August 26, 2016, 12:27 am
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“This heers na wanker, this heers ma mate” said Tam, “he kens Jock fra ma ma’s street”. No one seemed impressed. Then Tam said “he laved in Greenock, he wos a fucken ‘hatchet warrior’ yous ken yous daft wankers”. Now this did the trick and everyone moved up and made room for me. They all had obviously heard of the ‘hatchet warriors’ reputation, but if they only knew about me being a pacifist, but then why spoil a good thing, especially when several pints of beer appeared before me.
Any intention of getting an early night was soon out of the window when another round was bought and someone told me that we had to finish all the beer standing on the table before anyone could leave. My heart sank when I counted 45 pints of beer and eight people in the group one of whom could only manage a few pints since his kidney failure through drinking every day for three years whilst serving in the RAF in Germany - me!
The evening wore on and when the barman tried to tell us it was closing time, a few whispers in his ear seemed to do the trick and he agreed to stay open for a few more hours but the doors had to be locked. Tam’s reply was as good as it gets: “eye, ahn keep yon bloody door locked so we canny get ooot”. I contented myself with the fact that this was going to be an all-nighter, if not, someone was going to pay and I don’t mean the transferring of money!
Around 3am a loud knock on the door interrupted the session. I thanked whoever it was as I was by now lagging behind with emptying the glasses in front of me, but got a little anxious when in walked a police sergeant. I thought things were going to get ugly but he just said that he was looking for volunteers to help on a rescue as someone reported shouts for help from around the base of the Buchaille several hours ago and the regular Coe team were still out helping the Fort William rescue team on the Ben.![]()
I drove alone to the car park below the mountain, word arrived that the body had been recovered. This was my excuse to say goodbye to Tam and his mates who were already eager to get back to the pub in the hope the barman would re-open it for them. Chance would be a fine thing I thought but then again, you never know!!
We parted company with me driving south cautiously out of the Glen in the direction of Callander whilst the others crammed into Billy’s car shouting and singing unprintable words to the tune of ‘the wild west show’. Poor barman I muttered to myself as I drove off.
I drove until my eyelids refused to stay open for business so pulled over into a lay by and tried to get some sleep in what was left of the morning. As it was, I got little sleep so got up around 7am and started off for the car park below Ben Ledi arriving around 8am. I hurriedly got my climbing boots and other gear on, donned my head torch and set off in the morning darkness along the path towards the gully. As I left the path so that I could head for the start of the gully, I had to fight with snow covered bracken tufts which made my legs and thighs ache.
After what seemed hours, I arrived at the start of the gully just as the light was pushing the darkness out of the way. Looking up I felt the adrenaline start to course through my body, and my head cleared of all the nasty things I wanted to do to heather, scree and gorse. What a sight. The gully looked vertical, snow filled and very welcoming so I did not disappoint it and took my first step on the snow slope. As I thumped one of my climbing axes into the hard crusty ice wall it made that fantastic noise that climbers love, the pinging sound which tells you that it is a good hold on good solid ice.
Once I was climbing, my world opened up to allow a multitude of warm sweet feelings to flow in which in itself, gave me the impetus to keep climbing upwards despite the fact that higher up the gully the snow cover was unconsolidated and loose, in addition to last night’s alcohol intake playing havoc with both my head and my bladder.
Three quarters of the way up I was confronted with a large boulder wedged in the gully. It was covered in rime ice and attempts to get a good pick hold with either my Pterodactyl climbing axe or my Chouinard ice hammer was proving difficult and time consuming. Looking back down there was no way I was going to reverse my position as I was too close to the top, just thirty to forty feet away. After struggling for some twenty minutes to overcome the boulder, the weather changed dramatically. Cold winds were blowing, increasing with every gust, and snow put in an appearance, first as a flutter of slow falling flakes, but rapidly turning into a swift downwards fall of a blanket of snow. The early morning sun vanished in a cloud blanket that said I’m here to stay so goodbye sun and any modicum of heat. Finally, it turned into a ravaging snow storm, not wishing to offer up any mercy to those caught out in it which of course really meant - me!![]()
A few more hard pulls, some heavy breathing coupled with impaired vision by the stinging snow and sleet which was now attacking me horizontally, and the top disappeared in a white out just when I thought I had reached it. My position was getting serious. The snow was balling up under my crampons so that the points could not get a good grip and visibility was down to less than a couple of inches.
At one point a gust of wind pushed an intake of air deep into the back of my throat making me struggle to catch my breath like a fish out of water struggling for life giving oxygen that wasn’t there. My energy was quickly being sapped and my arms and legs were telling me constantly that they had had enough of fighting and wanted a rest. I knew that in my rucksack somewhere, I had a pair of snow goggles but I was unable to take the time to get the rucksack off and to look for them so had to endure movement without them.
My brain however, knew that rest was also impossible due to the unconsolidated snow base this high up the gully which was soft and loose causing every step to end with the snow cover to fall aimlessly down the gully. Without a doubt, this was a terrible day to be climbing solo up a gully that was relentless in its efforts to prevent any degree of success.
As I took a few seconds from the battering storm to get my breathing into some semblance of order so that much needed oxygen could get to my brain and onto the muscles that just did not have any strength left in them, I thought of that big open coal fire in my study where I sit and work when not out climbing or trying to prove that I am immortal and I wilted at the thought of the flames as they danced across the logs and coal to a merry tune. It was not long before the shrieking wailing wind brought me back to reality and the task to hand and despite its rip roaring theatrical approach to my situation, it continued incessantly to buffer my sodden and damp clothes as it tried so very hard to knock me off balance and tumble down to my final demise below.
I suddenly and uncomfortably became aware that the sleet, snow or rain whatever it was blowing horizontally at the time, was finding those little openings in my clothing allowing the cold to sweep across my already numb body. If there was any time in my life when I most closely resembled a drowned rat, this was surely it.
Reaching down for any internal mental and physical reserves that I hoped was there somewhere deep within my psyche I was shocked and somewhat frightened to discover that these had been used up earlier. In addition, I realised that the gully was higher than I thought and therefore it had taken me longer than I had anticipated just to get this far. I also realised I had made the cardinal error of not taking into account the weather patterns which had turned violent, angry and determined to hurt.
I tried to work my way to the sides of the gully to see if I could climb out onto the mountain slope itself but the absence of any consolidated snow proved that this was not on. Just then a window in the swirling snow, allowed me to see what I assumed to be the top just some fifteen feet away. With such a motivation, I summoned what strength I had deep inside of me and lunged upwards with my two ice axes, kicking as hard as I could with my crampons into what I hoped would be consolidated snow or ice, which it wasn’t but I cared nothing as I was grateful for the rock hard frozen sods and earth so long as it held.
Anger, hate, confusion, bewilderment, anxiety, euphoria, fear, regret and pleasure. How can I be feeling all these emotions at once? What is happening to me? Why am I slipping? Why is my head full of this crap? Relax. I must clear my mind, say a quick prayer if you must, even accept the inevitable outcome of the fall downwards but get on and do something. I know in this split second that I have probably outreached myself this time. Too arrogant by half. This time I have to pay the ferryman, there is no escape as he waits for me at the bottom. Who will cry for me? Who will miss me? Who will even care when they pick my broken mangled frozen body from among the rocks below. No answer was forthcoming. The silence of ensuing death was all that could be heard.
Life has real meaning when you are about to lose it. All that matters, is how hard do you want to stay alive and what you are prepared to do to achieve that.One-minute I was lunging upwards with every conviction that I would top out within seconds and the next I was slipping downwards. The snow cover let go its grip on the gully surface and decided to drop not knowing or caring that I was relying on it to stay where it was so that I could get out of my predicament.
Snow like a virus has no need of logic and is none selective on who or whatever it attacks. It just does what it wants when it wants. Frantic stabbing into the tufts of grass that became stripped of its white blanket with both ice axes did not appear to be working, but then, just when I thought I was going to make contact with terra firma in a way that I would rather not, I came to a stop. Frozen not daring to move a muscle in case it started my down wards movement again, I breathed slowly and quietly tried to evaluate my situation. Looking up I saw that all the snow cover had gone leaving hard compacted tufts of grass and a few frozen sprigs of heather decorated with white frozen snow.
I really only had two choices open to me. The first was to just let go and take my chances on the down wards fall, the second and most logical, was to hold my breath, and scrabble upwards using everything and anything that I could, not stopping until I got to the top which was now some distance away if not more a thousand miles!
Despite the cold wind and blinding sleet and snow, I took a few seconds in order to breathe deeply and to calm my insides from its incessant bobbing like a piece of cork floating on an angry sea.
Looking down I saw that the boulder that I had surmounted a while before, was jutting out some ten to fifteen or so feet below and the snow that had banked up above it after falling from above, was in some way responsible for my sudden stop. However, once again, amid the storm that was raging all around as well as the storm raging inside myself, that old familiar feeling returned that this was not the time for me to die, although looking up did nothing to ease the anxiety I was feeling about my current situation.
Everything went quiet with not even a sound coming from my heavy breathing or fast pumping heartbeat. I felt in a familiar serene and peaceful place and noticed that around me the raging snow storm had abated but was still raging ‘outside’ my cocoon. Darkness slowly engulfed my body starting with my head and going down to my cold snow covered boots and despite the raging storm all around, I felt warm and safe.
I was convinced someone was talking to me, saying ‘You know what you have to do, so just do it’. Feelings of déjá vu spread through me just as the darkness left and became replaced by the storm which shook me back to reality.
I felt a slight comforting twinge at the sound of a distant voice and without thinking about what I was going to do, I allowed my climbing axes to hang by their wrist loops, took off my gloves, said my farewells to Sandy, my children and family, thanked whoever was listening for a good life and just moved upwards grabbing whatever I could. Heather, grass tufts, frozen stones, whatever, they all became good handholds and I cared not for climbing etiquette.
Just why each and every tuft of grass and clump of frozen heather I grabbed that day held is still a mystery, but hold they did which finally enabled me to roll over the top where I lay on the deep snow, oblivious of the snow storm that was still raging furiously all around. The storm could not touch me now as I rolled away from the edge and crawled to a large boulder which I sat against, ignoring the fury of the storm, no doubt angry that I had got away. My whole body was trembling and shaking but whether it was from the cold or the release of tension I had been under is hard to say, but possibly a mixture of both.
The trembling and shaking stopped as suddenly as it started being replaced by euphoria, relief, elation and uncontrollable whooping and shouts of delight. This in turn was eventually replaced with a feeling of arrogance as I punched the air with clenched shouting into the howling storm, “sod you, it’s just not my time to die yet”. I allowed myself to enjoy the flowing and ebbing of a spring tidal wave of emotions as I took great internal comfort from the fact that death can be overcome in extreme circumstances when you have the resolve to want to live.
It mattered not that I may have miscalculated the snow conditions or that I should have been aware that the weather was most likely to turn for the worse, what matters is that as I struggled to get back down the mountain in a white out, I was in control - I resolved to live. ![]()
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September 2, 2016, 5:39 am
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“Called at 10 a.m. on my way home, after climbing
my last tops in Glen Affric. Wonderful days! Left
Alltbeithe at 6 p.m. and got to the top of Sgurr nan
Ceathreamhnan at 8.30 p.m. Watched the sunset
about 10 p.m. and the new moon set at 1 a.m.
Bivvied right down on the summit.
“Rising sun awoke me at 4 a.m. Set off and did the
nine tops and back at Alltbeithe at 11 a.m. Good meal.
Slept outside until 4 p.m. Climbed 32 tops this time,
22 to go. Will be up again soon, Knoydart this time,
maybe see you then. Trust you and your wife are both
well and enjoying life as we are.”
That peak with the difficult spelling—it’s usually pronounced Keranan—is the fourth highest north of the Great Glen, and in my mind’s eye I could see the wee man tracing and retracing his steps on the complicated ridges of this massive mountain with its inconveniently placed tops.I didn’t see him walking like me, for Stan is a noted fell runner and at 68 years of age is the youngest old man I know.
I wrote about him when I met him on the Cuillin.At 63 he wondered if he was the oldest man who had ever done the main ridge in a day, involving 10,000 ft. of ascent and eight miles of intermittent rock scrambling, some of it very serious. Curiously enough when I got Stan’s note on his latest ploy I had just been out with a climber who had celebrated his 70th birthday by doing the same ridge.He was Charles Warren who in pre-war days had been on Everest in the early attempts on the mountain. Charles and I had climbed what was a new Munro for me, Mullach Fraoch-Choire, 3614 ft., which looks directly across to Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan.
There was an even greater coincidence, for another friend, John, who is coming up to 73, wanted to celebrate his birthday by climbing The Cobbler, so since it was to be an old men’s expedition I invited my friend Pat Sandeman along as well to share the fun. Off we went on a morning of such warm sun that I was glad of khaki drill shorts on a day of high promise with old man Cobbler, softened by heat haze, looking down benignly on a limpid Loch Long.
It was four years since I had been up on its rock prongs, and I had forgotten what a lovely approach it has by the Buttermilk Burn on a path rising swiftly past a succession of waterfalls shaded by rowans and birches, each rock pool an invitation to dip in its green depths. Then you are into spruce forest, following a steep ride to the plantation edge where suddenly the angle eases and the full splendour of the open corrie lies ahead, the jagged Cobbler to the left, and the bouldery Narnain to the right. John and Pat, who had never been here before, were fumbling with their cameras at the vision of wildness bursting on them so soon.
Warm sun, cool breeze, drifting cloud shadows, it was perfection, and underfoot everything was dry after weeks of fine weather.It was an easy walk to the Narnain Boulders and now that we were close in to the corrie floor it needed little imagination to see how The Cobbler got its name; the slender pinnacle—the highest point of the centre peak—resembles a man with a hammer bending over his last, with the bulkier hunched shape on the right, his wife, and on the left, shapely Jean, his daughter.We struck off for the north peak, rising swiftly on a well-trodden path through beetling slabs of wrinkled mica-schist which were a mere foretaste to the rock architecture to come, a world of overhangs and strange jutting beaks.
We thought we had it all to ourselves until we heard voices and the clink of steel on steel, and I spotted a party of helmeted and roped climbers in the vertical slit between overhangs known as the Right-angled Gully. We arrived on top to watch the second man of the party of four, edge up the final moves of the vertical crack which was led for the first time by Jock Nimiin in the ’30’s when it was considered to be the hardest climb on the Cobbler.The leader grinned when I told him this.
“Now, it’s for beginners,” he said. “None of this party has climbed before. They’re from Jordanhill College for Teachers and for them this is just another ‘activity’, part of their course as physical education instructors. It doesn’t follow they will be mountaineers. This is rock climbing, with specialised boots and safety aids that were unknown in the early days.”
Leaving them to their sport I couldn’t help reflecting on the difference in attitude between theirs and mine.Armed with gear and guided by a trained leader they were engaged in rock sport, a form of athletics shown now as television entertainment in which the star performers are described in extravagant phrases such as “the finest climber in Britain “.
They are men who train on indoor climbing walls and on rock outcrops to attain world champion boxer fitness. From our armchairs we watch a very first ascent up a blank wall, or not quite blank, for the star climber has roped down it to inspect the face and brush the possible holds clean. As well as looking for cracks to insert wire chocks, he puts in one piton, telling us as he does so that a lot of climbers will criticise him for it. He says he knows he might die, but he has to challenge the rock rising sheer for 160 ft. Well, it’s all very wonderful in a way, but does it make sense? Not to me, I’m afraid.
What we were looking for was a special place out of the wind, and in the sun, to have lunch in sight of the best rock scenery of all three peaks. And we got it on an airy eyrie with a mica slab as back-rest, while John got out his birthday cake and Pat poured a refreshment guaranteed to do his health good while not affecting the steadiness of his feet. John usually has a nap at lunchtime but not today. Soon we were packing up for the climb up to old man Cobbler himself whose bare rock prow is to be reached only by an airy traverse along a shoulder blade exposed to a big drop below. They were content to leave it to me and enjoy the absolute silence of the summit, where neither sound of bird nor of man could be heard.
“It’s very, very rare in this modern world to hear silence” This remark was from John as we scrambled on along the ridge to the south peak, Jean, on which the rest had no intention of making conquest. So while they sunned themselves I enjoyed the succession of little rock walls leading directly from the col to the sharp summit from which I looked clown on narrow Loch Long winding to the widening Clyde dimmed by haze. This summit also enjoys the noblest aspect of Ben Lomond, elegantly pointed, and it was good to reflect that, for the next few years at least it has been reprieved from the threat of “hydro-electrocution”.
When I rejoined the others John asked Pat and me to go on ahead as he wanted to linger and enjoy the marvellous rock scenery and atmosphere of the corrie, since it might be his last visit here.
Later we all followed the burn from the corrie down through the trees and past the waterfalls. Back at the car for tea out of the flask we left it had been a good birthday party.I had enjoyed that day on the tops immensely.I was at Balfron and I thought I’d take a walk along a stretch of the Endrick where it meanders below the conies of the north side of the Campsies, lovely rolling countryside of big fields and woods. Under blue skies and towering banks of white cumulus I had never seen it look better than on that day, except that the river was less than half its usual size.![]()
Just nine years ago I bought a couple of folding bicycles for my wife and myself, so that we could use them in the glens on right of way paths where locked gates debar motor cars.Fitted with 3-speed gears, the bikes have been a splendid success, and we’ve taken them over to Raasay, the Outer Hebrides, and many other places with no more trouble than the occasional puncture. Now that Pat has one of these bikes, too, he’s become a fervid enthusiast for excursions that combine cycling and hill walking. I had done one trip with him, and now he unfolded the map to show me what our next trip should be.
