Ulysses...anatomy of a first ascent

November 13, 2015, 5:35 am

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The Poisoned Glen-Donegal.
The Castle is the big buttress just left of Bearnas Gap in the Poisoned Glen (see 1955-’56 journal)* Its left-hand edge, overlooking Green Grass Gully, forms an attractive but formidable line which was first seriously tackled by Harold and Neville Drasdo in 1954, after notable pioneering routes in the neighbourhood. They started from the bed of the gully, and climbed a short wall to get onto the edge of the rib. This was followed with slight difficulty to a ledge at about 40 feet. Above this the rib becomes very steep, with an overhang or two to increase the effect. So they looked out onto the face to the right. A horizontal traverse leads right to the base of an overhanging corner which is hopeless, though almost every subsequent party got into it. 

More inviting were two steep gangways slanting, one above the other, from the ledge and passing above the overhanging corner towards a large grassy ledge in the centre of the face. The lower gangway is easy to start, but almost immediately becomes holdless. So the second shelf was chosen. This proved hard to start, but then led up with comparative ease for 30 feet where a serious bulge broke its continuity. A retreat was made from here.

The next attempt was made later that year by Paul Hill and myself, not knowing of the previous attempt. We took the same first pitch to the ledge on the rib, and we also chose the upper gangway as the most likely route. Soon after starting this I found signs of gardening. Then I came to the bulge. I was able to reach a small, sloping hold at the top of the bulge. It appeared to have been gardened out, and so I was encouraged to continue. The hold was muddy, however, and the rock around was wet from recent rain, so I placed a piton–unfortunately right under the bulge. The hold was still too slimy, but a handkerchief over it gave enough friction for the pull-up. A few hectic moves followed, and then a stance was reached.

Winter Guide Book topo of The Castle
I should have taken Paul to here, because the friction of the rope through the badly-placed piton was already considerable. But the grass ledge was only 30 feet away, so I took off my boots and started on a hand-traverse. At first this was on a good flake–I got a runner on here–but then continued by finger- holds on a vertical wall. I had to cling with one hand at intervals to pull the rope through the piton. This left me with just enough strength to grab for the last hold, and when this broke I had nothing in reserve. The runner near at hand slowed the fall, but Paul assumed that I had arrived on easy ground and paid out the rope until he saw me descending the overhanging corner on his right in spider-like fashion. When he stopped me I climbed the lower shelf with the aid of the rope from the runner and belayed on the steep grass ledge.

Paul then came up and found an easier variation by traversing under the bulge, but did not take his boots off for the hand-traverse. Dismayed by the wetness of the rock and the weight of the rucksack and my boots, he gave up half-way and disappeared down the overhanging corner before I could stop him. The haul up the overhang was discouraging, so we abseiled off.

The next attempt was made in the following summer by Betty Healy, Harold Drasdo and myself. Again everything was wet when we started, but it rapidly dried out and we were able to climb the whole way in vibrams. This time the first two pitches went uneventfully. Following Paul’s variations, we traversed under the bulge–a couple of airy but reasonable moves. This took much of the sting out of this pitch, though the hand-traverse was still a very interesting exercise. We then ascended to the top of the grass ledge. Above this a steep and high wall runs right across the centre of the buttress, and to the left the rib rises uncompromisingly. Between the two lies the weakness–a steep groove ending in an overhang. I went up this to see what would happen. Below the overhang a nice rock mushroom appeared on the edge to the left.

By swinging out and mantelshelfing onto this I was able to peer over the overhang. The slab above was steep and smooth, and eventually I had to put a piton in a small crack and use it to pull over the overhang. I scurried up the rest of the slab and half-way up a chimney above before I had time to feel frightened. The rest of the chimney, fortunately, was easy, but the pull out at the top had to be done on poor vegetation. The party then reassembled and considered how to continue. 

We felt that the main difficulties were past, but there was still a lot of rock above and careful route-finding was required. When planning the route from the ground we had seen two prominent grooves and we were making for these. We could not see them now, but from memory they were directly above. An interesting passion-pink wall and a series of broken steps were climbed, and sure enough we found ourselves at the base of the first groove. The groove was climbed, easily at first, but it became thin after about forty feet, so we traversed out to the right and ascended a short wall to the base of a slab. The slab would have been sheer delight in rubbers, but my clumsiness in vibrams enabled it to leave an impression on my nerves. The second groove now lay above and seemed rather fierce. We looked at it with doubtful eyes and then lazily moved right and found an easier series of walls. Then the buttress suddenly relaxed, leaving us to scramble for the last couple of hundred feet.

Donegal Pioneers: Neville Drasdo belayed by brother Harold climbing on Craig Rhiw Goch in north Wales.

I have written about this climb, which we called Ulysses, and which is in the Hard Severes, partly because my earlier attempt illustrates some of the things which it is wiser not to do, and partly because it was a problem mainly in route-finding, which I enjoy. It still is a problem in route-finding–a very strong English party tried to find it this summer. After the first pitch the sling that Paul and I had abseiled from drew them into the overhanging corner which defeated even them. Having a totally wrong impression of our standards of climbing, they assumed that the climb was just too hard and retreated. 

Frank Winder: * First Published in the Irish Mountaineering Club Journal: 1956/57. 

 

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A Black Rainbow: The life and times of Menlove Edwards

November 21, 2015, 1:29 am

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Edwards (standing) and friends.Crib Goch 1935

Nearly quarter of a century after his untimely death, at the age of forty-eight, the climbing career of John Menlove Edwards, one of the most curious in British climbing history, still exerts a compelling fascination. As an innovator, he was the most prolific cragsman of the thirties, pioneering at least ninety new climbs or variations. Not interested in aesthetically pleasing lines, Edwards usually selected a less-popular cliff and dissected it over a period of time, sometimes in the process producing mediocre climbs on loose, vegetated rock — a factor seized upon by his critics- but as posterity has shown,a pointer to the future. It is impossible to divorce his traumatic and tortured life from his mountaineering activities, or indeed, the remarkable feats of rowing, sailing or swimming in which J.M.E. indulged at various times — each were an integral part of his complex make-up. Towards the end of his life he considered himself a failure, yet he was a man gifted with an array of talent. As a writer he has been described as having one of the most exciting styles of prose-writing between the wars.

His poetry, original and deeply expressive and has received similar praise.He was a proven success as a clinical psychiatrist with a brilliant career ahead of him but it was enough for him and he entered the maze of experimental psychiatry, devoting many years of study to the subject. Mainly because of the war, little progress was made in the field of psychiatric medicine in this country and Edwards was ploughing a lone furrow — the intensity of the work, the deprivation and isolation he imposed upon himself, the inner conflicts of his suppressed homosexual tendencies and the extreme social pressures which he was forced to endure as a conscientious objector during the war years, all helped to erode his resilience. Now in a weakened state, the total rejection of his theories by his fellow psychiatrists, much of it in crude note form, was to him, unacceptable — the tragedy was drawing to its inevitable end and after at least two suicide attempts, Edwards had to suffer the mortifying experience of being committed to Denbigh Mental Hospital where he underwent electric shock treatment.

It was to no avail and sometime later he gave up the battle for life before darkness and despair submerged him completely. On the 2nd February, 1958, he ended it all by swallowing potassium cyanide. Since his death two generations of climbers have journeyed through British mountaineering and there is a danger that the deeds of the great figures of the past, like Edwards, will be lost in the passage of time — this would be a tragedy because the climbing world owes him a debt that will probably never be fully realised.

Menlove Edwards was born in 1910 at Crossens village, near Southport; he is remembered as a rather shy and sensitive lad, who despite his already powerful build, was usually the family peacemaker whenever his two elder brothers were involved in childish squabbles. At the age of thirteen he won a scholarship to Fettes public school where the lack of privacy and the astringent atmosphere were completely alien to his retiring nature. He shone at sports and distinguished himself at swimming, hockey and cricket. After winning the Begg Memorial Exhibition, he disappointed his family by refusing the possibility of reading medicine at Edinburgh University, choosing instead to enrol at Liverpool University where he could be near his family, concerned about his father, who was forced to retire through ill-health on a vicar's meagre pension. At Liverpool University he was introduced to climbing by his brother, Hewlett—this was in 1929 and his progress the next year was phenomenal!

In August, 1930, he pioneered Ochre Slab on Lliwedd, followed a few months later by Route V on the East Wall of Idwal Slabs and by the end of 1931 he was responsible for fourteen new climbs in Snowdonia, the pick of these being Flying Buttress and Spiral Stairs on Dinas Cromlech, the Girdle Traverse of Idwal East Wall and the Final Flake on Glyder Fach. On the 29th August, 1931, he emphasised his arrival in British climbing by becoming the first cragsman to lead Flake Crack, Scafell Central Buttress, without aid at the chockstone and without prior inspection —Edwards was only twenty at the time. He made the ascent in rubbers and later returned to claim the first lead in nailed boots. In the same year, Edwards seconded Kirkus when he pioneered the Chimney Route on Cloggy, and in 1933, Kirkus followed J.M.E. up Nebuchadnezzar' s Crawl on Dinas Cromlech — the only two routes these master climbers ever essayed jointly.

Edwards was arguably the finest climber produced in this country before the war —although many may feel that Kirkus should hold that distinction. Comparisons between them, hypothetical or not, are bound to happen. Strength was the main characteristic of Edwards and his leads of Flake Crack (HVS), Lliwedd Central Gully (HVS) and Brant and Slape (VS) on Clogwyn y Grochan all typify this attribute (he was also quite capable of leading courses of a delicate nature, i.e. Bow Shaped Slab, Shadow Wall, and Western Slabs — all high standard routes in their day. In contrast, Kirkus appeared to prefer the more delicate balance movement on open faces that reached its highest expression with climbs the calibre of Mickledore Grooves on the East Buttress of Scafell. J.M.E. was considered a safer mountaineer than Kirkus, whose judgement at times was suspect, being involved in a series of spectacular falls, the results of which would have probably had dire consequences had it not been for the belaying expertise of A. B. Hargreaves.

Edwards was greatly affected by moods, and on an off-day, has been known to fail on lowly climbs such as Hope on Idwal Slabs. He safeguarded himself when soloing with a rope loop, probably putting it to the test on a number of occasions — on the subject of falling his notes read: . . .6-10 times, depending whether one counts. The longest about 40' .Others have bettered that by a long way. 80'. C.F.K. [Kirkus] 200' on steep rock . ." Writing of Edwards, Hargreaves has this to say: 

But there is one thing no one could say about him — and this is quite extraordinary considering the enormous amount of climbing he did and the exceptional difficulty of much of it — that he was prone to falling-off whilst leading. I do know that he once came off that notoriously holdless place in the Cioch Gully, but I never heard of him making a serious mistake which could have endangered his party." (He also came adrift on Eliminate I on Helsby, where others have been killed, but his sling method of protection stopped him hitting the ground.)

He led many of the hardest routes of the day in nailed-boots. These included Longland's, Great Slab and the Chimney on Cloggy; Belle Vue Bastion- Tryfan; Routes 1 and 2, Pillar Rock; Innominate Crack and Sepulchre, Kern Knotts; and Botterill's Slab, Scafell. It was also on Botterill's Slab in pouring rain, three-quarters of the way up, that he decided to proceed further would be stretching his safety margin — he finished the climb on a top rope from a young Wilfred Noyce. His enormous power was displayed to the full during the second ascent of Great Slab, Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, in 1932. One of the team, a man of fifteen stones, fell free of the face on the end of a 150 ft. line, with the diminutive Alan Hargreaves the unfortunate anchor man. Edwards came down to the belay and without any fuss grasped the rope with his hands and just lifted the dangling climber until he made contact with the rock.

Such was his immense faith in his own ability, he would literally climb with anyone, irrespective of their experience — on the first ascent of Grey Slab, Glyder Fawr, he was partnered by a twelve year old boy by the name of Frank Reade, who was instructed by Edwards to lean out from the wall on the rope and walk up the 150 ft. pitch — with a little help from J.M.E. He was not an enthusiastic club man, despite serving the Wayfarers' as vice-president and being made an honorary member of the Climbers' Club — he did not mix easily and it suited his temperament to climb with casual acquaintances. Wilfred Noyce, a cousin of Colin Kirkus, who was one of the few climbers to establish a regular climbing partnership with Edwards recalls his first meeting with J.M.E. in 1934:

"As a boy of 17, I was staying at Helyg over the Easter meet. On the Friday evening, while the others descended to Capel, I stayed in. The only other person in the hut was a man in a tattered coat and seaman's jersey, a man with powerful looking shoulders and a strange face, handsome in its way.The hair was auburn, almost woolly; he jaw firm and jutting, so as to force a hollow between the full lips; the face smooth, rather childlike but for the eyes, which were those of a man who had seen a great deal." He took Noyce to climb in Llanberis Pass, where they sampled Long Tree Gate, one of JME.' s recent discoveries on Clogwyn y Grochan. En route to the cliff Edwards conceded that he never derived any pleasure in walking uphill for its own sake and that he enjoyed the tranquillity of having a rock face to himself. Edwards believed that climbers skilled in their trade could safely utilize loose rock and any vertical vegetation that they may encounter — it was a revolutionary idea which opened up cliffs that had been considered out of the question by the experts of the past. Here is what he wrote in 1934:

Of Wales in general what strikes one most is the large number of unclimbed faces still staring down upon a pretty stiff-necked veneration. What is the fascination of young climbers in the old Slabs and that still older face of Tryfan? 

The dank, brooding walls of the Devil's Kitchen were approached by Edwards in this way, and of course, his pilgrimage on the three cliffs of Llanberis Pass. He was no doubt considered eccentric and was subjected to a certain amount of leg-pulling concerning his horticultural pursuits — nevertheless, he was responsible for it least twenty-five pre-war routes in the Pass, paving the way for the climbing mecca this area has since become. It was during the early thirties he became associated with 'The British Mountaineering Journal'— the first commercial climbing magazine to be produced in this country. He eventually became editor and although the journal filled an important need in mountaineering literature, its appearance received a mixed reception among senior climbing clubs.

Edwards, keenly aware about the lack of information on new climbs, started a series of ' Guides to the British Hills'— the first areas written by him and dealt with the East Wall of Idwal Slabs and Holly Tree Wall. The advantage of a handy pull-out section for visiting climbers was obvious and subsequently the Climbers' Club took over the Welsh Guides, with J.M.E. playing a major role. And it was as a guide book writer that Edwards made his mark with the general climbing world, devoting about seven years of his climbing life to these works. In 1936 he compiled his Cwm Idwal Guide and to many pundits of the time, it was the finest ever produced. He attempted to show not only technical information, but the climber's state of mind and the whole cliff in relation to the most prominent features. Kelly's Lakes guides were an economy of English, a strong contrast to Menlove's literary style. Viewed across a gap of nearly fifty years, some of his descriptions have not been bettered.

On the first pitch of Belle Vue Bastion he writes, "Numerous scratches lead easily up and round the main corner and on to and up a little subsidiary slab on the edge of all things." Clogwyn-y-Geifr warrants this description, "It has every natural advantage, being steep, composed of pretty rocky sort of rock and being covered with vegetation: also parts of it have been long over-due for public exploitation. It is the sort of place where one can feel the full glory of stepping in perfect safety on someone else's considered opinion." Cwm Idwal was quickly followed by the Tryfan Guide and in 1937 saw the start of Lliwedd — it was two years in preparation and a perpetual battle against adversity. Despite atrocious weather conditions, Edwards camped at the foot of the mountain for a month before being washed out of his tent. Handicapped by a lack of helpers who were willing to endure the rigours of an inhospitable terrain and the standards imposed by J.M.E. Its publication in 1939 was the finale of a monumental effort. During the early war years J.M.E. and John Barford were co-authors of a provisional guide to Clogwyn Du'r Arddu using the controversial continental system of grading routes — it is also interesting to note that Menlove's only creation on Cloggy is Bow Shaped Slab which he climbed on the 20th September, 1942.

On the subject of big cliff mentality he related to Noyce: Nobody, in these days, would climb without being certain of a good jughandle hold at the end of it. All a question of habit and nerve training. Soon we will be able to get over that, the leads will come longer and people more able to stick around on small holds for a long time without worrying. The top part of the Pinnacle on Du'r would be climbed. It wanted the right leader, that was all.

It was a prophetic statement which Joe Brown and others were to fulfill many years later. Before the recent upsurge of tolerance and enlightenment, the bigoted prejudices society held against homosexuality in the thirties must have been a constant source of deep anxiety to Edwards and a major contribution to his agonising decline. Few knew of his social impediment. It became general knowledge with the publication of his biographical study after his death. It was during the Winter of 1931 he rowed a boat from Arisaig to Skye in a storm — the first of his many amazing aquatic exploits. In the Easter of that year he swam through the Linn of the Dee in full spate. The Linn is a narrow gorge through which the River Dee is compressed with considerable force, especially in the Spring, when the winter snow is melting on the Cairngorms. Apart from some bruising he was unhurt. Not long afterwards he spent sixteen hours alone in a collapsible canoe, paddling from the Isle of Man to the Cumberland coast — an incident which was given wide coverage in a local newspaper. In 1935 he persuaded Colin Kirkus to join him in an attempt to row across the Irish Sea — it became an epic as the pair spent many hours battling against heavy seas and a freezing gale before Edwards amitted defeat and returned to Conwy, only to be swamped by a wave under the jetty.

Several months later he hired a fishing smack and left Fraserburgh to sail to Norway — it was to be his most enterprising project to date. He took six weeks' supply of food but was convinced he could do it in three. After sailing through the night his boat was spotted by a Scottish drifter, who went to investigate. It appeared that his boat had a damaged rudder and was made less effective when the drifter ''accidentally" rammed it — Edwards was forced to return to port, much to his disgust. Throughout the towing operation Edwards sat back in his boat and refused to help in any way, suspicious that his friends, worried about the perilous journey, had arranged the fortuitous meeting with the Scottish boat. In January, 1936, he rowed across the Minch to the Isle of Harris. The outward journey took him 28 hours before he reached at a deserted cove — he returned in 24 hours after spending 3 days on the island.

His last recorded marine exploit took place in the summer of 1944 when he hired rowing boat at Skye and crossed to the Isle Rhum, then over to Canna, spending 18 hours at sea in poor visibility, being continuously buffeted by wind and rain. One pre-war holiday found him systematically swimming across every large expanse of water in the Lake District and in the early forties he developed an amazing technique of using strong waves off the Cornish coast to lift him on to a cliff, where-upon he would pick out a line to the top. Three commandos who were watching tried to emulate this feat but were tragically drowned.

Apart from the obvious physical challenge to his exceptional strength, why did he project himself into these situations of extreme danger, forcing himself to endure hardship and acute discomfort in his obsessive compulsion to come to terms with powerful volumes of water? After swimming the Linn of the Dee, he wrote: " I have always been amazed at the strength of water. But what stands out to me, in the Linn, is the sudden strong fragments of feeling in me that answered that terrific command under water." As a psychiatrist, he may well have been his own guinea pig as he subjected his mind and body to the outer limits of fatigue and self-analysis. Edwards rarely made an effort to reach a summit and displayed little liking for Alpine climbing, but his potential as a mountaineer was beyond question. On a rare excursion to Norway in 1937 he spent a week traversing a fjord, carrying all his equipment on his back and at the age of thirty four he made the first solo-traverse of the main Cuillin Ridge, including Blaven and Clach Glas. He had not been over the ridge previous and all he carried in the way of sustenance was a packet of sandwiches supplied by his landlady at Glen Brittle

He set off casually, had breakfast at 08.00 hours and no drinks for 24 hours, spending 12 hours, 30 minutes on the actual ridge, returning over the rough terrain from Garsbheinn to Glen Brittle in the dark. He saw the war as civilisation gone mad and registered, on pacifist grounds, as a conscientious objector. Imposed austerity meant the closing of his child guidance clinic in the Liverpool area where he was consultant psychiatrist, and where he did some of his finest work. It was a body blow to his professional idealism! After a short period as a warden fire-watcher, he retired to North Wales, taking up residence in Hafod Owen, a farm cottage he rented from Colin Kirkus, assuming an almost reclusive existence as he committed his theories to paper. These were grim lonely years for Edwards and it is generally thought that this period was the beginning of the end and the onset of his mental instability.

Colin Kirkus:Wayfarers Club

His brother-in-law, the famous Red Dean of Canterbury, and many friends rallied round, offering help and encouragement when they realized J.M.E.' s low state. With funds short he applied for a study grant which was refused and in the September of 1942, Colin Kirkus, a navigator with the RAF, was lost over Germany. For a time he worked at Tavistock Clinic and Great Ormond Street, both posts of tremendous prestige, but he did not settle. Paranoid tendencies were now deeply entrenched and he became hypercritical of his seniors. Although his mind was impaired, his old power remained and he resurfaced on rare occasions to pioneer several new routes. These include the Central Gully of Clogwyn Y Grochan and a harder variation two years later in 1951, both of very severe standard. The Route of Knobs on Clogwyn Y Ddysgl in 1952, was another in the typical Edwards mould and rated at Hard Very Severe. Incredibly, he graded neither of these routes above Mild Severe, contesting that a climber of his age could not possibly lead above this standard — he was only 42 years old at the time!

On the 26th June, 1957, J.M.E. made his last visit to North Wales, returning to the Devil's Kitchen where he climbed a short crack-line near the final chockstone which he dubbed The Waterfall Route. Eight months later Edwards was dead. After the cremation his ashes were scattered by his sister and brother-in-law on a Welsh hill-side, not far from Hafod Owen and under the craggy shadow of Yr Wyddfa, the tomb.

Hafod Owen. Above which Menlove Edwards' mortal remains were scattered by his sister in 1958

And as we went back home that night following the scratch marks over the rocks and through the heather the evening cleared as it had cleared before and the view was still fair to look upon, golden and with line upon line of hills through the sheen of the air and with the sound of the hills. 

From False Gods (Unfinished) by J.M.E.

*Footnote Edwards documents his adventures during the compilation of the Lliwedd Guide, in Up Against It', published in the Wayfarers' Journal, circa 1939. 

Ken Smith: First Published in Climber and Rambler-September 1983

Scrambles in Yorkshire and further gritstone adventures

November 28, 2015, 2:14 am

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I was waiting at Arthington Junction, near Leeds — a station specially constructed to inculcate the virtue of patience, though it is believed that the complaints of incensed passengers have done much to modify its original useful purpose,when my eye was attracted by a singular clump of timber standing out solitary and conspicuous on a bare hillside. A gentleman in corduroys was near me on the platform, regaling the evening air with his views on railway companies. Of him I inquired the name of those trees. 'Trees! Haw, haw! Why that was Awmescliff Craag.' I was unacquainted with gritstone then, and knew not its little ways. Of course, I had met it walking down the street, with a man behind it bawling out 'Knives and scissors to grind!' and I had no idea that it lived in mills and ground up corn and things; but I had never before encountered it in its wild state on its native heath.

