Forty feet higher we could see the third and last pitch. The gully is now very much more open. We made a digression on the right again, and peered inquisitively down the hole at the top of the B chimney--the hole that was said to discriminate nicely between a thin man and a thick. The buttress was considerably broken about here, and offered admirable scrambling of a heterogeneous description; but we had yet one more stage in our own direct course, and returned to finish it. Several boulders had combined to form another cave, whose interior appeared to be rather complicated--judging by the number of times I knocked my head in exploring its upper regions. We tried hard to force a route up the right wall, but after twenty minutes had been wasted in futile attempts we decided to take the regulation route to the left, and leave the variation for another day that might find us there with an ice-axe. The left wall is sufficiently provided with holds to make the climb easy; but at the top there were several stones to be passed that report said were in a shaky condition. We were not troubled by them, and after passing over, a glance at the screes that remained above gave assurance that the presence or absence of a few loose stones at the head of the pitch would be quite fortuitous.
After a short halt called for photographic purposes we made for the head of the C gully, the next to the west that actually reaches the sky-line when viewed from below. It was nearly all scree at a steep angle, and we had good reason to be thankful that no exploring parties were further down. There were two or three places passed in our descent where the craggy bed of the gully jutted out through the layer of loose stones, and at such spots, though no actual climbing was necessary, the danger of one man bombarding the other with projectiles made us both proceed with an excess of caution. The one difficulty in the gully, which we were now preparing to descend, is by far the finest looking pitch on Pike’s Crag. A large boulder with square edges roofs in a cavern thirty feet high; a stream of water pouring down the gully spreads over the boulder, and forms a thin curtain of spray stretching from side to side of the cave entrance. The two walls of the gully are black and glistening, the floor of the cave is slippery, and slopes steeply down to the foot of the ghyll. The only safe way up or down the pitch is by a series of ledges in a square recess on the left, well marked in the opposite illustration.