October 27, 2017, 1:08 am
The author (left), John Proom, Iain Robertson and another, JMCS Glencoe bus Meet, 1957.Image RNCMy first acquaintance with mountains grew from flight from the dullness of weekends at home, especially Sundays, and fed on the romance of exploring unvisited crags and finding a place in a small history. I began with camping/hill-walking trips with friends in the Scouts, then learned to climb rocks on Craigie Barns, the little hill above Dunkeld, and soon joined the local mountaineering club in Perth. This functioned through day meets mostly. A Sunday morning bus collected us from points around town, took us to the mountains, and returned us in the late evening. Our far point on these excursions was Glencoe. As petrol rationing eased, and cars could be afforded, we added weekend outings to Derry Lodge in the Cairngorms and to the SMC Hut on Ben Nevis. In the school holidays I was able to reach Arran and Skye. I recall a week in Glenbrittle Lodge there in 1960 for 6 guineas all found. The publications of the SMC, and W.H. Murray’s Mountaineering in Scotland and Undiscovered Scotland defined the world I sought to master, and taught me how to behave in it.
After a few years of activity, I knew our mountains tolerably well, summer and winter, and loved them all. In a very small space, we found a great range of types of rock to climb, and mountain forms of all sorts, book-ended by the prickly Skye peaks and the rolling Grampian hills.I felt a strong sense of ownership – a common feeling among mountaineers. It has its drawbacks. We find it difficult to tolerate others who presume to own mountains. There is always some new enemy of beauty, solitude and free movement: deer-stalking, crop forestry, hydro-electric plants, ski facilities, and now giant pylons, electric fencing, and wind-farming. How dare these ignorant Barbarian users of mountains, animated by greed rather than love, intrude and despoil!
But if you take your place in this history, you are soon drawn in to the 'politics of the environment', as Malcolm Slesser put it. I passed my 40s and 50s in Committees, Councils and Trusts, and began to see the mountaineer in a different light – the user who takes the greatest pleasure from our hills, but who pays the least for the privilege; the user who demands free access, free carparks, free footpaths and bridges, yet deplores any financial easement granted to commercial use of mountains; the user who inveighs against wind-farms, but who built the first mountain wind-turbine at 700 metres in the bosom of Ben Nevis; the user who deplores the ugliness of other mountain uses, but who – in the recesses of his garish clothing – carries a phone that defaces hilltops with masts, and a GPS navigator that pollutes the skies with satellites.
Although my perception shifted during those years, so did mountaineering. There has been a loss of virtue. We were once an elite, which embraced Percy Unna's doctrine – 'the mountains shall not be made easier or safer to climb', which preached and practised self-reliance, and accepted the price of long approaches, river-drownings and deaths from hypothermia. We are now a mob, and the mob counts life as sacred, demands deliverance, and expects to pay no price, expect perhaps the price of a Guide who will ensure our safety, and carry our luggage up the hill.
Much has changed since I started climbing mountains, but the mountains are more or less the same, and the principles that regulate acquaintance with them haven’t changed unduly: boots, anorak, map, and compass work as just as well today as they did sixty years ago. The climbers – increasingly pagan, selfish, and hypocritical – still like to hear the 121st Psalm at their funerals. They get something from the hills that other parts of their life fail to provide. For me, and for thousands of others, our regular pilgrimages to the hills remind us that there are some things that don’t change, and that shared hardship and dependence on others for company and assistance still have a place in a world dominated by easy comfort and independent living. ![]()
Robin N Campbell: 2017First Published in The Geographer
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November 4, 2017, 2:20 am
Lakeland Fells: Delmar Harmood Banner-The Lakes Trust
The Climber
Climbing mountains was climbing
himself. From the summit
he could look down and see below
the problems he had left behind
Thoughts were like flowers on
the ledges, high up and far out,
the best needing to be plucked
dangerously and smelling of courage.
At night there was this mountain
above him, dark as the cave
of sleep he would enter and emerge
from tomorrow to resume his climbing.
R S Thomas
William Blake spoke of spots of time; those fleeting moments in life when one escapes the fetters of ‘mind forged manacles’ to express and experience humanity in its complete wonder; to be alive.
Unusually this was something which Blake had in common with Wordsworth and the Romantics. Where their paths split, where they went their separate ways, was with regards to their understanding of the point of it all. Where they differed so radically was on process and purpose : on how one gets to the point, who could get there and, in the end, what is the point?
The ‘point’ for Wordsworth was precisely that; to reach a place, far removed from the humdrum of daily life. A place where one could see all, and put things into perspective. The preserve of the ‘cultured elite’; of those who had the time, money and temperament to undertake the arduous process of inner reflection and personal betterment. To be ‘good enough’ to view and order the world from an elevated position of superiority.
In sharp contrast, for Blake achievement and identity was never about the individual, nor rooted in personal introspection; it had little to do with getting away from it all. No, for him, to be human was a much more expansive process. For Blake personal identity could only be expressed in terms of communal solidarity and action. That is, the extent to which we can only fully understand ourselves through shared purpose, collective appreciation and communal experience. How it is that we can only truly be, through, and with others. Ultimately, for Blake it is not about escape but about engagement.
From what I know of R S Thomas I strongly suspect that his sympathies were much closer to those of Blake than Wordsworth.![]()
By happy coincidence the day I received The Climber from a friend, I bumped into the re-printed article by Terry Gifford highlighting how narrow thinking by editors has squeezed the space for poetry within climbing literature. What is on offer here is less about poetry in climbing, but more about the poetics of climbing; the words we use to describe our experience, what this may say about how we make meaning out of climbing, what it includes and what it excludes. It is an attempt to develop Gifford’s proposition by exploring the inter-relationship between blinkered editors and a wider popular consciousness which I fear is constricted by its own vocabulary.
Back in 1984, Terry Gifford wondered ‘how far British climbing writing has emerged from the Rock and Ice era’. His question is as pertinent as ever and the poem by R S Thomas’s helps us address the question. I think that the poem highlights tensions and contradictions within language, forms of thinking and visualisation which still restrict our view of climbing. If we look carefully we can see how Thomas’s language is both beautifully evocative and yet slightly constricted within the confines of romantic language and sensibility. It is only at the summit where the experience is complete, the impression of escape and how insight is derived from courage in the face of danger.
This isn’t to say that these sentiments and evocations are invalid or of less worth, but simply to put them in context. The context of Blake, of what he anticipated would grow into commodity and universal empire. A restricted way of seeing; a way of being built on the muscular ideals of personal achievement, fortitude and conquest; of being the best – the perfect specimen. The key word here is restricted, not right or wrong. Blake simply recognised that this way of being was just that; one way; not, the way.
What strikes me most of all in this is that while climbing continually portrays itself as a counter culture of outsiders, it expresses itself overwhelmingly within the mainstream idiom. We may actually ‘talk’ more like the ‘insiders’ we often scoff. Whilst it is easy to track the extent to which the practice of climbing has escaped the constrictions of polite society and the amateur, it is less clear on how far our talking and writing has progressed. Rock and Ice prised open the doors of the Alpine Club many years ago, quite literally changing the face of climbing, opening it up, making it more democratic in the sense of its ‘membership’. But the extent to which our chatter both then, and since, has escaped the confines of mainstream constructs is less certain. I personally detect a strong continuity of romantic sentiment which both feeds and feeds into a wider set of climbing constructs which are perhaps not as counter as we imagine.
To start with, whilst Rock and Ice clearly pushed the boundaries in terms of who could climb, ‘talk’ about climbing remained firmly rooted in male white tropes, when men were men; rites of passage had to earned the hard way and apparently nobody took themselves too seriously. Later, whilst this hard edge of masculinity soften and more athletic forms of practice were celebrated, the vein of hardness remained as core stratum. Indeed it has continued to be a rich seam within the literature, often expressed as nostalgia for those times of hard training, hard climbing, hard partying and hard womanising. On top of this, familiar romantic tropes such as the savage beauty of nature, trial by ordeal and courage in the face of overwhelming odds have provided the scaffolding for much of the spoken and written word. To me this remains as strong today as it ever was. For sure the language has softened, but the underlying sentiments remain present and remain visible within our current self-preoccupation with process and the journey. Just to give one current example. I couldn’t help but notice the latest ‘big number’ headline on UKC recently - “E10 7a” (UKC 11/Oct). Reading the associated article, I was struck by what I interpreted as reticence : ‘for those interested in the numbers’. Perhaps a healthy ambivalence with regards to a perceived pressure to reduce a long and complex effort into a number; unease at the way in which numbers make good headlines in the same way that points make prizes. The climbing media and its editors are not totally responsible for this either. We can’t blame them for everything that is spoken and written.
Clearly there is much talk and many perspectives on climbing, but I think it is reasonable to suggest that one thing all these different conversations have in common is an insistence on climbing as counter culture. But I am left wondering how counter we really are? If we look carefully at our language then we see that we may be part of a counter culture which is almost wholly dependent on the language of the mainstream to articulate and describe itself. No wonder there isn’t any space for poetry.
Responsibility for where we are and where we go as a community of climbers rests on the shoulders of both the residents and those who purport to speak on our behalf. In this context I think it is great that the other Climber is seeking to add depth of analysis and breadth of coverage into its new format. I also chuckled this week to see that, characteristically, UKC appears to have risen to the challenge by re-defining “ESSAY” as no more than 3 paragraphs (UKC Oct 12 ESSAY: Why do Climbing & Mountaineering attract Outsiders?) . But it is easy to mock this lazy thinking. We should all think about our own language and how we can contribute to developing a more expansive and inclusive vision of climbing. ![]()
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November 10, 2017, 1:13 am
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John Burns was a name that I was familiar with without knowing much about him. I’d seen the name crop up in the Twittersphere and on social media platforms without having much of a clue what his bag was so to speak. I knew he was based in Scotland so imagined a rugged Highlander who gained his spurs hacking up remote cliffs with a Slater's hammer and home made crampons. A smouldering tab hanging from gritted teeth framed within an ice crusted beard. Turns out that the author and I have more in common than I thought. A fellow Merseysider-albeit from the wrong side of the river- of a similar vintage and whose early footsteps into the great outdoors chimed with my own. The ill fitting clothing from Army and Navy suppliers, Boots guaranteed to inflict maximum pain . Tents which offered as much protection from the elements as Geisha’s bamboo umbrella.
And then there were the adventures.Those triumphs of hope over experience. Biting off more than you can chew and putting yourself and your unfortunate partner into situations where just staying alive becomes the ultimate aim and any thoughts of a simple fun day out spirals into chaos. But somehow, for most of us, we survived and lived to tell the tale, and it’s those triumphs and near tragedies which underpin The Last Hillwalker.
As you would expect, the early chapters describe how a gauche schoolboy slowly found his way into the world of mountain activities. The secondary school fellwalking and hosteling trips where in contrast to the stultifying restrictions and limitations placed on youth outdoor activities today by a zealous Nanny State, allowed youngsters an incredible amount of freedom and leeway. Hard to imagine today, a geography teacher propping up the bar while his charges set off alone and with limited experience on a lengthy mountain excursion that finishes in the dark!
In the intervening years since the freedom enjoyed by youngsters in the 1970‘s, outdoor education has either disappeared completely as cash strapped LEA’s sell off their mountain centres, or is so tightly managed and controlled by organisations who live in constant fear of litigation, as to make the experience an outdoor equivalent to painting by numbers.
But back to the book; the experience gained through these school excursions gave the author the confidence to tackle his first big outdoor challenge. The long distance Pennine Way which in those days really was a journey into hell! The cloying peat mud that could suck a divers boot off a misplaced foot, the seemingly endless rain, the miserable walker unfriendly villages that in contrast to today, treated scruffy young walkers as potential criminals.“ Mrs Pennyhassett... Call the police! ’.
Successfully completing the 280 mile route as a teenager in the 70‘s was truly a right of passage which announced that the author had arrived as a serious mountain man!
The freedom enjoyed by those who took their first mountain steps in the 1970‘s inevitably developed a ‘give it a go’ mentality, and for those like the author, fortunate enough to go to University, this attitude allied to the opportunities presented through Uni mountaineering clubs opened up new horizons. Offering the opportunity to develop new skills in new vistas like the Alps or Scottish mountains where the joys of rock and ice climbing were quickly learnt and exploited to the full.
Throughout the early chapters, the author counter balances his growing passion for the great outdoors with the social and political events at home. The 70‘s were after all a time of great upheaval in the UK with strikes, collapsing governments, three day weeks, the developing conflict in Ireland and mass unemployment. It is against this sombre backdrop that the author found escape in the hills. With Uni behind him he entered the Social Work profession and left Merseyside behind to further his career in Leicester before the opportunity arose for him to high tail it out of England and take a position in Inverness.
With the great Scottish ranges on his doorstep, it provided a wonderful opportunity to develop his winter skills and experiences. It was no surprise then that the author should eventually join a Highland mountain rescue team. Balancing a career with the social services with a mountain life is no mean feat and it was no surprise that as we enter a new century, the middle aged activist eventually steps off the gas. As relationships, family commitments and a peeling away of old comrades takes place. Something the single, childless activist cannot appreciate. Just how difficult it is to continue an active mountain life at the same level once a partner and children come on to the scene. For many a middle aged climber, they can continue their activity albeit to a lesser degree. However, many just gradually give up climbing and hillwalking altogether with many taking up new hobbies like the current craze for road biking.
By the time the author had hit his 50‘s, the mountain flame that once burned so brightly begins to take on a different hue. Those activities begin to take on a more mundane course as he finds himself guiding low level walks for the elderly and disabled. As his confidence and enthusiasm for hard core mountain activities diminishes, a new chapter begins. The writer discovers he has a talent for live performance and develops a career in stand up comedy and eventually as a thespian. Developing a one man drama surrounding ‘The Great Beast’...himself...Aleister Crowley. Mountaineer, libertarian, dark arts practitioner and all round bad egg! Well...at least according to The Daily Mail who labelled him,'The Wickedest Man in England!' The author is blessed in his role as Crowley by sharing his physical characteristics and quickly finds himself playing to sell out crowds up and down the country.
At the same time, he slowly rediscovers his passion for the mountains by reacquainting himself with that most Scottish of institutions, the mountain bothy. Feeling somewhat flaccid, overweight and lacking in physical gusto, slowly but surely his bothy campaign takes hold of his imagination and by the end of the book, the author is once again finding pleasure in the hills of home.![]()
This brief overview gives but a flavour of what lies within The Last Hillwalker and the reader will find excitement, human interest and humour running like a fast flowing Scottish burn throughout its 300 pages.
John Appleby:2017
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November 17, 2017, 2:16 am
I took a first tentative step towards the Ogre in the spring of 1968. I felt the need to go off climbing on the really big mountains of the world following on from my experiences in the Hindu Kush with friends from the Nottingham Climbers’ Club in 1967. I started to hatch plans to go overland to Pakistan with Dave Nichol and also Ian Clough. Ian suggested I invite Don Whillans to come along as leader. I wrote off to the Pakistani authorities exploring the possibilities of climbing on Gasherbrum III, Kunyang Chhish and the Ogre. The Ogre was top of the list as I’d just read an article in Mountain by Dennis Gray who had marked it up as a better proposition than Trango Tower. Unfortunately permission was not forthcoming but I remained interested.
In February 1969 I wrote to Jimmy Roberts at Mountain Travel in Kathmandu, enquiring if he thought there was a chance of not only climbing in Nepal but also Pakistan. Jimmy had recently been there trying to gain permission for the Ogre. He decided against it on account of the turbulent political situation for this was the time when the young politician Zul kar Ali Bhutto was gaining strength and support to oust Pakistan’s second president and first military dictator, General Ayub Khan.![]()
In July 1975, Clive Rowland, Rob Wood, Tony Watts, Bob Wilson, Ronnie Richards and I travelled out to Pakistan to climb Sosbun Brakk, a shapely peak near the head of the Biafo Glacier. We came out on a shoestring budget and with limited time enforced upon us by commitments to jobs back home, and in the case of Ronnie and I, to get back in time to join the SouthWest Face of Everest expedition (see the account of this trip to the Karakoram in my book Up and About, pages 358–360).
