Climbers

Climbers, the 1989 novel by M. John Harrison, has just been republished with a new introduction by Robert Macfarlane (recently reprinted in the Guardian's Saturday Review).

It tells the story of a group of climbers in the north of England who escape life's mundane routines by spending their weekends seeking out the perfect route. This is as likely to be found in an old quarry - 'a gloomy hole in the hillside near Bolton', as on an imposing mountain cliff. As Macfarlane puts it:

The climbing they do is impure, tending to the tawdry. It lacks the cleanliness of winter mountaineering, or the epic scale of big-range expeditions. It is mucky, thrutchy stuff that happens from litter-strewn crag-foot terraces, within eyeshot of cities and earshot of motorways.

One of the many strengths of the novel is that Harrison, a climber, goes into painstaking detail about some of the routes. He also has a sharp ear for dialogue but it's the sense of place, particularly when describing the northern urban and rural landscape in the late 1980s, that really makes the book. It went on to win the Boardman Tasker prize in 1989.

On original publication there was only one small review in the Guardian:

Christoper Wordsworth, The Guardian, 7 September 1989

Also in the recent edition of the Guardian was a review of All That Is, James Salter's new novel. However, it is Solo Faces, one of his earlier books that is probably of most interest to climbers. Set in the 1970s, it follows the fortunes of Rand, an American climber, as he makes his name doing big routes and rescuing people on the mountains of France.

Like Harrison's Climbers, the novel is considered a climbing classic (admittedly a small field). It did though  attract some criticism because, as Audrey Salkeld and Rosie Smith wrote in the introduction to One Step in the Clouds, Salter was  not seen as a 'true believer' - ie he only climbed as research for the book. Also, some got caught up with whether he explained climbing equipment properly. This though is a minor point set against his fine writing and story-telling. A small review appeared in the Observer:

Anthony Thwaite, The Observer, 10 February 1980. Click on image to enlarge.

 James Salter: the forgotten hero of American literature, an interview with the writer, appeared in the Observer New Review on 12 May 2013.

The Rücksack Club

Sharp-eyed fans of the Guardian's country diary archive column (yes, there are a few) might have noticed that today's piece has a small news item about the Rucksack Club sitting alongside it.

The Manchester Guardian, 11 April 1913

The Rucksack Club was formed in 1902 after JE Entwistle and AE Burns, two "novices with a good walking record and a secret ambition to handle a rope and axe", wrote to the Manchester City News suggesting that a mountaineering club be formed in the city. There was a good enough response to justify a start and it is still going strong today. Read more about its history here.

There were strong links between the Manchester Guardian and the club, especially during its early years, with news of climbing activities and annual reports regularly appearing on the pages of the paper. Several members of staff joined the group including Laurence Scott, eldest son of CP Scott, the long-serving Guardian editor.

On 14 November 1903, a small news piece appeared in which an umlaut has been added to the club's name, thus turning it into the exciting looking Rücksack Club. I rather like this, but the use of the diacritic appears to have been very short-lived.

The Manchester Guardian, 14 November 1903

Read more stories like this in the Guardian Book of Mountains. Also available as an ebook.

The Black Cliff

Skimming through a March 1971 issue of the Observer the other day, I came across an Al Alvarez review of Chris Bonington's Annapurna South Face. Tucked at the end of the piece though, were a few words about The Black Cliff, a history of rock climbing on Clogwyn du'r Arddu, in north Wales.  As Alvarez points out, many of the climbers on the Annapurna climb crop up in Snowdonia book - including Don Whillans. Which is the perfect excuse to post a link to a footnote from Jim Perrin's The Villain, a biography of Whillans, that neatly illustrates the point...

 Alvarez was poetry editor and a critic for the Observer from 1956 to 1966, after which he continued to review books and write the occasional climbing article for the paper. See also Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia.