I did not then suspect the facility with which it can simulate the appearance of the bosky grove, nor had I the slightest idea of the amount of sport that Almes Cliff — Great Almias Cliff of maps and guide-books — would someday afford me, or of the quantity of clothes and skin I should leave thereon by way of compensation. Gritstone may popularly be described as a glorified lump of petrified sandstone. This great roughness allows of climbing methods which would be out of the question on almost any other kind of rock. You can take liberties which ordinary rock would resent; and for this reason gritstone is not good  practice for a beginner. In other words if the gritstone climbs were composed of rock of the Borrowdale or Snowdonian series, half of them would not 'go', ie...would be impossible.

On the other hand, gritstone has certain little peculiarities of its own. Without decency or warning the roughness changes to an absolutely smooth bevel, of course entirely to your disadvantage, affording no possibilities for either grip or friction.Or else the rock bulges out unexpectedly and knocks you backwards. Also, when it comes on to rain, the surface is transmuted into a nasty, mossy, greasy slime. Almes Cliff Crags give some of the finest gritstone climbing I know. In appearance they are insignificant, two escarpments of grit, one below the other, and neither more than sixty feet in altitude at the highest point. Sixty feet! What is that? Men who get killed in the Alps do the thing in style and tumble half a mile or so. All very well. Sixty feet is quite sufficient.

Anyone who doubts this has only to step off the coping of his house on to the pavement to be convinced. Happily this danger can only be obviated by sending round a friend with a rope to the top of the cliff to play you up, and this should invariably be done until you have assured yourself by frequent ascents that the climb is well within your powers. I italicize these words, because the cliff is visited by climbers of exceptional skill, and climbing of a somewhat desperate nature is occasionally indulged in.

Onlookers who know nothing of the game may be tempted to follow in their foot and hand holds (if they can find them), and may hurt themselves. One of the best climb on Almes Cliff is the Great Chimney on the High Man. It gives some fifty or sixty feet of straightforward back-and- knee-work.The climber enters the chimney right shoulder first, and with a little difficulty works his way up till his toes are lodged in the lower crack. Then comes the tug of war. The next ten feet are quite holdless and the roughness and angle of the crack something to the climber's disadvantage. The body is firmly braced across the chimney by lateral pressure of the arms, knees and feet, and is then lifted vertically a few inches by a desperate wriggle. This is repeated several times, till the hands can be reached into the upper crack, when it is usual to rest awhile. It is not so easy to get the feet up to that crack as may appear at first sight. Closer inspection will show the (proper) right wall just above it overhangs it considerably.

The finish of the climb, a long a, reach over a rounded edge, is not quite nice in a high wind. Who was the first tailor? I don't mean Adam, with his fig leaves, but the first man who took up tailoring commercially?  Because I'm sure he invented gritstone. It plays the dickens with ones clothes, especially when you back up. Once have I been compelled to depart hurriedly to the nearest village to be, like a newly paid bill,reseated. After my last day's scrambling there I pursued my homeward way with my hands pensively clasped behind my back whenever I sighted anybody. The climbing at Almes Cliff is almost inexhaustible. I could name half a hundred problems right away, and some courses are of first class severity. I know of no harder in climb in England than Parsons' Chimney. I have seen it done once, and attempted it more than once, but, like Mr. OG Jones's  friend, I do not like that 'infernal dangling'.

The Leaf Climb is quite a hard little struggle. The left arm and knee are wedged between the jammed boulder and the containing wall,and the body is levered up until the right knee and arm can be thrown across. Then a comprehensive wriggle brings the top of the stone within reach of the climber's left  hand.

The Leaf can be passed easily on the climber's right, and this course is to be preferred in heavy wind. There is a Stomach Traverse on the famous Pillar Stone in Ennerdale, Cumberland, and there is a Stomach Traverse on Almes Cliff. The Pillar Traverse is not very difficult, quite reasonably safe though in emergency sensational. The difficulty consists in hauling oneself about forty feet along a diagonal crack on the face of the precipice; the safety lies in the fact that it is possible to wedge the left arm and leg so firmly in the crack that it is something of a tussle to get them out; the sensationalism arises from the fact that a considerable portion of your frame is supported by some two thousand odd feet of the thinnest of thin nothingness, with a nice, accommodating, and entirely finishing bump about three hundred feet down to speed you on your short cut to the Liza Valley.

The Almes Cliff Traverse is somewhat different. It is fairly safe — you cannot fall more than 40ft; the sensationalism is to be found — easily — in the realisation that you are quite likely to come off anywhere between the 4ft and the 40ft. And the difficulty! There is no mistake about that. There are two points of attack curiously resembling each other, yet differing as far as the right from the left. The right shoulder attack :The right arm first, and afterwards the knee, are wedged in a crack, and the body is then forced upwards by desperate wrigglings aided by wild scrapings with the left foot (clearly shown by the white scratches) until both hands can be reached to the top of a ledge to the left of the climber. The left shoulder attack is very similar, except that the arm has to be braced, elbow and palm and rather less vigour and a great deal more delicate balance are required. On the ledge the climber generally lies on his 'tummy'

This position, however, is not the origin of the name of the climb. The next move is to traverse laterally and upwards across the face of the cliff, with the fingers in one horizontal crack and the toes in another. This would be comparatively easy were it not that the rock between the cracks bulges out like a typical alderman's corporation. The balance in places is nice enough, even for a thin man. Whence the name of the climb. The bouldering at Almes cliff is second to none. Ilkley would be another happy hunting ground were it not that it is more frequented than the Almes Cliff district. There are one or two good things on the Cow and the Calf, but the best of the scrambling is in the Valley of Rocks. The Split Rocks Climb is not easy in itself, and is specially valuable as instructive in the art of feeling at ease on a dangerous face. The Crooked Crack is one of the stiffest little bits in broad Yorkshire; and there are many others. Gritstone climbing is not mountaineering of course.

Nevertheless, much can be learnt. Balance, backing up, something of the management of the rope something of the art of climbing with the least possible fatigue, and all sorts of little things that go to make the complete climber.

CE Benson: First Published in Fry's Outdoor Magazine-1906

 

Rough Bounds: Running the Wainwrights.....

December 4, 2015, 6:32 am

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Chris Bland points the way from Greatrigg Man-Fairfield.Original photo R Douglas

 

At 18 minutes to 4 on the morning of Saturday July 4 1981, Chris Bland and a couple of companions trotted through the darkness up to the gates of Lorton church and stopped for a breather.It was the end of one of the most remarkable fell runs ever accomplished, a pounding, punishing, week-long slog all over the Lake District, the equivalent of a double-marathon a day for seven consecutive days, only harder than that because Chris was running on the roughest and steepest ground in England. It was typical of the man — and of the sport — that no fuss was made. Chris went home to bed for a few hours. The local papers gave a few column inches to the run. The national papers and other media made no mention at all. They devoted their sports space to the antics of a young American athlete who had spent the week shouting abuse at the Wimbledon officials. Chris Bland's aim was to 'run Wainwright', to see how quickly he could attain every summit mentioned in Alfred Wainwright's Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells. There are more than 200 such summits and the distances between them add up to 337 miles and involve more than 110,000 feet of ascent.

The ground-rules were simple. He would try to knock them off at the rate of one area, one guidebook, a day. Since there are seven guidebooks, it would clearly be neater, and a bit more of a challenge, to do them on consecutive days, so that the whole Wainwright round might be completed in one week. Then he added one further complication. Chris is a churchwarden of Borrowdale church and the church badly needed re-roofing. So Chris was persuaded to make it a sponsored run, all proceeds to go towards a new church roof, and in acknowledgement of this he decided to start each day's run at a valley church and end the day at another. In the best tradition of modern adventure sport, he set himself an outrageously difficult target, then went to a lot of trouble to make it as easy as he could. The routes for each day were worked out carefully. The help of friends and fellow fell-runners was enlisted. They had to make themselves familiar with certain routes or sections of routes. It would be their job to lead the way, to keep Chris going and cheerful, and to carry all the gear.

Chris would travel light, carrying nothing but himself. If the weather was hot, he would run in shorts and a sweat shirt. In the event it was a cool dampish week and he was mostly in his track suit. On his feet he wore a battered pair of running shoes. He aimed to average 3-4 miles an hour, moving in spells of three hours or so, then resting for 20-25 minutes. Each night he would be driven home for a few hours sleep in his own bed in the house he built himself at Stonethwaite in Borrowdale. He did not sleep a wink the night before the big run - he was too nervous, he says. Too afraid of disappointing all the expectations he had raised. He was up before 3 and at 4 minutes to 4 on the morning of Saturday, June 27, he set off from Matterdale church with Chris Dodd. Half an hour later they were on the first summit, Great Mell Fell. The game, as Sherlock Holmes would have said, was afoot.

All went well the first day. All 35 summits in Wainwright's Eastern Fells, including Helvellyn, were visited in a round of 55 miles and over 17,000 feet of up and down. Just before 8.30 p.m. the two Chris's —Chris Dodd was with him all the way —reached Threlkeld church. It had been a 16+ -hour day with four stops for rest and food. Day Two was very different. Judging by the statistics, the Far Eastern Fells should have been rather easier — not quite so far, not quite so much ascent as the day before. Chris got another early start, at 4.35 a.m, but 12 hours later he was struggling. 'I got into the wrong state of mind' he says, wasn't enjoying myself. I kept thinking of the five days still to go. I couldn't see how I could keep going that long'. When the week was over and he had kept going, he came to the conclusion that his big mistake on the second day out was not eating enough: `When you're burning up energy at that rate you have to keep shovelling the fuel in. I soon got sick of chocolate and that sort of stuff but found I'd a great appetite for tins of macaroni pudding and fruit salad.

After the second day I ate tremendously. But on the second day I didn't and I ran out of steam. If I'd rested another half hour and had a couple more tins of food, I'm sure I'd have been able to complete the course' . Instead, he called it a day just before 6 p.m, leaving nine summits un-visited.Psychologically, this was the crunch moment of the week. He was feeling low, disappointed with himself. There was no way now he could hope to do all the Wainwrights in the week. But he decided to press on and do as much as he could. Next day, luckily, was the easiest of the week, southwards along the Central Fells between Borrowdale and Thirlmere, on to the Langdale Pikes, then down the declining ridge to Rydal, a matter of 41 miles and a mere 12,000 feet of ascent. It was done in 13+hours and Chris recovered his spirits. Day 4, by contrast, was to be the most challenging.Wainwright included in his Southern Fells the biggest area of all and the highest mountains, from Coniston Old Man in the south, by way of Bowfell and Glaramara and many intermediate high-points, then west to the highest hills in England, Scafell Pike and Scafell — more than 60 miles altogether and well over 20,000 vertical feet, for most of the way on steep and broken ground.

The Coniston Fells. Painting-Delmar Harmood-Banner

And on the appointed day, June 30, a thick blanket of dank mist covered all the ground above 1,800 feet, turning route-finding into a nightmare task, making it dangerous to move at any speed. Pete Parkins was his companion all that day. They ran into mist on Wetherlam and soon realised they would have to abandon the bigger mountains further south, including Coniston Old Man. They turned north hoping the mist would clear, but there was no wind stirring and by the time they gained the summit of Great End in the late afternoon it was plain that any attempt to reach all the remaining tops would take them far into the night. In the interests of safety and sanity, Chris decided to lose the Scafells and the summits further west and drop down instead by way of Glaramara to his home church in Borrowdale.

It meant more summits missed from the Wainwright canon, in terms of distance and height gained only half the day's programme accomplished. Even so they had been on the go for nearly 13 hours. The next two days were plain sailing. The Northern fells, just under 50 miles, were knocked off in 14+ hours. Then the North-Western Fells, nearly 47 miles and 15,000 feet, took just under 16 hours.

God rested from his labours on the seventh day but there was no such relief for Chris Bland. The last day was also the hardest, more than 50 miles and more than 21,000 feet of ascent. At 7.55 a.m. on Friday, July 3, he left Ennerdale to climb a little-known mountain called Grike. By mid-day he was looking down on Wastwater from the summit of Buckbarrow, the southernmost of the Western Fells. From there the route swung east-wards to take in the big hills of the Mosedale Horseshoe via Scoat Fell, Steeple and Pillar. By mid-afternoon he and his guides were on the stony summit of Great Gable. By early evening they were high above the lake of Buttermere, with the long humpy ridge stretching before them to the north-west and the setting sun. It was dusk when they left Red Pike.

His companions for the final miles were Pete Parkins and John Bulman and they escorted him carefully through the darkness along the smaller summits at the end of the ridge, across the road at Loweswater, up Low Fell and Fellbarrow, then down to the last valley to reach Lorton church with just 14 minutes to spare before the week was up. In those seven days Chris Bland had a climbed 192 mountains, run 310 miles, ascended and descended the equivalent of 99,000 vertical feet — well over three times the height of Mount Everest. And even though the last day was the longest, he found himself going as well on the final slopes as he had on the first. In fact, he found he got stronger as the strenuous days passed. He got heavier too, consuming so much macaroni pudding and other tins of sustaining stodge that he put on three pounds during the week.

On the last couple of days he felt a little soreness behind one knee and a touch of strain inside one thigh but they were not serious and nothing else went wrong. Throughout the whole of his massive marathon, moving at speed over broken ground that was often steep and often slimy, he never slipped and does not remember ever even stumbling. When he a got home each night he had a long soak in a hot bath, ate a big hot meal, then slept for four hours or so. He is not normally good atgetting up in the mornings but he had no difficulty that week. Two thing about it give him special pleasure. The first is that it earned him a word though not much more — of praise from his sternest critic, his father.

The other is that all the complicated arrangements for meeting guides and cars, picking up food and flasks, worked perfectly. Everyone and everything was there on time and a lot of people turned up to give extra unscheduled support. When you talk to him about the run, Chris spends most of the time saying how marvellous all his helpers were, how he could not have done it without them, how that should be emphasised rather than anything he did himself. He was driven home on the Saturday morning and slept for a couple of hours. Then he got up to go to Keswick to watch his daughter taking part in a dancing display.

He raised something between £4,000 and £5,000 by his run but not a penny for himself. He did not seek publicity. And when it was all over his only words of criticism were levelled at himself, that he failed on the second day because he ran out of determination. He is not a natural athlete, 40 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall, a compact 11-1/2 stone. He took to fell-running some 7 years ago when he found himself sadly out of condition, nearly 14 stone and soon breathless. The sport was just beginning to be popular in the valley so he and his younger brother Anthony and their cousins, Stuart, Billy and David, all had a go. The other four quickly showed great talent — Billy became the British champion — but Chris found that he always came in, as he still does, well down the field. He was fast enough uphill but could not hurl himself down steep slopes with the kind of controlled abandon you need if you are to finish among the leaders.

He carried on fell-running because he enjoyed it, he liked the easy camaraderie of the sport, and it felt good to be fit again. And he gradually realised that what he lacked in speed and agility, he made up for in physical stamina and — more important — in mental powers of concentration and determination which enabled him to go on and on and on again when most men, even the hardest of them, would rather lie down quietly somewhere and die.

He does not give the impression of a man with any compelling hang-ups. There does not seem to be anything particular he feels he has to prove. But he has these qualities, especially, as he cheerfully agrees, this kind of extreme 'bloody-mindedness' and he likes to exercise them. Is he going to have another go at the Wainwright round? `No', he says firmly, 'I'll find something else to try. I've set up a target for better men to beat and my great hope is that the idea catches on and that others come along and do better than me. They can try to beat my times for the five days when I completed the round, or they can try to do the whole lot in the week and see if they can include the tops I missed. I'll be glad to help anyone who wants to have a go' . You get the feeling that Chris Bland is not altogether sorry that he did not succeed completely, that he left room for others to overtake him.

Alan Hankinson: First published in Climber and Rambler: December 1981 

 

The First Ascent of Napes Needle

December 11, 2015, 5:16 am

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Just about ten years ago there died far from the hills, in distant Dorset, a lonely old man whose name will be revered in Lakeland and in many places scattered about the world so long as men come to climb the rocks and walk the mountains. His name was Walter Parry Haskett-Smith, and when he died, far from his friends, he was eighty-five years old. He was the 'father' of British rock climbing, the pioneer of the very earliest routes on half a dozen different Lakeland crags, and the man who first discovered and climbed Napes Needle. Haskett-Smith first saw the Needle- a graceful pinnacle among the Napes Ridges on the Wasdale face of Great Gable- on a windy, cloudy day in the early 1880s. He has written: 'The outermost curtain of mist seemed to be drawn aside, and one of the fitful gleams of sunshine fell on a slender pinnacle of rock standing out against the background of cloud, without a sign of any other rock near it and appearing to shoot up for about 200 to 300 feet.'

At that time nobody had ever examined the Napes Ridges — the steep slopes of scree below them had kept explorers away and given the impression that the whole crag was dangerously rotten.

But Haskett-Smith, the young Oxford graduate and barrister,decided to track down the slender spire and climb it if possible. At his first attempt he failed to locate it, but at the second he found it but left its conquest to another day. Some years later he was exploring on the mountain quite alone and decided to work his way down from the summit to the ridge, now known as Needle Ridge, up which he had climbed two years before. He had with him a long fell pole, which gave him some trouble by continually dropping and jamming in cracks and crevices, but eventually he got down to the gap behind the Needle and decided, as climbers say, to 'have a look at it'. There was nobody about on the mountain to help if he was to fall, and there were no mountain rescue teams in those distant days, but without hesitation the young man began to work his way up the tall spire, which seems to hang over Styhead.

At first he used for his fingers and toes, a crack, which in those days was blocked with stones and moss, and eventually he reached what is called the shoulder of the Needle and here he could study the final problem. The summit of the Needle really consists of two tremendous blocks, one perched on top of the other, but the young man had no real means of knowing whether the top block was secure or whether, if pulled on, it would overbalance and crash with its victim to the screen 100 feet below. Today, of course, we all know it is safe, and if three climbers balance on one side it can be gently rocked, but on this day seventy years ago only two or three people had even seen the Needle and nobody had climbed it.

The young man was also anxious to know whether the summit of the top block was reasonably flat so that he could perch on it, in the event of his getting there. But, even more important, he thought that a flat top would mean that the edges of the top block would not be rounded and so would give him a good grip for his fingers. He therefore cast about for two or three flat stones and threw these up in turn, hoping that one would stay on top. At last one did so and he started up, 'feeling as small as a mouse climbing a millstone'.

 He balanced himself up onto the Mantelshelf, with the steep drop on his right, shuffled along a horizontal crack, sidled round a comer, up the face on small holds and then, reaching up for the top, clambered up to the summit and sat down on his tiny, airy perch.

The summit of the Needle is a sloping oblong, only a few feet across, and when you are sitting or standing up there it is easy to imagine yourself very high above the world and almost sitting out in space. This sort of perch is common enough in the Alps but very rare in Lakeland, and there is nothing quite like the Needle anywhere else in the British Isles. People have stood on their heads on top of the Needle, lit fires up there, shaved and done a hundred and one other strange things, but Haskett-Smith just sat down, admired the view —and wondered how on earth he was going to get down. Before he began lowering himself down, he left his handkerchief jammed in a crevice for all to see, and it must have been something of a relief and a moment of pride to get down the top block safely and be able to look up at the bit of linen fluttering in the breeze.

Since those days the Needle has been climbed thousands of times by seven or eight different routes, it is photographed dozens of times eve, week during the summer, and its shape is known in many parts of the world. Small boys and girls have been hauled up it in fine weather, stunt climbs and record attempts have been made on it. It has been filmed and televised, painted and sketched, but the Needle — although nowadays regarded as a comparatively easy route — is still a climb of character and a remarkable memorial to a very great man. On the fiftieth anniversary of his first ascent of the Napes Needle, Hackett-Smith, then a man of seventy-four, went up again, roped between Lord Chorley and the late Mr G.R. Speaker. Many hundreds of people, sitting and standing on the rocks around, watched the slow, careful ascent on Easter Sunday 1936, and when the old man clambered onto the top of the most famous bit of rock in English climbing the crowd below him gave a cheer.

Hackett-Smith had a reputation of never being at a loss for words, and his gift for repartee did not fail him even on this particularly important occasion. 'Tell us a story,' shouted someone from the crowds below, and the old man seated on the spire a hundred feet above their heads replied, in a flash: 'There is no other story. This is the top storey.' This fine mountaineer had climbed in the Alps, Norway, the Pyrenees, North Africa, the Balkans, the Rockies and the Andes, but it was on Lake District climbing that he left his most permanent mark.

He was a man of strong personality a brilliant speaker and a man of wide reading and culture, but often eccentric in his habits and dress.At formal evening functions he would often appear, without the slightest embarrassment in the most careless array, while for outside excursions he would turn out, on the hottest days, in a long, heavy, check tailcoat fitted with huge outside pockets. Nobody can be claimed as the 'inventor' of British rock climbing, but this tattered Old Etonian, with his ragged moustache and a glint in his eye, probably came nearer than anybody else.

Men of his individuality are not so often seen today, and I often regret that I never met him. He was little seen in the Lake District after the first world war and some of the modern generation of young rock climbers have perhaps never heard of him. But his name will be kept green by the little climbed gully named after him, a couple of slim books on climbing, a few articles and Napes Needle. In a way the finest memorial that anyone could have.

AH Griffin: First Published in the Lancashire Evening Post.February 1956.

 

Christmas Hibernation.

December 21, 2015, 3:32 am

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Original Painting by Bill Wynn

 

Footless Crow is flying off for a couple of weeks and will be back in the early new year with three new and previously unpublished articles. As I write from Crow Towers here in North Wales, the weather is really atrocious! I don't know if it's global warming but for most of the last 7 or 8 weeks it has been depressingly grey, warm, windy and WET!

Not subscribing myself to the theory attributed to AW Wainwright that 'there is no such thing as bad weather-just bad clothing' -funny that I've never seen photographs of Wainwright trodding the fells in waterproofs!-the mountains have blurred into memory. Hidden behind rain cloud and swept by gales. You still see the hardy lycra clad road bikers out on the A5; head down, pedalling like fury into the eye of 50mph westerlies but personally, that looks as much fun as being castrated while ground glass is poured into your eyes!

There are still a few months of winter left however, and who knows....we might...just might, see some traditional winter weather before spring arrives with the daffodils in Wales. 

Seasonal greetings and thanks everyone for your support and good wishes.

John

How History is Made

January 2, 2016, 4:28 am

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Every year the world's greatest climbers and mountaineers push the boundaries of what can be achieved further and further. There are no cheering fans or stadiums in which these adventurers demonstrate their craft. They toil alone, on the wall, far from the world's gaze.

Over the years, the way in which these feats have been recorded has gone from letters and journals to today's brand sponsored video and GoPro enthusiasts. As with many developments driven by technology and commerce it has resulted in a change of tone and perspective on what is being captured and recorded. A change that can't be attributed to the passing of time alone.