We flew out on Afghan Air to Kabul. At £180 return it was by far and away the cheapest air fare we could find. We then took buses from Kabul, through Jalalabad and the Khyber Pass to Rawalpindi. There we stayed with Buster Goodwin, once Colonel Eric Goodwin of the Indian Army, who had settled in Rawalpindi after a lifetime of service mainly amongst the Pathans on the NorthWest Frontier. In fact Buster, within a few minutes of meeting, sold us all a copy of his book Life Among the Pathans. ![]()
We were, as can be imagined when considering our time and financial constraints, doomed to disappointment, especially as there was an added factor ensuring our demise – the weather. at year there had been consider able dumps of spring snow on the Biafo Glacier and we simply could not reach our objective. After three days of wading through thighdeep snow, sometimes up to our chests, we gave up on our peak and turned the trip into a recce of the Ogre. We had already seen the upper part during our journey up the Biafo and now, with Clive’s local knowledge, we went back down the Biafo and turned left up the Baintha Lukpar Glacier on to the Uzun Brakk Glacier. We climbed some way up the peaks to the west of the Uzun Brakk from where we had excellent views of the south side of the Ogre.![]()
I had for the last few years, and especially after climbing Asgard right on the Arctic Circle of Baffin Island, thought about climbing big rock walls at altitude. Without any obvious plan in it I had taken to climbing big rock faces, first in the Alps and Dolomites during the 1960s, then in the 1970s in Norway including the Troll Wall, and in Yosemite Valley on El Capitan. These climbs had involved evermore technical difficulty, and on the big walls on Baffin Island there was the added challenge of subzero temperatures. The next logical step could be right here on the Ogre.
I was now familiar with the effect of climbing in the rarefied atmosphere up to 27,000 feet (8,230 metres) on Everest but, that had been on relatively easy, non technical snow slopes. Even so, I knew enough to appreciate that to survive at that level it was essential that everything that had to be done was second nature. It would be an interesting exercise, to say the least, to see if I could put the two together successfully: climbing steep rock high in the thin cold air at 23,000 feet. If that worked out I might just have time, before old age and decrepitude, to attempt the mighty West Face of Makalu up to 27,000 feet, and even the highest rock face of them all, the West Face of K2.
My only regret was that I had not started my high altitude apprenticeship earlier. There is a relatively narrow window of opportunity to climb technical routes at altitude. It can only realistically happen after a climber has accumulated bigwall climbing experience and also climbed at extreme altitude but early enough to ensure that he is still fit and strong enough to put it all together to make technical climbs up high.
Clive and I decided to launch an expedition together for the summer of 1977 hoping that the mountain would still be unclimbed. It had already been reported in Mountain magazine that an eight man Japanese expedition had attempted the Ogre in the summer of 1974. The climbers were from the Shizuoka Tohan Club and were led by Reisuke Akiyama. Team members were: Yukio Katsumi, Kimio Itokawa, Masamitsu Urayama, Tetsuji Furuta, Mitsuo Nishikawa, Takeshi Tsushima and Toshio Kasai. They set up base camp on the Uzun Brakk Glacier and attempted the South Face but an avalanche left two members seriously injured and essential items of equipment lost. ![]()
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November 24, 2017, 2:09 am
I know now, from my own experience, that your memory of youth gets sharper as you get older. Wandering about the Highlands it happens to me more and more, and nowhere more sharply recently than on Ben Nevis.I was passing the point where the half-way house used to be, and in my mind’s eye I saw a lad in short trousers and a lithe fair-haired man, their backs bent beneath bulging rucksacks as they made to doss down on the floor for the night.
The wee fellow’s neck ached under the weight of that sack. He hated it as much as his companion relished doing what few folk would want to do. Ritchie, a champion wrestler, weight-lifter and racing cyclist, prided himself on being a “sourdough.” He scorned comfort. An unemployed Clydeside plumber he sought the wilds.He and I had been travelling across country from getting off the train at Taynuilt and crossing on the ferry to Bonawe three days before. Now we were heading for Rannoch Moor, via the top of Ben Nevis and Aonach Mor and Aonach Beag.
It was bliss to get that bag off, get the Primus going for a “drum- up” and curl up on the floor. But continuous sleep was hard to come by for heavy boots kept thumping in—folk on their way to the summit to await the sunrise— unaware that we were on the floor until their eyes became accustomed to the darkness. As we went up in the mist and drizzle of the morning we met party after party coming down, all of them bedraggled and disappointed at seeing nothing for their effort. Conditions were still the same when we saw the Observatory building looming ahead, less of a ruin than it is today, even to a bit of lead roof remaining. Unpacking the tea-can I went off to find “Wragge’s Well” marked on our old map a short distance away. Ritchie gave me a compass bearing and was pleased when I returned with the means of tea-making.
What we didn’t know was that the ridge of Carn Dearg has got many climbers into trouble for it is difficult to hit on. Ritchie set off confidently and still continued on our rough compass bearing when the easy slope became rocks. Soon they were so steep we had to face inward for hand and footholds.Ritchie was enjoying himself, but I was frightened.
The drag of the sack was unbalancing me and I could visualise myself falling into the unknown void below. My legs were trembling and once I had to cry for help. Memory is vague now, but I have an image of snow patches and an immense scattering of pink boulders far below and away to our right the narrow ridge we were trying to find. A series of ledgeways led us to it.Once down on the Aonach Beag col, Ritchie scrapped the idea of humping the bags over the tops in favour of dumping them for a quick race up and down. I really enjoyed myself then, free of ballast. It was fun to be crunching over the ice-hard snow-patches lying in the hollows and then running back down the screes to our bags.
Little could I have guessed after that wet week with Ritchie that it would be the cliffs of Ben Nevis that would draw me back again and again in every season of the year. Or that the least enjoyable part of future days on Britain’s highest mountain would be the plod from Glen Nevis and the descent from the summit after a day on the longest rock climbs in Britain.And now here I was on Ben Nevis again with two young folk who knew as little about the mountain as I did on my very first ascent, and this time I was going to the top by the pony track on a promising morning of crisp visibility though a full thousand feet of mist still capped the summit.![]()
It was the astonishing weather variations between sea and summit which decided the Scottish Meteorological Society to build the first mountain-top observatory on Ben Nevis lying in the direct path of Atlantic storms. What Wragge had been doing was a feasibility study over a period of two summers, climbing the ben from June until October inclusive. The £4000 required to build the Observatory was raised in Scotland, as was the money for the pony track.Suddenly everybody wanted to climb Ben Nevis—over 4000 within a year. Many of them would arrive in Fort William by the West Highland Railway which opened in August 1894 bringing the mountain within easy range of the mass of the Scottish population. Trade in the town was brisk. A hotel was built on top to provide bed and breakfast for those wanting to stay for the sunrise, and there was serious talk of extending the railway from the town to the summit.
Talking about these things my young friends and I overtook the first climbers of the morning, a family in yellow oilskins, father and mother with a bright-faced wee girl roped between them. In foreign accent the man asked if I thought the weather would remain fine. “We turned back from here yesterday. We would like to climb up the highest peak in Scotland but perhaps it is too much for this little girl?” She was not quite six.“She’ll do it if you can keep her interested,” I told him. “Tell her about the wee house there used to be on the top—the highest in the whole of this country. Give her something to look forward to.”
They were from the flat lands of Holland.We broke off from the path after crossing the Red Burn to see what we could find in the way of mountain plants among the boulders; fir club and other mosses, alpine ladies mantle, starry saxifrages and the tiny least willow. No snow buntings singing as I had hoped, but I have a feeling they nest here. We were well in the mist at 3500 ft. and at 4000 ft. were on the unbroken snowfield between Cam Dearg and Ben Nevis which Wragge called “The Plateau of Storms”.
I used the compass now in this dimensionless world of white mist on snow, to keep on parallel course with the big cliffs which sheer away from the plateau edge for roughly a mile between here and the top of Nevis. Then suddenly came the proof that all was well: the big snow dome of the summit suddenly bulged in front of us, the mist pouring off north-eastwards revealing the black thrust of crags soaring to thick lips of snow cornice.Our spirits soared as colour Hooded around us and below us. There was green-shored Loch Linnhe, a ribbon of soft grey winding to the blue hills of Mull. Corpach on Loch Eil and the Pulp Mill on its peninsula looking like a white toy. Highland topography at a glance. Behind the deep cut of the Great Glen jumbled ridges stretched from Knoydart to Kintail and Glen Affric. There would be even more to see when we reached the top.Our first delightful surprise on getting there was to find the Dutch family already there. The wee girl said she wasn’t even tired and proved it by grabbing my ice-axe and digging furiously into the snow while we talked.They were amused when I told them about the Fort William man who claimed the first wheeled victory on Ben Nevis by pushing a wheel-barrow to the summit, followed in 1911 by a Model T Ford motor car which took three days to reach the Observatory, but a mere 2 ½ hours to return after a night cooling down.
At the news of the victory of the internal combustion engine over the steeps of the mountain a public holiday was declared in Fort William and a pipe band played to greet the entry of the motor car into the town. The man with the wheelbarrow was there trundling along in the procession. It was to be another thirteen years before the motor car could equal the wheelbarrow by going up and down in a day. That came in 1928 when a Model A Ford achieved the feat.We took a walk along the cliffs to identify the peaks stretching from Ben Wvvis to Ben Lawers, Schiehallion, Ben Alder and the high mass of the Cairngorms, the nearest approach to true Arctic terrain we have in Scotland and still very white after an exceptionally long winter and cold spring.
Sheltered by the modern “survival hut” which perches on what used to be the Observatory conning tower, I thought about the disappointment Wragge must have felt when the Observatory was built and he was refused the post of Superintendent which he wanted. But you can’t suppress a man of his pioneering spirit.He had been in Australia, and he went back there, getting his due as Government meteorologist and setting up mountain-top observatories on Mount Wellington and Mount Kodciusko. The world remembers him as its first long-range weather forecaster. He died in 1922.The staff of the Observatory was normally four and they seem to have got on comfortably together with little friction. Visiting students came to stay. One was C.T.R. Wilson, a Nobel Prize winner from Glencorse whose work played an important part in the development in nuclear physics. It was the optical phenomena shown when the sun shone on the clouds surrounding the hilltop that turned his thoughts to imitating them in the laboratory which led to 40 years of tracking atoms.![]()
Later, in 1892 they had to warn tourists not to hurl rocks down the cliff. An incredible thing had happened: a family from the north of England had scaled the 2000 ft. cliffs. In four days the Hopkinson brothers pioneered two of the great classics of Scottish climbing, Tower Ridge and Observatory Ridge. Strangely they wrote not a word in any journal about it.In March two years later a noted Scottish Mountaineering Club alpinist came with a strong party in March and made the first winter ascent of Tower Ridge which Collie described as being comparable with the Italian ridge of the Matterhorn—powerful praise and not over-stated. These great crags are a volcanic cauldron of lava which did not erupt but subsided inside a mass of softer material, its head changing the nature of the surrounding rocks.
It was erosion by moving masses of ice scraping away the softer which uncovered the inside of the mountain and made its lava the north-eastern outside we see today, a superb architectural form of ridge and spire, buttress and arête, gully and chimney. From below they look even more daunting than from above, so all praise to the Hopkinson brothers in finding two of the best natural lines.Among the early pioneers was Dr W. Inglis Clark, Scottish Mountaineering Club President from 1913—19. His name is remembered in the only true alpine cabin in Britain, situated below the Tower Ridge. Dr Clark built it to commemorate his son Charles, who died of wounds in Mesopotamia. It was opened in 1929. This year a large gathering of Scottish Mountaineering Club members plans to celebrate its 50 years of active service.
I’ve been looking back the record of the official opening of the hut on 31st March five decades ago. The time was 7 p.m. They had just eaten a splendid meal cooked on the club stove. It was snowing hard outside when the door was thrust open and in lurched two climbers in a state of near exhaustion. They had fallen from Observatory Gully, lost their ice axes, slid 600 ft. and were fumbling their way down when they saw a light beside them. Clark wrote: “Thus early our hut had justified itself in time of danger.”
Time of danger? In fact mountaineering accidents were very few on Ben Nevis until the sudden popularisation of the sport in the late 50s when the climbing revolution took place and gathering streams converged in all seasons. Accidents became commonplace- over 50 in two decades- many of the victims totally lacking any idea of what to expect on this most savage of Scottish peaks. There is less excuse for ignorance today than when Ritchie and I went up on our first visit.
How long should you allow yourself to climb Ben Nevis by the pony track? For comfort you want seven hours from Achintee or from the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel. Don’t be misled by the fact that runners in the Ben Nevis race, held on the first Saturday in September, will have to beat 1 hour 26 minutes 55 seconds to beat the record from the town park to the summit and back.Just remember that experienced fell runners regard the Ben Nevis race as the hardest in Britain, not just because it rises so sharply from sea- level to summit, but because of the roughness of it, and the severe jolting body and feet have to take on the descent.
August will see hundreds of climbers on any reasonable day setting off up the pony track to the top. if you are one of them, make sure you have some warm clothing and a pair of gloves, even if it is warm and sunny in Fort William. And your footgear should be stout and comfortable, not smooth leather soles, but with nails or cleated rubber to give a grip.Don’t be put off by mere mist for the upper part of the hill is well marked by cairns of stones. You may climb above the clouds or get the same kind of clearing as we did. But don’t be too proud to turn back if the conditions become too wet and stormy for comfort. Go back another day.The Big Ben is an experience not to be missed.Tom Weir: First published as 'The Big Ben' in The Scots Magazine-1979
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December 1, 2017, 1:06 am
Making plans at Base Camp. L–R: Tut and I intend to climb the South Pillar; Nick with Chris, and Clive with Mo, are planning to climb up to the West Col together.The OGRE. Doug Scott. Vertebrate Publishing. £20.
Biography of a mountain and the dramatic story of the first ascent.
This book is the story of the Ogre in two parts, the first is concerned with its geological evolution and exploration from the earliest times, the second part is the story of the mountains epic first ascent.
The Karakoram has within its range, some of the world’s highest mountains, but also many of its most dramatic peaks in terms of difficulty to ascend and the Ogre is one of these. To those who are unlucky, and have never visited the Karakoram, it is hard to find words that do justice to the first sight of mountains such as the Trango Towers, The Mustagh Tower and K2 which impress on the climber as they walk into their glacial fastness. All is on the grandest of scales, and in an attempt to convey this, The Ogre begins with an explanation of the geological forces that have formed these incredible peaks. The book then moves on to detail an ancient history of exploration, putting into context the geopolitical and historical importance of the barriers to travel formed by the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs, and the Karakoram mountains.
The early explorers were driven by many different forces, some by conquest as in the campaigns of Darius the Great of Persia who as early as the sixth century BC conquered northern Pakistan, and just three centuries later the invasion by Alexander of much the same territory. I noted myself whilst in the Swat Valley how some of the local men still dressed in similar attire to classical Greek studies. The Karakoram on its northern- slopes spreads into Xinjiang, and it was passing through that territory that drove merchants and religious pilgrims, across the huge and perilous expanses of the Gobi and the Taklamakan deserts, following what became known as the Silk Road (a name coined by Von Richtofen in the 19th century). This was never a single pathway, for it diverted, moving west or north and south leading into Central Asia, India and Europe. And though detail of these events, are of necessity superficial, Scott does a good job in distilling down the essential early history of the region. My own favourite traveller story is that of the Chinese monk, Xuanzang (Hsuan-Tsang). He left what is now Xi’an in the mid-7th century to travel to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. He returned 16 years later, armed with 75 of these having travelled across some of the most challenging places on earth; the deserts and the Himalaya, travelling as far south as Sri Lanka. His adventures are told in the ever popular Chinese classic, ‘The Journey to the West’ and every school child in that country knows of these from the ongoing CCTV series ‘Monkey’. These have enlivened many a dull hour when travelling around China for myself.![]()
Strategic necessity then forced the surveyors such as Godwin-Austen deep into the mountains. And he was the first westerner into the environs of The Ogre (Baintha Brakk) in 1861 fixing its height at 23,914ft. It is interesting to note that where possible the surveyors always tried to find out the local name for any of the peaks they were interested in. Besides the surveyors there were still keen explorers appearing on the scene, most notably in 1887 the soldier Francis Younghusband; he made some significant journeys across China, and into the Karakoram but is now remembered most as the leader of the ‘1903 invasion of Tibet’ which like the Iraq war in modern times was the result of a failure of intelligence. After slaughtering with Maxim guns several hundred badly armed Tibetans, he had a religious experience on a hilltop above Lhasa, and spent a large part of his life thereafter promoting interfaith dialogue. However he was also a driving force after The Great War in the planning of the early British expeditions to Mount Everest.