The Observer, 21 March 1971 (click on image to read)

Colin Kirkus

An excellent profile of the rock-climber Colin Kirkus recently appeared on the Footless Crow blog. It tells the story of how the clerk from a Liverpool insurance office "strode like a Colossus across the British climbing scene", putting up a series of hard routes during the late1920s and early-1930s, However, after a fatal accident on Ben Nevis in 1934 in which he was seriously injured and his climbing partner, Maurice Linnell, died, Kirkus never fully recovered - both physically or the urge to create new lines.

I always wanted to include a piece about Colin Kirkus in the Guardian Book of Mountains, particularly a review of his 1941 book, Let's Go Climbing! Alas, the paper didn't cover it. On a more sombre note, on April 2 1934 it carried a detailed report of the Ben Nevis accident and on April 20, an interview with him. (click on images to enlarge)

John Muir: Stone Sermons

Travel writer Jan Morris once observed that "there can be few places of comparable grandeur so ghastly to visit as the Yosemite Valley on a holiday." She (then James) was writing in 1956 but on a recent visit to the Valley I did begin to wonder what I was doing there. There were queues for everything - from finding a parking space, getting a pizza, viewing waterfalls, showers, to the pleasure of renting a dusty patch of ground to put up my tent.

Of course nothing detracts from the supreme beauty of the place and once established in your campsite/lodge/hotel you can begin to relax and really appreciate the place. In fact, as I soon discovered, step off the main roads and it surprising how relaxed things begin to feel, while break away from the established trails and you'll soon be on your own. And then of course there is always the option heading up one of the the rock faces. Gain a bit of height, then look out over the tall, ancient trees, framed by the vast granite walls, and you can imagine what it was like when people first started exploring this wilderness in the 19th century (obviously Native Americans had been living in Yosemite for centuries.)

The most famous of these new visitors was John Muir, who, as every self-respecting environmentalist knows, was the Scottish-born American naturalist who was largely responsible for the establishment of Yosemite as a National Park as well the preservation of other wilderness ares. He has an almost god-like status in the park with his picture everywhere. In fact the great bearded one spent a relatively small amount of time in the park, mainly between the years 1868 and 1874. During this period he signed up as a shepherd to take a flock of 2,000 sheep to Tuolumne Meadows in the High Sierra, an adventure he recounted in one of his most exciting books, My First Summer in the Sierra, (published much later on in his life.)

Muir may have been looking after sheep but he explored as much of the landscape as possible. His diary shows that he was obsessed with Cathedral Peak, a spectacular 10,911-foot weathered granite horn above Tuolumne Meadows. The following entry appeared on August 9 1869:

"From every point of view it shows marked individuality. It is a majestic temple of one stone, hewn from the living rock, and adorned with spires and pinnacles in regular cathedral style ...(he hoped to climb to it) to say my prayers and hear the stone sermons."

Later that year he finally made an unroped ascent of the peak armed with nothing but a notebook tied to his belt and a few lumps of hard break in his coat pockets. One has to marvel at Muir's daring and adventurous spirit and some say this excursion kicked off Yosemite's climbing era. Equipped with rather more gear, a friend and I did a route on the mountain, last month. We had the rock to ourselves (bar a bare-chested hotshot who soloed past muttering something about English beer) and if I didn't quite hear Muir's 'stone sermons' amidst the spires, the view from the top of the final pinnacle is stupendous enough to bring out feelings about a higher being in even the most hardened atheist.

Or, as Peter Croft, author of The Good, The Great and The Awesome, puts it:

"The view from the top is pretty as punch and less than two hours away is the Meadows Store. Soon you'll be accosting strangers in the parking lot. "Excuse me, sir", you'll say, popsickle in one hand as you jerk the thumb of the other hand over your shoulder , "in case you're interested, I just climbed that MOUNTAIN!"

To take the ecclesiastical theme one step further, Climbing Great Buildings, a new BBC series, includes climbs up great structures such as World Heritage site, Durham Cathedral.

