Number in series 70; Year of publication 1986 - Fell and Rock ...

22 A SHORT HISTORY OF LAKELAND CLIMBING - PART Ithe hardest of them, and will continue to do so, for most parties attempting ithave still to adopt the combined tactics invented by the first leaders to overcomethe Great Flake. Undoubtedly it stamped climbing with yet a new hallmark, andthe inspiration due to it is not yet exhausted: all the great modern climbs in theBritish Isles are its lineal descendants. These men, too, gave evidence of the newspirit that had entered into the sport—the feeling that rock-climbing was an artin itself and could be pursued for its own sake and enjoyment. Unlike Jones andothers of his day, they hadn't one foot on Scafell and the other on theMatterhorn. There was, indeed, something like an inversion of values; menbegan to measure the routes in the Alps against their own climbs. The formerwere certainly not technically more difficult; as far as rock work was concernedit was mainly a matter of more stamina. The self-reliance engendered at homemay also have influenced guideless climbing abroad. The Central Buttress wasfirst climbed in April, 1914. A few months later its conqueror was serving as aprivate in France, the prescience of the War Office having failed to discern inhim sufficient evidence of powers of leadership to warrant the granting of thecommission he applied for. In January, 1916, he fell in action.The Inheritors(Post-war climbing)With the close of hostilities in 1918 a great renaissance in climbing wasnaturally to be expected. For four long years the big majority of active climbershad been able to pay but brief, fugitive visits to their happy hunting grounds;and now they returned with an avidity sharpened by the lengthy period of rockstarvation,and the spirit of adventure which the searing experiences of the warhad intensified rather than dulled. Yet an observer of those days might well havehad misgivings as to the outcome. Had Herford been a solitary genius to whomno heir could be expected, whose vitalising influence had expired with his owndemise? Were there indeed the opportunities for further explorations of thisorder? Even so shrewd a judge as Laycock had expressed some doubts. 'From1911 onwards it has been no easy matter to discover good new climbs inEngland and Wales.' Thus we find him writing in 1916. It is true that a fewlines later he continues, with characteristic generosity and breadth of view: '....anew tradition has arisen. But all Herford's friends will be, as he himself wouldhave been, the first to welcome the arrival of a greater climber still.'All doubts were soon laid to rest. It would be rash to assert that a greaterclimber arose, or has since arisen; but this much can be said withconfidence—that within a few brief years of the post-war era a new harvest hadbeen garnered, far surpassing in quantity anything accomplished hitherto in acomparable period of time, and much of it at least worthy of the new tradition inits quality.192