Number in series 26; Year of publication 1932 - Fell and Rock ...

190 THE FELL AND ROCK CLIMBING CLUB JOURNALuntil, goaded by hunger and cold, they trusted themselves tothe rocks and somehow made a safe descent.The Romsdalhorn was not climbed again until Carl Hall, theDane, made the ascent in 1881. Meanwhile, the dalesmen'sfeat had become almost legendary, and people seeing their stoneman from the valley had begun to believe that it was a naturalpinnacle on the top of the mountain. Three years after Hall'sascent the Horn was climbed by the first woman, Mrs. CecilSlingsby.You don't approach the Horn from the Romsdal valley, youhave to work along towards the head of the fjord and then goup the Voengedal; this enables you to attack it much moreconveniently from the back. And the Voengedal is a beautifuldale. On the left Voengetind builds up to its knife edge ridgein a fine sweep of buff rock. Ahead the Romsdalhorn fills thevalley end—from the shoulder to the top like a sturdy Doriccolumn with the capital cut off. The correct modern route is tofollow the Voengedal past a little lake and on to where it comes toits head abruptly at a tarn and a rocky wall, and then turn onto the mountain and hunt up a sort of path by which youscramble rather tediously over very easy rocks until you come toa gully leading up to the cleft between the two peaks. Here, thereal climbing—what there is of it—begins. You quickly workup the gully to the cleft and then you climb the right-hand peakover very satisfactory big, rough blocks. The summit is quiteflat and round, as if the tip which it ought to have had had beenneatly sliced off. There are five immense stone men on it now.We, however, knew nothing about the modern route, and wereattacking the mountain from Slingsby's rather sketchy directions.All we knew was that we had to make for a great yellowish pinkround scar on the mountain, and that from somewhere near thisscar, the gully, which is the key to the climb, started. We climbedout of the valley, soon after passing the first lake, much soonerthan we ought to have done, on to the Lillefjeld, a narrowsaddle between the Voengedal and the Romsdal. The view fromthis saddle was superb. We looked straight across space at thesmooth, plunging walls of the Troldtinder. We looked down tothe Romsdal far below, and from this height the meadowsglowed with a green so fiery that even Lakeland standards weresurpassed. We looked up at our mountain, steepening now, and