(Cathedral Peak pictures: Tim Wilkinson)

John Menlove Edwards

It was a hundred years ago today (June 18) that the writer, poet, and leading British rock climber in the inter-war period, John Menlove Edwards was born. A psychiatrist by profession, he is remembered for his great climbing routes in the Llanberis Pass, Wales, as well as his guide books and literature.

Mention must also be made of his depression, mental illness and his suicide in 1958. A homosexual at a time when homosexuality was a criminal act in Britain, Menlove Edwards was also a conscientious objector during WWII. Whatever one thinks about COs, this must have been an extremely brave act for individuals when names and addresses were published in the daily papers. This is how the Manchester Guardian reported the refusal of his application on May 14 1941:

Short biographies can be read here and here, but Jim Perrin's Menlove is the definitive account.

Bouldering in St. Ives

It was bright blue skies and big surf in St. Ives, last week, so most of my time was spent in and around the sea. However, inspired by Bouldering in St. Ives, I did manage to drag myself away from the beach and onto some rock. This excellent guide is an introduction to the boulders that are within a few minutes walk of the town.

OK, so many are just a few metres high and it may seem a bit of a waste of time climbing on these when the majestic cliffs of Gurnard's Head, Bosigran and Sennen Cove lie just a few miles along the coast. But, apart from being great fun, I was intrigued by the history of bouldering in the area.

Victorian Alpinist Sir Leslie Stephen was climbing in West Cornwall during the 1850s, but much of the action centred around the house of Eagle's Nest at Zennor, a few miles from St Ives. In 1873 this was bought by Professor John Westlake, and, as Barnaby Carver explains in the guide's introduction:

"His nephew, Arthur Westlake Andrews is regarded by many as ‘the father of Cornish climbing’. A. W. Andrews and his sister Marion Elizabeth (‘Elsie’) Andrews, scrambled on the granite boulders surrounding the house during childhood holidays. These rocks would later provide test-pieces for visiting climbers...By 1922 Andrews was living at Tregerthen, neighbouring Eagle’s Nest which was by then owned by painter, politician and writer Will Arnold-Forster. Andrews still presided over the house and garden parties for visiting climbers. Sir Leslie Stephen’s daughter, the author Virginia Woolf, describes Cornwall’s early ‘bouldering scene’ in her diary entry of 30th March 1921: ‘Visited Arnold-Forster’s at Eagle’s Nest... Endless varieties of nice elderly men to be seen there, come for the climbing...'"

One of the most famous climbs in the area is the Commando Ridge at Bosigran, a 700ft ridge of granite, that was used in the second world war for training commandos in cliff assault. In fact it was first climbed in 1902 by AW Andrews, and was then known as Bosigran Ridge Climb.

Early history of British rock climbing

Footless Crow features a fascinating account from George Abraham of a 1913 mysterious rock-climbing route in North Wales which only recently came to light. George, and his brother Ashley, were photographers whose work provided a unique record of the early history of British rock climbing. But as the blog reports:

"Although the brothers are best known for their photographic work, they were very much mountaineers and pioneers in the true sense of the word. Establishing new climbs and revisiting established climbs which were detailed in their well regarded and illustrated books. After their co-operation with the legendary OG Jones for his very successful Rock Climbing in the English Lake District (1897), they produced companion volumes, Rock Climbing in North Wales (George, in 1906) and Rock Climbing in Skye (Ashley, in 1907)."

This period at the beginning of the 20th Century provided a rich seam of archive material for The Guardian Book of Mountains. At the time, the paper was something of a clearing house for new rock climbing developments and regularly featured news and features about the Lake District and North Wales, as well as the Alps, Norway, and further afield. There were a number of reasons for this, but having mountain-lovers on its staff certainly helped. One in particular was CE Montague, a leader writer and essayist, who worked for the Manchester Guardian from 1890-1925.

For a detailed examination of Montague and this period, I'd recommend this article by Jonathan Westaway.