It is said that 'History is written by the victors'. However, as Hollywood has demonstrated with its portrayal of historic events, such as World War 2, history is also written by those that choose to present a version of events rather than simply those that document what has happened.

That's why I started the BoxMonkey project. Box- like TV, Monkey- like climbing. I was concerned that climbing and mountaineering was experiencing its own Hollywood moment. The money being invested portrayed American- or specifically- Californian climbing culture and the ascents of note were narrowed by the climbers photogenic enough to be sponsored by the bigger brands. That's not to say British names, British climbing culture and British filmmaking doesn't often stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these films.

Of course it does; but does the world hear that British voice and can we be complacent? Our climbing heritage is rich and varies from the old mining communities of North Wales to the working men of Sheffield who first ventured out onto Gritstone. Times change, of course, but as times change people, or shall we say the majority, can become completely detached from the roots. BoxMonkey is meant to provide these roots in an accessible and modern form.

There is also another consequence of globalisation and commerce that this project attempts to counterbalance. I was speaking to a leading climber in the GB team recently. They told me that a number of the brand sponsors had had a 'clear out' of the climbers and mountaineers that they sponsored. Being a first class athlete or visionary adventurer wasn't enough. You had to demonstrate mastery of online services like Twitter and Instagram. Climbers with big online followings were considered valuable and those that had failed to cultivate this persona were considered expendable or without value. A meritocracy, yes, but a meritocracy based upon criteria that prioritises marketability over achievement.

Ironically, it is this marketability that creates value and that value is passed onto the climber and enables them to go on trips and make history. Adventurers have, of course, always needed money or support from somewhere; but the motivation for this support has changed. In the UK,on TV, we have an institution that counterbalances these market forces. It's called the BBC. I'd like to think that the BoxMonkey project acts in the same capacity in a similar scenario. Indeed, the British Mountaineering Council recognised as much when they recently featured the project......BMC/Get on the Box Monkey

 

In closing, I want share one of my recent and favourite short films. It's one that readers of this blogazine might particularly enjoy. Its a film by James Robinson and George Sewell and retraces the steps of an account from Fell and Rock Journal first published in 1916. It's believed this may be the fist 'bouldering guide' ever written. The video - which is shot in a black and white silent movie style - is interspersed with statements from the 1916 article. We watch as a group of modern day climbers dressed in tweed and leather boots attempt the routes featured in them article. It's a whimsical account of what climbing trips were like almost 100 years ago. What makes it all the more special, is the way in which it uses modern form to bring the past to life. You can find the film at www.BoxMonkey.tvor on Vimeo directly from James Robinson and George Sewell.

You can find and contribute at BoxMonkey

Alex Street:2016

Hole in the Mind

January 9, 2016, 3:58 am

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The saddle above Craig Ysfa between Pen yr Helgi Du and Carnedd Llewelyn. The descent path to the Ogwen Valley begins on the lower central section of ridge

F. A. Pullinger,* was precise in not revealing the authors, titles or the names of the dead in his notes of 'references - not wholly accurate -' made in two books to the tragic accident by Ffynnon Llugwy on November 20^th1927, in which two young climbers lost their lives. As Editor he desired to put on record the action of the Climbers' Club on that occasion, until then held by the Committee as confidential. A sub-committee was appointed and a 'weighty report' established of full facts with certain conclusions drawn and acting upon these the resignation of an unnamed member was accepted.

Mr. Pullinger considered the following paragraph of the report retained its general value:-

“It cannot in our opinion be too strongly emphasised, more especially in view of the number of inexperienced parties who now undertake mountaineering expeditions which involve risks, that the bonds uniting the members of a climbing party involves a mutual responsibility which is only terminated in death, by the safe outcome of the expedition, or by a voluntary and equal agreement to separate where no risk is in question. This is an obligation which rests on every member of the expedition, leader and led alike. In moments of dilemma or crisis the leader – or whichever of the party may have been selected by circumstances to succeed to his responsibilities – may be called upon to exercise a difficult discrimination, and, in the event of accident or mischance, to decide upon the orderin which he shall fulfil his obligation to the several members of his party. He may, for instance, climbing with A and B, be forced to decide whether he will remain with B who is injured, or help first to get A out of danger. But his duty to A and B alike remains the same.

“Directly his duty to A is discharged – so far as may be essential for A's safety at the moment, and therefore, for a reasonable probability that A will dispatch ultimate succour – he is bound to make B his only thought; and, at any risk to his own safety or risk or survival, it is his duty, and the duty of any other member of the party still able to act, to return to B, and to share his situation until either life be extinct, or until the home-coming of every member of his original party, injured or capable, is ensured.”

Llyn Fynnon Llugwy: Mark Hughes

Thomas Firbank's book 'I Bought a Mountain', published in 1940 gives a version of the tragedy of 20^thNovember 1927 when Norman Stott and Arthur Taylor died near Llyn Ffynnon Llugwy. They had climbed the Great Gully, Craig yr Ysfa with Francis Giveen and William Tayleur.

 

He begins, 'There are many climbing accidents, of course, but nearly all of them provide those involved with opportunities to show great courage and devotion.' Not the words attributed to Francis Giveen and William Tayleur, rather the conduct of them as survivors that deserved his strongest criticism.

He describes the weather as rough, a wet day, and how Giveen, 'a very fine climber' and leader of the other three novices were all at Helyg, the Climbers' Club Hut. All 'no doubt' were quite wet and cold before they reached the foot of the climb, two hours away over the Carnedds. The weather so delayed the inexperienced men to the top of the climb it was achieved by lantern light at seven that evening, led by Giveen.

'Soaked to the skin, half-frozen with cold, tired out, and faint with hunger' the long journey back to Helyg via Bwlch Eryl Frachog was hindered when Tayleur dropped the compass, which was lost. They struggled on and the lantern then gave out and in the darkness, Stott and Taylor 'blundered' into the lake. Stott scrambled into the water, rescued his companion and both collapsed on the shore.

Firbank suggested that previous to the disaster, Tayleur had been the 'most distressed, not being so physically strong as the others' and it was this that led Giveen to hurry him to shelter and to leave Stott and Taylor where they had collapsed, near the lake, where he dragged them behind a wind-break for shelter. Giveen and Tayleur then took four hours to reach the hut, where they ate then got the car out and drove to a hotel five miles away. A party was organised at once but the croaking of the ravens led them to the frozen bodies of Stott and Taylor. The rescuers recalled finding the bodies lying face down in a bog, their equipment still on their backs with Taylor smothered by peaty mud.

This is Firbank version of Giveen's evidence at the inquest but the story extends to Stott's father, who showed little sympathy to Giveen. He insisted how mad it had been to take three novices up so severe a climb in such weather. His criticisms became more pointed as he persuaded some friends to visit the scene where they found Taylor's watch, stopped at 6-40. In a letter to the newspapers Mr. Stott asked Giveen to explain what he had done in the twelve hours between the accident and him arriving at the hotel with Tayleur. According to Firbank there were 'ugly' rumours locally and when questioned Tayleur admitted he had not been exhausted, and Giveen solicitude had been misplaced.

Firbank surmised Giveen had anxiously persuaded Tayleur to hurry off the mountainside with him. Mr. Stott senior had stages of the route timed with Helyg from the top of the climb at two hours. Apparently Giveen and Tayleur had arrived at Helyg at 9.0 p.m., had a meal and slept until the morning. Farms close to the hut were ignored and when they arrived at the hotel they had breakfast before reporting the accident with no urgency. Firbank ends his retelling of the incident with members of the Climbers' Club hearing of the incident and threatening to resign unless Giveen was expelled. The enquiry held by the Club was disturbed before a final verdict reached was disturbed by Giveen as he marched in, resigned, laughed and cursed as he left. Giveen was considered to have been insane on the night of the accident.

'Over Welsh Hills', written by Frank Smythe, published 1941 devoted 4 pages to the incident. He described the Great Gully, Craig yr Ysfa and regarded its length and difficulty indirectly responsible for the worst 'catastrophe' that had befallen British mountaineering. Giveen is detailed the more experienced rock climber and only by his good leadership did they reach the top of the climb. The descent is as that of Firbank; the loss of the compass, the fall into the lake of Stott and Taylor. Stott who scrambled out then then bravely dived back to rescue Taylor, who was no swimmer. An effort that so exhausted the two that they collapsed face downwards on the boggy shore of the lake.

 

Smythe heaped the pressure on Giveen with a situation, not merely unpleasant before, that suddenly had become dangerous. He was of the opinion that Giveen should have saved the party by taking one of two courses that were open to him. He could have either got the two exhausted men to a dry and sheltered spot, given them all the clothing he could spare, restored their circulation as best he could or leave Tayleur to tend them and then race for the nearest farm, close to Helyg, half an hour or forty minutes from the lake. The other was to remain himself with Stott and Taylor and send Tayleur for help. Smythe was of the opinion that the former option was the best as Giveen knew the countryside better than Tayleur, who was tired and might be slow in summoning assistance.

Ogwen Valley

'What in fact did he do?' asked Smythe and described rather how Giveen did not follow his advice and he left Stott and Taylor where they had fallen, journeyed to Helyg and had a meal. They slept and on wakening realised their companions had not arrived and decided that something had to be done! Why had they not roused the neighbouringfarmers? Instead they motored to an hotel several miles distant to seek help arriving there twelve hours after Stott and Taylor had fallen exhausted. The rescue party was immediately organised but arrived to find Stott and Taylor dead.

Smythe retold Giveen's 'different' account at the inquest and that he done everything possible for his companions and had only accompanied Tayleur because of the latter’s exhaustion. Arriving at Helyg he had set out immediately for help and a 'colourless' verdict was passed and indeed sympathy was expressed for Giveen. The anguish of Mr. Stott was retold with emphasis on the twelve hour delay from the time the watch stopped to the time of the summoning of help. Smythe prognosed insanity on behalf of Giveen and that Tayleur, a novice was overawed and overruled by his leader.

Although to some he thought it unnecessary to have included this tragic and unsavoury story he did so because 'in days when mountaineering and rock climbing are rapidly increasing in popularity among all classes and types of persons it cannot be too often stated that a sense of responsibility is, and must always be, the underlying note in mountaineering, the responsibility of the leader in the selection of a climb and the method in which it is carried out and the responsibility of each member of a party towards his companions. The sense of responsibility more than anything else promotes good comradeship and sound mountaineering.'

The accounts of the accident by Firbank and Smythe coincide but can be challenged. The party of four were not all at Helyg, rather Giveen and Tayleur stayed there from the 23^rdOctober. Perhaps Stott and Taylor were at The Oakwoood Park Hotel, Sychnant Pass, Conwy, owned by Stott's father.

The Climbers' Club, then, as now, did and do not consider novicesas members, Messrs. Giveen, Stott and Taylor were officialmembers, and Mr. Tayleur's membership application was in the hands of the secretary of the Club.

At the inquest it was noted that they summited the climb at approximately 7.00 pm of the 20^thNovember and thus the two men must have fallen into Llyn Ffynnon Llugwy some time after this. The watch, found stopped with the hands at 6-40 could have stopped either on the ascent of the climb or on the morning of the attempted rescue and probably played no part in the 'twelve hour delay' accusation. The time of 9 'o' clock for the descent from the top of the climb to the hut, as described by Firbank, paid no attention to the loss of the compass, the lantern that expired, the incident at the lake and the aid given to the two men before the descent to Helyg. The weather, 'wet and windy' was far more wintry in conditions with sleet and snow, an icy, ferocious wind and very low temperatures the order of the night.

 Helyg

The editor of the Climbers' Club Journal in 1943, Mr. Pullinger wrote only of two books but a third, probably 'not wholly accurate' exists, a novel entitled Bride to the Mountain (pub 1940) by Thomas Firbank, written shortly after the success of I Bought a Mountain, which draws heavily on the same experiences, largely based on the actual 1927 case with a description of a similar climb and tragic ending.

 * Editor of the The Climbers' Club Journal, 1943, Vol. VII. No.2, New Series, sixty-ninth issue, page 94 

Mark Hughes: 2016 

 

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Sandbagged

January 15, 2016, 4:41 am

≫ Next: 'Christ you know it ain't easy': Climbing 'The Rock'

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Southern Sandstone

A personal memoir and some history

Harrison's classic 'Slimfinger Crack':Photo Gordon Stainforth

SANDBAGGED

‘The rendezvous of fools, buffoons and praters, cuckolds, whores, citizens, their wives and daughters’. Edmund Waller, a poet who expressed his opinion about those visiting High Rocks in 1645.

On the night of 15^thOctober 1987, I was in Maidstone giving a lecture to the local climbing club. At the end of which, around 10pm I moved out of the lecture venue, and joined some of the attendees in the adjacent bar of a local pub. As I did so I noticed that a strong wind had developed, and that some detritus was being blown around the yard we crossed. When I emerged an hour later and started to walk to my car, parked out in a road nearby, it was like being in a storm on the Cairngorm plateau. But with small bushes and tree branches hurtling westwards driven by the strongest wind I have experienced in an urban area. After being hit by a fairly substantial tree branch, I realised this was serious, and that to try to drive to Groombridge, where I had intended to stay with Terry Tullis the Warden of Harrison’s Rocks, might be suicidal.

Battling against this maelstrom I ran back into the bar I had recently vacated, to join some other drinkers as frightened as I was by the unbelievable conditions on the outside. And there we stayed all night, sitting in chairs, listening to intermittent news broadcasts on the radio, for the TV was down. We learnt that the wind nearby had reached 115mph, and even in central London gusts were being experienced of 94mph. Although the hostelry I had sheltered in was substantial, the building creaked and groaned as each blast screamed by.

This was the great storm of 1987, the one that Michael Fish had got so wrong earlier that evening on the BBC’s main weather forecast, when a worried viewer had phoned in enquiring if a hurricane was on its way, and she was assured by him ‘that it was not!’. It actually was an extra tropical cyclone we experienced that night in South East England, where 15 million trees blew down and 18 people died in just a few hours. The wreckage blocked roads and railways, and damaged many houses and buildings with the total cost of the storm amounting to billions of pounds.

On re-gaining my vehicle the next morning, the storm having totally abated I was relieved to find it had survived its battering with just a few indentations, but on driving on to Groombridge and Terry’s bungalow set outside that village in the grounds of a country estate I was to find he had not been so lucky. A huge tree had fallen onto the side of his dwelling, badly damaging his motor car, and trapping him inside his house. He had needed to climb out of a back window, which had required quite some contortions on his behalf. At Harrrison’s Rocks, on the twenty minute walk in through the Birchden Woods, huge swathes of the forest were down. Surprisingly some areas were totally intact, whilst in some others it was just as if some giant hand armed with a huge axe had cut through a passage many yards wide. But actually at the Rocks the damage was not so bad, something that Terry as the Warden and I as a member of its Management Committee was, relieved to discover.

This news that we had found that Harrison’s despite such a catastrophic- event was still reasonably accessible for climbing might not be historically interesting to Northern climbers, but these Rocks are probably the most popular outcrop in the UK. When I was at the BMC in the 1980’s we did a survey of use and found that on many summer weekends over 500 climbers visited the site. And ignorance of just how good the climbing can be on the southern sandstone outcrops, often clouds opinion in other parts of the UK as to their worth.

Pete Robbins, one of today’s leading rock climbers, after being persuaded to visit High Rocks almost against his better judgement, came away declaring that ‘this is one of the best crags in Britain’. And it is not just the climbing that is good, often the setting of outcrops such as Eridge Green and Bowles besides Harrison’s in their woodland sites are memorable. The list of outstanding climbers who were inspired into the sport or were regular visitors at these venues is also impressive; Nea Morin, Eric Shipton, Menlove Edwards, Chris Bonington, Martin Boysen, Julie Tullis, The Holliwells (Les and Lawrie), The Wintringhams(Ben and Marion), Mick Fowler and so many more.

My own first visit to the southern sandstone occurred in the winter of 1959, I had met and climbed that summer in Wales, at Almscliff and in the Peak District with Phil Gordon and Martin Boysen, two of the area’s leading performers at that date, and both members of The Sandstone Club. This led on to me being invited as guest to their annual dinner at the High Rocks Inn and to bolster my appearance I had enlisted Vin Betts and Ron Cummaford, fellow Rock and Ice members to travel south with me. We stayed at the club’s hut (formerly a tea house) in the grounds of the High Rocks, and on the Saturday drove across to Harrison’s. I climbed with Martin, and initially found the idea of top roping, which was the norm, rather off putting, but after a momentous struggle on a route called Niblick I realised that not only were the climbs hard, but that the rock was much different, and more friable than the gritstone I was used to. It was on this climb that I was initiated into the ‘Harrison’s move’. Pull on a side hold with one hand, press down on a hold with the other and rock up high on one foot.

Still not realising how hard some of the routes were I set off solo, up the famous Slim Finger Crack. This is climbed by a layback followed by a rock over high onto a sloping, rounded ledge out on the right side ofthe fissure. This was covered in loose sand and I nearly slid off because of this, and after such a heart stopping moment I was happy to only top rope from thereon. The climbs on southern sandstone are what we call ‘knack’ routes on gritstone; on many of them you need to get the move and hold sequences right, and local knowledge can make the difference to a successful ascent or not. I was to find this out later that afternoon when I was talked by a ground crew up both the Unclimbed Wall and Edwards’ Effort.

It was like playing a musical instrument under instruction, and though the climbs are short, 30ft to 40ft maximum, they are unusually sustained.

The Sandstone Club were the leading pioneers of the area during the 1950’s and early 1960’s and they were responsible for some of the outstanding new routes which were climbed at that time. Routes like Coronation Crack (5c), the Lobster(6a) and Advertisement Wall Direct (5c) at High Rocks and The Banana (5b) at Bowles. I was pleased to get to know them on this first visit, and later several members such as Julie and Terry Tullis, Billy Maxwell, Paul Smoker, Doug Stone, Barney Lewis and Mike Davies became good friends of mine. I was eventually to be made an honorary member of the Sandstone Club.

The hut we stayed in at High Rocks was I guess typical of a climber’s howff of that period, it was rudimentary but it bred a close camaraderie amongst its denizens, and there was a large turn-out of members at the annual dinner on the Saturday night. The club had good relations with the staff and landlord at the Inn, and the evening was typical of such climbing club events of that era. After dinner, some witty speeches were followed by a music session, provided by Paul Smoker at the piano, playing and singing from his own repertoire of climbing themed ballads, and then a ‘games’ session. This is where my two Rock and Ice companions came in, for Vin Betts was our outstanding limbo dancer, and Ron Cummaford a master at wall squatting.

Unconquered Wall:Gordon Stainforth

Our southern friends had no answer to their skills at these pastimes (Vin could dance under a rope held only 18 inches above the ground), but they outshone us at diving over chairs. These were wooden ones with high backs, and after three in line only Billy Maxwell was left to continue taking part. This not only took great athletic skill but it was obviously dangerous, with fractured ribs almost certain if you failed to clear the obstacles.

 

It is hard to describe the High Rocks area exactly, for climbing there is almost like being in a cultivated park. After King James the second visited the area in the 17^thcentury it became a woodland resort, and a tourist attraction which offered a maze, a bowling-green, gambling rooms, tea houses, and cold baths! An aerial walk with a series of bridges linking across the top of the crags was built in the 19^thCentury, but it was to be the Sandstone Club members who really opened up the Rocks to climbing, for in the 1950s and the early 1960’s led by Max Smart, Dave Fagan, Paul and John Smoker, Billy Maxwell and Martin Boysen almost 70 new routes were pioneered there. When we visited in 1959 the last great problem was the Lobster, which had never been led. This starts by climbing up a fissure to a steep headwall, replete with a deep pocket. Vin Betts nearly managed to solo this, but fell reaching for the top of the climb, whilst heaving strenuously on the finger slot. 

‘Bang’ he hit the ground from a height of over 20ft, and lay winded for some while to our consternation, but eventually he staggered to his feet and rounded on his erstwhile fielder, John Smoker. “Yer were supposed to catch me yer know! Yer a bloody Cockney drink of water!” This latter term of abuse Vin had learned from the master himself, Don Whillans, with whom he climbed on occasion, including the first ascent of Cloggy’s Slanting Slab. My own best effort at High Rocks during this visit was to on sight the Advertisement Wall Direct (5c) on a slack top rope.

Niblick-Gordon Stainforth climbing:Photo-Gordon Stainforth

Historically, Harrison’s Rocks has an interesting back story climbing wise. They are named after a local farmer William Harrison, who also manufactured firearms in the area during the 18^thCentury. But the crags were first explored by two members of the Alpine Club, Charles Nettleton and Claude Wilson in 1908. The first named had noticed them whilst riding along the Valley with the Eridge hunt. They left no record what actual climbing they did…. if any? The present era of development really began in 1926 with Nea and Jean Morin, who having climbed at Fontainebleau decided that the sandstone outcrops in south east England might also be worthy of some investigation.

They encouraged other climbing friends to accompany them such as Gilbert Peaker, Eric Shipton, and E.H. Marriott. They made some outstanding first ascents for that date such as the Long Layback, Unclimbed Wall and Half Crown Corner. (Jean Morin was a leading French alpinist who was to die tragically in the war). On my first meeting with Nea Morin at Harrison’s, more than 50 years ago, she marched me along to the Half Crown Corner and explained that the route had been so named, because her father who was present at the time, offered to pay her a half crown (15p) if she could manage to climb it, which she did making the first ascent. With Nea encouraging me I also managed to do that, but I found it a brute of a climb on which I struggled so hard I was nearly sick.

By the 1930’s the outcrop was so developed that the first guidebook appeared, written by Courtney Bryson. This was published by the Mountaineering section of the Camping Club, who by that date had become regular visitors at Harrison’s. Another group also active at that date was surprisingly the London section of the Junior Mountaineering Club of Scotland (a long way from the Club’s home base!). One of their members, E.R. Zenthon pioneered in 1941 a girdle traverse of the crag, which was over a 1000feet in length, and more than 20 pitches in all. This group also published the first comprehensive guide to the whole district in 1947, ‘Sandstone Climbs in S-E England’ edited by Ted Pyatt. This was revised and updated by him in 1963, helped by Dave Fagan and John Smoker of the Sandstone Club, the first such to be published by the Climbers’ Club.

It is interesting to record some of Pyatt’s comments recorded in these guides here, first noting that ‘the rock is sedimentary of comparatively recent origin’ (hence its friability) and noted the changing fashions of clothes worn by climbers at Harrison’s in those eras. ‘The wearers are divided between those wearing the oldest of old clothes and those sporting flannels with the crease still intact, or those dressed in good class mountaineering garb’ By 1963 many of the regulars must have been abroad, and doubtless observed how well turned out Continental climbers were compared to their British counterparts!

During the war a climber who had been forced south from his earlier pioneering in the Peak District was Frank Elliott, who made several first ascents at Harrison’s but everyone else’s efforts in this direction were to be eclipsed in 1945, by a shooting star Clifford Fenner, who was responsible for a real breakthrough in standards at the crag with first ascents of the Slim Finger Crack and Niblick. This latter must have been one of the hardest outcrop routes in the country at that date?

