As a tribute to Walt Unsworth who died on Tuesday at the fine age of 89, the following article is a piece he wrote for Climber magazine in 1983 when he was editor. His long and active life in the world of mountain literature as an author, editor and publisher, can be discovered in fuller detail in the linked Cicerone appreciation at the foot of this article.Everyone has their own favourites amongst the lesser hills of Britain; places to which they can return time and again, not in the expectation of a dour struggle against mountain and weather perhaps (though sometimes they surprise you) but for spiritual renewal, in the way that the old mill workers used to tread the draughty Pennines. My favourites have always been in my backyard, so to speak. When I lived in the Midlands I found much pleasure in tramping the Stiperstones and scrambling about the weird, witch-begotten rocks that mark the top of that strange hill; when I lived in Manchester the Anglezarke moors became a favourite and I remember particularly one long winter's walk with A. B. Hargreaves and Jim O'Neil, staggering down in the frosty darkness to a hotpot supper at Rivington Old Barn.
Nowadays my favourites are the Howgills which I can just about glimpse from the look-out on the roof of my house, put there by a long dead sea captain, who wanted to see the ships coming into Sandside. He traded in slaves, incidentally. The Howgills are, for me, the very essence of Housman's 'blue remembered hills'— much more so than the others I've mentioned. They are hills as a child would draw hills: steep sided cones clustered together in a broad clump. From a distant viewpoint like Farleton Fell they often seem literally blue, or more accurately perhaps, a pale mauve — then the light will change and a hint of green show through, dappled by shadows from passing clouds. I first saw these hills as a child during the war when I was periodically shipped off to Edinburgh out of harm's way. The gorge of the Lune was always one of the highlights of the journey, the great steam locomotive of the L.M.S. charging into the narrow dale, cinders flying from the smoke stack and the steep sided hills crowding in on either hand. They made a marvellous picture framed by the carriage windows and, strangely enough, that same view of the Howgills is still the best, in my opinion. Though nowadays it is more often viewed from the adjacent motorway, where the view is wider
and more long lasting.
Thousands of travellers over the years must have had their curiosity aroused by the conspicuous gash of Carlin Gill which is the focal point of this scene. Perhaps some, like Hassan, went a little further and determined to someday penetrate the Gill, looking for the last blue mountain. Though not many, I think. The Howgills are never overpopulated despite the fact that they have a Wainwright guide, not to mention a Harvey large scale map. They are not to everyone's taste- thank God- being, as someone once said, neither 'fish nor fowl'. Meaning that they had neither the rugged grandeur of the Lakeland fells which flank them to the west, nor the bogtrotting bleakness of the Pennine moors to the east. The qualities they possess are their own. Exceedingly steep slopes and a short, dry, springy turf which makes walking a pleasure. They are by no means gentle hills, but neither are they savage in the way that, say, Bleaklow is. Technically, I suppose, several of the tops in the Howgills are not hills but mountains, if one accepts the generally agreed definition of a mountain as something of 2000ft or over.
The highest point, The Calf, is 2219ft: Randygill Top, Yarlside, Fell Head, all make the magic mark, though ‘nobbut just' as they say, whilst most of the others miss out by the merest of margins. Nor are they hills in another sense: they are of the North West and therefore `fells', in the proper Norse tradition. ![]()
This walk can be lengthened by continuing over Bram Rigg Top, Calders and Great Dummacks, then descending the steep fellside back to the Cross Keys. I once did this on a meet led by John and Fredda Kemsley, who had the happy knack of organising club meets in the lesser known hills. The previous day we had been over Wild Boar Fell and Mallerstang Edge in hot weather, with ABH searching for a suitable pool in which to have a dip, en route. Sadly, John and Fredda were to lose their lives a couple of years later in a storm on the Dent d' Herens.
There is a more energetic approach to The Calf from the Cross Keys which Pat Hurley and I took one time and which visits some of the less frequented eastern tops. We began up Westerdale, crossing the Backside Beck by a little footbridge, then following the old farm road which leads from Narthwaite to Mountain View. This is a short valley by Howgill standards, so before long we were climbing up to the col below Randygill Top and following the fine little ridge that leads to the summit. What an extensive view there is from this fell! In the distance the blue ridges of Lakeland sweep across the horizon from Coniston Old Man to Carrock Fell. Cross Fell rises massively to the north, then, turning in a half circle eastwards, we could pick out Wild Boar Fell, Ingleborough, Whernside and the tangle of fells around Barbon. The nearer view, too, is impressive, especially the long trough of Bowderdale which lay directly below us. The ridges and deep troughs of the Howgills were revealed in their complexity; hump upon hump, like a shoal of stranded whales. The slopes of our next objectives, Kensgriff and Yarlside, looked horrendous as they shimmered in the hot sun. ![]()
It was, of course, Henry, the landlord's pet llama. Carlin Gill is different from any other walk in the Howgills. From the narrow road the Romans built along the western flanks of the fells you enter at once into a narrow valley which twists away to the right. So steep are the valley sides that landslip is common and the grass has at best a tenuous hold on the shaley slopes. The path crosses and recrosses the beck, seeking what footholds it can until at last the valley widens at a confluence and makes a splendid camp site. Beyond this it narrows again to a small rocky gorge where the best way ahead is usually the bed of the gill, though in a really wet season this might not be practicable. Once through the narrows, the gill divides in a dramatic manner.
The main stream comes directly down from a splendid little waterfall, known, somewhat confusingly, as The Spout. It is set in a craggy bower, bypassed on the left by extremely steep shaley slopes, the like of which I wouldn't recommend even to a mere acquaintance. The Spout is fine, but is overshadowed by Black Force, a deep ravine which tumbles into the gill on its right bank. There is a scramble up the bed of Black Force which Brian Evans mentions in Scrambles In The Lake District, but most walkers would prefer the fine, steep, grass ridge which bounds it on the left. Pat Hurley and I were here once when the mist was low, giving the head of the gill a Wagnerian atmosphere. Fingers of vapour drifted in and out of Black Force, making it appear much more savage than it really is.
We were very impressed and even more impressed as we crawled up the narrow ridge, the top of which seemed like a miniature model of Halls Fell on Blencathra,with nothing but bottomless pits of mist on either hand. Pure illusion, of course — take away the mist and you have a straightforward slog offering interesting views into the Force. On that misty day we traversed, somewhat uncertainly, over Fell Head and round the ridge over White Fell to The Calf. The compass seemed unreliable, for I tend not to trust an instrument which gives me three different directions for North whilst I'm standing still, and it may be that there are magnetic influences in the underlying rock, though nobody else seems to have noticed them. ![]()
Anyway, I kept the compass in my pocket as a good-luck charm, and steered by God and Guesswork, as the old mariners used to say. There were never enough windows in the mist to give us a clear idea of where we were at any one time, but somehow we managed to reach the trig block on The Calf without too much fuss. On the descent, naturally, the mist began to rise and we had a splendid jog down the long ridge of White Fell to Chapel Beck, then cut steeply over Brown Moor and the slopes beyond to reach the Fairmile Gate on the Roman Road. Steak and chips at the Barnaby Rudge in Tebay, washed down with a couple of pints of good ale, ended what had been another memorable day on the Howgills. ■ Walt Unsworth:Climber November 1983 Cicerone Appreciation article
↧
Image: Glenn DennyIt may seem a strange thing to say, but Royal Robbins carried British climbing values into American climbing culture with permanent benefit for both climbers and the rock they climbed. There were to be no more peg scars in Yosemite cracks, which now became finger locks for climbs protected by nuts, and bolt ladders became the guilty ‘machine in the garden’, to use Leo Marx’s famous phrase, that they always had been. So when he came to the UK, often at the suggestion, behind the scenes, of Ken Wilson, Royal reflected back at us, in his gracious, principled, quiet, steely manner, our own best selves, in case we had forgotten and had started bolting beside cracks in quarries like Harper Hill.It was his mother, who moved to California when he was a teenager, who taught Robbins self-reliance – breaking through low self-esteem at school, the disappearance of two fathers, an attempted robbery - and it was the Boy Scouts that introduced him to rock climbing in the High Sierra. He wrote in the first volume of his autobiography, ‘Scouting is a vehicle through which good men change forever the lives of boys, and are forever remembered for doing so’. Bouldering and top-roping after school at the local sandstone outcrops at Stoney Point, Robbins gained his first lessons and a broken wrist.In 1952, Robbins made the first free ascent of the Open Book in Tahquitz, California, pushing free climbing standards to 5.9. Five years later, he, Jerry Gallwas, and Mike Sherrick completed the first ascent of the Northwest Face of Half Dome over five days. But it was the 1967 ascent with his wife Liz of The Nutcracker (5.8) in Yosemite, after a visit to the UK had convinced him that pitons could be replaced by nuts, even on a 500 foot route, that changed everything. Warren Harding had been sieging and bolting his way up Yosemite’s walls, sometimes with six months gaps between pitches for weather and partying, and Robbins was determined to demonstrate that there was a better way.As his partner Tom Frost said, ‘His philosophy was that it’s not getting to the summit but how you do it that counts’. Harding declared that Robbins was the ‘Valley Christian’ in his advocacy of ‘clean climbing’. Perhaps nowhere was Robbins’ preaching more eloquent than on the West Face of Leaning Tower, which had taken Harding seventeen months to climb with the use of fixed ropes from bottom to top, and multiple partners, topping out in November 1958. Four and a half years later Robbins soloed the route over four days, using some of Harding’s bolts, but cleaning his pitons after each pitch (five years before he discovered the even cleaner use of nuts).This was the ‘Golden Age’ of Yosemite climbing, but during this period Robbins also applied his approach in first ascents on Alpine walls elsewhere, such as his 1962 first ascent of the American Direct (ED: 5.11, 1000m) on the Aiguille du Dru with Gary Hemming, and the 1963 first ascent of the Robbins Route (originally VI 5.8 A4) on Mt. Proboscis in Canada's Northwest Territories with Jim McCarthy, Layton Kor and Dick McCracken. It was in Yosemite, however, that Robbins forged his climbing ethics.
In 2010 Robbins reflected, ‘I think that we were drawn to our ethical stance because it was harder that way, frankly, and I think whatever’s harder has to be better’. In later life Robbins admitted to really being in thrall to ‘the fame dragon’ as much as Harding and admired his sheer grit in staying focussed on his routes. Harding had answered Robbins’ Half Dome ascent with the epic first ascent of The Nose of El Cap, bolting the last pitch with desperate determination through the night. Robbins replied with the first ascent of the Salathe Wall with Tom Frost and Chuck Pratt, taking a natural line that required only thirteen bolts, before Harding did Leaning Tower. Robbins’ second ascent of The Nose was made in a continuous, seven-day push with Joe Fitschen, Chuck Pratt and Tom Frost.
A more radical statement was made in Robbins’ second ascent of the Wall of Early Morning Light on El Cap in 1971 with Don Lauria. Robbins was outraged at the first ascent made in typical Harding siege style, later writing: ‘Here was a route with 330 bolts. It had been forced up what we felt to be a very unnatural line, sandwiched between other routes, merely to get another route on El Capitan and bring credit to the people who climbed it. We felt that this could be done anywhere; instead of 330 bolts, the next might have 600 bolts, or even double that. We felt that it was an outrage, and that if a distinction between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable had to be made, then this was the time to make it.’ Probably the TV appearances Harding made as a hero of Yosemite climbing had something to do with Robbins and Lauria making plans to remove the route, chopping the bolts off the wall as they climbed.Their six day climb also became the first winter ascent of El Cap. When Geoff Birtles cheekily asked Robbins to write Harding’s obituary for High magazine Robbins rose to the occasion with honesty, grace and wit, recalling his last visit to Harding in his hospital bed where, as Robbins was leaving, Harding looked up at the tubes coming into his arm and said, ‘More wine!’ After arthritis curtailed his climbing career, Robbins made many kayak first descents in the Sierras after he realised that some were only possible in meltwater floods. This included the ‘Triple Crown’ of the last three great rivers in the Sierra that had yet to see a descent. In 1967 Robbins launched a climbing-gear company, importing boots, ropes, and helmets with his wife Liz who was his real rock. By the 1980s, this small gear company, Mountain Paraphernalia, had blossomed into a business producing no-nonsense, reliable clothing, called ‘Royal Robbins’ which, although they sold it in 2003, is still going strong today.Robbins also became known for his classic instructional books Basic Rockcraft (1971) and Advanced Rockcraft (1973) which taught the techniques of clean climbing. Robbins even included a ‘Sermon’ in Advanced Rockcraft in which he summed up his ‘rules’ of climbing: stay safe, be honest, and leave the stone unchanged. More recently the three published volumes of his autobiography reflect wryly on the philosophy behind his statement climbs and generously acknowledge his debts to his mentors, protagonists and partners.
It was sad that Robbins was probably unaware of the earlier death of his old friend Ken Wilson because, like Ken, he was suffering from dementia. I heard of Robbins’ death in an email from my Californian climbing partner, Larry Giacomino, who expressed the feelings of a local: ‘A really sad day for us here. He was a cut above the rest of us in terms of ethics - a couple of cuts above in skill. And his judgement was impeccable. I must go to his “Camp Four Wine Café” in Modesto on my next trip to the Valley.’ Royal Robbins had a Camp Four Wine Café? Had he stolen one idea from Harding after all?Terry Gifford:2017. First Published in Climber-April 2017
↧
↧
HelygAt the end of a month of glorious weather in August 1939, when the only clouds were those of impending war in Europe, My wife Joy and I were walking with the Lake District artist Heaton Cooper, down Far Easedale, after a relaxed day's climbing on Lining Crag, below Greenup Edge. Only the day beforehand I had received a telegram, awaiting on our return to the Old Dungeon Ghyll from a day spent climbing on Gimmer Crag. I was instructed to report at Greenock on 2nd September, only three days later, to join the first troop convoy of the war.
I was due to sail on 3rd September, the third anniversary of our marriage.We strolled down the dale with a deep sense of things ending; of parting and uncertainty about the future. I recall saying to Joy: "Whatever else changes, these hills will still be the same when it's all over." Self-evident though they were, these words implied the fun we had enjoyed during July and August of that year. We had rented a bungalow at Braithwaite, and later taken a cottage in Grasmere, after returning from India. Our stay in the Lakes had been intended as a retreat from my studies for the Army Staff college exams. But as the days passed, bringing war even closer, that work became ever more irrelevant. In fact, we spent everyday climbing during those eight weeks; I still have the long list of climbs we did during that run-up to the declaration of war. The prospect of an end to those happy days, and to other days spent in Snowdonia during our three years of marriage, weighed heavily on our minds on our way back to Grasmere.
As things turned out, I had a rather good war as far as the mountains were concerned. I ran a training course at Helyg for members of my Brigade, and trained Commandos to climb in the Cairngorms and Snowdonia, and overseas there were times spent on Olympus, Athos and in the Appenines. There were opportunities to ski in the Vermion mountains, in the Peleponnese and on the hills surrounding Athens. But most memorable were the brief opportunities to return with Joy to the Lakes and North Wales during spells of leave from abroad. The first of these occasions was, to say the least of it, unfortunate. I had returned from India during the summer of 1940, and our first chance to return to the hills was in December of that year. We were expecting our second child early in 1941, so Joy would not be climbing and we would not go far afield.We decided to spend the day following our arrival at Ogwen Cottage in the area surrounding Llyn Bochlwyd. It was one of those rare mid-winter days, with a clear sky after an overnight frost. Aware of my lack of form after 12 months since I had last climbed; conscious, too, of my forthcoming paternal responsibility, I resolved to do only a few modest climbs. I soloed happily up several routes on Bochlwyd Buttress, and moved on up to the Alphabet Slab on Glyder Fach. Beta and Delta presented no problems. It was now past mid-day; time to rejoin Joy, who was patiently waiting for me beside Llyn Bochlwyd. Should I do one more climb? ![]()
Eventually help arrived from the valley in the persons of a policeman and a doctor from Bethesda; mountain rescue was not an organised business in those days. With the Cambridge party acting as carriers of the stretcher which had been brought up from below, and with Joy in close attendance, we descended to the road. So much for paternal responsibility! A year later, in December 1941, I had recovered from the accident and we were again staying at Ogwen Cottage. Once again it was a perfect winter day when we prepared to start out on what, in view of the limited daylight hours, was a somewhat ambitious programme. We proposed to cross Bwlch Tryfan on our way to Lliwedd, climb the East Buttress via the Avalanche Route, traverse Snowdon, Crib y Ddysgl and Crib Goch and return to the cottage: all this was on foot, of course, for we had no car in those days. This time we had a companion. Marco Pallis was a climber with Himalayan experience; he had climbed in Sikkim with Freddie Spencer-Chapman. He had also led an expedition to the Gangotri area of the Central Himalaya in 1933.![]()
Joy and I had planned an early start, but Marco arrived very late and it was mid-day before we were able to leave the cottage. It took us three and a half hours to reach the foot of Lliwedd. Marco was out of practice and unfit, so we made slow progress on the climb. By the time we had finished the route we were in total darkness, and had some difficulty in climbing the easy Terminal Arete. On the summit of the East Peak, having no torches, we were in real trouble. To continue over Snowdon and along the Horseshoe ridge was out of the question. Indeed, so minimal was our vision that we resorted to crawling on hands and knees, hopefully heading for the scree gully leading down to Llyn Llydaw, anticipating disaster from a fall over some minor crag on our way. During the descent Marco sprained an ankle, making progress even more snail-like.
At Pen y Gwryd we had a stroke of luck when we met a member of the Home Guard coming out of the hotel, who gave us a lift to Capel Curig. Here, by another fortunate coincidence, a good samaritan appeared in the person of Ifan Roberts, a local quarryman and botanist who was to become a good friend to myself and many other climbers. He was on his way home after duty as a member of the Observer Corps and he, in turn, gave us a further lift to Ogwen Cottage. It was nearly 2am. Great was the relief of Mrs Williams and her daughter, who were just about to report our absence to the police. I recall that episode with affection and respect for Marco Pallis, whose serenity and patience throughout the expedition was an object lesson to myself. And there were other friends who joined us during further visits to Snowdonia, before I was again posted overseas in 1943.
