cragsman

plural cragsmen

1. A (skillful) male climber of crags.

   [H]ere and there are traversed by a winding footpath like a staircase, which few but native cragsmen are venturesome enough to scale.

   1922, W[illiam] Barclay, “Along the Coast”, in Banffshire (Cambridge County Geographies), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, →OCLC, page 40

   5 more examples

   Francie o'Fowlsheugh, and he was the best craigsman that ever speel'd heugh, (mair by token, he brake his neck upon the Dunbuy of Slaines,) wadua hae ventured upon the Halket-head craigs after sun-down— […]

   1816, [Walter Scott], chapter VII, in The Antiquary. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 166

   Meanwhile I had become a daring cragsman, a character to which an English lad has seldom opportunities of aspiring; for in England there are neither crags nor mountains.

   1851, George Borrow, chapter VIII, in Lavengro; the Scholar—the Gypsy—the Priest. […], volume I, London: John Murray […], →OCLC, page 109

   Those who "halt between two opinions," in the matter of religion, are like travellers who halt in indecision at cross-roads, with tempest and the night hurrying up behind them; […] like a cragsman, who has quitted hold on the rope by which he has let himself down from the overhanging brow of the cliff to the eagle's nest, and hesitates to spring and seize the rope in its rapidly diminishing oscillations.—Union Magazine.

   1860s, The Biblical Treasury: A Collection of Scripture Illustrations, for the Use of Sunday School Teachers and Bible Students, volume VI, London: Sunday School Union, […], →OCLC, paragraph 1261, page 100

   A boyhood spent on the cliffs at Kirkcaple had made me a bold cragsman, and the porphyry of the Rooirand clearly gave excellent holds.

   1910, John Buchan, “My Journey to the Winter-veld”, in Prester John, London; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, →OCLC, page 86

   Let us suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to the village which is our home. At mid-day we come to the top of a cliff where we are, in space, very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But as we are no cragsmen we can't get down. We must go a long way round; five miles, maybe.

   1960, C[live] S[taples] Lewis, “Introduction”, in The Four Loves, London: Geoffrey Bles, →OCLC, page 13