Spyclists and climbers

The revelation that cycling tours by Hitler Youth groups and Nazi attempts to establish close links with the Boy Scout movement caused a security panic in prewar Britain was widely reported yesterday. Files released by MI5 revealed that police officers were alerted to monitor German students on bicycle holidays in the late 1930s as they stopped at schools, Rotary clubs, factories and church services. Even a meeting between Lord Baden-Powell, head of the Scout movement, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, caused alarm.

But it wasn't just German cyclists - or 'spyclists' as they were dubbed by the Daily Herald - visiting the UK during the 1930s. In July 1936, members of the German Alpine Club arrived as guests of the Workers' Travel Association mountaineering group. The party spent five days in North Wales and six in the Lake District, accompanied by leading British rock-climbers of the day. The visitors impressed their hosts by climbing many of the Welsh test-pieces in wet conditions. However, relations soured over the Germans' habit of hammering pitons, or metal pegs, into the rock for protection. This continental practice was totally at odds with the British ethos of not damaging the rock, as explained in this Guardian report from July 26 1936:

As Colin Wells wrote in A Brief History of British Mountaineering: "Things came to a head when the Germans put up a new, hard route on the historic climbing ground of the Welsh mountain Tryfan (917m). They placed three pitons in the course of the climb, outraging the establishment and provoking the talented British climber John Menlove Edwards to repeat the route without the pegs - which were removed shortly afterwards."

This though was nothing compared with the disgust many British climbers felt towards German attempts to climb the north face of the Eiger. The route was one of the last great challenges in Alpine mountaineering and the Reich was to sponsor several teams during the 1930s. Raked by avalanches and loose rocks, many climbers had lost their lives on this notorious Mordwand ('murder wall').

After the deaths of four climbers in 1936, a Guardian leading article (July 24 1936), was highly critical of the attempt. This was both for what was seen as the distasteful continental practice of using pitons, but also that the climbers were driven on by an 'inflamed nationalism that regards mountaineering as a field for the moral aggrandisement of one's own country'. No doubt this line was influenced by recent events (Germany had just concluded a gentleman's agreement with Austria and had recently sent troops to the Rhineland).There's more about this in The Guardian Book of Mountains.

To return to the subject of the Hitler Youth and sport, a short piece from the paper's The Footpath Way column illustrates the attitude of a minority of Germans towards the British, during the 1930s.

(August 24 1936)

Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia

Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia, published in 1966, was "the first really modern book about climbing in Britain." So wrote Steve Dean in a Climbers Club article celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the hugely influential guide. With spectacular pictures by John Cleare, and text provided by Tony Smythe, it went on inspire a new generation of climbers and book publishers.

Now Footless Crow has just reprinted the piece complete with a selection of Cleare's pictures. Part two appears next Friday.

A clue as to why the title made such an impact can be found in a quote by Ken Wilson when he was interviewed about the influences on Hard Rock. Wilson said: 

"What was less of an influence was Rock Climbers in Action is Snowdonia, though I do think that it is a fine book, but it is not my style. It is all about the feeling of climbing and its verve and position and very 'photographic' and the captions are poetic rather than factual. Leo Dickinson, Ray Wood, Bob Keates and John Beatty are photographers that might be said to be part of that school. I favour a more scrupulously factual (some might say boring) approach and I particularly like to see the climber in his architectural setting."

The "verve and position" point seems to complement Dean's description that "something had appeared in print that in words and pictures really managed to convey just how rock climbing felt." 

Apparently Al Alvarez was originally going to write the commentary but in the end was too busy to take on the work. However, Alvarez did write The Edge of the Impossible, a feature about 'hard' climber Peter Crew, and illustrated with Cleare's pictures, that appeared in the Observer magazine on August 22 1965. This, as Jim Perrin was to later put it (The way you climb is the way you are, The Climbing Essays), was a "wonderful and over-the-top essay," that a did good job of turning Crew "into climbing's first pop icon".