Indeed, our climbs, enjoyable though some of them were, were less important than the company we kept. I remember a splendid day in the Great Gully on Craig y Isfa with Alf Bridge. Alf, a perfectionist, was a dynamic and loveable character, who resigned at various times, from both the Climbers' Club and the Alpine Club on matters of principle, but remained a close friend of many climbers. He had helped me run the training course at Helyg and was later to play a vital role in the assembly and dispatch of our oxygen equipment on Everest in 1953. I recall a much smaller climb with Wilfred Noyce during that Helyg course: on Chalkren Stairs, Gallt yr Ogof, when he, a brilliant rock climber, 'came off' while climbing the final slab, and I had the privilege of holding his fall and then giving him a top-rope! During the Commando courses I enjoyed the company of Frank Smythe of Everest 1933 fame, and David Cox. Frank, a gentle and most unwar-like person, was commandant of the Commando and Snow Warfare school. He was a member of the party which made the first ascent of Longland's on Clogwyn du'r Arddu; but he, like Marco, was no longer in his prime on hard rock.![]()
How remote they were from the global conflict. In Snowdonia, the roads were narrow and winding in those days, bordered by the ancient dry stone walls and burdened by a negligible flow of traffic. No tourist industry brought visitors in their thousands at at weekends to the 'honey-pot' areas of Beddgelert, Capel Curig, Betws y Coed, Pen y Pass and Llanberis. There were few climbers or walkers around. Apart from mainly sea training orientated Outward Bound Centre at Aberdovey, no activity centres had been established, to add their colourful anoraks to the scenery and to create congestion on the more popular climbs. Plas y Brenin was still the historic Royal Hotel. At Pen y Pass, the Gorfwysfa Hotel, famed for the reunions convened by Geoffrey Winthrop Young at Easter, was still in business.Ogwen Cottage was still a humble inn for the likes of Joy and me.![]()
↧
Artist:Ricky Blake
He who experiences the unity of life, sees himself in all beings, and all beings in himself’ The Buddha.
One would expect that climbers would be bound by a strict conservation ethic, but unfortunately that is not always the case, and some of the most pristine of natural sites have suffered severe degradation in recent years. I guess it was easier to be high minded and highly motivated to conservation when our numbers were small, but as our sport becomes ever more populated there is a real task in educating the new comers, mainly coming from an urbanised existence, into the fragile nature of crag and hill environments. Historically they have many role models within the wider realms of mountain activities to emulate, and it is a source of some interest and pride that three of the most influential figures in this respect, John Muir, David Brower and Amory Lovins were all mountaineers. Between them they cover the whole time line from the mid-nineteenth century to date.
John Muir (1838-1914) was born in Dunbar in East Lothian but he was emigrated; to the USA with his deeply religious family when he was eleven years old. After growing up on the family farm in Wisconsin, working around the clock driven by a father who had him memorising from his earliest years huge chunks of the King James bible, he moved to work in Canada. Where he might have remained, but after suffering an industrial accident, he set forth and walked the hundreds of miles, down through America to the Gulf of Mexico. This gave him the taste for the adventure he craved, and from there he found his way to California and the high country of the Sierra’s, and to Yosemite, eventually making the State his permanent home.
For the next decade, from his first visit to Yosemite in 1868, he wandered amongst and climbed to the summits of the Sierra Nevada. Making many first ascents, mostly accomplished climbing solo. His ascent in 1869 of Cathedral Peak (10,940ft’) in Yosemite was impressive, and probably at that date one of the most difficult such climbs in North America. To write that he was physically robust is an understatement, for his equipment was rudimentary and he endured many bivouacs in the mountains living off hard tack, sleeping wrapped in a single blanket. Besides his climbing activities, he was educating himself, heavily reading and studying, and it is obvious that he was highly gifted for he quickly realised that it was glacial and river action that had formed Yosemite, not volcanic activity as promoted by the then leading US geologists. He then undertook some climbing trips further afield, to Glenora Peak now in British Columbia, to Mt Rainier making the seventh ascent of the peak, and to Alaska. The story of the rescue on Glenora Peak of Samuel Hall Young by Muir, written up by the injured man, deserves to be a classic of mountain survival stories. At one stage in the narrative, hanging out over a 1000ft drop to the glacier below, Muir pulled his companion up to a safe perch, dragging him by his teeth biting into his collar!![]()
It was during his time in Yosemite when he worked as a shepherd and at other tasks that he came to realise that human beings are merely a part of the natural world, and not the centre of it. If you look at photographs of Muir from this era, lean, spare and heavily bearded, he looks what he later became, a prophet of the spiritual quality of nature, and from thereon he became an ardent supporter of the wish to preserve such wilderness areas. He petitioned Congress with the need for National Parks to be established and in 1890 a bill was passed that set up the first: Yosemite. His continued activism in this cause then led on to other areas being so designated, including the Sequoia National Park, and he is now universally recognised as the ‘Father’ of those designations.
Over the next years Muir became a National figure in the US, writing many books and essays about his adventures in the Sierras, and his wish to conserve and preserve the natural environment for all his countries citizens. In his campaigns he met with Congress Men, the President and other like minded outdoor enthusiasts. This led on in 1892 to him co-founding The Sierra Club. Which today, via many stages in its development, has become the largest and most influential grassroots environmental organisation in the USA with millions of members, and Chapters across the Nation; The Sierra Club has a permanent base in Yosemite, and Muir’s later family residence in Martinez, California is also now a National historic site.
Few mountaineers can have made such an impact on subsequent generations, for as an outstanding ‘Wilderness Prophet’ who helped to lay the groundwork for modern environmental thinking, he has inspired so many others to carry his message and to act. In the UK the John Muir Trust founded in 1983, is dedicated to protecting and enhancing wild places, and is the owner of some of the most important natural and mountain sites in the UK, including Ben Nevis. There is the John Muir Way, a 215 kms long distance walking route running from Helensburgh in the West to Dunbar in the East. And the Muir original family home in that town is now a museum. The John Muir Trail in the US is recorded as that Country’s premier hiking route, 211 miles in length passing through Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.
His books are all still in print, but what might be a failing in this commentator, is that I find his writing too set in his religiosity, and even child like, but they are honest and true to his mission of enthusing his readers about the restoring spirit to be found in the earth’s wild places (In later life he travelled widely including ascending the Mueller Glacier on Mount Cook in 1903). Anyone who is interested in reading more about Muir’s mountaineering should study, ‘John Muir’s Greatest Climbs’ by Graham White published by Canongate in 1999. Finally the Muir name is now so well used in the US, in educational and ecological nomenclatures on an almost industrial scale, that I will mention only one more, April 21st is John Muir Day, his birthday. ![]()
David Brower (1912-2000) was another key figure in the development of the modern environmental movement, who came to this through his interest in mountaineering. He was born in Berkeley, California and it was whilst he was a student at its University he began to climb. He quickly made a name as a high standard friction climber and he was one of the first to attempt an ascent of the Lost Arrow Spire in Yosemite. A fellow student was Hervey Voge, who later wrote one of the earliest climbing guidebooks to the Sierras, and with whom in 1934, Brower traversed the bulk of the High Sierras from Kearsage Pass to Yosemite, summiting 59 peaks in 69 days. Voge had persuaded Brower to join the Sierra Club in 1933, an organisation which in later life became synonymous for many years with the name Dave Brower. But that was in the future, and on graduating he took up a post with The University of California Press, and it was because of the knowledge he gained of the publishing process which enabled him to launch many outstanding wilderness and mountaineering volumes in the years ahead.
In 1935 with a group from the Sierra Club, he attempted to climb Mount Waddington (13,186ft) in British Columbia. He and his friends had by then begun to winter climb in the Palisades, a part of the Sierras and they were as at home on ice as rock, but the weather in the Coastal Range is notoriously bad, and their attempt was beset by bad weather and despite repeated attempts they had to retreat . But in 1939, Brower along with Bestor Robinson, Raffi Bedayn and John Dyer decided to take on the challenge of ‘Shiprock’ in New Mexico. This huge volcanic peak had already defeated 12 previous attempts by groups from around the USA and it was known as ‘the last great American climbing problem’. Initially they tried to climb the mountain by ascending and descending from their high point each day, but they realised that they needed to keep climbing up from a bivouac. After some fine leads by all the other three, belayed by Bedayn, who had made a name for himself as a holder of some big falls, they succeeded in ascending ‘Shiprock’. Not without controversy for they used four bolts on the climb, two for aid, and two for belays. This was the first time bolts were placed on a climb in the USA!
The war then intervened, and Brower was called up as a Lieutenant and inducted into the 10th Mountain Division, an elite unit with whom he served as a mountain, and skiing instructor. He put together for this ‘The Manual of Ski Mountaineering’ which subsequently continued in demand post war in several editions. The 10th Mountain Division was involved in several key battles in North Italy and Brower earned a decoration for bravery in action in the Pre-alps. Returning to California on demob Brower along with Ansel Adams, and attorney Dick Leonard were the young Turks who set to and revitalised the Sierra Club which had become somewhat atrophied during the conflict. One has to understand that in the USA, there was not long standing local climbing clubs at that date, but what there was in California were the local Chapters of The Sierra Club, who organised climbing meets and beginners events at such outcrops as Stoney Point, where climbers like Royal Robbins learnt to climb as a member of the Los Angeles Chapter, and it was through these and building up the membership that a revitalised Sierra Club was reborn.
In 1952 Brower became the first Executive Director of The Sierra Club, and he brought a dynamism to the role not previously experienced in such a body, taking on the big corporations, and opposing developments the organisation felt damaged the natural environment such as a series of planned dams within the Grand Canyon, on the Colorado River, and lobbying against these by taking out whole page advertisements in National newspapers, by appearing in the media, arguing the conservation cause, and winning a series of high exposure battles. In 1960 Brower drawing on his publishing experience launched a series of coffee table, exhibit format style books amongst which was in 1962, ‘In Wilderness is the Preservation of the World’, with photographs by Eliot Porter. Which became an international best seller; I still have my copy, and the pictures are still gob smacking. The Sierra Club also published climbing guidebooks to the Sierra, and Steve Roper and Alan Steck’s, ‘Fifty Classic Climbs in North America’.
Campaigning takes its toll on friendships and tempers, but mainly because of Brower’s expensive campaigns and his opposition to atomic power generation, worried by the problems of security and the expense of decommissioning, he faced serious criticism for his actions. A vote of no confidence was defeated in 1968, but in 1969 the heat was on again and this time he resigned. His old friends, Ansel Adams and Dick Leonard voted against him, but at least he could leave knowing he had put The Sierra Club centre stage with a massive increase in membership and its public profile.
But you cannot keep a campaigner like Brower quiet, he went off and founded in 1969 with Anderson, Aitken and Jerry Mander, a new environmental agency, with an international scope, ‘Friends of the Earth’. This is now bigger than The Sierra Club, with an international network of organisations in 74 countries; its first overseas employee was Amory Bloch Lovins, (more of him anon) and its Headquarters are in Holland. Brower was so famous in the following decade that he was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he was affectionately referred at as the ‘Arch Druid’, reported on as such by a New York Times reporter, John McPhee in a series of essays; ‘Encounters with the Arch Druid’. Two of Brower’s own books were high sellers, ‘The Population Bomb’ this a major alert about the affects of a massive growth in the world’s population, and a truly environmental preservation work: ‘Let the mountains talk, let the rivers run’.
In 1986 Brower resigned as the head of Friends of the Earth, but meanwhile he had founded another organisation with a US brief, ‘The Earth Island Institute’. This is still like the other organisations he had given his effort and direction to, going on from strength to strength as is the David Brower centre in Berkeley. He died in 2000, but not before he had been invited back twice onto the Board of The Sierra Club. I met him once at an event organised by the American Alpine Club in Colorado in the 1980’s, he was tall, with an impressive presence and a very inquisitive look for all around him. When I was introduced to him by an old friend, a former President of the AAC, Bill Putnam he looked at me for a moment and demanded to know what was happening ‘to conserve the mountains of Snowdonia?’ He was as we might say in Yorkshire ‘an old cough drop!’![]()
Amory Lovins is in a long line of scientist mountaineers; born in Washington D C in 1947 he began his academic career at Harvard, but moved to Oxford University to study Physics in 1967. He had already started mountaineering in the White Mountains of New Hampshire before that and each summer from 1965 Lovins guided trips there, earning a reputation as a photographer and essayist. At Oxford he joined the University Mountaineering Club, and contributed articles to its journal, including a contribution in 1969 about some of his Appalachian mountain activities entitled ‘New England Wanderer’, and whilst in the UK he became enthused by the hills of Snowdonia, and in 1971 this led on to the publication of his first book, ‘Eryri, The Mountains of Longing’, with photographs by Philip Evans and a foreword by Charles Evans. This put him in touch with Dave Brower and The Friends of the Earth who edited and published the book in their Earth’s Wild Places series. This volume is now a collectors-item, including poems and excerpts of writing by many other authors including R.S.Thomas to W.H.Murray with a mountain/wilderness theme. For some years he stayed on at Oxford gaining an M.A and becoming a Don, but then he was persuaded by Brower to become the first overseas employee of Friends of the Earth, and so he left academia and moved to London where he stayed until 1981.
In my early years at the BMC in the 1970’s we were hard wired into developing our policies over conservation and access, for we were often faced with threats both by access problems and inappropriate development schemes. In 1973 the World Energy crisis focussed our thinking about its generation, especially potential further Hydro schemes in the hill regions of the country. Alan Blackshaw was a high powered civil servant, the Under Secretary for Energy no less, and was later to be responsible for the bringing in of North Sea Oil. He was also the BMC President. Lovins had begun to specialise in the energy field, and I can remember Alan suggesting we try to get him involved, and so we welcomed him to advise in this area. He was very easy to know, and looked like a stereotypical Professor with a studious aspect that belied a fine sense of humour.
Amory returned to the USA in 1981 and in the following year he established with his wife Hunter Lovins, The Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado. There he developed his theories of a ‘soft energy path’, based on efficient energy use, and also utilising diverse and renewable sources; wind, solar etc. It all reads as standard thinking now but in 1982 this was revolutionary. To promote his ideas he made with his wife ( a photographer) a film documentary that won awards and he began a series of books to follow this up, some of which became best sellers, ‘Reinventing fire’, ‘Small is Profitable’, ‘Natural Capitalism’ and as of today he has now published 31 volumes in all. A volume of his selected essays, ‘The Essential Amory Lovins’, covering every subject from climbing to research physics was put together by the well known mountaineering commentator, Cameron Burns in 2011, and it was published by The Green Library.
His ideas are now centre stage, influencing Al Gore and other major public figures and he is so weighed down with awards and recognition, so much so that I will only, note that he has so far received ten honorary doctorates, two medals-The Benjamin Franklin and Happold medals, and dozens of other awards (The Heinz, Nissan, Lindbergh etc). In 1994 he started to work on ideas for improving and developing more energy efficient cars, which led to the Hypercar which was hydrogen powered, his ideas have led on to the major motor manufacturers bringing out a range of hybrids, including both BMW and Volkswagen.He has now worked in the area of energy policy and its related fields for four decades, including advising several overseas governments to help develop their policies in this field. In 2009 he was named by Time Magazine as one of the World’s 100 most influential people. The lad has come a long way from his youthful scrambling along the Grib Goch Ridge many years ago, and so the last words might be to any young climber just setting forth on their first tentative climbs; think where an awareness and respect for the mountain environment might- just might lead you? Dennis Gray: 2017: Previously Unpublished
↧
![]()
At a recent meeting between the Conservancy and the B.M.C. to discuss this report and its implications, it was agreed to publicise the relevant facts as widely as possible, to obtain the cooperation of climbers. In actual fact, the species of birds of importance nest in only a few specific parts of the Holyhead cliffs, mainly in the South Stack area. The main colonies of Auks nest on the two huge buttresses which project from Red Wall; in other words the two buttresses which define the Left-hand Red Wall zawn. Other smaller colonies nest on the prominent horizontal ledges in Mousetrap zawn, between Green Slab and the lighthouse steps. Thus the approaches to the Left-hand Red Wall routes and Mousetrap pass very near to the main colonies and Green Slab, Primevil, Primate and the Mousetrap zawn girdle actually go through the smaller colonies.![]()
In the case of these less critical areas it is obviously of importance to be careful only when in the near vicinity of isolated birds, particularly when scrambling up the upper parts of the cliff. The majority of climbers will be rather uncertain exactly when and where they constitute a serious disturbance to the more susceptible species. This being so I will try to provide a few notes for guidance, which I hope will be both helpful and interesting. Space does not allow a full description of each species, but any good reference book on birds will give clear illustrations of those concerned. Gulls: There are three species present on the Holyhead cliffs—Herring (or Common), Great Black-backed and Lesser Black-backed gulls. Of these the first is very numerous and of the others there are perhaps 10/20 pairs each. All are capable of looking after themselves, being so bold as to physically attack climbers—but any actual in-jury to a person is rare and almost certainly due to a miscalculation on the part of the bird.![]()
They require large recesses or ledges for their bulky nests and consequently they often occupy sites that are useful as belay ledges. Some conflict is inevitable here, but it is not the immediate concern of the conservationists. However, due care should be taken when in the vicinity of nests. Auks: So far as the Holyhead cliffs are concerned this family of three birds, the Puffin, Razorbill and Guillemot, are the main problem. The Razorbill and Guillemot resemble a small version of the penguin, whilst the Puffin is smaller still with a highly coloured bill. Auks are oceanic birds which return to the coasts in February to establish colonies and leave in July when the young are fully fledged. They are placid birds with a shy disposition and are thus very susceptible to human interference.
Climbers may in themselves present only a marginal threat to breeding success, but when there is any oil or chemical pollution in the sea these birds die in their thousands. From a conservationist point of view it is essential to have several large colonies in each area to offset these catastrophes and speed recovery. The South Stack cliffs, as described above, are such an area and are second in importance only to the colonies on the Lleyn peninsula. Another factor is the slow breeding rate of Auks. They lay only one egg each year and do not lay another if the first is destroyed or deserted. Apart from the three species described above there are several other types of bird which nest on the Anglesey cliffs in much smaller numbers.
