sanger Davies recess. It must be reached somehow. Elbow poking helped when the hands struck work. Then the leg strokes! Had the cliff been submerged we should soon have reached the surface. Brown far below gazed at us fascinated, or convulsed. Breathless, at last I thrust one arm and my head into the recess. Ill-ventilated as it was and unsuited for repose, I hung there as if I loved it, until I had fully realized the pangs of the pillory. Then I prepared to move on, fighting for breath and a knee-hold near my nose to the amusement of Hilton. It was exasperating, and had Jack indulged in any leg pulling I should have been down on him like a ton of bricks. He tactfully enjoyed the ridiculous spectacle in enraptured silence, while I was privately stimulated by the thought that he also must in his turn claw and kick, swear and sweat up this elongated Whisky Climb. So gasping and heaving like a played fish I clung ventrally to the edge of my O. Pip, rested a while, and, when I could, assured the dubious heavy-weight of the simplicity of the task before him. As I watched his vigorous enjoyment, and heard the emphatic words of praise flow from his lips in ecstatic phrases, I glowed with a post-purgatorial unctuousness. We had earned a short breather.

In recalling the features of the fifty-odd first-class climbs of the English Lake District one is impressed by the wonderful variety of the problems presented by their pitches. On the Napes Ridges the keen interest aroused by the difficulties of the lower part is amply maintained by the height attained in the upper. In Walker’s Gully and a few others altitude and severity increase together. These are superlative in quality. They demand a gradual summoning of every strong sinew to its full power, and then a last final tremendous effort of force and control to overcome the almost superhuman difficulties and paralysing exposure of the culminating pitch. Such swift conclusions may be too abrupt for perfect design, of which Scawfell Central Buttress is a model. There the dramatic moment, prepared effectively in the earlier stages, is reached at the Chock Stone, maintained beyond the Traverses at great height, and gradually resolved in the upper reaches. At the summit the intense concentration has entirely relaxed and with a sigh of satisfaction, mingled with regret, your scrambler looks abroad with a fresh outlook. But when darkness threatens it is very thrilling for the climax immediately to precede the curtain, as it does on Esk Buttress, where we sat perplexed and insecure just over a drop of three hundred feet sheer.

There was no way out, except by descending, that we could see. The gangway on the right that offered such promise when viewed from below appeared inverted at this level into an overhang. The sloping ledge where we sat ran corbel-like around the recess and the square tower beyond, some twenty feet from the summit. The tantalising crack in the corner fully provided with chocks faded just out of reach into a shallow groove, obviously unclimbable, and there was no stance for giving a leg-up.

Although there was no belay Hilton rove a kind of loop around a downward spike, urged himself still farther under and pleasantly prevaricated on the point of security. So I said that I would go along the ledge and see if any hope lay on the open face of the tower, and, as I almost persuaded myself that such was my intention, I realized the misery of plank-walking. Obviously I did not reach even the jumping-off point. At the corner containing the groove I shrank from the edge into another hollow, the hidden solution of the difficulty.

They were shallow hollows and slimy, yet it would be the very limit if one of us could not shin up far enough to reach the first chock, and then, if this were as firm as my faith in it, success was assured. But as I prepared to bridge across the corner I appreciated the globe-trotter’s boast that he had done the National Gallery in two hours, and could have beaten that record in nailed boots. Eventually the jammed stone prevented one of the upward squirms from resulting in the usual downward slide. The feet only slipped this time, a lop-sided movement which resulted in an exciting swing and a final struggle worthy of the top pitch of a really good climb.

Even Hilton, strong climber as he is, hardly walked up that pitch, but up he did come in spite of rubbers and slimy rocks. It was hardly nine o’clock as we crept carefully down the scree to our boots and Brown. The absence of a good belay at the foot of the last pitch is the only demerit of the climb, which after all cannot be more than very difficult. All the pitches “went” the first time to a party hardly fresh after a full day. Beginners, I think had better not try it, but hardened sinners, escaping from the Capuan pleasures of the charming and hospitable valley, will be able to extract two or three hours of exhilarating exercise from this fine Buttress, and return with added eagerness to the particular bathing pool selected on the way up earlier in the day.

We were not so enlightened, for, in spite of the moon doing her best, we stumbled downwards in darkness. The fairy pools had changed to witches’ cauldrons. Grotesque shapes flew across the bright disc of the moon, and uneasy shadows swept over the moorland. The chill wind made unfamiliar rustlings, difficult to place without the shock of a stumble. Tired, pleasantly miserable, one wondered if the dale really had a pretty dress for morning.

NOTE – The Scawfell Guide is out now and the discrepancies between the official description of the Esk Buttress climb and the above account of our struggle up it will be only too obvious. In the F. & R. C. C. Journal Vol. V., p. 202, will be found notes on the first ascent under the heading “Climbs Old and New.” As far as the “waiting room near the Vertebral Slabs on the left,” the two routes are identical, but at this point our enthusiasm apparently took us up the thin overhanging crack on the left. From this point of divergence neither Hilton nor I can recognise any feature in the notes, which have been followed by the Editor of the Guide, except the cairn to which ours was certainly the shortest and most direct way. Whether it is less severe can only be ascertained by another visit, and we are longing for an opportunity to compare the original line of ascent with our exciting variation. Meanwhile our sympathies are with Holland.