“We’ll take the bikes to Stronachlachar on Loch Katrine, and cycle the private road round past Glen Gyle. The bikes can be left at the burnside and then we’ll climb the peak due north, Stob an Duibhe. It’s hidden by other peaks, but I’ve looked at the wee bit you can see of it, and it’s got a pinnacle on its ridge.” He’d said enough, but we hadn’t fixed a date. Came a vivid morning of hail showers following a delightful sunrise of soft gold, and I phoned him before he was properly awake. “I had a late night,” he apologised, but when I suggested we make the expedition that day he was more than ready.
We met up two hours later at Aberfoyle when the sun was still playing hide and seek with the clouds scudding before the north wind. It was a joy to leave the car and take to the bike along the shore of Loch Katrine, with frequent stops to look at mergansers, mallard and teal, watch whinchat and redpolls, and enjoy the fringing oaks above the mirror of the loch.
Past rocky Glen Gyle, birthplace of Rob Roy, and in another mile we were at the deep cleft of our burn, overhung with natural woodland but with a comfortable ridge on its flank for easy walking.We struck on to the Meall Mor ridge first where we were in the company of the red deer. From up there we could watch the hail showers approaching and then rattling us with white pellets before passing on like gauzy curtains dimming the outlines of the Trossachs hills and the distant Campsies. Luck was with us for we arrived on the top of Stob an Duibhe as all the high hills cleared, from Beinn Chabhair to Stobinian, each peak a different shade of grey or blue.
Now for a go at the wee pinnacle which had excited Pat’s interest.I took it by its overhanging front and it was good fun, with a raven seeming to bark approval. Immediately below us was the River Lochlarig and by dropping north to it and walking its course eastward for about three miles we could have been at Inverlochlarig, where Rob Roy lived at a later stage- in his life.Between Loch Katrine and Loch Voil is still a very wild block of country, cut up by innumerable glens and still unspanned by roads. Down at the house we spoke to the shepherd who told us he was having his problems. Because of the dry weather, the ewes were being tempted on to the lusher grasses of the rocky ledges where they get stuck.
“There’s one now I’ll have to go up and see to, and take it out with the rope.” Over a cup of tea he displayed a real knowledge of wildlife and enthusiasm for it, which was echoed by his young wife. One of the early records of this bit of country came from the Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg, who in his Tour of the Highlands in 1803 speaks of droving sheep from the head of Loch Lomond to Falkirk by way of Glen Gyle and Loch Katrine to Aberfoyle.
The present hotel of Inverarnan was a droving inn in Hogg’s time and a pass leads from it west to Loch Fyne, with another one just to the north for Glen Shira. Just three days after our trip Pat and I went off to examine the rather complicated topography of this area, and now we had the company of two ornithological friends. We were not out to keep to paths, but explore some of the normally very boggy bits peppered with wee lochans, haunts of golden plover, which at 1500 ft. were calling mournfully around us, piping from high knolls and running ahead of us to lead us away from their nesting areas.
It was Pat who spotted his favourite bird, the golden eagle, a mere speck in the sky above a distant ridge, but coming nearer and nearer and showing off the breadth of its long wings relative to the short tail. Suddenly we saw it swerve as a peregrine falcon attacked it. For fully five minutes we watched the finest peregrine aerobatics of our lives as the falcon whirled about, climbing and attacking from every angle, wings going like a swift as it came in again and again skirmishing with the much larger eagle.
After watching that we didn’t mind getting a wetting, crouching against boulders on the edge of a small lochan eating our pieces, and having a celebratory glass of red wine. Our boggy plateau had a wee surprise in store for us yet, when we nearly stood on the nest of a dunlin, the little wader going off with a “scrake” of alarm to reveal four eggs neatly tucked into a tussock. “It would be easy to imagine you were amongst the flows of Sutherland,” I said, casting an eye over the bog cotton moor with its moranic knolls where 10 red deer hinds stood silhouetted. The time was 3.30 p.m. and two of our party were back in their homes in Glasgow by 5.30 p.m., which illustrates how convenient our greatest city is to some of the best country in Scotland, small scale in the Trossachs but becoming bigger and more spacious with higher tops as you go up Glen Falloch.Tom Weir:First Published in The Scots Magazine
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September 9, 2016, 1:20 am
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So does author Andrew McCloy-experienced walker and contributor to outdoor media-have anything to new to add to the extensive PW body of work? Well an unreserved Yes would be the answer to that question.. Although like most people, I can’t say I’ve read and inwardly digested everything ever published about the 268 mile walk, and although I have to admit I haven’t had the inclination to walk it myself, I did find ‘The Pennine Way’ a pleasure to read and one of those books I looked forward to getting back to.
Unlike so many long distance trail books which simply detail ever minute aspect of the journey..’at this stage my water had long since run out and I was reduced to sucking my socks etc etc’ Andrew’s book skillfully combines his day to day peregrinations oe’r hill and down dale, with a comprehensive socio/political and cultural overview behind the Way's conception and realisation over the decades. Casting a spotlight on the appalling access situation which existed at the time. Particularly at the Way's southern extremities where the grouse stocked uplands were fiercely protected by crusty landowners and their servile goon squad of gamekeepers. A situation which of course led to the mass trespass movements of the 1930‘s and the politicisation of the great outdoors movement involving left wing organisations,political parties and feisty campaigners like Tom Stephenson, Benny Rothwell reinforced by establishment figures like Labour cabinet members,Fred Willey and Barbara Castle.![]()
Well known as those political struggles may be (See Dave Cook’s article on the Kinder Trespass) another important aspect of the PW which is well covered here, is the environmental impact. An entirely predictable and natural consequence of thousands of walkers descending upon a fragile, upland ecosystem which is highly vulnerable to erosion. The early days of the Pennine Way saw the newly liberated rambler hoards unleashed upon peat bogs and wet moorlands which all to quickly were reduced to a peat soup. The powers that be faced a losing battle as authors like Alfred Wainwright increased usage through the publication of his popular eponymous guidebook to the trail. Incidentally, it appears that AW who never walked the Way in a single push but in bite sized chunks, didn’t actually think much of the trail and preferred his own creation, The Coast to Coast which crosses the PW in Yorkshire.
With those walking the Pennine Way at an all time high in the 70‘s and 80‘s it was ironic that this coincided with the Way’s ecological low point. Battered and bruised by over twenty years of foot fall -The Pennine Way officially opened in 1962 after decades of campaigning and planning- it became obvious that the authorities responsible for their particular section had no option but to up their game and introduce some drastic measures to save the trail. Sections were tweaked and re-directed, experiments into different types of duck boards across eroded muddy wastelands were investigated before finally, the use of re-claimed old mill flag stones were chosen as the most aesthetically pleasing, durable and ecologically acceptable way of transporting walkers across the battered bogs.
After all, the gritstone flags had generally been quarried ‘oop on’t moor’ and they were just coming home; albeit in a man made form.
Another fascinating socio/cultural aspect which is well researched and detailed herein is the growth and decline of hostels along the Pennine Way. At one stage, the walker could count on 14 YHA hostels along the trail to rest their weary head. These YHA hostels were supplemented by private hostels, farm B&B’s and the odd rough bothy or hut. As the Pennine Way approached the 21st century, the traditional hostel was becoming a thing of the past. Most were either closed down and sold off by the YHA or in some cases, demolished completely.![]()
The decline of the hostel mirrors the decline in popularity of the Pennine Way. In its early years, most walkers were in the under 40‘s age group. This included school and scout groups led by beery cheery leaders in breeches or just a gang of mates ‘doing it for a laugh!’. These days, most people doing the PW are the middle aged... the 50/60/70 and even 80+ who have sensibly eshewed buying a 750cc motor bike and who have decided instead to 'find themselves' on a long distance trail. Of these silver surfers, three quarters are men although the author comes across a fair few women who are doing the trail on their own.
Its interesting to note that although the Pennine Way is the granddaddy of long distance trails in the UK, it is easily beaten-mile wise- by trails like the South Coast Path or the new Wales Coastal Path. As far as popularity goes, I was surprised to read just how far behind in terms of usage it was with the aforementioned Coast to Coast. Its popularity perhaps helped in no short part by Julia Bradbury’s BBC six part series and the continuing popularity of all things Wainwright. It also helps that the 190 mile coast to coast can be squeezed into a fortnight’s holiday but you’ll really need your skates on if you can do the PW in a fortnight. An example of the competing trails’ conflicting popularity can be gauged when the author stays the night at a hostel where the two long distance paths converge. The hostel's mine hostess informs the author that those doing the Coast Coast outnumber the Pennine Way walkers by twenty to one!![]()
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September 16, 2016, 3:33 am
Remember the 70's man!....Advertising feature in the 1975 Climber and Rambler magazine.After an appallingly cold day on Scafell Shamrock where we found Silver Lining too wet, too mossy and altogether uninviting, I viewed the clouds gathering over Hollow Stones with some distaste. The usual "Morning after" feeling of a night spent in the Wastwater Hotel did nothing to improve my flagging level of enthusiasm, nor did the chilly wind blowing across the campsite. Pete's face appeared at the rear window of my van and the door was pulled open to admit the cold breeze. "What are we doing then?" The Singer was his usual irritatingly cheerful self but as yet unmelodic. "Not going to Scafell, that's what," I answered, then added with little keeness, "But Gable's clear and I've never done anything on Napes." Wigan's answer to Donald Peers doesn't need second bidding and was off to fetch his gear while I dug about among the dirty breakfast pans, ropes, clothing and assorted "useful items" that no climber can afford to be without and eventually came up with the Gable Guide.
After some minutes spent thumbing through the pages on the Napes, doing my rain dance and voicing my various "ploys for not climbing" my boots were on and we tramped off across the campsite with the Singer in fine form as soon as we began to go uphill. A quick discussion at a point on the Styhead path immediately below Napes and we turned to ascend the fellside directly. Jean, who had accompanied us this far, took one look and set a resolute course for Styhead. What a shattering slog up, almost 1500 ft.; but for once it put a stop to Pete's singing except for occasional bursts. Someone once suggested that he should be made to carry a hundredweight sack to slow him down to a more human pace.
"Right, Tophet Wall for starters is it?" I could only collapse and manage a breathless gasp by way of reply and a full twenty minutes expired before we were roped up at the foot of the Wall. My delaying tactics of disputing the point at which the route begins had worked well! I started up the pitch, a wall followed by an over-hanging crack. It looked horrifying but with a Severe grade it had to be O.K. Feeling weak and lacking confidence I fixed two doubtful runners then a good one in the crack and moved up, then down, up and down again almost in time with the rhythm of the vocal from below.After ten minutes of this I cheerfully handed over the lead. Pete did not hesitate but agreed that it was a bit awkward before turning on the strength to pull up the crack and on to a narrow ledge. A lull in the vocals occurred for a few moments as he did so. The top rope made all the difference and instead of straining up the leaning crack I moved out left when the previously awkward hand-holds became good jugs. A small foothold on the wall to the left and I was up easily although I thought that it merited hard severe. Leading through the rising traverse of the second pitch proved very pleasant, mostly due to an abundance of places for my favourite aids — big, safe looking runners. I never miss an opportunity to make sure of staying alive to enjoy another day, even on Diffs. Apart from stops to extract my well bedded runners, the voice all but ran up the pitch and led through up the next little wall without protection to belay in a comfortable corner.
I followed making my own line in order to be more directly below the belay since the holds were rather small and sloping. From this point we could see the so called Great Slab and vaguely discussed doing the Demon Wall traverse of it before I started up the corner. There seemed no point in belaying 25 ft. further on, so dropping a good runner over a spike continued along the semi-hand traverse. It appeared to be considerably longer than the 30 ft. stated in the guide but has excellent holds, and need I say, plenty of runners. The corner at the end is furnished with some fine loose rock and is in a delightfully exposed situation. I took a belay on an uncomfortable ledge, having failed to spot a bigger one a few feet higher, and called for the Singer.![]()
Anyway, safety point made, so back to the climbing. The weather had greatly improved in the previous half hour so we moved along to the Needle where with all due respect to Mr Haskett-Smith we decided that Uncle Tom Cobleigh and clan had swarmed over this spire through the years and duly left it to the three who were about to stand on its hallowed summit. At the extreme right of Abbey Buttress I was feeling confident enough to set off up the first easy rocks of our next effort. Plenty of runners as usual and somewhat higher than the guidebook's fifty feet a good ledge on the right with a fine view of the Needle. My brief investigation of the ridge above caused Pete to pause in his latest refrain and ask if I was going on.
"No mate, I'll leave it for you. Looks good though." Deliberate casualness to hide returning lack of confidence. Pete came up and the guidebook was consulted. It proved to be misleading in suggesting that parallel cracks should be used to traverse left as the cracks are best used to move directly up to join the ridge about 25 ft. above the ledge. Silhouetted on the edge the Singer would have made an impressive picture from the top of the Needle, but no photographer was at hand nor a sound recordist! Tin Pan Alley doesn't know what it is missing. Vocals were temporarily interrupted. "Ah, this must be the Eagle's Nest." Another couple of musical moves up then, "And this is the Crow's Nest." Further crochets and quavers from the Minstrel Boy and rope movement ceased. "How are you doing Pete?" The refrain stopped for a moment to let me know that he was taking in. It proved to be a pitch worth singing about. Always a hold when it was needed, steep, delightfully exposed and just about deserving the M.V.S. grade.![]()
Nevertheless one is bound to have respect for the efforts of Solly and Slingsby who made the first ascent as long ago as 1892. I wouldn't have liked to try even seconding in the big nailed boots of their day. Clouds were scudding in along Wastwater by the time we finished the route, which continues by way of Eagle's Nest Ordinary, so after returning to the bottom we enjoyed a fast descent of the scree directly to the Styhead path leaving billows of red dust in our wakes. No sound from the Singer; must have gone through his entire repertoire. Maybe he'll master some downhill songs one day.Tony Sainsbury: First published in Climber and Rambler November 1975 Lancs MC Tony Sainsbury Obituary
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September 23, 2016, 12:52 am
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One particular Sunday, I was not feeling too good and decided that this was the day I would go and visit the stacks and do what I had promised myself all these years to do. So there I was, standing in front of the stacks, shades of brown, rough, smooth edges, some higher than others and whilst others were more inviting than some, I forced myself to go to the one that was always the one that I thought about; standing alone on my far left with its wide base tapering into the small block that was its summit.
My hands started to shake at the expectant desire and fear that could well be my reward for daring to be here once again after so long an absence. Desire because I knew what delights I could experience and fear because of the possible outcome if I had made the wrong decision all those years ago.
I took a series of long deliberate breaths before reaching out my hands to the stack standing before me, it appeared to be leaning towards me as if to greet and old friend. I lifted the top cardboard box off the stack and blew off the dust that had slowly accrued on its summit surface, it had begun; the attic was going to get its first clean out and the contents of the boxes, would once again be revealed to my eyes. Excitement levels rose as I ripped off the sellotape, wondering why I had placed there instead of putting them in the bin as I was asked to do by my good lady wife who said my study resembled a magazine warehouse that had been hit by a hurricane.
A grin that would shame any self-respecting Cheshire cat, spread across my face as I saw the pile of old climbing magazines. As I sat down beside it, I knew this would be the only stack that would see the light of day, the rest would have to remain where they were for another forty odd years!
Excitedly as a child opening their Christmas or birthday presents, I lifted out the first magazine and flipped through it. The next magazine had a picture of Everest on its front page which invoked a memory going back to 1953 when I was nine years of age.
The school took us all to the local cinema in Fareham to watch a film of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which included a few minutes of the first ascent of Everest. It was at this point that my life suddenly that day, had purpose – to be a climber.
As it turned out, within two weeks of seeing the news film, I was climbing on the rough walls of Portchester Castle and exploring the local area for rocks to climb, which came in the shape of old military installations and chalk quarry walls.
A few more magazines later, there was a picture on the front cover of the Eiger and I recalled that on 15th birthday, I got a copy of The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer, and after reading it, I wanted to be the first Englishman to solo climb the Eiger North Face. My heart rate had increased as the tsunamis of childhood memories came flooding back, not just the good, but the bad through the loss of so many good climbing partners and companions – Chalky White killed in the Alps – Tom the Milky Bar Kid killed in Snowdonia – Geordie Brown killed in Cyprus – and recently, Rup killed on Ben Nevis in Scotland. At this point, I decided I had had enough of clearing out the attic and what was needed, was a quick drive to Headend Quarry on the Caldbeck Hills to celebrate the lives of those friends I had lost, and of course, to satiate my desire for climbing rock.
As I started to pile the stack of boxes back up, one slipped out of my hands and fell to the floor where it spilt it contents like the Langdale Scree slopes. I got a plastic box and started to put them in. The last item I picked up was a toned copy of a 1975/76 Durham University Mountaineering Club Journal which I had totally forgotten I had. I carefully stacked the boxes back up, shut the attic door and with the booklet in hand, went down to my study where I intended to read it to refresh my memory banks of my time as a student at Durham when I spent more time climbing on the Belling, Causey Quarry, Bowden Doors, Shittlington Crags, Crag lough and Peel crags, Simonside crag and a host of others, rather than in lectures.
Sitting in my study with the coffee machine spluttering into the pot, I started to read the Journal. Names of my fellow committee members invoked smiles, grins and images of them and what we looked like back in the 1970’s with our long unkempt hair and couldn’t-care-less attitude.
I immersed myself in a world of memories as I read every word that was typed, smiled at the matchstick images that represented the world of climbing mishaps, and felt very nostalgic when I read my own articles and and interpretations of the psyche of the ‘student climbing scene’.