By the end of the 19th century mountaineering was under away in the Karakoram, and one of the major figures in bringing this about was Martin Conway. Anyone who has read ‘The Alps from End to End’ or Simon Thompson’s modern interpretation of this will know what a forceful, entrepreneur and self publicist Conway really was. Marrying an American heiress, whose stepfather bank rolled him out on many of his schemes he nevertheless put together an outstanding exploratory expedition to the Karakoram in 1892. Amongst its members were Eckenstein the inventor of the 10point crampon, Bruce and Zurbriggen a Swiss guide. They made a journey up the Hispar and down the Biafo before reaching the Baltoro Glacier. However there was dissension in the ranks and Eckenstein who was keener to climb some peaks rather than exploration and mapping, argued with Conway and left the expedition. It is thought it was Conway who gave the ‘Ogre’ its name although there is some confusion over this, for a mountain nearby is now known to climbers as ‘Conway’s Ogre’, Uzun Brakk on the maps. His expedition was a first in many ways; Bruce a Gurkha officer and a future leader of the earliest attempt on Mount Everest, brought four of his soldiers with him, starting the tradition of employing Nepalese hill men; Sherpas on many future expeditions, and adding much cartographic detail to Godwin-Austen’s work, plus several equipment innovations, including beside crampons a lightweight silk tent designed by Mummery. ![]()
Post Conway exploration in the Karakoram quickened. The first expedition to K2 took place in 1902. This was led by Eckenstein, but it ran into difficulties from the first, when he was held under arrest by the deputy commissioner in Rawalpindi. It took him three weeks to extricate himself and rejoin the expedition, without any explanation as to this action. Subsequently both Aleister Crowley and Guy Knowles who mainly funded the expedition, believe that this had been done at the behest of Conway whose standing in the London establishment was by then forever rising. It is incredible in retrospect that Crowley was a lead climber on this first attempt on K2, for he became known as ‘The Great Beast 666’, involved in drugs, sex and black magic. During the expedition he even threatened Guy Knowles with a loaded revolver. Maybe Nick Bullock is right, ‘there just are not the original characters around in British climbing any longer?’ Nevertheless the expedition did add quite some knowledge about the mountain and its approaches.
Scott makes a swift revue from thereon of developments in the Karakoram over the next period as more and more parties arrived to explore and climb its mountains. One such, were the American couple, the Bullock Workman’s, Fanny and Hunter. In eight visits between 1898 and 1912 they walked more and climbed more of the mountains than any other party hitherto. In 1909 the Duke of Abruzzi led the first of many outstanding Italian expeditions into the Karakoram. Making determined attempts on K2 and reaching a height of 24,600feet on Chogolisa, but being unfortunately dogged by bad weather throughout their stay. Vittorio Sella was the photographer on this expedition and his black and white prints of the peaks of the Baltoro region and of K2 inspired generations of future climbers.
The Italians were back in 1929 and 1930 exploring in several areas of the range, surveying and mapping and a Dutch couple the Visser’s made four expeditions in the eastern Karakoram. In 1937 Shipton and Tilman undertook a four month sojourn in the range mapping and exploring and Shipton returned in 1939 with another strong surveying and mapping team, who with great relevance to The Ogre story, produced an accurate map of the Biafo and the Uzun Brakk glacier systems. The stage was now set for the post war period of rising climbing standards, equipment innovation, and knowledge of the importance of altitude acclimatisation that allowed for attempts to be made on the Latok Peaks and The Ogre. It is thought its local name, Baintha Brakk means ‘The Rocky Peak above The Pasture’. ![]()
The author having rattled through these early explorations of the range, in Part two concentrates on the history of the attempts and at last the successful ascent of The Ogre by himself and Chris Bonington. The first to try in 1971 was a Yorkshire expedition led by Don Morrison and including Clive Rowland, who spotted a route up via the South West spur leading to the West Col. From where it might be possible to climb the West Summit of the mountain, but also to gain the slopes leading to the final rock tower of the main summit, which has been re-surveyed as 23,900 feet. Like many other expeditions to the Karakoram they were stopped by a bad run of inclement weather. Over the next six years several expeditions explored around the Latok peaks and the Ogre, and inevitably in that era most were Japanese. Although Don Morrison returned in June 1975 his party ran into serious porter problems, and ended by trying to in relays from Askole, which is now the road head, to carry in their own equipment to the Ogre base camp. They soon realised that this left them not enough time for a realistic attempt on the mountain, and so they turned their attention to three more accessible peaks nearby. In 1976 a strong Japanese party reached the West Col via the South West Spur and climbed some way along the west ridge, but for some unexplained reason abandoned this obvious route to the summit. And so the scene was set for Scott and his party made up of Clive Rowland, Paul ‘Tut’ Braithwaite, Mo Anthoine, Nick Estcourt and Chris Bonington in 1977 to make their attempt to climb The Ogre. They were a part of a golden age of British Himalayan climbing, and few parties have left the UK with such mountain experience behind them.
Initially the party split, Scott and Braithwaite set out to attempt the imposing south pillar of the mountain, whilst the other four concentrated in following the South West Spur. However climbing in the Himalaya is ever-dangerous, and whilst climbing a gully leading onto the south pillar, Scott dislodged a rock which ploughed into Braithwaites leg, immobilising him for the rest of the expedition and leading to a first crawl down by him back to Base Camp.
Meanwhile the other four had made good progress in climbing the South West Spur, and in typical fashion Bonington supported by Estcourt, made a dash for the summit. Reaching the mountains West Peak but being forced by technical difficulties to retreat from climbing on further to attempt the huge summit block, protecting the mountains summit. All then returned to Base Camp to recuperate. After which Rowland, Anthoine, Bonington and Scott climbed back up to the West Col. During all this activity they were blessed by unusually good weather, and to cash in on this as soon as possible Scott and Bonington set off for another summit attempt.
They made good progress in this, and after some tricky ridge traversing, reached the final summit block, which composed of marvellously sound granite, reminded Scott of his climbs on Yosemite’s El Capitan. The climbing from thereon demanded some of the hardest aid and free climbing then achieved in the Himalaya; however all did go well and they reached the summit. But it was on the descent from this that the meat of the story develops. On the way up the summit pillar, they had needed to make a huge pendulum to reach a crack system, and in reversing this Scott swung off wildly into space slipping on verglas, and hammering his legs by the impact at the end of his trajectory. Hanging on the ropes he realised he had fractured both legs. Somehow he and Bonington managed to recover from this and began to abseil back down the mountain. However they ran out of daylight and had to spend the night cowed together bivouacking on a tiny ledge. Next day they continued abseiling and on reaching the ridge leading back across to the West summit they were met by Rowland and Anthoine. Somehow with their unstinting support and help Scott managed to crawl back along the knife edge ridge to an ice cave they had cut below the West summit. But then the weather broke and what followed is one of the great survival stories of mountaineering. They ran out of food and after days holed up in the ice cave decided they must descend, despite a blizzard blowing outside.
This descent developed into a fight to survive; and due to a misunderstanding during this, on one of the abseils, both Scott and Bonington almost shot off the end of the ropes into space and oblivion. Chris unfortunately fractured his ribs during this happening. This epic lasted for days, including Scott needing to crawl all the way down the glacier and moraine system to reach Base Camp.
On arriving at Base Camp they were gob smacked to find it empty, for Estcourt (who had developed a serious throat infection) and Braithwaite believing their team mates had perished, had on the arrival of porters from Askole set off for home to relay the sad news of their friends demise. Mo Anthoine immediately set off, and by almost none stop moving and jogging managed to intercept them before they had managed to mistakenly post their companions as deceased to the outside world. It was fortunate that this had not happened today, for with solar panels, and mobile phones this false news would have reached the media, before it could be corrected. They returned with the porters from Askole, and after fashioning a stretcher, these Balti hill men carried Scott down some of the roughest terrain, to where a helicopter could pick him up and drop him into hospital. However a final twist to the story is that on this journey the helicopters engine stalled; and it crash landed on its approach. So it was to be several days before another replacement chopper could be found to go and pick up Chris who remained in agony with his damaged ribs.
A postscript to this impressive feat of survival is that the real heroes of the epic, Clive Rowland and Mo Anthoine who shepherded both Bonington and Scott off the mountain received little or no plaudits in the press reports for their part in saving the lives of their companions, who would not have made it to safety without them. Fortunately, even though it is now 40 years since the epic on the Ogre, both Chris and Doug in a series of lectures around the UK this winter, at this anniversary are both attempting to put the record straight by highlighting just how much they owed to Clive and Mo for a safe return, who unfortunately is no longer able to receive their heartfelt thanks having died of cancer some years ago now. ![]()
This book deserves to become like Touching the Void, Into Thin Air and Annapurna and be regarded as one of the great classical survival stories of our sport. Photographically it is well illustrated, and though in fact it is only a slim volume considering the history it covers, just for the pictures alone it is worth the purchase price. I understand Doug intends to follow this up with similar volumes about the other mountains he has been associated with in his long mountaineering career; Kanchenjunga, Makalu, K2, Nanga Parbat, Everest etc. If they are as good a read and production as The Ogre they will all I believe become accepted as yet another outstanding effort by someone who has put back into the mountain world more than he has taken out. I am thinking of his charitable initiative, Community Action Nepal which has done such good works in Nepal, building schools and hospitals in some of its remote mountain regions, and organising a safe and hygienic water supply for the Karakoram village, Askole as by way of his thanks to its denizens who carried him down to safety in his hour of need. Dennis Gray: 2017 Images supplied by Vertebrate Publishing
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December 8, 2017, 1:12 am
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On the morning of the 28th we issued from our hotel. A pale blue, dashed with ochre, and blending to a most delicate green, overspread a portion of the eastern sky. Grey cumuli, tinged ruddily here and there as they caught the morning light, swung aloft, but melted more and more as the day advanced. The eastern mountains were all thickly covered with newly fallen snow. The effect was unspeakably lovely. In front of us was Snowdon; over it and behind it the atmosphere was closely packed with dense brown haze, the lower filaments of which reached almost half-way down the mountain, but still left all its outline clearly visible through the attenuated fog.
No ray of sunlight fell upon the hill, and the face which it turned towards us, too steep to hold the snow, exhibited a precipitous slope of rock, faintly tinted by the blue grey of its icy enamel. Below us was Llyn Mymbyr, a frozen plain; behind us the hills were flooded with sunlight, and here and there from the shaded slopes, which were illuminated chiefly by the light of the firmament, shimmered a most delicate blue. This beautiful effect deserves a word of notice; many doubtless have observed it during the late snow. Ten days ago, in driving from Kirtlington to Glympton, the window of my cab became partially opaque by the condensation of the vapour of respiration.
With the finger-ends little apertures were made in the coating, and when viewed through, these the snow-covered landscape flashed incessantly with blue gleams. They rose from the shadows of objects along the road, which shadows were illuminated by the light of the sky. The blue light is best seen when the eye is in motion, thus causing the images of the shadows to pass over different parts of the retina. The whole shadow of a tree may thus be seen with stem and branches of the most delicate blue. I have seen similar effects upon the fresh névés of the Alps, the shadow being that of the human body looked at through an aperture in a handkerchief thrown over the face.
The same splendid effect was once exhibited in a manner never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it, on the sudden opening of a tent-door at sunrise on the summit of Mont Blanc. At Pen-y-Gwryd Busk halted, purposing to descend to Llanberis by the road, while Huxley and I went forward to the small public-house known as Pen y Pass. Here our guide, Robert Hughes, a powerful but elderly man, refreshed himself, and we quit the road and proceeded for a short distance along a cart-track which seemed to wind round a spur of Snowdon. ‘Is there no shorter way up?’ we demanded. ‘Yes; but I fear it is now impracticable,’ was the reply. ‘Go straight on,’ said Huxley, ‘and do not fear us.’ Up the man went with a spurt, suddenly putting on all his steam. The whisky of Pen Pass had given him a flash of energy, which we well knew could not last. In fact, the guide, though he acquitted himself admirably during the day, had at first no notion that we should reach the summit; and this made him careless of preserving himself at the outset. Toning him down a little, we went forward at a calmer pace. Crossing the spur, we came upon a pony-track on the opposite side. It was rendered conspicuous by the unbroken layer of snow which rested on it. Huxley took the lead, wading knee-deep for nearly an hour. I, wishing to escape this labour, climbed the slopes to the right, and sought a way over the less loaded bosses of the mountain. ![]()
My own heat sufficed for a time to melt the snow; but this clearly could not go on for ever. My left heel first became numbed and painful; and this increased till both feet were in great distress. I sought relief by quitting the track and trying to get along the impending shingle to the right. The high ridges afforded me some relief, but they were separated by cwms in which the snow had accumulated, and through which I sometimes floundered waist-deep. The pain at length became unbearable; I sat down, took off my boots and emptied them; put them on again, tied Huxley’s pocket handkerchief round one ankle, and my own round the other, and went forward once more.
It was a great improvement— the pain vanished, and did not return. The scene was grand in the extreme. Before us were the buttresses of Snowdon, crowned by his conical peak; while below us were three llyns, black as ink, and contracting additional gloom from the shadow of the mountain. The lines of weathering had caused the frozen rime to deposit itself upon the rocks, as on the tendrils of a vine, the crags being fantastically wreathed with runners of ice. The summit, when we looked at it, damped our ardour a little; it seemed very distant, and the day was sinking fast. From the summit the mountain sloped downward to a col which linked it with a bold eminence to our right.
At the col we aimed, and half an hour before reaching it we passed the steepest portion of the track. This I quitted, seeking to cut off the zig-zags, but gained nothing but trouble by the attempt. This difficulty conquered, the col was clearly within reach; on its curve we met a fine snow cornice, through which we broke at a plunge, and gained safe footing on the mountain-rim. The health and gladness of that moment were a full recompense for the entire journey into Wales. We went upward along the edge of the cone with the noble sweep of the snow cornice at our left. The huts at the top were all cased in ice, and from their chimneys and projections the snow was drawn into a kind of plumage by the wind. The crystals had set themselves so as to present the exact appearance of feathers, and in some cases these were stuck against a common axis, so as accurately to resemble the plumes in soldiers’ caps. It was 3 o’clock when we gained the summit. Above and behind us the heavens were of the densest grey; towards the western horizon this was broken by belts of fiery red, which nearer the sun brightened to orange and yellow. The mountains of Flintshire were flooded with glory, and later on, through the gaps in the ranges, the sunlight was poured in coloured beams, which could be tracked through the air to the places on which their radiance fell.
The scene would bear comparison with the splendours of the Alps themselves. Next day we ascended the pass of Llanberis. The waterfalls, stiffened into pillars of blue ice, gave it a grandeur which it might not otherwise exhibit. The wind, moreover, was violent, and shook clouds of snow-dust from the mountain-heads. We descended from Pen-y-Gwrid to Beddgelert. What splendid skating surfaces the lakes presented— so smooth as scarcely to distort the images of the hills! A snow-storm caught us before we reached our hotel. This melted to rain during the night. ![]()
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December 15, 2017, 2:35 am
Will Yo' come O Sunday Mornin' Fo a Walk O'er Winter Hill?
Ten thousand went last Sunday But there's room for thousands still!
O the moors are rare and bonny An' the heather's sweet and fine
An' the road across the hilltops is the public's — yours and mine.'
Allen Clarke, Winter Hill Mass Trespass.1896
It was the Kinder Mass Trespass of April 1932 that became immortalised in the struggle for `Rights of Way' over England's upland: Benny Rothman cycled from Manchester to the Peak District (as it became in 1951) to lead the march on to the moors, and thence into jail. The historic events in Bolton 100 years ago last year were almost forgotten, until re-discovered by Paul Salverson in his book Will Yo' come O 'Sunday Mornin' (1982). More overtly than the battle for Kinder Scout, politics played its part on Winter Hill, as the popular uprising was diverted into a struggle between the 'Bolton Socialist Party' and a local squire —the outcome perhaps inevitable in Victorian England. A glorious early September Sunday morning in 1896 saw a surprisingly large crowd gathered at Halliwell Road (barely a mile north of Bolton Town Hall), fired by speeches from the soapbox of William Hutchinson, Joe Shufflebotham and the doughty Boltonian journalist, Solomon Partington. Mill workers and hand loom weavers flocked from the terraced houses that crowded off the main street. Many in Sunday best, they rubbed shoulders with grimy coal miners from nearby pits, as the march grew to ten thousand strong as it reached the Ainsworth Arms, at the edge of town.
Emerging in jubilant mood from Halliwell Road, the long line passed Ainsworth's Bleach Works, then Smithills Hall (imposing residence of the other protagonist, Colonel Richard Henry Ainsworth), on the steady rise where Smithills Dean Road bolts arrow-straight for Winter Hill. The crossing of Scout Road marks the edge of Smithills Moor, as Coal Pit Road continues towards the summit, before contouring to the hill farms. At its high point, a track heads hard across the dark chocolate peat and heather-clad moor; its junction still marked by the original gritstone gateposts quarried from the moor. There the Colonel's men and local constabulary made their stand. Now celebrated by a handsomely carved stone, 100 years ago it saw a dramatic confrontation, where the ancient route to the summit ( 1500') was barred. After the invigorating march from the steaming mills of Halliwell, the ramblers were in no mood to be thwarted.