These include the Oyster-catcher, Fulmar, Raven, Kestrel and Rock Dove. Although it is unlikely that any of these birds would nest in an area of climbing activity, care should be taken if any of these birds or their nests are approached. The rock gymnast may either regard the birds as an interesting contribution to the unique atmosphere of sea-cliff climbs, or merely as a bloody nuisance. Whatever our view in these matters, we will recognise that when the interests of man and animal conflict, the animal invariably comes off worst. In conclusion, I would like to emphasise that it is in the interest of every climber using sea-cliffs to take every reasonable precaution to avoid the harassment of birds at all times, and particularly in the breeding season in the areas described.
So far, the problem has only arisen on Anglesey because of the intense climbing activity there over the past few years. Full co-operation from climbers using these cliffs will create a deal of goodwill with the conservationists and will prevent the necessity of more drastic measures being taken. The Nature Conservancy are to carry out population surveys over the next two years, to determine more exactly the effect of rock climbing on the status of each species. Exemplary conduct on our part should ensure that their conclusions will not lead them to press for permanent restrictions on Anglesey or on any other sea-cliffs. Les Holiwell:First published in Rocksport-April/May 1970
The Climbers excerpt- featuring Les and Laurie Holliwell
↧
↧
Freda and Friend The following essay by John Redhead is an exclusive extract from a forthcoming Gogarth Anthology, put together by Grant Farquhar.
The climbing was never ‘it’.
The keeper of the fog was an old soul and a man of the sea. He kept the time with the tides and talked weather and birds and told his tale. His kettle always singing on the stove, always ready to tempt the odd-climber or bird watcher inside to tell their own tale. He was also the keeper of a book that recorded climbing activities on the stack. He was interested beyond the surface of things, and I guess, being a sociable but solitary man, aware of more abundant life, he was eager to share the life-force. I gave him the peg that I took out of the Cad on the third ascent. The station became decommissioned and the telegraph poles across the mountain carried silence to a dead end. No more sirens. But still the fog. The keeper, in time, possibly became an inmate of a nursing home, and drifted away an unbound soul with hazy musings of white walls atop the white zawn - heads bobbing over the top like seals in the sea, washed with salty tales and jargon of ascent…E7? The Bells The Bells! Time to sound the siren on losing the grip.
The Telegraph pole totemic - wrapping your ropes around like a homecoming caress, throwing them over the cliff and hopping on down for a way up - so many lives hung from this bit of old wood unknowing of its depth - sadly gone. And the old canon from a bygone era, job done, wedged and at peace between boulders – sadly gone. And, from weathered disrepair, in time, an American lady artist bought the silent, whitewashed outpost. I guess no one had told her that not only puffins found this place fun. She drove her Land Rover purposefully over my ropes one day whilst I was half way down Parliament House Cave on the abseil. The jolt I felt was a lucky one but the ropes had been torn. Jesus lady, fuck off! Obviously climbers do not ‘flip her skirt’ and the fog station, built for a storm, her bought solitude, became a temple to her own affairs.
The clown smiles a clown’s smile.![]()
For sure, the climbing was never it.
The climbing was never a game of numbers, apart from one occasion whilst soloing Pentathol with Captain Cliff Phillips. He fell asleep after rolling a little number on the sloping stance near the top, and I had to wedge his head into a crack to stop him rolling off and plummeting into the sea. Gogarth is like intravenous. It kicks in immediately and you have to deal with it. It is a robust domain without clippy-clips and Main cliff sums it up.
When you spend a lot of time on a particular piece of rock, an affinity builds up. One relates, one responds, pushes, probes and enters a dialogue like that with a friend or lover. North Stack is one such wall and for me the joy of moving around on the rock’s surface were conversations held deep in the body and bones. However, these joyful, playful little chats were in fact life threatening and could have led to termination at anytime. Attention, respect the enemy in your friend, and know there is more to this frisson-scampering on the rock than technique or self-preservation. The fragile placing of fingers and toes, chalked-talked the talk and there you have it…or rather not, because I am not just toes and fingers joining dots. And beyond the fear is another terrain that proves the climbing was never it.
It is this terrain that nourished the Trickster that fed me ‘visitors’ that filled my studio, and with each North Stack route, each breath stopped but held to a tiny nubbin, came a little death and with that came a bus-full more, just walking in, cheeky feely, bumping into my body, charging into my head and soul with images, form and colour. Like the climbs, the canvasses were a commitment to uncertain outcomes. No sketching and no planning meant an engagement with doubt, an entry into something unknown. The work asserted itself and moves were made. Once on the holds, it seems, one resorts to chance and an awesome awakening. Only by doubt can such forms enter the world, and only by entering this field can such vital ingredients be summoned. Like a hunt, it suited me. Summon and seize is always juicy.
I admit, I am not a strong climber, but had the strength in the ability to find what I needed on the way. It was my trick. It was like stepping on and summoning the strength from a third person, shuffling up as if ‘literally’ in a six-foot box with all the tools I required. For me, the passage and release upon survival nourished the creative process to actually open the box-lid, turn around and peer inside, be very alarmed, see the joke and act…back in a, hmmm, ‘safe’ studio.
I have done all the climbs here, many more than once and know, as the climber clings to his knowledge and life, that the prospect of death was not the most vital of forces acting upon me. It is an awesome wall and so much has been said about ‘trad’ climbing and anyone stepping on here with an on-sight in mind will get the joke pretty quick. I cannot say what ‘trad’ climbing means in these days of popular climbing vernacular born from institutional sport, but this stage exists for all to experience in their own way.
That force that I felt acting upon me, a ‘lifting away from myself’… is a divine conduit of poetic significance with a breathing planet, not what I consider to be a destructive regime that takes control, as is mostly the case with a sport.
‘Trad’ stands for traditional… unreconstructed in a way I am at odds. But perhaps it means to die… even if the new-born-brave peer down the grade and quantify a high digital readout with a clean gathering of beta, death is the bottom line, and the tidal rocks are the whispering of roots into the hinterland. It ain't gonna be clean with your name on a snappy when your beta talks swazzle. My routes at North Stack were never ‘trad’ to me, and the idea of a sport never entered the equation. Life was too ludicrous, random, still a dirty business with side-stalls of anarchy and nonsense, when rock was more a guide to thought.
Following ‘purple blobs’ on the climbing wall brick-road will not lead you here, I don’t think, but more likely to lead you into staring at traffic lights, or a possible Olympic challenge for the GB team and ambassadors for the State of Rule. Hey ho, piss poor for the old rebel soul receptive to a stranger music, but cool for those who wish to play with the stock in the paddock, learn moves and earn badges! Sorry to tell you guys but what you have lost is greater than what you gain… and I will tell you from my little bit of scary spanning on the stack, from limb to limb, smearing, stretching, swazzling a ritual passage, that nothing in nature is clean, is watching you and writhing in its slime and waste for a better hold. The joke is not just on the stack… and I guess, to be honest, there have been times when the effort to stay on was almost too much, a dangerous slide into a blurred resignation, almost happy to let go of that we call land and that we call body…
So having experienced North Stack as an arena for thought and revelation, I think it’s also cool to die a little… tool up, step on, peer inside, it’s easy, and thanking Kali and her necklace of skulls, there is no sport here! Amen, and enjoy the show!
North Stack Wall – what an epic seaside stage!
As an outsider artist back in the 80’s I penned a few key words by chance and received a grant from the Arts Council. Yes, this was the eighties and proof as such. The actual ‘chance’ bit came while Bobby Drury was living in my caravan next to my studio and the previous evening a frying pan had crashed through a window accompanied by banshee screams from his girl friend demanding an orgasm. Tracy was a tough local cookie and took no hostages. Soon after, with glass shards still falling and tinkling musically onto the slate patio, my studio door groaned open and I was abruptly raped by the blunt-end. The lady of misrule gasps, “That’s the way to do it”.![]()
The next day I coined the idea of a film, based on Stravinsky’s Petrushka and the three puppets imbued with half-life by a Trickster – where ‘no’ means a new caravan window and pan and brush, attraction, jealousy, hate and an audience warning about what’s going on behind your back. Petrushka, melancholic, a mythical outcast, headpiece filled with straw is both victim and perpetrator, messed up by post modern sexuality, blunt-ends needing satisfaction, and a flying, frying pan empty of sausages. A lycra-clad, homoerotic Bobby holds my strings on a North Stack Wall ‘big number’ as a venue. A ten-minute rock ballet was born! It felt like a real joke, dressing up some top climbers of the day, conjured from life’s rich tapestry. I pondered what I had done after I accepted the offer from the Arts Council. I could have picked a ‘safer’, more convenient route for all this theatrical prancing, but The Clown gave it a gnarly edge, an unwanted erection, some psychological trauma, an orgasm and a passage through snappy, surreal space on fingertips. Punch says, “Oh yes I will, it’s a winner”. Eh?
How poignant and enlightening to witness facsimiles of the human race that torture, hurt and abuse, but without the pain and suffering…where death can be imagined as a timeless tragedy.
Some friends of Romani origin had come back to their house in Bangor from the pub and found a stranger, curled up asleep on the sofa in front of the fire. Like the visiting images sliding in through an un-locked door, cheeky, he just walked right in. Being a race confronted by intolerance and hate, they know the worth of a fellow traveller obviously in need, and indeed this stranger made their tinker eyes sparkle with generations of hospitality and goodwill. An unlocked door is the way it is and in a peddler’s domain, way back to the ancient nomads of Asia, is worthy of man and good crack to boot and the show goes on. Thomas had somehow arrived from Sweden, picked a good door, knowing only a little English, without passport or documentation but became good friends with the scrap dealers and stayed in the house for several months. He had been a cameraman for a Swedish television company, and to me it was obvious, Thomas was to be the cameraman.
Martin Crook, well tuned to an outrageous joke and the secrets of the wall, was obviously contender to play Petrouchka the clown wearing a jester’s motley and sugarloaf hat, made by the Mother of his lover. Sawdust-headed and love-torn, he is wary that he is perhaps the subject of some cruel joke that he unknowingly created by wishing to be endowed with human feelings and emotions. And what of Freda Lowe, and how could the clown not fall in love with her?
As the late Harold Drasdo stated, “What is a nice girl like Freda doing in JR’s book?…”
Wearing a tutu, that’s what, Harold. Can’t do it at home, durrr.
“Wearing a tutu, well that’s my job”, said Chris Dale indignantly, the cross-dressing outdoor guide from the lakes!
“It’s cool Chris, I will paint you up proper in textured acrylic, as a grinning Blackamoor, and make sure the costume is made from soft, fluffy fabric, that your glammed-up persona, Crystal will adore, and so will the ballerina”.
At 6ft 6in he was the man-moor-woman, gender confusing star of slate climbing, and the climber of the last unclimbed summit in the UK. Crystal or Chris, sadly neither any more the bouncing characters of glam-rock.
Paul Trower, signed up as ‘safety’ man, no stranger to glam and cool fibres or to expedition hardship and exhaustion. Instead of avalanche, loose rock and bad weather, were the cast of a freak show, logistics of emptying bin bags of sawdust onto a falling clown, a Swede terrified of heights and wearing espadrilles, men in lycra who really should be sectioned, a nice lady, and no idea of how to drop Martin onto me without killing either of us. He found it hilarious!
Clinging to one of Britain’s hardest routes at the time was a feat of total piss-taking and nonsense! ‘I chose to arse’ is not a book I wrote however, and the film did not get BMC approval for how to climb at North Stack. The film was shown once only, at the Mountain Film Festival in Llanberis. And for Shiva’s sake, the 16mm spool and the one vhs copy have been lost in the annals of time and 80’s lunacy. I only have the photos to prove the film actually happened - to prove that the characters lived and laughed and loved. As with old copies of ‘…and one for the crow’ it will turn up one day covered with a dusty patina from underneath a bed, were only the silly trinkets and broken things find solace…
It really does beg the question, ‘Who really is holding the ropes’?![]()
Real, unreal, safe, unsafe.
John Redhead:St Laurent de Cerdans-September 2016Images-John Redhead Collection
↧
Head of CwmorthinFor a really satisfactory hillwalk some sort of objective is necessary. But whereas (in the present writer's opinion) the covering of a given distance in the shortest possible time has nothing to do with appreciation of mountains, the leisurely visiting of a group of related summits is a worthy and rewarding form of peak-bagging. The Moelwyn group, 10 miles south-east of Snowdon, provides an excellent day' s walking of this sort. The route is a circuit over the seven summits topping 2,000 feet, returning to starting-point, which is the hamlet of Croesor 7 miles from Beddgelert and 4 miles from Penrhyndeudraeth. There is a recently constructed car park at Croesor, the customary starting-point for that increasingly popular little mountain Cnicht, 2265 feet. The beginning of the way up Cnicht is well marked with "walker" posts up to a broad saddle on the south-west ridge, and from here a path- beginning to suffer from erosion now- mounts pleasantly on the narrowing crest to the foot of the final steep bit, a very easy scramble beloved of school parties.
The sharply-pointed summit, of course, is an illusion, being the end of an undulating half-mile ridge whence there are splendid views of Snowdon across the Gwynant valley on the left. This ridge slants gently down to a saddle where the boggy slopes cradle Llyn yr Adar, Lake of the Birds; a seduction for photographers when the waters are still enough to reflect the peak of Snowdon afar off. All this upland area is rich in little lakes, and from Cnicht you'll have looked down on one of the larger ones, Llyn Cwm-y-foel.
A boggy path heads northerly above the eastern shore of Llyn yr Adar. This is part of the route used by the slate-miners of last century to cross from Beddgelert to the Ffestiniog quarries at weekends, winter and summer. You follow it for 1/4 -mile, but then leave it to mount north-east on the little craggy ridge that appears on your right front. Miniature rocky summits jut here and there, and in mist it's not easy to find the highest of these Creigiau'r Cwn and bag your second summit at 2192 feet. The three Lakes of the Dogs (Llynau' r Cwn) are your safest guides, small lonely tarns clustered close together; Point 2192 is the crag immediately south of the most easterly tarn. This is the place where the mountain watershed between Liverpool Bay and Tremadoc Bay makes its right-angle turn from E-W to N-S, running northward to Pen-y-gwryd and then over Crib Goch to Rhyd-ddu and the Eifionydd ridges. You'll
head south, south-east, and east, following for the most part the decrepit wire fence that marks the height of land — a dullish stretch in thick weather but in clear conditions giving magnificent distant views to the sea on the right hand and the moorland ramparts of England on the left. ![]()
You have to get down to Bwlch Rhosydd, the lowest point on the traverse, where a path crosses the pass between the long steep-walled valleys of Cwm Croesor and Cwmorthin. Having plodded along the south shore of Conglog and crossed its outlet stream (which plunges down into Llyn Cwmorthin on the left) you could in clear weather follow the rim of Cwmorthin as it winds west-by-south down to little Llyn Clogwyn Brith in its crater like hollow, thence descending to the bwlch below. In doubtful conditions it's best to make the larger Llyn Cwm-Corsiog the objective, steering due west from the narrow western tip of Conglog past a marshy tarn and so down boggy slopes, bearing rather to the south-west, to gain the old dam at the south end of Cwm-Corsiog. A faint track goes down from here to the ruined quarry build-ings on the pass. Rhosydd Quarry ceased work in the 1920's and its remains are now the haunt of industrial archaeologists, but its spoil heaps remain to puzzle the hillwalker with their tilted unbeautiful maze. ![]()
Approaching the larger Moelwyn from this direction shows the mountain's least attractive side, unfortunately, but the prospects to right and left widen as you plod along the broad boggy crest and up the steepening flank of shaley turf. Only when the O.S. cairn at 2,527 feet is reached does Moelwyn reveal that, like Cnicht, it is an impostor; but whereas Cnicht pretends to be a sharp peak when it is really a ridge, Moelwyn pretends to be a lumpish dome when it is really a narrow ridge. The ridge, running north-west from the trig. point, drops on the right in little crags and gullies to a long scree. One of the gullies provided myself and my wife with a good snow climb in March some years ago.
The slopes on the left are turfy, but that they are long and steep was proved one day when, sitting down to lunch just below the O.S. cairn, I incautiously placed my rucksack on the turf beside me. It rolled away before I could grab it, and had fallen a good 800 feet when I finally rescued it. But the view from Moelwyn Mawr is its major asset. Standing as it does well clear of the Snowdon massif and with only the lower Moelwyn Bach to southward, it gives a magnificent all-round panorama on a clear day. The sea fills most of the western horizon- northward all the three-thousanders and their satellites are in view; eastward Berwyns, Arenigs and Arans march afar, and in the south Plynlimon peers from beyond the long cliff-line of Cader Idris. It is arguable (and I sometimes argue it) that there is no wider view from any North Wales top.
A fine rocky ridge drops due south to the col between the two Moelwyns, but not due south from the cairn — a point to be noted in mist. You steer south-east at first, down easy turf slopes for about 200 feet to join. the descending ridge. Nowadays the way down its succession of little easy rock-steps is well marked. It rises over the small craggy top of Craig Ysgafn, touching the 2,000-foot contour and so making an eighth two-thousander in the circuit if you were inclined to be fussy. But it's a mere 'incident on the ridge" really — and anyway "Seven Summits" is alliteratively preferable. Steeply down on the left here is Llyn Stwlan, once possessing- an ideal diving-rock for climbers sweating after a warm day on the excellent Moelwyniau climbs just round the corner but now quite spoiled by its dam; it is the upper lake of the Tanygrisiau Pumped Storage scheme, and buses and coaches reach it by the road constructed by the C.E.G.B. The dam and its approach road can easily be reached from the col at the bottom of the Craig Ysgafn ridge, a useful get-off for anyone who finds six summits enough for them on this walk.![]()
Nowadays, however, our parties-under instruction with their passion for well-trodden paths- have trodden one out up the scree to the left of the upper rock-face, plain enough to be obvious from the col. In its upper part this path becomes a trifle obscure just where it mounts a steepening slope of turfy shale with a considerable drop below. I have used both routes in winter, and have turned back from both in conditions of hard frost; scree and shale can freeze to a steel-plate hardness that renders ice-axe and crampons useless and makes it totally impossible to arrest a slide.
