A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush Read Online Free PDF Page B

and I are free this afternoon; we’re going to do the Spiral Stairs on Dinas Cromlech. It’s an interesting climb.’
    As soon as we could get through our breakfast we looked it up in the Climbing Guide to the Snowdon District, Part 6.
    ‘Dinas Cromlech,’ said the book,
    is perhaps the most impressive cliff on the north side of the Llanberis Pass, its massive rhyolite pillars giving it the appearance of some grim castle … all routes have surprising steepness … on the whole the rock is sound, although on first acquaintance it may not appear to be so .
    Spiral Stairs was described as ‘Very difficult’ and as having ‘an impressive first pitch with good exposure’. At the back was a nasty picture of the Cromlech with the routes marked on it. Besides Spiral Stairs there was Cenotaph Corner , Ivy Sepulchre and the Sexton’s Route. It sounded a jolly spot.
    ‘I wish we were doing Castle Gully. It says here, “a pleasant vegetable route”.’
    ‘They might have decided on Ivy Sepulchre ,’ said Hugh. ‘Just listen to this. “Two hundred feet. Exceptionally severe. A very serious and difficult climb … loose rock overhangs … progress is made by a bridging type of lay-back movement, an occasional hold of a doubtful nature appearing now and then .” He doesn’t say what you do when it doesn’t.’
    ‘What’s a lay-back?’
    ‘You were doing a lay-back when you fell off the Eckenstein Boulder.’
    ‘This is only the beginning, it gets worse. “At this point the angle relents …”’
    ‘Relents is good,’ I said.
    ‘“… to a small niche below the conspicuous overhang; no belay. Start the overhang by bridging. The climbing at this point is exceptionally severe, strenuous and in a very exposed position.” It goes on and on! “A short groove leads to the foot of an old rickety holly tree and after a struggle with this and the crack behind it, a good hold can be reached on the left wall.”’
    ‘I wonder why everything seems to end with a rickety old holly tree.’
    We decided to have a quiet morning. Just then the other two girls appeared loaded with gear.
    ‘Hurry up,’ they said, ‘we’ve got to be back by half past twelve. We’re going to take you up The Gauge. You made a nonsense of it, the Doctor said. And you’ve both got to lead.’
    That afternoon, as Judith led the way up the scree from the road towards the base of Dinas Cromlech, we felt that if anything the guide book, in spite of its sombre warnings, had not prepared us for the reality. It was as if a giant had been smoothing off the sides of a heap of cement with a trowel and had then lost patience and left it half finished. Its most impressive featurewas a vast, right-angled wall, shiny with water and apparently smooth.
    ‘ Cenotaph Corner ,’ said Judith, ‘Hundred and twenty feet. When you can do that you really will be climbers.’
    It seemed impossible.
    ‘Joe Brown led it in 1952, with Belshaw. Joe’s a plumber in Manchester. He spends every moment he can here. You remember how awful it was last winter when everyone’s pipes were bursting? In the middle of it he left a note on the door of his house: “Gone climbing. Joe Brown.” People nearly went mad.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘In the Himalayas.’
    We looked at what he had climbed with awe.
    There were already three people on Spiral Stairs. I could see what the book meant by ‘good exposure’. At that moment one of them was edging his way round the vertical left-hand edge of Cenotaph Corner .
    ‘That’s the part that always gives me a thrill,’ said Pamela, the other girl. ‘Pity. Let’s not wait, let’s do Ivy Sepulchre instead.’
    ‘Oh, Pamela, do you think we ought to? It may be too much for them.’
    She made us sound like a couple of invalids out on the pier for an airing. Nevertheless, this was no time for stubborn pride. I asked Hugh if that was the climb we had been reading about at breakfast. He said it was.
    ‘I think Judith’s