Owen Glynne Jones on Cader Idris
Owen Glynne Jones, everyone agreed, was the outstanding rock climber of his age. Born in London in 1867 of Welsh-speaking parents and educated in science and engineering, he made his name by pioneering new routes in the English Lake District, and from 1891 he became internationally famous for his climbs in the Alps. A natural athlete and gymnast, he specialised in completing routes that were generally recognised as impossible.
Throughout his life Jones, a sociable, humorous and kind man, was proud of his Welsh roots. Though he was mainly brought up in London, he may have had a spell in a school in Barmouth, according to Ioan Bowen Rees. From there he would have had a view of Cader Idris. In 1888, even before his exploits in the Lake District, and with little background in the techniques of rock-climbing, he visited Cader, always a favourite mountain, to test himself on its cliffs, and made a notable first, solo ascent of the eastern arrête of Cyfrwy. This was his first recorded ascent of any kind. The detailed notes of his later climbs were inherited by the brothers George and Ashley Abraham, fellow-climbers and well-known mountain photographers. In 1906 they made use of them to publish a guidebook entitled Rock-climbing in north Wales. In the section of the book on Cader Idris Ashley Abraham gives a vivid account of a climb on Craig Cau in Easter 1897.
The seven climbers start out from Dolgellau, and walk past Llyn y Gadair, over the ‘saddle’ and down to Llyn Cau. They lie on the lakeside grass and weigh up the gullies in the rock face ahead of them. Jones teases Ashley Abraham on the tough climb facing them:
‘What do you think of that now? Isn’t that a grand crag?’ he asked with justifiable pride; and then, in answer to our questions, ‘Yes, the big rift bristling with pitches is the Great Gully. The difficult pitch? That’s it; the black-looking cave about half-way up there.’ ‘A small hole to negotiate? Yes, near the top of the pitch. I can just squeeze through’, and then, turning to me with a smile, ‘You’ll enjoy that, I’m sure’. My weight is about fourteen stone, and I ventured a remark that the enjoyment might be not altogether unalloyed.
Jones traces possible routes and points to the Pencoed Pillar; ‘it has not been climbed, and I doubt if it will ever be’ (he was wrong about that). He plumps instead for the Great Gully. They walk round the lake to the scree at its foot and climb to a natural cavern, guarded by a boulder. Next, Jones leads the way up directly through a waterfall: ‘buttoning up his coat he plunged through the water’. The rest watch him ‘through a curtain of water, his lithe body, like some huge amphibian, slowly ascending’. Above, the waterfall became more intense:
The water was here concentrated in a solid jet which poured over with considerable impetus. His position was one of such discomfort as would not allow of his keeping us long in suspense. Was it in too much force for him? He commenced to traverse out, and thrust his hand through the water to grasp a handhold on the right wall. Then he pulled his body forward, and the water struck him full on the top of the head, splashing off it, fanlike, on to the walls of the gully. He was quite blinded, progress was impossible, and after stoically standing its battering until fatigued, he withdrew into the shelter of the chockstone – amid our cheers!
His friends strip Jones, wring out his soaked clothes, and the photographer takes a picture of him, fortunately undeveloped. The climbers find another route forward, until the gully narrows into an inverted funnel. Jones, though, is a match for this, and leads the way past it. Next comes a huge boulder with only a small hole through it as a way forward.
‘Surely,’ I exclaimed, ‘you can never get through there!’ ‘Oh yes I can,’ said he; ‘and, what is more, you must come too, for you must follow the rope.’
Jones deflates his lungs and wriggles his way through the hole. Ashley Abraham follows, but his larger body is not made for the hole:
Wriggling, kicking, and twisting seemed only to make matters more hopeless, so I resolved to go back; and discovered that that was equally impossible … desperation set in, and a final effort, accompanied by a grievous rendering of nether garments, brought me though like a cork blown violently out a bottle. I came through with such éclat that, had it not been for the rope, I might have gone headlong into the gully below … I would strongly urge others of a like avoirdupois to come up by the more difficult outside route.
They find an abandoned rope, hat and waistcoat, evidence that an early party had tried this same route and failed: ‘pathetic testimonies to the tightness of the ‘through route’. Two hours have gone, and still more climbing is ahead, but they stop to take in the dramatic view and the grandeur of the sheer rocks faces on either side:
There was something very impressive about these steep curtains of rock – so unconventional were they, and possessed of such a vigorous strength of outline, storm-battered and frost-riven, but still strong, massive, and enduring – that demanded our awed admiration and wondering contemplation.
Just one narrow chimney remains, and then loose stones towards the top. One falls in top of the photographer’s head, making a ‘nasty cut’, which calls for a bandage and much ‘liquid refreshment’ once the party arrives back in Dolgellau. Soon they will also be able to see Abraham’s photos of the climb, some of them eventually incorporated in the brothers’ book. Perhaps the photographer was only slightly less heroic that O.G. Jones on the climb, given the bulk and weight of camera equipment of the period.
The Craig Cau ascent came almost at the end of a remarkable career on the rocks of Europe. Not much more than two years later Jones was dead, aged 32, after falling from the Ferpècle Ridge of the Dent Blanche in Switzerland on 28 August 1899. During his lifetime he received only patronising acknowledgement from the upper-class Alpinists who dominated climbing at the time, but he should clearly be remembered as one of the most talented and fearless rock climbers of his age. He certainly deserves a full-length biography. A tribute added by a friend, W.M. Crook, to the second, posthumous edition of Jones’s book Rock-climbing in the English Lake District (1900) includes this summary:
As a climber he was unique, and many years must elapse ere another can hope to fill his place worthily; but, as a friend under all circumstances, he was always to be depended upon, for the weakest and heaviest members in every party were generally his special care, and many can never forget his true unselfishness and the kindly way in which personal blunders were criticised.
Whether the party was struggling up a waterfall or resting shivering and wet under a huge chock-stone, or clinging desperately to a wind-swept ridge or icy couloir, everyone felt happy with Jones as their comforter and leader.
Diolch. Difyr iawn oedd dysgu am y dringwr cynnar hwn. Mae disgrifiadau’r dyfyniadau yn ddiddorol – yn creu darlun byw o anawsterau dringfeydd. Faswn i ddim yn mentro – hyd yn oed yn fy ieuenctid.
Mi ddois i ar draws dringwr lled gynnar (1920au a’r 1930au} â chysylltiad â Chymru. Yn llythrennol baglu ar ei draws ac yna chwilota am ei hanes. Dim llyfrau o’i eiddo nac amdano, ond hanesyn bach diddorol. Mae’n syndod beth y daw dyn ar ei draws ar hap.
Dyma fo – mwy o rwdlan gan Hen Ddeurodiwr!
https://yrhenddeurodiwr.wordpress.com/2024/12/14/er-cof/
A dwi wedi sôn am Gader Idris – y ddwy ohonynt, yn y gorffennol hefyd:
https://yrhenddeurodiwr.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/symud-mynyddoedd/
Diolch yn fawr. Diddorol iawn clywed hanes Denis Yelland Richards. A diolch o galon am dy flog hyddysg ar gerflyn William Pye – mae e ar fy rhestr o bethau i’w trafod (gyda ‘Tyrau Mawr’) yn y bennod olaf o’r llfyr newydd ar Gader a’r artistiaid.