In ordinary conditions there's no difficulty at all in plodding up the steep path or in using the direct route. Both bring you to easier ground and a five-minute ramble to the insignificant summit-cairn at 2,334 feet. Looking southward from here, down into the wooded glens of Maentwrog and the Ffestiniog valley and away beyond to the dim shapes of the Arans and Cader Idris, you get an even more delightful prospect than from Moelwyn Mawr. But the northward view from Moelwyn Bach is partly blocked by the massive bulk of its neighbour and it can claim only 270° of panorama.
All the same, for my money this last of the seven summits is the best little mountain of them all, for it is very steep on three of its sides and boldly sculptured. Its buttressing crags are not high enough to make good rock climbs, which is a pity, for the rock is sound. I once made a three-pitch route here, below the summit on the east. Since I and my four companions constituted the membership of a small but select Club, I had conceived the idea (I think an original one) of holding the Annual General Meeting of the Club on the way up the climb; in consequence of which it was named A.G.M. Rib. It's still in the official Moelwyniau guide, but under the title of "Agm Rib," which must puzzle those interested in route nomenclature.![]()
There is a pleasant way of descending to Croesor from Moelwyn Bach by dropping down to the right from the long western ridge and picking a way across the bogs and streams of Maesgwm, but it postulates for comfort a knowledge of the best places for crossing the streams and a couple of tricky wire fences. At the end of a longish hill day it's probably best to walk easily down due west and by way of a stile and a corner of forestry onto the mountain road. Then there remains one mile of downhill on a metalled surface, with superb views lit by the westering sun, before you are back at Croesor car park. Distance: 14 miles approx. Time: allow 8 hours Maps: O.S. 1/50,000 Sheets 115 and 124. Sheet 107 of the old 1-inch map covers the whole walk. Showell Styles: First published as 'The Seven Summits Walk in Climber and Rambler-December 1980.
↧
![]()
The terrain is moorland swelling into low hills, but fronting the Atlantic to west and north, there are over twelve miles of cliffs, and this is the Parph: the last land seen by the wild geese before they touch down in the Arctic, the ultimate sanctuary for the last wolf in Britain. Seal-women and mermaids have been seen in its coves, and on dark nights a drowned Dutch sailor can be heard scrunching the strand of Sandwood Bay. I went there once, in late spring, with an anti-cyclone stationary over the north-west corner of Scotland so that I could travel light, without tent or stove. I went in from the road between Durness and Rhiconich, heading in a northerly direction for Creag Riabhach, which, at 1592ft, is the highest point of the Parph. My route was line-of-sight and followed burns, upstream and down, over miniature watersheds.
And out there, in the middle of wastes of heather, I came on a squat round cairn of sandstone flags — just one, very old and with not the slightest indication of how or why it came to be there. If it was a grave, who died here, from what cause, miles from any road? Creag Riabhach was wild and dark, facing north-east, with late primroses glowing in its shadow. Below was a clear blue lochan fringed by pale sand marked with the tracks of fox and heron. Sitting between crag and water, eating lunch, I looked at the contents of my pack and reflected that for four days those few possessions represented security.They looked madly incongruous and served only to emphasize the solitude. Suddenly this shining world, soft, balmy and beautiful, became animate, implacable, hostile. I was aware, first, of my own arrogance in coming here, then of my vulnerability. I thought of turning back, but I looked at the shimmering horizon and knew I should continue to the coast and find shelter for the night.
Providing the weather is holding the traveller may concentrate on his immediate surroundings. All I had to be wary of was a sprained ankle, and one man at least has crawled home with a fractured pelvis. As I approached the coast the land became more dramatic and the weather changed — not much but sufficient to make a difference. Untracked heather and bog is tiring, and the psychological strain is a heavy factor. I was happy on sandstone pavements among sculpted rocks, delighted with a prospect of Sandwood Bay, but the breeze was freshening, already driving white horses across the lochs. By the time I reached the cliffs water was slopping out of pools before a dry gale and I was uneasy. ![]()
I woke to stillness. I could tell by the light between the chinks in the stones that the sun was on the bothy. A wren was singing. A gull called . The bay was calm and only the occasional breaker bloomed against the southern s headland. Eider duck were talking softly in the kelp, fulmar regarded me with dark eyes from their nests among the thrift. I bathed l and ate at my leisure, and strolled back for a mile to see what I'd missed last night. There were orchids everywhere (I'd not seen one), the fulmars floated beside me, a skua came in for a closer look but dismissed me. I was a harmless. The lighthouse at Cape Wrath was visible as soon as I climbed out of Kescaig Bay: a black dome a little over three miles away but twice that distance as I was forced to trace the coastline, rounding its innumerable inlets.
Depressions were full of flowers, the clifftop was scattered with cushions of moss campion and thrift in deserts of red stones. A ringed plover's nest was framed by crystals of roze quartz. Seals tossed in the foam below the cliffs, skuas patrolled, handing me on to the next pair at the boundary of their territory. As I approached the corner of the land, the sea boiled under stacks at the end of the reef: tall pinnacles, a cubist tower, carmine rock cleft by pink dykes. The sea was green and purple, the foam dazzling. The lighthouse was built above a reef that ended in an arched pinnacle covered with birds. The keepers gave me coffee ("We put the kettle on when saw you coming"), and told me about the man camping at Kearvaig, where I proposed to spend the night.
It had happened last year: the police and coastguards had found his tent empty, the food going mouldy, and nothing had been seen or heard of him since: a Liverpool man with spectacles. The keepers and I regarded each other silently. My mind raced. At the Bay of Kearvaig the corner had been turned; Cape Wrath was now behind me, the arch below the lighthouse forming the bay's western headland, a huge horned stack to the east. Two men were camping on the strand and we sat round a fire of driftwood and talked until midnight, when I went away to sleep among the plovers in the dunes, the sunset colours still lingering in the sky.
From Kearvaig eastward the cliffs of Clo Mor rise sharply. Facing north they are shadowed and speckled with the white of birds and clumps of scurvy grass. They are 900ft high, and vertical where they don't overhang. The sea whispers softly at their feet, the swell crawls landward in slow motion, seals bask on skerries: grey, black and silver, and sometimes, very faintly, their song rises to the watcher on the cliff. I spent the third night in the heather above the Kyle of Durness and the fog rolled in so that any dreams were threaded by sound: the fog horn, seals, the howl of the last wolf. I woke to space, to spiders' webs spangled with moisture against the cloud, to a new awareness as civilisation loomed on the other side of the kyle. ![]()
↧
Porters on the way to the Gasherbrums in the Baltoro,1983.Image-Voytek Kurtyka.It’s hard to assess the value of finding the right partner for any particular climb. For the Shining Wall of Gasherbrum IV, Voytek chose Austrian alpinist, Robert Schauer. Although it was their only climb together, after eight days on the unclimbed West Face, high on the mountain in the midst of a crippling storm, they attained a level of communication that astounds.
On 18 July Robert and Voytek reached 7,800 metres. They had arrived at the final slabs and snowfields leading to the summit, but by afternoon it began to snow in earnest. The snow continued throughout the night,building up around their bivouac sack and threatening to push them off their airy perch. They no longer had food, and they were out of gas.
That meant they couldn’t make more water. They could barely poke their heads out of the bivouac sack because of the blowing snow. They waited all the next day for the storm to break, but it persisted. The snow piled up around them at an alarming rate. Voytek wrote: ‘Snowstorm. Jail at 7,800 metres. No food and no liquid.’ Retreat was out of the question, since they only had ten remaining pitons, not nearly enough to rappel down the face they had climbed. Their only option was to outlast the storm.Voytek Kurtyka approaching the rock barrier on Gasherbrum I on the first day of the climb. Jerzy Kukuczka, Voytek Kurtyka collection.Sleep-deprived, hungry, thirsty, hypoxic and stressed, they drifted into a delirious state. It was at this point, in extremity, that both Robert and Voytek sensed something – an independent spirit on the mountain that, for Robert, grew more ominous and real with each snowflake. So real that they waited expectantly for some signal or action from their invisible ‘third man.’ Robert began to blame their imaginary companion for having slowed them down on the face. As avalanches surged over them, nudging them, almost burying them, Robert became convinced that the third man was trying to push him off the ledge into oblivion.
It’s not unusual for an invisible person to appear in dire circumstances such as these, but in most cases the presence is helpful, giving suggestions and support and companionship. When Stephen Venables was descending Everest after having climbed the Kangshung Face, he was forced to bivouac not far below the summit. He wasn’t alone, however. An imaginary old man kept him company throughout the night and on his exhausting descent the next day. Once Stephen and the old man reached the South Summit, they were met by an imaginary (and long-dead) Eric Shipton, who helped by warming Stephen’s hands. There are countless high-altitude examples of these wonderfully kind, unexplainable creatures, yet Robert’s third man was strangely malevolent.Voytek Kurtyka on the summit of Gasherbrum II East, 1983. Jerry Kukuczka.Voytek, while acutely aware of their new partner, was preoccupied with carrying out odd experiments, such as pinching his thigh and wondering if the pain would disappear when he neared death. He relished the pain, for it confirmed that he was still alive. He was already imagining the distinct possibility of turning into a lifeless block of ice on the narrowing ledge slowly disappearing under drifts of snow.
Occasionally they would burrow out from one end of their bivouac sack to remove enough snow to avoid suffocation. As they shivered on their ledge, they considered their options. Again, thoughts of retreat were discussed then quickly abandoned. Going up was also out of the question in this storm. Waiting – the most agonising option of all – remained the only feasible choice. Cold and hungry and so dreadfully thirsty, they waited. From time to time they reassured each other with little niceties. ‘Are you feeling okay, Robert?’ ‘Oh, yes, I’m feeling fine.’ Robert described it as a ‘fragile mood of hope.’ Voytek recalled that he had never had so much ‘free time’ on a climb. ‘We had two nights and a day up there. We just sat. We had a stove, but the gas was finished, so we had nothing to do but think.’Time became warped, stretching and contracting at will. One hour was the same as one day. The darkness pushed down on them, coating their heaving lungs. It felt aggressive, as if it would swallow them. Voytek’s thoughts drifted into dangerous territory. Death was something he had often mused about in the past, and now it seemed inevitable and barely worth worrying about. What was most important to him was to be fully aware of the experience. Being completely conscious of the process of dying, particularly in this remote and savage place, would be interesting.Voytek Kurtyka and Jerzy Kukuczka arrive in base camp after having completed a new route on Gasherbrum I in 1983. Voytek Kurtyka collection.As he pondered his own demise, Voytek became concerned about Robert. Was he also aware of how close they were to death in this terrible place, this wonderful place? It became incredibly important to him that Robert understand what was happening – that they share this almost sacred experience. But it was a delicate topic, and Voytek struggled with his decision to speak with Robert. Finally, he could no longer hold back. He began, his voice raspy with cold and fatigue, ‘Robert, I…I…I’d like to…’ Robert interrupted quietly but firmly in a painful whisper, ‘I know what you’re thinking. I’m ready. I’m prepared for this. Don’t worry.’Bernadette McDonald The Art of Freedom is available from Vertebrate Publishing
↧
↧
The Art of Freedom- The Life and Climbs of Voytek Kurtyka .
Bernadette McDonald.
Published by Vertebrate Publishing. Under licence from Rocky Mountain Books, Canada. Price £24.Beauty is mysterious as well as terribleDostoevsky
Voytek Kurtyka is one of the most outstanding climbers in the history of the sport, equally significant as a rock climber and mountaineer. One of the leaders of a Polish led revolution that redefined Himalayan climbing in the 1970’s and 1980’s. His visionary approach marked him out even from many of his own countries mountaineers, with an emphasis on alpine style ascents on the highest mountains of the world. Born in 1947, it was when his family moved to Wroclaw that he started to climb at a local outcrop, persuaded to try this by a female fellow student whilst studying electronics at the local university in 1968. He was immediately smitten, and began to visit the rocks as often as he could, much to the chagrin of his father, a writer who later became well known in Polish literary circles.
I was fortunate to visit Poland and the Tatras in 1967, the year before Voytek started to climb, and from later experience in the following decade, climbing in Czech, Slovakia and Bulgaria (the Rila mountains), all communist countries in that era, I was to find climbing was ‘organised’ along lines that fitted into the prevailing political system, with tests and examinations, and you were only supposed to climb unsupervised when you had passed these. The Wroclaw Climbing Club was teeming with good climbers, Wanda Rutkiewicz, Bogdan Jankowski and Kryzysztof Wielicki all future stars of Himalayan exploration and Voytek soon provided an intriguing addition to that grouping, but he was from the first, a non-conformist.He never bothered with instruction and the tests set nationally by the Polish Mountaineering Association (PZA), but by the time he finished his degree he was one of the best rock climbers in Poland, known by a soubriquet as the ‘Animal’. Why this nick name I am not sure, but in looks he was compared with the brilliant Russian dancer, Rudolf Nureyev. Having met (once) this latter person, and looking at photographs of Voytek in his early twenties, the comparison is apt for he too was lithe, of medium height and moved sinuously. I did meet him at that time but I guess he will not remember.![]()
Kurtyka continued pioneering into old age, in 2003 he was still making new routes in summer and winter in the Tatras, and his last major Himalayan climb was the Biacherahi Central Tower, 5.700 metres in the Karakoram, a new route on its south face with Japanese climbers Taeko and Yasushi Yamanoi in 2001. He confesses that he is impressed by Japanese culture and thinking, and it seems that he does have something of a Zen like approach to life.
The book starts with Kurtyka agonising over and refusing to take part on several occasions when he is invited to receive recognition over a Piolets d'Or award, becoming ever more impatient with the organisers for inviting him. I empathised and although I have never been invited myself for any such award, and never will be I am not sure that mountaineering needs any such form of recognition. I am not against competition, in fact, I founded one of the best known athletic events in Yorkshire in 1979, the Chevin Chase, won for the last six years by one or other Olympic Triathletes, the Brownlee’s, Alistair and Johnny. But what a climber experiences in the mountains is not like kicking a ball, or running along a track, it has elements of Chan, which is actually where Zen thought comes from.A fusion of Daoism and Buddhism, and it is beyond description and too precious to confuse with awards, however well intentioned. However ‘Art of Freedom’ ends in 2016 with Kurtyka accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award, at a Piolets d'Or ceremony in La Grave, leaving the reader to ponder which road rock climbing and mountaineering will now travel down, with Olympic recognition looming and climbing imagery becoming a mainstay of consumerist advertising.Tadek Piotrowski and Voytek Kurtyka in Camp II (7,300 metres) on the Lhotse Wall, waiting for the weather to improve. Polish autumn–winter 1975/1975 expedition. Bogdan JankowskiThe author of this biography, the award winning writer Bernadette McDonald has crafted an outstanding book about a mountaineering legend. It is a warts and all portrait of Kurtyka’s complicated personality and relationships, with partners, family, the law, risk, and an uncompromising lifestyle whilst meeting his climbing goals. She has produced a thought provoking master work. The publishers are also to be congratulated for such a well presented volume, copiously illustrated with many personal and historic photographs. Dennis Gray: 2017Available Direct from Vertebrate Publishing
↧
Ed Douglas’s collection of eight essays which have previously graced the pages of the US Alpinist and Rock and Ice magazines are brought together in 'The Magician Glass'; after being re-edited-in Ed’s words-’for a British readership’. I’m not sure how British and US mountaineering buffs, sharing a language, differ in their interpretation of a mountain essay to the extent that they require them to be re-worked, but as I have not seen the originals then I’m not in a position to speculate? That being said, for someone who at times has become a tad jaded with so much mountaineering material, I did find The Magician’s Glass something of an exception.... In fact, it's a bit of a cracker! The eight essays herein, are never less than absorbing and extremely well crafted. Another alternative title for the book could have been ‘The Black Mirror’-if Charlie Brooker had not got in first!- for each essay addresses the dark reality behind mountaineering at the limits of possibility. Those fatal human emotions- Pride, Egotism,Envy and Wrath fall off the pages like ripe fruit while death is never more than a few page turns away. Yes...The Magicians Glass is dark but isn’t that the point about extreme climbing and mountaineering; that those who ‘succeed’ more often than not, ultimately fail? Both at their craft and/or as grounded human beings?
After saying that, there are not many people better than the author at putting flesh on the bones of a story and Ed is such a good writer. Very much in the Orwell tradition; That is, never use a dozen words when half a dozen will do. No ornate peregrinations in the telling of the tale. Instead, the writing is clean, sharp and to the point. The book's eponymous opening essay tells the epic story of glorious failure on Annapurna III, and essentially revolves around the enigmatic Nick Colton. It was an ascent upon ‘The Adamantine Wall’ that is best summerised by Lindsay Griffin....
In 1981 Steve Bell, Nick Colton and Tim Leach became the first climbers to reach the South East Face of Annapurna III via the Seti Khola.
They first acclimatized on the East Ridge, and then cached equipment on the pillar, before setting off for an alpine-style attempt. They reached the crest via snow runnels on the right flank, continued past a difficult section of V and V+, and reached a high point of 6,500m. Although they had probably climbed the most technical section, the ridge above looked dangerous and time-consuming. Calculating that another five or six days would be needed to reach the top and get down again, they retreated.
Subsequent parties, which have included a number of outstanding alpinists, have barely been able to set foot on the route, adding to the aura surrounding this line and the now legendary status of the 1981 attempt.
The effort essentially left the team broken. With Colton effectively stepping off the gas for several years and Tim Leach giving up altogether to became an architect. An essay which sums up the psychological warfare and physical shredding which so often defines extreme mountaineering projects.
In Stealing Toni Egger the author describes ‘The murder of the Impossible’. The hugely controversial Cesare Maestri/Tony Egger ascent of Cerro Torre in Patagonia and its explosive aftermath. Not least the mystery surrounding the death of Austrian guide Toni Egger in the retreat off the mountain. Much of the account has inevitably been told before in various books and journals but Ed goes further into the darkest catacombs. Visting friends and family members who throw new light on what we already know. A light from which the clown prince Cesare Maestri cannot escape.