Once into the 1950’s and with a slow improvement in overall living standards, the rocks reached a popularity which could hardly have been anticipated. Harrison’s became the best known of the sandstone outcrops, and some of the long term regulars became worried about the problems this was bringing, particularly erosion caused by the friction of ropes biting into the rock at the top of the crag, the wearing down of holds because of the use of inappropriate footwear, and the need for some form of a climbing code of conduct.

In 1958 Nea Morin, Dennis Kemp and Ted Pyatt purchased the crag, this being done with the sole intention of preserving the climbing facilities. They did this on behalf of all climbers and gave Harrison’s to the BMC. There was a problem however for the Council could not then own land, being an unincorporated body, and so a solution was found in that the Central Council of Physical Recreation would hold them in trust, and a joint BMC-CCPR Management Committee was formed to look after the rocks. One of their first actions was to publish a code of conduct for climbing at the outcrop, vibrams and nailed boots should not be used: only soft soled footwear being possible, all belays should be indirect, using a long sling and karabiner, and a system of voluntary wardens was agreed.

One of the CCPR Officers was Joe Jagger, Mick’s father! He was a leading figure in the development of outdoor pursuits, and he wrote a successful book about canoe camping. Later he also made several instructional videos, and he organised numerous courses on canoeing, walking and climbing. His climbing video featured a young Rolling Stone, Mick climbing at Harrison’s. I only met him once, and that was in a corridor at the old CCPR HQ in Park Row in London. I was introduced to him by Fred Briscoe, just at the changeover of the CCPR staff and facilities into the newly created Sports Council, early in 1972.

 We started discussing the future administration of Harrison’s which was being transferred along with Plas y Brenin, into the new National Centre’s programme, when a burly guy sporting an England Rugby Football blazer stopped by us, and vehemently declared at Joe(obviously having recognized him), ‘If I had a son like yours I would horse whip him’. He then moved off down the corridor, leaving the three of us staring in amazement at his huge backside. I often wonder what he would think of now, ‘Sir Mick’ a darling of the establishment and his band The Rolling Stones, acknowledged as one of the most outstanding rhythm and blues band in the history of popular music.

The ever increasing popularity of Harrison’s began to cause serious problems during the decades of the 1960’s and into the 1970’s, for with increasing car ownership, the volume of parking in the nearby village of Groombridge became a difficulty for both locals and visitors. This forced the Management Committee into action; and after negotiations with the Forestry Commission, a Car Park was built on the edge of Birchden Wood, and a toilet and washing block added in the interests of meeting local hygiene standards. To climbers from other parts of the country this may sound extreme, but by the date these facilities were built besides the hundreds of climbers descending each weekend on the site, mid-week many youth, school and disabled parties were also visiting the area, to say nothing of the walkers hiking through the woods.

I continued to visit the area, especially once I had become the first professional officer in the sport at the BMC in 1971. Old friendships stayed intact and of two in particular, their memories have stayed with me throughout the subsequent decades, despite their tragic deaths whilst climbing. The first such memory is of Julie Tullis, who I originally met in 1959 and with whom I remained in contact with her and husband Terry, until her death on K2 whilst descending from the summit of the mountain caught in an horrific storm, during which several other climbers also perished in early August 1986. Julie had started climbing on the sandstone in 1956, where she met Terry.

They were probably the best known couple in the area, and from 1970 until 1979 they ran a climbers café and shop ‘The Festerhaunt’ in Groombridge. Unfortunately Terry was injured in a freak accident which limited his climbing, but this did not stop him from being a voluntary warden and then subsequently a full time professional in charge on the ground at Harrison’s. Julie was an all action personality, dark and petite,it was easy to underestimate her abilities and determination, for despite the demands posed by having a family of two children, she was a practitioner of Japanese martial arts, a climbing instructor and in her later life she had an outstanding career in high altitude filming on Nanga Parbat, K2 and Mount Everest.

She also with the legless climber Norman Croucher and Dennis Kemp climbed Huascaran (6,645mtrs) in Peru. And with the Austrian mountaineer, her filming partner, Kurt Diemberger she climbed Broad Peak (8051mtrs) at the age of 45 in 1984.The year of Julie’s death, her autobiography was published, ‘Clouds From Both Sides’ to wide acclaim.

After Julie died members of the Sandstone Club formed a committee to set up a memorial to her memory. I was privileged to be invited to help with this, and after many fund raising events and difficult negotiations over planning permission, we managed first to set up a camp site at Harrison’s in 1991, then an award for exploratory women mountaineers administered by the BMC International Committee in 2009.

Julie Tullis 

Dennis Kemp was also one of the most memorable of climbers who I first met at Harrison’s Rocks. He was very much responsible for publicising the need to combat the erosion occurring to the outcrop, and at his own expense produced a booklet about good practice to combat this. At first meeting he looked to me like a southern hippy, bearded and with straggly hair, spare, muscular and of medium height. But once I got to know him well I realised how talented he really was.
He worked for Kodak, and he was one of the first photographers in the climbing world to develop an audio visual show. He had been the photographer on the 1958 Minapin- (7257mtrs) expedition, a high peak in the Karakoram Himalaya, on which two of his companions Ted Warr and Chris Hoyte disappeared.
Despite efforts by Dennis and another companion to discover their fate, they could find no trace of the missing pair who had been in the lead on the mountain.Dennis’s audio visual of this expedition was outstanding, and I organised a showing of this in Manchester, where he received an ovation at the end of the evening from a group of hard bitten climbers, who were so moved by his story.

I got to know Dennis well on a visit to Bowles Rock; he camped there alongside my family and self. My children were still young at that time and he made a great rapport with them, showing them how to use a camera, and shepherding my eldest son, Stephen up some easy rock climbs. He was unable to have children himself, for he had been badly injured by a sniper’s bullet at the end of the war. He originated from the Brighton area, but was wedded to climbing and the mountains. I never found out how he entered the climbing arena, but he was pioneering new routes as early as 1953 in Cornwall, including the classic Nameless Route (VS) on Bosigran with Nea Morin.

In 1974 he produced ‘The Know the Game Rock Climbing’ for EP Publishers which received BMC approval. This was a concise, easy to follow instructional book which became a best seller. By this date he had moved to live in Mold in North Wales, and I did meet and climb with him in the Llanberis Pass. But he did keep returning to his first love Southern Sandstone to renew acquaintance with the Tullis’s and other friends in the area. Surprisingly as he grew older he returned to expeditions in Peru and to travelling widely to climb in Yosemite and Australia.

His final trip of 1990 was to Arapiles in that country at the age of 67, where after leading a pitch of a classic climb ‘The Birdman of Alcatraz (23)’, a huge block he was belayed to, which most other parties had used, detached and killed him. The news of his death hurt all of us who were his friends, for he was a joy to be with and an enthusiast of our sport to his end.

Photo:The BMC

Generations of activists have now enjoyed climbing on the southern sandstone, their continued popularity is assured, and they are now as popular with boulderers as routers, and outcrops like Eridge have come into their own in that respect. Almost every decade an updated guidebook is needed to keep abreast of developments with over a 1000 routes recorded, and there is now a separate volume to the bouldering for so many such challenges have been developed.

My last visit to the area was as the guest at the 60^thanniversary dinner of the Sandstone Club (It has now merged with the Tunbridge Wells Mountaineering Club). On the Saturday I was at High Rocks and I was surprised to meet climbers there from Eastern Europe bouldering, and a mixed, women and men large contingent of climbers from Germany who were routing. On the Sunday I was at Harrison’s and there I met a group of French climbers. Intrigued I asked why they were visiting southern sandstone, and the answer was like the other continentals I had met the day before they were working in the Big Smoke (London).

The Southern Sandstone has always drawn enthusiasts from that conurbation, and in recent years groups like the North London Mountaineering Club have been amongst the leading activists at the outcrops. Whose members, Mick Fowler, Chris Watts and Vic Saunders from this base have gone on to outstanding mountaineering careers in the Alps and the Himalaya, with both Mick and Vic writing, best selling, award winning books about their climbs.

Casual visitors have not always understood the delights of climbing in the region, the late Scottish ace Robin Smith thought that Harrison’s was, ‘a miserable outcrop for London picnickers’. But if he had stayed around long enough, learnt just how unique the climbing is, he might also like me have become enamoured of the whole scene.

Dennis Gray

How deep this feeling can make itself felt is perhaps best expressed, by the London based poet and a former regular at Harrison’s, Al Alvarez, ‘I can’t tell you how much I’d like to be back at Harrison’s, but you can’t climb with a bloody zimmer frame’.

Dennis Gray:2016 

'Christ you know it ain't easy': Climbing 'The Rock'

January 22, 2016, 3:25 am

≫ Next: Haskett Smith-The Revenant!

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The most baffling part of the climb was getting to the base of the Rock. Or so we thought until we embarked on the Face itself. On a Saturday we started to ask our way along the limpet-horde of wrecked garages and scrapyards that encrust the base of the reef. Nowhere does the 500-metre soaring triangle of raw limestone actually sprout from common ground. These rusting corrugated-iron shanties shut us out. At Rock Haulage Ltd, 26 Devil’s Tower Road, a tanned and stubbled man is standing in the doorway of a den stacked up with cannibalised cars. When I say, ‘We want to climb the cliff here,’ he says instantly, ‘Are you sure?’, looking me full in the eye. He is friendly about access but must clear it with his boss, who ‘should be back by 6’. As we talk, the crag leans over us hugely.

For a few hours Neil (my youngest son) and I work out at the other end of Gibraltar, on the sun-warmed and flowery tiers of Buffadero Bluff, where I had climbed two years before. When we get to No 26, the door is padlocked shut. At No 24 (Rock Services Ltd) another tanned and stubbled man, younger but with a bigger paunch, is sharing a brew in the doorway with a stoned-looking man whose lower face is invisible behind a luxuriant walrus moustache. They too must wait for the boss, who ‘should be back soon’. The Paunch says: ‘I wouldn’t have the guts to climb that. Or the brains.’ At this my own guts turn to water. The sun dips, more tea is brewed among the scarred limbs and torsos of unidentifiable cars. Paunch takes us through to the back and gestures at a great sagging hole in the roof: ‘A big rock came through there. Whole place was fuckin shakin’. He grins, half-proud of his desperate environment.

Giving up on the invisible bosses, I wander along Devil’s Tower Road to what looks like the only other feasible access, a pair of open steel gates in a solid, well-painted yellow wall. It’s Royal Navy property, apparently. A young serviceman in a blue uniform and beret was here earlier. Now the yard inside is deserted, seemingly disused. Nothing could be less shipshape or Bristol fashion. The bare concrete is littered with stones from fist to skull-size. A reinforced concrete walkway leads to a painted metal door in the base of the Rock. As I walk about eyeing the drifts of nettles and sagging mesh marking the boundary with the cliff, the young rating comes out of the door and says: ‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘we could do with a strong boarding-party, preferably with helicopter back-up.’ Actually, I utter my usual request for access and he beckons me to follow him into the Rock. Inside, a few feet from the seeming dereliction of the yard, are passage after passage lined with immaculately-maintained consoles, generators encased in metal, vents and piping and wiring and needles in dials quivering with massed voltage or tonnage or whatever. From here, I suppose, are powered the instruments with which the Forces monitor all shipping and aircraft movements in the Straits. An RAF flight lieutenant has already given us clearance (by letter) to finish our climb beside their little nest of masts and pylons; a major in the Army has given us clearance to approach the base of the cliff. The Face itself is owned by the Gibraltar Government, which doesn’t care what we do. Now only the Navy stands in our way.

Deep inside the Rock, entrenched in his phalanxes of generators, a less junior naval person is sitting at a desk in a cubby-hole, under a closed-circuit TV monitor, entering figures in a ledger. When his mate explains my mission, he looks openly derisive and phones his superior: ‘There is someone here, sir, who wishes to climb the Rock, because he, er, likes doing that kind of thing. Can we give him clearance to access the cliff. No? Very well – no chance at all? Thank you, sir – very good – g’bye, sir.’ He then explains with relish that nobody is ever allowed use of the yard, ‘not even our own vehicles’, because rock-fall is so frequent; that’s why they’ve built the covered way. I’m left to find my way out, which I do, planting a little Semtex here and there.
 

John and Yoko celebrate their gnarly first ascent of The Rock:

Christ you know it ain't easy,you know how hard it can be,the way things are going, they're going to crucify me

The Ballad of John and Yoko:Lennon/McCartney

Back at No 24, Paunch and Walrus have sportingly agreed to open up for us next day and let us through. We are ‘armed only with an old photograph’, as they say in adventure stories. Adrian Cabedo, the Gibraltarian most expert in the Face, has lent us his print of the photo used by the first ascensionists in 1980 to record their routes. Broken lines in ink mark Metroway on the left, climbed by Smiler Cuthbertson, Don Whillans, and D. Coward, and Regina Mater on the right, climbed by Ben and Marion Wintringham. Adrian has told us how he was hit by a falling block, which broke his arm. He had to be rescued from the Notch, the col between the massif and Devil’s Tower.

Cuthbertson has encouraged me on the phone by saying that their line was ‘very good – it takes an Alpine-type curving crack. It’s about VS’ – Very Severe – ‘with a Hard VS bit where it goes through an overhang on jugs [big holds]. No, it wasn’t all that loose’ – the article in Climber and Rambler in 1981 had used the word ‘loose’ many times – ‘only near the start, where the weight of the whole Rock is cracking it a bit.’ On the other hand, the people who work in the firing-line have stressed that ‘a lot of rock has come down the last few years’ because of heavy rains.

On the light-table in Adrian’s artists’ shop in Irish Town, his big slides of the Face shine glamorously silver and proud. The details of gully, groove and vegetation which they are too small to show are more or less visible in the grainy murk of the large black-and-white print. In the morning we can see detail in plenty – the curving crack, perhaps three hundred metres up, blocked by a rugged cave (the HVS crux?); the steep groove which is the entry to the upper Face, with its bristling ilex copses; the lower part where smeared-looking brownish walls must be outflanked by puzzling a way up labyrinths of cracks. The Face hangs over us, scoured by the dawn wind whisking along the coast from Algeciras. Hundreds of gulls straight above our heads are gyring in brilliant sunlight which turns their flight-feathers into ermine fringes.

Early ascentionist-Don Whillans.Photo John Cleare
We wade waist-deep through jagged layers of car-body and collapsing drifts of rotted timbers from demolished houses. We gear up and uncoil our ropes among beds of nettle and corn marigold which have been turned into a rock garden by dozens of stones showered down by the Face. I lead off up easy, flowery ramps, then a series of rounded rock steps and bollards. When the drag of the rope starts to hobble me, I look for a belay and can find only a crack between an unstable rock and the shoulder it’s parting from. I put in a nut on wire and yank it to test it – the lips of the crack splinter and I replace the nut further down.

Neil reaches me and climbs on through, then belays surprisingly soon. I find him eyeing a 40-metre cracked slab which steepens into a wall before fading back into the ilex groove. The rock of the steepest part is suspiciously discoloured. We’d noticed in the Dolomites that only white or grey limestone is strong limestone. Below us the scrap-yards are starting to shrink, so directly underneath that stones loosened by our feet plummet onto the rusty roofs. The crash-crash arouses the guard dogs in No 26: a brown Alsatian, a white Alsatian and a pair of dusty blackish mongrels. They bark furiously, fight each other in little circles, then settle down again in the shade. As I do myself for the next half-hour – hour – hour and a half. Why is Neil so slow on that comfortable angle? There must be a reason for it – he is trained and fit and very much at home on vertical Spanish limestone. As he puts on yet another nut and stands staring expressionlessly (balefully?) upward, I call ‘What’s it like?’ and he answers: ‘It’s horrifying. And I can’t see where I’m going.’ He keeps on going as the sun above the container ships moves round towards Africa and the white dazzle it’s been making on the face of Regina Mater to our right turns fish-grey.

When Neil reaches a steep discoloured area, I’m encouraged to see his feet, as he steps up on protruding wafers, disappear almost completely. I’d been expecting mere toe-holds. He still gains height at the pace of a tendril unfolding in time-lapse photography and keeps looking all ways, across to right and left as well as up. Then he disappears–always a bleak juncture for the second on a steep and problematic route. And time passes, and the dogs wrestle, and the wind dies into the warmth of noon. Down in the car park Anne gets out of our hire car from time to time – too miniature to be recognisable – and a man, presumably Walrus, mooches across the road and back again. The ropes are taken in by the invisible Neil and vague shouts from him tell me it’s time to go.


The ‘slab’ is fairly steep, and quite blank apart from the black cracks that seam it–all too closed to help us except the one Neil chose, which is wide enough to take a boot. The fissure is choked with rubble – precariously lodged. Its right edge is mostly strong enough to act as a handrail, and this is all right as long as the bounding rock is not too steep. As it nears 80 degrees, I’m forced to search for lodgments for my feet. Nothing but wee bevelled facets. I feel like a frail bubble of flesh, inhabiting a thinned air. At home it would smell of earth and moss. Here it has the fish-and-distemper whiff of gull guano with a sweetish-resinous under-smell of sub-tropical flowers – the wild candytuft and com marigold which adorn the face.

These tiny footholds might do if the handrail had continued solid. It’s cracked through now, in places cuttingly sharp, and the fissure is stacked up with big wedged blocks half a metre square. They have fine edges, my fingers itch to clutch them and heave up on them – they’d unstack like children’s bricks. I could lay-away rightward on the handrail – it’s too nearly vertical. When I sketch the move, I start to lose it and my toes slur downward half an inch. Sink your hand in the crack – feel up as far as you can – there must be something. My forearm disappears up to the elbow, my fingertips feel a little upright edge: if I laid-away from that it might put less of a destabilising stress on the wedged block, and the one above it, and the one below it. This is madness, nobody and nothing can live in all this totter and collapse. (Neil did.) I make the move. I think I remember a moment’s grating, like a tooth starting to come out of your jaw under the dentist’s forceps. Everything stays put. I can’t trust my full weight to that block I just pulled up on. I do. It holds its own (for another year or two). I leave this place of barest equilibrium and step thankfully up beneath the discoloured overhang.

Those fine big shelves are cracked right round. One of them looks to be lodged in a lateral crevice like a packet in a letterbox. I repeat Neil’s steps, trying to perform the trick of withholding half my weight, making myself lighter, weightless even. Again no downward lurch, no crash (of rocks or bodies) onto tire rusty roofs. I ease myself out of the perpendicular world and stand in a brief daze among more or less solid ribs upholstered with little flowerless plants. Neil’s dirty white helmet comes into sight above the lower lip of the ilex groove. He has found a roomy stance. I ensconce myself, tie on, take off my helmet and let sweat pour down my forehead.

The debriefing is terse – we both want out of here. ‘I just carried on,’ he says, ‘because there was nothing else to do – nothing was strong enough to rope back down off. It’s horrific. D’you think it’ll get any better?’ We peer upward, knowing we can tell nothing from down here. We’ve climbed about eighty metres – so how much more is left of Cuthbertson’s ‘start’? I nibble melting chocolate and swig lukewarm water from my rucksack. Neil says: ‘If only we could get to that tree ... D’you want to lead this next bit?’ Want? Want? Yes, it’s only fair. I add some of Neil’s gear to my own rack of nuts and slings and step up onto the solid left rib of the groove. A small ilex grows in the middle of it, shading a gull’s nest with two big turquoise eggs blotched brown like gravemarks on a hand. I have to step into the bed of the gully, which is hard without breaking the eggs. The rock of the bed is made up of arrow-heads in crazy paving. ‘Crazy’ is right – each one shifts and could easily be lifted out. The rib is now vertical and blank. When I give Neil the disgusting news, he says with little emotion: ‘What d’you think then?’
‘Shouldn’t we go down?’
‘What about your book?’
‘That’s okay – this is just one aspect of Gibraltar. And anyway, isn’t all this interesting, in its horrible way?’
‘Is there anything to go off up there? What’s the tree like?’

The tree is hard to suss; its base is defended by huge nettles. I seize it as low down as possible and give it a shake. It is so thin it trembles, and it is only rooted in such soil as has gathered here, dusty-gravelly, shallow, friable. The thick brown root, then, on which the nest is draped? Respectfully I lift the nest a little, trying not to send the eggs rolling down among the guard dogs, and the root turns out to be a rusty rod – not a tube, a rod, planted at a slightly upward angle in the bedrock of the rib. A dream anchor. I put a sling round this memorial to long-ago sappers, another round the tree-stem, and climb back down to our eyrie. Then we set up our abseil and retreat. The Face gives its last grimace: as I plant my feet on a plaque of rock near the overhang, it shatters and a fusillade hits the roofs with the biggest crash so far. For the rest of my backward-downward journey, I’m staring up at the edge where the rope goes tautly over, wondering furiously if the strain is about to burst the stone, twang the rope onto a freshly jagged edge, cut it right through and ...

When we rejoin Anne, it turns out that ours was not the only danger. Walrus had offered her a cup of coffee, then bolted the door of the cabin and started kissing her. She got the bolt shot back, he shot it to again – finally she laughed and talked her way back outside. It seemed the final squalor of a day bristling with pitfalls – an episode on rock that couldn’t have been more grotesquely unlike my preference for a Wordsworthian experience. The colossal triangle with its soaring, skyward-reaching grain is one of the most handsome shapes in Europe. We have done our best to ruin it. No great rock in the world has been so hewn, mined, drilled, shelled, blasted. The Spaniards threw a quarter of a million cannonballs at it in the Great Siege of the 1780s. The British Army blew and dug out gun emplacements inside it, and air-raid shelters during the Second World War.

If charges were to be set off inside it now, the whole North Face would quake and the cracks all over it would spurt out dust like smoke. Will it ever settle down again into solidity, having shed all its man-made debris, or will its racked body give off shards for millennia until it is transformed into unimaginable shapes, or no shape at all, as it takes the first shock of the African tectonic plate on its grinding northward voyage and the doors which Hercules opened five and a half million years ago, start to close again?

David Craig: 2002 

 

Haskett Smith-The Revenant!

January 29, 2016, 3:04 am

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August 3, 1913

'W. P. Haskett Smith Dies in Canadian Rockies'

Such newspaper headlines, would without any shadow of a doubt, cause consternation among the climbing world of today, let alone at the turn of the 20th century when he was at the pinnacle of his unwanted fame. But in August 1913, this could well have been the headlines in British newspapers of the day, putting a shocked climbing fraternity in mourning, for the loss of a climbing pioneer who was hailed as the ‘Father of British Rock Climbing’, as a result of his solo ascent of Napes Needle on the slopes of Great Gable on 2nd or 3rd July,1886. In essence, this was the first recorded rock climb undertaken, not for Alpine training as was generally the norm at that time, but for pure aesthetic pleasure of movement up rock for enjoyment, thus making it a sport in its own right as opposed to being a ‘gentleman’s Alpine training playground’.