The Bolton Chronicle reported “... a scene of the wildest excitement...' and 'Amid the lusty shouting of the crowd the gate was attacked by powerful hands... short work was made of the wooden barrier and with a ring of triumph the demonstrators rushed through into the disputed territory'. In the melee, Inspector Willoughby dived over the drystone wall as Sergeant Sefton fielded the flying gritstone. Gamekeeper Watch's son was knocked over, relinquishing his precious list of names, plus hat and mackintosh, whilst another gamekeeper was ignominiously ducked in the ditch. ![]()
equivalent would make a national figure in a libel trial wince... A number continued down to Belmont village, to surprise the locals and, no doubt, delight the landlord of the Black Dog. As the Bolton Journal reported, 'Thus ended a demonstration... many returning to the town, and the remainder besieging the local hostelries... The demand was said to be so great that the wants of the hungry and thirsty ramblers could not be satisfied...' The next Sunday morning, despite inclement weather, (‘miserably wet' ) according to the Chronicle), again attracted huge support, and as the deluge cleared, the steam rising from the walkers rivalled that from the mills!
But the movement's denouement was nigh — the Colonel now entered the fray, counter attacking with devastating effect, isolating and issuing writs by the score,and as promised help failed to materialise, the Bolton Socialist Party slipped quietly away. Back in 1801 the Ainsworth family were already wealthy enough to purchase Smithills Hall and Moor for a princely £21,000. Later, their ownership of the Bleach Works allowed the Colonel to indulge
his love of grouse shooting, leading to the closing off of Smithills Moor. At the trial the defence called 44 witnesses but still lost the day, despite providing much amusement when William Fletcher, itinerant bricklayer,described his use of Coal Pit Road and stops at Black Jack's, (the moorland cottage of Luke Morris, who sold gingerbread with `free ale’ to subvert the licensing laws). One day, Luke tossed a loaded pistol into the fireplace — demolishing the cottage. So, it was left to Solomon Partington to repeatedly issue protest pamphlets against the Colonel, until the journalist finally retired. ![]()
Henry Tindell: 1997 . First published in High-May 1997 as 'Mass Trespass Winter Hill-1896
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December 22, 2017, 3:35 am
I'm taking a break until the new year so thanks to everyone who has contributed to the site or even just dropped in occasionally to see what's going down hereabouts. Have a non too stressful holiday and here's to 2018 being a little less fraught and downright crazy as recent years have been! As one of my heroes Edward Abbey once said...'"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.'Peace Out. JA
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I for one, and I suspect I am by no means alone, disagree with the protestor's argument. The aesthetic in wild country is not just about being there and looking at it, but it's also about the interaction of the person with that environment as he or she travels through it. That interaction is based mostly on the intrinsic satisfaction of experiencing an ever open skill in an ever changing challenge. Surely the satisfaction of some peak or other is not to be found in 'one is there' but in 'one got there'? How one got there, the nature of the challenge, is a choice that the individual makes — one that is supposed to be a key element of all wild country challenges — that the individual carefully assesses what level and type of challenge to undertake and satisfaction is gained by the meeting of that challenge.
There need be no reference to others, or rather one's rank in relation to others. The challenge for one person is as meaningful, as difficult and as close to the limit as any other person's challenge. The nature of that challenge in wild country is normally a combination of the mental and the physical. It is the latter that offers most scope for manipulation. One can choose a sustained strenuous route, one with a desperate bouldering move or a route of technical finesse. A day in the hills can be long, remote but with little technical difficulty or it can be short, sharp and requiring great technique. Why not, then, have fast days or trips — the speed at which one moves through this wilderness challenge is of great consequence in the level of difficulty of that challenge: it usually makes the challenge more difficult but not always so.
I have found, and I'm sure many others have also, that the challenge that suits me is not one of the maximum technical difficulty (a relative concept) but of travelling at speed through a hostile environment of lesser technical difficulty. There is great pleasure to be obtained from 'flowing quickly' through difficult terrain; there is great beauty in travelling fast along Crib Goch, the Skye Ridge or the West Ridge of the Salbit. One must plan the route ahead while travelling at speed over concentration demanding terrain, develop the ability to scramble blind over rock while searching out the footholds three or four moves ahead. In caves the art is all about working out rapidly and in advance the best way of tackling any obstacle or passage shape ahead; lots of different approaches will work of course but there is only one perfect solution and that is the one that guarantees speed, for there has to be great efficiency of movement if speed is to be maintaned. ![]()
One doesn’t have to be a fell runner or speed climbing competitor to get enjoyment from moving fast. You don’t even have to be fit,though undoubtably you will be in time. One needs to be able to jog over hilly country,develop some agility,have a keen eye for route choice and navigation and think carefully about equipment. There is little more pleasurable experience on rock than to solo long easy routes without stopping. To flow from hold to hold up Troutdale Pinnacle or Commando Ridge. To arrive at the top of the Gervasutti Pillar one and a half hours after leaving the glacier, unencumbered by a heavy sac, is pleasurable, satisfying and an eminently suitable way to tackle such a climb.
In the Peak District the route of Tanky's Trog, probably the best moorland race of all, is an absolute delight in its challenging simplicity; get from Marsden to Edale as fast as possible passing by Torside and the Snake Inn — a great, almost straight, point to point route with a multiplicity of major and minor navigational and route choice variations. Every second a fresh micro problem is presented.Whether the heather or the peat is fastest, whether the wet winding grough or the up and down of the straightline peat hag route is better. At the same time major decisions are calculated; does one take the route over Black Hill or contour it to the west, and all the time every stride must be smooth, efficient and flowing. Great complicated bumpy areas make ideal go faster challenges- try the ridge between Ennerdale and Wasdale, either going over the lumps such as Pillar and Kirk Fell, or traversing them. The best (i.e. fastest) route is tremendously complex and rarely obvious. Routes through the Howgills from east to west, (or vice versa), or on a smaller scale the lumpy rocky areas of the Lakes like that around Watendlath provide superb moving fast challenges through enticing bumpy country with constant decision making.![]()
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January 12, 2018, 1:39 am
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite William Blake.
Two books recently published are focussing a new interest in the Karakoram Mountain Range; ‘‘The Ogre’ by Doug Scott and ‘Karakoram’ by Steve Swenson, the first by Vertebrate and the latter by The Mountaineers; (published in the USA-available in the UK via Cordee). The ‘Ogre’ has been well reviewed in the UK, but ‘Karakoram’ less so. It is a first person story of the authors 15 visits to the range, during which he amassed an outstanding record of ascents, plus the inevitable failures and epic retreats. Set against the cultural and political background of Pakistan during the almost three decades in which these climbs took place; a period of ever increasing tension caused by the Kashmir conflict with India, and the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism and terror. It is in explaining and detailing the history of these events, and their affect on the local peoples of the Karakoram, that I found this book to be above the common place of such expedition fare.
I cannot compete with Swenson’s fifteen journeys to the Karakoram, for I have only been there on four occasions, but like him my own experiences in these incomparable mountains, can still bring from my memory bank, days (and nights) spent amongst peaks with magic names like The Trango Towers, The Gasherbrum’s, and Masherbrum.
My own experience in the range began when leading a trek to K2 Base Camp in 1989. The recalls from this are still raw, for by the time we reached Concordia (at approx 4600m), the famous glacier basin with its almost unbelievable dramatic mountain setting, and its iconic view of K2 and the surrounding peaks, I was almost bushed out. One of our Party, had become ill, and from about a section of the trek on the Baltoro glacier beneath the Mustagh Tower, two of the Balti porters and I had to take it in turns to support him physically. Fortunately after a couple of days rest on reaching Concordia he made a good recovery. I was feeling much the same, until scoping from our camp, scanning the slopes of Broad Peak (8051m) looming almost directly above us, something caught my eye which could only be human movement. Watching this for some time I realised it was a party in distress, and they needed help, and fortunately as our Sirdar Hussein had previously been with an expedition to this mountain and knew a safe route through its ice fall, we quickly readied and set forth to climb up the flanks of the peak to render what help we were able.
Some hours later we were within shouting distance of the stricken party, initially believing them to be Spanish but as we reached them, we found they were three Mexican’s; two females who were supporting a male climber held between them. They had descended from high on the mountain, from whence their team member had developed pulmonary oedema in a high camp 1600m above our heads. The women had more or less carried their companion for most of that distance, down some dangerous and difficult terrain. A truly impressive feat!
Hussein had along with him another Hunza, and they took over supporting the sick man to give the Mexican ladies a rest. However they soon tired and Marguerite the strongest of them and I then moved in to replace the others. I found this exhausting, but as we quickly lost height, it became somewhat easier. The Hunzas took over again to get the patient through the ice fall as I went on ahead to reach our camp, and to alert our Doctor, an American Peter Stone to be ready as soon as the patient arrived. Fortunately he had all that was needed, a comprehensive medical chest and some emergency oxygen. By the next morning the sick man was sitting up on a bed of sleeping bags, in our Base tent, and quaffing the hot drinks we prepared for him.
I have often wondered why so many climbers suffer altitude problems on Broad Peak? One such was a friend Pete Thexton, a Doctor himself who also developed oedema but unfortunately in a period of bad weather, was unable to descend and who died in a high camp. It seems that because of its reputation as a technically easy peak, climbers tend to move very quickly into the so called ‘death zone’. And I found that moving up so quickly helping the Mexican’s in their need, to a height well over 5000m was totally shattering physically.
So many memories remain from my four Karakoran visits, including meeting Mark Millar near Hushe, retreating after an attempt via a new route on the flanks of Masherbrum, as he was heading back to Islamabad to catch a plane to Kathmandu, to meet up with team mates for an attempt on Makalu ll. We said our goodbyes, but sad to report a few days later, he and his party perished in a PIA plane crash in the hills above Nepal’s capital. However most of my Karakoram memories are happy ones and an instance of this is the day we organised on a green sward, under Masherbrum, the ‘Hushe Olympics’. Climbers/Trekkers versus team Balti. The tug of war event became larger and larger in participation using a 60m rope. In the end the sheer number of locals prevailed, leaving team Climber spread-eagled on the ground.
But a Nanga Parbat trip (8125m), the 9th highest mountain in the world dominates at present my thinking from those days. This, the western bastion of the Karakoram boasts the largest mountain faces in the Himalaya, its southern aspect holds four kilometres of height above base. Its four deep and previously inaccessible valleys set around the Peak meant that the villagers residing in them all spoke different languages and even today are suspicious of outsiders. My visit to the northern, Rakhiot side of the peak in 1990, when I led a trek/climb to Julipar peak on the eastern flank of this huge face bears this out. Failing to reach the summit of this mountain, due to bad weather, we crossed over by a pass of that name into the upper environs of the Diamir, descending down into the shelter of the Patro valley. ![]()
Although what happened there on the night of 22nd June was widely reported, there has been little follow up and understanding of the disparate cultural and political forces at work in that area of the Karakoram. The Diamir Face, particularly the Kinshofer route has become the most popular way to access the summit of Nanga Parbat, and fortunately as the weather had been settled in that period most of the climbers, were in the High Camps. But 12 people remained in the Base that night when 16 armed militants, dressed in the uniform of the Gilgit Baltistan Scouts, arrived in the camp guided there by a local. This irregular military unit was formed by the British in the latter part of the 19th century and was based in Gilgit, hence its original name, Gilgit Scouts. On Independence it was merged with The Pakistan Army, but later it included Baltistan into its title, and it was charged with policing and keeping the peace in this highly volatile district.
The militants forced the inhabitants of the Base Camp out of their tents, made them hand over their money, valuables and mobile phones. All of which they then smashed to pieces, and they then tied their hands behind their backs, made them kneel and shot each one in turn. One Chinese climber, Zhang Chuan from Yunnan managed to escape. He ran blindly into the night, zig zagging as he did so followed by a hail of bullets one of which cut his scalp and the bleeding from this was nearly blinding him; fortunately near the camp was a ravine and he dived into this to reach safety. But the remaining ten climbers and a local camp worker all died. Three were from the Ukraine, one from China, two from Slovakia, two from Lithuania, and two from Nepal. One Base worker was allowed to survive by the killers, for he persuaded them he was a ‘good Muslim’. In the early hours of the morning the militants left the camp, and gingerly the Chinese climber returned to his tent where he had hidden a mobile phone. Climbing up towards Camp One, he managed to make contact with those in residence there and let them know what had happened. They summoned help and later that day the Pakistan military arrived in helicopters. The climbers in the high camps then all retreated and assembled at the Base. Initially the idea was to walk out, but worried that the militants would still be in the area they refused, and eventually they were flown to safety.
Subsequently the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for this attack, but unlike the climbers who reported they believed this had been carried out to avenge the death of Bin Laden; they stated it had been in retaliation for a USA drone strike, which had killed a local Taliban leader, Waliur Rehman. The whole area around Nanga Parbat is fraught with tribal loyalties and long standing disputes, but this attack on the climbers was seen by the Pakistan authorities as truly serious, and almost the very next day it was the subject of debate in the countries legislature. An enquiry was set up and an Army Colonel, Captain and Police officer were despatched to investigate. But they too met a bloody end, gunned down in a hail of bullets in their car at Chilas, a nearby town on the Karakoram Highway, again being the victims of the Taliban; however they had managed to establish that the militants were mainly local before their demise.
Soon after this the authorities arrested 16 men who were claimed to be the attackers, 10 were from the Diamir region, 3 Mansehera and 3 from Kohistan. This latter is surprising to me, unless they were members of the Gilgit Baltistan Scouts and that is how they knew each other. Kohistan is quite some distance from Nanga Parbat, away in Swat. Steve Swenson has a short Chapter about this ‘Attack’ in his Karakoram book, but even today almost five years on from this event there are serious questions about what really happened that night. How about the fate of the local guide who led the militants to the Base Camp?
Over recent decades thousands of trekkers and climbers have visited the Karakoram Mountains, and there had never, until the killings on Nanga Parbat been any such attacks on them. This had a major effect on the economy of the region for many of the locals had come to rely on these visitors for their financial well being. It meant hardship for many families in towns like Hushe as fewer and fewer visitors continued arriving, but as at 2017 recovery is under away, and once again many climbers and trekkers are heading for the Karakoram. Even parties were on the south side of Nanga Parbat last year, bolstered by the presence of a new, local Mountain police unit of the Gilgit Baltistan Scouts whose members now accompany each expedition.
The culture, make up and politics of Pakistan are ever more complicated and Steve Swenson does inform on these from a mountaineers viewpoint, and how it affects climbers in their planning to visit the Karakoram, but he also has feeling and friendship for such locals as his long standing cook Ghulam Rasool from Hushe, who he has materially helped over the years. Few climbers of my experience understand how the territorial and tribal conflicts in the region affect the locals besides the international visitors. The whole region was restive at the time of the British, and though popular images of this era in film and literature seem to concentrate on the North West Frontier, the Khyber Pass and the Pathans, equally such areas as Swat/Kohistan, Gilgit Agency and the Indus valley were difficult areas to govern. ![]()
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January 19, 2018, 3:33 am
'Hole in the Mind with Ysfa Symbolism: John Redhead
Time of mine spent with those of the past that is over? Given to those in the present that live in the past? Or to those who will be there to see the end?
‘Electric Letterbox', Footless Crow, Friday 14th October 2016 eked no email comments after a comparison request of that climb in 'Bride to the Mountain'. Perhaps it is not the Great Gully, Craig Yr Ysfa and Firbank is off the radar now, or that you choose to read is not what you have seen?
Lean the memories of a Giveen ripe worthy chat with John Redhead at a Pete's Eats book exchange, Martin Crook and Tony Loxton there also amid vague side glances of others less able than them. A life sentence partly served an opportunity for a sketch although limited in viewing numbers, until now. Emails to and fro muster interest in my Footless ‘scribbles’? or lest niggled his understanding of my behest before the postman’s knock and a foreign stamped cardboard tube. Awkwardly, kitchen-knifed partly opened the fingerprinted, smudged back enough of a signature and not fully opened; his original gist of my obsession non-reflectively finished by Dilwyn of Fframia, Llanberis.
Until parole is granted and afterwards my view is to The Gully, The Cave Pitch and Giveen hanging with others in John’s last, best Catalunya interpretation of 'wounded bison, the shaman, who cocked up and always a happy ferryman and of course Giveen and loads of common stuff. Yet is there more and I have some time, unlike others on that day lost on November 20th, 1927; 04:14:28 pm.8h 26m 20- the sunset and daylight hours, little to crave for, nothing wasted on and vital for the lives of Norman Stott and Arthur Taylor. Time of death uncertain at Llyn Ffynnon Llugwy, Capel Curig, post Great Gully climb, Craig Yr Ysfa, although a father's guess from the hands of a broken watch tried to sway evidence after the inquest.