Searching for Tomaz Humar fleshes out an obituary which Ed did for the Guardian in 2009 after the Slovenian super nova died on Langtang Lirung during a solo ascent of the mountain. To say that Humar was ‘driven’ would be an understatement. Here was a supremely talented mountaineer who had an ego the size of a London bus and who had a penchant for new age mysticism. While undertaking an epic solo ascent on Nanga Parbat in 2005, his team included an astrologer who read his aura and who could predict a favourable climbing window. The mystic was presumably sacked as Humar escaped with his life by a hair’s breath after bad weather closed in and left him at the mercy of the elements. Such was the standard that Humar climbed at that even though he was continually pushing the envelope, his natural ability, it appeared, would always carry him through. However, Humar was indeed human after all and in his later life, he suffered both physically and mentally. Surviving a terrible fall at his home which left him with a shattered leg, and seeing his family life and business suffer. The end of course, became all too predictable.
Big Guts revolves around the legendary German climber, Kurt Albert and continues the ‘doomed romantic’ theme. Albert was a larger than life figure who gave the climbing world the concept-and name- ‘Redpoint'. Albert was the passionate explorer of new horizons. Both physically and mentally. Never a mere climbing machine, the man the author describes in Big Guts, is at all times, warm and generous towards his peers, irreverent and self-deprecating yet totally focused on his passion. Albert’s big hearted approach towards his fellow climbers and his pioneering zeal gained him world wide respect. Not least from our own Jerry Moffat who provides a swathe of anecdotal material which brings his late friend to life.
Crazy Wisdom Brings the author’s deep interest in the Sherpa culture into focus. A community which has come under the international spotlight in recent years. Particularly after the unsavoury incidents on Everest in 2013, when angry Sherpas and western climbers-including Ulli Steck-were involved in a simmering dispute which spilt over into violence. What perhaps is not commonly known to the everyday climber back at home, and which the author brings out in this essay, is the fact that although in the West we use the word ‘Sherpa’ as a generic term to describe someone from the region who is usually employed to ferry supplies and to fix ropes etc, for usually western expeditions. In fact, these roles are carried out by several different ethnic cultures.The true Sherpa is someone of Nepalese extraction from the northern region of high Himalayas and who is Tibetan speaking. This group could be said to be basically at the top of the tree with regard to status and earning potential. In reality, other ethnic groups including The Gurungs, the Tamangs and in particular the Rai who overwhelming these days, take on the hard donkey work. And donkey work it is for the poor Rai in particular who often find themselves carrying incredible loads to boost their meagre earnings. The historic exploitation of these indigenous people and the fight to improve their lot by both the 'Sherpas’ themselves and enlightened, sympathetic westerners, is at the heart of Crazy wisdom.
What’s Eating Ueli Steck, written well before the ‘Swiss Machine’s’ untimely death, visits the scene of someone quite rightly hailed as one of our greatest ever mountaineers, greatest ever controversies. The Piolet d’Or nominated ascent of the Annapurna's South Face. There and back in an incredible 28 hours. Problem is that Steck has no concrete proof to support his claim. He told reporters that he had been caught in an avalanche and lost one of his gloves and his camera in slough which meant that he could not provide any summit photos to back up his claims. He also claimed that his altimeter wasn’t working so a GPS tracking on his ascent became impossible.Despite these problems, Steck took the award despite many mountaineers throwing doubt on the ascent. For Steck, that was their problem.It's fair to say that the aftermath of the affair still reverberates around the mountaineering community.
Lone Wolf describes that fallen giant of French rock climbing, Patrick Edlinger. A household name amongst rock athletes, not only in his native France but around the world. During the 80‘s and 90‘s, Edlinger’s rock star image became almost iconic. Gracing the front covers of the climbing glossies and defining an era in all its wild haired, day-glo, ripped lycra glory! However, the showman the author describes, whilst being an outstanding talent and rock pioneer, was prone to self-doubt and ultimately, deep depression. His end when it came, falling down a flight of bathroom stairs at home, was cruel in its mundanity and almost darkly ironic given the extreme places Edlinger had visited during his all too short life.
Lines of Beauty: The art of Climbing uses the climbing artist Andy Parkin as the hook to hang an essay of the visual aesthetics of climbing. Although Parkin takes centre stage, figures from Jim Curren and Julian Heaton Cooper share the pages with Brown Whillans and Dawes. That shared space between climbing and painting-the line of flight-which has always informed the activity and which can be observed both on canvas or through the sinewy lines drawn by the climber on stone. An essay which in its appreciation of nature and beauty is rather an exception to the air of tragedy which pervades the majority of essays herein.
So...there you have it. A journey through the glass darkly, which deserves to be widely read. Not just by mountaineering anoraks who will will appreciate the depth of insight and detail surrounding these iconic figures, but also those who just enjoy a good yarn. For the latter constituency, there are gripping moments aplenty to sate their appetite. As for the book’s title. It comes from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
There’s something ever egotistical in mountain tops and towers, and all the other grand and lofty things...which like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back to his own mysterious selfCaptain AhabAvailable from Vertebrate Publishing John Appleby:2017
↧
![]()
Exciting because we were young, naive, energetic, full of life, carried a couldn’t care less attitude on our shoulders and yes, we enjoyed the freedom climbing gave us despite wearing uniforms and being subjected to banal orders, given by newly commissioned officers, fresh out of RAF Cranwell training school who thought, no believed, that as they walked up to the summit of Snowdon one summer, they were experienced and competent climbers/mountaineers!
The five of us became good friends when we found ourselves, independently volunteering for a rescue mission to the Monte Rosa region within three weeks of being posted to the station. We found ourselves in the same search group, which entailed climbing several high cols, across two glaciers and traversing one long pinnacle ridge, and as we climbed as if we had been doing it for ever, we formed a bond which was cemented through our passion for climbing and alcohol.
However, such things never last. Within two years of being together, Chalky was killed whilst soloing on the Dorset cliffs in March 1964 when he went on a rare home-leave; Pete was posted to Aden a year earlier at the start of the troubles (1963), and on his first day off, he went into a local bar where a young lad came in and threw a grenade in his lap, and Geordie was killed on a rescue mission in the Alps when he was assigned to an international rescue group, which was the first (and last) time the five of us were not in the same mountain rescue group.
Only Sam and I remained out of the small merry band of climbers and we climbed together all the time, sometimes using a rope, and other times climbing unroped. It depended on how we felt at the time. Either way, we were both aware of our mortality given what had happened to our friends.
In July 1964, we had 3 weeks leave coming up, so we made plans to go to the Picos De Europa to try a new route on the South Face of El Naranjo, but a few days before setting off, I was sent to Berlin for a week. Sam being Sam, decided to go by himself and play around on the rocks until I joined him later.![]()
On the Saturday, Sam rang to say he had found a local climbing partner and they had already completed some climbs together, and had made plans to climb a new route on the East Face of El Neveron de Urriellu on the Sunday. Just as the phone call pips went, I heard him say, his climbing partner was called Hośe Gibanna. The word Gibanna hit the pit of my stomach like a sledge hammer. Blood sank to my feet leaving me light headed. I shouted incoherently to Sam not to go climbing but to return so we could have some beer and talk about another expedition to the Alps or even the Himalaya. But Sam was like a kid on Christmas morning who just found out he had a room full of presents. Then the phone went dead.
Two days later, I was told to report to the duty officer in the guardhouse, where I was told that I had to go to Rhinedalen to identify Sam’s body as it had been flown back from Spain. Sam was an orphan and had no other relatives, and unbeknown to me, he had put me down as his next of kin. It appears that he was belaying Hośe on the third pitch when Hośe dislodged a stone, which plummeted down in accordance with Newton’s law and lodged in Sam’s head after penetrating the spare climbing helmet he borrowed from Hośe, as his was well past its use by date.
Sam was buried in a Military cemetery in Germany with just a few friends around. For the next few weeks, I felt emotionally empty. All my climbing partners were gone within a two-year period. I was angry at everybody and everything including each of them in turn. Angry for deserting me, leaving me to cope with this void within me, to grieve alone without comfort.The next few weeks were a blur, and I knew that I had hit rock bottom, when one weekend, after taking a weeks’ leave, I drove to Fleurus in Belgium, to drown my grief and sorrows in alcohol, with the thought uppermost in my mind, that I did not care what happened to me. What right had I live!
On the Saturday, my headache was the monster of all headaches but none the less, I reluctantly drove south, with no real idea where I was heading for, but as I couldn’t care less where I was going, or why, I just drove until I saw some limestone cliffs poking out of a wooded area. I drove down a track until I could park below the cliff face. I left the car unlocked and started to climb on the warm grey rock, and the pleasure it gave me as soon as I touched it, ‘stilled my troubled breast’, and I felt at home, despite not being aware of anything other than empty space and none existent time.
Climbing blindly, I ascended a large crack which ended in a blind scoop. I stood and surveyed the ground some distance below. The ‘stilled breast’ was no longer ‘stilled’ but was raging with anger, guilt and self-pity. Why did they have to die – how could they leave me alone like this – what were they thinking.Here I was, 20 years of age, and my four climbing/drinking friends had already departed this life, leaving me bereft and alone. Clearly, all rational thought had suddenly gone walk-about and I was in no mood to recognise logic. As I stood there for goodness how long, the thought came to me, that if I just let go and stepped forwards, I could join them, and all my pain, guilt and anger would evaporate. I would be at peace.
With eyes misted over with tears as I leaned forward, but was startled by a bird of prey that flew in front of me, so close that I felt the disturbed air current on my face as it flew past. My eyes cleared and I realised this was no answer, so carefully and purposefully, climbed back the way I had come.
Back on the ground, I sat and drank a few beers. When I woke at sunrise, I was covered in a heavy dew and snail slime, but I cared little for my appearance, so drank several bottles of lager for breakfast and set off up a crack not caring where it would lead. I remember nothing of the actual climb and came to some semblance of sobriety, when I found myself unable to move on a small ledge. As I perched there alone, I realised there was a putrid smell from somewhere, and was horrified to find that I had vomited over myself as well as having had a bad case of diarrhoea during the night, but had not noticed it earlier.
I climbed back down, sat and cried for what seemed a very long time. I felt ashamed, and angry with myself with the knowledge that I had debased my humanity. I knew I had to do something about my life style as it was not serving anyone’s purpose, not least those friends who I would never climb with again. As I sat there in my own filth, I became disgusted for letting myself get to such a debased state. The tears came in sobbing waves, like a raging winter’s storm. I had humiliated myself and even though I felt totally bereft at the loss of so many good climbing friends, I knew this was no excuse, none what so ever.
After a while of retching, interspersed with racking sobbing, I stood up, took off my clothes, and ran naked into the nearby river to wash away my disgust in the silent current, hoping it would wash away the shame I was feeling.
Once I felt cleansed, I ran back to the car, oblivious to the pain the stony ground caused my bare feet. Got dressed in my spare clothing and returned to where my soiled clothes lay and burnt them. Later, I went for a walk along the base of the cliffs, allowing my thoughts the freedom to go where they wished. After a while, I came to a part of the cliff which had a large rising crack, until it vanished as the cliff face became concave. I knew I had to climb it, if not for me, then for Chalky, Geordie, Pete and Sam. This would be my testament to our friendship.
The moment my fingers touched the grey rock, I felt the energy surge up my arms and through my body. I was alive and guilt had no part to play in the loss of my friends. I had to live for them, to climb for them, they would expect nothing less. Up I went, cat like movements, singing to the tune of the soft summer breeze, feeling every touch of the rock with my fingers and toes. This was what I wanted to do – climb, nothing more but climb alone. This way, I would never again find myself in such a low emotional state of mind nor feel the sadness at the loss of a climbing friend. A new door had opened and I walked through it with open eyes. My life would never be the same.![]()
Frank Grant © 2017
↧
September 1, 2017, 1:18 am
![]()
Twenty five years ago there were some minor differences in what I believe is called 'the climbing scene' from what you would find in the North Wales of today. For example all the inns and hotels, all the eating places had a notice outside the public rooms, 'No nailed boots beyond this point, please', and there were various regulations, now deemed absurd, like putting on some kind of jacket if you were having a meal. But the men and women and the talk were all much the same, with one major difference. There was an immense amount of evening- indeed practically all night, activity. Everyone, but everyone, indulged in some eccentric display of skill or feat of strength. Groups took off at midnight to run round the Snowdon Horseshoe by moonlight; rooms were traversed, and chairs climbed round; loops of rope were climbed through, and wrist grips exchanged; heads were balanced on, and impossible steps were made across unbridgeable fireplaces.
Dead bodies were simulated and lifted, knots were practised, and peculiar athletic challenges were issued and at once accepted. People raced each other over the Glyders in the dark, or found out who could run from Pen-y-Gwryd to Pen-y-Pass and back in the fastest time. Much later, in the early sixties, the Editor of this Journal* was unbeatable at that particular exercise. There were not so many of us, of course. That was the real secret. We all knew each other, were glad to be meeting each other again and always felt in the mood for nonsense. I remember one such week-end of activity with peculiar intensity, largely I think because it created more confused disturbance in a limited space than I would have believed possible, and because it produced a brand new climber of all round excellence from the unlikeliest piece of material, other than myself, I have ever encountered in the mountain world. It all took place at PyG and it centred on a bag of golf clubs.
It was early winter, and half a dozen of us had been walking over Carnedd Llewelyn, enjoying on the return journey a marvellous snow glissade nearly half a mile in length. We were all in high spirits, kicked off our boots in the bar and sat round in stockings waiting our turn for a hot bath and talking the same nonsense you would hear today. There was a little man in a corner who sat watching us and saying nothing. He was wearing (I can see it still) a rather nice suit of dark grey with beautifully polished brown shoes and he had what I think is still called a 'crisp' military moustache. We were all in breeches and anoraks, one or two of us wearing the red stockings now somewhat out of fashion but then signalling that the wearer had made a first ascent of some importance. The little man must have thought that he had wandered into the clowns changing room in a circus. All of a sudden he spoke. 'What's the golf like round here?' he asked.
In those days he might just as well have asked if anyone had a boa constrictor they were not using, and he produced what is still called I think 'a stunned silence'. No such question can ever have been asked before in that place although I have since heard people there talking about fishing, the archaeological interests of the neighbourhood, and whether anyone would care to make up a four at bridge. But in those days if you were not climbing or walking, or preparing to do either, or keeping fit for both, you had no business in that part of the world at all. We all looked at the little man in silence. Then someone said, 'I've heard that there is a golf course at Harlech and I've been told there's something of the sort down in Bangor'. 'No,' the little man said, 'I mean round here. I'm told there's a lot of good golf round here.
Two of my friends are arriving in Capel tomorrow and they've told me to be sure and bring my clubs'. Even in those far off days, five years before Everest, I was pretty old to be in that company at all and I thought perhaps I ought to speak first. I remember so well that as I replied one of our future 'greats' was working his way round the specially strengthened picture rail in the old fashioned bar of those days. He had just passed the cash register and, in accordance with strict custom, had rung up `No Sale' with his stockinged right foot big toe.
You had to do that or your traverse didn't count. 'There's no golf immediately round here,' I began in my fatherly way, 'this is a climbing inn and everyone who stays here, or comes in for a meal or a drink, either climbs or walks.' `I think you are mistaken,' the little man said, 'my friends are very reliable.' We left it at that and I recall that after dinner we all tried climbing round a chair brought in from the kitchen. The little man watched these antics for a bit and then got up to go to bed. 'This place seems like a mad house to me,' he said, quite mildly, as he left the bar. We instantly forgot about him. The following day we all went off to Tremadoc, those admirable 'wet day on Snowdon' cliffs discovered by Dave Thomas flying over them during the War.We got back late, just after the early winter dark, and the little man was sitting in the bar alone. He was a terrifying sight, white as a sheet, filthy dirty, his hands all scratched, a pair of flannel trousers ripped to pieces about his knees. He looked as though he had been run over and, indeed, I thought that was what had happened to him. I asked him if he was all right. 'I think so,' he said, 'but you were quite right yesterday —there is no golf round here. They took me climbing.'![]()
Suddenly there was a disturbance; the little man had begun shouting. 'Damn and blast you all,' he cried, 'every last one of you'. He kicked off a slipper. 'And damn and blast this place and every place like it in the whole wide world.' He stood up in his socks and flung himself at the picture rail, muttering curses all the way round, but never touching the floor. He arrived at the cash register and I expected to see him lash out at it. Instead, with a most dreadful and sinister smile, he looked down over his feet and, with an infinity of care, rang up 'No Sale' with his right foot big toe.He completed the traverse and sat down by his slippers. 'So much for all that blankety stuff,' he said, 'And so much for all of you. Good-bye'. He limped out of the bar. But it's nice to be right sometimes. It's not five months since I last saw that chap, and I see him pretty often as the years go by. He belongs to most of the recognised climbing clubs and organizations. I always say the same thing when we meet, and I said it then. 'How's the golf going,' I asked him, 'Not too good,' he replied as he always does, a man who hasn't touched a club for a quarter of a century, 'but I tell you what, Kevin.That climb on El Capitan they call The Fairway is tremendous. It's miles above my standard now but at least I've seen it, and been on the first pitch and a bit of the second. Talk about hard!' `I don't know about it,' I said, 'but I suppose it's named after one of those big chaps, Nicklaus, Palmer, or Jacklin; one of those'. `Oh them,' he said, stooping to his boots, 'imagine footling around on some golf course when you could be walking about on a hill.' He went off to have a bath. Even his language had improved.![]()
↧
↧
September 8, 2017, 1:11 am
![]()
I first met Ken- as he was then- in Liverpool in the early 70‘s. He was a wild haired, bearded freak- think Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull circa 1972. Fiercely intelligent, opinionated and principled, and like myself, he was tired of city life and together we planned our escape to the promised land of North Wales. By the mid 70‘s Ken had become Cenn and had left the city behind. I would follow two years later after a brief stop-over in Chester. During this period he was travelling extensively in north Africa. Living with aid and charity workers in Niger, Bukina Faso and Mali, and amongst the indigenous people of those desperately poor states. After his brother had tragically died of an epiletic seizure while Cenn was staying in our flat, he gave his entire share of his brother’s estate to Oxfam and Plaid Cymru. Hence his life long commitment to the charity and his voluntary work with them in Africa in the mid 70‘s .
