Between the Sunset and the Sea: A View of 16 British Mountains

Many of Sutcliffe’s critics claimed that the young instructor’s charge of five boys was far too much for him alone to herd safely to Snowdon’s summit, and that the deteriorating weather should have prompted him to turn the group back. Others focused on details, highlighting the inherent flaws in the ‘roping-together’ technique the boys were using – an arrangement common in the Alps that relies on the principle that if one person takes a tumble, the others are required to quickly and deftly fling the slack over a handy spike of rock to arrest the fall (the problem here being, of course, that if no spike immediately presents itself the rest of the party is yanked towards whatever doom awaits). But most extraordinary in all of this was the disagreement amongst practically everybody as to exactly how serious the route the group took up Snowdon – that ‘Ridge of Death Row’ so subtly christened by the Daily Mail – really was.

Surely this was straightforward: it was either a route from which you could easily fall to your death or it wasn’t. Even in the tragedy’s aftermath, Sutcliffe stuck to his assertion that the ridge was ‘not a climb, but a walk’, along with his aforementioned reference to untroubled women in high heels. Reportedly, the reason the boys were using a rope was for training purposes, not for any concerns over safety.

An inquest was held in a tiny stone chapel in Llanberis, during which Arthur Bell, the guardian of John Brenchley, repeatedly pilloried Sutcliffe on this seemingly very complicated point. One exchange began with Bell levelling: ‘Am I right that in places this ridge is just a narrow pathway with a drop on either side?’ Sutcliffe responded that yes, this was correct. Bell then countered: ‘Yet you say you don’t think this is dangerous?’ Sutcliffe simply replied that no, he didn’t. Then a senior member of mountain rescue gave Sutcliffe’s defence some much-needed solidity. When asked if he considered the route dangerous for inexperienced people, he responded with: ‘No, sir – I’ve seen young children up there.’

A verdict of ‘misadventure’ followed, with coroner E. Lloyd-Jones citing mist as the principal cause. But Bell remained adamant that the route itself – and the decision to tackle it – was to blame. In a statement he said: ‘I have been told that the ledge from which they fell is only two foot wide. I think this walk was dangerous, and I don’t think the boys should have faced such risks.’

Lloyd-Jones delivered a statement in acknowledgement, worth noting for a simplicity that verges on the profound: ‘Of course there is danger. It is one of the objects of the course.’

Over 50 years later, people continue to argue over the severity of the route that those boys took on Snowdon. In fact, people argue about Snowdon as a whole all the time. The muscular, four-peaked mountain that dominates North Wales’ arrestingly contoured uplands is a superstar, drawing upwards of half a million visitors each year. It’s not only Britain’s most-climbed mountain; it’s probably the most-climbed mountain in the world. Some come looking for a pleasant walk, some for a challenge, some for thrills – and few are disappointed. But there’s danger here, too, and nowhere are arguments about mountain safety found in sharper relief.

What isn’t in dispute is this: at a rate of about two a year, people still die on the ridge that claimed those three lives in 1960. This upsetting tally has steadily made the ragged arête – bitten into Snowdon’s east flank 600 metres above the Pass of Llanberis – the most notorious mountain route in Britain. Its name is Crib Goch.

Empty, foam-streaked glasses and the living remains of a funeral party were spread around the lounge of the Douglas Hotel in Bethesda when I arrived just after 6 p.m. and took a seat in the corner to wait for Mal Creasey.

Mal is a mountain guide and a veteran of the Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team – volunteers whose self-imposed duty is to locate those who find themselves in trouble high on the Snowdon massif. It’s one of the busiest teams in Britain, having the dubious honour of working a patch that’s the very definition of a black spot. It’s been known for the team and its neighbouring units to attend call-outs from people in distress on the slopes of Snowdon 170 times in a single year. For one Welsh mountain, that’s pretty exceptional.

Ten minutes after I arrived the door opened and I heard the clip of crutches from the lobby. Seconds later Mal swung into the lounge, looking out of breath. He nodded a hangdog hello, before scowling at his crutches. ‘Arthroscopy. Both knees.’

I gave him a blank look.

‘Where they go into the joint and scrape off all the crap.’ He shrugged. ‘Hey – live a sedentary life and you could die of a heart attack at 50. Or live a long life outdoors and expect a few squeaks.’

There’s no longer really any debate about whether Crib Goch is a walk or a rock climb. Today it’s considered neither, occupying a grey area between the two that’s actually more dangerous than both: scrambling. Any route above a potentially damaging drop that demands the use of your hands to negotiate it is considered a scramble. It would seem the activity is addictive, too: given the proximity to vertical danger and the monkey-business it demands, devotees will tell you that it’s the most thrilling thing you can do in the mountains. Routes are given grades, going from 1 to 3 in ascending order of difficulty.* (#ulink_97761042-aa2e-546f-a2f0-8d925a76d80d) These grades were originally established by guidebook writers as a general indication of a route’s toughness when combined with how far you could fall if you screwed up, but the system has proliferated into a more-or-less universally adopted yardstick of overall difficulty.

