"What goes on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and in the evening on two legs and two walking poles?" Given 2000 years to think about it, the original Riddle of the Sphinx is not really all that tricky. The Riddle of the Sphinx Rock is tougher, though. And it's posed to anyone on any of the surrounding slopes. "Just how great is Gable? To put it another way, what are you coming up here for anyhow?"
       Are we going up Gable to tick it off our list? No, because we've been up Gable several times already. Are we going up it for the view? If that were the case, then Westmoreland's Cairn would have the trample marks and the occasional abandoned boot, rather than the summit knoll.

       Wainwright had a thing about Haystacks, but overall Gable must be Lakeland's most-loved mountain. Whatever it is we go up hills for, it's something that Great Gable's got and Great End, by comparison, lacks.
       For starters, there's something about the shape. From Wasdale it's the original and architectural gable end – from everywhere else, it's a sort of bowler hat – but always recognisable, and always important and big. We like the look of certain of our fellow humans: I might mention Johnny Depp, I might mention Meg Ryan. Depending on your gender preference, Johnny and Meg appeal to certain obvious and explainable instincts. Great Gable appeals to an instinct that, for now, remains nameless. It's like the Matterhorn, and Snowdon, and the Cobbler, in having a shape that makes you want to get your leg up over it.
       Skiddaw too is shapely; but Skiddaw is spoilt by having an easy way up. Gable plays a better game. Every path (except the rebuilt Breast Path from Sty Head) has boulders, scree, and bare rock. Every path (and now including the Breast Path) involves some steep ground. As the bowler-hat outline indicates, that steepness is at the top; and accordingly, every path involves an eagle's eye view back across the valley and the lake.
       Ignore Great Gable's rocky little top knoll, the clear pool it once harboured now trampled by a hundred thousand pairs of Brashers. That so-sought summit stands, a just-not-made-it 899m up, in its desert of stones, with its view of the inside of a cloud. Even if the cloud temporarily rises, all it reveals is an awful lot of stones, the edges of the plateau, and some similar stones on top of of Scafell Pike.
       "What you up to?" enquires the Sphinx. We thought we wanted to get to the top. Gable shows us that the answer's more complicated. Indeed, for the very greatest of Gable, the trick is to avoid ever having to arrive. Skirt Gable on the screes path, high above Wasdale with that wonderful Wasdale view, rock overhead, rock underfoot, and you don't even have to go uphill. On the Ennerdale side there's another path, right up under the crags and getting dripped on by the overhangs.

       And then consider all the other great places on Gable that aren't its top. Seek out the cave with the spring, half way up the southern screes. Seek out Moses' Finger. Tread the Moses' Trod under the Gable Crag and above all of Ennerdale. Go into little Gillercomb suspended half way up the side of Borrowdale. Crouch behind a boulder in the narrow pass of Windy Gap, with its steep paths dropping east and west, its other steep paths climbing north and south.
       We go to the tops of the hills for the sake of the going, not for the tops. The greatness of Gable is something to do with Westmoreland's Cairn, Sour Milk Gill and the Nape's Needle. To solve the riddle, simply consider the Sphinx.