In the early 80‘s. Cenn joined me as a leader/instructor with a North Wales charity group- The Clwyd Outward Group- which took socially disadvantaged youngsters, mainly from urban conurbations like Wrexham, on outdoor activity weekends. For many of these youngsters it would be their first visit to a mountain environment and certainly, their first opportunity to participate in a range of outdoor activities....climbing/abseiling, kayaking, sailing and hillwalking As to be expected, Cenn was a good natured and tolerant figure who related well to our charges.Surprisingly so considering some of the more ‘challenging’ youngsters we had under our wing!
Cenn never married, had a long term relationship or much of a relationship of any description come to that. He remained the eternal bachelor and gave his affection to close friends, my children, cats and dogs! He never learnt to drive but that didn’t stop him travelling. An oddball, eccentric, square peg in a round hole. Someone who would argue black was white and was usually right...it was! A bookish,vegetarian,leftist,nationalist who loved mountains,animals and cheese!......Cenn's gone but as his fellow Scouse poet Brian Patten writes...' 'A man lives for as long as we carry him inside us,for as long as we carry the harvest of his dreams,for as long as we ourselves live,holding memories in common, a man lives.'![]()
Now here’s the weird bit. The idea for this article literally came to me in a dream last night. In my dream I was in the attic looking to see if I could find those wonderful evocative letters that Cenn would send back from Niger and Mali. Colourful, poetic and charming. At first light, I hauled out a step-ladder and pulled myself up through the hatch and began rooting around in boxes amongst the cobwebs and mouse droppings. Just one letter came to hand and it is this letter which I reproduce here, Just as it was written nearly 40 years ago. In another strange twist. As I sifted through old theatre programmes, notebooks and assorted bits of paper deemed of sufficient sentimental value to keep, a poem that Cenn had written for my late son Jamie when he was born in 1978, fell out of a note. Cenn has specified that he wants to be buried in the same cemetery as Jamie...and so I understand, it shall be.
Cenn was a Welsh language learner so if the first paragraph- which is written in Welsh- does not quite read correctly to the native speaker, please accept it in the spirit it was written, from someone who loved Wales to his very core. JA
"Niamey,24 Mei
Annwyl Sion,
Annwyl Theatr Clwyd ac ur annwyl Wyddgrug! Annwyl Iaith ac annwyl Gymdeithas yr Iaith! Annwyl Halcun! Annwyl Jack Nicholson!
Yr eiddoch yn gywir,
Cenn
PS. Dioloch yn fawr i awn am y cerdyn
Annwyl Angiebell,
Sala’am aleik. El kheir ras. As you doubtless know by now, I received your letter, a breath of quasi-Celtic Cestrian air in the heavy Sahelian heat. And today at post restante, a patriotic post card from Sion ap Pleby!
Oh to hear Blood on the Tracks or Desire or Hissing of the Summer Lawns or New Skin for the Old Ceremony or......but things are not so bad. Mark Nieuwark has cassettes of Dylan, Fairport, Beatles, Floyd, Neil Young, James Taylor and a good selection of classical music; and at his house a couple of days ago I found a dog eared ( sorry Fred) copy of Zen and the art of motor cycle maintenance which I hope to beg, steal or borrow before long!
Last weekend, with two companions, one Antipodean and one American, I discovered a cafe which serves big bowls of iced yogurt with crisp buttered bread, for 75 francs CFA, about 15p. That Sunday, my first day’s eating after a two day fast against dysentery, I scoffed a double helping, and ever since have been eating yogurt twice daily, amongst other things. One of the latter is delicious black eye beans and rice,which we buy on the street, all you can eat at 25 francs a time.![]()
We? Don Ada, Australian, arrived 13th from Agadez and Algeria,left 18th for Ouagadougou en route for Tanzania; Dave Walters, American, arrived 14th from Ouagadougou and Ghana, left 17th for Zinder, en route to Cameroon; Roland Witschi, Swiss, arrived 17th from Agadez and Algeria,left 19th for Ouagadouga, en route to Bamako; Pete Remington, English,arrived 22nd from Zinder and North East Nigeria,still around as I write but en route for Agadez, Algeria and home.
I’m doing more reading than anything else except perhaps sweating. I brought Day of the Jackal with me from Gao, where an English fellow-traveller gave it to me. In Hamani’s box of books I’ve found and read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London; Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory; Midpoint, a book of poems by John Updike; and James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain.The Orwell and Updike were interesting, the Greene and Baldwin were both very good indeed. Any other lists I could bore you with?
My last trip to Oullam with the man from Caritas, originally scheduled for last Sunday or Monday, was postponed, perhaps indefinitely; I’ve been hanging around all week waiting to hear from them. Mark, who as Oxfam’s representative here has formal and informal contacts in Mali for the last few days,so communication has been a little difficult,but he came back today,so I should know quite soon whether I’m staying or going and whichever, where.
Doggerel jotted in in-flight movie machine between Paris and Dakar on the 10th April:
Oh Africa, I’m coming home from home
To spend a half year homeless, and to roam
In one vast corner of you, there to seek
What makes my vision strong..my body weak
This evening I went round to Mark’s house and found him preparing to show home movies to a small audience: two Americans and two English people I’d met already, Tessa and Chris. The movies or rather slides, were of Bororo nomads ( a people I love) at Gao in Mali, where I spent a couple of days at the beginning of this month sweltering amongst familiar ghosts (a place I love), and these particular Bororo were from Abala, where I spent a couple of days quite recently communing with unfamiliar ghosts (love). Tell me these loves were not my coffin nails.![]()
Soon, before the rains, I’ll go to Agadez. then perhaps back to Abala. Sometime to Ouallam. Work, or wander. To Ouagadougou, or Cameroon, and back to Niger again. I’m leading a slow, soft life. Past pounces, present purrs, future fawns. Roads stretch from here to everywhere. Happier still hearing you’re all happy.
Love Cenn
Niamey, 25 Journada I.'Cennydd Williams: 1978
↧
September 15, 2017, 4:01 am
Opening Scene: Cima Tosi 10,410ft - highest point in the Brenta Group in Northern Italy.The Players: Six RAF training instructors [1 officer-newest member, this being his first time as an instructor; 4 NCO’s-all established instructors as well as experienced climbers and all-round mountaineers.Disposition: Knackered, tired, cold and weary after gruelling three-week training course with 16 NATO pilots.Salvation: Improved weather, ten-day break before the start of next training course, and we all wanted to go climbing, so drove south and camped at Pietramurta. Following morning, Group leader - Flt. Sergeant ‘Dicky’ Davidson, paired us up, adopting service protocol, of naming the lead climber second. So, when he said: “Robin [the Flying Officer], you climb with Frank”, I knew my place, but as it turned out a few minutes later, my climbing partner did not.
As we walked to the next cliff, he quickly informed me that as he was the Officer and I was not, it was inappropriate for him to be led by me.
Things did not improve when we got to the foot of the cliff and I started to unpack my climbing gear: one old rigid hawser lay rope sling I had acquired earlier, along with my plain white nylon rope which had coloured tape at both ends, and a couple of homemade nylon slings sporting large aircraft nuts with the inside screws ground down, which I (we), used for protection and belays when climbing. They may not have been good looking, but they were effective and they were cheap!
Clearly, he was far from happy with my equipment, and insisted we use his brand-new gear he had recently purchased. But I am a traditionalist and like to stick to my own gear that I know has been tried and tested, so declined his offer which did not go down well at all.
As I was still getting myself kitted up, he tied on to one end of the rope, threw me the other end and told me to tie in when I was ready. Before I could take the cigarette out of my mouth to speak, he moved over to the rock face and started to climb. I stood there in amazement.
Suggestions that he wait until I was tied in and could belay him safely, earned a mumbled reply about not waiting for idiots and ‘time and tide wait for no man’ as he climbed.
My initial thought – yank the rope before he gets too high; untie and walk away; or tie off the rope so he could not move upwards. I chose the last option in addition to lighting up a smoke.
He stopped climbing – started to yell orders – I ignored him – he threatened to charge me – I ignored him – he climbed back down.
Once he was back down on the ground, he started to berate me for my “disgraceful climbing ethics”, and my total lack of respect for his rank.
I took a final puff on my smoke and said with quiet confidence: “When we climb, we are climbers and nothing more and rank does not have a part to play in this activity or any other activity connected with my role as a survival instructor”, which went down like the proverbial lead balloon.
Anyway, an hour later, I had led the first two pitches, (because he said his arms were tired after having to down-climb). We were standing at the belay below the third pitch, when I pointed out to Robin, that I believed this to be the crux pitch: it was long, looked devoid of good hand holds and appeared to offer few places to put in any protection.
As I munched on my first Mars bar of the day, he muttered continuously about me being disrespectful towards him, and that he would be putting me on a charge when we got back to RAF Brüggen. I of course, was busy working out what to do with him for the next few days as unbeknown to him, I was given the task of planning the next few days’ programme!
I asked him if he felt confident doing this third pitch, which may well be the crux, and all I heard was mumbling about him being a good climber and an ex-member of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club.
I made sure he had all the gear he needed: all six ground-out aircraft bolts, some on slings and others on pieces of nylon cord, and my one and only chock on a piece of nylon, and three metal pegs (one flat one being home-made), then I settled back to belay him, ignoring the fact that he started off in a hurry, leaving my peg-hammer behind, because he said it was too heavy and cumbersome.![]()
Eventually, he made it to the base of a scoop where he had no choice but to belay as he was running out of rope.
Once in the scoop, he secured himself to the rock face and shouted: “ok Grant, climb when you're’ ready”. Now it wasn’t his condescending voice that irked me, but the fact that he called me by my surname, something I had never witnessed before on any of the climbing I had done with other RAF personnel, no matter their rank.
I made easy work of the slab and was into the scoop before he could take in all the climbing rope. I stuck a nut into a small crack and belayed myself to it. He demanded to know why I did not clip myself into his belay point, and was unhappy when I said, that I preferred to place my own protection when climbing with someone who I had never climbed with before, and that it was no slight to his own belay technique.
I, of course, ignored his mutterings but reacted immediately when he started to unclip himself. “Hey”, I shouted, “what do you think your’ doing”. His reply notched up my desire for wanting to put him in his place quickly, when he immediately replied, “you mean, what do you think you are doing, Sir”.
I informed him that it was practice for climbers to climb through, so before I gave him the chance of replying, I clipped him back into the belay loop, stood up and gave him the rope leading into my harness for him to belay me. He complied reluctantly.
I set off up and out of the scoop, thrutching my way until I could get hold of a good jug at the top end of the scoop. It was clear that the rock face above, overhung by about ten to fifteen feet some thirty feet above. What was unclear, was what was above this and where, if any, my next belay point would be.
The overhang looked worse than it was. When I got to the start of the first bulge, it required a leap of faith to go for one hand hold, in the hope that there would be another above that for the other hand, which thankfully, there was.
After setting up a good ‘Y’ belay, I shouted for Robin to come on up.
Silence permeated the air. I shouted again. The silence had not gone away. What was wrong with this idiot! His banality was trying my patience when it occurred to me that he was waiting for me to say: “climb when you are ready Robin, Sir”.
He struggled over the bulge shouting repeatedly for a tight rope which I obliged, making sure that when he wanted me to give him some slack to gain his balance once over the lip, his words fell on deaf ears. When he came up to me, I tied him securely into the anchor point in silence and started to get the rope ready to belay him up the next pitch which was a hundred-foot run out across some slabs, entailing a traverse along a horizontal crack, some ten to fifteen feet above our stance.
Clearly, the traverse would provide ample protection but the initial climb above to gain the traverse did not look as obliging. Robin set off up the wall above our stance to gain access to the start of the traverse. As he did so, he shouted back down: “I want a tight rope here Grant but when I get to the traverse, I want you to give me plenty of slack as I will get across it quickly as this is my climbing forte, so pay attention”.
As he set off, I said nothing about the fact that he did not have enough gear to complete the whole route especially the traverse.
I waited until he had climbed with difficulty, some ten to fifteen feet above me to gain access to the traverse, when this fact became very clear to himself. He shouted back down as to what he should do. I suggested either he climb on with little protection and as he felt this was ‘his forte’ he shouldn’t have much difficulty in doing this, or he climb back down to get some of my gear.
He climbed back down grudgingly. He then said his arms were aching and so he ordered me to do it! I was not amused in the slightest.
After a while, he was standing beside me and very unhappy with the next pitch and informed me that he decided I would climb this also. I was happy to do so. Before I had made my mind up whether to go up the face on what appeared to be small infrequent holds, or to reverse a few feet along the traverse and try to go through the small roofs above, Robin threw another remark in my direction: “the route goes up there Grant, but if your’ not up to it, I will have to lead it”. That was it, I had had enough. This was a good a time as any to teach him the meaning of humility.
“Right, up you go then”, was my reply as I tied myself back into the anchor point. After some ten-minutes, he was still struggling to get off the belay position, muttering about the rock being too wet!
Eventually, he got started and was eager to get in his first piece of protection, then a few feet more and another piece of protection. Sweating and panting some ten feet above the belay stance, he put in his third runner and then asked for a tight rope as he needed to take a rest, as his arms were pumped.
I obliged, but offered him no encouragement at all. “Can you see where to go next” he enquired with a quiver in his voice. I remained silent. Some expletives were made from above as he tried to make upwards movement but as he hadn’t asked me to take him off a tight rope, he just fell off. He would, of course, have landed not far above where I was standing at the belay stance, if his protection was in properly, which it wasn’t. Out came the last one he had placed and down he dropped. Out came his second-last and down he dropped even further, and then out popped his first runner just above my head and down he fell again. Fortunately, it was where the cliff face was leaning out so he hung there oscillating unceremoniously some fifteen feet below me.
My tight belay held as I knew it would. He dangled there on the end of the rope over a drop which looked and probably was, just as frightening, especially to him. I tied off the rope so that it would not slip any further and got out a Mars bar and started to eat it slowly.
His demands to be pulled up, fell on deaf ears just as his orders to lower him down to a ledge, twenty-feet below him which would have eased his discomfort. But deaf ears and a Mars bar won the day.
When I had placed the last piece into my mouth, I looked down and suggested he start to climb back up to the belay stance. “But I can’t” came his desperately shaking voice. “Pull me up to the belay”, came his next command, his voice softening a little. Now was the time to be vindictive. What, you thought I had already been so, you must be joking!
Swallowing the last piece, I looked over the edge and said in a condescending voice, “Robin, don’t you mean, please Frank, pull me up to the belay”
“Yes please, Frank” came his quaking voice. Setting up a small pulley system with a back-up system in place, I started to pull on the rope which instantly drew a thousand thanks from a shaking young man, but just when he thought he was going to make the belay stance, I slid off the half hitch I had put in to the pulley system and he fell right back down to where he was a minute before.
The yell could be heard echoing across the Alps and the sight of him clutching frantically at the rock face was food enough to feed my vindictive soul. “Sorry pal” I shouted down, “the rope slipped, I’ll try again”.
When he finally sat, puffing and panting on the belay stance shaking with fear with the odd bit of moisture in his eyes, I gave him my party piece. “Robin, do you want to climb with me or climb with a non-commissioned officer?”
His remark was sweet music to my ears. “I’d like to climb with you Frank and I would appreciate it very much if you could lead the rest of the climb”.![]()
Frank Grant © 2017
↧
September 22, 2017, 1:54 am
![]()
Perhaps at this point I should set the scene for readers who have not already turned over to read of greater things muttering, "Oh no, not another of Sainsbury's dismal failures." Picture then- if it doesn't distress too much- the Wasdale campsite at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning with sufficient low cloud and cold wind to suggest an intelligent retreat to a warm pit followed by a protracted breakfast and an even more intelligent stroll to the welcoming cash register in the bar at Wasdale Head. I stuck my head through the tent flap on just such a morning, dragged on some clothing and headed rapidly in the direction of that central haven for those who have slept on an overlarge ale intake. Already stoves were roaring and health and fresh air fanatics marched briskly about in neat regulation shorts, long woolly socks and Aran sweaters, contrasting with my own regulation Spanish fell boots (no laces), no socks, tattered breeches and aged Helly.
Returning to the tent to find that Jean was still asleep and consequently no brew, I searched for some other member of our group from whom I could scrounge a ready made pot of the life giving liquid. Failing, I resigned myself to separating the stove and some clean pans from the previous night's greasy plates and pots. The next hour- passed in an orgy of tea, biscuits and greasy bacon buttys during which time others of our party emerged and the health and beauty fans strode off into the drizzle. It was during my third brew that I was idly flicking through the guidebook when my eyes lit upon the perfect route and the plot was hatched. It had not escaped my notice that as usual when inclement conditions prevail nobody seemed to have a clear idea of where to go. "I've got just the route for today," I enthused as Bill appeared.
"Traditional stuff, a real mountain day.""Sorry mate, I promised to walk with Heather. today." A pause then, "What is it?" Did I detect a weakening of resolve? "Think about it mate while I see if anyone else is interested. 600 feet and perfect for this weather." Using the same approach elsewhere worked well and in less time than I expected I had gathered five more suckers and when Bill finally cracked the seven of us made a remarkably swift departure in the direction of the lower end of Wasdale and The Screes. Reaching the river bank opposite the water intake building, we rejected the idea of swimming in favour of a rickety traverse across the front of the boathouse. Each hoping that someone would slip into three feet of icy water. Encouraged by shouts of ‘Fall off you Bum!'![]()
The next vertical section, down which coursed the inevitable water, proved even trickier and since the best finishing hold was in the centre of the stream, naturally it took the shortest route via the inside of my sleeve and breeches to join that already in my boot. Reaching easy ground I walked up the Gully and found a belay, satisfied in the knowledge that removal of my runners would cause similar discomfort to whoever was to follow. The guidebook describes this first 100 feet of Great Gully as a scramble so one could be excused for wondering what to expect on the next 60 feet where climbing was actually mentioned. A considerable amount of time and unprintable remarks, some reflecting upon my ancestry, passed before we were all assembled and ready to continue. Bill gave in with surprising speed to my suggestion that he should take over and made short work of a nasty wet corner before disappearing from my view when the Singer, from his position kept me informed of his progress up a short steep section and along a traverse to rejoin the Gully above a waterfall.