Visitors to Helyg near the time of the incident, including Raymond Greene, were mostly experienced Climbers, aware of the dangerous weather conditions in the dank, dark aspects of the Gully shadows and the perils available of certain climbing conditions. J M A Thompson in his first ascent described the hardest part of the climb, the Great cave in 1900 '.... unquestionably the finest in any gully of the district. Rocks fallen from above and jammed between the vertical side-walls of the gully, form both the roof and two bridges...removal of debris necessitated single climbing...with strange gymnastics indulged in here, before the top of the rock was reached, for the right wall was streaming at the time with cold water from the snow melting above, and daylight had ceased to penetrate the recesses of the cave. The next move was across the bridge to a slippery ledge on the south wall; sidling across this string-course by the light of faith, we reached the outer bridge, where a hole afforded a convenient exit. A faint glimmer on the western horizon sufficed for the ascent of the little pitch above, and we reached the summit ridge soon after eight o'clock. Of the four hours spent in the gully, probably the major part was occupied in pioneering, for while the bed rock was found to be very sound and satisfactory, the obstacles were decorated with so exceptional quantity of loose turf and moss, that we might claim to have found them of grass and left them of granite.' On the first ascent, four hours spent in the Gully.
So, another 'whatever' and to that otiose, beerly wise Saturday night decision to safe haven some Giveen laden scrolls. Prior to departure, a chance moment to read my 1930 Oxford Mail article and another Giveen secret.... A 'prominent member' of the Oxford University Climbing Club as was Raymond Greene....a pairing belayed fleetingly at Oxford University in the early 1920's. Quite different characters, Greene the dependable medical student and would be stalwart of the Climbers' Club. Giveen, the rake, a reprobate who climbed the Martyrs' Memorial, 'sent down' from Wadham College and Oxford for an unknown misdemeanor and worse, he sold Greene a car then ‘retrieved’ it, without his consent. Also, an accusation by Greene of Giveen attempting to shoot him after blackballing him from membership of the club. One cannot be true without the others and for Giveen the truth is recorded in handwritten accounts of meetings available in the coffers of the Climbers' Club Minute Book secluded to Gwynedd Archives. ![]()
A Committee Meeting held at 110, Cannon Street with the President (in the Chair) and Messrs. Benson, Bradley, Coventry, Green, Marler, Marples and Poole (Mr. Balfour was also present by permission of the Committee). The meeting was closed with the 'New members' area and Norman Stott elected as member 600 under rule 14a proposed by Messrs. Longland and Sinker. The first of the membership issues confirmed of one the four involved in the accident.
To page 212, the Meeting, same venue, Friday 20th May, 1927. The President there with Messrs. Balfour, Benson, Coventry, Lowen, Marler, Marples, Pitcher and Poole. The agenda followed the actions taken of minutes of the meeting held on the 12th April 1927 followed by: 'The following 14 gentlemen were elected members of the Club, including F. W. Giveen (632 pencil marked in margin) proposed by M. S. Gotch and C. W. Marshall', contrary to Raymond Greene's account of his blackballing account in his book, ‘Moments of Being’.
Arthur M. Taylor was elected on the 13th September 1927 and recorded in the minutes of the meeting held at The Rendezvous Restaurant, Dean Street, W1, proposed by C. W. Marshall; seconded by Norman Stott.
The first meeting after the accident of the 20th November 1927, recorded in Pages 222-223, dated Tuesday 29th November 1927 again at the same venue. The President and Messrs. Balfour, Bradley, Carr, Coventry, Donkin, Lowen, Marler (?), Pitcher, Poole and Valentine-Richard present. The 'Accident in North Wales' was on the agenda and 'reference was made to the events of the 20th/21st instant when a party consisting of F. W. Giveen, W.H.T. Tayleur, N. Stott and A. Taylor had set off from Helyg Cottage to climb the Great Gully on Craig yr Ysfa and on the return journey the two-last named had lost their lives. All but one (Tayleur) were members of the Club, and Tayleur's application for membership was in the Hon. Secretary's hands.' The Hon. Secretary read papers sent from C W Marshall, Custodian of Helyg, which included an undated letter from Giveen to Marshall written a few days after the accident. Also, there were copies of the statements made on oath to the Coroner by Giveen and Tayleur and a letter dated 28th from Marshall addressed to the Hon.Secretary.The resolution made at the lengthy meeting was to convey an expression in severe sympathy to the relatives of the dead members with them in their bereavement. The Hon. Secretary was instructed to thank Giveen for the information supplied and to express to him The Committee's opinion that what he did was right, in the circumstance.
Pages 228-230, a Committee meeting held at the Rendezvous Restaurant on Thursday 12th January 1928 with The President (in the chair) and Messrs. Carr, Coventry, Graham, Lowen, Marler, Marbles, Pitcher, Poole, and from the Oxford University Mountaineering Club, Mr. Wager, with apologies submitted for inability to attend from Mr. Donkin (Vice-President) and Messrs. Balfour and Valentine-Richards. On this occasion the matter of W. H. Tayleur's enquiries for his application for membership of the Climbers' Club was reported by the Hon. Secretary and deferred.![]()
The Hon. Secretary reported he had written to the parents of the two men who had died and to Mr. F. W. Giveen in the terms instructed by the Committee and he had read replies received. A letter from Mr Giveen asked the Committee to hold an enquiry into the matter and the question was 'very fully discussed' with a resolution that the request be acceded to. Also, it was decided 'that the following gentlemen, viz. The President, Mr.. Winthrop Young and Mr. Roderick Williams (whom failing, Mr. Claude Elliott ) be and they are hereby constituted a Subcommittee to enquire into all the circumstances of and relating to the expedition under the leadership of Mr. Giveen on the 20th November 1927 and to report to the Committee therein'.
On Page 238, 16th March 1928 at the Meeting at the Rendezvous Restaurant, Dean Street. There present the The President (in the Chair) with Messrs. Balfour, Bowman, Coventry, Donkin, Gotch, Lowen, Marples, Pearson, Pitcher Poole and Mr. Wager again present. A question was raised regarding the climbing incident inquiry, which led the Hon. Sec. to read a letter dated 14th March 1928 from Mr. C. M Mathews, stating that the Report of the Sub Committee had been drafted, approved by all its members; sent for signatures, and be in his hands early in the following week. It was resolved that a further meeting of the Committee be held on the 23rd inst. to consider this Sub-Committees Report.
On Page 242, the meeting on the 28th March 1928 attended by the President and Messrs. Balfour, Bowman, Coventry, Donkin, Gotch, Lowen, Mailer, Marples, Pearson, Pitcher, Poole. The Hon. Secretary read to the Meeting the Sub-Committee's Report on the matter of the accident, which he had received from Mr. Mathews, signed by him and by the other three members of the Sub-Committee. After a long discussion upon the Report it was resolved:
(1) That the Hon. Sec. write to Mr. Giveen a letter embodying the following words: "The Committee having read the Report of its Sub-Committee, inform Mr. Giveen that they are prepared to accept his resignation from the Club."
(2) That the thanks of the Committee be tendered to the members of the Sub-Committee for their most efficient performance of what must have been a very distasteful task. (signed) S. Donkin Vice President 16.5.28
The final meeting to discuss the ‘Accident in North Wales’ was held on the May 16th 1928 and the Hon. Sec laid before the Committee Mr. F.W. Giveen's tender of resignation from the Club and it was resolved it be accepted with instructions to inform Mr. Taylor of this resolution.![]()
The reports and letters mentioned above are no longer available, at least not in the Archive collection of the Climbers’ Club or Gwynedd County Council offices, Caernarfon. Unswerving, initial support for the action taken by Francis Giveen soon diluted by a stream of local gossip, pressure from Cambridge University Climbers’ Club and Mr. Stott, Norman Stott’s father who not only sent a letter to the Club, but also the local Press and Francis Giveen, pleading answers. It is understood no legal action against Giveen was sought, not that any guilt was proved, although his story continues.Mark Hughes: 2018
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January 26, 2018, 12:34 am
GL Mallory second left, back row, with leading members of the 1924 expedition
In 1883 W. W. Graham took Swiss guides to India and the history of climbing in the Himalayas began. Previous explorers had penetrated the region as soldiers on military expeditions, with big game hunting on the side, as officers of the Government' Survey Department, medical missionaries or members of diplomatic missions. During the next 72 years, 62 if the war years are left out, to 1955when the late Professor Kenneth Mason published his classic history of the Himalaya, "The Abode of Snow" (Rupert Hart-Davies, two impressions, though now a quarter of a century out of date, the best book of reference to 1955; fairly expensive in the second hand book market) Mason listed (pp. 346/7) 50 peaks over 25,000 ft., only eight of them had by then been conquered.
Surely this speaks for itself and throws the whole pioneer period into true perspective. On Everest three expeditions were mounted by the British in 1921, 22 and 24, aimed at the N.E. ridge from Tibet. The achievement of these expeditions was extremely impressive. Indeed 1922, the first full attack, was a triumph for George Finch and his primitive oxygen equipment; in spite of bad weather, he had he had made an altitude record and had turned back less than 2,000 feet below the summit. In the official record of the expedition Finch wrote a convincing chapter in support of the use of oxygen in Himalayan climbing. He was right in his assertion that it would be use in the conquest of Everest, though this was not a popular view among climbers at that time. However, it convinced Mallory that it enable him to move faster and thus he was more likely to succeed with it with it than without it. He made the summit bid from which he not return on June 8th 1924.
On June 16th, Colonel Norton, the leader was seated in his tent at the Base Camp writing a letter to Irvine's father. *"In my view, he wrote, they had enough oxygen to enable them to reach the summit: they would have had to descend without oxygen, but this has been proved quite feasible." In 1922 it had been thought that a man using oxygen at high altitudes would soon collapse and die if and when his supply ran out or failed. At home Winthrop Young wrote of Mallory "In all probability the first man to tread the world's highest summit". A number of minor prophets raised a chorus of approval. It was so much nicer to believe that victory had come before the fatal fall. This mood of euphoria did not survive the sequence of failures in the 1930's, and it is easy to see that none of the Everesters present at Tilman's lecture to the R.G.S. in 1939 believed that the summit problem had been solved.![]()
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Compare the experience of Bourdillon and Evans in 1953 on their ascent of the South summit, a climb of some 3,000 feet, not unlike that which Mallory was attempting. I must leave it to readers of my book (the IRVINE DIARIES) to examine the grounds on which I base my belief that the summit was not reached in 1924. I could add two pointers. In his letters to his wife towards the end of May, Mallory was clearly uneasy about his physical fitness to make an effective summit bid—and there was also the doubt about Irvine’s lack of experience if the route became at all difficult.
It cannot escape notice that in the rescue of the porters from Camp IV,Somervell led the very trying and dangerous snow slope below the col which gave success to the operation,this in spite of his acute suffering from a high altitude cough. Norton and Mallory sat below and watched him. Now in 1981 the climbing of giant mountains has become commonplace: it happens every month, all the year round, year after year, all over the world.It is difficult today to realise how primitive was the equipment, how great the lack of knowledge of those gallant and brave men who were the pioneers of the 1920's. We now know that the whole of the N.E. ridge (Mallory's proposed route) can be climbed in a straightforward manner without encountering any passage more difficult than those normally found on the popular route from Nepal.![]()
** Note: While on the subject of Everest it is interesting to record that in 1974 a Chinese climber, Wang Kow Po, reported finding the body in a desiccated form at 26.7730ft. He buried the body and the West did not learn of the discovery until 1979, just before Wang Po lost his life in an avalanche. Leading climbers were certain that it was highly unlikely to be the body of either Mallory or Irvine. Another report said that the Chinese had also found a body at 21.000ft on their 1960 expedition. Even more mysterious was the discovery last year (1980) of a woman’s high heel shoe made of fine brown leather. it was found at 25.000ft amongst the remains of a British camp along with Oxygen gear and tent poles. It dated back to the 1920/30‘s. (HC)
*** Mallory’s body was of course discovered by the ‘Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition’,led by Eric Simonson in 1999. Andrew Irvine’s remains have yet to be discovered and confirmed although the discovery of a body in 1960- as mentioned above- at 21.000ft suggests the possibility that it was indeed Irvine who had possibly fallen on his way down the mountain after falling victim to exhaustion or oedema. Leaving the far stronger and more experienced Mallory to attempt a solo summit bid.(JA)Herbert Carr. First published as 'Some aspects of the Mallory Legend' in the Climbers Club Journal, 1981
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February 2, 2018, 3:57 am
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Now after seven years of weekly articles, FC is going fortnightly.In an age when even a highly respected publication like Climb has gone under after many years and in various guises, there is no doubt that reading habits within the climbing community have changed. In fact climbing itself has changed dramatically with more and more especially younger activists, moving into other areas like mountain and road biking, skiing, parascending and surfing.Many who do still climb are more likely these days, to be bouldering, sports climbing or down at the wall. Witness the many great crags which are disappearing under vegetation throughout the climbing areas of the UK, as modern climbers find trekking in to a remote mountain crag where they might find a once recommended, two star route is now a lichenous, heathery, green spiral!
Another factor in the fast changing climbing culture landscape has been the rise of the vlog. More and more people these days are abandoning the traditional outdoor press and digital sites like Footless Crow, and moving over to You-tube and Vimeo where they can watch thousands of highly polished personal vlogs and professional sites. Producing highly entertaining and informative videos on everything from climbing to wild camping; road trips to back country skiing. It might be an exaggeration to state that moving images are taking over from words but there’s no doubt in my mind that this trend and appetite for vlogs is hitting the written media.
Which brings me back to why FC is going fortnightly. First off,it takes a surprising amount of work to source material and then knock out a presentable illustrated article every week and the truth is, viewing figures have been declining in recent years. FC has always been rather quirky and specialised in that it resides by and large, in the past, and in 2018 there is a limited audience it appears, for historical articles. The positive side of a fortnightly enterprise is that an article remains at the top of the tree-so to speak- for an extra week. It is surprising how many people will come to the site from Google and just take a look at the lead article and not bother scrolling down to check out the other articles beneath.
So, the crow is alive and well; its just that he’ll be spending more time perched on a gently swaying branch, scanning the horizon, than in the air!![]()
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February 9, 2018, 12:50 am
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Years later I trained people in the use of such equipment but always felt strange carrying such extraneous gear as chocks, slings,karabiners, harnesses and helmets. However, though we climbed the hardest routes in Britain up to the coming of the war, they would not now rate as hard — but we had a grand time doing them, sometimes in rubbers, often in nails, occasionally solo, but generally the two of us together. Linked by a Beales three red-stranded hemp rope, there seemed to be no problem in the whole wide world other than getting up the next stretch of intriguing and alluring rock. In the 1930s Hopkinson's Crack, or Hoppy's, on Dow Crag above Goats Water was graded as the top severe on’t crag'. Though not the highest standard climb, the big corner crack gave a good natural line full of interest. The day before we climbed the crack on a winter’s day in 1937,my brother and I drove to Coniston Copper Mines Youth Hostel with the Iron Lung.
In those days powered vehicles were forbidden but Mrs. Mowitt, the hostel warden, always turned a blind eye if you were a climber. This was a piece of vital information passed on to us by Charlie Wilson and the Thompson brothers. The next morning was grey and cold and promised to remain so. Probably ice on the rocks, I thought, and shivered, but warmed up trudging over Little Arrow Moor, fortified by a breakfast of Mrs Mowitt's bacon and eggs. The crag was strangely silent, no wind, no sounds of running water, and no drip, drip of liquid from the overhangs. As I'd suspected the rocks, normally damp, were now glazed with ice.
Ron, as always, was not deterred, his decision brief and to the point. "No sense hanging about today. Leave the rope and we can each solo!""Might as well," I agreed, "the hemp rope will soon be difficult to handle," but I felt distinctly unenthusiastic. In Easter Gully we arrived at the huge chockstone that blocks the way to the Amphitheatre and the foot of Hopkinson's. Its left-hand route known as the Cave Pitch was normally easy but this day fingers were quickly numbed and progress slow as with our nailed boots we kicked at the ice knobs to reach the rock beneath. Then at last there was the crack — direct, honest, not long, perhaps 150 ft., but long enough for such a day. Ron found no problems. "He's got methylated spirits in his bloodstream. Doesn't seem to feel the cold at all," I thought.
Three or four moves and my fingers were numb with cold, totally lacking in feeling. I beat them, blew on them, stuck each of my thumbs in my mouth feeling pain when the blood came throbbing back. I was thinking, "Don't hang about here. Ron's kicked ice from most of the footholds but there's still lots so kick again." I did so, each time making progress for a few more feet. At 80 ft the crack became really thin, the rock walls steepened and the small finger holds were covered with frost.
Finger nails scraped and dug into the verglas and I realised Ron's ascent had looked deceptively easy. Pausing for a re-warm, I looked around and across the gully and noted the rime on the Bandstand Wall. There was an increasing greyness to the day and between my feet I caught a fleeting glimpse of the fan of large boulders above Goats Water. I failed miserably on my first attempt at the final few feet of the crux. "Try facing right", advised Ron— and I did. That's how I climbed the crux, but seemed to gain most of my adhesion from my rough tweed jacket freezing to the crag. ![]()
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February 23, 2018, 12:32 am
‘Unknown Pleasures’ Andy Kirkpatrick. Vertebrate Publishing.... £24
‘I want to be me, I want to be free’... Toyah Wilcox... Jubilee.
