SCALING COLLEGES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19255, 20 August 1924, Page 8

SCALING COLLEGES.

ALPINE CLIMBING AT CAMBRIDGE.

Climbing feats are by no ineans ra.ro nt, Cambridge, although it is unusual for tho climbers to court notoriety, and perhaps ‘•rouble, by leaving evidences of their prowess behind them. This sort of thing happens on “rag” nights sometimes 'writes “Old Alpinist” in the Daily Chronicle), and a. college may awake one mornhig to find some lofty and inaccessible pinnacle crowned with unsuitable adornment but as a rule the climbers scorn to advertise themselves in this way. They do their climbing at night, when the University is asleep, and by the time dawn breaks they have crept happily to bed, true to their ideal of “art for art’s sake.” There are several climbing clubs, chief of which is tho Alpine Club, which draws its members from different colleges. No one knows tho origin of these clubs. Probably, like most inventions, necessity was their mother. If for any reason an undergraduate found he could not get back to his college by midnight, when the gates are locked, it was convenient to know of a way of getting in without ringing up tire porter and so letting himself in for a troublesome interview with the Dean. Gradually, one may suppose, college authorities made their fortresses more and more inaccessible, and so a spirit of competition arose which has nowadays no ulterior motive. The members of the climbing clubs know the walls and battlements of every college in Cambridge as intimately as a Swiss guide knows the rocks and crevices of tho Matterhorn. Some colleges are so easy to got into that they tempt only the beginner. You can almost walk into Downing, for example, and “Cat’s” and King’s are almost as easy. Others, however, call for strength, agility, and “nerve” of the highest order if they are to be conquered. Corpus is tho hardest not of all to crack, and there are very few climbers who have ever got into it without help from someone inside, which is, of course, against the strict rules of the clubs. One of the most daring “Alpinists” of recent years was a certain famous oarsman, who scaled every college in Cambridge, including Corpus, and then sought new worlds to conquer inside the colleges themselves. Hjs greatest feat, which has never been done by anyone else, before or since, was climbing into Trinity by means of the main gateway. It looks impossible. lam sure a monkey could not do it, and I certainly should not advise any man to try it again. To drop from its sheer wall from a height of 100 ft or so on to the cobblestones below woulu bo most unpleasant. This man wrote a book on the most difficult climbs he had negotiated, with diagrams of his itineraries. I saw it in proof form, hut I do not know if it was actually published. He was doubtful about tho wisdom of itl