Meantime, Dave went past with another rope and a fair degree of knitting began to develop. By the time I had completed this pitch, helped by a useful sideways pull on the rope as I jumped the last few feet of the traverse, the party was strung out over some 200 feet, what with Bill having continued and Niel and Gerry lagging a pitch behind. The following waterslide proved to be just that and although rated as a single 135 foot pitch, we split it into convenient sections as dictated by fear, exhaustion or degree of discomfort that its ascent brought about. All sense of order had vanished by now and I found myself sometimes leading, sometimes following and occasionally not apparently tied to anyone as we swapped rope ends around. In this way we all assembled in the grassy amphitheatre about halfway up the Gully, all except Bill, not a little wet.
In view of his condition he was unanimously elected to lead on. Up to the left for twenty feet, traverse back right twenty feet and he hit difficulties. Vertical grass, no runners and earthy holds - where they existed at all. We began chuckling. "Its not bloody funny," he yelled angrily. "In fact its bloody serious." This was followed by a stream of Yankee invective from our American cousin. Nevertheless he a struggled on and disappeared from view, soon to be followed by the rest. I did see his point though — it was bloody serious if you happened to be leading, since the key move involved swinging down into the gully bed from two holes in the grass on to a foothold near the lip of a twenty foot drop to a very nasty landing.
After this things eased off and a lot of scrambling, a widening of the sky suggested that the end may be in sight. Oh, and how we were mistaken! Once again a narrowing of the sky as the walls closed in to 3 foot wide verticality blocked by a huge d chock stone twenty watery feet up, with a great volume of fluid coursing over it. By the time I arrived Bill and the Bat had already vanished over this, a fact made evident by their rope passing through a heavy tape just level with the lip of the fall. "The Bat led it," Niel remarked as I viewed the greasy verticality with mounting alarm, "and Bill still appears to be dry."
We swapped ropes round yet again and I struggled up a series of nasty bridging moves with all the grace of a dancing Dervish, until I could grab the tape and pull myself through the main flow and stand above the chock. How Gerry, who stands four foot nothing in platform heels would manage I couldn't imagine. In fact she put us all to shame with a swift and polished performance that did not involve the use of the tape. There must be a lesson to learn there somewhere! Just as I began to think it was all finished we arrived by yet more scrambling, at the foot of what turned out to be the final pitch. A series of loose wet steps led up for 30 feet or so to a vertical ten feet sporting the now familiar waterfall. A nearly new peg adorned the right wall about halfway up the steepest section. Bill and the Bat had already ascended and the Singer was on his way. ![]()
I watched, wet, cold and wondering why I was there when I could have been warm dry and drinking. My turn. Up the steps, the rock pushing me to the left when I wanted to go right, an awkward side hold, foot out to the right wall and lunge for the peg. Useless, it was in the wrong position. A couple of dicey bridging moves and a grab for a hold on the right wall, left hand scrambling over the top, a desperate pull, knees on the edge and I crawled to safety to the clicking of Gerry' s camera. Why do these photographic enthusiasts always record the worst performances? Ten minutes later we stripped off our wet gear in the sunshine that had broken through unnoticed in the dank depths of the Gully. Was it worth it? Undoubtedly I would say, though from the dark mutterings around me dissent upon this point could be sensed. As Pete, the Singer, remarked over a pint much later....... "interesting!" Tony Sainsbury : First Published in Climber and Rambler-June 1981 as 'In the Finest Tradition'.Images..Gerry Goldsmith
↧
September 29, 2017, 2:33 am
Pillar Rock
The Cumbrian who,with his brother, gave his name to the Westmorland Cairn on Great Gable—from which point of vantage they considered the finest view in all Lakeland could be obtained—died just 50 years ago. And now, with fitting timing, a cragsman's climb on Dove Crag, Patterdale, one of the steepest cliffs in England, has just been renamed Westmorland's Route in honour of his son—Lieut Colonel Horace Westmorland of Threlkeld.Surely one of the sprightliest septuagenarians in Lakeland- or anywhere else- today. Although Colonel Westmorland —" Rusty" to a host of climbers and skiers all over Britain and in many places abroad—has been climbing steep rocks for 60 years he is still able to tackle some of the harder routes and, only a short time ago, led his party of youngsters up a " very severe " in his beloved Borrowdale.
He would climb every day if he could find the companions; as it is, he has to content himself with three or four days a week in summer, and perhaps only a paltry two or three in winter. Only the mountains count; one can easily imagine him sulking in cities. At 73 years of age, Rusty Westmorland is not only an extremely good rock climber and competent skier, but also manages, with or without conscious effort, to look the part. To many people, unfamiliar with the mountain scene, he must represent exactly their idea of the bold cragsman, bursting with health and determination. The clipped moustache, the erect bearing, the polished boots, and the neat, efficient clothes reflect his military background, while the tanned face, the clear, twinkling eyes, the jaunty Austrian hat, and the springy step suggest the mountaineer. The Mountain Rescue flash on his shoulder—he it was who revived the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team several years ago—is worn for use, not for ornament, and his general neat, well groomed appearance on a climb is in striking contrast to that of the many dirty, bearded youths, clanking with ironmongery, who often decorate the crags today.
The yeomen forbears of Horace Westmorland farmed at Milburn under the shadow of Crossfell—they had taken their name from their native county—but Rusty himself was born at Penrith, just over the Cumberland border, where his father had a leather business. Right from his birth the mountains were in his blood. His father, Tom Westmorland, his uncle Ned and his aunts were scrambling and camping in the Lakeland fells last century long before the joys of steep, remote places had become as commonplace as they are today. One of his aunts—Mary (May) Westmorland — was the second woman to reach the summit of Pillar Rock, on July 24th, 1873, The first having been a Miss A Barker who had achieved the feat just three years earlier. May went up, un-roped, with her brothers Tom and Edward and on the summit, where they found a bottle containing the names of the 10 previous conquerors, they stood to attention and proudly sang God Save the Queen.
Later Tom celebrated the occasion with a poem, A Summer Ramble, which describes the day in detail. A photograph taken at the time shows May to have been a short, sturdy, good looking girl and her brothers to have been most determined looking men, sprouting youthful beards. May wore a smart, close fitting jacket, a short skirt and trousers rather like plus fours, with collar and bow tie and a peculiar hat. Not unlike a sailor's. Her brothers wore the outdoor clothes of the period and heavy shepherds' boots, and all three carried poles at least six feet long. Another memorable day for the Westmorland brothers was when they skated the full length of Ullswater from Pooley Bridge to Patterdale and back to Watermillock, but the day they put their name on the map was a summer afternoon in 1876 when they built the Westmorland Cairn on Great Gable. ![]()
The climb remained a challenge to the boy and 12 years later, as a young man of 24, he succeeded in leading his two cousins in the first ascent of the whole route. And a few days later Horace Westmorland led the same party up the upper part of the route on Dove Crag which has now been renamed Westmorland's Route in acknowledgment of Rusty's contributions to climbing in this, as well as in other, areas. As a boy of 15 young Horace had been taken—again by his father—to the summit of Pillar Rock by way of the easy Slab and Notch route, and exactly 50 years later, in 1951, Col Westmorland achieved his great ambition by making a jubilee ascent of the Rock.
The route chosen on this occasion was the considerably harder North Climb which Rusty, then 65 years of age, led throughout without any difficulty. The event being fittingly celebrated on the summit with a bottle of wine. Since that day, eight years ago, the old warrior, who looks no more than a cheery 60, seems to have been climbing increasingly harder things, to the frequent embarrassment and shame of companions only half his age. And yet, 15 years ago, this same man, after 31 years service in the Canadian Army and half a lifetime of surveying, climbing and skiing in the Rockies and other exciting places, had been invalided home to England, and told to take things easy in his retirement.![]()
↧
↧
'The Madcap Laughs'.Renaissance Man,Ed Drummond being led away by New York cops after scaling the Statue of Liberty in a political protest"Poetry isn't where climbers are at," a climbing publisher said to me recently. When I mentioned this to another climbing friend he quickly got incensed at the statement: "I resent that kind of blanket censorship by the publishers of climbing writing. It's typical of the conservatism of the publishers playing safe. Their assumption that poetry won't interest readers and therefore won't sell, however good it may be, deprives ordinary people of ever seeing the best climbing poems and making up their own minds for themselves. I'm not a poet, so when I see a poem that I like by a friend, say one of David Craig's, I think, 'Now why can't I buy a copy of that in a well produced climbing magazine?' If anybody thinks that the majority of mountaineers aren't in the sport partly for the aesthetics of the experience, they're wrong."
So why is it that Jim Perrin was allowed only two poems amongst almost 700 pages of prose in Mirrors In The Cliffs? Why is the only collection of British mountain poetry, Hamish Brown and Martyn Berry's Speak To The Hills, sadly pleading for finance to even get published? Why do we hardly ever see a poem in the climbing magazines despite the fact that over 300 people sent poems in for Poems Of The Scottish Hills?The aesthetics of the visual arts are accepted as a major selling point of the magazines. High No 16 reproduced on a full
page a superb watercolour painting. Why is the full range of verbal arts not used to explore and celebrate the experience of climbing? And why does poetry make the gentlemen of the climbing press uncharacteristically nervous? "I don't know much about poetry," is a partly understandable Way of avoiding making a judgement about a poem. But academic mystique has never inhibited climbers much before. Fear of the unknown hasn't really prevented climbers from taking a risk, and instinctive assessment of the risk is not beyond climbing editors. A poem has got to work for the climbing editor, given a fair hearing. It hasn't got to work all at one reading. In fact to be worth publishing it ought to be a poem you want to read again. ![]()
The criteria for such an instinctive judgement should be that the poem catches the spirit of the sport in an original way. This is what Michael Roberts refers to in his essay in Mirrors as the difference between 'the poetry of mountains rather than the poetry of mountaineering'.
Poetry set in the mountains is not the same as what is recognisably a climber's poem. Michael Roberts is helpfully clear about the dangers in 'the poetry of the mountains', but makes the point 'the writers of sentimental poetry are seldom climbers'. Poetry that is concrete, direct and accessible, yet catches the experience of the sport is instinctively recognisable by climbing editors. But dare they trust their judgements? If there is not a community of climbing opinion upon which to test their judgements out, as there is for other climbing writing, this is because poetry is caught in a Catch 22 of their own making: nobody can discuss it because it isn't published; it isn't published because nobody talks about it. In fact the reasons for the non-publication of climbing poetry lie deeper than this. They lie at the heart of our present attitude towards the sport and its public image. British climbing writing has hardly emerged from the 'Rock and Ice' era. It was as necessary for the working-class climbers to ignore the climbing establishment in order to make their climbing achievements as it was for the writing of this era to reject the romanticism perhaps typified by Winthrop Young and his culture.
But although poetry was associated with an 'educated' class it was never dead in working-class culture. Patey recognised that it was vigorously alive in the form of songs and his own contributions were characteristically irreverent and anti-romantic. We must make sure that the baby has not been thrown out with the bathwater. But the strengths of the 'Rock and Ice' era were in prose that revealed a terse humour of understatement and an ironic narrative drama. You can see Mike Thompson's writing for example, continuing this ironic tale-telling in the tradition of Patey and Smith. This strength in understatement really represents a fear of risking overstatement, which is associated with poetry.Poetry is regarded by some climbers, perhaps as embarrassing, as an outpouring of emotion, as uncontrolled self-indulgence. Here is the sad paradox of climbers who might regard themselves as a pretty uninhibited lot, adventurous, even wild at heart, being inhibited by poetry because of their inhibitions about an open expression of emotions. The present public image of the sport as physical and athletic, with its concentration on moves and their grading, seems to be a long way away from the pleasures which the modern Don Whillans neatly summarised at Buxton as 'being in this place with these mates'.
Don doesn't write poems as far as I know, but his typical aphorism indicates that the aesthetic and the emotional cannot be far away from any climber's experience. You've only to watch the slow motion title sequence of 'Rock Athlete' to feel that poetry can express even the modern wall-trained climbing experience. So why this inhibiting nervousness about climbing poetry? The key word is 'control'. It is a word which strikes at the heart of the sport. Testing the edge of control is what climbing is about. If there is no risk, no climbing can take place. In between is a matter of degree for each climber, his ability, her experience, the conditions, his companions, her judgement and so on. It is these kinds of experience that poetry is good at exploring —the subtle, intense, and complex experience. Poetry is the form to express the edges of experience and experience at the edge. Poetry is about the control of language under pressure. But fear about being out of control must not inhibit editors from looking at language that faces that challenge.
It is in this direction that American climbing literature is well in advance of the British. I tried to indicate in my review of Mirrors (High No 15) that some writing, most of it American, is exploring the total experience of climbing in visionary expression. The quality of these essays is poetic. I would now go further and say that until British writers accept the poetic our climbing writing will not move forward and develop from the 'Rock and Ice' era of expression. Jim Perrin wrote recently (High No 16) 'Most of the creative energy of mountain writing over the last 10 years is American in origin, and over here we seem almost to disregard it'. I agree that we ought to absorb its influence, but when we do progress it will be in our own way, not that produced by American culture. Jim knows better than anyone that there has also been another trail of British climbing writers resurfacing occasionally alongside the Patey, Smith, Thompson trail, and still apparently of popular interest.
Jim is himself about to publish a biography of the poet and essayist Menlove Edwards whose prose piece 'End of a Climb' is in many ways the most poetic in Mirrors. Bill Murray's two books of Scottish Mountaineering essays, which celebrate the mountains and mountaineering aesthetically, both with feeling and control, remain in print and selling. And the books of that reluctant romantic, Bill Tilman, have recently been republished.
Last year, Poems of the Scottish Hills showed how much poetry there is available set in Scottish mountains alone. Ed Drummond is apparently about to lay down the gauntlet to current British climbing writers by returning from exile with a new collection of poems. And now the answer? The signs are that in our culture the inhibitions about poetry are being broken down by writers of poetry coming out into the open. The proliferation of poetry competitions has revealed that thousands of people are writing poetry. Some of them must be climbers. Local workshop groups are increasing in numbers. Some of their members must be climbers. Ed Drummond taught for a while a 16-plus English course with a strong creative base, which is now widespread in the North of England. My home town, Sheffield, has its own 'A' Level English course in which creative writing is an important element. Some of these students must be present and future climbers. But editors can only reflect from what they receive.
Pat Ament says that in America, poetry is expected to be a regular feature of the climbing magazines, although he fears that since the sixties young climbers have become more interested in gradings. It would be a mistake to believe that the two interests are mutually exclusive. Climbers' poems ought to have a regular and natural place alongside the photographs, narratives, debates and news. And in case you think that the material is not there I can now satisfy at least my irate climbing partner by quoting a couple of poems by David Craig. Of course two poems cannot carry the weight of all my arguments. It so happens that one poem was rejected by a certain magazine editor and the other can be found in Poems Of The Scottish Hills. You may not like either or both of them, but I believe we've got to start taking that risk if you're to have any choice at all in the matter. I'm grateful to David Craig for allowing me to do so with these two poems. So why do I choose these two? The first is an expression of sadness at the death of a friend that is controlled by a technique typical of poetry: the facts are faced through the extended metaphor of Ben Nevis as a great whale.
No self- indulgence, no lapse of control but the small sad details in original poetry. The second poem is a celebration of a climber's physical relationship with the rock, so concentrated that even the folds of the brain come to reflect the rock's strata. But the wit of the last line deflates any pretence to grand achievements or suggestions of mystical `communication with the rock'. Personal vision, in these poems, is rooted in the raw facts of the experience of the sport. ![]()
ONE THOUSAND FEET OF
SHADOW
(For Dave)
The whale got my friend,
The big whale hull down in Loch Linnhe,
The big white whale ghosting under a
frore sky,
High snowfields windless, frozen
shoulders sheer.
The Cam Dearg buttresses reared their
shattered backbones,
Shadows skulked in the lee of the plateau.
My friend turned to see
His mate making a high step,
Their bodies light with relief
After the hours of tensed effort upwards.
He caught a spike in a lace,
Toppled, slid, plummeted off the edge,
Fell into one thousand feet of shadow.
The corrie gaped its whale jaws,
The great gut constricted,
A cold draught came from the depths,
Stiffening rapidly the torn skin,
Coagulating blood, limbs out of tune,
And my friend's face transfixed
In the tearing gasp of his last breath. * * *
INTO ROCK He stretched to fit the rock He crouched and eeled to fit the rock Thinned and flexed to fit the rock Spreadeagled on its burnished sheets Feeling his fingers hone to claws He chimneyed up the gigantic split Sitting in air like an ejecting pilot While the sky out there Blazed at him and the granite ground his spine Then he surfaced from the fissure like a mole
Bearing the chimney's pressure in his hunch Its rising in his springing tendons Its darkness in the gleam behind his eyes
Bearing the face's crystals in his fingerprints Its cracking torsions in his wrists Its drop in the air beneath his arches
It moulded him. He was its casting. His clay was kneaded to its bas-relief. His brain infolded, mimicking its strata. And when he called, and the echo heard its note, It parodied his language.
Essay: Terry Gifford. Poems David Craigfirst published in High-July 1984
↧
October 13, 2017, 2:18 am
High Mountains and Cold Seas. J.R.L. Anderson. 416 pagesTriumph and Tribulation. H.W. Tilman. 200 pages..
Published by Lodestar Books and Vertebrate Publishing, in paperback format.
£12 each title.‘I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees......’ Tennyson (Ulysses)
These two volumes are the final ones in a publishing endeavour that commenced in September 2015, with the intention, that for the first time since their original appearance of all the fifteen books by Bill Tilman, to be reprinted as single volumes. The programme has been strictly adhered to with one of the seven mountain exploration books appearing alongside the eight sailing ones each quarter for the last two years, with the final effort being the two books covered by this review. A foreword and afterword appears in the first of these by two people who knew Tilman, sailed with him and kept in touch until his fateful last voyage in 1977.
‘High Mountains and Cold Seas’, originally published by Victor Gollancz in 1980 is a thoroughly researched authorised biography of Tilman by John Anderson, a long time Guardian employee , but also with a background as a poet, writer of fiction and non-fiction, an adventurer and sailing enthusiast who unfortunately died in 1981. It is interesting to note here that a second biography of Tilman, ‘The Last Hero’ appeared in 1995, by Tim Madge who has written a foreword to this reprint of the Anderson book. Having read reviews of these two biographies, it is by common consent that whilst they both adequately cover Tilman’s impressive life story, they somehow leave the reader to ruminate about what kept him adventuring into advanced old age, and what really did motivate him?