At Grade 1, Crib Goch is considered amongst the easiest of scrambles from a difficulty point of view. But there’s a catch. What Showell Styles called a ‘special quality’ was also noted by Irvine Butterfield in The High Mountains of Britain and Ireland: ‘The ridge is magnificently precarious for about 400 feet and whilst technically easy, commands respect – with a sensationally sharp summit ridge above a steep precipice.’ These evidently awesome drops mean that exactly how anyone will fare on Crib Goch is still fiercely and unpredictably subjective. Some inexperienced walkers can skip across with nary a care, yet there are bedded-in mountaineers who blanch at the thought of going anywhere near it. In mountains this seems to be the thing; you can describe how difficult you found it and why, but how anyone else will get on is down to them.

Perhaps because of this, your Crib Goch status – more than any other mountain route in Britain, it seems – says something about you. After its many years of notoriety, today the ridge inevitably presents something of a rite of passage; a mountain-shaped question mark that only a firm constitution, a certain element of skill and a generous endowment of sheer balls can answer. Nail it, and you can proudly attest to hitting the top of the thrill curve for what a gutsy mountain walker could be reasonably expected to achieve. Miss it out, and you’re missing out. You’re below the watermark. You’re a wimp. Right?

‘Dangerous way to think,’ said Mal, as we sat down at a corner table away from the increasingly horizontal mourners. ‘With that kind of attitude, all that happens after you’ve beaten it – if you beat it – is you end up sizing up something even scarier. Some climbers feel that way if they haven’t climbed the Matterhorn. Everest, even. Can you believe that?’ He considered this for a moment, before chuckling. ‘Anyway. Crib Goch.’

There are harder, more overtly threatening mountains in Britain – in this book, even – but in terms of a personification of all that is deviously hazardous about the British hills, no shadows fall on the staircase of Crib Goch and the pile of sharp contradictions that is Snowdon itself. The slightest glance at incident reports reveals that the mountain is a high-volume cautionary anthem for what can and does go wrong in the British hills.

All this aside, on a more personal level I knew exactly why I was scared of Crib Goch. An enthusiasm for mountains and the ability to be at ease with horrible drops are not necessarily easy bedfellows – heights hate me, and I hate them back. Some people can keep their head and enjoy the thrill of tightroping along ridgelines; me, I stay back from cliff edges, avoid tall buildings and take the aisle seat on an aeroplane. Inability to focus on objective difficulties when faced with ‘exposure’ – the mountain name for a drop that will pretty much definitely kill you – meant I struggled with any terrain that wasn’t wide enough for me to sprawl messily over it should the need arise.

From reading up I knew that the crest of Crib Goch certainly did not possess much width. Five hundred metres of bony, severely angled rock over drops many times the height of Big Ben, this thing was sheer, sharp, long – and didn’t have much patience for the acrophobic.* (#ulink_5e1e6635-39a4-51f4-a5f5-9877fb126625) As many claimed after the tragic accident in 1960, from a point of view of actual physical difficulty the ridge isn’t really that hard at all; like climbing a stepladder, or boulder-hopping on a beach. But raise these little exercises to a platform the thick end of 300 metres above spiky ground, and – whilst from a coldly technical point of view it shouldn’t make a difference – psychologically the consequences of a slip suddenly become harder to ignore.

I needed to talk to someone who knew the ridge in forensic detail. Someone who could tell me, with nothing in the way of macho marinade, exactly how much trouble I would be in. That’s why I’d called Mal. You can use a map to traverse the rump of any mountain, but on something as hefty as Snowdon you needed someone like Mal to really get you under its skin. A sturdy 60-something with an air of permanent bemusement, I knew him to be straight-talking, likeably mischievous and peerlessly experienced. If anyone could reassure me – or at least give me a couple of pointers – it was Mal.

‘Well, I don’t want to worry you,’ Mal began, ‘but if you got rid of Crib Goch … I’d say rescue call-outs would drop by 80 per cent.’ He sipped his pint. ‘Give or take.’

‘Falls?’

‘Yeah, some. A few get lost. But most people just get cragfast.’

This is a term you come across regularly in association with Crib Goch, and steep mountains in general. ‘Cragfast’ means, quite simply, stuck – stuck in a trap of your own making, when you’ve climbed up something you can’t climb down, and then freeze, barnacle-like, to whatever you’re clinging to. This could be because of physical difficulty; more often it’s because every way looks precarious and you’re too scared to move.

‘So where on the ridge does it happen?’