Climbing organisations such as the Fell and Rock, Rucksack Club, Alpine Club and Climber’s Club, would on hearing such devastating news, work frantically to get obituaries written for their next Journals. Talk around the smoking rooms of the Lakeland Hotels climbers frequented at weekends and holidays, and in particular, the Wasdale Hotel, would endlessly centre on such an event, as it sent turbulent ripples through the small but close knit climbing community that was growing in the United Kingdom, none more so than in the English Lake District. Memories would be invoked of a similar event six years earlier, when such clubs were saddened by the death of another pioneering climber – John Wilson Robinson, a close friend and climbing partner of Haskett Smith’s. How could the climbing fraternity lose two such climbing icons within a decade of each other, both being viewed as an intricate part of the Lakeland climbing scene of the day!

Questions would have been asked: ‘Why did he go to Canada?’; ‘Who was he with when the accident happened?’; ‘How did the accident happen?’; ‘Where did it happen?’; ‘Who or what was responsible?’ among endless other searching questions, climbers were eager to find answers to.Having spent the last 14 months researching material for his biography, the potential seriousness of this incident can now be told in full.

W. P. Haskett Smith and his younger brother Edmund L. W. Haskett Smith, had been climbing together constantly since 1881 when Walter P. first visited Wasdale in the English Lake District, leading a combined Oxford/Cambridge classics reading group over a two-month period. It was here that he became acquainted with Frederick H. Bowring, an ardent and prolific walker of the Lakeland fells and mountainsides. It was said of him, that he knew the Lakeland fells and mountains like no other, including hidden gems yet to be discovered by any resolute climber.

Early days;The Wasdale Inn.Photo F&R Club
 
Bowring often took groups of reading parties on walks along little known tracks, leading them under and alongside the many crags and gullies that can be found on the Lakeland mountains. In effect, he became Haskett Smith’s walking and climbing ‘mentor’, encouraging him to climb and explore the gullies, those already climbed and those waiting to be climbed. Haskett Smith and Bowring, formed such a close friendship, that in order to honour his ‘mentor’, Haskett Smith sent him an inscribed copy of his 1894 first climbing guide – ‘Rock Climbing in the British Isles, England, Volume 1’.

Throughout the 1880’s and 90’s, Haskett Smith climbed prolifically in the Lake District as well as other places in the UK, mainly with his younger brother Edmund who he was close to. His 1886 solo ascent of Napes Needle, an iconic object in its own right, is well known throughout the climbing and mountaineering world, as is many of his other first ascents. What is not known widely, is his keen interest in sailing and cycling which he did with his good friend Maurice Byles in the early years of the 20th century. They frequently cycled to Dover, took a ferry to France and then cycled around the Benelux countries, often putting their cycles on board a sailing boat, sailing along the French and Dutch coast lines and stopping off to explore new countryside by bicycle. Once they had satiated themselves, they returned to their sailing boat, stored the cycles aboard, then sailed off again to seek other new places to explore.

Whilst he had many climbing friends and associates throughout his rock climbing years, it was his brother Edmund who he was closest to and who was in effect, his ‘best friend’. From 1882 onwards, both brothers regularly travelled to Wasdale together and whilst they did not always climb or walk together, they enjoyed spending time in each other’s company, possibly because both were introverts, being relatively shy and having no need to enter into constant conversation when in company, preferring the quietness and beatitude of their situation.

Such was their close ‘brotherly’ bond, that when in 1898, Edmund moved to Nova Scotia in Canada to live, Walter P. felt bereft at losing not just a brother, but a close friend and climbing companion. Both of them were aware, that Walter P. (or Haskett Smith as he was, and still is known by), was receiving all the attention from the climbing fraternity, in relation to the many first ascents he is recorded as doing, especially in the 1880’s.It would appear, that it is Haskett Smith’s name (meaning Walter P. and not Edmund), that not only appears in climbing guide books as being the person who made the first ascent, but that climbing history does not give Edmund a mention at all. This despite the fact, that whilst they climbed unroped and it would be Walter P. who summited first, the fact that Edmund followed within minutes, appears to have gone unrecognised.

However, for his part, Edmund was happy with this situation for two reasons: first he had great respect for his older brother, and secondly, he was happy with not being in any ‘spotlight’, shunning attention of any sort. 
Haskett Smith was pleased when Edmund returned to England in 1904, as it gave them opportunities to continue their adventures together, although Edmund was less interested in climbing and more interested in traveling and seeing ‘new worlds’. Things would not last however, as Edmund returned to Canada again in 1912 with his family. And so it was, that a few months after he led a small group on the 2nd ascent of Gillercombe Buttress Gully (May 5th), and which in retrospect, was one of his last climbs, Haskett Smith sailed for Canada to visit Edmund who was now living in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia.

Within a few weeks of arriving, the two brothers lost no time in going out walking to explore the wide expanse of wilderness that surrounded the small town. Edmund by now had a camera, and whilst his images are generally too far away to get a clear glimpse of his subjects (sometimes of the landscape and other times of his brother Walter), his diary and photo album captured the spirit of Haskett Smith as an individual, free from the constant attention others made of him for no other reason than to feed their own egos by saying they ‘rubbed shoulders’ with the ‘Father of British Rock Climbing’. (And who says that the birth of celebrity status is a modern phenomenon!)
                                                                        
In late July, he and Edmund travelled by train to Calgary, calling in at Banff on their way to Jasper, before making their way to Mount Robson where they had been invited by Arthur Wheeler, founding President of the Alpine Club of Canada, to call on him during their month long annual summer expedition camp, which was being held from 28th July to 9th August in the Mount Robson Pass area. Due to the high numbers attending the camp that year, two subsidiary camps were set up, one about six miles down the Smokey River and the other beside Calumet Creek in Moose Pass. In both camps, seventy-three people were under canvass including a native from Penrith in Cumberland – Horace ‘Rusty’ Westmorland, who when aged 11 back in 1897, had met Haskett Smith in the Lake District.

At the time they met, the Westmorland family were having a picnic beside Grisedale Tarn above Ullswater, when they saw a climbing party descending Tarn Crag, walking towards the tarn where they were picnicking.The party consisted of Haskett Smith, Geoffrey Hastings (who knew Thomas Westmorland), Ellis Carr and John W. Robinson. They had been trying to make the first ascent of Big Gully on Tarn Crag (now called Chockstone Gully), but were unsuccessful due to loose boulders and stones festooning the gully floor, making movement difficult and potentially dangerous. Haskett Smith later wrote about this attempt: “As any attempt far outweighed the sport, retreat was the better course of action, and so we traversed off the route by the grassy ledge that separates the lower and upper two pitches.”
On meeting, Hastings introduced the others to Thomas Westmorland and his family who invited the four climbers, to sit awhile and partake sustenance from their picnic hamper.
 
For his part, Thomas Westmorland was a well-known local climbing and fell walking pioneer, known for being adamant, that it was not the done-thing to use a climbing rope, under any circumstances. The Westmorland family as a whole, were very ardent outdoor enthusiasts, spending two weeks every Easter and eight weeks every summer, camping on the shores of Ullswater near Howtown, from where they would frequently explore the confines of the Northern Fells and beyond.

Thomas’s only son Horace, (who received the nickname Rusty whilst serving in the Canadian Army in France in 1914), has the distinction of being taken to Norfolk Island aged one by his parents for an open air over-night bivvy; then three months later, being carried to the summit of Helvellyn in order to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee at the country’s biggest mountaintop bonfire; at aged four years being taken by his father, to climb (unroped), the rough rock strewn walls of Brougham Castle, just as he himself had done when he was the same age; and in 1901 aged fifteen, being taken up to the summit of Pillar Rock via the Slab and Notch route (unroped of course), by his father, making him the youngest person at that time to have done so. [His sister Alice was also with them, but she was aged 16!]Now, sixteen years later, Haskett Smith and Rusty Westmorland were to meet up at the Alpine Club of Canada’s annual camp, where both took great delight in reminiscing, not just about the Lakeland climbing scene and mutual acquaintances, but also about Rusty’s first ascent of Chockstone Gully (Big Gully) on Tarn Crag in 1910, the very route Haskett Smith along with Hastings, Robinson and Carr, had attempted back in 1897, but had failed.
 
It was unfortunate that the weather around Mount Robson for the first few days, was not conducive for climbing or ascending major peaks, although this did not deter Rusty from making several first ascents himself as he was hoping to impress Wheeler, who ultimately decided who should be invited to become a member of the Alpine Club of Canada. As Rusty wanted a job as a mountain guide, he knew that being invited by Wheeler to become a member of the Club, it would ‘open doors’ for working in an area where there were innumerable virgin peaks waiting to be climbed.As it happened, after five days of rain, they all woke to a cloudless azure blue sky without a rain cloud in sight. This spurred the members to form climbing groups and decide on where they would go. As Rusty knew that the Haskett Smith brothers were leaving in a few days’ time, he agreed to lead them on a long walk up to Robson Pass summit, as he knew the route through the uncharted wilderness.
                                   
As they approached Emperor Falls area, there was a great deal of water runoff from the rocky slopes towering above them, and as they negotiated a narrow part of the trail, the waterlogged rock slope started to slide downwards. Whilst Rusty and Edmund managed to get clear of the falling stones and rubble, Haskett Smith did not and was hit on the legs.

His injuries were so bad, that he had to be carried back to camp by other members who were luckily nearby. However, their camp was too far away from civilisation for anyone to be called in to treat his leg, and very quickly, his injuries led to blood poisoning. This in turn made him dangerously ill and so he had to be carried down the long mountain trail to a suitable place where he could be transported by vehicle to the nearest medical centre in Jasper.
He remained ill for several weeks which did little to ease the turmoil Wheeler was experiencing, at the thought of possible headlines: ‘W. P. Haskett Smith, English visiting climber dies as a result of a rock slide during the Alpine Club Canada’s annual camp’. This was clearly something he did not want to have ‘on his watch’.

History as we now know, tells us that Haskett Smith recovered from his injuries and his blood poisoning abated, allowing Wheeler to breathe a grateful sigh of relief.It is interesting to note, that after this incident, there is no record of him ever rock climbing again. Indeed, it was from this period in his life, that his siblings noticed a change in his behaviour, in that he started to shun being with groups of people. Indeed, it is well recorded in the Fell and Rock Journal, that he often went out walking with groups on a club meet but at some point, walked off on his own, making his own way back home, or to the club hut they were staying in.In addition to ‘wandering off’ from his group, there was a subtle change in his personality and general demeanour as well as his dress code. His family noticed that he began to develop a general negative ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude towards material possessions such as the Trowswell family estate in Kent and its contents, which he inherited on his father’s death in 1895.

Whilst we can only speculate as to the effects the accident may have had on his demeanour and general attitude in later life, what we do know, is that there were several cases of his family members suffering from some form of mental illness, indeed, his parent’s first children were twin girls (Thermuthis and Henrietta, born 1854). Thermuthis died in 1864 aged 10, and Henrietta spent her life (she died aged 60 in 1914), in and out of mental institutions and never appeared on any family census data. Then there was his older brother Algernon, who died under strange circumstances when a shotgun he was cleaning, ‘accidentally’ went off shooting him in the head.
Being a member of the infamous Canning Club, a popular Victorian haunt for upper class homosexuals, which included titled gentry and a grandson of Queen Victoria, coupled with the fact that another member of the Canning Club was Montague John Druitt, who after his mysterious death by drowning in the river Thames, became a suspect for being Jack the Ripper, may of course, have had nothing to do with Algernon’s death!

And finally, it is recorded in various climbing club journals as well as being known to his relatives, that not long after the rock slide incident, he tired of attending climbing club annual dinners where he would always be called on to ‘tell a story’ or to give a talk, and was known occasionally, to give ‘short shrift’ to such requests, leaving onlookers, perplexed and bewildered at this unexpected retort.
This aside, it is fortunate, that any newspaper headline stating: ‘W. P. Haskett Smith Dies in Canadian Rockies’ was never written. If it had, we would have been sadly deprived of a plethora of written articles, not just on climbing and climbing personalities, but also on his other areas of interest: genealogy; philology; etymology, and all things antiquarian.

Frank Grant:2016

Note: Haskett Smith’s on-going biography, already some 70,000 + words, is still looking for a publisher!
Frank Grant
Carlisle

 

Wild America: A personal celebration of the national parks....review

February 5, 2016, 3:56 am

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Veteran outdoor journalist Roly Smith and acclaimed photographer David Muench have brought their respective skills to bear on a rather fine coffee table tome, 'Wild America: a personal celebration of the national parks'. Although the work will of course be of interest to US readers, it will probably be equally appreciated here in the UK where most people's knowledge of US national parks begins and ends with Yosemite and Yellowstone.

In fact the US National parks-of which there are now 59 across 27 states-precede our own by almost 80 years. Compared to the relatively recent first UK national park established in The Peak District in 1951, the aforementioned Yellowstone national park spread across Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, was established in 1872.

In 'Wild America' the author's offer a modest 21 of the sum total of US parks based on personal favourites. However, included in this 'Greatest Hits' selection are some real humdingers,including many of which were unfamiliar to myself. The vast majority are as expected,concentrated in West/Mid West of the United States with a high concentration around  'Abbeyland'; the mountains and deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Only two parks in the East appear. Arcadia in Maine and Shenandoah in Virginia.
With roughly four pages allocated to each national park, Roly Smith's text combines his personal impressions and descriptive notes with historical details and anecdotes. Each section beautifully illustrated by David Muench's sumptuous photographs.

Some fascinating historical facts jump out at times. For example, when the Shenandoah national park in Virginia was created in 1935, the indigenous 'hillbilly farmers' were evicted off the land by the state. The theory being,that national parks had to be empty uninhabited wilderness. Perhaps that would explain the present day survivalist tendencies and paranoia displayed by the redneck constituency!

For the casual observer of national parks stateside,it has always seemed ironic-for me at least-that the land of the free appears to operate quite a rigid,structured and decidedly authoritarian approach to how its parks are used. For example,entrance fees and strict control over wild camping within the confines of the park. Edward Abbey in his essays describes taking a great delight in ignoring 'keep out' signs and tearing down fences in the wilderness areas whenever he had the opportunity! As a former national park employee,he was on record as lamenting the drift towards tourist consumerism and the taming of the wild places of south western America.

That being said, the US's approach to establishing national parks-the latest being the magnificent Black canyon of Gunnison, granted national park status by President Clinton in 1999- shows up the UK's rather timid approach. For example,anyone familiar with north Wales would ask why the boundaries of the Snowdonia park have been so arbitrarily set? Why is most of the wild Hiraethog, The Berwyn mountain range, The Dee Valley, even the Clwydians not included in an extended national park or even set in a new NE Wales national park?

Probably because the farmers and landowners object,as they did when the Cambrian Mountains were proposed as our first national park in the 1930's. But I digress; to get back to Wild America. It's only flaw as far as I'm concerned is the fact that the author is no Ed Ebbey. The approach is rather touristy and tame.Lacking the investigative spirit of ' Cactus Ed' the author contents himself to guided walks and looks on from a safe distance as it were. Without this spirit of adventure,the book lacks the excitement that a seasoned backpacker like say Chris Townsend would have brought to life.

That being said, it's still a lovely little book-just 96 pages- which I'm sure will stimulate interest in areas unfamiliar to the reader. The photographs are never less than exquisite and its a nice little work to dip into for inspiration when the grey skies of Britain threaten to tip you into depression!

Wild America will be published in the UK in April. You can pre-order it from Rucsac Readers 
 
John Appleby:2016 

 

Gone to Earth

February 12, 2016, 6:08 am

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I do not think you could call the lads real animal lovers. It's not that they actually hated animals, but just that they never thought about them, or if they did then it was with a cold detachment quite alien to our national character. This antipathy extended even to dogs. I doubt if any of the lads ever owned a dog, and if they did then the poor bloody mongrel would have had no doggy vitamins to slaver over, but would have had to make do with common steak like the rest of us. The image of Big Harry, for example, squatting on his massive haunches and murmuring "Poochy, poochy, poochy," to one of those little miniatures is not one which springs readily to mind, you must admit. He once kicked a bulldog up the arse, mark you, but that was because the savage brute bit him for tresspassing, so it should not be construed as a sign of affection.

I am fully aware that this sort of attitude puts the lads beyond the pale for many people. I mean all those animal lovers who spend hours grooming their horses so that they can hunt foxes, or pat their dog with real affection as they wait to empty both barrels into some unsuspecting grouse. And yet, despite this, the lads had a compassion which went deeper than one would imagine, looking at their craggy, weather beaten faces.

It puts me in mind of the time Sorrowful Jones took part in a fox hunt: not officially, of course, because Sorrowful was not really one of the county set. It happened one spring in the Lake District, when Sorrowful was out of work and spending a few idle days alone, wandering the fells and sleeping rough. He had started his walk in Langdale as usual; had a flaming row with a couple of blokes at the Wall End Barn, and escaped into a westering sun over Rossett  Ghyll to Wasdale, there to commune with nature. He made his bed by some big boulders below the awful scree slopes which sweep down from Scafell Crag: a cliff of sheer, black, forbidding rock and not the sort of place I would choose to sleep, myself. But Sorrowful is funny that way, something of a masochist. He's the only bloke I know who prefers to sleep on hard rock. I reckon he has a Japanese ancestor somewhere in his twisted family tree— although the permanent yellow cast to his skin comes from not washing too often.

He slept until the warm spring sun was into the sky, then he rose and stretched, batted the dust out of his clothes, and scrambled over to a nearby beck where he obtained a panful of water for the coffee which formed his breakfast. He had two sweet cups that morning, bulked out by a forgotten crispbread which he discovered in his rucksack, then he packed away his petrol stove and mug and prepared for the forthcoming day. And a lovely day it was too: such a day as can only happen in the Lakes in spring. The sunshine made the rocks glow with warmth, the becks tinkled like fairy pianos, and the new lambs bleated for their mothers in the valley below. The sky was blue, with puffs of pure white cloud to break the monotony, and even old Scafell itself seemed less broody, as though it acknowledged the day as perfect. What with all these signs of Nature's annual rebirth, and the warmth and promise of the day, Sorrowful felt pretty good. As he walked towards the cliffs he even burst into snatches of song: "Caviare comes from the virgin sturgeon, The virgin sturgeon is a very fine fish, The virgin sturgeon needs no urgin', That's why caviare is my dish.'

He was trying to remember the second verse of this immortal ballad, which had something to do with grandpa chasing grandma up a tree, when he came face to face with a fox. Now there are a great many foxes in the Lake District but this was the first time that Sorrowful had ever seen one so close, and it is difficult to imagine which was the more surprised of the two. On balance, I reckon the fox — seeing as how there are lots of foxes but only one Sorrowful Jones. Whatever effect the appearance of Sorrowful had on the fox's mind we shall never know, for the animal was already in a state of terror. It made no move to escape; instead it just lay on the ledge where it had ensconced itself, panting away so that its shaggy golden coat heaved in and out like the bosom of a film starlet doing weight lifting exercises. Although Sorrowful was not much of a judge of horseflesh, he could tell the fox was a young one, that it had been running hard, and that it was all but buggered, as the saying goes.

"Poor little sod," said Sorrowful, aloud to the fox. "What you been up to, then? Been tryin' to get up the crag, 'ave yer?" The fox just lay, panting, its eyes not leaving Sorrowful's grubby face for an instance. "You don't seem 'urt," Sorrowful mused on,"but yer must 'ave been runnin' like 'ell to get in this state." Then, cutting through the soft spring air like a butcher's knife, he heard the excited yapping of hounds, and looking up he saw the tiny piebald bodies of fifteen or twenty dogs rounding the shoulder of the mountain and scrabbling like mad things up the steep scree, darting this way and that, looking for the scent, their long tails waving with pleasure. Some way behind the hounds came the huntsmen, stumbling and cursing among the boulders but intent to be in at the kill. "'Ello then", exclaimed Sorrowful to the fox, grasping at once the essentials of the situation. "You're in a right fix, ain't you mate? A bloody great crag up your backside an' a howlin' mob out front. They're out to get you, mate, an' no mistake." The fox kept its brown eyes steadfastly on Sorrowful's as if appealing for help.

Now I must make it clear that in the normal way of things, Sorrowful Jones doesn't give a bugger about foxes. He is not anti-blood sport and he thinks aniseed is the stuff you make sweets from, but right then, at that moment in time, he could no more have stood by and seen that fox slaughtered than if it had been a suckling babe in the path of advancing Dervishes. He had a sudden inner revulsion at the idea that people should turn one of God's cathedrals- Scafell- into a sacrificial altar. Before the fox knew what was happening, Sorrowful scooped it up and with a deft movement thrust it down the front of his anorak. Then he turned and ran towards the mountain for sanctuary. 

Scafell Crag does not show up well from a distance unless you happen to pick exactly the right vantage point, so that when you come up to it, it is something of a surprise, not to say shock. It is easily the biggest mass of rock in the Lakes; towering walls and aggressively thrusting buttresses seamed with steep, dank, gulleys, From the middle distance it looks formidable; from close by it looks impossible. And yet, when you know the place and have done mortal combat with it, you know it can be beaten. There are ledges and ways between ledges, and Sorrowful Jones knew them well. Clutching the fox to his breast Sorrowful scrambled to the foot of the rocks. At first he thought he would escape up the long shoot of loose scree known as Lord's Rake, but the idea of toiling up such a steep slope under a hot sun did not appeal to him one bit, and anyway, he quickly realised that the dogs could follow and even overtake him. Then he thought of Slingsby's Route, which is a climb generously supplied with holds, but he remembered that it involved a rather nasty chimney overhanging a big drop, and whilst there might be room in the chimney for him-self he was not sure he could manage it carrying a fox. So in the end he just hit the cliff slap on and began to climb.

He was barely in time, too, for as he stepped onto the rock the first of the dogs snapped at his heels. Their frustration at being so blatantly robbed of their birthright was something awful to hear. The going was easy and within a few minutes Sorrowful reached a broad, grassy edge, where he paused to wipe the perspiration from his brow and to see how the fox was getting along. He opened his anorak zip and the creature popped out its head to grin,wickedly at the howling dogs some twenty feet below. At this piece of impertinence they yowled even louder. "They're dead narked, Foxy an' no mistake," observed Sorrowful, giving his charge a pat on the head. Now, it is common knowledge that a dog is an animal with a fair degree of nouse, and these particular dogs being born and bred in the mountains, did not intend being thwarted by a bit of steep rock. When they discovered that they could not make a direct frontal assault on the cliff they switched off the old scent gland and reverted to natural cunning.

