Climbing Napes Needle

Dedicated to my son Elwood Amey, who comes from a long line of climbers written up in these pages before. See list of posts below.

Ken and I went to the Lakes together in August, staying at a farm-house at Seathwaite. We had decided to do a little rock-climbing. We knew nothing about it, but Ken had brought a rope, nailed boots, and the standard book by Owen Glynne Jones. The climbs in this book were graded under such headings as Easy, Medium, Moderately Stiff, and Extremely Stiff. We decided to start with a Moderately Stiff one, and chose the Napes Needle on Great Gable, whose charm is that on a post-card it looks Extremely Stiff. Detached by the hands of a good photographer from its context, it becomes a towering pinnacle rising a thousand feet above the abyss. Roped together, since it seemed to be the etiquette, Ken and I would scale this mighty pinnacle, and send post-cards to the family.

We were a little shy about the rope when we started out, carrying it lightly over the arm at first as if we had just found it and were looking for its owner . . . and then more grimly over the other arm, as one who makes for a well, down which some wanderer has fallen. The important thing was not to be mistaken for what we were: two novices who had been assured that a rope made climbing less dangerous, when, in fact, they were convinced that it would make climbing very much more so. There was also the question of difficulty. To get ourselves to the top of the Needle would be Moderately Stiff; but it was (surely) Extremely Stiff to expect us to drag a rope up there too. I felt all this more keenly than Ken, because it had already been decided, anyhow by myself, that I was to ‘lead’. Not only had I won the Gymnastics Competition Under 14 in 1892, but compared with Ken’s my life was now of no value. Ken had just got engaged to be married. If I led, we might both be killed (as seemed likely with this rope) or I might be killed alone, but it was impossible that I should -ever be breaking the news to his lady of an accident which I had callously survived. I was glad of this, of course; but I should have liked it better if it had been I who was engaged and Ken who was being glad.

We scrambled up the lower slopes of Great Gable and reached the foot of the Needle. Seen close it was a large splinter of rock about sixty feet high, shaped like an acute-angled pyramid with a small piece of the top cut off, leaving a flat summit which could just take Ken and me and (we supposed) the rope. We had practised tying ourselves on, and we now tied ourselves on. I just started up, dragging the rope behind me.

The Napes Needle has this advantage over, from what I hear, the Matterhorn : that the difficult part is not really dangerous and the dangerous part is not really difficult. The dangerous part, as one would expect, comes at the top. One begins by forcing oneself diagonally up a flat slab of rock, the left leg, from knee to ankle, wedged in a crack, and the rest of oneself free as a trolley-bus to follow the left leg upwards. Only the reassurance of the book, as shouted up to me by Ken that this, though difficult, was not dangerous, kept me at it. No doubt my leg was jambed—no doubt about it, as I found when I tried to move it; no doubt I couldn’t roll down the mountain without it; but the rest of my body felt horribly defenceless, and every nerve in it was saying ‘This is silly, and one should stick to Essex.’ With a sudden jerk which made all that the book said ridiculous, I loosened my leg and got it in a little higher up. The very slave of circumstance and impulse, like Sardanapalus, ‘borne away with every breath’ a little farther from Ken (which meant twice as far to fall) I puffed on . . . until a moment came when I could go no farther. Knee still in crack, heart still in mouth, body still in vacua, I sidled backward to Ken.

`It’s no good. Sorry.’
`Were you really stuck?’
`Absolutely. There’s more in this than we thought.’
`Shall I try?’

At some other time I might have said ‘My dear man, if I can’t, you can’t.’ At some other time I might have said ‘For Maud’s sake, no!

At this time I said ‘Yes, do.’
I wanted to lie down. In a little while he was back with me, and we were studying the Easy group.
`All the same,’ said Ken, looking up at the Needle again. `
All the same,’ said I. `Think of Bruce.’
`I think of nothing else.’
‘Say “I can do it”.’ `I can do it.’
We got up.
`Suppose I came up behind you and pushed a bit?’ `
What’s the rope doing?’
`Hanging about.’
`Is that right?’
`Well, I don’t see what else it can do.’
`Nor do I. I don’t like the look of the dangerous bit at the top, do you?’
`It may look better when we get there.’
`Yes. Well, let’s get there. Dash it, we can’t just carry the rope home again. Come on.’
It was a little easier this time; I felt more like a tram, and less like a ‘bus; I got to the sticking-place and waited for Ken’s hand to reach my foot. With its support I straightened my knee and got a handhold higher up. We went on doing this until Ken had reached the sticky place, by which time I was in sight of home. Soon we were sitting side by side on a broad shelf, puffing happily. The ‘difficult’ part was over.