Then towards the end of the small A5 stapled Journal, two articles struck a chord and which related to my earlier mentioning of the loss of so many good climbing companions. The first was an article titled ‘Alpine or Siege’ by Pete Boardman (pages 23/24), and the second article was titled ‘The Dinner Climb’ by Trevor Jones (pages 48/49).
I had forgotten that they had contributed articles to our small and insignificant Mountaineering Club journal, and realised that these were lost gems of voices from the past. I decided to share them with you, by reproducing them exactly as they were written.
Frank Grant: 2016Pete Boardman:Vertebrate
Alpine or Siege
Climb Everest in September, be at home by October’. So read the graffiti on the boudoir walls of the camp II superbox. and all the climbing team of the British Everest Expedition South West Face 1975 were agreed – we were there because it was Everest and we wanted to climb it soon and go home. Alpine style is the ethic for the Himalayas of the ‘70’s, and the ascents in 1975 of Dunagiri and Gasherbrum proved this. Nick and Chris thought of their ascent of Brammah I, Doug thought of Baffin, Tut and Ronnie thought of the Pamirs, I thought of my climbs in the Hindu Kush and Alaska. It’s a matter of as much how you climb as the peak that you climb, how you draw the line between the possible and the impossible, between adventure and safety, impulse and planning, irresponsibility and spontaneity.And yet there was the South West Face of Everest,8,000ft looming up to a plumed summit. Access to its secrets had only been achieved after a 2,000ft ice fall and a two mile walk under the dangerous flanks of Nuptse and up the Western Cwm at 21,000ft. Yes, in September 1975 looking up at the Face we felt humbled and that our big expedition was justified and that we were only capable of puny ant-like scratchings. For I was to discover that, beyond the end of the fixed ropes, there is a sense of total alpine commitment. It seems worthwhile to describe that sensation.
“Mount Everest, the Highest Point of Earth”. As a child I had two favourite picture books. One was written in the 1930’s and was called “The Winder Book of Wonders”. It had a picture of Everest, white- an ethereal rising in the distance out of the great brown plateau of Tibet. The caption beneath it briefly, enigmatically, described the disappearances of Mallory and Irvine on the summit slopes in 1924.
The second book, “Adventure of the World” had a painting of the summit of Everest as the only peak visible, thrusting out of an endless sea of clouds, with the tiny figures of Hillary and Tenzing standing on the summit.
The 26th of September- the day I reached the summit with Sherpa Pertemba- started with a scene just like that second picture – it was as if a forgotten bell in a distant room in the picturehouse of my mind had been rung. We were moving across the great traverse of the upper icefield above the Rock Band, towards the gully that led up to the south summit. We had left the end of the fixed ropes and were now moving free and unroped, committed to our attempt. The cloud layer was up to 27,800ft, for the weather was changing. Below us there was an infinite cloud sea. Above us the wind was blowing ice particles off the summit ridge that were shimmering in the sunlight.![]()
Peter D. Boardman
December 1975
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The Dinner Climb
“You are old Father Jones” the young maiden said “and do you really expect to lead our young heroes up Praying Mantis?” “Of course dear child for I have 28 years of skill, experience and bullshit”.They twirled around the dance floor, alcohol slopped into his eyeballs and caused a qualm about trying a hard climb after a five month lay-off.
By this time the young heroes were wrestling on the dance floor. Father Jones remembered the two bones he had broken whilst fighting. The broken leg over a disputed 17 year old beauty. The broken nose over being in bed with a young lady in circumstances which probably should not be explained in a journal as pure as this. Next morning, Fred, Chris and Andy together with Father Jones looked up at the leering crack of the first pitch of Praying Mantis, a rotting bootlace sling hung limply half way up.
Father Jones rushed at it in a bridging sort of layback. Just before the bootlace his dentures became dislodged. A vast National health bill seemed possible. He retreated. Fangs in position, he rushed again and lodged in a niche with a compression on a quarter of a cheek; feet flapping and trembling aimlessly. A high step and it was done.
Fred, Chris came up like wing gazelles but Andy lost interest and decided it was butty time.The last pitch was overhanging in its middle part the holds were all wrong. Suddenly he remembered Joe Brown’s advice “when its ‘ard, get yer leg right oop about yer ‘ead”. This Mancunian advice resulted in Jones's foot shooting off. The resultant heavy breathing was heard in Carlisle. It started to rain on the final few moves, but with one quick bound he was up.
Sunday night conversation:-
"Did you have a nice time with the young people dear?'....'Yes.''Did you hit anyone?'.....'No.'
'Did you crash the car?'....'No.'
'Did the police get you again?'....'No.'
'Were you sick?'....'Certainly not'.
'Where did you sleep?'....'In a tent.'
'What about your arthritis?'....'No reply.'
'Were there birds?'....'Er, can’t remember.'
'Did you climb?'....'Yes.'
'Did you fall off?'....'No.''Sounds as though it was a bit of a bore. Oh and by the way, I left the dinner dishes for you to wash up.'
Trevor JonesThe sorrow of death is not in the passing, but what could have been in life
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September 30, 2016, 1:50 am
Image: Vertebrate Pub To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to it with delight.’ Shakespeare
Despite an impressive back story, Mark Vallance has not figured other than rarely over the years in this country’s outdoor media. This despite the fact that he has been responsible for some of the activities major developments in equipment design, retailing and a lead role in the setting up of the first modern style climbing wall in the UK, The Foundry in Sheffield.
To start at the beginning of his book to set the scene, The Prologue, for whilst rock climbing in Spain at Pedriza north of Madrid, he first realised that he had physical co-ordination problems, returning to the UK the symptoms worsened. This led on to a diagnosis of an early onset of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 54. For many this would have meant a retreat into a cosseted existence; a drug regime, pipe and slippers, but not for Mark. Despite the ongoing problems the condition imposed, he still managed some impressive climbs, particularly in the Himalaya over the next decade. But it has inevitably led to a long term physical decline, a real personal tragedy in that he had by the date of his diagnosis divested himself of his business responsibilities, with the intention of a long term active retirement, the diagnosis was in his own words a ‘bugger’.
Vallance did have a silver spoon childhood, and schooling. His parents were Unitarian ministers, both mother and father, his maternal grandfather was a standout figure in that religion; who like Mark’s parents had graduated from Oxford, he even was the recipient of an honorary degree from Harvard. Mark was born in Cheshire in 1944, but the family moved to Chesterfield early in his life, and this was later to be crucial in his development as a climber. He was inspired in this by a viewing of the 1953 ‘Ascent of Everest’ film, and at his public school Abbotsholme near Ashbourne, his headmaster Robin Hodgkin had been an outstanding climber in the 1930’s, but who had suffered serious frost bite injuries on Masherbrum in 1938, yet he continued to climb despite having lost toes and fingers in a harrowing descent off that mountain in a storm.
Abbotsholme is seen as a progressive school, and Hodgkin ran as part of its curriculum outdoor pursuits, including climbing. At the school Vallance made friends with Nick Longland, the son of another outstanding pre-war climber, Jack Longland, and he like Mark was hooked on to becoming a climber. The early chapters of the book recount the days they spent developing their skills together in the Peak District, and further afield in North Wales. It was not like the working class introduction to the activity of the previous decade, ‘nowt but pluck, beginners luck, and his mother’s washing line’, but cycling out from Chesterfield into the Peak District, Mark was soon making some impressive climbs, leading such as Brown’s Eliminate at Froggatt Edge and later Cenotaph Corner on Dinas Cromlech whilst still a schoolboy in his gym pumps. These were very creditable leads in the early 1960’s. Through his friendship with Nick Longland, he became for a while firm friends with the latter’s father Jack, who welcomed him regularly into the family home in Bakewell, after a day spent climbing with his son. This friendship was to be badly damaged later over the Mountain Training dispute, when Mark sided with the BMC against a rival Educationalist group led by Jack. Longland did not speak to him again for many years after this, but in writing about this in his book, Vallance has the facts wrong about how this fractious debate was resolved. An independent arbitration group was set up by the Alpine Club, whose findings/recommendations were accepted by both sides to the dispute. John Hunt had no part in this as wrongly reported by Mark, but he had before the dispute escalated undertaken as head of a committee (of which I was the secretary) formed by the BMC, carried out an investigation into mountain training. This resulted in the publication of a booklet, known as The Hunt Report and it was the recommendations within this that so upset the educationalists, in that mainstream mountaineers through the BMC should play a much larger role in developing the policies surrounding mountain activities. The real reason why this had become such an acrimonious debate was there had been a succession of accidents involving young people on training schemes, culminating in the Cairngorm tragedy in 1971 when five young participants had died whilst taking part in an organised youth outing. This alerted the-none involved climbing world as to how serious in mountaineering terms some of these programmes really were.
We are all products of our environment and though Mark grew up in such a religiously inspired background, other influences persuaded him towards atheism. A great uncle had been Hermann Woolley, a pioneer climber at the end of the 19th century, who became a founder member of the Climbers’ Club and a President of the Alpine Club. In these early chapters he is honest in accepting he was privileged, and also that he was no great scholar academically, but the stubborn streak in him which was to emerge so strongly in his later business ventures and dealings, was honed by his early experiences as a young climber. This also led on to a desire to travel, to experience other worlds’ and so on leaving school he took a gap year in India. He was inspired to go there in part by reading Somervell’s autobiography ‘After Everest’, who after taking part in the 1922 and 1924 expeditions to that mountain, spent most of the rest of his life as a missionary surgeon in south India.
Through connections he obtained a post as a teacher at the Ramakrishna School near Calcutta. This was at a time in the 1960’s when the hippy trail and flower power led many westerners to visit India one of whom, the writer Christopher Isherwood fetched up one day at the Ramakrishna centre. Isherwood famous as a novelist recorded his views about meeting over lunch Mark and several others in his diary; about Vallance he wrote ‘met a handsome and sexy nineteen year old boy from Cheshire, named Mark Vallance who has come here to teach English-or rather, his no-shit Midlands accent’. Being an innocent abroad at that stage of his life, Mark had not realised Isherwood’s sexual orientation. India had a seminal influence on him and he found himself comparing the Unitarian faith with Hinduism, and having an enquiring mind attending with the students at the temple, their puja prayer ceremonies, but he concluded this was not for him. He also managed a trek up into the Kanchenjunga foothills, and the view of the Himalaya was to stay with him from thereon.
Returning to England in January 1965 he enrolled at Goldsmith’s College in London to read for a teaching degree. It was there he met his future wife Jan, a drama student, but the paths of true love were a roller coaster for them due to taking on subsequent challenges in far flung regions of the world, but a few years later they were to be married in the Falkland Islands. Whilst waiting to start his course in London Mark returned to his first love climbing. To do which he needed to earn some money, especially for a forthcoming Alpine season; he took a job drilling blast holes in a quarry, then another pouring concrete to help build a dam project in the Goyt valley. His alpine season was successful with routes climbed such as the Frendo Spur, the north face of the Lenzspitze and the north face on the Triolet, back then before the development of modern ice climbing equipment still notable ascents.
The pace now quickens in his book, with a compelling chapter on his two years experience working for the British Antarctic Survey, in Halley Bay, first as a general assistant, but ending as the Base Commander. He admits that living in the Antarctic changed him, with its raw beauty in such a challenging environment and in managing a group of dedicated individualists, mainly scientists from several different disciplines. It was to be for him truly educative. Finishing his BAS sojourn and en route to the USA via the Falklands, there he met his wife to be again, and Mark and Jan were married in Port Stanley. But climbers like Vallance need to move on with life, and leaving her there to finish a work contract, he took off to Colorado and the Outward Bound School for a post as an instructor. During which he also managed a lot of climbing in Colorado, and later in Yosemite where his wife joined him at the end of her contract. It was in Yosemite that the event occurred that would eventually change his life, the meeting and climbing with Ray Jardine the inventor and developer of the camming device which he named ‘Friends’. Jardine reads like a very brilliant but demanding character, in his day one of the best rock climbers in the world, pioneering the first 5.13 climb Phoenix, and a computer engineer who had worked in the aero space industry.
Returning to the UK with his wife, after a three years absence, Mark needed to find a job, and to his surprise after applying he was appointed to a post working in the Peak District National Park. I remember him well in this period, for he not only chaired the BMC’s ‘Access and Conservation Committee’, he also working with myself organised a symposium on these topics in North Wales. He seemed very happy in this work, first as schools officer then as the volunteer organiser, but an incident which happened on one of the latter courses soured his view of the work and he decided to move on. Undecided what to do next unexpectedly a letter arrived from Jardine, offering Vallance the possibility to manufacture his camming devices in the UK. I know from other sources that this was no act of charity on Jardine’s part, for he had arranged with Bill Forrest to manufacture them in the USA, but the arrangement fell through at the last moment. Forrest was also involved in developing outdoor equipment, but others such as the Lowe brothers had tried to design unsuccessfully camming devices, and this had led to a view in the USA which rather coloured against them. And so Jardine who had been impressed with Mark decided to try to persuade him to take this on, which he did with enthusiasm, obtaining a bank loan and a second mortgage to do so, and eventually setting up Wild Country to manufacture Friends.
This was in 1977 and few such innovations can have taken off so quickly, although the setting up of the manufacturing processes, were fraught with difficulty for a none engineer, but within six months sales had rocketed. Later to be assisted by an appearance on the BBC’s popular technology programme ‘Tomorrow’s World’, where Mark so confident in his product dived off the top of Millstone Edge to be stopped by his belayer, held by Friends placed as protection devices in a crack after a fall of many feet.
In an effort to globalise his business he took part as a member of a six man party of British climbers to Japan, fulfilling an invite to the BMC to send such a group to that country by its climbing Federation. In his book he describes near the end of the meet an incident on the killer mountain Tanigawa, on which almost 900 climbers had died in the years before this visit, but he has not go this quite right, for the Japanese climber who fell was away across the flanks of the mountain, and did not fall past Mark as he described. I know because I was there on the stance alongside him, climbing with a Japanese companion, Takao Kurosawa, but we did all go to the rescue of the injured climber and we all did agree that this was the most dangerous mountain any of us had ever been upon because of its looseness and constant rock falls. However the visit worked out well for Mark, for he set up a Japanese distributor for his products.
Much of the rest of the book is dominated by Vallance’s business story, for Friends were the platform for Mark to go on and build the ‘Wild Country’ brand, eventually developing into several other areas of outdoor equipment manufacturing tents, nuts and some clothing items. An illustration of his ability in this field was his design of another climbing protection aid, which he named Rocks. Probably the most successful range of nuts ever produced in this country. Business is an obsession like climbing, and over the next decade Vallance became the man with the Midas touch, developing further the Wild Country brand into the USA, setting up the Outside retail shop in Hathersage, and being one of the moving forces behind the setting up of the first modern indoor climbing centre in this country, The Foundry in Sheffield in 1990. An innovation which has now spread the length and breadth of the UK, and no one can forecast presently how this will affect the long term development of climbing. Vallance is sanguine about this, and writes that ‘if some participants wish to solely climb indoors this is OK by him’, but I am not so sure that this is a wise decision, for the recent debacle at the BMC over a failed attempt at re-branding, was caused I believe in part by an attempt to cajole into membership an ever growing number of indoor wall exercisers, with a swinging new name change, ‘Climb Britain’.
And writing about the BMC, surprisingly despite his diagnosis of Parkinson’s, Vallance took on at a time of crisis, the Presidency of the Council in 2002. He was a reforming figure head, and needed to take a firm line with the staff and members to achieve some of his goals. One, which I could never understand why he made such a big issue of was his wish to give the individual members a vote; he called this doing away with the ‘block vote’, but in any major issue in which a vote was demanded, the clubs still have votes to the size of their paid up membership. The Alpine Club 1400, the Climbers’ Club a 1000 and so on, that is if you have a one man, one vote system. The majority of individual members join the BMC for its services, and to support its aims, but few wish to involve themselves in the Council’s committees and such as the AGM. The current membership is over 80,000 more than half of which are individual members, if these did all of a sudden become politicised and keen to attend such as the AGM of the Council, it would need to hire Old Trafford for the event, but as it is, just a 100 delegates attended at the last such meeting. Mark did make a great contribution during his Presidency with a development along with Harvey’s, the specialist maker of maps, especially for mountaineering to popular climbing areas, e.g The Lake District. These have been a big success and have come to be used by many other groups besides climbers.
Although business dominated his life for the next two decades, Mark did keep on climbing whenever he could get away, including trips to the Himalaya when he ascended Shishapangma ( 8046m) and some other mountains and the Nose route on El Capitan. The latter with the late Hugh Banner; but once again in buttering up his companions climbing CV before their ascent, Mark repeats the old canard that his companion had made the first ascent of Insanity on Curbar, a route that Rock and Ice leaders had failed on. Whillans climbed this on sight in 1958, in the same year as Banner, the only matter in dispute is who made the first ascent, Brown had been part way up the route and swung left to create the harder climb L’Horla, and Martin Boysen and myself both led the route on sight in 1959 as recounted in his recently published autobiography, so all the Rock and Ice leaders involved were successful on that climb, Whillans, Brown and myself.
The chapters in the book dealing with the machinations around running his businesses are enough to put anyone off starting out on a similar road, sometimes they are so involved they are difficult to follow, as to who was taken over, who sold their shares, who sued who. The litigations, the lawyers, the argumentative falling outs, it all could make for a gripping TV drama series. Talking to others who have been in a similar position, running a medium size business, it seems de rigeur in an era of litigation that inevitably you will meet such challenges.
The book ends in a fine winding down sort of way, looking back on a life so vigorously lived, for I have missed out so much of the action including his later membership of the governing Peak Park Board, a successful completion of the Bob Graham round in the Lakes, the ultimate 24 hour challenge in that district, other long runs such as following the Marsden to Edale route, and a charity bike ride from the Lizard to Dunnet Head in north Scotland and continuing on to ride from the northern most tip of Ireland to the southern-most to raise funds for Parkinson’s research.
