Reviews

Island Of Skye (Scottish Mountaineering Club Guide, Vol Iii., Section A.) – 10s. net, post free 10s. 4d. – Map, 126 pp., over 60 illustrations and diagrams. – This is a splendid piece of work, edited by Messrs. Steeple, Barlow, and MacRobert. That they are enthusiastic lovers of the glorious island group, the Cuillin, is proved by the knowledge that two of the three live so far from it as Birmingham. The authors are to be heartily congratulated, and the S.M.C. is fortunate in having completed so important a section of its Guide.

One bold reviewer has criticized the spelling, another the omission of record times. Our own particular grouse is at the adverse fate which prevents us spending the weeks of this May and June in working through the Skye Guide on the rocks.

Hill Paths In Scotland, by W. A. Smith, (Macniven and Wallace), 1924, 104 pp., 25. 6d. – This wonderful little synopsis is a most useful companion to one’s study of those enthralling sheets of the Scottish uplands, when one plans all sorts of climbs and tramps that one will never carry out. The author must have been a real “end-to-ender,” and no centrist, to have covered all this ground.

The Mountains Of Youth, by Arnold Lunn (Oxford University Press), 192 pp., 20 ill. – The author begins his last chapter by telling us that he hopes his book will be read by ski-runners who are not mountaineers, and mountaineers who are not ski-runners, and thereafter, when we expect more painting for the mountaineer of the delights of winter and spring with ski, continues with an eloquent apology for the cragsman. His heart is in the right place for all who seek the unknown in the high places and on the old snow ways.

At twenty-one, Mr. Lunn fell with a mass of rock from the Cyfrwy Table Rock, and through skilful, surgery recovered, though with a lame leg shorter than the other. How pluckily he set himself to overcome his handicap, this book tells.

Alpine Journal (10s. 6d., May and November). – With contributions from every part of the world the Alpine journal grows steadily larger and maintains its unique position. The dramatic story of the Everest expedition and tragedy is told in the numbers for 1925. Innumerable freshly conquered peaks are recorded in the Rockies, another ascent of Mount Sefton in New Zealand, and a continuous struggle to open out new variations in the Alps.

The journal of November, 1925, is a very remarkable one and leaves a strong impression on the mind. Miss Bray draws attention to a group the Kaisergebirge, containing very stiff climbs and almost unknown to the British, but apart from this the striking thing is the number of references to great climbs lately accomplished and the notices of the deaths of actors in them.

British Ski Year Book – No. 6, 1925, 5s., 288 pp. – No. 7,1926, 10s., 366 pp. – These are not ordinary journals, they are thick books, volumes, splendidly illustrated. The frontispiece of the last strikes us at the moment as the most sensational picture we have ever seen.

We learn that a British ski team has for the first time defeated a strong Continental team, in the race British Universities v. Swiss Universities, and rejoice.

The two numbers contain a full History of Ski-ing with a list of Pioneer Winter Ascents and Ski Ascents. There are many mountaineering articles, dozens of them in fact. But by the time the reader has finished the two volumes, he will not only be well up in the results of two winters’ racing, and in the theory of racing and the present position of climbing with ski, but he will be well posted in the teaching of ski-ing, and in every controversy connected with bindings, etc.

Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal (2s. 6d., April and November). – Mr. G. B. Green is the present Editor and had the honour of producing the hundredth number at the end of 1925. The journals are full of interest, with many beautiful illustrations. Personally we have much appreciated the instalments of a diary of a walking tour made by the brothers Gall Inglis in 1856 through the wildest parts of the Highlands. Ordnance Survey maps were not then available, and the brothers were several times unable to reach even the roughest night quarters, and had to bivouac.

In an article on Stob Ghabhar an excellent plan is suggested for the making of records in the field under those conditions of discomfort which lead people to omit them or trust to memory, a plan which must be put into force underground. One man’s sole duty is to see the records made, thus – to A., “What’s the time?” – to B, “What is the aneroid?” – to C, “There now, put this down.”

Rock Climbing Guides.

1. Doe Crags And Coniston, by G. S. Bower.
2. Pillar Rock, by H. M. Kelly.
3. Scawfell, by C. F. Holland.
4. Great Gable, by H. S. Gross, and Borrowdale, by A. R. Thomson.