There remained a vertical slab of rock in the shape of the lower four-fifths of an isosceles triangle. It was about fifteen feet high, and there was a ledge like a narrow mantelpiece halfway up. Owen Glynne Jones (who may have been a nuisance in the home) made a practice of pulling himself on to mantelpieces by the fingers, so as to keep in training, and no doubt it is in the repertory of every real climber. We were merely a .couple of tourists. When in doubt we collaborated. Ken reached up to the ledge and grasped it firmly, and I climbed up him. When I was standing on the ledge, my fingers were a couple of feet below the top. In making these climbs it is impossible to lose the way. Every vital handhold is registered in the books, every foot-hold scored by the nails of previous climbers. To get to the top I wanted one more foothold and one handhold, and I knew where they were. I shuffled to the left and looked round the corner. On the precipitous left-hand face of the pyramid, a little out of reach, there was an excrescence of rock the size and shape of half a cricket-ball. That was the handhold. Just within reach of raised foot and bent knee a piece of the rock sloped out for a moment at an angle of 45 °, before resuming the perpendicular. That was the foothold. I should imagine that the whole charm of the Napes Needle to an enthusiast rests on that forbidding foothold. To a non-enthusiast, as I was at that moment, the whole charm of a foothold is that it holds the foot solidly, at right angles to whatever one is climbing. This didn’t. Could one’s nails (and Jones) be trusted? When all one’s weight was on that slippery-looking, nail-scratched slope, while one grabbed for the cricket-ball, did one simply disappear down the left-hand face, leaving Ken with a lot of rope and no brother, or did one’s head appear triumphantly over the top? That was the question, and there was only one way to find the answer. After all, there must be something in this rope business, or people wouldn’t carry them about. If I fell, I could only fall thirty feet. It was absurd to suppose that. I should then break in half; there was no record of anyone having broken in half; no, I should simply dangle for a little, assure Ken’s anxious head that all that blood he saw every-where was only where I had hit myself on the way down, and then climb gaily up the rope to safety. All this was just the give-and-take of the climber’s life. All those scratches were just signs of where other people had slipped, disappeared, and come laughing back. Without the rope one would be a dead man. But with it the whole climb would be child’s play . . . or just plain folly?

Oh, well . . .
It was delightful to sit on top of the Needle, and and dangle one’s legs, and think “We’ve done it”. but with it the whole climb was child’s play . . . or just plain folly?

About once every ten years it comes back to me that, in addition to all the things I can’t do and haven’t done, I have climbed the Napes Needle. So have thousands of other people. But they, probably, knew something about it. A few days later we climbed Kern Knotts Chimney. My ideal reader of this book would be somebody just sufficiently acquainted with the subject to think that by Kern Knotts Chimney I mean Kern Knotts Crack. If I had climbed the Crack, this would have been a different sort of book. The Chimney is only Moderately Stiff. Blocking the top of the actual chimney, which is the second stage of the climb, is a rocking-stone. Somehow this has to be surmounted. Our faith in Jones was now such as to—I was going to say move mountains’ but that would be an unfortunate metaphor. It was this bit of the mountain which was not going to move, according to Jones, and we trusted him. But it wobbled alarmingly. There is a technique of chimney-climbing which we didn’t seem to have mastered. We had a discussion as to whether it would be bad form to throw the rope over this boulder and haul ourselves up by it.

‘Good heavens, you can do what you like with the rope,’ said Ken. ‘That’s what it’s for.’ ‘Then if you had a ‘lasso and lassoed the top of the Monument and climbed up, you could say you had climbed the Monument?’ `That’s absurd. You might as well say—’
‘What?’ `Almost anything,’ said Ken, thinking hard. ‘Such as?’ ‘Well, you’ll admit that you can stand on the other man’s shoulders? That’s quite fair?’ ‘Of course. But a rope—’

Then if you had a friend 475 feet high and you climbed on his braces and stof on his shoulders——’
‘Oh! Shut up. Give us the rope.’
We reached the top. It may be things like this that get you blackballed from the Alpine Club. I wouldn’t know.

Other posts on climbing:
The Creative Mind
Intrepid Victorians
Intrepid Victorians (2)
What the Alpine Club Had to Say