For me reading a book in which so many of my own friends and acquaintances appear was a joyful experience, Dez and Ann Hadlum and John Evans in Colorado, Eric Beard, Johnny Cunningham and Eric Langmuir in Scotland; Peter Boardman, Steve Bell, Robin Hodgkin and Jack Longland and so many more. This is an outstanding book by an outstanding personality and it is a tragedy that it needs to end on such a sad note with failing vigour, decimated by a presently incurable disease, however he assures us that he is ‘still fighting gravity and always will’.Dennis Gray: 2016Original 'Friend'.Image Wild CountryWild Country - The man who made Friends
Mark Vallance – Vertebrate Publishing
People had been telling Mark Vallance for years that he should write the ‘story of Friends’ – I know, because I was one of them. And what a story it would be, telling how a somewhat esoteric mechanical engineering concept was explored by a hotshot American climber who, by chance, met a climber from Derbyshire who was able to turn this into not just a commercial success, but probably the most influential climbing ‘gizmo’ since the rope was first used.
However Mark, being Mark, went several steps better than that and wrote the story of Mark Vallance – the man who made Friends. It’s a good thing that he did as there is far more to Mark’s story than the ‘simple’ development of Friends as a commercial product.
He is the slightly dyslexic son of a family of Unitarian Ministers – grandfather, mother and father all being in this profession, and all highly intellectual, gaining degrees from Oxford. He failed to match their prowess in his early academic life and didn’t ‘make the cut’ into his father’s old school, Sedbergh. As Mark notes - if he had gone to Sedbergh, he would have spent his school time unsuccessfully playing catch-up with those to whom academic learning came more easily. Instead, he won a bursary to Abbotsholme school near Ashbourne where an alternative approach to education and an emphasis on outdoor pursuits suited him better. Here he formed a friendship with fellow pupil Nick Longland that is still close today and, through this, an entrée to the social and climbing world that Nick’s father Jack inhabited. When Mark applied to join the British Antarctic Survey some years later, the interviewer asked “How the hell did you manage to get references from Jack Longland and John Cunningham?”
His referees and BAS were astute – Mark excelled in the post and completed his time in Antarctica as Base Commander at Halley Base! His time in Antarctica was followed by work at Colorado Outward Bound School and a meeting and much climbing with Ray Jardine, at that time one of the best climbers in America. Over the next few years Ray fiddled with and tweaked various home-made camming devices as potential assets for improving his own climbing through better protection. It was at this stage that Ray’s bag of secret prototypes acquired the name that was to change rock-climbing – a coded “Have you got your ‘Friends’ with you today?” Nudge..nudge… when met at the crag. A much better name choice than Ray’s which was ‘Grabbers’.
Mark moved on from Outward Bound to return to the UK and took a job in a National Park, but it seems that he had been the only person who Ray believed to have understood both the functioning of Friends and their potential for changing climbing. Eventually this appreciation led to an offer from Ray of a world-wide manufacturing licence – a challenging prospect for a full-time officer in the Peak District National Park! What followed would indeed have made a good book in its own right as many technical design problems were overcome, patents acquired, sub-contracts arranged, marketing and sales begun and, eventually, a company name, Wild Country, was selected that, today owned by Salewa, is still one of the strongest brands in outdoor equipment. Other ground-breaking [not literally!] products followed – ‘Rocks’ off-set nuts and ‘Quasar’ geodesic tents amongst them.
But there is much more to Mark’s life than this. Outside the demands of Wild Country, he started Outside gear shop in Hathersage, opened The Foundry climbing wall in Sheffield [the first of the modern walls] and continued to climb at a very high level. His fell-running too was serious stuff and he completed the Bob Graham Round. He climbed an 8,000 metre peak – Shishapangma – and, years after the onset of Parkinson’s Disease, got almost to the North Col on Everest. Later he cycled to the geographical extremities of Britain and Ireland in a one 1,600 mile push in order to raise awareness and research funds for this debilitating disease. Somehow, in between these activities, he found time to serve on the Peak District National Park Board, to become President of the Climbers’ Club for our Centenary year and later to take on the Presidency of the BMC. ![]()
David Medcalf: 2016David's review will also feature in the forthcoming Climbers Club Journal. My thanks to Dennis and David for their contributionsWild Country is published and available to buy from Vertebrate Publishing
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Commuting between his family home above the Conwy Valley to fulfil his professional responsibilities as a mountain guide in the Alps and beyond, the environmental impact of global warming and its dramatic effects on glacier erosion combined with a growing awareness of his own contribution to the problem through his frequent use of air travel, has led the author to a Damascene conversion in recent years, towards greener forms of travel. This ‘think globally-act locally’ approach to environmentalism has drawn him to not only reshaping his own lifestyle to lessen his carbon footprint but opened his eyes to the myriad ecological problems brought about here in Wales through national and EU policies which have effected real and lasting damage on our fragile ecosystems.
But first things first; ‘Days to Remember’ is not just a green manifesto, it is brim full of evocative essays drawn from a lifetime of mountain activities. From his time as a young student at Cambridge, taking his first steps in the Scottish winter scene; early forays in the Alps and adventures in the greater ranges of the Himalaya and South America. Figures like Dougal Haston and Dick Isherwood slot into his outdoor life and like so many young tyros who took their first steps in the outdoor world in the sixties, the envelope is well and truly pushed on many an occasion. Adventures springing from boundless enthusiasm in those early years rather than gradually honed experience and natural ability. Surviving through luck rather than skill as when climbing in Zanskar he pulled a rock the size of a football onto to his bare head when abseiling and had to be lowered back to base camp by his companions.![]()
These evocative descriptions of our homeland are each framed within an activity which has opened to door to the imagination. The aforementioned Aran essay springing from an impulsive decision to complete a circular expedition of the Arans on foot and by bike. In another essay, the author wanders over to Craig Ysfa one fair morning and solos up Amphitheatre Buttress and then on to the summit of Carnedd Llewelyn; whose summit beckoned and it was much to fine a day to ignore the summons. A winter climb above Fynnon Caseg in the Carneddau when... a projecting sphere of rock on Carreg y Garth Isaf was tipped gold by the sun, as if freshly drawn from the molten core of the world. Within each essay, Rob’s love of both the natural environment and those activities which bring him close to that fragile theatre of dreams-running, climbing,skiing,winter climbing and cycling-shine through.
Part Two, 'Further Afield’, as previously mentioned, describes the authors' further adventures across the world. Essays which encapsulate the essence of foreign travel. The bureaucratic frustrations,the frisson of excitement that being totally alone in a wilderness brings. Coping with illness and stress and of course, the very real pressure that comes with confinement. Trapped with companions for weeks on end, when even the closest friendships are tested and relationships inevitably become strained.
In Part 3, ‘Issues’, Rob returns to many of those subjects raised in Part One. Matters of environmental concern which have impacted on the author both in a physical and spiritual sense through human mismanagement of the land. Sadly, many of these depressing ecologically degrading elements, whilst being carried out by individual landowners, are being driven by political factors both home and abroad. Even the most enthusiastic EU-rophile cannot fail to see the negative impact that many EU agricultural policies have had upon the countryside. The subsidised overstocking of the uplands with sheep, leading inevitably to previously diverse eco-systems become bare monocultures. The erection of giant agribarns, the gouging out of tracks over the mountains, the draining of ponds and wetlands, the grubbing up of hedges and copses. All subsidised by an EU agricultural policy which has placed profits above environmental protection.
Nowhere is this more vividly seen than in the area of stock fencing. As the author says of his north Wales uplands home, ‘appearing where no fencing has ever appeared before’. It is a phenomena that I have noticed on my travels. Shiny green fencing topped with pointless and in the circumstances useless barbed wire! Winding and rolling across the undulating hillsides in even the wildest bleakest landscapes which are devoid of sheep. Why is this happening? As the author points out, farmers can receive £9.00 per metre in EU subsidies for erecting fence yet they can hire contractors who will erect fencing for just £3.00 a metre. As you’ve guessed, fencing is not just taming and aesthetically despoiling the uplands, its a money making scam to boot!
As touched upon in the second paragraph, the final essay ‘More Adventure- Less Impact’ we find the much travelled author now fretting about his Doc Marten Size 12 carbon footprint! As someone used to flying here there and everywhere, both in a professional and recreational capacity- like the travel writer and BBC Coast presenter, Nicolas Crane who now refuses to use air travel period-without totally following in the umbrella man's footsteps and going completely 'Cold Turkey', Rob has decided, as far as possible,to dramatically reduce his flying time. Instead using rail travel to reach places within reach like The Alps, and totally abandoning any future trips to remote places like Antarctica.![]()
In conclusion, Days to Remember brings together a wonderful collection of essays by a seasoned outdoor campaigner at a stage when his mountain career is winding down and he can take stock of new horizons. Although far from collapsing into his rocking chair, the essays convey a sense of both contentment at a life lived to the full, tinged with a wistful melancholia which springs from a love of the natural world and his observations that the land lies bleeding. In this his essays act as a signpost for those who care to look. Pointing the way towards a better way of living.John Appleby:2016 Days to Remember is published and available to buy from Vertebrate Publishing
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October 14, 2016, 2:10 am
Craig yr Ysfa: John Petts engraving on woodOf a mind to plunge my hands into Thomas Firbank's, 1940 novel- 'Bride to the Mountain'- to ooze potential clues of the events of the Giveen climbing incident in 1927 not conceded to in 'I Bought a Mountain', but almost thwarted by a holiday chlorine wash. It would take longer to reveal the three climbs, which, if accurate, could provide evidence for this local man who was perhaps privy to secret information from an adjacent Capel Curig valley resident. If the descriptions of the three climbs bore any resemblance to the Great Gully, Craig yr Ysfa, perhaps it will be prudent to consider his fictional twist with this opportunity to refresh the Giveen story.
Turning to Chapter 2 to focus on Grace, a man of modest private means of no occupation, a superb climber, delicate as a cat, strong as a bullock who travelled to the Alps or the Dolomites each year or if less fiscally flush, to Skye, the Lake District, or North Wales. Staying with his friend, Peter Prospect, son of a northern landowner, at the 'Clamberers' Climbers' Club hut in November. 'Late in the year for climbing' they were joined the next morning by a local man, Jim Dunne. Two hours walk over the 'Cader' range they reached 'Black Arete', a climb of a thousand feet, described as extremely difficult and rendered slippery by a thin drizzle. Grace's companion, as of 'novice' experience is likened to be exercised of his skill as inexperienced people are on such difficult rock-pitches by his own personal efforts.
Firbank regales why 'everything went wrong'. A late breakfast that delayed the start from the hut, an unhurried walk and a late lunch. Prospect, burdened of having a bad, off-day, held up the other two badly as he fell off twice. Soon cold and with climbing difficult the last pitch was completed in near darkness, where they collapsed, wet to the skin on the summit.
Grace had an alpine lantern and compass, necessary as the drizzle had turned to heavy rain driven by an icy wind; the night pitch black. The candle in the lantern gave out half way down but the three men 'knew the lie of the land' and stumbled on, falling over often. Unexpectedly Dunne fell into a small pond, where he splashed out to the side helped by his companions and collapsed on the grass, unconscious with Prospect little better. Grace, 'in a quandary' decided to save one and dragged Dunne to shelter behind a rock, and then half dragged, half carried Prospect down the valley. They reached the boundary fence of the valley road after midnight, with the hut still three quarters of a mile away. They struggled into the teeth of the funnel wind.
The key to the hut, usually hidden under under a stone, was not readily found by Grace in the wild blackness and he smashed the window, gained entry and then dragged his companion inside. He lit a fire, wrapped Prospect in blankets before the stove, while both drank some brandy, kept in the hut for emergencies. Grace changed his clothes whilst Prospect slept and went into the night to find Dunne's car, which eventually started. It was not until near dawn that he drew upon help when they returned to the valley, on the way knocking on the doors of three farms leaving word for men to follow for help. Dunne's body was found lying at the edge of the lake where he had fallen, the inquest on the next day credited Grace’s actions but for a short lecture on the impropriety of rock climbing in the winter.
One of the climb descriptions begins in Chapter 3. 'Craig Ddu', which started by a fairly direct route. To the west of the highest point a V-shaped nick 'Hollt Y Cawr' (Giant's cut), an eastward course was taken to reach the crest as the map revealed that the ridge, which ran back to from one wall of the 'Hanging Valley', was more accessible from that side. At the foot of the precipitous mountain, the slope, almost all of firm rock at an angle of fifty degrees or so, striated horizontally to give excellent holds. The ascent, no more difficult than a staircase was easy and the terraces were wider than they looked from below. It took two hours to climb the two thousand feet from the 'Marchlyn Valley' to the 'Craig Ddu' ridge. The next ascent was that to Craig yr Ogof, which started with a field of boulders at its foot. The next stretch was eight hundred feet of unbroken climbing, the top nearly sheer,at eighty degrees.The cave was found via a chimney, eight hundred feet above a turf ledge, where a rest was taken and then a slab afterwards to a Rowan tree. About eighty feet of good holds, then a traverse to the right. A nice arete, an easier angle and maybe another hundred feet, and an easy lot of slabs afterwards with plenty of quartz. Large holds then grass afterwards, within a hundred feet of the cave at the end of the grass. The foot of the climb was split by a great fissure. The chimney was not wide- two to three feet . The climber wedged himself inside and wriggled up and sometimes the chimney narrowed so much that he came right to the outside and used holds on the jagged edge. Out of the fissure on to a steep-sloping shelf had proved hard work.![]()
A crack then fifty feet up, only two or three feet wide, possibly good for hand holds which passes the end of ledge and by the side of the cave with no way across.
The only way forward was on up the crack until above the cave where the slope eased off and was easily scrambled down. The last pitch proved far different with holds far apart and small. A crevice to take the first joints of the little fingers, a wrinkle of the rock that gave a friction hold for the side of his stockinged foot and but too rarely forming solid rock for a healthy grip. The crack led westwards and upwards at an angle of forty five degrees across the vertical face with no footholds beneath. Almost a hand-traverse. There was little chance to relieve the weight with the feet. Level with the cave with twenty feet to go to the ledge the crack petered out and recommenced after an interval of two or three feet. Somewhere above the cave, pressed hard to the face just to the left there was a small niche, which allowed the toes to be inserted and a stretch across the blank space to where the crack opened again to fall onto the ledge in front of Ogof y Cawr.
In Chapter 7 another 'Craig Ddu' climb is described, that of the 'Great Wall'. Eight hundred feet climbing a huge rock slab, reached by a ridge between a great cleft and the peak, broken but twice by large terraces. The first eighty foot pitch- the steepest of the climb- ended on a ledge. The initial part of the next pitch- an awkward place at the continuation of the slab- fifty feet up, the few holds petered out with only a vertical chute on the right, as if a giant had sliced a 'ten-yard sliver of rock with a semi-circular chisel'. A smooth, shallow gully known as the Slide. Ahead was the smallest of rock areas, large enough only to take the toe of one shoe and giving time only to secure a handhold. The distance across the Slide precluded a tentative essay with the foot and once launched, there was no going back onto the opposite foothold. A second or two of balancing and a grab for the handhold followed by the short climb up to the terrace . The next long pitch, with no secure place to stop and belay, needed the full run of the hundred foot rope between each climber.
A stop was needed at a point half way up the great slab between the terraces, standing in a small projection whilst the next climber's rope was belayed over a blunt spike of rock, between the knob and the slab. A long chimney above with a fold in the face like a partly opened book, had so obtuse an angle as to allow the back to be wedged against one wall and the feet against the other. In the very angle of the groove the rock was spilt, a thin crack ran right the way up where the chimney gave on to a long, easy-sloping slab studded with white quatrz.
In places the crack in the corner allowed the toe of a shoe, in others a stone jammed provided a hand hold. The walls of the chimney, smooth, with occasional footholds and not difficult, gazed over a void below. At the quartz area a firm rock knob allowed a rope tie. Enough to belay a man around his own body and call for another to come along. The first of the next two easy pitches of the Black Slab was studded with quartz, which provided gargantuan holds, and part of striated rock. The last pitch, difficult initially but straightforward to within twenty feet of the crest of the ridge, followed by a bulge in the rock, which made a very slight overhang. Standing on a small foothold below the bulge, a hand slid over to seek a hold above it. Careful not to lose balance in the attempt. Pressed tight to the face and straightening up in small increments and then boldly to capture the hold above.
The 'Black Arête' climb of Chapter 12 associated with the accident earlier in the book is on the north side of the 'Caders'. Of one thousand feet it started in a dark, wet gully, steep enough in places to be called a chimney, lined with loose stones and patches of turf. The gully took up nearly half the climb before being forced on to the face. The steep arête, sometimes not far off the vertical then appeared for some three hundred feet. The climb on the apex of the angle with three parts very thin. The arête eventually got very smooth with work needed to work back into the three or four feet wide gully. The only way up was the ‘chimney’ by using feet on one side and the back of the neck of the other up a gap of about four feet. Forty feet later the top of the pitch led to a ledge, a foot traverse outwards to work out above the gully and a look down the way already climbed as if you’re seeing through the wrong end of a telescope. The ledge led to the mountain ridge between 'Cader Gwynt' and 'Cader Fronwen'.