I guess if anyone in the climbing world wants ‘to be me’ then that person has to be Andy Kirkpatrick, who grew up in straightened circumstance, on a Council estate in Hull. For so many years now he has been doing his own thing, almost a ‘Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’, seeking out climbs where the danger is real, and safety questionable, confounding his critics and delighting audiences with his stand up comedy performances, that are based on his life and hard times on some of the gnarly big walls and mountain faces of the world. Having noted this, I expected ‘Unknown Pleasures’ (The title gleaned from a ‘Joy Division’ album) to be a laugh a minute, albeit couched in fruity discourse, but no I found this a serious and thought provoking read. I only laughed out loud once in digesting its contents.
There must be something in the water in Hull and its surrounds for besides this author, Joe Tasker, John Redhead and Alex MacIntyre all hailed from within its flat landscapes. It is interesting however to think on this author’s family name, not Yorkshire at all but lowland Scots. We are such a mixture in this country, but this Kirkpatrick is I guess almost a one off, despite the fact he is seriously dyslexic, which was not diagnosed until his late teens, and admits he cannot spell, punctuate or has any grammatical ability, yet he has twice won the Boardman/Tasker Mountain Literature prize. And for myself, his first such, Psychovertical is a modern classic about climbing and climbers. ‘Unknown Pleasures’ is a collection of 32 essays, and the range of subjects covered is best described as ‘diverse’. So much so that I had to stop reading on occasion to re assess my own thoughts on some of the topics included; yes there are some essays that are hard core climbing, but others that touch on relationships, parenting, mental health including suicide, the workings of the media and its misuse, abortion, Nazi atrocities in a French village in the last war and so much more. I do not think it will be ‘Big’ with those who get their kicks only indoors on plastic, but if you wish to be made to think about the meaning of it all then this might be the book for you. However already the trolls are at work on the so called Social media, which is not social at all, and often uninformed, but I think the author is of such a background that he can turn their ill thought out criticisms to his own advantage. Maybe we should note here his 30 plus ascents of El Capitan, five of which have been solo, including The Reticent Wall which was the central theme of ‘Psychovertical’, his ski crossing of Greenland, and climbs in Patagonia, Alaska and Antarctica plus his writings about these adventures; which now it seems has enabled him to write, and unburden himself about events and relationships that have troubled in his past.![]()
The essays carry so much feeling that at times I found myself wondering why the author had decided to let us in on the trials and tribulations within his own personal relationships. I cannot think of any other climber who has done this with such honesty. The climbing essays are as one would expect from this writer page turners, and the ones about his early life in Hull ‘The Land of Green Ginger’ and ‘High Marks’ when he was finally diagnosed with extreme dyslexia are interesting and in the case of the latter educative. What undiagnosed problem might we also be suffering, I was always unbelieving when Don Whillans confessed he suffered from an undiagnosed vertigo condition, but having read Kirkpatrick’s story, maybe we were unsympathetic to the Villain’s plight in that respect?
The two climbing essays I enjoyed the most were ‘The Troll’s Gift’ and ‘Queen Maud Land’, the first about attempts and a successful ascent of the Troll Wall in Norway, and the second about being some kind of guide to a party of Norwegians intent on climbing Ulvetanna, a difficult mountain which they wished to ascend and then Base Jump from its summit. In setting the scene about this, he decides that he must start thinking about the cold conditions like his companions. They seem totally inured to such, and I can vouchsafe for this myself when one winter in the 1980’s in Lappland, I made a winter climb with a Swede and two Norwegians. The latter spent each weekend in winter camping near some climbing objective, their secret in combating the freezing conditions they informed me was they slept on reindeer skin mats. I think the author’s writing in this essay is amongst his finest and, despite the fact that his Norwegian partners on this climb were novices they were successful in climbing a mountain, which had previously been regarded as extremely difficult.![]()
His final essays which he classifies as ‘Unidentifiable’ have little to do with climbing and much to do with life, in all its different forms. The essay ‘Roger Godfrin’ is disturbing for it deals with a terrible massacre in a French village, Oradour-sur-Glane by men of the Waffen-SS. ‘Roger Godfrin’ of the title, a young boy who disobeyed the orders to line up, and who said to a friend ‘They’re German’s, They will hurt us. I’m going to try and escape’. And he did whilst the hundreds who obeyed orders from their teachers, priests and the SS were all murdered.
The book finishes with an Epilogue ‘What I’ve learnt’ and notes about The Essays and their origination histories. In the first of these ‘Not Your Man’ you get the essence of what Kirkpatrick is about. He is not a made over, Instagram warrior. He certainly try’s to tell it without flim-flam as it appears to him, and for instance now living in Ireland with his second wife, who is from that country he is not afraid to give us his views on abortion, in another judgement piece he lets rip about the CIA, the Contras, Nicaragua, drugs and the secret Iran arms deal and much more. He also tells us that a Gay contact had told him that if he also was such, he would be a BEAR. His wife likes to refer to him as ‘Polar Bear’ for he is physically solidly built! And typical of his roots in the East Riding he is an avid tea drinker.![]()
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'Just dangerous, stupid and scary. Underdressed, ill-equipped, no guidebook, blizzard, sub-zero.”
Филипп Петрович скорер.
We were staying at Wern, near Trawsfynydd. I drove fast up the narrow, tight-walled road towards Ffestiniog, making Alice flinch and exclaim. I had only started driving last year. We sped through Capel and the glistening gash of Ogwen opened up. Everything was covered with snow.
“Just a dusting,” I said confidently, pointing our wives at the north ridge of Tryfan - “Kate, darling, Al, it goes up that way... roughly,” - and we told them we’d see them at the top in a couple of hours. Just a couple of hours, honestly...
Both married, not quite yet fathers, my best friend Philip and I had decided to climb Grooved Arête to celebrate his 30th birthday. An easy romp, with plentiful belay ledges to smoke on and admire the view. It was mid-April. It would be like a day at the beach, sunbathing like in the late 80s, when the naughty Dawlish girls would take their tops off for Helios - I digress... He had never done it before. The snow should make it more ‘interesting’.
We stamped our way up the Heather Terrace, the snow becoming more icy and solid. I found the old scratched letters. It was nearly fifteen years since I’d last been at the foot of this route. With various accumulated gear and a whole pile of rope-access stuff - we even had full body harnesses as our old ones had vanished along the way - we looked up and saw about four parties abseiling off. Inevitably, the yellow helicopter turned up. For training purposes, apparently.
“Fuck it,” I said with a smile, and we began.
I suppose, like all self-taught young climbers, we had a history of idiocy. Or at least I did.
I was seven. I was taught a fist-jam. It was a six-foot high crack on Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire, a place where later I discovered a boulder named the Devil’s Table. A little later, I had climbed the more famous Devil’s Chimney many times in my teens, despite the Council having declared it was verboten. Getting off that quarriers’ phallic joke was always the hardest part, feeling for the foothold beneath the top overhang. When the council propped it with crude rebar and tonnes of concrete we concocted plans to demolish it, involving homemade gunpowder, or drilled-holes filled with acid, or at least paint it pink and purple, a giant cock. As with all plans, the design, not the execution, was the main thing.
We got up to many vaguely dangerous things in the 70s and 80s. We would pour lakes of petrol and douse our bicycles, set fire to the bike and pedal madly through the explosive ponds. Strangely, I was always the first moron to do it each night. Kids who were less skillful got set on fire. I got used to smothering flames. ‘Dads’ started to lock their garages.
We robbed stores for fags: “Forty B&H and forty JPS please, for my dad, please.” As soon as on the counter, grab and run with a mate holding the door open. Eventually the Police caught up.
For a bet - there were many, but it was usually me, I once slept in a three foot gap between the brick and the track under a railway bridge next to the main-line to London. Terrifyingly, I got some sleep between trains. I shall pass over the multiplicity of other stupidities. I was avoiding home, for the usual, splintering family reasons.
In my mid-teens, after finding Joe Brown’s The Hard Years in the library, bored with soloing the chossy edges above Gloucester and Cheltenham, and finally grasping the concept that climbing should be a social activity, I bought 50 feet of 6mm blue polypropylene ‘washing line’. I used part of it to unravel and thread some 6mm un-drilled nuts with 2mm strands. Three dog-lead clips for krabs.
I showed my more naive mates how to do a waist belay. I knew the leader never fell and I never placed one of those useless nuts. Yet the rope held even my large friends when they fell off - or, as was more common, lumps of the crag fell off. Yet my waist belays held, and I was tiny. On that same rope, I taught myself to do the classic abseil. I started from my bedroom window, and graduated to the fast lane of the M5 in the nighttime. You just had to time the headlights right.
In my late teens, I got a grant for poor kids doing A levels, and spent it on a ‘proper’ set of climbing gear. I had done some easy classics with ancient hemp and a Moac or two back in ‘86, but I finally had an RP, about six Rocks, the old Moac and its smaller mate on a most dubious piece of tat - though strangely, it was the most Zen piece of pro: sink that and one felt immortal - and two Hexes, a luxury undreamt of. Oh yes, and a rope.
A friend, Dan, and I came up with a backpacking itinerary that involved every mountain from Foel Fras to Cader. Sadly I came down with a dose of worms on Foel Grach. I apologise for our stoned scrawls in the logbook in the shelter. I still sprinted Tryfan’s north ridge for the first time in exhilarated exhaustion - we’d already pitched the tent up at Bochlwyd and ran direct down through the boulders. Hard work. I collapsed by the morning - there was nothing left in me but those wriggling parasites. We came back a month later, and did Grooved Arete. A simple romp. Big boots and easy, careless.
Later I obtained sticky boots and a Troll harness, and after a while one of the first flexible friends - the ones that got recalled immediately. We didn’t bother sending it back, nor did we ever trust it, so it hung impotently from our belts.
I had recently moved to Exeter, because the family was supposedly relocating there. I started my A levels, taught myself to cook and all the rest for a term while I waited for - as it turned out - some of them to turn up. And angrily, I started climbing properly.![]()
Moonraker: traversing through the Great Cave, the tide a little too high, and we went round with legs finding holds underwater the first time. It wasn’t too rough, but the swell lifted and dropped and your toes had to find the holds. But the route… easy, but so wonderful.
The Spider: that overhang, where the crucial hold on the overhang broke into different pieces the three times I did it in a year, and then that slab. That slab was superb, so thin. I was lazy once, and Philip took a 60 foot pendulum. I was tied to a distant gorse bush and was dragged and ended up with my buttocks on the vertical watching him swing. I lowered him to a ledge and he swore a lot, untied, and soloed down some VS.
Aviation: the second pitch like a great steep buttcrack. One foot slip and you’re going to get hurt, but it eases, it lubes itself up in a perverse friction, and you keep going, admiring the lichens. Vandal and Ann is nearly as good but more dangerous, especially if you have a botanical interest in plants on the second pitch.
The Heart of the Sun: only did it once. We ate spam sarnies before setting off. We had no cams. I found myself about forty foot up with a dodgy RP 1 and a 0.5. Then my god, the finger-crack! A rock 4! There really is a god, for climbers at least. The grade changes every year I’ve heard, depending on whatever has fallen off. It was a dangerous E2 the version we did. Magical. But the last choss pitch... Poor Phil, I’d get him to lead it, including when we did the Void, but I never wore a helmet, so I think it was fair play.
Such fantastic routes when you’re seventeen and haven’t got a clue about safety.
We were both sybarites and naïvetés. We’d go to Font in August. The ferry, whisky and 7Up, Gare de Nord and the first café avec la fumée... Le Métro avec the stench de Gitanes that nauseated the duty-free hangover, and the trek from le Gare de Melun through the Forêt with our rucksacks, Vango Force 10 and all, until we’d pitch our spot at the old free camping ground at Cuvier, just near the great places for shitting. The weather was good, which was better than any modern ridiculous aspirations of ‘friction’.
The girls bathing naked under the Cuvier standpipe were gleaming, foreign and had that effortless assurance that the English rarely achieve. They were much more our idea of lubricious friction - sod the grades. After two weeks of our passing with our respective “B’jour ça va? Bien,” I forgot myself on the day we left. “Morning. We’re off today. Mais, mais… tu es tres joli...” as I smiled wanly with that farewell shrug. Their eyebrows shot up and slowly lowered, and then came the reply: “Oh! You’re English too! We’re from Bristol…” I sighed, a helpless clown, palms aloft in mute despair, that turned to laughter. Multiverses of missed opportunities.
As for climbing, very soon women intervened. Fucking was more fun. For nearly a decade I didn't climb, the odd route aside, when I was always surprised to find I could still do it.
“Fuck it,” I said, with an idiot smile, and we started up.
The snow was falling thick and fast. We helped with a couple of stuck ropes for the various retreating parties - one of them had a face like a horse, yet the others were nondescript - and then we got to it. Big boots, for the lower pitches were mostly clear. But once we’d got past the snowy traverse, the going became rapidly more difficult.
Big boots came off. Rock shoes came on. Rock shoes came off. Cold feet. Boots. Shoes. Rubbing of feet. Verglas everywhere, and every crack was choked with ice. We agreed it would be good to have some picks and crampons.
I was still full of confidence. I was at my physical yet immature prime. We were going up, I decided. Phil was more wise than me, but he still came too.
At some point, we went off route. There was no Haven to be found. We climbed the very edge of the rib above the gully, avoiding the worst patches of ice, but with most of the cracks choked with it. Protection was sparse, and that had to be chipped out. It felt bizarrely hard, even for the conditions. I strung it out somewhat, to Philip’s annoyance that if he slipped he could be falling into the space above Green Gully, the rope slicing against the blunt scythe of the rib. I felt for him, and knew he could do it, but (to use a climbing cliche) failure was not an option.![]()
The yellow helicopter had been back for a couple of hours, watching us - me with my antiquated Helly Hansen onesie and a Harris Tweed on top, and Philip in a faded Berghaus that might once have been red and blue. I suppose we looked like idiots. I gave the chopper the finger several times, reasoning that would not be misinterpreted as a sign for help, or might be interpreted as “We’re going up!” but it still wouldn’t go away. Yet as we continued, it eventually buggered off.
But this slab. I remembered the Knight’s Move was upwards left to right. Apparently I kept swearing about where the fucking Knight’s Slab was. But this was wrong. It was all thick with white ice and thin with black ice. There were some vague horizontal bands, more ripples than holds. It looked impossible. The only ice-tools I had was a number 11 hex and a nut-key - did I even have the nut-key? But that was no good against the verglas. There was no friction. I remembered some of my childish reading, and took off my boots. Stockinged feet. They actually work. They seem to immediately freeze and add a little extra friction. I teetered and smeared somehow to below a corner. Needless to say, there was no protection to be found.
“V-F***ing-Diff?” I expostulated.
Below, Philip watched impassively, but I could see his concern. The belay could have been better, and it would have been a hard fall.
The corner crack was choked with ice, but at least after a few minutes of smashing and digging I found a placement. Moving up was straightforward up a slightly impending crack. Thick ice. Number 11 hex as an ice hammer. I put my boots back on, for I could not feel my feet. Then smash and clear holds - any holds - even a small crimp… on a V Diff? Somehow I clawed my way up, close to the North Summit. The blizzard and clag we’d climbed in fell away, and I found myself at the margin of a temperature inversion. All the peaks became icy and bright in the sun, and the world below didn’t exist in the least. Well, at least for me.
We grinned and laughed. On the main summit I did Adam and Eve both ways, which sounds kinky, but really wasn’t. We checked the time. It had been nine hours since we had bid farewell to our beloveds. How time flies. We sat and smoked, and took a few photographs, guessing what our reception would be, but I was trying to hang on to this moment of escape, this small severance of the world beneath the cloud.
We remembered we had an early mobile phone, and somehow found some signal from the summit. There were some unsettling, angry noises at the other end. So, we ran down past Bochlwyd, back to the Milestone layby. I think we saw the black cloud of our furies a quarter of a mile away, which were truly unleashed when I unfeelingly laughed at the fact that they had called Mountain Rescue. It transpired they had retreated off the north ridge minutes after we said we’d see them in a couple of hours.
It was a very silent journey back. It had been one of my most rich, thin, and memorable climbs, with all the ghosts of Winthrop-Young, Mallory and Kirkus crossing my mind at times. But that silence that remained amongst the four of us in the car spoke of something lost. There was a new silence.
Postscript, by Philip Scorer.
Almost eighteen years ago it seemed like a good idea to go for a birthday climb up Grooved Arete. I’d not been up any routes that long before and was excited by the prospect. We packed our cumbersome gear, including, I think, at least one industrial rope access harness with steel karabiners, a 60m 11mm rope, a reasonable rack but with few slings/runners etc and lots of heavy clothes (no light weight trendy gear back then).
We set off to the foot of Tryfan, told our wives to go up the ridge and meet us in about three hours and then briskly marched off leaving them looking a bit bemused.
