The eighty-feet length of rope just reached to the crack from which the start was made, and getting George to tie himself on at the lower extremity, I mounted to a higher and larger niche while he cautiously climbed up the crack. The situation was very novel. Some may remember the _firma loca_ in Mr. Sanger Davies’ account of the Croda da Lago. This grass-floored hermitage of mine was truly a _firma loca_, and sitting down comfortably in it I took out a biscuit from my pocket and tried to realize all the view.
It was every bit as appalling as a Dolomite climb. Direct progress upwards seemed quite impossible; a feasible traverse over some badly-sloping moss-covered ledges to the right led to the sky-line at a spot where the _arête_ made a vertical spring upwards for forty feet. A descent would have been seriously difficult, but it was the one thing we did not want. I could hear another climbing party finishing an ascent of the pinnacle by the ordinary route, their voices echoing down the ghyll and cheering me with a sense of neighbourliness. My companions were holding an animated discussion below on the subject of photography. The light was excellent, and our positions most artistic. The cameras were left in the cave at the foot of the ghyll. Ashley was afraid I meant to go up without him; but his professional instinct got the better of his desire to climb, and, shouting out to us to stay where we were for five minutes, he ran round to the high-level traverse on the other side of the ghyll, and down the Lord’s Rake to the cavern.
George had the tripod screw and could not hand it to his brother; so, asking me to hold him firmly with the rope, he practised throwing stones across the gully to the traverse. Then, tying the screw to a stone, he managed to project this over successfully. We composed our limbs to a photographic quiescence. Ashley had a splendid wide-angle lens, which, from his elevated position on the traverse opposite, could take in 400 feet of the cliff, showing the entire route to the summit. It was his turn to take the lead. ‘Mr. Jones! I can’t see you, your clothes are so dark.’ I apologized. ‘Will you step out a foot or two from that hole?’ I was in a cheerful mood and ready to oblige a friend, but the platform was scarcely two feet square, and to acquiesce was to step out a few hundred feet into Deep Ghyll. For this I had not made adequate preparation and told him so. ‘Well, will you take off your coat?’ That I could do with pleasure, and for a while his instructions were levelled at George.