They scouted around to see whether they could reach Sorrowful (and his fox) by an outflanking movement. The moment Sorrowful realised what the dogs were about he knew he was in trouble. The ledge upon which he rested sloped down 70 his right and came so close to the ground that any dog with a bit of spring in its legs could easily reach it. Quickly, he pushed the fox's snout back inside his jacket again and so began to climb higher. A dozen of the dogs had meanwhile found the key to the ledge and had jumped aboard like four legged pirates. When they found that their prey had gone once again, their fury knew no bounds. They wasted no time in baying for the moon, but got to work sniffing their way around the problem. It was positively uncanny the way those dogs could find ledges and flakes with which in to ascend the cliff.

Before long some of them were once again level with Sorrowful, and of would have reached him had he not beaten a quick, upwards retreat. Fortunately for Sorrowful, the climbing was easy, but the dogs managed to follow, somehow. No sooner had he reached a ledge than some dog would appear on the one below. They were literally chasing him up the cliff. Of course, things couldn't go on like that for too long. The climbing got progressively more difficult and the ledges small and less frequent. The dogs began to feel the strain. They became fewer: half a dozen, four, two, until at last there was only one big hound, a black bastard with a brown eye patch, which kept up the chase. It seemed able to follow Sorrowful wherever he went, that dog. It scrambled up a chimney after him, and Sorrowful claims it even laybacked a crack, but that I find hard to believe.

He insists, however, that it was a damn sight better climber that Piss Eyed Pete, which I am prepared to accept.By the time the black hound called quits, they were a considerable way up the cliff and Sorrowful was dead scared. The holds had diminished to almost nothing and the ledges were negligible. He was lost on that gaunt crag, with only a fox for company. Somehow, he managed to keep going; always choosing what seemed the easiest way, until eventually he came to a great amphitheatre in the rocks. He recognised it at once as the bowl which funnels down into Moss Ghyll and his confidence came storming back. This was home ground. Within half an hour he was standing on the rocky summit of the mountain. He glanced around apprehensively just to make sure the black dog had not followed him, but the only thing to meet his senses was the distant barking of hounds, far, far, below, mingled with an occasional huntsman's shout and the frantic parping of a horn.

The fox scurried off, the moment Sorrowful opened his anorak, without so much as a glance back at his rescuer. "Ungrateful bastard," murmured Sorrowful. "I wonder if foxes 'ave fleas?" He scratched at the thought, but if the fox did have fleas it had taken them with it. The din from below grew to outrageous proportions. At first Sorrowful pretended not to notice but after a while the cacophonous sound jarred his nerves. It seemed as though the whole of Wasdale was a pit of howling canines. With a heavy sigh, Sorrowful picked up his rucksack and made his way towards Broad Stand, the easy way down. The noise disturbed the peace of the hills, and made him restless, but more than that he had developed an intense curiosity. He wanted to see what was going on down below. It took him far less time to descend the mountain than it had to climb it. There was just one short, nasty bit which demanded his attention and then he was able to slide down a groove which landed him on the narrow ridge dividing Scafell from the neighbouring Pike. From there it was only a matter of minutes before he was once again at the foot of the great crag.

Now, Sorrowful Jones is not the kind of bloke you can easily surprise. He has a poker face which he got through playing poker, and he has been around a lot. In his short but crowded life he has seen most things so that there is little left with which to surprise him. But when he reached the foot of Scafell Crag that day, he was amazed. Above him towered the great black buttresses of the crag, soaring for hundreds of perpendicular feet into the blue sky. At its foot, a group of huntsmen were dancing a kind of jig which at first sight, Sorrowful took to be some sort of ritual — like you see on those travel films from Nepal. When this flash of fantasy had passed, however, he could see that the huntsmen were not dancing at ail. They were hopping with rage. And they had just cause. Scattered all over the soaring face of the cliff on ledges great and small was a multitude of dogs. There were brown dogs on black ledges and black dogs on brown ledges. There were sitting dogs, standing dogs and dogs on the trot like caged lions. Above all there were howling dogs—for every single hound in the pack was stuck fast.

Sorrowful ambled over the scree to the dancing huntsmen and struck up a conversation with a fiery countenanced old boy who seemed to be in a position of authority,. "They're stuck, mate," remarked Sorrowful, indicating the dogs. The Master of Foxhounds gave him a look which would have withered a fully matured oak, but Sorrowful pretended not to notice. "How did it 'appen, then?" he asked, innocently. "The damned brutes must have followed the fox up the crag", replied the Huntsman "Extraordinary business, what? We were all too far behind to see it clearly, or stop 'em. Now they're stuck up there." He looked at Sorrowful hopefully and added, "You look like a climber, young fella: can't you get 'em down?" A young pup, which had been too small to keep up with the rest of the pack, had been standing by its master's legs, when suddenly it smelt the scent of fox on Sorrowful's anorak. With an infant bound it sprang at him, yapping excitedly. "Down Brutus! Down boy!" Commanded the Master. "Dammit! Don't you know the difference between Man and Fox, yet?

Can't think what's got into the blasted creatures today!""I'm used to bein' hunted so don't mind me," said Sorrowful, catching the dog a clip on the earhole which immediately stopped its malarky. The pup looked hurt and puzzled: nobody had ever told him that if you came too close to a fox-smell it belted you like a steam hammer. "What about the pack?" moaned the Master. Sorrowful shook his head. "I'm only a poor soddin' rambler, mate, so I can't help yer.

He wandered away, leaving the huntsmen to solve their problem as best they might. Down the scree he went, then along a sylvan greensward until he came to the valley floor and the cluster of cottages and the whitewashed old inn from whose windows men first gazed at crags with eyes that saw truth and adventure. He bought a pint of ale and some bread and cheese and consumed his repast in the glowing warmth of the afternoon sun. That night he found again his old shelter spot on the rough stones and he lay down, contented. In front of him Scafell rose blackly etched against the purple night sky; an ebony outline of serrated towers. Less than an hour before, with the aid of torches and miles of rope, the last of the dogs had been recovered from the crag and the caterwauling had died away as the huntsmen returned home. Now it was still and dark and as Nature intended. Sorrowful belched loudly, turned over, and fell asleep.

Walt Unsworth: First Published in Climber & Rambler: May 1978.

Mike Tomkies: Life in the Wilderness

February 19, 2016, 5:26 am

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Mike Tomkies,Moobli and a wildcat

Just now and then you read a book by an adventurous man which is so superbly written that you feel you must talk to the author. Not since Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water, with its incredibly rich vision of the Western Highlands, had I been so powerfully moved.

What otters were to Maxwell—a source of inspiration giving meaning to his life when he most needed it — so, I felt, were wildcats to Mike Tomkies. Where Tomkies differed from Maxwell was that he had no wish to make pets of his wildcats. Having rescued them when they were abandoned by the mother, he felt it his duty to rear them and let them loose. But strange events conspired to turn the whole affair into an extraordinary story.

When I reviewed the book My Wilderness Wildcats, I had no clue as to where the wilderness was, for no place-names were given. The author obviously wanted to keep the location secret and, respecting his privacy, I didn’t even consider trying to find out.Then the unexpected happened: he wrote to thank me for the review. I replied suggesting we meet and so we did, at the remote post-office where he collects his mail once a week in summer – it was a blind date. What would he be like?

I had to wait longer than I expected before a tall and lithe figure, wearing a camouflage jacket, held out his hand and said, “Mike Tomkies. Sorry I’m late.” His manner was matter of fact, not effusive. The voice was English. The determined face had a fringe of whiskers and a chin beard, with a few grey hairs among the dark. I thought we would be off immediately to the remote road-end where he keeps his boat. Instead, he gazed at me thoughtfully, then came out with it:

“I should really visit a golden eagle eyrie. It’s important I look at it to see if it’s in use. But it’s a twenty-mile drive back the way you’ve come, then a steep climb to the foot of the cliff, and I expect you’ve had enough for one day.” The time was 4.30 p.m.

I rather liked the idea, even although mist was smirring as I put on my boots and transferred to his Land-Rover, while Mike ordered Moobli the Alsatian into the backseat. So back round the sea-loch we went and over a thousand-foot pass while he talked of eagles and the exhausting work of visiting every eyrie in one of the wildest stretches of Scotland.

“I did thirty-three treks last season checking over a score of eyries. I’ll tell you this—writing about wildlife is a lot easier than taking photographs of it. I spent five nights out in a small hide at one eyrie. The longest continuous spell was thirty-one hours. I felt terrible at the end of it. Even with a sleeping-bag it was freezing cold and uncomfortable. But I found out what I wanted to know—that the eagle hunts and brings in prey at night. The problem of flying into a cliff ledge under an overhang with trees and landing on it must be really difficult. I also discovered that it sleeps with its head under its wing like a duck, brooding its chick all the while.

“The big thrill was to be awake while the eagle was asleep, then see it push its head out, open its eyes, close them again and nuzzle down for another forty winks. I was waiting for the sunrise, and I’ll never forget the moment when the eyrie was touched with gold and I pressed the camera shutter to get my best picture of an eagle with its chick.

Moobli above Glencoe:Photo- Mike Tomkies

“My most terrifying moment was one day when the male rocketed straight at the hide as if to destroy it. But all it wanted was a sprig of heather from above my face, stuff I had used to camouflage my hide, to add to the nest material. There were four days when prey must have been scarce, so little was being brought in. I offered the eaglet steak that I had carried up to supplement its diet, but it wouldn’t eat it until the mother tore it up.

“I’m frightened of heights, and it slightly worries me that I have to take so many chances. I’ve had my pack blown off a ledge, such was the force of the wind. Eagles really test you. You can be exhausted, despondent, and in a state of exultation all in a day.”

We were over the pass now and contouring a fresh-water loch enclosed by spruce and larch forest.

“This is the place,” said Mike, pulling the vehicle in close and leaving Moobli as guard while the pair of us took a steep ride through the trees. An hour of steady plugging, and I happened to be looking up the face, when the broad, out-stretched wings of an eagle came over the ridge and dipped into the rocks.

Mike Tomkies abode 'Gasken Cottage',on Loch Sheil.

“You’ve brought me luck. The eyrie must be in use,” said Mike, excitement in his voice.

Closer to the rocks we could see the big stick-pile of the eyrie on a precarious ledge. Soon I was up there, looking obliquely into the nest cup containing two pale eggs, while Mike traversed across by a different route. Now we turned for home, driving into heavier rain as we went west to the road-end where the fibre-glass boat lay anchored. A few carries of heavy gear down the steep bank, a pull at the outboard engine, and we were away into an out-of-focus world of grey water and creeping mist.

“Yes, it’s a dangerous loch,” said Mike in answer to my query.

I’ve had two narrow escapes from drowning—once when the boat was swamped in a squall and I had to swim for it. The boat sank, but I got some buoyancy from a box with a wildcat kitten in it and from a watertight attache case containing my valuables. I got some help from the dog, too, by grabbing his tail. Training it from being a pup to stay close to me paid off. The other bad moment was due to engine failure in stormy conditions.”

“Welcome to Wilderness!” were his next words as we pulled sharply into what was little more than a slit of inlet below a white croft house flanked and backed by noble trees. Even in the dim light it had welcoming charm. It was good to get in, light the Tilley lamps and have a dram while the steak was cooking on the Calor gas stove. I was too ready for my bunk to take much in. Eiderdown bag unrolled, I was asleep in minutes, and woke up to the steady drumming of rain on the tin roof.

Mike was already up and at breakfast of cereal and fruit in his own quarters, which combine his bedroom, office and living-room.

“Help yourself,” he nodded to the kitchen table, and I took the hint, for I, too, am not by nature talkative in the morning. However, once the fire was lit and Mike’s pipe of tobacco was drawing, he was ready to expand.

“I’m not quite a Sassenach,” he said. “My mother was a McKinlay Stewart from Islay, but she died when I was four and I didn’t know of my Highland connections until I was 42. At that time I was living in a log cabin which I’d built myself on a piece of virgin coast in British Columbia. No neighbours except deer, racoons, mink, bald eagles, skunks, pack rats, salmon and the odd cougar and black bear. I had cut myself off from my old way of life to try to write a great novel. In that wilderness, with a boat and a sea full of fish, I could live easily on five dollars a week.

“But the loneliness of living in the wilderness nearly broke me, especially the first long winter when nature seemed to be conspiring against me. I worked ten hours a day on the novel, trying to banish the pangs of solitude, but they kept gnawing at me. In three and a half years of patience-testing discipline I wrote and rewrote that novel. And the manuscripts are across the room from you in that wooden chest, still unsold.

“It was a purging experience. There were depths, but a change was taking place in me as I became attuned to the wilderness and drew more and more joy from its wildlife. Then I did a solo trek into the mountainous grizzly bear country, going back there later with a wise old Indian, a marvellous backwoodsman who really opened my eyes.” He has written about the experience in a book published in Britain last year called Alone In The Wilderness, which I have read and enjoyed since I saw him.

Two questions came to my mind. What made him leave Britain for the wilds of Canada? The other was- why did he leave British Columbia for Scotland when he was getting so much from the wilderness experience out there? He referred me to his Canadian book, and its opening chapter, “The Immigrant”, where he writes :

“Before my move from Britain I had found myself becoming bored and depressed. The reasons perhaps reached back to my youth. During the early years as a cub reporter in country villages I had dreamed only of making it to London. The British capital then seemed to me in my painful naivety a magic journalistic mecca where I’d be accepted into an exciting world of earls, politicians, glamorous women, movie stars and athletes.

“After more than a decade in London I indeed dallied with the illustrious, the beautiful and the swift. I was flying between Paris, Rome, Athens, Madrid, Vienna, New York and Hollywood, mixing drinks, talk, life and copy with vaunted famous names whose images I’d once worshipped as a village youth. Meeting whom I chose, writing about whom I liked, my name at the head of columns in widely read magazines, money simply Hooded in 1 became the complete hedonist. I went through sports cars like a frustrated racing driver, and reacted against my shy and awkward country-bred youth by squiring some of the world’s most beautiful women.

“It was around my 34th birthday that this fast life began to go sour. Quite suddenly nothing seemed to lie ahead but boring repetition. A self-contempt grew as I realised that I ought to be doing something more intelligent with my life. Material success was no longer enough.”

Living between man and the last wild places

Having changed horses in midstream around that age myself, I could understand his state of discontent.

“But why come back to Britain after being in a big country that you were enjoying?” He answers this question in the end chapter of Alone In The Wilderness titled “Time To Move On”.

“Canada had been good to me, good for me. It had shaken me from a city rut and had shown me a finer and fuller life here on this lonely cliff, five thousand miles from all I had previously known, my mind had been freed, I felt as if a new self had been formed … I had lived close to nature, seen both its beauty and its callousness, and been shown a path, a way that led beyond hope or fear, success or failure.

“I knew now the time had come to move on. I did not know when or where I would go, only that my life, minor and of little account though it was, would be bound up somehow in the future between man and the last wild places . . ”

Astonishingly, it was the chance find of a paperback which he picked off a rubbish heap in Canada which brought him to Scotland. The book was A Ring Of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell.

“As I read about Camusfearna and Maxwell’s magical description of the Western Highlands, it set me wondering if I could find a place like that in Scotland. The idea was reinforced by an article I’d read about the Adventure School which the Atlantic rower John Ridgway had set up in Sutherland.

“Uncertainties were resolved when the land next to mine was sold to city folk who began building log cabins on it. I sold up, came eventually to Scotland and visited the beautiful bay where Camusfearna used to stand. Then I drove north to Ardmore. I admired Ridgway, but I wanted not an Adventure School, but a wild place of my own to study. I started looking around and tried 14 different landowners without success.

“I visited Scotland again in March 1970, and it was on that trip I first saw Arisaig, and beyond its white sands, these strange islands- Rum, Eigg and the Cuillin peaks of Skye. I was so powerfully moved by the sudden impact of it all that I got out the car and kissed the ground. And it was from that moment onwards my difficulties were smoothed as I was passed from one helpful person to another, and got the offer of a dilapidated wooden croft on a small Atlantic island if I cared to make it habitable.

“I knew it was the place for me the moment I saw it, and I soon learned that the tides and currents of this coast were more dangerous than the Pacific Coast where I’d come from. There was a lot of boating to do, towing timber and cement and building materials to the house to make it weathertight. I needed cash to buy the stuff, and got it, thanks to an advance of £500 from a publisher for a biography of John Wayne which I later wrote on the island.

“And it was there, too, that I began writing about the wilderness experience in Canada. It happened because an editor friend of mine thought it would be a good magazine article. Strangely enough, as I sat down to write, I realised that it was exactly four years to the very day that I had arrived in Canada. Something unusual happened as I started to put down the log cabin experience. The typewriter carriage ran away with me. I typed right through the night and produced 30,000 words in three days. All the doubts and uncertainties and the hard treks came back to me. The result was more than a series of articles. It became my best book: Alone In The Wilderness.

“So much was happening every day there. I felt I had become a part of the natural life of the island. Seals would follow my boat for a hand-out of mackerel. I could call a kestrel down from the sky. I was adopted by a crow and I trained a young sparrowhawk. Crabs and plaice would ride on the waves right up to the very edge of my beach to snatch insects blown from the trees. Then when the tide fell, along would come the oystercatchers to pick up what had been left. Next would come the fox looking for bigger spoils cast up by the tide.”

While we talked the mist was lifting and the rain had eased. We put on our boots and Mike led me to the waterfall spouting white through the oaks and birches.

Moss, grey rocks, fragrant scents of the new leaf, the little garden he had created amidst his three acres, and the native trees he had planted were so much as he had described in his Wildcats book that I felt I had been here before as we strolled, with a background of woodland birdsong and sandpipers calling from the shore.

 
Tom Weir: First published in The Scots Magazine 

 

Blizzard on The Old Man

February 26, 2016, 4:32 am

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For as long as I can remember, Boxing Day has always been the day for going out on the fells. Christmas Day was always a lazy day — eating, drinking, dozing in front of the fire and singing around the piano — but the next day you went out, no matter what the weather, even if only for a short stroll down the lanes and across the fields. Sometime you just stumbled through the woods in the fog or got wet through in the Langdales. Several times we were skating on Tarn Hows in the sunshine and much later we went skiing in the Pennines. But once, more than forty years ago, either because the weather was too bad or because we had eaten too much on Christmas Day, we just went up to Coniston in the afternoon to sleep the night at the hut but do something fairly energetic the next day.

This but was a wooden garage, sited in a field at Coniston Old Hall farm, a hundred yards or so from the lake. It was the joint property of nine of us, and was one of the first climbing huts in the Lake District. Nowadays the field is a caravan park, but at that time we had the whole of the lake-shore to ourselves. We slept on rickety home-made beds under blankets that were invariably damp, and the place was heated by an old combustion stove that produced a fug you could hardly see through. Light was Provided by a couple of storm lamps and we cooked on Primus stoves. Often it was so cold — despite the stove — that we woke up in the morning to find an inch of ice on the water-bucket kept inside the door.

Incredibly, we bathed briefly in the lake every weekend, no matter what the month — it was a point of honour — and we either argued or played cards in the evenings. When we woke up this particular Christmastime, after the usual uncomfortable night's sleep, we discovered that several inches of snow lay on the ground. And, over porridge, bacon and eggs — we used to do ourselves rather well in those days — we decided to walk over Coniston Old Man; a mountain that we thought we knew as well as our back gardens at home. Just as we had no sleeping bags in those days, neither did we have any proper windproof clothing — in fact I don't think it had been invented. We just had old jackets and trousers, plenty of sweaters and scarves, motor-cycle goggles and Balaclava helmets.

But we all wore nailed climbing-boots and carried ice-axes and some of us had Boy Scout compasses. I can clearly remember, after all these years, walking up the hill behind Coniston railway station and thinking I had never seen so much snow. The village looked like somewhere in the Alps — although none of us had been abroad at that time — and the yellow lights from the lamps in the cottages shone out across the snow. It was a dark, murky morning and it was snowing hard. We trudged up the hill to the open fell and then turned right to follow the quarry track, except that no track was visible. The snow was already building up over the stone walls, and all the well-remembered features of the fellside had disappeared. Higher up, on our way to the quarries, we came upon a small crag, immediately to our left, which was completely encased in black ice, several inches thick, to its total height of perhaps forty feet.

By now a blizzard was blowing and it was difficult to see. The snow, and hail lashed painfully into our faces and at one time we noticed tiny specks of blood in the snow and assumed that the frozen snow had cut our cheeks. But as I have never heard since of hail drawing blood I can only assume that one of us had a nose bleed or some slight injury. All the same, it seemed dramatic evidence to us youngsters of the ferocity of the elements. Further on, the shores of Low Water loomed out of the mist and we saw that the tiny tarn was piled high with ice-floes so that the scene looked like a corner of Spitzbergen or the Arctic. It was perhaps ten minutes later when we realized that the conditions were becoming serious.

We were ploughing through soft snow knee-high and sometimes up to our waists, the wind and the driving snow were almost unbearable, and we were not even sure where we were. Visibility was down to a few yards, the snow had completely transformed the mountainside we knew so well, and there were black crags and drops into unseen depths — which looked much worse in the gloom and the storm than they actually were. We wanted to find some sort of shelter so that we could look at a compass and bring some life back to our frozen fingers. Nobody thought of going down. And then a miracle occurred. One of us suddently fell through a hole in the snow and, when he had recovered from the shock, found he had dropped through a hole in the roof of one of the quarry huts.

In a moment we all followed him, and, sheltered from the storm, were soon able to put on our reserves of clothing, get our fingers warm again and have a look at the compass — the first and only time I have ever had to use a compass on Coniston Old Man. We climbed out through the roof looking like Arctic explorers, with Balaclavas tied down with scarves and most of us wearing two pairs of gloves. With our circulations restored, some food eaten, and the general line to the top established, we pressed on without further adventures to the cairn and then down the other side of the mountain to Goats Water and back to the hut.

But the conditions on top of this simple fell were the most Alpine I can ever remember in Lakeland. In those days the huge cairn was about ten feet high, but, so deep was the snow, it was completely hidden. The wind was unbelievably strong, so much so that one of the party had his goggles blown off his face and irretrievably lost in the storm. And the normally easy descent to Goats Water was a slope of wind-polished ice so that we had to creep down supported by our axes, as if we were coming off the Eiger. Fortunately we were in nailed boots; in present-day vibram-soled boots without crampons, the slope would have been almost impossible for comparative novices and certainly extremely dangerous.

The Old Man of Coniston: WG Collingwood-1925: The Ruskin Museum.
 
When we got down to the but we stood our frozen clothes in a corner like suits of armour and photographed them. And in the evening at the Crown we had our first taste of mulled ale, done on a shovel over a blazing fire. 

AH (Harry) Griffin. First published in the Lancashire Evening Post.

 

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The Chasm of Buachaille Etive Mor

March 4, 2016, 5:33 am

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ON THE SOUTH-EAST side of Stob Dearg of Buachaille Etive Mor broken rocks and scree descend for about 500 feet beneath the summit in a sort of wide funnel, below which the mountain face is cleft by a great, vertical rift between precipitous cliffs for about 1,500 feet or more, ending on the gently sloping moorland not very far above the road in Glen Etive, about a mile and a half below its junction with the main road west of Kingshouse. The early age of British rock climbing specialized in the ascent of gullies, and its most exciting problems were encountered where the gullies were bridged by huge boulders with caves underneath them. Such difficulties were usually accentuated by a stream of water coming over the chockstone and clothing the rocky walls with spongy, green moss, circumstances in which the older pioneers appeared to put forth their best efforts and find keen enjoyment.

