We must make the most of our mountains then, and come to them in the right spirit, for they will never crush indifference with the overpowering force of fourteen thousand feet of rock and snow. And herein lies the special charm of rock-climbing. It provides the sharpest possible contrast with everyday life, and jerks the pedant out of his groove. There are only two directions in which the average Englishman of to-day can get back to the bare realities of life as a struggle of man with Nature--the mountains and the sea. Hence the futility of the common taunt against the rock-climber--that he climbs his mountain by a difficult way instead of walking up it by the easiest; the implication, of course, being that the truest philosophy of life is summed up in the categorical imperative of America--‘Get there.’ As well taunt the genuine yachtsman because he prefers to sail his boat across the Channel, not without danger and discomfort, when he might go over in the latest turbine steamer, and hardly notice that he had ever left the land. Each attempts in his own way to escape from the toils of civilisation. It is not the impulse which is artificial and perverse, but the conditions of life which close all other avenues of escape.
It is very difficult to say how much of the joy of climbing is physical, how much æsthetic. The two sides react upon each other. Perception is at its keenest during physical exhilaration, and conversely nothing is so conducive to a sense of vital energy and well-being as the appreciation of beauty. And yet the truth of this is often unrealised. Ruskin with his reference to the greasy pole is typical of a large number of people who appear to think that because the climber’s pleasure is partly physical, contemplation can have no part in it. They say, too, that we should look at mountains as at a picture which is so hung by a thoughtful Providence that it can only be properly appreciated from the valleys where men are meant to stay. We who go closer get the perspective wrong, like the too inquisitive critic who cannot see the picture for the paint. Was Swinburne then less of a poet because it was his delight to leave the sheltered shore and swim out into the sea, fighting its waves and matching his strength against theirs? The physical strife brings insight and understanding, instead of negating them. Only the sailor understands the sea, only the climber understands the mountains. Nor, of course, is it true that the beauty of mountains can be best appreciated from below. That is a fiction invented by the plainsman to excuse his want of enterprise. Even in the British Isles, where the secrets of the hills are not so well guarded as in the Alps, there are a hundred Scottish corries and Welsh cwms where none but the climber ever goes. The tourist who travels through Glencoe sees nothing so fine as the upper cliffs of Bidian nan Bian, or the chasms of Buchaille Etive. Spurred on by wholly unworthy motives he may struggle up the laborious southern slopes of Nevis, and buy picture postcards at the top. Under his feet the dull amorphous summit breaks down in splendid precipices to Alt a’ Mhuilinn. But he will see nothing of them except the dipping foreground of flat stones. He may admire the view from the top of Scawfell, but the climber within a few hundred yards of him on the Pinnacle arête is moving in another and a more beautiful world. From across the valley Lliwedd appears as a featureless face, grand only in the sweep of its descent to Cwm Dwli. But to the climber it reveals an infinite variety of rock scenery. There is no flat foreground to detract from the sense of height. The eye looks straight across a mile of emptiness to the opposing bastions of Crib Goch.