Firbank's account of this 'accident climb' begins with Grace the leader who worked his way up the right wall of the gully close to its floor, which lay at seventy degrees. Several holds were cleared of earth or moss by him and a belay reached at eighty feet. The next pitch, a ‘beastly greasy wall' was ascended as if it were a staircase and then off again on a hundred foot lead where he belayed and then led upwards. There was a repeat of things for the rest of the gully part until they reached foot of the Black Arete. Here the gully had become a rock chute with damp sheer sides. There was no way forward but by climbing out on to the Arete. About five hundred feet up the ground at the foot of the climb fell away so sharply that looking outwards did not 'light on level ground' for perhaps fifteen hundred feet. The Arete was thin, steep, the rock beautifully sound, horribly smooth and an exposed place because when they moved out from the gully there was an overhang below the point where the Arete was joined with a clear view between the legs into clear space. The area subject to the full force of the wind.![]()
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October 21, 2016, 1:06 am
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their night sleeps with me still.
I dream my feet upon the starry way
my heart rests in the hill.
I may not grudge the little left undone;
I hold the heights - I keep the dreams I won.
G. Winthrop-Young
(Last stanza from “I have not lost the magic of long days”)
Summer 1976, a year that was purgatory for river canoeists and fishermen, but one continual party for rock climbers and crag rats, and of course, I was proud to be both so it was a great opportunity for me to indulge my passion over the long summer break, before I finished at Uni and entered the rat race.
Sandy and I decided to go to Achiltibuie for three weeks before moving north to Cape Wrath for another few weeks, where she would pursue her passion – painting and sketching, and me mine – being alone in contact with rock as I moved up and across it.
I woke on the morning of the 23rd June (my 32nd birthday) and had a great breakfast sitting outside the lodge with binoculars in hand, seeking potential sea cliff routes on the Summer Isles, and noted some possible areas in my climbing log book for another year.
We had decided the previous evening to go for a long coastal walk northwards towards a point on the map called Rhu Coigach, as we were told by the local postman that otters were frequently seen among the kelp in that area. This was ideal, as Sandy was studying them with the intention of opening an otter rescue centre somewhere in Sutherland or Wester Ross when I finished my course at Durham.
We left the lodge expecting to have a long day out, hoping to be inundated with spectacular views along the way, and of course, to see some lutra lutra*.
As we approached the small hamlet of Reiff, just along the road from where we were staying, we met the local postman again, who when we told him where we were going, replied: “Old Tam MacPhearson, a local fisherman, was in the Am Fuaran Bar, near Altandhu last night, and said he saw a large family of otters, playing in the kelp just south of Rhu Coigach around 6pm” and suggested that we should time our arrival, mid to late afternoon.
We parted, feeling good that our day would a good one.
As the day was dry with a slight warm breeze blowing, the clear blue sky with its small fluffy clouds high above, added to the pleasure we got whilst walking northwards along the coast line. The waves were big and clearly took great delight in smashing into the rocks, sounding like a full orchestra tuning its instruments before a concert, no order, no synchronicity, just a jumbled yet pleasant thunderous noise.
After fifteen to twenty minutes of ambling along, Sandy sat on some rocks whilst I inched my way out as far as I could, so that I could play dodgem with the waves as they try hard to soak me and I tried hard to prevent them from doing so; I was happy that the little child in me was still alive and well!
Looking up stopped me in my tracks, when I saw a line of sea cliffs further on some of which were of considerable height. I knew that there were no recorded climbs in this area and with my little boy to the fore, I ran back to Sandy to hurry her up so that we could get to the cliffs I had seen. ![]()
I talked it over with Sandy, and despite wearing an old pair of flared corduroy trousers and well-worn trainers, we agreed that as I was climbing at my best, it was well within my limits.
As I climbed down and across to the tidal area, noticing that at least ten to fifteen feet was covered in limpets and barnacles, Sandy sat down with a view of the cliff face and agreed to take photos of the climb for posterity.
The rock was firm to the touch and although the surface was rough on the fingers, I knew it would offer my trainers superb friction. As I slowly made my way to the high tide line, I looked up at the inviting rock face, and traced in my minds’ eye, the line I was going to follow up to the skyline and sensed that this was another moment in my life that I would remember all my days.
I put my left hand out and took hold of some small protruding rugosities, placed my right toe on a large barnacle and stood up. My gazelle like movement thrilled my senses as I slowly eased my body upright so as to gain a higher hold for my right hand. I braced my muscles as I brought up the other foot to meet the right one perched precariously on another small protuberance which thankfully took my weight. I stood at this position and listened to the sweet music of the waves as they met the rocks behind and below and I knew, no I believed that this was where I should be at this moment in my life. Synchronicity of life, movement, belief, desire and truth, what more could a mere insignificant human being ask for!
I searched above for the next hand hold and moved in a slow rhythmic movement in tune with my heart beat, as it pulsated nectar of life around my sinews and muscles that were being tested to their limits. I was now on clean rock, no more limpets or barnacles as footholds, just the rough texture of the rock and my own ability to remain in contact with it.
There can be no doubt that when a climber chooses to climb alone, he cannot afford to make the slightest error of judgement, for there is no climbing partner and no rope to assist or arrest any possible slip or fall, let alone have someone to offer encouragement to make a daring move when upward movement appears impossibly. In essence, the end result of such an error would almost certainly lead to severe bodily injury or even the forfeit of life itself.![]()
As I passionately and purposefully moved upwards a little further, I saw above me a small scoop which had a sloping base, narrowing at the top. I made for it not knowing where I would go from there. This was exploration at its boundary limits of my human capability and it made me realise that right here, right now, I was doing what I was born to do, at least, this is what I convinced myself as I thought about my next upwards move.
As I rested in the scoop, I heard my heart beat as it increased to the sweet familiar adrenalin rush, as it coursed faster through my body. The temple muscles throbbed a delightful tune to the music being played within my veins, and I was loving every minute of it, especially when I felt that the crashing waves of the returning tide, were playing in tune with my very senses.
Trying to get up and past this scoop was both difficult and awkward, and at one stage I was spreadeagled in the shape of a crucifix, (which is what I eventually called the route). Whilst I was fleetingly enjoying being in that position, it became all too clear that I had no idea how I was going to extricate myself from such a precarious position. It felt like many minutes had passed before I came to a decision on what to do next, but in reality, I knew that it was only a few micro seconds as over the past twenty-three years of climbing, mostly alone, I had become attuned to be as one with the rock, so that movement came naturally, quickly and automatically as it had to do when soloing.
An awkward move using a knee, allowed me to gain another fault line leading off to the left and upwards and this gave me two choices of topping out. One route went direttissima that is taking a direct line straight up to the top and the other veered leftwards to some large angled steps then a short wall to the top. Both looked inviting although the direttissima route was without a doubt, a very severe undertaking.
I weighed up both routes and settled for the direttissima route which is what I expected my decision to be. However, when I saw Sandy across the cove taking pictures, I realised that sometimes being selfish and egocentric in my decision making, was not the right thing to do and that any error leading to my possible demise was not fair on her, so elected to do the easier finish.
Movement across to the steps on the left was done in a gazelle like fashion, as all my senses and my limbs became one unified movement of beauty, whilst a cacophony of nature’s sounds tried to sing in harmony with my movements. Upwards movement again, then a little more, a few grunts and groans, and I topped out to applause from Sandy. I felt chuffed at doing what I considered to be a first ascent on what I believed to be an unknown climbing area. Both Sandy and I were confident that I was climbing well and so I continued to climb another few routes nearby. ![]()
Nothing happened so I tried to start climbing again, but my movement was sluggish as if some force was pulling me back and although I was in contact with the rock, I could not feel it under my finger-tips or with my toes. It felt like I was just standing there in the air, free from all contact with the rock, cocooned in a pocket of total silence.
Suddenly there was a thunderous noise as a huge wave crashed into the base of the cliff face making me leap out of my cocoon. The noise echoed, deafening me for a few seconds and without thinking, I started to climb upwards, across the arch, up a short wall and topping out. I was pleased to see Sandy sitting nearby, gave a wave and walked over to give her a long embracing cuddle.
I was taken aback when she asked where I had been for the past hour. I said I had been nowhere and had only just left her to climb down the rock face to the archway, when a huge wave crashed into the cliff so hurried up and finished the climb. Sandy assured me that I had been away for over an hour and was starting to get worried as she could not see or hear me.
As this was not the first time I had experiences such situations whilst solo climbing, I shrugged it off as just being another unexplained occurrence, and so we moved on further northwards where more rock presented itself, so much so, that I was spoilt for choice and was unable to settle on any particular cliff face. I climbed around a few more coves on our way to Rhu Coigach, but I could see that Sandy was getting bored with me going off to climb continually, so gave up and we walked together in silence to our destination where as we had a break, we peered intently into the kelp beds for signs of otters searching for crabs and fish.
Sandy did some sketching whilst I played around on the small cliffs around the headland, and whilst they were not as big as those further back the way we came, they offered me plenty of sport for which I was most grateful. ![]()
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October 28, 2016, 6:52 am
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First climbed in 1971, remarkably with only one aide point, by Keith Myhill, Crow attacks the wall to the left of its perhaps more well-known neighbour, Vulture and received a free ascent in 1978 from Mick Fowler and Mick Morrison, one of the very few teams to seek out the Cilan atmosphere at this time.![]()
World Climbing, 1980
By the late 80s and into the early 90s the roll call of climbers making exploratory routes or repeats began to increase and whist the Peninsula did not experience a trendy ‘place to be’ scenario a few Llanberis based teams initially spearheaded by Ray Kay and Dave ‘skinny’ Jones in the company of John Toombes and Lee McGinley did much to arouse a curiosity in other that would increase the Lleyn resume. Pat Littlejohn with various partners had also been quietly operating in the area for some time and thus with a Culm Coast seal of approval it was clear that those entering this lonely realm would be ill advised to do so without a certain apprehension. Sparsely documented, there seemed a magnetic charm purveyed by the only guide book, a slim off yellow paperback, published by the Climbers Club in 1979 and compiled by Trevor Jones, who after editing known information into forty eight pages reminded would be acolytes that “the descriptions and in particular the grades should therefore be considered as provisional and treated with some respect”. It was good advice.
After using this tome on a number of bitter sweet occasions, we had found a number of zawns apparently untouched by previous explorers. To reach these there were a times difficult sea level traverses and unfeasibly treacherous fishermen’s paths. It was in one of these arenas that I now confronted the so called ‘severe’ looking crack in the zawn of the three caves. 'Bytilith' it was marked on OS maps, yet a most defining feature signing our approach centred on a defunct pipeline emanating from a short red brick wall atop and left of the cliffs when looking out to sea. This forgotten edifice plunged in decay down a disturbing couloir for over a hundred feet ending its fall on beach boulders, from where at low tide it was also possible to get round in to the semi cauldron zawn in which rested out point of interest, a crack line whose apparent ascetic charm was difficult to ignore.
Anyone venturing out on short climbs offered by the ‘grit stone’ edge at Rhiw might be forgiven for thinking that sea cliffs in the vicinity might display a similar, generally solid, nature. Yet, this form of false consciousness, would be, above all hope, swiftly be annulled unless concentrating solely on sea rumbled boulders. Thus the crack once engaged rendered a gear shift on my part so that the mind, hit with information, after architecture each side of the alarming fissure which saw designated footholds explode or de-laminate when nominally weighted, returned to Cilan mode. I think therefore I jamb, or, in a less than grand philosophical sense, which might nevertheless have great repercussions on a personal level, I thought how best jambs should be placed. It wasn’t that baffling technical difficulties suddenly caused a long pause in proceedings, but that typically such ascents rely on a slow probing up and down after securing, at least psychologically, any available protection. Of this, deep inside the crack’s mud butter, better crystallised rock gave home to a couple of friend placements and a big sideways hex biting the fracture’s doubtful outer edges backed them up. It was enough.
When leaders hardly move for half an hour, it might be no surprise to hear second shout in encouragement ‘go for it’ which whilst possible galvanising action in sound rock settings with bomber gear the matter in hand was more likely to succumb after a long mental war of attrition and knowing this Al, maintaining a silent vigil shuffled atop the highest boulders as turning tide began cutting off escape. Cruel were the impediments barring way to the imagined haven promised by a beckoning ledge where steepness was temporarily postponed. This was the belay out sloper, proportioned with a horizontal crumble line taking a friend and some nuts on which I overkilled the snug and braced to bring up the Ruper. A shipwrecked monk lamenting the stone boat’s sinking, no longer paying out.
Crouching and lashed in, maybe eighty feet from where the rock ended at the cave lips and their hollows underneath blew out wave wash over and over, the situation was dramatic. A grey rock pillar dominating the cliff’s upper reaches resembled in appearance Pembroke limestone yet its nature would probably diverge considerably when tested for the properties which Pems is famously known. To the left, the zawn’s concavity bent it round in windscreen flex where it rubbled in ghoul shapes and deep brown death blocks lurking and hanging like gargantuan bats roosting. It lent together in disturbing bulges threatening to drop. Al toiling with the revelation brought on by the crack’s true gravity at one point implored me to give assistance since a deeply seated friend, now inverted, required in a typical case both hand for trigger release least it ‘walk’ towards loss in the crack’s innards. With great regret it was my solemn duty to inform him that no such assistance could be advanced. I did not like to say it, ‘that the belay might pull’. Yet, not long after this heart breaking news arrived, the friend, aided by a forceful extraction pull, think Popeye opening a can of spinach, and with something like flurry of blows Al soon exchanged jambs at the crack’s finale for a creaking welcome on the shelving perch and we hurriedly plugged in the extra cam shoring up the anchors.
On the lunatic fringe of the next pitch a crack / groove took a rock four, biting in solid first go. Bridge out- lean in- left shouldering and a reach with the right gains faulty finger locks. Moving in reptile shape I make a position under an overlap, where things- as Glenn Robbins was fond of saying, and George Smith would later name his Shale City test piece- were 'getting ugly’. Some wall shadows tell the sun is losing us and I can’t pull over.A man hanging forms the gallows of his own making. This surplomb was half mud, half biscuit, half past dead Whymper.... earth, and stuck below it, excavating fragile layers with one hand sapping, exposure bites as an invisible pig suckles strength away. But here now is the animal in most savage form and with survival its only goal, half standing amidst the left arête’s museum porcelain I commit, chest first, to a gaiter roll mantle and twist body parts over drip fed Hammer House horror, emerging a white faced phantom on the uber steps as uncloaked rock grass becomes airborne, famous amongst the shearwaters.
With our compadres return there are two figures forty feet above peering over and I shout them to fix a rope for the exit shoot at the only conceivable belay, a block diagonally distanced some forty feet away, it would have to do, we have no head torches and the overlord on the incubus steps is waiting. I the kick back before the top it feels like I am tread milling a smashed escalator and with the sky empty of birds I find a grim oasis, but there is no warning and suddenly you’re dead. Double vision? No, blood, only a little, but the hard baked pudding stone had struck me a direct skull hit and its bass rhythm sent a shock wave through the jaw, attempting to dwarf me,stunned, the torso as my knees buckled and I stepped for a moment off the round world’s edge... deaf.![]()
But I am okay apart from rope snag on non-extended runners, causing a final crawling technique which gains relief only after clipping in under the rim on the cold cliff, as Rutger Hauer says ‘not yet, not yet’ clenching his Roy Batty fist. Alive. In sort of muck lined crevasse formed by banks, rabbit warren honey combed, I face out towards the Irish Sea, ready to bring up Al from the cirque of the unclingables, and he comes on like a medieval abbot surveying monastery ruins. Schwarzenegger big in his coat, ‘an insensitive oaf’ a girlfriend once called him, but he picks a way through the Herculean jenga pillars without causing collapse when the merest indelicate touch would have caused regret. With wind blast, hoods go tight on the draw cord and below a crusader zeal fuels the oxygen of escape as he passes over the fairy-tale roof with hands hard grasping. ‘Extremely Severe’, he would later say. But then we are there avoiding the head landers, where there are none except those captured in memory. Burdened only by the hillside’s incline we must set a zig zag course away from the pipe wall and taking a breather, become conscious of the slopers at dusk in the R. S. Thomas necroscope night. Down in the dark zawn.....at the end of Wales.
An account of The First Ascent of Headlander 100 metres XS, April 1992, Martin Crook, Alistair HughesMartin Crook: 2016: Previously Unpublished.
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November 4, 2016, 3:50 am
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The book was no searing, in depth autobiography but a simple coffee table tome which set out to record his global and domestic campaigns in a photo-journalistic style. The substance and strength of the book was in its photographs with the matter of fact text simply outlining what was going on at the time when the image was recorded. Fast forward almost 30 years and the fifty something action man has become an 80 something grizzled veteran and survivor. Where many have fallen, Chris has overcome triumph and tragedy and remained in the saddle to reach an age when many of his generation who have come this far, have fallen into decrepitude. By contrast, ‘rage,raging against the dying of the light’, he remains ever the activist. Climbing The Old Man of Hoy with young whippersnapper, Leo Holding in his 80th year! Good fortune or simply living a healthy life? Whatever the reasons for his continued rude health, his exploits in the great outdoors continue to delight and astound the mountain community.![]()
Given the quality of the images-and not all photographs included were taken by Chris- those interested in photography would be interested to discover what cameras were used to record what are overwhelmingly, outstanding images. Well, Chris is very much an Olympus man. In the footnotes at the back of the book he tells us that he switched to Olympus in 1974 and never changed. Attracted by the introduction of the compact SLR, he generally used Olympus cameras and lenses with Kodachrome film-25/64 above the snowline and 200 below. The Olympus addiction continued into the digital age and he continues to use the OM-D and four third system Pens. Although he confesses to increasingly use an iPhone 6 to record his adventures.![]()
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November 11, 2016, 5:49 am
Written in 1974, Chris Brasher's article originally published in the BMC's Mountain Life magazine, tapped into the widespread public concern that was being expressed at the time, in relation to a series of mountain tragedies and close shaves involving parties of young people taking part in mountain expeditions organised by schools and outdoor education centres. Hard to imagine now in an age when schools, outdoor centres and those involved in outdoor education have become paranoid about public liability and fear of litigation, back in those far off days,rules and regulations which governed the actions of organisations and individuals taking youngsters on outdoor activity courses, was of course, far more relaxed. 'Abandoning' youngsters in a mountain environment and leaving them to survive and return through their own skills without interference from instructors, was an integral part of a centre's survival and navigation course experiences.