The Chasm of the Buachaille was bound to attract attention in the early days of Scottish rock climbing, and its history is, in fact, a long one. In July 1898 J. H. Bell (a past president of the S.M.C.not related to the author) and J. Maclay were forced to retreat after a hard struggle, from below a 100-foot waterfall pouring down over a seemingly impregnable, vertical cliff. This point is now recognized to be less than half-way up the Chasm. In June 1903 the ablest Scottish climber of his time, Harold Raeburn, accompanied by Dr and Mrs Inglis Clark, entered the Chasm above this difficulty. They found a good deal of old snow and, at one place, traversed about fifty feet through a snow tunnel. Time was against them, for Raeburn had to catch an evening train at Tyndrum. They escaped on to the south wall at a point where two severe pitches still remained to be tackled, above which was the culminating difficulty, now known as the Devil's Cauldron. Their climb ended on the Lady's Pinnacle, about 200 feet high, situated on the south wall. Dr Clark considered that this was the most prolonged piece of difficult climbing in his British experience. Raeburn, however, returned to the assault in April 1906, accompanied by W. N. Ling.

Although it should have been obvious that the Chasm would be most likely to yield its last secrets as a pure rock climb, uncomplicated by snow or water, and preferably after a long, dry period, the pioneers of those days were in the habit of doing their Scottish climbing in the early part of the year and spending their summer vacations in the Alps. Climbing the Chasm was thus rendered much more difficult by the presence of masses of old snow which had partly melted away from the side walls of the gully, the rocks of which were often exceedingly smooth and water-worn. If the weather was fine and the sun was hot, copious streams of descending water added to the difficulties. Raeburn and Ling put up a very good show. At certain places stocking-sole technique was necessary. At others the snow was of some assistance, as it piled up against the walls and lessened the effective height of the pitches. Raeburn reported that this applied to most of the pitches which were climbed in 1903. Finally, they too were driven out on to the south wall at a point where the last pitch- "a black, slimy slit of smooth rock, down which gurgled enough water in gallons per minute, to furnish an ample supply to a fair sized town"- loomed high above them. The next attempt resulted in a successful ascent of all but the direct route up the back of the Devil's Cauldron. A reconnais-sance on the previous day solved the problem of the 100 foot pitch which had frustrated the party of 1898, and a fixed rope was left hanging down the pitch.

The ascent was started at six-fifteen a.m. (from the foot of the first pitch) on 13 April 1920 by R. F. Stobart and Mr and Mrs N. E. Odell. There was plenty of snow and running water. The mist closed down on the party after second breakfast at half-past ten. Combined tactics were necessary at a pitch where smooth, waterworn, vertical walls converged at middle height and permitted the necessary bridg-ing tactics. At the back of the Devil's Cauldron the waterfall hung suspended as a 100 foot curtain of great icicles, but the party was able, by a second use of combined tactics, to climb a vertical chimney on the south wall. So ended the Chasm and its difficulties at five-twenty p.m. The first direct ascent of the back of the Devil's Cauldron was effected on 30 August 1931 by J. G. Robinson and I. G. Jack. They took four hours to reach its floor and another three to climb the pitch. This triumph was the climax to a number of attempts by a small band of enthusiasts. Colin Allan and I had no part in the exploration of the Chasm. Our first visit, entirely unplanned, was in May 1932. It was not a complete success, as we were defeated by a considerable flow of water at the middle section of the Cauldron, but we returned to the Chasm, year after year, as a sort of standard climb which never failed to yield a grand day of strenuous rock work in magnificent surroundings. If we could climb Buachaille by the Chasm, run down to the Etive and enjoy a swim in its long pool and feel no fatigue, we concluded that we were in reasonably good training.

We spent a pleasant evening at Kingshouse, but left our friends after eleven p.m. in order to pass the night in our own way. About midnight we were seated on the pier at Lochetivehead, watching the full moon rise over the shoulder of Ben Staray. We sat for so long, absorbing the peace and beauty of that perfect night, that a half-formed impulse to climb the mountain died away of itself. About four miles back on the way to Dalness we found a little wood where we spread our sleeping sacks on a carpet of pine needles and went to sleep. There is nothing more delightful than such a bivouac in a cool, spring night. A few midges awoke us between four and five a.m., but they were only a handful of skirmishers, and not the hordes of summer-time. Our day commenced with a swim in a cold, deep pool of the river Etive. Then came plenty of breakfast—kippers toasted over a wood fire, boiled eggs, pork pies, bread, cheese, marmalade and tea. We paid tribute to dietetics and vitamins with a final course of oranges. Nowadays, even were it possible, I should doubt the value of such a preparation for a day's climbing.

Then, the procedure was normal, and most enjoyable too. A few introductory pitches loosened our muscles before the walls of the gully closed in about us. A triple pitch loomed ahead, with three huge chockstones in succession, each surmounting a cave. The ascent was effected on the right wall. This is almost the only vegetatious pitch in the Chasm, but even here there are good rock holds where required. We made one pitch of it and traversed back on to the floor of the gully above the waterfall. The next long pitch was up a slabby wall of red rock, on the left, with an awkward traverse to the right at the top of the difficulty, where the holds were not in-cut. The leader should have adequate length of rope for this pitch. In wet conditions it can be very wet at the bottom. Little need be said of the successive difficulties which we encountered below the 100 foot waterfall pitch which had defeated the earliest explorers. They are all interesting and varied, but Colin Allan and I, in successive visits, became so familiar with them that we did not use the rope at all on this lower section. This is a confession rather than an example to be followed.

Some of the pitches are exposed and difficult. If we took guests with us we always roped them up. The reputed. sixth pitch is a test of the dryness of the Chasm. It is a straight-forward staircase with the usual waterfall pouring down. In wet weather it means a certain drenching on the stair on the left. We discovered an alternative through-route by a cave on the right, but this is mossy, slimy and difficult and unlikely to be drier. If the sixth pitch is dry one has a reasonable expectation of being able to climb the rest of the Chasm. The last pitch below the Cross Roads is a delightful, airy problem on a nearly vertical rib on the left, followed by a lofty traverse back to the bed of the gully above a waterfall. Now we arrived at the Cross Roads, where a transverse, eroded dyke forms two gullies, to left and right. It was a good place for lunch. Any party that has had enough difficulty or enough climbing for the day can escape here on either side, the more interesting being the right or north side, with a pleasant descent from the crest of the north wall, involving some good practice scrambling. Allan and I contemplated the waterfall. The only possible route was obvious enough, by a near-vertical, shallow cleft on the right-hand buttress of the fall. The first thirty feet to a little pinnacle, with stance and belay, were easy. Then the holds became small and more widely spaced.

At a return visit in 1945 I found some loose rock in this upper section, but there are still sufficient sound holds. It is an exposed pitch with small but adequate holds, technically excellent if one goes about it with care and deliberation. At the top there is a perfect stance and belay. Although it is possible to continue up this wall, the better way is to make a short, difficult traverse into the gully bed, cross this and go up the other wall for a few feet to a narrow ledge which goes almost as far as the lip of the next waterfall. The handholds are few and wide apart. The ledge peters out towards the finish and the rock is very smooth and rounded. Delicate balance and a long arm span are necessary if one is to be successful in negotiating the Piano Pitch, as it has been named.

Careful selection of holds and study of the direction of stresses are essential to make each movement safe, especially for a short man. Brute force and rush tactics may land one in the pool beneath the waterfall. I have seen two seconds who have slipped in at the last move. It is only eight or ten feet down to the water. Those who slipped were, of course, lowered into the pool! After some inclined, water-worn slabs, which are not too easy, we came to a narrow rift with smooth walls, about sixty feet high. About twenty feet up on the left was a rounded bulge projecting from the wall, and just above this point the walls converged to their narrowest aperture, about three feet or so.

The stream came down in a fall at the innermost part of the rift. This pitch may, unfortunately, be avoided by climbing out of the gully on the left. The back of the rift is somewhat undercut, which would make it altogether impossible to climb up there by orthodox chimney tactics. I have never tried, as it must be a very wet proceeding. It is not a cave pitch, and the neat solution of the problem makes use of the bulge of rock on the wall. Combined tactics were used by the Stobart-Odell party in 1920. I think that Colin Allan was the first man to climb the pitch unaided by the direct method. He climbed it in boots, which makes the performance all the more creditable on smooth, rounded, waterworn rock, taking into consideration the corresponding qualities of Allan's boots, which seldom had many nails at all! I led up to the bulge by bridging movements with feet on one wall and hands on the other. There is a good stance at the bulge, hardly enough room for two people, but no belay. Colin pushed up past me, wedged between the walls, reached across to a handhold on the opposite (north) wall and pulled himself over and up with both arms. He was strong enough to do it in that way and I respected his performance.

Somehow, I failed to get the knack, so that I had to accept a good pull on the rope. This failure made me think on ways and means of making up for my relative lack of stature and arm strength. The solution is applicable to many other, difficult, cross-stepping traverses on severe rock climbs. The guiding rule is to spare no effort in order to get high enough, and somewhat above the holds which one is aiming for. One should also study the holds for one or two moves ahead. Accurate co-ordination of eye and limb replaces brute force and hard pulling. In 1933, when climbing the Chasm with G. C. Williams, I led the Converging Walls Pitch and found that I had a good reserve of energy. The landing on the north wall is still on rounded rock ledges, but is perfectly secure. If you lead the pitch and have doubts of the ability of your second it is a good idea to make him take off his boots and proceed in stocking-soles. There is a belay on the north wall some distance above. On one occasion Colin was taking a lady climber up to the first bulge, when the latter had the misfortune to slip. Colin was obviously enjoying himself as the lady executed a few pendulum swings below him on the rope.

Then he simply took in the rope, pulling her up as if he were landing a fish. He was a good man to climb with. As in first-class drama, there is now a breathing space. The Chasm is walled in on both sides to a height of over 100 feet. Numerous pitches succeed one another, all in the line of the watercourse where there should now be only a trickle of water. At one point there is an easy exit on to the south wall. A somewhat difficult, short cave pitch lies below the great hall of the Devil's Cauldron. There is an undercut handhold near the top on the right wall of the cave and a good hold above.

The Devil's Cauldron is a savage and magnificent place, the north wall of 200 feet being vertical and unclimbable. The impressive wall on the south side is cleft by a narrow vertical chimney. At first sight the wet repulsive slit at the back of this narrow enclosure appears to be utterly unclimbable, so that it is small wonder that the earlier parties never attempted to do so. Unless after dry weather in summer, and preferably no earlier than June, as there is often snow in the Chasm till well on into May, one should not attempt the direct route up the back of the Cauldron. The weather had deteriorated when Allan and I got thus far. I was deputed to lead the first fifty or sixty feet to a small platform underneath a narrow undercut chimney which was the crux of the climb. Although reasonably dry at the start, the last ten feet below the platform sprayed me fairly effectively.

Colin joined me on the stance and I belayed him for his attempt on the crucial chimney. Conditions were altogether against him. Like all strong men he delighted in forcing himself up and pulling with both hands, keeping far too close inside the chimney and so becoming the butt for a vigorous stream of water from above, which poured over his head, down his neck and down his sleeves. He failed to gain a foothold on the north wall, but was wise enough to retreat in good order. I was so overawed by the sight of my friend in the guise of a mermaid that I called out for a complete withdrawal while we were still not too chilled to grasp the rocks. On the floor of the Cauldron I took off all my clothes, wrung them out and put them on again. It was worth doing. We traversed out of the Chasm by the south wall, but we had enjoyed a good day's climbing. The next time I visited the Chasm was in the company of G. C. Williams on 9 July 1933. There was only a trickle of water at the back of the Cauldron. I had a hard struggle with the crucial chimney, and retained a wholesome respect for the place. Above it I found a little rock arch where Williams belayed me for the final, straight section of the pitch. From below, this appears to be far worse than what goes before. The side walls are vertical and the water comes trickling down over mossy slabs which seem to be almost as steep. The reality is much more comforting.

The technique is orthodox backing-up, such as is used for most chimneys, and the exposure, with a sensational drop to the rocky floor of the Cauldron, need not worry any confident expert. With feet pressed against the wall in front and palms of the hands at my hips pressed against the wall behind, I progressed upwards, a few inches at a time, with very little effort and almost as much comfort as if I had been seated in an armchair with my feet against the sides of the fireplace. At intervals I could rest across the gap and take a bird's-eye-view of the countenance of my second. Fortunately, the holds improve below the upper overhanging chockstone, which is the last difficulty. In the first edition of the Central Highlands Guide the exit pitch from the Cauldron is given as 175 feet high. The earlier explorers thought it must be 200 feet at least. Debunking is a sordid occupation, but I have measured the height with a reliable surveying aneroid with a 4-inch dial, and the result was between 105 and 110 feet. Climbers are but human: they would not indulge in such an irrational sport without a lively imagination, singularly sensitive to the impress of difficulty and the self-satisfaction of victory. Even the crux is not so difficult and strenuous as I have suggested. In August 1945 I led an English climbing friend up the Chasm.

The Converging Walls Pitch pleased him, but it was only at the Cauldron that he became visibly impressed. Then it dawned upon me that, after a lapse of twelve years, which had taken my own age very close to the half-century, I might not be able to lead the crux at all. I discounted the effect of those years in better co-ordinated movements and economy of effort. By keeping as far out of the chimney as possible and resting frequently I was able to gain the critical foothold on the north wall without any undue effort. It is true that the other wall shrinks away to nothing at a certain height and that the position feels and appears to be highly precarious, but exposure is not the same thing as danger. August 1945 was, however, a dry month in the West Highlands. It is seldom that conditions are good enough for a comfortably dry ascent of the back of the Cauldron. On all other occasions but the two already mentioned Allan and I were obliged to climb out of the Cauldron by the chimney on the south wall. In 1920 the Stobart-Odell party used combined tactics for climbing this severe chimney.

About 1938 or so, E. R. Zenthon climbed it alone, and W. H. Murray has also climbed it. Our problem was to find a safe way up the south wall for more ordinary climbers in conditions when the back of the Cauldron was too wet. We found the best solution at our second attempt, using the chimney only for the first twenty feet or so. The second can then safeguard the leader over a severe traverse out of the chimney, by an exposed corner and along a smooth, narrow ledge on the south wall. The movement is as difficult as anything on the direct route, but it is safe and dry. The leader can then climb straight up to an excellent stance and belay, from which he can safeguard his second. The final ascent to the top of the wall is by a moderate, upper chimney.

The climb finishes on the top of the Lady's Pinnacle, which was first reached by Harold Raeburn, Dr and Mrs Inglis Clark in 1903. So history tends to repeat itself, but there is no easy ascent of the Devil's Cauldron and the Chasm keeps its best pitches for the end. 

JHB Bell: First published in 'Bell's Scottish Climbs'

Lost World: Seventeen days on the face of Roraima

March 11, 2016, 1:39 am

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 Whillans and Brown....carry on up the jungle.

Currently showing on BBC2 in the UK is an adventure programme which the makers advertise thus...

Adventurer and naturalist Steve Backshall embarks on one of the most dramatic and dangerous expeditions ever filmed by a BBC crew. His mission is to explore Venezuela's tepuis - ancient, sheer-sided mountains, lost worlds cut off from the jungle below.

With an elite team of rock climbers, Steve attempts the first ascent of an unclimbed wall on a remote tepui to search for wildlife on the summit. But nobody could have predicted what would happen, nor the kinds of decisions they'd be forced to make. A white-knuckle ride from the start, the team encounter river rapids and hazardous wildlife, and survive a close shave with a rickety biplane. Yet nothing can prepare them for their climb to the island in the sky. ( Extreme Mountain Challenge)

However,the following article recalls a remarkably similar adventure from over 40 years ago when a crack team which included Joe Brown, Don Whillans, Hamish McInnes and Mo Anthoine took on a climb inspired by Arthur Conan Doyles''The Lost World' novel in the Brazilian/Venezuela rain forest.

"Mo Anthoine and Joe Brown tell in their own words of their climb to the Lost World. Together with Hamish Maclnnes. They arrived home on November 21st — Mike Thompson had returned home with an injured foot early on while Don Whillans — always a glutton for punishment — continued down to Patagonia for more thrills.'

The cliff dominates everything. There's a sort of ridge that runs up to the Face with a big drop on either side. Roraima is a two-tiered job and you by-pass the bottom tier by going up the ridge. We climbed the top tier. I've got a newspaper cutting from one of the previous expeditions and you'd think it was the most bloody desperate climb in the world just to get to the foot of it. You walk for three days through flat forest, not bad going. Then the vegetation changes as you go up the ridge. There are jellyish icicles of nasty grey slime hanging on all the trees. Eventually you reach Eldorado Swamp, that’s a height gain of about 2000‘and there we had Camp 7. It  was named by the botanists, for 'them it was Eldorado, for us, well we were up to our calves in mud and stuff. It as the first you could see the Face itself and the left-hand skyline is Brazil and the right Venezuela.

Anyway, from Eldorado Swamp the ridge gets steeper and it's about a 1000 feet, and about one and a quarter hours to the foot of the Face. It's only technically scrambling but we put fixed ropes on parts to stop having to get hold of nasty plants. We'd been told there would be no nasties on the Face but above Eldorado Swamp I caught five snakes! And these are tarantulas. We'd not seen them before and they suddenly started leaping around. They'll get up on their back legs, you know, when they're in an attacking mood, and jump at you. I was collecting them in polythene bags but Don was throwing my bloody collection away. Spiders, you can usually see them because they're so big, but scorpions are things I didn't like. They were what worried me most.

Mo and Mike arrived first and receed the thing up. It's metamorphosed sandstone — quartzite actually — and very, very hard. It's horizontally bedded so you get hardly any vertical cracks and the horizontal ones are shallow. It's desperate to drill. We had a bolt gun but even then the bolts wouldn't go in, just poof — they turned round and came out. Bloody hopeless! Hamish couldn't understand it. Anyway, Mo started off and did about 130 feet in two hours and Mike and I jumared up to him and I started the next pitch. There were lots of little holds with vegetation in and everyone I cleaned out had a scorpion under the vegetation and this slowed things down. You had to look into each hand-hold before using it. If there was a scorpion you just belted it with a peg hammer. The tension got me very fed up. Next day I used 12 drills trying to put in one bolt but we got to the Cabbage Patch, a sort of long ledge six inches wide where you get onto it, but widening to six or seven feet.It was covered in plants like huge leeks and full of water with mosquito larvae in that wriggled around. But we had to drink it and they stopped wriggling when you boiled the water.

Next day Hamish led off with Don. Eventually I was leading and when I was getting onto a big ledge I reached up and there was a really big fist-sized tarantula. I jumped off on to my last peg, got me hammer out and jumped back, splat, So we called it Tarantula Terrace. We had a camp under a roof here where we slung hammocks from pegs. Then the cliff, steepened with bare sections and overhangs and this Africa Flake thing. There was bolting for 50 feet and then some really exciting pegging for 200 feet. (Joe: "I found the whole lot bloody exciting! All expanding flakes and loose rock and horrible tie-offs. It was incredibly overhanging. You started off on jumars and swung thirty feet out, with three stances in etrier. It was really gripping I thought. To give you some idea, for the first 900 feet you never got a drop of water on you and it rained three inches every day. You'd be climbing away completely engrossed and you would hear the brrrrrrr, it would be rain beating on the forest below and you and you would be looking out to these fantastic waterfalls pouring down everywhere and the water wasn’t anywhere near you.But after we got around Africa Flake and the big right angle roofs,you were absolutely bloody soaked and really cold all day.it was gruelling.

On one occasion, was leading towards what I thought was a stance, but it wasn't. I was soaked to the skin, the vegetation was desperate and the pegs really manky. There was only one hour of daylight left. I said, "We've got to go". Don and Hamish had jumared up behind with the bivvy gear and there was a bit of a panic. We went down as fast as we could and there was a real snarl up with the ropes. I was going hand over hand down thirteen ropes. It was a bunch six inches in diameter and I hadn't a clue what they were. Bloody chaos. Don was stanced in etrier and he had to pull Mo in. We abseiled in the dark. At that time I thought, "This is bloody crazy and we're finished". No-one disputed that. We went down to Camp 7 and rested for two or three days. Don and Hamish had a crack next and we watched from the bottom. You could shout up to the face and we jollied them on. Hamish was leading in his sugarcane-cutter's boots and they only got 15 feet above our high point when the weather was bad so they came down.

 Eventually Mo got to the start of the Green Tower, a nice ledge full of hundreds of fantastic huge insects. (Mo: "One looked like a JCB earth mover, all hooks and spikes and things...Then I led 30 to 40 feet up vegetation to our haven. At this ledge on top of the Green Tower we spent five nights, but the tent was only three feet wide and one side was hanging over the edge, but it was somewhere to work from and we felt a lot better. It's strange that on what must have been one of the wettest cliffs anywhere, you couldn't get any water. You had to do a swing round the corner on jumars with a poly bag to collect drips. Above this Joe tried his controlled descent. Only a few feet but I thought, "A peg's come out", but it hadn't. Joe said in a very calm voice, "I tried lay-backing up an etrier. I'm going to put a bolt in now". Then up an evil looking chimney to a tennis court — a really huge ledge and you could see the top 120 feet above.

We went back down the ropes to the camp. Don and Hamish had this squalid little bit of ledge and they didn't believe there was a big ledge above no they had this real miserable night under just a bit of awning. Hamish had a gaz stove for a pillow.

They're both seasoned gamesman those two, and they were trying to outwriggle each other. We were in hysterics. We persuaded them to lead a bit the next day but Don said, "Who do you think you are? You've led most of the way, so how about finishing it off?". Hamish agreed to do some. We got to a hard 40 foot pitch and Hamish got some krabs on a rope and hurled it across into a chimney and it stuck on a chockstone and he jumared up.

Then there was some steep vegetated stuff where Hamish  stood on Don's back to start and then I got the top pitch to do. I was worried and the rock got soft and the pegs were all duff. When I tried to get onto this pinnacle I pulled a ledge off and I didn't shout, "Below" until a second after it had landed on Hamish! It flattened him! (Joe: "Christ how d'yr get a really injured man down the Face? How d'yr get yourself down? Really gripping! It was mostly soil but Hamish was adamant there was a great big block in the middle. Quite a whoompf! The last part looked hard, but it was a piece of duff. Suddenly, poompf — and I pulled over the top and the sun came out. It had been raining for a month. Bloody amazing! The top was incredible. Just as good as you'd imagined it to be. Just flat, just bare rock.