About an hour later we arrived at the foot of the climb, the skies darkened with a snow cloud. The noise of an RAF rescue helicopter made me a little wary at the conditions as climbers were descending from the route. But we knew better, and started climbing, following a fifteen-year old memory of a route done in the summer.
David had always been a good leader and he ploughed, chipped and smashed his way up the route with me tagging behind hauling our heavy rucksacks. Walking boots were changed to climbing slippers and back as terrain altered. The blizzard swirled and the three hours had elapsed and we were ‘lost’.
He could not find anything familiar, memory, off-route? I was just following. As a second it was mostly safe but not enjoyable in the moment, mostly feeling that we were too high to start retreating so simply had to go on. Another couple of hours elapsed as David climbed icy slabs in his socks, the boots and shoes giving no purchase.
One particular pitch was most certainly not a V.Diff. A technical slab overhanging what seemed like an infinite drop into a black and white world of swirling snow and sharp rocks, the haul line tugging below, David holding the line tight above. Somehow I managed to get up to the stance impressed that he had managed to lead such a terrifying pitch.
The ground got easier, I may have even lead a pitch or two, and perhaps some alpine style scrambling to the top. At least it was still daylight as we emerged into clear blue sky and a stunning view. Happy to be alive we called our wives and raced down the mountain to find our desperate and angry spouses. They really had feared the worst, they had no idea how to get to the top, they had seen the RAF helicopter hovering around, and exhausted climbers retreat.
There is something to be said of the juxtaposition of fearful experiences, beautiful places and trials overcome, but on balance, I would have preferred a nice walk with my wife in the sunshine and snow of the hills. I don’t think I climbed with David again for at least thirteen years.
(There’s another story when I drove for nine hours to meet David to attempt ‘A Dream of White Horses’. When will I learn…?)![]()
Memory is fickle. Off-route is even more so. I was probably a fool in the circumstances. Mike Bailey, author of the Ogwen Guide, has kindly suggested that we had probably wandered onto a route called Snowstorm, VS 5a. An extremely apt name, and I thoroughly approve. I must go back there and see - perhaps a 20th anniversary is in order. If the first ascentionists are known… I have - thanks to Mike - just found out it was Don Roscoe and Hamish MacInnes. I shall raise a glass to the Rock and Ice and the Creagh Dhu. Discovering that last night brought the broadest of smiles to my face.
The summit photographs remained in my trusty Olympus XA2 that eventually got soaked in the leaky footwell of Phil’s car. Years later I extracted the colour film and developed the negatives as black and white. There is a little detail: it belies its time, but it seems true to our style of ascent.
“Ill-equipped?” Vest, shirt, Helly Hansen onesie, jumper, trousers, harris tweed, gloves, big boots and socks, rock boots, helmet, whistle, (torch?), a decent rack, waterproofs, hat, water, (coffee?), and chocolate. Rather heavy in the rucksack I recall, having to take a lot of it off. Poor Philip. But yes, bloody cold, and we had no guidebook.
But, we had dented the samovar.Thank you Philip for the memories; apologies, to you, Kate and Alice for the stress of that day, and finally thanks to Mick Ward for his constructive advice writing this piece.David Alcock-2018 Images-DA.
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To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field’ Boris Pasternack.Nick Bullock has made something of a reputation as one of the leading chroniclers of modern mountaineering and rock climbing; via the social media, articles and now his second book, ‘tides’. This covers the period from 2003 up to 2016. The first of these dates marks the year he left his job as a PE Instructor in the Prison service, based at a high security institution in Leicester. For 15 years acting out a role as a warder, helping to keep behind locked doors some of those who society wishes to hold and keep off their streets. Many of whom are damaged souls, with little hope of rehabilitation. At this happening Bullock was 37 years old, and to decide to leave such a career post and a settled life to become a full time climber was by any reckoning, a bold step?
Before moving on to the meat of the book, the climbing, I wish to make an observation about prison life, I just cannot believe that the 15 years of his previous career has not made Bullock into the climber he has now become. Questioning his own motivation and sometimes racked by self doubt; at others totally dedicated and positive about living the life of a full time climber, and in the arena of expedition climbing becoming one of its leading exponents. I think if you have been exposed to prison life and its denizens, to subsequently freely move around in open country, to watch the bird and animal life, to chart an array of stars in the night sky, and observe a grove of flowers, it must provide experiences that are so heightened by the previous knowledge of, other humans, living almost like caged animals. I write with a little knowledge about these conditions, for I was many years ago for a short period of time a prison visitor.![]()
The book is made up of 36 short chapters, and their headings give some sort of feeling as to the stories they tell of extreme rock climbs, and committing expeditions; ‘love and hate’, ‘death or glory’ ‘the pitfalls of a peroni model’ ‘that’s rowdy dude’ ‘slave to the rhythm?’ and so many other such do get the reader set up for what is to come. Some of the writing is so dense that I had to go back and re-read parts of the action to quite understand its significance. And so with the writer living in his van (having let his house in Leicesteshire), he commutes in this between Llanberis, Scotland and Chamonix. Outstanding climbs are made on the sea cliffs of Anglesey, in the Pass, Glencoe/The Ben/Lochnagar and the Mont Blanc Range. And as the chapters progress the authors companions are also centre stage for he is climbing with some of the leading ‘stars’ of the period;, Kenton Cool, Al Powell, Steve House, Nico Favresse, Andy Houseman, Jon Bracey and James McHaffie. Someone who he climbs with a lot, and who plays many roles in the stories of his climbs is ‘Streaky’, Graham Desroy, who for some reason Bullock always refers to as ‘The Hippy’. Most of the time poor old Streaky is scared witless by the action, particularly on the sea cliffs, but for those of us who know him well, this is a part of his put on persona, for he is actually a very competent and outstanding climber in his own right. I might be accused of Yorkshire favouritism here for Graham was once a part of the Leeds Mafia, editing the area’s guidebooks. (In passing Cool, Bercy and Powell also cut their climbing teeth in the same milieu)
He does not spare himself or his companions as the action unfolds, and I suppose as a former Prison officer one might be thinking about people and their motivations. Who you can one really rely on and who might just be talking a good game, bolstered by past glories? Once again as in some other recent climbing stories, we are let in on the authors very private life, his wish for a deep relationship with some female who he can gel with, but each of these attempts fails, some leaving deeper scars than others. One can imagine the dedication to keep up such a climbing life, year in year out wears down companions if not the author, but everyone if they survive gets old and now into his early 50’s Nick must be wondering what might yet still be in store in climbing terms? I do have an example for him, an old friend from Geneva, Jean Juge climbed the North Face of the Eiger when it was still for tigers only, more than thirty years ago in his late ‘sixties’.
There is so much climbing that it is hard to keep up, but one that sticks with me is the confrontation with Stevie Haston, who when he discovers that on a route of his ‘Melody’ on Craig Doris, Bullock had been trying to remove his original protection pitons, by then very old and rusty, to replace them with new pins. Stevie came a steaming to the crag, warning of dire consequences if he went ahead with his plans. Bullock actually thought he might be physically attacked by Stevie who can look and act very ferociously, but actually he is a gentle kind soul beneath his hard exterior. I used to meet him occasionally in London at the Mile End Wall, as did my eldest son when he was a music student in the Capital. Haston would willingly spend his time encouraging us lesser mortals up his favourite problems. Bullock returned to ‘Melody’ at a later date, bolstered by Streaky, and led the route without too much fuss, and only relying on Stevie’s ancient pegs for protection.
The story of the confrontation in the Autumn of 2015 with a grizzly bear that the author and Greg Boswell suffered on the lower slopes around Mount Wilson in the Canadian Rockies is truly gripping. After preparing the trail to reach the first pitches, scouting out a twelve pitch route named ‘Dirty Love’ high on the mountain, they left all their gear, axes, and ropes behind ready to return once the conditions improved. It was while they were descending through deep forest that the bear attacked and Boswell was floored and bitten in the legs and ankle. Somehow, through screaming and shouting, for they had no weapons themselves the bear was frightened off, but leaving Boswell bleeding profusely and in agony for the rest of the descent back to a car and the hospital in Banff. These are the bare bones of this story for obviously the event lasted longer in its frightening hours.
Bullock has been energetically exercised in so many climbing areas of the world, in south America with Al Powell, in Alaska with Andy Houseman, in the Himalaya with Kenton Cool, so many stand out ascents such as a repeat of the Slovak route on the Mount Denali. But there is a price to pay for several good friends are injured or die whilst also pushing out on such magical climbs. None more so than the death of Jules Cartwright, who was killed along with a client guiding in the Alps; his death affected the author deeply for he was such a larger than life character, and they had made some outstanding climbs together.
Nearing the end of the book we read the story of the first ascent in Tibet of the north Buttress on Nyainqentangla, an eight day mountain marathon in September 2016, by the author with Paul Ramsden. This is now where cutting edge Himalayan climbing is happening, new routes on the lesser but probably more technically difficult mountains of the range. For this climb they were awarded a Piolet d-Or. One has to wonder about such, but the photograph of them is good fun, for although their climb was worthy I guess to receive an award, they do appear a most unlikely couple for they look more like a couple crown green bowlers than hot alpinists. Tempes fugit and it gets us all in the end, and sadly we read about the death of the author’s mother, someone who had been a generous caring rock throughout his life.
Bullock’s knowledge of fauna and flora, particularly in the UK is poetically expressed and knowledgeable. Maybe that harks back to his time spent as a gamekeeper when young, but I was surprised about how little description there is in ‘tides’ of the people’s who inhabit the countries he has been to. I have been three times to Tibet, and for me the local people I travelled with and met are important to remember. But maybe that is why I never climbed anything like the route that the author pioneered there. He has now followed this vagabond lifestyle, totally dedicated to a climbing life, living in a van for over a decade.
It is interesting to speculate how climbing might develop in future. Bullock notes that young British climbers do not seem to want to go on expeditions anymore? I am not sure about that, for the Mount Everest Foundation is still making many grants each year to such. And not a few of these are made up by parties of University club climbers and I am sure this book will inspire many young climbers to widen their horizons. ‘tides’ includes 37 black/white photographs of varying quality in reproduction. However they do give more insight (if it were still needed) into the life Nick has led; obviously his late start as a climber was bolstered by his PE background, and he was a ‘trainer’ from the word go. But one is left to wonder at what he might have achieved if he had started climbing as a teenager?![]()
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Henry Barber bouldering at John Smith's Bay:Photo-Grant Farquhar
Full Hot: 1 adj. Archaic English: Heated; Fiery; Hotter than hot. 2 adj. /fuhl-hah t/ Bermudian: A person who has had too much alcohol to the point of complete inebriation. “Aceboy is FULL HOT ummaa take mi bredrin home.” See also: half hot, hot, full hot & foolish.
I had gotten in touch with Henry Barber, from my home in Bermuda, to obtain permission from him and Chip Lee to include an excerpt from Chip’s 1982 biography of Henry in the forthcoming Gogarth anthology: The White Cliff. Henry made several trips to the UK in the 70s climbing in many different areas, including Gogarth, and forging friendships in the anarchic climbing scene.
At the time, ‘Hot Henry’ was, arguably, the best climber in the world. He climbed 300+ days a year and travelled the world to climb in diverse places, often barefoot or solo, amassing a string of first-free and onsight solo ascents that redefined style and ethics on a global scale. In 1972, Henry pulled into Yosemite for the first time; coming from the east coast, he was not made to feel welcome: “They would give me the stinkeye. It could have been a jealousy thing, or I could have been an asshole, I don’t know. It just got worse over the years.” The following year, Henry onsighted the outstanding project of Butterballs (5.11c), a route that was, according to John Bachar, “way over everybody’s heads”. Henry then soloed the Steck-Salathe, onsight, and climbed The Nose of El Cap 75 percent free in a day and a half. ![]()
Henry returned to Yosemite in 1975: “I wasn’t liked, flat out. I was a gun walking into town. I was like a lone gunslinger walking down the street and there were five guys lined up at the other end of the street ready to draw their guns.” Fish Crack was the Valley’s biggest prize at the time, and a project being worked by Bachar and Ron Kauk. Barber climbed to the poorly-protected crux near the top of the route and fell onto a lone, sketchy nut that – had it pulled – would have ended his bold career: “I fell off the chicken head after the crux when my feet slipped as I was climbing in a light rain. The next day Kauk and Bachar yo-yoed the route but didn’t get to my high point. I completed it, in one go, the following day.” At the time, the 5.12 grade had yet to be established in Yosemite. Henry gave Fish Crack 5.11 because: “They would have hated me even more if I’d given it 5.12.” It now is graded 5.12b and regarded as one of Yosemite’s, and the world’s, first routes of that grade.
In 1976, for an American Sportsman TV show episode, a 22-year-old Henry onsight soloed The Strand, an E2 5b on Gogarth’s Upper Tier. This ascent turned into a gruelling one-and-a-half-hour epic. Once past the crux, Henry was totally committed: “Under the circumstances, I realised that I could not down-climb the difficult moves. It’s one of the only times in climbing that this has been true. There were just too many things working against me.” He was very relieved to, finally, reach the top: “I was hot, I was tired, and I was beaten. It was an incredible mental challenge for me, but I wouldn’t do anything like it again because it was too close to death.”Soloing in Scaur Quarry, 1972: Photo HB ![]()
While corresponding about his Gogarth days for The White Cliff, Henry revealed that he had been to Bermuda around Nov/Dec 1972, and climbed. I wasn’t particularly surprised that Henry had climbed in Bermuda before, but I was surprised when he accepted my invitation to visit this year.
“Who’s Henry?” enquires my wife. I explain who ‘Hot Henry’ is. “So what’s his nickname now that he’s older? Half Hot Henry? Tepid Henry?” she asks. I had met Henry once before, in Melbourne after he gave a lecture at the climbing shop. Waiting at the airport, in Bermuda, almost 20 years later, I’m wondering how much he has changed in that time. Some old guy with a moustache emerges. Is that him? No. Time passes, I start to wonder whether he made his flight or not. Just as I sit down, Henry comes through the sliding doors. His moustache is whiter, but otherwise he looks remarkably similar to my memory of him.
Henry is in a good mood, but having got up at 2am and made a 6-hour drive through driving snow into the teeth of a New England Nor’easter to make his flight, he wants to head to my place to regroup a little before hitting the crag. Afterwards, I take him to Clarence Cove, and we do some mellow deep water soloing. The second day starts off well when Henry lands a 10 pound+ bonefish on his fly rod in our bay. Notoriously difficult to hook and land, the local bones experts are suitably impressed and the resulting conversation about casts, bites, lures, flys and the size and weight of fish goes on for a while.![]()
Henry is a purist, an exponent of ‘clean climbing’ which means that his climbing equipment consists of simply a bandolier of nuts and a swami belt. No cams. No harness, and sometimes no rockboots. At least he has a belay device and a chalkbag. Oh, and he is wearing rock shoes. Barefoot climbing on the sharp rock in Bermuda would be painful. We hit the Great Head; at 100’ this is Bermuda’s biggest cliff and home to many good routes from 5.8 to 5.13. We start off on 5.8 and progress steadily to 5.10. Henry is 64 years old and not suffering from anorexia nervosa, but he climbs surely and steadily with no dithering. The steepest sections cause him to pause and there is some down climbing, but he is always in control.
I’m interested in picking Henry’s brains about free soloing. There are sections of The White Cliff that touch on this topic in relation to climbers such as Jimmy Jewell and Derek Hersey; who soloed frequently, and who died doing it. In his superb essay about soloing with John Bachar, The Only Blasphemy, John Long defined this as “ – to willfully jeopardise my own life”. If this is, indeed, the only blasphemy then to blaspheme on a daily basis; to be willing to pay the ultimate price, like Jewell and Hersey, can only be described as heresy.
The rewards for indulging, repeatedly, in such behaviour appear to lie in the feelings arising, at the time, from doing it and, afterwards, from having done it. Regarding the former, Derek Hersey said: “There’s nothing that makes me feel so alive. You’re thinking – but not in words. You’re thinking in movement, in rhythm... You have to almost say there is no probability of falling. Subconsciously, you just have to go with that.”
In his book, Rock Athlete, Ron Fawcett outlines: “The strange mixture of feelings you get while soloing high above the ground, of being calm but utterly focused. I see myself totally absorbed and living intensely; it’s what I love about the sport.” Both appear to be describing the highly focused mental state of complete absorption in an activity that has been labelled ‘flow’.![]()
Regarding the ‘high’, Ron Fawcett concedes in his book that he did get “a buzz” from the danger. In an interview in 2008 Henry Barber said: “Another reason I loved soloing was for the euphoric feeling afterwards. I remember soloing the North Face of Capitol Peak [a 5.9 in Colorado] and coming down and making love to my girlfriend. Unless I was Carlos Castaneda, I couldn’t describe what that’s like, but that’s what really almost addicted me to it; not the struggle and focus during the climbing, but the release afterwards. I’ve never done drugs, but it’s got to be like that, because it’s intense.”
