At the finish of this exciting portion we saw the sky-line a few feet in front of us, and with a spurt we ran up and reached the summit breathless.
Since that time I have descended by the same route with a different party. We had just come up Moss Ghyll, and my two friends were well contented with their day’s work; for Moss Ghyll had been the limit of their ambition, and they were willing to rest contentedly on their laurels. To tackle Collier’s Climb had never entered their heads before--like the death-dealing pebble for poor Goliath--and they shyly suggested that we had climbed enough for one day. But with the sense of possession of a trump card up my sleeve--that handy rope-hold at the bottom pitch--I succeeded in rousing their enthusiasm sufficiently, and we started downwards. They were perfectly safe men to accompany; this had been proved in Moss Ghyll, and it was perhaps not so very wrong to indulge in a harmless exaggeration of the excitement that the finish had in store for them. But they climbed extremely well in spite of forebodings, and gratified me immensely by agreeing that for beauty of surroundings Collier’s Climb has no equal in all the gullies of the Lake District. The descent was rather easier than the ascent--a state of things so often experienced in difficult climbing work--and we reached the lowest grassy platform in half an hour. There we found the little cairn I had erected a few months before, and were cheered to see a couple of friends approaching from Mickledore to give us any aid necessary near the finish. I let down the first man by the rope; he went well till within ten feet of the Progress, and then, slipping away from the hold, was left for an uncomfortable moment dangling in mid-air. Lowered a yard or so his legs were seized by the men below and he was pulled to their level in safety. There he unroped, and thus also descended the second man. But he came on the middle of the rope, and before reaching the spot where he was destined to quit the rocks he was instructed to slip the lower end of the rope through the safety-hole. On reaching the Progress he also unroped, and with the united strength of the party holding me through the jammed stone I also was willing, when my turn came to let myself hang and be lowered gently down like a bale of goods into a ship’s hold.