Ironically,the increased regulation and tightening up of outdoor education in the UK has led to massive decrease in the number of youngsters now experiencing outdoor activities. With many LEA outdoor centres since the 1970's now closed down and sold off, and outdoor charities forced to likewise cease their activities, there are many who would argue that the initially well intentioned actions of the state, has had a serious detrimental effect on outdoor education in the UK.
Everyone of us who has ever been in charge of a party of boys or girls on a mountain expedition must fear the thought of the moment when we have to call out the search parties. On Sunday March 17th that moment came to Chris Abel, the master in charge of adventure training at Bredon School, Tewkesbury. The fear is of the hullabaloo that follows every major search for a party of kids — the enquiries by news reporters and television teams, the criticism of other climbers and the tut-tutting of the public. But, that fear can, and must, never interfere with one's responsibility to call for help as soon as it is needed. I myself have known this fear when three different parties of boys were late at their camp site on an exercise that I had set.An exercise which I know now had too many boys in it and was too arduous. Luckily they were all rounded up — after a vast expenditure of my energy — before dark. And I have been on the other end, quizzing masters in charge of parties that have involved massive searches and then writing about it in the press. So now I examine myself before putting pen to paper and I employ one criterion: would publicity help enlighten others and perhaps — just perhaps — help prevent the same sort of thing happening again?
One has to be careful about being too pompous. There is after all no such thing as a safe mountain. With our unpredictable British weather almost any mountain, however apparently welcoming, and at any time of the year, can be dangerous to people without the complete skills and judgement of the mountaineer. So accidents will happen. Having said that, the case of the Bredon schoolboys and Chris Abel, the master in charge, does warrant examination because, in my opinion, there are one or two factors which resemble the case of the massive search for the Hertfordshire schoolboys on the Carneddau last Easter. Bredon School have a cottage called Dorwen (OS sheet 153, G.R. 772 148). On Saturday March 16th, after a morning of instruction in climbing and abseiling, six boys from the school, aged between 13 and 15, set out in two parties of three — one party at 13.50 hrs. and the other at 14.10 hrs. Their route was via the Trig point 1547 and then to Bwlch y Giedd (2,400 feet), on the shoulder of Bannau Brycheiniog, and then by a very steep sheep track (not marked on the map) which leads past the southern end of Lyn y Fan-Fawr to a rendezvous on a minor road at GR 852214 (OS sheet 140). The distance; according to the school, is nine or ten miles and they were supposed to rendezvous with Chris Abel at 17.30 — approximately three and a half hours after they set out.
They carried two emergency rucksacks between the six of them. Each sack contained one tent, one sleeping bag, a plastic bag holding spare clothing, and a one man 24-hour food pack plus one pound of chocolate. Each sack weighed about 24 pounds when dry, perhaps 30 pounds when wet. Each boy had an anorak, a nylon cagoule and corduroy or cavalry-twill trousers. None of them had waterproof trousers and some were without a woollen cap or gloves because the weather was good when they set out. The boys reached the Bwlch at 16.35 hrs by which time, the mist had come down and the wind had risen. In unpleasant conditions -strong wind, cloud and a hint of hail — conditions with which they were not familiar- they could not find the sheep track and rather than face the steep slope down to the llyn they decided to turn back. For some reason (perhaps fear of the steep escarpment on the East) they did not attempt their planned alternative route of coming down the SSE ridge of the mountain (a gentle ridge) until meeting the main road at Gwyn Arms. (This ridge, incidentally, is part of the proposed Cambrian Way)![]()
Next morning, Monday March 18th, they struck camp and set off back to the cottage. They were sighted and rescued by an R.A.F. helicopter at about 0900 hours when they were less than one and a half miles south of their camp site and three and a half miles from the cottage. Chris Abel says that similar parties from the school have regularly done this trip on many occasions before in both directions. Experience, he says, shows that 3-1/2 hours is a reasonable time for it. He himself has been organising this type of expedition for the school for 10 years and before that he was at the Devon Outward Bound School. (Some instructors will no doubt comment that the law of averages had to catch up with him sometimes). He did not set the boys off at an earlier hour because they were involved in climbing and abseiling instruction and because he wanted them to be well briefed and to have a good lunch. The trouble arose, he feels, because one of the party was not feeling well and because the cloud came down half an hour earlier — and it came 1,000 feet lower — than had been forecast.
Now for our comments:
1. The distance by the best route on the map is 8 miles. The height gained is 1700 feet. Two boys out of the six were loaded and the speed of any party is the speed of the slowest. Using the R.A.F. formula for a loaded party of 2-1/2 miles per hour plus one hour for every 1,500 feet gained, the formula time for the expedition is 4 hour 20 minutes. This would put the boys at the rendezvous point at 18.20 hours — after sunset. We realise that formulae are no substitute for experience and Chris Abel has far more experience of this area than we do. Nevertheless, is this not another typical instance of that terrible British habit (of which we ourselves have been guilty many times) of setting out late in the day and not allowing an ample margin of time before dusk. Should not we aim to be at our terminal point by mid-afternoon — or earlier — thus allowing plenty of time for wrong route finding, not feeling well, dawdling over lunch or any of the other diversions that seem to spring up in the hills?![]()
2. Again there is a similarity with the Carneddau incident in that the crux of the Bredon schoolboys' expedition — the crossing of the Bwlch — came near the end of the expedition when there was much less than two hours to darkness. Should not the crux of any "adventure training" expedition come early in the day when the boys are fresh? It then gives them a tremendous glow of achievement to speed their way for the rest of the day.
3. This business of staying put. Many experienced mountaineers felt that all the praise lavished on the Hertfordshire schoolboys (including a Mayoral reception!) for their "sense" in staying put would only lead to other parties of schoolboys bedding down for the night at the first sign of trouble and then waiting to be rescued. If this sounds harsh, then please remember that the Hertfordshire boys were "found" by a couple from Cambridge after they had been "lost" for over 18 hours but they did not want to go down to the Conway Valley with the Cambridge couple because it was in the opposite direction to their rendezvous. And what, may we ask, were the "well- trained" Bredon schoolboys doing throughout Sunday when conditions were such that their master could see the whole route up to the Bwlch.
The pendulum of human experience as tends to swing in an exaggerated way. Before we knew about Mountain Hypothermia, lives were lost because parties and individuals would press on when conditions got bad, the body got wet and exhaustion approached. So out went the call "to stay put and keep warm". And very good advice it is. But it does not mean staying put for two or three nights when conditions are such that escape is more than feasible. Because if this goes on then the fears of those people after the Carneddau incident — fears that our lives would be spent looking for "stay put" parties — may well turn out to be only too true. ![]()
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November 18, 2016, 1:25 am
Path to Kallas Monastery. (Tibet): Nicholas Roerich 1932The wise find pleasure in waters, the virtuous in mountains: Kong Zi (Confucius)The painting of mountains and or climbing action is now an activity with a long history, but it is a difficult discipline to embrace in order to achieve a meaningful result for a studious beholder, and more so for the artist involved. In recent years there has been several such artists within the British climbing world; John Redhead, Tim Pollard, Bill Peascod, Tom Price, Julian Cooper, Jim Curran etc but they were I believe working within a sub section of landscape painting , which has its historical origins in China. A form of art which has always encompassed a spiritual element, drawing on Daoism, but which only became explicit in the west with romanticism.
The earliest landscape painting with no human figures depicted has its origins in frescoes in Minoan Greece, (circa 1500 BCE) but by the 10th/11th century during the Chinese Song dynasty a form of painting, shan shui (mountain water) with brush and ink, had been perfected to the highest standards. Mountains had long been considered sacred places in China, and surprisingly plain dwelling literati painted vertiginous peaks such as Kuo Hsi’s ‘Clearing autumn skies over mountains and valleys’; these works included human figures set in the vastness of nature, with a Daoist emphasis on the insignificance of the human presence in a scene depicting mountains, waterfalls and rivers.These works (often in scroll form) do not try to represent an exact image of what the painter sees in nature, but what they thought about this. It is not important whether the painted colours or shapes look exactly like the real object; the intent is to capture on paper an awareness of inner reality and wholeness. Shan shui painters use the same materials and techniques as shufu (calligraphy), and they are judged by the same criteria, including a philosophy which regards painting and shufu as a form of meditation, influenced by Chan (Zen) Buddhism.![]()
During the renaissance the development of a thorough system of graphical perspective in Italy, quickly became standard throughout Europe, and later in the USA, and eventually to an ever wider geographic area. This allowed large and complex views to be painted, which had a dramatic effect in the working of outdoor studies. Some of the most outstanding artists of the 18th and 19th centuries painted mountain scenes, and crucial in this development was David Friedrich Casper’s ‘Wanderers Above The Sea of Fog’ of 1818 which had a major influence on the romantic movement, along with Gainsborough’s ‘Mountain Landscape With Shepherd’ of 1783.Subsequently in the US during the 19th century, there was the White Mountain School, which included Albert Bierstadt an outstanding painter of Rocky Mountain Landscapes, and later still from the Hudson River School, Thomas Hill a recorder of views in Yosemite.By this date mountain studies were appearing as far apart as Duncan Darroch in New Zealand(Mount Cook), Svetlana Kanyo in the Canadian Rockies, Sergio Lopez painting Zion and the Sierras and Ivan Aivazvosky, the Caucasus . Mountain paintings are such that they either compliment ones taste and approval or not, but for myself I have two favourite mountain painters, the English born Edward Theodore Compton (1849-1921) and the Russian, Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947).
I was first intrigued by Compton’s paintings when along with Ian Howell I was invited to give a talk in 1965 at the Alpenverienhaus in Innsbruck about our 1964 attempt on Gauri Sankar. Around the walls of some of the rooms were the most impressive mountain paintings I had then seen. I was even more intrigued about their provenance when I was informed they were the work of an English artist, E. T. Compton.![]()
Compton I later found out had been born into a devout Quaker family in Stoke Newington in 1849, and exhibited from an early age an outstanding ability at drawing and sketching. His parents recognising his unique talent moved their family to Germany in order for him to study and develop his abilities, first in Darmstadt and then Munich. On a family holiday to the Bernese Oberland, he saw for the first time Alpine mountains and decided he would paint them. It was whilst living in Germany he began to climb, and over the next five decades he made over 300 ascents including 27 firsts, with some of the outstanding mountaineers of that era, Ludwig Purtscheller, Emil Zsigmondy and Karl Blodig. The latter was the first to ascend all the 4000 metre peaks in the Alps, and with whom Compton made the first guideless climb in 1905 of the Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey, and the first ascent of the Torre Di Brenta and the South Face of the Cima di Brenta . In a German publication Berg, he is described as being strong physically, and an excellent technical climber.
Compton became well known as an illustrator for the German and Austrian Alpine Clubs, and was the artist who provided the plates for two of the most iconic mountain books of that period, ‘In the High Mountains’ by Zsigmondy (1889) and ‘Mountaineering in pictures’ by Alfred Steinitzer (1913). In 1880 he was elected to the Royal Academy, and he was a member of the Alpine Club and the DAV (German/Austrian Alpine Clubs). When he was 70 he ascended the Gross Glockner, but his climbing achievements pale once you are confronted by his canvases. For myself, his paintings of the Alps (he also visited North Africa, Scandinavia, the Andes and the UK etc); including the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and the Dolomites are memorable but his study of the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses is peerless.This was exhibited in Chamonix last year, and all those who viewed this (many thousands) were impressed by its detail and accuracy, but nevertheless he can be regarded as an expressionist. He died in 1921 and a hut in the Carinthian Alps bears his name, but his real memorial, are his paintings. It has taken many years for his true technical and artistic ability to be recognised, but if you want to own one you now need deep pockets.
Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich, little known in Britain, is a man for whom the designation polymath is hardly adequate. There are two museums extant at present which illustrate his achievements as a painter, archaeologist, designer, writer, architect, philosopher, musician, and spiritualist. There is one museum in New York and another in Moscow which aim to illustrate the full range of Roerich’s accomplishments, the most lauded of which are his paintings, particularly of Himalayan Mountains and the peoples of those regions. The totality of his canvases spread amongst different collections around the world amount to a staggering 7000 plus paintings.
He was born in St Petersburg to a well to do notary public, and studied law to please his father and art to please himself; graduating at both the University and the Imperial art school with outstanding grades. An early interest in archaeology and history, caused him to undertake a long journey around Russia and from this, subsequently, once a member of the artistic community in the Russia of that era, he drafted a story, ‘The Rites of Spring’, the music for which was composed by Stravinsky. Diaghilev had been a fellow law student with Roerich, and he invited him to design sets for ‘The Ballet Russes’ which was to cause such a sensation in Paris before the first war. Roerich’s designs for Borodin’s ‘Prince Igor’ (1909) and ‘The Rites of Spring’ cemented his reputation in that field. ![]()
During the first decade of the 1900’s, largely due to his wife Helena, Roerich developed an interest in Eastern religions, which would shape the rest of his life; the influence of Theosophy, Vedanta, Zen Buddhism and other mystical concepts can be detected not only in his paintings, but in the many stories and poems he wrote and illustrated. His wife was related to Mussorgsky, and another connection was with Rimsky-Korsakov, and because of this he was invited to the USA where he designed the sets for that composers opera ‘The Snow Maiden’. They settled in New York and founded there an Institute for the Arts, an art school with an extensive and versatile curriculum, including architecture. Roerich’s acclaimed publication on this subject ’Architectural Studies’ (1904/5) had become a standard text by that date. They also set up the Agni Yoga Society, whilst -meanwhile an exhibition of his paintings toured the country and a book of his poetry, translated by Mary Siegrist , was published at that time. They stayed in the US until 1923, but then travelled out to Darjeeling, encouraged to move there to be near the Himalaya, which was where they felt their spiritual journey was leading them. Two of his paintings of Kanchenjunga from this date, have subsequently sold at auction for over one million pounds each, I have a framed print of one of these on my living room wall.
This interest in the Himalayan region led on to the Roerich’s setting forth with their son George, a brilliant linguist who was later to publish the first Tibetan/English/Russian language dictionary, and six friends to travel these regions for five years. They started in Sikkim, then moved on to Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram, Hotan, Kashgar, Urumqi, Iyrtish, the Altai mountains, the Oyrot region of Mongolia, the central Gobi, Gansu, Tsaidam and finally Tibet. Where they received an icy reception, being stopped on the high Tibetan plateau and forced to live in tents in sub-zero conditions, and to exist on subsistence meagre rations for several months, during which five members of their party died. Finally they were allowed to leave Tibet in March 1928, from whence they retreated back to India.
Returning first to Darjeeling; Roerich wrote several books about his experiences from this incredible journey, much of it on foot, two of which ‘Altai-Himalaya’ and ‘Shambala’ were translated and published in the USA. He had also painted many outstanding studies of the mountains he had viewed, including the Mustagh Tower, whilst traversing the Himalaya. In 1929 Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. His concern for peace resulted in his creation of the Pax Cultura, the ‘Red Cross’ of art and culture. His work for this cause resulted in the USA and the twenty other nations of the Pan-American Union, signing the Roerich pact on April 15th 1935 at the White House under President Roosevelt. This was an early international instrument attempting to protect cultural property.
Pictures of Roerich at this time, illustrate a tall, bearded, erect personality, who might have emerged out of the pages of a Tolstoy story. In 1935 on behalf of the US Department of Agriculture, accompanied by two of their scientists MacMillan and Stephens, Roerich led an expedition to Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. The expedition’s purpose was to collect the seeds of plants which prevent the destruction of benign layers of soil.
During his journeying in the Himalaya, Roerich decided on the need for a Himalayan Institute and in January 1929, he and his family moved to the Punjab’s, Kulu Valley. A site he had noted on his previous travels, and there by the village of Naggar , he bought the Hall estate from the Rajah of Mandi. His son, Svetoslav who is now revered in India as one of its most famous artists, who studied painting with his father from a young age, declared ‘I have seen many countries, but I have not discovered a more beautiful place as the Kulu Valley’. There they set up the Himalayan Research Institute, ‘Urusvati’ a name which in Sanskrit means ‘The light of the morning star’. From this base they set out on journeys into Lahul, Spiti, and Ladakh , and back at the Institute they studied local cultures, language, the natural sciences and much more.Both Nicholas and Svetoslav painted local peoples and scenery, whilst their eldest son, George a Philologist, who had studied at University College London, Harvard, and the Sorbonne and was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi,Chinese and Tibetan studied local dialects and language. The Roerichs continued their intense work in the Kulu valley until Nicholas died in 1947. Whilst living at Naggar, Roerich was visited by both Nehru and Indira Gandhi and subsequently his son Svetoslav painted their portraits, which along with that of a former President, Radhakrishan, also by him adorn the central Parliament Hall in Delhi.
Nicholas Roerich was a mystic, and an altruistic philosopher dedicated to the Himalaya and its peoples, he painted them as no one else has. He was a symbolist, and prior to his Indian sojourn, many of his paintings are of Slavic history and legend which some find ‘disturbing’. H.P. Lovecraft the cult horror story writer referred several times to the ‘strange and disturbing’ paintings of Nicholas Roerich, especially in his Antarctic novel of 1936,’At the mountains of madness’. Nevertheless one of these ‘strange’ paintings, the Madonna Laboris sold for 12 million dollars at Bonham’s in 2013! So to own one of these you would need even deeper pockets than to purchase a Compton.
