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Blue Remembered Hills
As a tribute to Walt Unsworth who died on Tuesday at the fine age of 89, the following article is a piece he wrote for Climber magazine in 1983 when he was editor. His long and active life in the world...
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Remembering Royal Robbins
Image: Glenn DennyIt may seem a strange thing to say, but Royal Robbins carried British climbing values into American climbing culture with permanent benefit for both climbers and the rock they...
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Climbing in the War Years
HelygAt the end of a month of glorious weather in August 1939, when the only clouds were those of impending war in Europe, My wife Joy and I were walking with the Lake District artist Heaton Cooper,...
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The Conservation Ethic
Artist:Ricky Blake He who experiences the unity of life, sees himself in all beings, and all beings in himself’ The Buddha.One would expect that climbers would be bound by a strict conservation ethic,...
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Where have all the Birds gone?
There is no doubt that some people will grin in anticipation of what this article might contain but, unfortunately, what follows is about the feathered, and not the more desirable, variety of bird....
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Never Mind the Puffins.....The lost Clown Film
Freda and Friend The following essay by John Redhead is an exclusive extract from a forthcoming Gogarth Anthology, put together by Grant Farquhar. The climbing was never ‘it’.The keeper of the fog was...
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Seven Summits: A Moelwynion Circuit
Head of CwmorthinFor a really satisfactory hillwalk some sort of objective is necessary. But whereas (in the present writer's opinion) the covering of a given distance in the shortest possible time has...
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The Edge of the World
I was not interested in those cliffs until the trawler drove straight into them. I was above Patey's Buachaille, contemplating the channel that, in the absence of ladders, must be swum; I was...
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The Art of freedom: The life and climbs of Voytek Kurtyka..extract
Porters on the way to the Gasherbrums in the Baltoro,1983.Image-Voytek Kurtyka.It’s hard to assess the value of finding the right partner for any particular climb. For the Shining Wall of Gasherbrum...
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Bernadette McDonald's 'The Art of Freedom....Reviewed
The Art of Freedom- The Life and Climbs of Voytek Kurtyka .Bernadette McDonald.Published by Vertebrate Publishing. Under licence from Rocky Mountain Books, Canada. Price £24.Beauty is mysterious as...
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Ed Douglas's The Magician's Glass...Reviewed
Ed Douglas’s collection of eight essays which have previously graced the pages of the US Alpinist and Rock and Ice magazines are brought together in 'The Magician Glass'; after being re-edited-in Ed’s...
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The Survivor's Tale
Life in the military during the 1960’s was full of ups and downs. Depending on how you looked at your lot in life-glass half empty or half full- and of course, what you could get away with. For me and...
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They Took Me Climbing!
Here is another of those excellent short stories by Kevin FitzGerald, which while continuing his theme that ours is a ludicrous sport, hints that it might perhaps be something rather more. Twenty five...
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Roads stretch from here to everywhere
So Cenn has gone. Cruelly cut down in his mid 60‘s by a bastard degenerative neurological condition. Was it Motor-Neurone Disease....I don’t know? Whatever it was, it left him a prisoner. Trapped...
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Mountain Manoeuvres
Opening Scene: Cima Tosi 10,410ft - highest point in the Brenta Group in Northern Italy.The Players: Six RAF training instructors [1 officer-newest member, this being his first time as an instructor; 4...
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Like Crag Rats up a Drainpipe!
“I suppose’ Dave remarked rather scathingly, ‘that this must rate as your best ever con?’ ‘Not bad at all’ I allowed as we-that is the six who had been successfully conned and I-squelched and dripped...
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A Family on the Crags
Pillar RockThe Cumbrian who,with his brother, gave his name to the Westmorland Cairn on Great Gable—from which point of vantage they considered the finest view in all Lakeland could be obtained—died...
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Poetry and the Climbing Press
'The Madcap Laughs'.Renaissance Man,Ed Drummond being led away by New York cops after scaling the Statue of Liberty in a political protest"Poetry isn't where climbers are at," a climbing publisher said...
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High Mountains & Cold Seas:Triumph and Tribulation... reviewed
High Mountains and Cold Seas. J.R.L. Anderson. 416 pagesTriumph and Tribulation. H.W. Tilman. 200 pages.. Published by Lodestar Books and Vertebrate Publishing, in paperback format. £12 each title.‘I...
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The Death of Mountaineering?
There are occasions when a single scene, or the smell of an atmosphere, are worth a thousand words. A sentiment which has been better expressed no doubt, but it captures the experience of the British...
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