As a footnote, the following week saw some heated debate on the letters page as to just how classless climbing really was.

Fred Botterill

Botterill’s Slab, high on Scafell in the Englsih Lake District, was one of the first rock climbing routes in the UK to be graded Very Severe (see previous post). Created in 1903 by Leeds climber, Fred Botterill, this week’s Footless Crow reproduces an account of the first ascent, taken from the Yorkshire Rambers Club Journal 1903/04.

It was while climbing on The Napes crag's Eagle's Nest Ridge, another test piece of the day, that Botterill was involved in an accident that saw the lead climber, Thomas Rennison, fall to his death. Following this, Botterill gradually withdrew from the crags.

The Manchester Guardian reported the inquest into the accident and it makes fascinating reading to see just how unprotected climbers were in the early days of the sport. Much more about this in The Guardian Book of Mountains.

Manchester Guardian, September 28 1909:

(click to enlarge)

The Night Climbers of Cambridge

Those pesky night climbers of Cambridge University have been at it again. This morning's Metro reports that someone has placed Santa hats on all four pinnacles of King's College Chapel, presumably after climbing the 45m 'routes'. Officials are not impressed and are hiring a steeplejack to retrieve the hats because the task is so dangerous.

As the Night Climbers blog points out, after dark ascents of the University's finest buildings has been part of the Cambridge subculture for over a 100 years, and probably a lot longer. Whipplesnaith's 1937 classic account of the sport was recently reprinted by Oleander Press, to great interest. A small review of the original book nearly made it into the Guardian Book of Mountains but was chopped at the final edit. Manchester Guardian, November 5 1937:

Oleander has also reprinted The Roof-Climbers Guide to Trinity (1900), by Geoffrey Winthrop Young. Often described as the father of modern climbing, there's a beautiful piece written by him about Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman in Those Who Dared.

Alain Robert

Alain Robert, the French 'Spider-Man', who has spent the past two decades climbing more than 100 of the world's tallest buildings describes what exactly motivates him in Saturday's Guardian. Using window frames, piping and protusions for handholds, and dispensing with a rope, this free solo climbing provides him with ' blissful solitude mixed with the exhilaration of being caught in a place between life and death.'

A true original, who goes where few, if any, are willing to venture, I was keen to include something about Robert in Those Who Dared but unfortunately couldn't find the right kind of piece - most being either extended photo captions are very long features. Channel 4 recently showed The Human Spider and there's a clip of it on YouTube.

Alain Robert is speaking at this year's Kendal Mountain Festival.

Lakeland climbing

A couple of news snippets about Lakeland climbing caught my eye today. Firstly, in the Guardian's Country diary Tony Greenbank reminisces about climbing a streaming wet Kern Knotts Chimney with two people who worked for K shoes of Kendal, sometime in the 1950s. All very interesting, but he also mentions that K Shoes used to be called Somervell Bros, and that a family member was Howard Somervell, of Everest fame. An experienced alpine climber and surgeon, he joined both the 1922 and 1924 expeditions, and was a close friend of George Mallory.

Following the attempts on Everest, Somervell turned his back on a prestigious surgeon’s job in London and instead worked for nearly 40 years as a missionary doctor in South India before retiring to the English Lake District. His book, After Everest: The Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary, is well respected and the following review appeared in the Manchester Guardian on January 5 1937.

Turning to an earlier climbing generation, UKClimbing features a story about Dave Birkett making a winter ascent of Botterill's Slab, a route high on Scafell, in the Lake District. When Fred Botterill put up the climb in 1903 it was one of the first to be graded Very Severe, a grade it still maintains today. Botterill's Slab, a film by Alison Stockwell, that re-creates the original climb can be seen here.

Sadly the Manchester Guardian didn't feature this first ascent but the period did see an incredible amount of reporting of the growing sport of rock climbing, a number of which are featured in On the Roof of the World.