There have been so many books now about the Roerich’s that it is hard to understand why so few people have heard about them in the UK? There are several biographies, and one about Nicholas and his wife Helena ‘The Spiritual Journey of two great artists’ by Ruth Drayer was published in 2014, and another ‘Nicholas Roerich- Inspired by the Himalaya’ by Ashok Dilwali appeared in 2013 and several of his own books are still in a revised recently published form. There are even music compositions such as the ‘Roerich Suite’ by Juan Carlos Garcia available as an MP3 download. Besides the two museums dedicated to his works in New York and Moscow, there are Roerich Institutes in Mexico and Brasil.![]()
Dennis Gray: 2016........(Previously unpublished)
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November 25, 2016, 1:21 am
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In meadows where the world was left behind,
Still seeking with a blameless recreation,
In troubled times, to keep a quiet mind;
This, with thy simple utterance, imparts
A pleasure ever new to musing hearts”
Bernard Barton
It is Easter 1982, and I decide that I need to get away for a few weeks climbing as life is beginning to stifle my senses. After some deliberation, I settle on driving to Skye for a return visit but rather than go to the Cuillins to climb, I decide to go to Staffin where I knew there was great potential for much climbing.
Planning takes all of half an hour as I throw everything I think I will need for the fortnight, into the back and boot of the car before leaving home to drive north. The suspension springs are at full stretch and the tyres appear half inflated despite how much air is pumped into them. Turn left at the drive, on through Edinburgh city, bustling with ants hurrying and scurrying about their business, faces set in concrete as they live their lives within a well framed lifestyle of worrying about their mortgage, the cranky boss at work, mundane financial matters, what excuse to use this time for arriving at the office late again, and so on. I drive past without a care in the world knowing that two weeks well-earned holiday on the island of Skye, offers me so much rock to touch and get acquainted with. What a mind blowing thought.
As I drive through Edinburgh, the only two thoughts in my head are, would the trusty old banger make it there, and, would it make the return journey? Nothing else matters, not the weather, not the midges, not even the time of year, April, could dampen my spirits.
After a long but pleasant drive, I arrive at the Kyle of Lochalsh but having missed the last ferry for the night, settle down to sleep in the front seat which was not all that easy given the amount of climbing gear I had thrown on the back seats. I try as best I can to get comfortable in a small space under the steering wheel, but whichever position I get into, the damn thing just sticks out preventing me from doing so. I try sleeping in a sitting position but as the seat would not go back due to the gear stuffed behind it, I just toss and turn, huffing and puffing and moaning to myself as the slow passing of the night crawls agonisingly past.
Dawn finally starts to arrive as I wake from a half sleep, but am dismayed that it is another two hours before the first morning ferry is operational. ‘God I wish they would build a bloody bridge across’ I muse to myself, as I try once again to get comfortable in a space even a contortionist would find difficult. As the full morning sun finally pokes its nose above the murky horizon in a clear blue sky, the sound of the ferry, its diesel engine chugging merrily along, calls out to me: ‘I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming’. Eventually it enters the small harbour, and the steel ramp scrapes along the concrete slope as if to say ‘I have arrived’.![]()
The ten odd cars that accompanied me across, jockey for first pole position down the narrow road and I am no different. Race after the car in front. Overtake. Get overtaken. Drive faster to overtake the car that has just overtaken me and so the game of leap frog goes on until I get tired of it all and slow down enough to allow them to disappear into the distance, leaving me an empty road. Sods law was only taking a short nap, for when I rounded a sharp bend, there in front was a slow moving lorry.
Braking hard I become frustrated because the road is full of bends for the next few miles or so. A car comes up behind me, close, too close so I tap my brakes to give him a fright hoping that it will make him back off a bit but it doesn’t, it just makes him more determined to overtake me and the lorry at the first opportunity that is presented. Suddenly a straight stretch of road appears and so I signal to pull out, but the car behind has other ideas as he pulls out without signalling and forces his way past me and the lorry waving with two fingers as he passes.
I ignore his gesture and stop at Portree for breakfast before driving on to park in the lay by beside the Old Man of Storr, a magnificent obelisk of rock that stands proud inviting those interested, to come close to its base and admire the conical shape of the rugosities that adorn the surface. Standing around are an array of other odd shaped pinnacles, rugged, weathered and just as magnificent, pleasing to the eye and touch.
I put on my running shoes and with my soft soled climbing shoes slung around my neck, I trot over to the base of the Old Man eager to feel its surface under my fingers.
I remembered that Harold Raeburn a noted Scottish climber and mountaineer visited the Old Man back in 1898 with A. W. Russell who noted at the time, that “we will not venture to assert that the Old Man will never be ascended, but we were quite content to look at him without making an attempt”.
It was not until 1955 when three climbers, that the legendary Don Whillans with George Sutton and John Barber made the first recorded ascent of the Old Man, although it rarely gets repeated ascents due to its suspect rock and the difficulty of finding good protection. However, for the solo climber it is ideal and I was in no mood for thinking otherwise.
As I stand at its base, some 40 feet in diameter, I crane my neck upwards following its shape to the overhanging summit some 160 foot above, being thankful for the light warm breeze that caressed the air making the atmosphere both pleasant and reassuring to me. Donning my climbing shoes, I deliberate on where to start climbing. Should I follow the first ascent line carried out by Whillans, Sutton and Barber assuming I could find it, or should I seek out a route of my own? I chose the latter.
Finding some good hand holds just above head height, I place my right toe gently yet with conviction onto the rock surface and pull up. My fingers are soon playing sweet music on the many protruding rugosities that covered the rock keyboard and my feet dance gracefully to the tune of the tiny holds. Climbing is both ecstatic and friendly in its harmonious contact with me and I truly feel life is indeed, full of bliss and rewards. As soon as my fingers touch the rounded globules and intrusions, my feet follow contentedly, gripping snugly to the same holds that earlier had caressed my fingers.
Movement is ballerina like, tempered with the approach of a fine arts restorer repairing a priceless china vase, delicate, with precision and all with a flowing purpose to please.
My mind is devoid of all thoughts as I allow my senses to become one with the rock itself. Life in every sense of the word, at least right then and there at that moment in time had meaning but impossible to verbally describe. As I move across the angulated rock surface, I sense I was not climbing alone and at one point I was convinced I felt someone’s breath on my naked arms. However, I dismiss this as possibly being a gust of wind until I thought I felt their body touching mine, and so I suddenly stop moving for no apparent reason. I still feel safe so smile contentedly to myself and ‘welcome’ whoever or whatever it was and carry on my ever upwards flowing movement. Up and up I climb until suddenly I become aware that the holds begin to become intrusive as fingers ache with the roughness of the rock. As I halt my upwards movement, I instinctively look down which is when I realize how far above the ground I am and that a slip would likely result in serious injury or death. In an instant, I relinquish the urge to continue upwards and start to climb back down the odd fifty feet I had gained.
Like Bentley Beetham, I am an ardent advocate of descending a climb, or down climbing as it is often referred to, believing that you should not climb anything you are not prepared to climb down, especially when soloing.
Once back on the ground, I move over to a smaller finger of rock, often referred to as The Old Women, and climb it several times by different routes. Clearly my body is receptive to climbing and so I indulged myself once more back on the Old Man by climbing up and around the circumference in an upwards spiral for approximately sixty feet, then back down using the same strategy.
After playing on some of the other rock pinnacles, I run back down to the car enjoying the tingling sensation in my toes that race upwards flooding all my body senses. I know that the rest of the holiday will be even better.
I had booked a small self-catering cottage in the tiny hamlet of Staffin, but lose no time once I had dumped all my gear inside, to set off to explore the Trotternish peninsula before the sun gave way to the rising moon which had already put in an appearance.![]()
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December 2, 2016, 4:31 am
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Passages by sea made it necessary for a man to get leave of six to eight months from his home and many ‘possibles’ could not do this, nor could they have afforded it had the leave been given. Thus the 1924 expedition started out with only eight climbers....in 1953 there were 14. about high altitude climbing we then had almost everything to learn; as an example, i remember Captain Farrah saying to me in 1920 that he thought that four climbers on an expedition would be a big enough team to make an effective dash for the top.
One had to admit that the pioneer climbs on Everest had two major results. first,they set foot on great controversy about the use of oxygen on high altitude climbs. At first, most mountaineers were against it. this certainly applies to the climber on the 1922 and 1924 expeditions.![]()
in 1922 Finch was the chief advocate of oxygen but he was a voice crying in the wilderness; none of the experienced mountaineers wanted to go with him but Geoffrey Bruce did not mind because he was a mountaineer and was game for adventure. secondly, there was an undoubted influence of Everest on expanding the interest in climbing; you might almost say, it was the spark which set the world alight. the selection committee in 1923 were in two minds about including Irvine on the team for 1924. some held the view that he was too young. But Irvine’s supporters had three strong argument in his favour.
First he was a very fine athlete of well proven stamina and splendid strength. Secondly: Noel Odell had been greatly impressed in Spitsbergen (August 1923) with his cheerful devotion to the work of the sledge journey and the dogged determination with which he faced its problems. Odell’s views carried the weight with the pundits in London. Then....and most important of all..Irvine was the right man to be in charge of the oxygen equipment. He was a born engineer and had good workshop experience. he had a keen eye for the solution of practical problems and very skillful hands. None of the others could have done what he did.
The homeland of the Irvine clan in times long past had been in the Scottish lowlands, not far north of the English Border. In the past, one of them had walked south to Liverpool to start a small commercial enterprise. Slowly that business grew. By the time Sandy came on the scene, the family were established in moderate affluence in a nice house in Birkenhead. the sons were sent to Shrewsbury, a school which at the start of the century had on its staff, the best rowing coach in England. When he took up residence in Merton, Oxford in January 1922, Sandy was immediately given a place in the university crew. He was a very fine oarsman indeed.
The speed with which sandy mastered the techniques of racing on skis was to some extent due to his considerable experience of ordinary ski running in Norway and Spitsbergen in 1923. As a mountaineer he was clearly competent above the average for a man of limited experience-the assumption that he had done no previous climbing is quite wrong.![]()
At the end of a long life of devotion to the mountains, I look back on so much that has been thrilling and delightful, (though there have been incidents that have given me grief and pain) The days of my active climbing are now long passed. Yet now, in old age, comes a pleasure I never anticipated; the privilege of doing something for the mountain world. For I have revived the memory of an Everester who must not be forgotten. If I may borrow the words from Holy Writ: Andrew Irvine ‘was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found’.
Herbert Carr:First published in Climber: December 1979
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December 9, 2016, 5:49 am
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One or two well waterproofed early risers looked a little surprised to see anyone starting up the hill at that late hour (for them anyway) especially after a morning during which conditions had degenerated from worse to much worse. Nevertheless we were greeted cheerily, no doubt because they were on their way to dry warm surroundings such as we had recently vacated. Rick set a cracking pace up the Band and it was not long before I cracked and allowed the gap between us to widen, settling down to a steady, head down plod, which allowed the rain to drip from my cagoule hood to the ground instead of coursing down my nose and eventually trickling down my neck. By the time we turned off the main path to head for the Climbers' Traverse he was almost out of sight and soon disappeared over the ridge. I stopped briefly to see what it felt like not to be heaving for breath, then struggled on to reach the high point. Sensing relief at the thought that the next section was more or less level. No sign of Rick. Another brief respite, then making a much better pace I managed to catch him as he stopped to examine the dripping walls of Flat Crags.
Bowfell Buttress itself was by turns hidden or visible as banks of cloud swirled up and down the gullies and cascaded over the top like a silent, ghostly waterfall. And still it rained. Once ,at the foot, we exposed the ropes and assorted gear to the elements and made haste to get started before we had time to cool off. My one previous acquaintance with Bowfell Buttress had been in glorious weather four years previously and I had climbed, unethically I feel, in PA’s. This time Rick was in a pair of very bendy army type boots- of dubious origin- matched by my worn out, loose soled ‘leakies’. Both in full waterproofs (at least, that's what equipment dealers sell them as) and carrying sacs with us. All we needed were Alpenstocks and Edward Whymper would have been proud of us.![]()
Five minutes later more squirming and heaving had generated considerable warmth and enough progress to allow a step right, then up to the large terrace. And once more into the driving rain. "Alright whose silly idea was this anyway?" A "Thank Gawd" look spread across Rick's face as I called for him to climb. He made short work of the first bit and used his height and reach advantage to make the chimney look easy before accepting some ironmongery for use on the next pitch. I watched with growing apprehension as Rick normally leads several standards above mine and was spending some time making moves up the first steep wall. Eventually he disappeared around a corner on the left and seemed, to be climbing steadily. Occasionally the chink and click of karabiners drifted down through the rain and mist till I soon called that there was only ten feet of rope left. No reply. A lung splitting shout prompted an answer, rather muffled, but to the effect that he was about to belay.
I had to assume that the next call from above as the rope tightened meant that I could start and quickly discovered why the little wall had proved awkward. Two steps up on sloping wet foot holds with nothing much for the hands, followed by a tricky move right to a small ledge then better holds to traverse up to the left and round the corner into an open chimney-groove cum watercourse. A doddle in P.A.s but in these conditions it took me some time to reach the comparative security of the watercourse. Thirty feet of this led to a large runner and the rope vanishing round to the right over easy ground. ,Rick was belayed at the bottom of a vertical, ten foot crack that formed the start of the next pitch. I studied it, unconvinced of my ability to lead in the prevailing conditions. Two attempts were enough and I more or less slid back down. Hanging on to the sling from a chock jammed high in the crack as part of the belay.
"We'll be here all day if I keep at this," I said, "you have a go." Gear was exchanged and in a matter of minutes Rick once again vanished from view. With only a few feet of rope left movement ceased. A moment or two of delay then a voice from the clouds, "Right, when you're ready." Confidence in the top rope improved the appearance of the crack no end and in spite of one boot sliding from a greasy foothold, I was soon up and following the rope away to the left. This proved to be the wrong line, forcing me into a difficult and slippery step round on to a sloping ledge to regain the route. Easy climbing from here led to a short wall with a Chimney in the corner to its left. I ascended the wall on good holds to a narrow ledge which ended some feet from the Chimney from where the step across looked decidedly nasty.
A very long, blind, off balance stride to a slimy unseen foothold. Easy in the dry but with rain still bucketing down-and in bendy boots- quite intimidating. I was glad to have avoided leading that. Sixty easy feet to go, I accepted the sharp end and made quick work of yet another chimney and easy groove that trended to the left and easy ground. As Rick arrived the heavens decided on a final fling and pelted us with fair sized hailstones for some minutes before easing away to nothing. Just another bit of amusement for us as we coiled the ropes. "Oh for a pint !" Scrambling to the top of the ridge we were rewarded for our efforts by a remarkable sight. The clouds had lifted and were scudding just above the top of Bowfell on our left and looking underneath them towards the coast, we could see the line where they ended abruptly. Brilliant sunshine produced an intense silvery reflection from a sea darkened by scattered cloud showers near the shore but quite clear and tending to become almost golden further out. In the distance, the shadowy hump of The Isle of Man stood out beneath the final ridge of Scafell. ![]()
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December 16, 2016, 1:16 am
Original Photo: Sandy LeeWhen Bill Tilman was lost in the stormy South Atlantic seas in 1977, with the entire crew of the the En Avant, en route to Smith Island, where several of the crew intended to launch a mountaineering expedition, the world lost a remarkable adventurer and irrepressible free spirit. In his 80th year, an age when most people-even those with a climbing and sailing background-have gracefully retired from the activity and content themselves with books and gardening, Tilman found it impossible to let go of the reins. Pushing his elderly body as far as possible. Never for one moment entertaining the possibility that he could not still play a hand’s on roll on an expedition.
Now Vertebrate Publishing-best known as one of the UK’s premier mountaineering book publishers, have teamed up with sailing publishing house, Lodestar Books- to bring Tilman’s adventure books back into the spotlight. With over half of the reprint run already in the bookshops, its a good time for those unfamiliar with this fascinating and iconic figure from the world of mountaineering and ocean sailing, to acquaint themselves with the Tilman oeuvre.![]()
Sent off for a private education at Berkhamstead, after completing his education, the young Tilman soon found himself caught up in the carnage of the first world war. Surviving amongst other campaigns, the battle of the Somme. Ten years after the war, Tilman met up with Eric Shipton who like himself was engaged in the coffee trade of East Africa. Early forays upon Mount Kenya, Kilimanjaro and Ruwenzori cemented a highly successful and long lasting climbing partnership.
Between the wars,Tilman was involved in two of the 1930s Mount Everest expeditions. The 1935 Reconnaissance Expedition, and as leader of the 1938 expedition when he reached 27200 feet without oxygen. With Shipton, he ventured into the previously unexplored Nanda Devi sanctuary in 1934 and two years later he returned and led a UK/US expedition which mounted a successful attempt on the summit. A mountain which until 1950, remained the highest yet climbed.![]()
After the war and now approaching his 50‘s, he began an impressive ocean sailing career to which complimented his mountaineering activities by enabling him to visit far flung and previously inaccessible areas. Initially setting sail in his famous Pilot Cutter ‘Mischief’ and visiting the Arctic regions and several remote Atlantic and Pacific islands, Tilman went on to skipper two more pilot cutters; ‘Sea Breeze’ and ‘Baroque’, before setting out on his fateful final voyage as a crew member of the Simon Richardson skippered ‘En Avant’.