Back a bit there were these ravines. Some were 150 feet deep at least, all eroded sandstone, water courses where the waterfalls start. It was a real maze. So we spent one and a half hours on the summit and came straight down. We left all the gear, all the fixed ropes from top to bottom. They'd frayed through and we left them. We'd spent 17 days on the Face, we thought it would be 4 and it was a lot harder than we thought. I've never been on an artificial climb that has been as continuous as that for so long. I've been on more difficult ones but they were much shorter, If you have something which is as hard as the hardest artificial climbs say in Derbyshire or Yorkshire, and put them one on top of the other and think back how long it took to climb Gordale Scar and Kilnsey Crag for the first time, well — that's why it took 17 days. I thought it was good going in fact. At one time we were all trying to psych out. I wished I could get stung by a scorpion, or get a spike through my foot and be sent home like Mike. We had this one drill left and if it broke then the climb would be finished and I was tempted to snap it.

"If it had been snow and ice it would have been interesting but it was just boring rock", that's a quote of Hamish's that is, but Hamish says he gets bored with rock climbing!

Footnote: Roraima, at 9219ft the highest point in the highlands where Guyana, Venezuela and Brazil meet, was first climbed in 1889— not of course by the same route as the recent expedition but by less steep but more jungly slopes on the opposite side. The ascent was made by Sir Everard im Thum, at that time the Government Agent for the N.W. District of the then colony of British Guiana, accompanied by Mr Henry lnnes Perkins. It was subsequently ascended by Mr F. V. McConnell in 1894 and 1898 and in 1916 there was a first ladies' ascent by Lady Clementi.

Mo Anthoine/Joe Brown in conversation with Chris Brasher:First published in Mountain Life Dec 1973

Whisper the Wind

March 18, 2016, 1:40 am

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John Syrett and Gordon Stainforth: Chamonix 1972.Photo Andy Long

Whisper the wind around the rocky outcrop
Moving the long grass at the base of the Crag
Listen carefully to the noise it keeps making
Sighing and dying as it rises then falls
 
It tells of a warm day at the height of a summer
And the three young climbers who came here to play
Their laughter remembered as I reach the rock face
Their faces I recall as I stand beneath the Green Crack

Above are the first two verses from a poem included in my published collection, ‘On the Edge’*. This was about a visit to Almscliff Crag in the summer of 1969, by John Syrett, Roger Baxter Jones and myself. At that date we all three were studying at Leeds University, I unlike the other two being a part time student. Both of my two companions subsequently made their mark in the history of British climbing, but each suffered a tragic death. Verse three is intended to set the scene of how we felt and enjoyed our activities at that date.

But the wind is rising and I cannot now confirm
Just who led and who lay out bare back in the sun
We were happy then for it seemed to be never ending
A life without strife with such good friends it was fun

Both John and Roger arrived at Leeds for the Autumn term of 1968, the first to read mineral sciences the second to study English. They were 18 years old at that date, and fetched up as members of the University climbing club, which over the next few years was to also include other outstanding activists such as John Porter, Brian Hall, Alex MacIntyre, Bernard Newman, John Stainforth and a host of others.

John Syrett on Cloggy's Shrike: Gordon Stainforth

John hailed from a village in Kent, and when he arrived in Leeds he was almost a novice rock climber, but immediately he settled to assiduous practice on the then famous university climbing wall. It seemed any time you visited that facility he would be there, and he quickly developed into one of its star performers. It is hard now to appreciate the standing of the Leeds Wall in that era, with the massive developments that have taken place in such facilities subsequently, but it is fair to report that it was then the most important wall in the UK. Only 15 feet high, it nevertheless boasted a hard landing, and some of the problems were very bold, and not a few fractured limbs resulted from falls at the facility. John’s climbing style was quickly developed as being particularly adventurous, and to watch him on his classic roof traverse, at the top of the wall, laybacking on small undercuts with a fractured spine as a real possibility if he fell, was real commitment and nobody else in the early 1970’s seemed keen to emulate the feat.

Thus John was one of the first to realise what such wall training could achieve in developing rock climbing skills, and within a few months he was transferring these learned abilities out onto the local gritstone outcrops. I first met him at the wall and in February 1969 arranged to climb at Ilkley with him. I had recently married and my wife and I were staying with my father in North Leeds, whilst working to refurbish a weaver’s cottage we had bought out of the city in Guiseley. On the Sunday morning early, John arrived having run the five kilometres from his shared flat in Leeds 6. He was wearing flared jeans, desert boots, and an open neck white shirt, assiduously ironed and clean. In each hand he carried a P.A. rock boot; that is all, despite it being an icy cold day with snow on the ground. My former wife Leni, later remarked on John’s startling good looks, being of average height, lithe, with sharp lit blue eyes, topped by a mass of thick black curly hair. Pete Livesey noted his ‘blue eyed god-like expression’.

That first time climbing outside with John made me realise what a phenomenon he really was. Ilkley Moor is known for its biting cold, yet he spent most of the day outside soloing, wearing only his open neck shirt, and jeans whilst my wife and I cowered in our ancient Dormobile sheltering from the elements and brewing up to combat the cold.
Over the next four years John was to pioneer some of Yorkshire’s finest routes, it was to be his golden period with over 40 new routes on gritstone, such as Joker’s Wall and the Brutaliser both at Brimham, Earl Buttress at that Crag, Propeller Wall at Ilkley and some of Almsciff’s outstanding test pieces; The Big Greeny, Encore, and his eponymous ‘Roof’ still a 6B challenge, plus many more and one of the earliest repeats of The Wall of Horrors. Most of his new climbs were at the highest standard of the day, and although he tended to concentrate on the gritstone outcrops his new climbs on limestone, such as Midnight Cowboy at Malham were also challenging to the other activists of that period.

Image: Brian Cropper
John graduated in the summer of 1972, but stayed on in Leeds for he seemed to then be enamoured of the climbing, social and clubbing scene. I once saw him disco dancing at a climbing club dinner,and he really was a mover but disaster struck in late 1973 when at a drunken party, he cut through the tendons on the fingers of one of his hands, opening a beer can. His climbing was never to be the same again and though he continued to be active, he was to be limited by these injuries. He visited Yosemite in 1974, and spent the winter of that year in the Ben Nevis area, soloing classic routes on that mountain.

He remained in Leeds until 1978, but then moved to live in Newcastle where he embarked on a physiotherapy course. He continued to do some climbing and pioneered an E4 5C on Northumberland sandstone, Stella at South Yardhope. Finishing his studies in Newcastle, he took up a position working on the North Sea Oil Rigs. A mutual friend, Mark Clark who met him around this time, reported back his worries about John’s behaviour which he found to be concerning, erratic and drinking heavily whilst worrying about a fatal accident to one of his workmates, for which he seemed to believe he was somehow partly responsible, although an enquiry into the incident absolved him from any blame.

One weekend in June 1985 I was at Malham, and early on the Sunday morning a climber came running into the camp site to tell there had been two accidents which had occurred up on the Cove. Could we go and help. One of these was up on the right wing, so my companion and self headed up there, to find a Scots climber lying at the foot of Wombat. He had set off to solo this, but he had fallen from low down on this route. He was badly cut in the thigh, but with support he could stand and between us we helped him down the hillside and then along to my car. As we moved away from the Cove we met Pete Livesey who was heading up to help at the other accident. All he knew at that juncture was someone had fallen from the top of the Central Wall of the Cove.

We drove the Scots climber to hospital, to accident and emergency, where he needed several stitches to close up his injury, and then I took him to catch a transport back North. He assured me he would be OK doing this on his own! Arriving home late that night, Pete Livesey phoned me with the terrible news that the body they had found at the foot of the Cove was John’s. He had turned up at Pete’s home in Malham the previous evening, holding a bottle of whisky. They had drunk most of this whilst talking late into the night whence John had insisted on going off into the gloom to sleep at the top of the Cove. There is a large cave up there at its right side and on arriving John was to find two other climbers in residence. He bedded down alongside them, but almost at first light he went outside, walked to the edge of the Cove and leapt off.

Pete informed me that there was a note attached to his body, and he definitely had intended to carry out this tragic action. He had taken the note off his body, and he would hand this to John’s relatives in confidence. Pete and I were good friends, and I agreed with him that this was for the best.
So ended the life of John Syrett in only his 35th year, a star that had burnt so bright in his rock climbing career, but who set himself such high standards, that when he could no longer meet these, his life moved on to what seemed to be an inevitable slow sad demise. He remains however in my memory forever young, and inspirational to recall the way he moved up a rockface.  Below is the fourth verse of Whisper the Wind:

It is a long time though since we were here together
And alas it never can be again, for I am the only survivor
The others were killed by their love of the mountains
Leaving me to grow old and trying to remember them

Roger Baxter Jones was from London, and I first met him in late 1968 at Almscliff where we ended by sharing a rope, and climbing together. I was immediately taken by his extreme good humour and strong personality, which led on to some of the other members of the university club to note that ‘It is all the way with RBJ’.  Subsequently I met him occasionally in the Pack Horse pub, the meeting place of the university climbers, but unlike John he was not a regular at the Climbing Wall, preferring to concentrate on spending time on a nearby dry ski slope, set up in an old chapel building on the edge of the campus and he eventually became a highly proficient off-piste skier. He was however a solid rock climber, but he would have been the first to admit that he could not emulate the outcrop feats of John, although they did several difficult climbs together such as the Great Wall on Clogwyn du’r Arddu, with Roger in the lead in 1970.

Roger Baxter-Jones on Rimpfischorn: Morgan Friis Andersen

From his earliest climbing however Roger was orientated to mountaineering, he had a powerful physique, above medium height, but during his first alpine season in the summer of 1969, he suffered a serious accident whilst climbing on the Piz Badile. This meant a long period of recovery and a drop out from his studies in Leeds. On his return, he began to work in Centresport (one of the first climbing/skiing specialist retailers), and to teach dry slope skiing at which he had become highly competent.

Once fully recovered he returned to alpinism, and from thereon he accepted that this was where his all round abilities were best employed. After summer successes he began to also visit the Alps in winter, and a significant climb for him in that season was the Super Couloir on Mont Blanc du Tacul. In summer 1972, he took part in hosting along with myself on a BMC invitation visit to Snowdonia by a party of French climbers, which included such outstanding performers as Simone Badier, Patrick Cordier, and Jean Afanassief. They made a big impression on Roger and were for him a booster to his growing sympathies for all things French.

He then studied at Sheffield, and finally obtained a degree, and a standout climb for him at the end of this period in 1977, was the second ascent of the Whymper Spur Direct on the Grandes Jorasses with Nick Colton.  And later still the first winter ascent, solo of the North Face of The Aiguille des Grands Charmoz.

Over the next half decade his life was dedicated to climbing in the Himalaya, commencing in 1978 with a bold alpine ascent of Jannu with Rab Carrington, Al Rouse and Brian Hall. In 1980 he attempted the south east ridge of Makalu with Doug Scott and George Bettembourg. In 1982 he played a notable part in the successful ascent of a new route on Shisha Pangma, by its south west face with Doug Scott and Alex MacIntyre. In 1983 he summited Broad Peak with Jean Afanasieff, and subsequently took part in two attempts to climb K2 climbing alpine style.

Back in Europe, more and more he became enamoured of the Mont Blanc range, in which region he became a leading exponent of first winter ascents, allied to his by then highly developed abilities in off piste skiing. He also became a disciple of inner game theory, a system of mind control developed by Tim Gallwey (USA), and adopted by some skiers besides other sports enthusiasts.

Roger continued with his French odyssey, in language, tastes and attitudes. In 1983 he married Christine Devassoux, he took French nationality, and became the first Briton to become a Chamonix Guide, whilst setting up with Christine their marital home in that valley.

Old friendships remained, and that winter when my eldest son Stephen had an accident above Le Tour, Roger was the first to offer to help us. But following his dangerous calling, where he specialised in guiding experienced clients up major climbs, he was to die guiding the North Face of the Triolet when a serac broke away obliterating all in its path, including Roger and his partner on the 8th July 1985 (Dying just one month later than John Syrett!).

Trying to make sense of both John and Roger’s life and deaths is  difficult, but they were two outstanding personalities who eschewed conformity and followed, their own chosen paths. Few of us have the courage or ability to be so bold. Here is the final verse of ‘Whisper the wind’.......

Whisper the wind around the outcrop
Moving the long grass at the base of the Crag
Listen carefully to the noise it keeps making
Sighing and dying as it rises then falls
 
* 'From the Edge Selected Poems' .Published by The Flux Gallery Press, 2012. Limited edition,quickly sold out. 

Dennis Gray:2016 

 

Tinkerbell...Ronnie Lee Remembered

March 25, 2016, 2:20 am

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Ronnie was born in December 1926; she was christened Veronica. In early childhood, to her elder twin sisters and friends, she became the little fairy, the ubiquitous Tinkerbell, that tiny nymph of J.M.Barrie's immortal Peter Pan, someone 'whose light, like that of a star, only went out when she was asleep.' In 1941, when I first met her, everyone called her ‘Tink’. Keen on games, swimming, on all athletic activity, Tink had a natural gymnastic agility and wanted to be a gym mistress but such opportunity never came; there was a war on. She left school at 16 to start work at Derby's telecommunications centre. Cycling then became her prime recreational sport and provided energetic introduction to the hills and dales of her native Derbyshire. She loved the hills, their rocky tors, so it was almost a natural progression from cycling to climbing.

Late in 1943, after attending a Walter Poucher lecture and marvelling at his wonderful colour slides of Snowdonia, two cycling-club friends suggested going to North Wales for Christmas; they even managed to procure some second hand, clinker nailed boots and a rucksack too. Our journey to Wales at Christmas was by a mixture of trains and bike, to reduce cost and provide transport to get to those mountains. The first was rocky Tryfan by its Heather Terrace. Next we scrambled up Crib Goch and over the Crazy Pinnacles to reach the summit of Snowdon. On our last day, in mist and rain, we went up Moel Siabod. These three, wonderful, mountain days made the light shine brightly for Tinkerbell; she lost the gossamer mantle of Peter Pan's capricious little fairy companion to become more mature Veronica, her proper name, later shortened to Ronnie. Soon in 1944 our roped rock-climbing began at Cromford's Black Rocks; the light shone brighter still.

There followed four full years of intense climbing activity; intense, that is, by standards of the day, for wartime im-posed its own restrictions and working hours, longer then, were spread over six days, sometimes seven.Black Rocks was the nearest crag and became our most frequent haunt where, occasionally, one might meet other climbers; the Dyke brothers, who cycled from Mansfield, or Ernie Phillips, (whom Ronnie later married), he cycled out too, from Burton-on-Trent. Sometimes we would go further, to Cratcliffe, but visits to more distant gritstone crags and to Wales or the Lake District were rare and usually confined to holidays.

Peter Harding on the first ascent of Black Rocks'Promontory Traverse,July 1945.Photo: Ernie Phillips
By 1945, a small group of Black Rocks habitues, Veronica Lee, Johnny Wellburn, Tony Taylor and me, with a young newcomer called A. J. J.Moulam, formed the Stonnis Club, (Stonnis being the old local name for Black Rocks). It proved to be a stimulus for the climbing there; Ronnie was soon the first woman climber to complete all the existing routes, leading most of them. The quest for new lines then began and she was in on the first ascents of Moulam's Green Crack, V.J.Crack and a hard climb we named Lean Man's Superdirect. Later this was found to have been led, 15 years earlier, by Alf Bridge. His second, Ivan Waller, considered it to be unjustifiably severe and left it unrecorded.

Ronnie was now climbing to a very high standard and it was fascinating to study her technique. Due to her diminutive build she developed a style all of her own. Cycling had already given good stamina and a steadiness of leg which enabled her to balance on the smallest holds, in rubbers or in nails. Light of weight combined with strong arms gave exceptional power to weight ratio. But her speciality was `mantelshelving`; this was practiced with either hand until it could be performed on steep slabs or walls using only the slightest undulations in their surface. In this way she managed to climb pitches where the normal holds were spaced well beyond her reach, simply by making intermediate mantelshelf moves. They often looked impossible.

For dealing with cracks, of course, she knew the secret of hand-jamming, in the days when so few climbers did. Without doubt at this time she was one of the leading women climbers and it was on gritstone and sandstone where Ronnie really excelled, competently following climbs which were then at the very highest grade of difficulty; Frank Elliott's Unconquerable at Cratcliffe, Jim Birkett's Morgue Slab on Helsby, (a second ascent), the Promontory Buttress at Black Rocks where she seconded Norman Millward's third independent traverse, (the first by a woman), and Goliath's Groove on Stanage. However, the crowning exploit, one which confirmed her as the top woman gritstoner, was on Suicide Wall at Cratcliffe when, in May 1946, she seconded its first ascent. During those years a Stonnis Club guide to Cratcliffe and Black Rocks had been compiled by Tony Moulam and myself, with Ronnie giving great help and support.

She was presented with her own, personal, leather-bound copy and in 1948. I borrowed it back, (it was the only copy still intact), for updating and later publication by the Climbers' Club. Afterwards our paths diverged and I only saw her again on two or three isolated occasions though she continued to take an active interest in climbing for many years, first with the Valkyrie Club, (forerunner of the Rock and Ice), then later joining the Oread. Some years ago, at an Oread dinner, she told me her interest had moved on from climbing to skiing, the enthusiasm with which she talked on skiing showed the light still shone.

At some more recent time the light failed and earlier this year, in May, just 41 years after her brilliant conquest of Cratcliffe's Suicide Wall, Ronnie found the wall of life too steep and escaped from it, tragically, incredibly, by suicide.

Author Peter Harding at the Roaches in 1995:Photo-Gordon Stainforth

In every generation of climbers, bright stars emerge to shoot across the mountain firmament then fade and disappear. Their brilliance is not always reflected by lists of new routes led, but sometimes in the memories of friends,. and by the light they shed. Tinkerbell was such as star. 

Peter Harding: First published in High November 1987 

Magic Carpet Ride on Cloggy's Great Slab

April 1, 2016, 3:49 am

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On Snowdon there is a cliff called Clogwyn du'r Arddu. Its name is enough to frighten away many people. It is over 500ft. in height and mostly vertical;quite the most magnificent precipice in England and Wales. Up to 1931 there was only one route on each of the two main buttresses. It was the West Buttress that first attracted me. In 1927, Longland and Pigott and Morley Wood had succeeded in breaking across from the left, to make their magnificent West Buttress Route [Longland's Climb]. My friend, Dr. Graham Macphee, had led me in record time up this climb, and we were sunbathing by the dark little Llyn du'r Arddu. Macphee thought he had earned his rest, as indeed he had, but I had other ideas. I had designs on the middle of the West Buttress. On the upper half of the buttress was a huge slab. If only it could be reached!

Below, the rocks were almost vertical. But the main problem was in the first few feet. All the way along the foot of the cliff the rocks overhung. It was a genuine overhang too; it formed a kind of covered corridor, with a roof that projected in places for 20ft or more. Nobody had yet succeeded in overcoming this over-hang. There seemed to be a faint chance in the middle, where a pile of blocks formed a kind of natural ladder. A well-known climber had tried to climb straight up at this point and had fallen off, luckily without hurting himself. It looked a nasty place, but it seemed to me that, instead of climbing upwards, it might be possible to traverse out to the left above the overhang.

Don Whillans and Bill Peascod in'a nasty place'.Photo-Bill Birkett.

This would lead to a narrow slab, which ran up to the skyline and out of sight. It was impossible to guess what happened after that. The traverse was very severe. There was one sloping hold where my rubbers would not grip at all, so at last I took them off and managed to get across in my stockinged feet. I found myself on a tiny grass ledge, looking rather hopelessly up at the grim face above. I had crossed on to a higher part of the cliff and was already about 100ft above the bottom, with the overhang below me. I felt very small and isolated. I started up the narrow slab. It was far more difficult than it had looked, and wickedly rotten. I threw down every other hold. A thin ribbon of grass ran all the way up on the right, looking like a long and ragged caterpillar. I thought that even this might be safer than the rock and plunged into it. It wasn't at all a friendly kind of caterpillar; it began to peel off and slide down.

I left this moving staircase very hurriedly and took to the rocks again. I climbed on the extreme edge, where it seemed to be a little firmer. Below my left foot the rocks dropped, sheer and unclimbable, for 200ft. Macphee called up that I had run out nearly all of the 120ft line. There was no stance in sight, so I had to stand about uncomfortably while he tied on another 100ft. length. I went on and on, with things looking more and more hopeless. I wondered whether I should ever find a belay. At last the climbing began to get easier, and I was able to traverse to a sheltered grassy recess.

The 'Sheltered Grassy Recess'.Climbers Martin Davies and Dave Williams

 There was a perfect thread-belay, and Macphee soon joined me. It was wonderful to think that no one had ever been here before. It was still more interesting to wonder whether we should ever escape. I tried the slab immediately above, but did not dare to pass a big loose block, resting on a ledge. A few years later, an optimistic climber was more daring; he succeeded in pulling the block on top of himself, gashing his hand very badly. He had to abseil down, weak and faint from loss of blood. He got back very late, and search-parties were out all night looking for him. By this time he was safely in bed. Some one had made a muddle of things. We climbed a rib to a little stance. The big slab, for which we were aiming, was away on our right. It was very steep and smooth here; the far side looked much more hopeful. But could we reach it? 

I got a long way across, and then stuck. The next move might be possible, by a kind of jump. It would be dangerous, but— well, a new climb was worth a risk. I looked at it a long time. It seemed to grow more and more grim. The exposure was terrifying and I was a long way from my second. I came back. I managed to find an easier way across, at a lower level; but that meant that I still had the steep part of the slab ahead of me. The corner was a 20ft wall of literally vertical grass. I made a mad rush at it. I had to climb up more quickly than the grass fell down. It was nasty and dangerous, but I dug in my finger-nails and toes (I was still climbing in stockings) and clutched and scrabbled until I reached the top. I don't know what Macphee thought of all this?

He is a safe and careful climber himself. But he is an ideal second. He watches you carefully and says nothing, except to point out a hold now and again. You feel that he trusts you and expects you to get up, and so you jolly well do get up. Also, he is equally famous both as an alpinist and as a rock-climber, so that I knew I could not have had a better man to back me up. The next pitch was still grass, but not quite so steep. The turf split from the slab and curled up. It was rather like standing on a roll of carpet — with the carpet going on unrolling. It was very difficult and unpleasant.

But our reward was to come. We had two wonderful airy 100ft pitches, right up and across the Great Slab, to its top left-hand corner. The rock was warm and very rough, and we felt profoundly happy and exhilarated. All the thrill of conquest was ours. The climbing was just severe, but it was easy after what had gone before and we seemed to glide up without effort. Macphee said I deserved a kick in the pants or a potato medal, he didn't know which. Why only a potato medal I don't know; I felt I deserved more than that. But it had been a marvellous day. We had done 1,000ft. of rock-climbing, most of it in the very severe class. 

Colin Kirkus:LET'S GO CLIMBING 1941.