Everybody has experienced flow states, during, and highs, after, climbing. According to the theories of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to achieve a flow state a balance must be struck between the challenge of the route and the skill of the climber. If the climb is too easy then it’s boring; too difficult it’s frustrating, and in both cases, flow cannot occur. Skill level and challenge level must be closely matched. In order to maintain the mental state that the protagonist seeks, then there will – have to – be an inevitable escalation of challenge over time, otherwise the activity will become boring: unrewarding.
The implications of this for someone whose chosen activity is highly potentially lethal, such as solo free climbing or, say, proximity wingsuit BASE are that unless, at some point, the individual consciously decides to retire from the flow-driven inexorable escalation of challenges, then the activity will, eventually, kill them. For the solo climber, the margin for error on a route of high difficulty will eventually become too thin for that unexpected occurrence: hold failure, gear failure, weather failure; or, perhaps, most insidiously, when soloing routes of lower difficulty has become insufficiently challenging – mundane – to generate the mental state necessary to survive. It doesn’t matter if you fall off a hard or an easy solo, the rock does not care, and the outcome is the same. When I question Henry about this, he says gnomically: “You retire it, or it retires you.”![]()
On our second full day climbing, we head to Tsunami Wall which, unfortunately, is living up to its name and being deluged by waves, so we visit The Pump Room. Henry’s knee is playing up, but he gimps his way manfully down the steep approach scramble before sending a couple of steep lines. Later I take him to an obscure deep water solo venue located in Tom Moore’s Jungle which also happens to be Bermuda’s premiere cave diving spot. Embarrassingly, I wander around the jungle, lost, and fail to locate the crag. I have an idea where it is but the trail has grown over, and I don’t want to lead Henry on a bushwhack from hell to try and find it. So we go bouldering on the beach and repair to the pub.
Henry, I have to say, was a highly entertaining guest. During our drives to the crag and mandatory debriefings, in the pub, Henry while frequently incoherent with laughter regaled me with tales from his time in North Wales in the 70s with luminaries such as Al Harris, Pete Minks, Al Rouse, Cliff Phillips et al. I should have recorded him as the stories are the stuff of legends, hilarious, but also dark and borderline sociopathic. There is a tale about four naked climbers in the bathtub with Pete Minks delivering the punchline as he comes up from between womens’ legs with grey bath water streaming off his beard: “It’s all right, I’m a plumber.”
Another story is of repeated restaurant food hijacking with Al Harris pleading to an enraged mob: “Do you think somebody like me would do something like that?” On another occasion North Wales arrives, without warning, in a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado with Pete Minks demonstrating the “Dance of the flaming fairies” involving a naked man and a rolled up newspaper that was inserted in a specific anatomical location and set on fire. Chip’s biography of Henry, On Edge, was written when Henry was 29 years old. Surely only pop stars and footballers produce biographies before they are 30? Henry is still ‘Full Hot’, and with stories like those above, it might be time for him to think about On Edge Volume 2.
After Henry leaves, I find the quarry that he climbed on in the 70s. It’s 20ft high with vertical walls, corners and arêtes. I solo the cracks and corners and then a nice 20ft arête. It’s like a mini-Millstone so Veg Lane has to be the name, or maybe On Edge would be more appropriate? The jungle at the top resembles Vietnam and is impenetrable. With a nasty looking squall blowing in from the ocean, I hastily downclimb another, easier, arête. I get home and look at Henry’s photos. Wait a minute that looks like a different quarry? Still it was a nice arête.![]()
Sources:Henry Barber in Wild New Brave (film).
Henry Barber – Free-Climbing Pioneer, Free Soloist, Trad Climber, Motivational Speaker, Purist; North Conway, New Hampshire by Mark Synnott in Climbing magazine, 2008.
Soloing at the Limit, an interview by Annie Whitehouse in Climbing magazine, 1992.
On Edge, the life and times of Henry Barber by Chip Lee.
Rock Athlete by Ron Fawcett (with Ed Douglas).Grant Farquhar: 2018
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'The man who cannot climb it never gets a wife in St. Kilda.' So said Maclean in his 'Sketches of the Island of St. Kilda,' a scarce book, published in Glasgow in 1838. In view of the fact that the natives of this remote island formerly subsisted largely on sea-birds and eggs, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a girl of St. Kilda, having in view her future welfare, should establish some sort of test whereby to judge her lover's ability as a climber. Sir Robert Moray, in a paper communicated to the Royal Society in 1678, describes the dangers connected with the capture of sea-fowl by the men of Hirta on the apparently inaccessible Stacca Donna.There can be no doubt that this is the stack now called Stack-na-Biorrach. After they landed, he says, a man having room but for one of his feet, he must climb up 12 or 16 fathoms high. Then he comes to a place where, having but room for his left foot and left hand, he must leap from thence to another place before him, which if he hit right the rest of the ascent is easie, and with a small cord which he carries with him he hales up a rope whereby all the rest come up. But if he misseth that footstep (as often times they do) he falls into the sea and the company takes him in by the small cord and he sits still until he is a little refreshed and then he tries it again; for everyone there is not able for that sport.
Martin, in his 'Late Voyage to St. Kilda,' published in 1698, describes the ascent of 'the famous rock Stackdonn, as a Mischievous rock.....
for it hath prov'd so to some of their number, who perished in attempting to climb it; it is much of the form and height of a steeple; there is a very great dexterity, and it is reckoned no small gallantry to climb this rock, especially that part of it called ‘the Thumb’, which is so little, that of all the parts of a man's body, the thumb only can lay hold on it, and that must be only for the space of one minute; during which time his feet have no support, nor any part of his body can touch the stone, except the thumb, at which minute he must jump by the help of his thumb, and the agility of his body, concurring to raise him higher at the same time, to a sharp point of the Rock, which when he has got hold of, puts him above danger, and having a rope about his middle, that he casts down to the boat, by the help of which he carries up as many persons as are designed for fowling. ![]()
This quaint description was written 215 years ago, but every writer of importance on St. Kilda since that date has also mentioned this rock. Macaulay (grand-uncle of Lord Macaulay), in his 'History of St. Kilda,' 1764, appears to be the first to mention Stacki-birach, and says 'within a pistol shot of it lies Stacki-don or the Stack of no consequence, being the only rock within the territories of Hirta where the fowls do not hatch.' Then he says that Stacki-birach derives its name from 'ending in a spire.' Seaton, in his 'St. Kilda, Past and Present,' 1878, which is the most exhaustive account of the island yet published, does not allude to the confusion of names. Heathcote, however, in his attractively illustrated book on St. Kilda, published in 1900, takes it for granted that the Stack referred to by Martin as 'Stackdonn' was that which is now known as Stack-na-Biorrach. Martin does not give the height, but Macaulay gives it as 40 feet; Maclean as 400 or 500 feet. Heathcote is, in my opinion, correct in putting it at 'about 240 feet.' Macaulay's 40 feet was perhaps intended for 400, as the old writers were given to exaggeration. Heathcote appears to have been the only writer on St. Kilda who ascended any of the Stacks, all of which rise out of the ocean. He states that he has done a lot of climbing in Skye and a certain amount in Switzerland, and thinks he may claim to be a tolerable climber, and in this he is probably correct. For although he did not attempt Stack-na-Biorrach, which he says is the most difficult climb, he scaled Stack Lii, the height of which he gives as 533 feet, and the cover of his book is illustrated with a striking picture showing the commencement of the ascent. He failed to trace the story that in order to get a wife in St. Kilda it was necessary to climb Stack-na-Biorrach. ![]()
The chief topics of conversation in this out-of-the-way island are climbing and birds. A visit to Switzerland in 1882, during which the Schreckhorn, Finsteraarhorn, Jungfrau and Matterhorn, and an equal number of high passes were negotiated within ten days, and the fact that a certain rivalry existed between myself and an elder brother who first ascended the Eiger, induced me to visit St. Kilda in 1883, as I wished to test the ability of the natives as cragsmen, to compare them with Swiss guides, and to study the fauna and flora of this remote island, of which little was then known. It is thirty years ago next June since I ascended Stack-na-Biorrach, and therefore I trust I shall not be accused of hasty self-advertisement; indeed, my chief object in writing is to give the members of the Alpine Club an account of a climb which the older writers have attempted to describe on second-hand information; and, moreover, I fear that even the St. Kildans themselves will soon cease to ascend the rock, as they no longer subsist to the same extent on sea-birds and there is not the same necessity for dangerous rock-climbing.
But I have not yet described the St. Kilda group, which lies about fifty miles west of the Sound of Harris, and about one hundred west of the Scottish mainland. It consists of one large island, three miles long and two broad, rising to a height of 1372 feet, and two smaller ones—Soa and Borera, each about 1200 feet in height, and three Stacks—Stack-an-Armin, Stack Lii, and Stack-na-Biorrach, besides smaller rocks. Formerly communication with the mainland was of rare occurrence. Lady Grange was conveyed there in 1734, and was not released for eight years. Since David McBrain's steamers began running there, from thirty to forty years ago, intercourse with the outer world in summer time has been frequent, if uncertain. Fearing I might be left on the island all the winter, I arranged with McBrain to send a special steamer to take me on in September for the sum of £30. There was no necessity to take advantage of this arrangement, as his ordinary steamer took me off in good time. Not knowing Gaelic, I brought an interpreter with me from Glasgow, but, as he was afraid to go within ten yards of any cliff and did not understand the St. Kilda dialect, he was useless, save as caretaker of an old Crimean tent which we pitched on the only level patch (about ten yards square) near the landing-place. ![]()
The natives could not speak a word of English, and it was nearly a fortnight before they permitted me to accompany them in catching fulmar petrels on the ledges along the face of the great Connacher (1200 feet). They wanted to test my ability. I remember one day walking along its edge and seeing a stout stick firmly embedded in the earth about three yards from the face, with a rope round it. I was sure someone was below catching birds, so descending about 100 feet I came upon another rope, also fastened round a stick, embedded in the next ledge. This I also descended and came to a second ledge on which two men roped together were busy catching birds with long fishing-rods, to the end of which horse-hair nooses were attached. Having obtained permission to try my hand and being rewarded with success, the natives became very friendly. Of course I had my boots off. If you don't take them off it is done for you compulsorily. For, on another occasion, after landing on the island of Borera and proceeding to climb without removing them, I felt myself pulled down from behind, one of the islanders grasping my arms and waist together while the other proceeded to unlace my boots. The ropes by which the men descended the Connacher cliff were of hemp and rather heavy, but the line between the two men on the ledge was made of horse-hair and was light. In 1883 there were no horses on St. Kilda, but many cows. Martin, in 1698, said there were only three ropes in the whole island, each fathoms long. 'The chief thing,' he says, 'upon which the strength of these ropes depends is cow-hides, salted, and cut out in one long piece. This they twist round the ordinary rope of hemp, which secures it from being cut by the rocks.' Macaulay says (1764) that 'a rope is the most valuable implement that a man of substance can be possessed of in St. Kilda.
In his will he makes it the very first article in favour of his eldest son,' and 'it was reckoned equal in value to the two best cows on the island.' The rope alluded to by Macaulay appears to have been made entirely of cow-hide. I brought two Alpine Club ropes with me, the red central thread being regarded as a great curiosity by the natives. They would use neither of them. But they were very useful when attached to the top of the tent, preventing it from being blown into the sea on two very stormy days. After repeated entreaties, and when the natives had tested my ability in various ways, they consented to bring me to Stack-na-Biorrach. The wind was light, and the entire able-bodied population assisted in pushing the boat over the rocks into the sea. During this operation a crowd of about twenty dogs barked furiously. ![]()
The men talked in Gaelic, not a word of which I understood. One of them put a horse-hair rope around his waist. I could not imagine what they intended to do. For to ascend the rock immediately opposite appeared an utter impossibility, and my heart sank within me when they shouted ' Stack-na-Biorrach, Stack-na-Biorrach!' Donald McDonald, the man with the horse-hair rope round his waist, stood in the bow of the boat. Another man held the rope slack, and, watching his opportunity as the boat rose on the top of a swell, McDonald jumped on a small ledge of slimy seaweed below high-water mark. There was a momentary stagger, but he kept his balance, and fastened himself to the rock by holding on apparently to the barnacles with which it was covered. He then proceeded upwards by sticking his fingers and toes into small wind-worn cavities on the western face. The rope was gradually slackened, and at a height of about thirty feet he turned to the east, getting on a small narrow ledge, unseen from below, which could not have been more than two or three inches wide.
The whole of this performance was remarkable, especially having regard to its surroundings, the steeple-like rock rising from the ocean off the very wildest part of this remote island, the boatmen shout-ing in Gaelic to the climber, the great surge of the Atlantic threatening every moment to drive us against the cliff, and the horse-hair rope alternately slack and tightened as the boat rose and fell. At a height of about 30 or 40 feet McDonald stood on a projecting knob, about two feet square, right over the boat. He hauled up another rope and fastened it round the knob. There were now two ropes to the boat. Donald McQueen, tapped me on the shoulder and explained by signs that I was to ascend, boots of course being first taken off. At that time I could ascend a rope easily hand over hand; the swaying of it between the boat and the cliff made it less perpendicular at intervals and therefore easier, and I soon stood on the knob beside McDonald. I recollect every incident as if it only happened yesterday. He pressed me against the face of the cliff, and, to my horror, Donald McQueen now proceeded to ascend the rope. For the life of me I did not know where he was going to stand, and to this day I am puzzled to know how we three men contrived to stand on this projection. Fearing every moment that I would fall, I shouted to pull the boat from the rock, so that in case of accident I should drop into the sea, and not into the boat from a distance of about 40 feet. McQueen now put the rope round his waist and took the lead up a ledge two feet wide, wet with spray, which sloped at a very steep angle upwards. Having ascended this he grasped a narrow horizontal ledge about four inches wide and sloping outwards, so that the fingers slipped readily, and, with his feet dangling in the air, proceeded to jerk himself along this ledge by getting a fresh hold every time with each hand alternately. It was about 15 feet long.
McDonald held the horse-hair rope which was round McQueen's waist in his hand. This, no doubt, gave him a false sense of security, but otherwise was absolutely useless, for, had McQueen fallen, they would have both tumbled into the sea. McQueen now stood on another projection of a more satisfactory character than the first, about 70 feet over the sea, and beckoned me to follow him. The horse-hair rope was placed round my waist, and with McQueen on one side and McDonald on the other, holding the rope, I proceeded along the ledge, dangling without any foothold. Had it not been slippery with the droppings of guillemots I might have succeeded, but when midway I slipped, and, unable to recover my grip, would have fallen had not the two men simultaneously tightened the horse-hair rope with a powerful jerk, raising me a foot, during which I caught sight of a small lump sticking up, and, grasping this anxiously with one hand, was soon safely landed by McQueen at his end of the ledge.![]()
After five or six failures it was successfully lassoed and the rope tested by vigorous pulls to see whether it would give way. Having satisfied themselves that it was secure McQueen ascended, I followed, and then McDonald, all hand over hand. We were now about 80 feet above the water, and as the stack was no longer perpendicular or overhanging I shall not give minute details of the remainder of the climb, which was not more difficult than many first-class clubmen could contend with. It was interesting, however, and the view from the top was very fine. Hundreds, almost thousands, of guillemots scurried and fluttered or flew into the ocean below. The top was not flat, like the pinnacles on Farne Islands, but weather-worn and uneven. My thoughts were not, I fear, ornithological, but rather concentrated on the problem 'How shall I ever get down?'
However, the descent was accomplished with less assistance than the ascent, and I caught ‘The Thumb’ this time. The boatmen exclaimed 'Sauna' which, being interpreted to me, signified that I was a great climber, like a famous St. Kildan of that name. The best photograph I have seen of Stack-na-Biorrach faces page 124 in Kearton's well-known and beautiful book 'With Nature and a Camera,' published in 1902. It is the left-hand stack in that photograph. Even still, although the people on the island are getting spoiled by visitors, St. Kilda and its inhabitants are full of interest. I do not know whether either of the men who accompanied me in the ascent of Stack-na-Biorrach is alive. My nephew took a photograph of us after we returned. It shows exactly how we were attired for the climb; horse-hair rope and all. Thirty years ago there was no Ordnance sheet of St. Kilda, and I believe none has yet been made. The best maps I know of are the Admiralty chart and the map at the end of Heathcote's book. The ankles of the natives are tremendously developed. Kearton, who is a powerful man, gives in his book a photograph of his own ankle and that of a native. Heathcote, at the end of his book, hopes that he has deterred most people from going to St. Kilda. I am afraid his interesting volume will have exactly the opposite effect, but I do not expect his happy hunting-grounds, as he expresses it, will ever be 'invaded by a host of Sassenachs.' ![]()
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