With regard to the ill fated vessel, its worth quoting from a Yachting and Boating forum where a contributor’s diligent research had turned up the following information.....![]()
I suspect the trip was funded by Richardson's own resources perhaps with contributions from the crew. He bought the boat for £750 and was given the engine. He was keen on Tilman's concept of small, low cost, expeditions. His Mother's writings (which I have not seen) would no doubt flesh this out.....There were seven on the trip: Tilman, Richardson, Coatman, Toombs, Williams (contacted by advert), Johnson (old school friend) and Dittamore (American Climber)....I guess some of the three brought in by advert would be sailors.’.![]()
The Tilman Series of adventure books are available from Vertebrate Publishers.
Tilman Archive: Yachting and Boating forum
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December 23, 2016, 1:38 am
Move along now...nothing to see here. Until the new year anyway. If you regularly drop in to catch up with articles and reviews from the world of mountaineering, then you’ll have to cool your boots man; for a week or two anyway. If you have stumbled upon the site by accident or through a recommendation, then there are over 500 classic articles going back six years in the archives to get you teeth into. Written and illustrated by some of the most respected names in the world of climbing literature.
To all the regulars- writers, photographers, artists and readers- thanks for your support and have a good holiday. Whether its relaxing with family and friends, hacking your way up a frozen Norwegian waterfall or camping on a remote Scottish island....Happy Christmas and as Irish comedian Dave Allen used to say...’May your God go with you’
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January 6, 2017, 12:09 am
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From the breaking year when ‘The January Man, he walks abroad in woollen coat and boots of leather’ to dark December when ‘December man looks through the snow to let eleven brothers know, they’re all a little older’, the author wanders across the landscapes and timescapes of his life to bring places and the living and the dead into focus. His travels take in those areas which lend themselves to Dave Goulder's seasonal song cycle. From the sombre grey flood plains of his childhood haunts on the River Severn to the high sheep country of Nidderdale in the north east of England; From the dramatic guano crusted cliffs of Shetland to the mythical woodland of Sherwood Forest,the author brings to life each region’s unique history,its wildlife,the topographical lie of the land and the independently minded people who inhabit these often remote backwaters.
The author wanderings reveal a timeless landscape where old habits and traditions die hard and where he can often find himself face to face with old ghosts. Not least in the form of his late father, John Sommerville, who while he was alive spent most of his life hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Being in the employ of the British intelligence and security services at GCHQ in Cheltenham where he was a senior operations manager. As a conscientious ‘spook’, his father never spoke of his work and remained a somewhat aloof and detached figure throughout his working life until after retirement, when the author and his newly liberated pater saw their relationship grow closer through their mutual love of walking.![]()
Amongst these landscapes which vary from the spectacular to the mundane, and from the conversations he has with ‘the natives’, the author offers his own philosophical musings which draw on his childhood memories and recent experiences. Even within the authors lifetime, the land and the people’s relationship to it has changed immeasurably. Yet some things appear fixed and preserved is aspic. Not least as witnessed in the books final chapter which sees the author in a traditional English pub twixt Wiltshire and Dorset, acting out the role of a Mummer..... Mummers' Plays are folk plays performed by troupes of amateur actors, traditionally all male, known as mummers or guisers (also by local names such as rhymers, pace-eggers, soulers, tipteerers, wrenboys, galoshins and guisers). It refers particularly to a play in which a number of characters are called on stage, two of whom engage in a combat, the loser being revived by a Doctor character. This play is sometimes found associated with a sword dance though both also exist in Britain independently.: Wikipedia)
Here in the green rural rides of the prosperous South-as is the case throughout the regions and nations of the UK- the old and the new are melded in a timeless ritual.
If The January Man captures anything, it is the ever changing nature of the natural environment within which we live, yet the powerful emotional forces which tie us to these places. Whatever the era, whatever the political climate, there is a thread of human experience and a spiritual dimension to these experiences which spans the generations and holds those who live in the countryside, in a timeless green maw.![]()
The January man, he walks the road in woollen coat and boots of leather.
The February man still wipes the snow from off his hair and blows his hands.
The man of March he sees the Spring and wonders what the year will bring
And hopes for better weather.
Through April rain the man goes down to watch the birds come in to share the summer.
The man of May stands very still watching the children dance away the day.
In June the man inside the man is young and wants to lend a hand
And grins at each newcomer.
And in July the man in cotton shirt, he sits and thinks on being idle.
The August man in thousands takes the road to watch the sea and find the sun.
September man is standing near to saddle up and lead the year
And Autumn is his bridle.
And the man of new October takes the reins and early frost is on his shoulder.
The poor November man sees fire and wind and mist and rain and Winter air.
December man looks through the snow to let eleven brothers know
They're all a little older.
And the January man comes round again in woollen coat and boots of leather
To take another turn and walk along the icy road he knows so well.
The January man is here for starting each and every year
Along the way for ever.
The January Man: Dave Goulder
The January Man is published by Penguin and is available from 12th January
John Appleby: 2017
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January 13, 2017, 3:04 am
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If the truth be known, I also had another reason for wanting to go to the Cairngorms; to climb and stand on top of the Rock called Craigellachie outside Aviemore [meaning: ‘come to me come to me’], the historical meeting place of the Clan Grant. It is said that when the Clan Chief required the clan to attend a meeting, his caller would stand on top of the Rock and shout Craigellachie repeatedly until the call was sent out across the Clan Grant lands.
Having traced my male family line back to a James Grant, born 1664 in Glenmoriston, and who as a Jacobite, fought at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, I as a child had always wanted to see the landmark called Craigellechie, where he would have heard the call to arms. When I was 10 years of age, we lived in Glasgow and my father took me to see the rock from which time, I had always had a strong desire to climb its face, stand on the point and shout out “Craigellechie, Craigellechie” to honour my ancestors who fought and died for ‘their cause’.
And so on the Friday evening, I packed, unpacked and repacked my rucksack for the umpteenth time in a useless attempt to get all the equipment I wanted to take in the one sack. Something definitely had to be sacrificed. First to go was all my spare clothing. I reasoned that as I would be on my own I would learn to cope with the smell.
Next to go was the binoculars then the telephoto lens camera. Still not enough room for what was left. Should I take the trangy or the gas stove? The trangy won although I was not taken with the idea of having to take a fuel bottle but my reasoning was that the trangy was reliable and the gas stove was not. The four season’s sleeping bag was exchanged for the lighter two season’s bag and the down duvet jacket exchanged for two Helly Hansen sweaters, items I would later regret leaving behind. A little stomping with the foot made it go down somewhat, but just a little more had to go. Out went all the food as I decided to buy some supplies at Aviemore when I got there, or so I reasoned at the time. Finally, out went the climbing helmet as this was superfluous given that I cared not if I fell as death was no stranger to me and it held no fear.
Finally, the rucksack was full and once more with a concerted effort of the customary helping of the foot stomp, I managed to get the top closed. Despite my culling exercise, it still weighed far too much, but as I had no way of knowing its true weight, I again reasoned that all I had to do was carry it to the station and the train would take the rest of the strain. It is only with hindsight that I realised that during this activity, I had given no thought to where the food was going to go when and if I remembered to buy it. The crampons and two climbing ice axes had to be tethered to the outside of the rucksack which was a pain as I had lost the crampon rubber stoppers for the spikes which kept getting caught every time I lifted the bloody rucksack onto my aching back.
Alone in a carriage on the train to Aviemore, I watched the scenery flash by until fading light made it impossible to enjoy so I turned to my climbing guide to see what I could do over the next fourteen days. Long before I arrived at Aviemore station, I had decided to start my expedition by doing the rounds of the bothies in the area starting with Jeans Hut (sadly no longer there) somewhere near where the current ski lift is situated.
From there I would climb some gullies that led up to the plateau, then go on to the Sinclair Memorial hut for a few days before moving on to Rynack and Corrour bothies before making my way back over the tops, back to my starting point. If I had time, I would just repeat the routine but this time in reverse.
As the train pulled into Aviemore, I was the only one to get off. The train pulled out heading north leaving me standing there alone in the dark as there was a power failure. Guess where the bloody head torch was? Sods law dictated that it would be somewhere at the bottom of the rucksack and surprise surprise, sods law was right. Shivering and sweating as I pushed the stuff back into the rucksack, the power came back on. I should have known then that things were not going to be as I had hoped they would be. I walked across the road to find nothing open although why I thought anything would be open at 9.45pm in the evening is still a mystery to me today, as this was Scotland and you tell me where in the 1970’s you could find a garage or a shop in the highlands that is open after 6pm!
I went into the nearest pub and bought some peanuts, crisps and a bar of chocolate to keep me going. As I walked back down the road, I passed the brightly lit Youth Hostel where from inside, I caught the merry making of the guests as they were obviously getting ready for the Christmas festivities. I did not have to think twice about it so booked in for the night (there was only one bed left!) knowing that in the morning I could get my supplies and start off in daylight, at least, that was the plan, and anyway, Craigellachie is situated some way behind the youth hostel so I was all but at one of my desired destinations.
However, as the old saying goes, ‘the plans of mice and men are as different as chalk and cheese’ which my diary that I diligently kept is testament to. Extracts from that diary give an indication of what I was feeling and thinking at the time and which I still refer to when I need some reassurance that life is for the taking.
Dec. 21st
Slept badly. Someone snored all bloody night. Had a cold breakfast. Left hostel, tramped until I got to the hump that is Craigellachie. Climbed scree slope over and through snow covered bracken and heather making a right pig’s ear of it. Reached some rocks after about an hour. Fought my way through and up a large boulder scree slope, jarring my knee several times. Was Craigellachie that damn important! Back was aching with heavy pack so left it under a small bush. Tied my neck scarf to the tree so as to find it on return journey.
Better progress followed. Came upon thick briar bush barrier. Tried to go through it but it scratched hands and face. Cursed the place more than once. Had to go round it. Pissed off with detour. Suddenly I was stopped by a crag face. Looking up I saw, and hoped, that this was the rock. Steep slopes to either sides meant either a wet scramble or, I could do my favourite way of going up anything, direttissima i.e. go straight up the front which was more to my liking. Fuck death. Straight up won the day.![]()
I climbed up a crack for some fifteen feet, then an awkward traverse for a few feet to the left followed, up and over a wet slippery bulge and I was there - standing on top of Craigellachie. A young man’s dream finally fulfilled. I sat for a while and dreamt of how things might have been different if James Grant had not fled to London after the battle of Killiecrankie, resulting in me being born an Englishman.
Such thoughts were rudely interrupted by the caw caw of a couple of hooded crows fought over a scrap of something one had found, so I walked off the back way, found my rucksack eventually, and headed for Loch Morlich allowing a tirade of thoughts and images to float pleasingly in and out of my brain as a result of my recent experience.
It was about the two-mile marker that the thunderbolt hit. I had forgotten to get supplies so back I trudged cursing my ineptitude for forgetting about it. Once I had two full plastic bags full of supplies which I hoped would last the whole two weeks, I set off mumbling to myself as I had to carry them as there was no room inside the rucksack!
Still muttering to myself as I trudged along, head down looking at my feet as they moved automatically, I was startled by a Landrover that pulled up beside me offering me a lift as I was obviously going in their direction. The occupants were some SAS guys who were also going to the Cairngorms for some survival training, but all they were interested in was the opening and closing times of the local pubs. After sharing a bottle of whiskey and a dozen cans of larger, I finally extricated myself, leaving them to finish off the other bottle of whiskey and a few dozen cans of beer.
Dec. 22nd
Reasonable night’s sleep. SAS guys never made a sound, must have spent the night in town! After breakfast, trudged up to Jeans Hut. Nobody at home, thank goodness, would have just walked back out if there had as I wanted to be on my own.
Spread gear around to make it look as if hut was full if anyone called, hoping it would send them off to somewhere else. Happy to be on my own. Cooked a meal and sorted out climbing gear. Was in my soggy sleeping bag by 8pm.
Dec. 23rd.
Squashed all the food into the rucksack ignoring the mess it made. Set off early in fine weather. Clear blue skies. Snow crisp underfoot. The world was mine as I climbed up ‘Y’ gully then along the top of the plateau. Wind got up mid-morning, increased to such a force that it blew me off my feet. Thunder claps in the distance. Temperature dropped and sun went inside for the rest of the day.
Made for the Sinclair Memorial hut, arrived around 4.30pm as dark was settling in. No one at home again, I felt blessed. Went into back room got brew on and tried unsuccessfully to dry clothes against trangy. Cursed myself for leaving behind spare clothes. Got into sleeping bag fully clothed. Tried to sleep but too cold as sleeping bag was too thin and too soggy. Regretted leaving the four season’s sleeping bag behind and the duvet jacket. Still, my choice so live with it.
4am. Sleep still won’t come. Bloody freezing. Wish I was home, anywhere else but here. Brain hurting. Everything was damp or wet with the incessant running of the condensation across the ceiling, down the walls and all making for where I lay.
Dec. 24th. Christmas Eve:
Must have fallen asleep around 5am. Looked at watch. 9.40am. Too cold to get out of bag. Tried to make a brew but knocked it over. Swore profusely. Finally get out. Clothes damp. Steam rising making the room foggy and unpleasant. Thought of those lucky buggers back down in the youth hostel. I envied them, no I hated them.
Left rucksack in hut and went for a walk. Clear blue sky again. Sun warm. No wind. Snow as crisp as yesterday. Up on the top of Sron Na Lairige. Fantastic atmosphere. Felt sorry for those poor sods below in the youth hostel.
Absolute peace and tranquillity. Brain not hurting as much. Body a little warmer with the suns struggling bright rays and physical movement. Walking along the edge looking down into the Lairig Ghru deep in thought, when I heard the familiar sound of a jet engine in flight.
Suddenly without warning, an RAF Phantom jet roared past below me in the Lairig Ghru! I stood transfixed. As it past, for a split second, I could see the face of the pilot and automatically waved, he seemed to wave back. Then silence. I felt a mixed bag of emotions. First I was annoyed that he had invaded my space, my peace, my thoughts and then I was pleased that he had acknowledged my existence. In and out of my life in under a second.
As waves of RAF nostalgia swept over me, I heard another loud roar and looked down into the Lairig Ghru to see the first plane’s wing buddy following on. Past experience told me that low level flying exercises are always done in twos or threes but never alone. The ground shook a little and I sensed something was wrong as a voice in my head told me that I was not meant to be standing, there so without trying to analyse it, I just ran away from the edge just as the avalanche happened.
Although my heart rate was working overtime, my breathing was in short gasps as I trembled with either excitement or fear, I’m not sure but for all of a few seconds, my mind was full of unpleasant emotions and feelings. I felt absolutely alone in the universe and yet I was enjoying every second of it.
Silence fell. I gingerly inched my way near to where I was standing just seconds before. The cornice had gone and with it tons of snow from the valley walls directly downwards which now lay in a heap on the valley floor below. Again, the ‘what if’ thoughts came back.
I allowed the thoughts to die so that I could carry on with my day. Gripping my walking poles tightly, I moved away from the edge and continued along the top to Ben MacDhui. Stopped for some dried fruit on the summit. Sitting there staring out across miles upon miles of snow covered mountains, all alone was something you could not buy. I felt rich beyond belief. At one point I felt a presence beside me but as I knew that the mountain was supposed to be haunted by a Victorian walker who died of hypothermia on the summit back in the 1900’s, I just ignored it as I did not want to start any conversation with anyone or anything who might just be present, so got up, donned rucksack and walked back to the hut along the valley floor dragging my weary but satiated body along on lead filled legs. On reaching the spot where the avalanche fell, I had to climb up the side of the valley and circumnavigate the snow debris which was a pain in the arse but necessary.
5.30pm. Sitting here in the back room. Morbid thoughts entering my head. Am I getting depressed. Is this where I really want to be. Haven’t spoken to anyone for 48 hours now. Thought I would miss human contact but I don’t so why this feeling!
6pm. Half asleep I am startled by a strange scratching noise on the outer door. Overactive mind working too much. A little scared and nervous. Scratching continues and I pluck up the courage to go and see what it is. I go into the outer room and ask who is there. No answer just more scratching. Anxiously I take hold of the door catch and fling it open to see a stag standing there rubbing its antlers on the wooden door. I laugh and shut the door, call myself some unprintable names and go back to my soggy and unglamorous sleeping bag.
7.20pm. Still not able to sleep. Suddenly I feel my stomach turn, my body twitch with electricity. I feel decidedly strange. My hair on the back of my neck is standing up. I feel very very cold. The darkness all around is frightening, suffocating me. I don’t know what’s going on. I sit up and look out the frosted window and in the moonlight I see a dark shadowy figure walking up the steps towards the hut. He has a long stick or pole. He appears to be wearing what I believe to be a shoulder cape of some sort and a strange looking hat.
He appears to be carrying something on his back, a pack perhaps. I calm down and feel relieved that I will have some company at last although I hoped he would stay in the outer room for the night. I heard the door latch open, then the door is shut. I gave him time to get himself sorted out.
8pm. I shouted out to him to ask if he is ok. Silence. No reply. I heard a match strike and soon I smelt the sweet aroma of his pipe tobacco, distinct and aromatic. I was both pleased and annoyed as at that point in time I was trying hard to give up smoking so I found the smell of tobacco repulsive. However, I shouted again. No answer. Ignorant bastard. Settled down and tried to sleep.![]()
Got up. Cold miserable. Need my climbing fix urgently. Leave the hut and head for Coire an Lochain. Pleased to see it covered in thick ice and hard snow. I head for the Central Crack Route but male the cardinal error of judgement by crossing the Great Slab, oblivious to the fact that there had been a heavy snow fall the previous evening. Too late – the cracking sound broke the silence – movement downwards........shit!To Be ContinuedFrank Grant: 2017
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