‘The Pinnacles, usually,’ Mal said, taking another sip. ‘And the beginning, the first big rock step. And sometimes descending into that first steepening.’ He frowned. ‘Oh, and don’t go left or right off the crest – all that does is take you onto a load of loose rock. Hit everything straight on,’ he said, blading a hand in my direction for emphasis. ‘It’s steep and exposed and it looks horrible, but the rock’s solid. And it’s better than the alternatives.’ I saw the look on his face and I didn’t like it: a kind of bouncy-eyebrowed I’ve-got-a-story-you-don’t want-to-hear look. Mal probably had a lot of stories I didn’t want to hear – as well as a whole bunch he probably didn’t want to tell.

Loosely, mountain rescue teams are the emergency services for the British mountains – only they aren’t, certainly not in the conventional sense. Nobody gets paid; few teams are even funded beyond the odd bit of clothing or radio gear, and they scratch sustenance from donations and tax breaks to keep volunteers equipped and trained. Beyond a doubt they’re heroes – but the cost can be steep. A mountain fall is not a pleasant way to go; it’s violent, tearing, shocking. Those dispatched to accidents where they sometimes literally have to pick up the pieces often suffer lasting psychological trauma. Some volunteers harden to encountering death in the mountains. Many, somewhat understandably, can’t.

If the fact that our mountain rescue personnel are local volunteers like Mal rather than paid-up professionals who ride around in helicopters all day is a surprise to many, the idea that Britain’s mountains are dangerous enough to need rescue personnel at all might come as another. In terms of their physical attributes, our mountains are laughable in comparison with those found in many other mountainous countries in the world. We’ve no glaciers filled with bottomless crevasses; no oxygen-drained high-altitude death zones in which pulmonary or cerebral oedema can stealthily kill you; no bears or mountain lions to keep an ear awake for in a quiet mountainside camp. But what we do have are hundreds – thousands – of steep, storied and striking mountains, and a lot of people interested in climbing them for amusement or thrill. The urge to climb mountains has complex, but largely pointless, sources – and often the feeling of danger is cited as justification in itself. The swaggery adage of ‘feeling more alive the closer you are to death’ often crops up at this point. But sometimes, for reasons often beyond control, close gets too close.

Before you even insert humans into the equation, mountains are in any case pretty hairy places. Avalanches and rockfalls are difficult to predict, and impossible to control. Freak weather gets freakier and more frequent the higher you go, and even the most benign gland of a hill can rapidly turn malignant given inclement conditions. Pieces of mountains fall down from time to time. Temperatures fall by around 6°C per 1,000 metres, a phenomenon known as the lapse rate – which, on a British mountain in spring, can mean the difference between dewy grass at sea level and solid ice at the summit, with damaging consequences for the unprepared. Lightning can strike without warning and with impunity, sometimes out of a clear blue sky, and wind can blow you off an exposed mountaintop in an unexpected gust. In the UK alone, all of these account for victims in double digits each year.

Sometimes when it comes to death or injury the mountains are merely aggravating bystanders. Heart attacks, strokes and the occasional suicide (including some extraordinarily odd cases in the Highlands of Scotland* (#ulink_98f457c7-6adf-5374-a5e7-7db72b739c16)) aren’t at all uncommon.

But most accidents in the mountains occur as the result of the smallest human error. Misjudgement, poor timing, inadequate clothing, distraction, panic, inexperience, over-ambition, under-preparedness, over-reliance – then the most simple and common of all: a split second of physical failing. A slip in a dangerous place. A trip. A tired stumble. Even something as innocuous as a broken shoelace or a dropped compass can be the spark that ignites a crisis. Head for a dangerous mountain and you need your head screwed on – a second can be all it takes.

Between 2002 and 2011 mountain-rescue teams in England, Wales and Scotland responded to 11,558 incidents in the hills. Of these, 6,862 yielded injuries, of which 564 were fatalities – almost exactly 10 per cent. The pattern of these statistics is unnervingly consistent but makes perfect sense when you think about it. ‘Slip, trip or stumble’ is the number one rescue-triggering mishap, year on year. ‘Falls or tumbles’ come a close second, with ‘lost’ as the number three cause of reported distress in the mountains. What’s interesting about these otherwise unsurprising figures is the nature of the wounding activity when broken down by region. In terms of objective dangers, Scotland has by far the most severe ground and weather, but their hills feel comparatively fewer feet – and the ones they do tend to be more experienced. Thus, Scotland has a much lower overall rate of incident when total area and potential high places in which to come unstuck are taken into account.* (#ulink_d0b0a4da-2190-5c8b-be53-97c430e1c706) The Lake District has by far the most incidents for hillwalking, largely injuries to the lower legs befitting an ugly slip or a fracturing step. But Snowdonia’s principal cause of damage is rock scrambling – almost to the point of exclusivity. If you’re going to fall off a ridge, chances are you’ll do it in Snowdonia. And with one or two exceptions, you’ll very likely do it on Crib Goch. Which is why I wanted to talk to Mal.