The first of the two books under review, describes three voyages to northern destinations, the number one a successful circumnavigation of Spitzbergen, the other two including the final one in his own boat, being to Greenland. The leitmotif of Tilman’s voyages was to sail to a challenging destination, with the possibility of some mountain exploration once this had been reached. This did not always prove to be possible; for instance on some of his Greenland journeys thwarted by pack ice it proved too difficult to land and explore the proposed glaciers and or peaks, on others such as the trip to Baffin Island or the one to Patagonia, mountains were climbed and the ice cap successfully traversed. However his final journey to East Greenland at the age of 78, ended in difficulties both with his crew, and damage to his boat Baroque in icy conditions necessitating him to seek harbour in Iceland, and eventually to leave this behind and return to the UK. So the title of this fifteenth volume, ‘Triumph and Tribulation’ is apposite and though the first part of this work sparks with the usual to be expected Tilman dry wit and measured understatement, I found the last sections lacking in this and a sad end to a series of books, without equal in these qualities within my own reading of mountain literature. I had not previously read the Anderson biography and this did inform about a life perhaps without a comparison in the history of British mountaineering. This work provides many avenues to follow in the search for the real Tilman; a privileged upbringing with a rich family background, the father a Liverpool sugar merchant , a sister Adeline who was in his own words ‘His Rock’ who he corresponded with wherever life and travels took him. Public school, at Berkhamsted with an outdoorsy headmaster; C.H. Greene father to Graham the novelist, Sir Hugh Carleton who became head of the BBC, and Dr Raymond who was a member of the successful Frank Smythe Expedition to Kamet (25,447ft) in 1931. All had been pupils at his school including Smythe. Tilman should have gone to University, but the First War intervened and at 17 years of age he joined the Army and after training he was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery as a Second Lieutenant. Within a few months in 1916 he was in service on the western front in the Battle of the Somme, where he was wounded, but quickly returned to the action. The following year he was not so lucky, he was badly wounded and was evacuated back to England for treatment, but not before he had won a Military Cross for his bravery. Recovering he returned to the front and was at the battles of Ypres and Passchendale, earning a bar to his MC and being promoted to Lieutenant.
All of this is truly gob smacking, for how he survived is astonishing, most of his fellow subalterns did not; life expectancy and the death rate amongst them was on average a six week one. It is a good job however that for most of us our teenage letters are consigned to the waste bins, for Tilman’s did not and his letters home were preserved, and at that stage of his life he had not become the wise old cynic of future years, and are full of jolly this, and jolly that! But just imagine an 18 year old, in charge of older none commissioned officers, and other ranks in an almost without historical parallel at that date, amongst the horrific muddy killing fields. It must have been character forming and might explain Tilman’s later enigmatic way of presenting himself. ![]()
Over the next decade, leading up to the second world-war, he and Shipton revolutionised how climbers approached remote mountain objectives by developing an economical lightweight approach, starting with ascents on Mount Kenya, including the first traverse of the mountain, followed by other African objectives including a successful visit to the Ruwenzori Mountains of Uganda. Initially Tilman was the novice, and learned much from his younger companion who quickly came to realise how tough and hardy his older rope mate really was, physically not a tall man, of below average height, but blessed with a powerful, squat physique. At the time of their first meeting Shipton had been climbing since his later teenage years, and already had some alpine experience and had previously summited Mount Kenya.
In 1932 Tilman was in the UK at Easter for family reasons, but managed to get away to North Wales and the Lake District to do some rock climbing. Unfortunately he was involved in a serious accident on Dow Crag, when climbing in a party of three, moving roped together near the summit, the third member of their party Vera Brown slipped and pulled Tilman off and though the leader John Brogden managed to hold them both, without a belay he could not do this for long and eventually he too was dragged down. Brogden died before he could be rescued and both Tilman and Brown were unconscious from their falls. Tilman came round and though injured crawled down to Coniston to raise the alarm, taking four hours to do this. The rescue party found Miss Brown still alive and she later recovered, but Tilman who had injured his back was advised by Doctor’s he would never be able to climb again. However after careful nursing, and building up his stamina once more, almost having to learn to walk upright again, he took off to the Alps on his own and made a string of voie normal ascents in first the Dauphine before moving on to the Mont Blanc range, to bag a few more climbing with a guide.
Returning to Kenya he became caught up in gold fever, which had then recently been discovered in several sites around the country. Staking a claim he tried his hand at finding this lucrative mineral, but without much success. He took off and climbed Kilimanjaro on his own, but then decided at his father’s failing health and other worries to sell up his land holdings and return to the UK. This he did by a remarkable solo cycle ride, travelling from the East to the West Coast of Africa and then a ship home.
The years leading up to the Second World War were to be his most memorable within the fields of mountain exploration, commencing by accompanying Shipton in 1934 for a first visit to the Himalaya, and a Nanda Devi reconnaissance expedition. During which they developed their lightweight approach to such undertakings. In 1935 he was a member of an Everest reconnaissance party, unfortunately succumbing to altitude sickness, leaving him to believe that he had an altitude ceiling around 20,000ft. But this was to be dispelled, when the following year he returned to the Indian Himalaya, and he successfully climbed Nanda Devi (25,643ft) with Odell, the highest peak to be ascended prior to the 1950 French success on Annapurna. His book about this ‘Ascent’, was by the standards of the day a best seller, and was to be the first of seven such volumes based on his experiences whilst climbing and travelling in the Himalaya and other remote mountain areas. In 1952 he was to receive an Honorary Degree in Literature from the University of St Andrews.![]()
He was promoted to Captain, and his experiences in this conflict read like a Boy’s Own Paper outing, he was at the evacuation of Dunkirk, took part in the North African campaign as a battery commander in the 8th Army, but then by ‘fiddling’ his papers whilst acting as commander of his regiment, he was recruited into the special service, by which time he had been promoted to Major, and he was then parachuted into Albania in 1943 to act as a liaison officer with the Partisans. It is interesting to note here that Kim Philby, the spy within MI6 acting for the Kremlin, was sending to Russia details of all the special agents being dropped into Albania at that time, but Tilman was to find that his most effective fighters were the members of the Communist groups. In 1944-5 he was dropped into the southern Dolomites where he took part in bloody fighting along with members of the Italian resistance against the German forces who had occupied the area; and subsequently moving north he was involved in the action taking place around the city of Belluno. ![]()
1946 started inauspiciously for him, when he fractured an arm in a climbing accident on Ben Nevis, where much to his chagrin he was helped off the mountain by a party of Boy Scouts! But he then rose above this with a visit to the Swiss Alps and the following year by taking part in an attempt to climb Rakaposhi (25,550ft) as a member of a Swiss Expedition, post which he visited Shipton who was by that date The British Consul in Kashgar. Together they attempted to climb Muztagh Ata (24,388ft), being forced to retreat by the onset of bad weather when success had seemed assured from a high camp on the mountain. Subsequently he visited Afghanistan’s Wakhan corridor where he was arrested on a charge of spying, but on his release he completed a journey back into what was to become Pakistan later that year, and then home to Bod Owen in Barmouth to live with his sister, which was to be his home base for the rest of his life.
In 1948 he was back in Central Asia travelling from China to Chitral, and on the journey he broke off to attempt two virgin peaks with Shipton, Bogdo Ola and Chakar Aghil and in 1949 at the opening of Nepal he spent four months exploring the Langtang, Ganesh and Jugal Himalaya. In 1950 post an attempt on Annapurna 1V, he along with the American Charles Houston managed a view into the then, not attempted Western Cwm southern route of Everest from off the lower slopes of Pumori. This is the route now known as the ‘Yak Route’ by the Sherpas and by which the mountain was first climbed in 1953. It was to be a real regret of Tilman’s that he had formed such a negative view of this approach, having warned that it appeared from their restricted view point, a very dangerous and forbidding prospect. The 1950 Journey was to be Tilman’s final Himalayan outing, having found that climbing at high altitude was becoming too much for him, as he moved into his fifth decade. And so typical of his adventurous spirit, in seeking a new and equally demanding activity as Himalayan exploration, he took to sailing, but not in a dinghy around his local estuary, but by buying an ancient Bristol Pilot Cutter which he named Mischief.
For a period of 22 years Tilman sailed to mountainous areas, during which time period he twice needed to replace his boats, on each occasion with another Pilot Cutter. Mischief was lost when she struck a lone rock pinnacle off Jan Mayen land, and Sea Breeze sank after running aground on the ledge of an ice berg in Greenland waters. By good management nobody was injured or lost in these mishaps. Baroque his final craft served for 5 Arctic voyages by which time its skipper was 79. Tilman became an outstanding navigator, and his methods relied on much the same methods as the pioneer sailors such as Cook had used. He managed over 140 thousand miles of sailing to pre-Antarctic and Arctic destinations, and always his navigation proved faultless and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation.
Not all was sweet reason and light however, and as he got older it seemed harder from him to recruit a crew. Often he had to take whoever applied; mostly young men with little or no seamanship experience. His journeys were often more exacting in time spent than would be needed for a Himalayan expedition. The first such in 1955 to Patagonia lasted for 12 months and involved over 20,000 miles of sailing, and one of his last, in 1974 to Spitzbergen included 7000 miles of travelling and took four months to complete. His biographer Anderson wrote a book in 1970, the Ulysses Factor. I well remember the discussions that this engendered, it reflected much on the nature of a man like Tilman driven to explore, and one of the Chapters was dedicated to his life and times.
That Tilman was a special example of a man driven to explore is not in question, however he was fortunate to have been born into a life of privilege. Unlike the majority of the people on this planet, he never had to worry about his finances, and was able to buy three boats, kit them out and provide the money to undertake his sea voyaging and earlier his own travels in the Himalaya. Although for the participation in his two Everest expeditions all his expenses were covered, he did after the 1938 attempt which he had led consider financing a further lightweight attempt himself, in order to do away with what he considered the tiresome business of the preliminary organisation, and the tie in to the press and media.![]()
↧
October 20, 2017, 1:23 am
There are occasions when a single scene, or the smell of an atmosphere, are worth a thousand words. A sentiment which has been better expressed no doubt, but it captures the experience of the British Mountaineering Council’s AGM of 2017. Here at last was the centrepiece of the recent attempt by some disgruntled members of Britain’s mountaineering fraternity to force a change of direction, or even unseat some of the key staff – a denouement which was always wildly optimistic, or outrageously presumptuous, depending on your point of view. (In the event the President resigned, but none of the paid executives.)
Prior to that day, the passage of time exacerbated by my tendency to stay out of touch, I hadn’t realised how much the game has changed – and how! My overwhelming impression, reinforced by the predictable debate which swallowed up the hours, was of two groups who were now so distinct as to make difficult even a meaningful conversation. On one side the troublemakers – ageing to a man (and it was men), dressed in the scruffy attire of the traditionalist or else with the elegance of a well-heeled gentleman at a Swiss ski resort (which may well be where Bob Pettigrew, leader of the troublemakers, had lately been).On the other side the young and on-board - and the BMC staff themselves, some dressed, I suppose perfectly reasonably though can’t help finding it uncomfortable, in matching BMC emblazoned T-shirts. And then the suits, those composing the BMC governing body, sitting in some sort of command on the dais. This being climbing they weren’t actually in suits, but were still somehow anonymous, indicative of a group whose role is to run an organisation rather than to proclaim a creed. As the day unfolded – a glorious summer day in north Wales, so all present must have wished they had been outside rather than crammed cheek-by-jowl into a lecture theatre – I wondered whether the AGM of a multinational might be rather like this, allowing for differences of scale and glamour – Bob Dudley, say, the CEO of BP, defending his multimillion pound salary against the anger of shareholders and a sagging share price, but carrying the day by stonewalling.
I came to reluctantly admit, but never admire, the professionalism of the suits. The CEOs of all sports council sponsored bodies probably meet together at conferences, whether it be climbing, cycling or tiddlywinks: and the experienced teach the new boys how to deflect criticism. Stonewalling is the secret, and it’s the part which depresses me most rather than the difference in attitude itself. As the meeting grinds to its inevitable end the troublemakers have opened their hearts; their views are prejudiced, partial and, this being the old guard, hopelessly out of date; but at least you know where you are. The suits remain mum through it all and stare stolidly out from the platform. If only one of them was to stand up and say: “look, we know exactly what you’re saying, but climbing has moved on and so has the BMC. If you don’t like it, tough. You’re all old and will soon be dead anyway, so this whole discussion is a tedious waste of time. Meanwhile, if you really want to change things come and do some voluntary work for the organisation instead of carping from the sidelines.”
This last criticism has some force. It is hard to find amongst the troublemakers anyone who is intimately involved in the BMC matters of today. And as one of their eminent supporters said to me at the meeting, organisations must take who they can get. If the traditionalists moan that the governing body is composed of nobodies, whose credentials as mountaineers are minor (with the notable exception of the CEO himself) – well, that is because none of the distinguished are prepared to give up their time. Or have already done their bit. And no-one could fail to notice – could they? -just how distinguished most of the troublemakers at that meeting were. Plenty of ex-Presidents and vice Presidents of the BMC itself and of the alpine club. And then in his address Bob Pettigrew unveiled his master stroke - the fact that Joe Brown himself had signed up to the motion of censure.Joe Brown having in British climbing circles the sort of standing Attenborough, say, has in nature and conservation, I thought his inclusion, together with the general standing of Bob’s supporters, would have a decisive effect , if not on the suits then on the youngsters. How wrong one can be. Barely a ripple of interest disturbed Bob’s peroration. Apparently this is normal – and who’s to say it’s not healthy too. In Germany and Italy the young admire Messner and Bonatti but are not, I’m told, prepared to be lectured to, even by them.They admire what the old have done in their time, but times have moved on - that endless and inescapable conclusion.
Of course, a review of BMC governance and its priorities is underway, under the august chairmanship of a retired judge. No one can seriously doubt that this would never have happened without the stirrings of the troublemakers – Bob Pettigrew, Dennis Gray, Doug Scott, and many others. Surely they deserve credit for this from all sides of the spectrum of opinion. But it is hard to believe such a review will make much difference. The BMC under Dennis is a body for which I feel nostalgia, but things can never be returned to that. Doug talks about the BMC being returned to its members; but that cannot happen in the way he envisages. The members are too busy doing other things, and the organisation too big. It takes considerable money from the Sports Council and must dance to the government’s tune.![]()
I might do better if I made more effort to keep in touch. I might recognise more names if I read Summit magazine or the online newsletter with greater determination. Unfortunately, I find that hard to do. “Summit” is hardly Ken Wilson’s “Mountain,” admittedly a superlative production. As for the newsletter, I have had reluctance ever since the issue which began, under the CEOs byline, with the immortal phrase “It is now spring, and time to think about getting outside.” The only way to make sense of this is to remember that I am no longer the BMC’s target audience.At least, I hope not. Some would see such platitudes as just further evidence of the inexorable infantilisation of the British public. But however you view it, I find I can’t read it. And if one doesn’t read the bumpf one is in peril of pontificating from a position of increasing ignorance. And curiously, the more ignorant, the easier it is to pronounce. It is a danger for all well-meaning troublemakers, everywhere. Personally I find myself in the invidious position of the late Leo Cooper, husband of Jilly, Queen of the gold-plated bonkbuster. Asked in an interview if he had ever read any of his wife’s novels, he replied: “I tried to once. But I had to give up. It was making me ill.”
Partway through day I spied one of the old brigade whom I hadn’t seen for many years. As a mountaineering journalist he was quite properly keeping himself above the fray, signing up neither with the troublemakers nor with the suits. I was surprised to see him there, imagining his appetite for such events about as weak as my own, and asked him why he had come. “To witness the death of British mountaineering” was his reply. “I wouldn’t want to miss that.”
This sounded a bit melodramatic even for me. But if he meant, as I think he did, the institutional death, then it’s not so far fetched. That meeting was, if not the last gasp, arguably the last occasion on which the old school would make it’s position felt in such numbers or with such passion. Whether you like it or you don’t, the way British mountaineering is administered, the way it is perceived, it’s public ethoc, have changed. And there is no way back.
But public ethos is one thing, private is another. I take mountaineering to be essentially an amusement. If it is an experience that can on some occasions have profound effects on the individual, it is still a pastime. If it has value to the individual, then it is has no very great social significance. Those who claim, in moments of enthusiasm, that it is “a way of life” grossly overstate their case. In my youth I certainly thought of climbing as “special”, quite different – and superior –to any mere sport, and this can still be the case. But for many, climbing these days is simply one of a suite of outdoor activities – a climb today, ski-ing tomorrow, a little cycling on Wednesday perhaps. Claiming for it a profound spiritual or philosophical significance begins to look rather thin.
And I can’t see how to define the right and the wrong way to practice it. In decrying modern trends the troublemakers are not stating an objective position but a personal preference, based in all likelihood on the way things were in their own formative years. We can say, I think, that the BMC is fundamentally different to the way it used to be, say, 40 years ago, and we can be sure that it will change still more. We may say that we don’t like this; but we cannot say that it is wrong. For myself, I expect I don’t like it because it is not the BMC of the 1970s, and that was my formative time.
And it is only an institution. Not only that, it is an institution one can choose to ignore. We do not live in a time in which you must have certain qualifications before you can jump on a plane and climb in the Himalaya. On driving into Capel Curig we do not encounter a road block and a leather-coated apparachnik who tells us not to proceed unless we have a BMC certificate of competence. I have no difficulty imagining a Britain in which these things are fact, but I cannot see it happening in the foreseeable future – and by that I mean within the lifetime of anyone likely to read this article.
On the contrary, we are free. We are free to leave the BMC, and proceed ever further into ignorance of contemporary trends. Whether the BMC is, or should be, a governing body or a representative body, and a thousand other trying matters can, if you so wish, be forgotten. Anyone in Britain can step off the road and begin a mountain adventure and no one is even going to try and stop them. Involvement in mountaineering mores, its administration, its social life, are voluntary. Anyone who finds contemporary forms too much to take is free to step away.![]()
Phil Bartlett:September 2017.
↧