‘So,’ he said after a while. ‘What’s your plan?’

I explained that later tonight – preferably after a splendid and unhealthy pub meal – I intended to drive up to Pen-y-Pass, wander into a secluded valley beneath Crib Goch and wild camp for the night. Then, come the dawn, I’d hit the ridge. Mal pulled a face.

‘Bad idea?’

‘Have you seen the forecast?’

I confessed that I had, but only the general forecast. Everything had seemed so meteorologically settled I hadn’t gotten round to it yet.

‘Well, the proper* (#ulink_4af1f7a6-f2e1-5454-ba39-c8eb7bc98728) forecast shows a front arriving early tomorrow morning. Gales, rain … Can’t say I’d want to be up there.’

‘Oh.’ Balls. This I should have checked.

‘May I suggest a compromise?’ said Mal. ‘Do the first section – the, ah, exciting section – tonight. Then you can slip down into the little valley beneath the gap in the middle of the ridge, camp, relax – and do the rest in the morning. You’ve got the nasty bits over with whilst it’s dry, then.’

‘Nasty bits?’

He bobbed his eyebrows again. ‘Exciting bits.’

I looked at my watch. ‘It’s gone seven.’

‘Well then,’ Mal drained the rest of his drink, ‘best get your skates on.’

***

The fast road to Snowdon from Bethesda takes you first through the broad half-pipe of the Ogwen valley. Here, ancient mountains spill slate to the roadside, lining the grand valley like a colonnade of towering, crumbling gargoyles. You pass Tryfan, a freestanding 918-metre arrowhead crowned with two tiny pinnacles: Adam and Eve. It’s a popular picture on the postcard racks; positioned just far enough apart to allow an uncomfortably nervy leap from one to the other, performing this summiteer’s tradition is said to gain you the ‘freedom’ of the peak.

Then the road bends and you brush the village of Capel Curig, before entering quaggy open ground, scudding along the shore of Llynnau Mymbyr towards the dark mass of Snowdon. From here, the triangular sweep of Crib Goch guards its parent peak in a protective curl, like a drawn cloak. The building overgrown with vegetation that appears to the right is the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel, marking the corner turn into the Pass of Llanberis – the road that wiggles up to the foot of Snowdon like a dropped cable.

Crags tower either side as you ascend, including some of the most storied in Britain. Find similar outcrops in Spain or Switzerland and, chances are, they’re just crags – unremarkable, unexplored and unexploited. But in Britain, being the confined menagerie of interested parties and interesting terrain it is, almost every significant cut of rock in Snowdonia will have been looked at with a devious eye and quickening pulse at some point. The crags on the Pass in particular have made history, home to climbing routes teased from the dark North Wales rock and given bleak, strikingly alliterate titles: Cenotaph Corner, Cemetery Gates, Cobweb Crack. Snowdonia has a certain darkness to it: the rain-streaked remnants of dead industry and hard, Welsh nomenclature lend the region something of a sinister air, which – combined with the region’s abrasive mountains and frequently tough weather – makes for an atmosphere so thick you could punch it.

Architecturally, the mountains hereabouts are sharp and broken. The clichéd postcards of this place consist of high summits studded with flakes of rock in silhouette, bristling at angles, like the radial spikes of a medieval torture machine. Occasionally these contain a climber, gazing out to a bruised sky, or swinging off a frozen seesaw of rock. Snowdon itself is extremely ancient, composed of some of the oldest exposed rock in Britain – a mixture of pressure-hoisted sea-floor sedimentaries and volcanics brutalised by pressure and glaciation into a sharp, arrestingly fractured massif. It’s an angrier landscape than the Lake District, and more claustrophobic than the Scottish Highlands, one of geological menace and home to a more chilling breed of outdoor adventure than the Lake District’s cuddly persona. It seems to say that if you want to find small animals wearing floral dresses and drinking tea, go to the Lakes. If you want dark, cold rock that hates you, go to Snowdonia.

I reached the corner turn on to the Pass of Llanberis a little before 8 p.m. A quick supply run in Bethesda had yielded a few comforts for a night out on the hill – sugary snacks, crisps, noodles, hot chocolate and some whisky to liven it up. It seemed a little unreal and adventurous that I was going to be approaching this dreaded ridge in little over an hour. It was the sensible choice, given the forecast – but tackling the ridge with darkness coming seemed even more intimidating than doing it in bad weather. Even in rain, there might possibly be someone else crazy enough to be up there with me – probably wearing shorts – who would be able to pat me on the back and gee me up. But at this hour, I’d almost certainly be very alone up there.