Under the editorial care of Mr. R. S. T. Chorley the Fell and Rock Climbing Club has issued a series of guides to the crags of the Lake District which appeared originally as parts of the Club journal. The authors are well-known experts, who have active personal knowledge of the courses, many of which they have originated. No happier choice could have been made. Considerable care and skill have been devoted to locating the scenes of their exploits. The pictures are plentiful and stimulating. Marked photographs, graduated lists, and lists of first ascents complete very compact guides.

Journal Of The Fell And Rock Climbing Club. – Besides the space devoted to the Guides, each number still has 100 pages of articles, some in reminiscent vein, some on climbs old and new, so numerous that there will soon be left no oddest of odd corner in Lakeland of which one cannot say, “There is something about it in number so-and-so.”

Mr. Wilson Butler writes a useful paper on the Great Deed of Borrowdale. Polemics, such as Benson has embarked on, are represented by lively thrust and parry between Mr. Chorley and Mr. Doughty, in the “Rubber Boom” reply to “Nothing like Leather.”

Pinnacle Club Journal, edited by Miss L. E. Bray and Miss D. E. Pilley. – We welcome the latest of mountaineering journals, that issued by the ladies’ club. The articles are all interesting. Miss Bray’s on the ascent of the Portiengrat is delightful in itself, but it is also an account of an ascent, surely historic in its way, by two ladies alone. Miss Pilley’s adventures at Easter in the Pyrenees make thrilling reading.

An article on “Pot-holing” explains the appearance of a Cairn and signs of digging on Newby Moss in 1924. It will come as a shock to those of us who maintain the sport to be the final stage in the Climber’s Progress, to read that there are feuds between pot-holers and rock climbers, and that we may in time become mountaineers.

Rucksack Club Journal. – It is always a pleasure to sit down to read a new number of this Journal. Mr. Wilding gets together a fine series of articles, in his last two numbers not only from Britain and Switzerland, but from Norway, the Pyrenees, Italy, and as far afield as Mexico

In the 1925 number, under the title of “Early Climbing at Wasdale,” appears J. W. Robinson’s own account of his fall from the Hand Traverse on the Pillar Rock and providential escape, an event now almost mythical. Details of peak-bagging expeditions in Scotland are given, and of Mr. Eustace Thomas’s activities in the Alps. Mr. Thomas had marvellous luck in two bad seasons, and we fully expect, when the new number of the Rucksack Club journal comes to hand, to find that in 1926 he beat the “Flying Dutchman” to a frazzle.

Annual Of The Mountain Club Of South Africa. – If any Rambler is about to migrate to South Africa, he should read these Annuals and he will find that he is going to a land where there is any amount of rock climbing, and any number of unexplored mountains. The numbers run to about 130 pages each, and prove the existence of a large group of enthusiasts with plenty of good work and good sport at hand.

Cairngorm Club Journal. – The Cairngorm Club has succeeded in erecting indicators to the surrounding summits, first on Lochnagar and now on Ben Macdhui. The task of erection was no easy one, and is related in the last number. Besides excursions in Scotland we read with pleasure the paper on a tramp from the Val d’ Isére south through the Alps to the Mediterranean.

Cambridge Mountaineering, 1925-6. – As befits people with long vacations, there is a lot of energetic climbing referred to in this number of 56 pages. Mr. Storr gives useful advice about a district, little visited by British climbers, the Zillertal and Oetztal in Austrian Tyrol. Noteworthy are a memoir of the late S.B. Van-Noorden, killed in the Pass of Llanberis, and an account of the successful but lucky ascent of the Brouillard Ridge of Mont Blanc by him and Mr. P. W. Harris.

Gritstone Club Journal. – The Gritstone Club is not big enough to issue a printed annual, but not to be beaten they issue yearly an account of their doings, type-written, or is it Roneo’d, or is it something else? No matter, they can spare us copies. From one of them we have “lifted” the struggle with Juniper Gulf which appears in this number of the Y. R. C. J. May they have good luck again, beat the water, and make the third descent of Mere Gill!

The death on Gimmer Crag of the Editor, that cheery soul, Mr. David Moulson, was a great loss to the Gritstone Club, and was felt deeply by the friends he had made among the Yorkshire Ramblers.

Climbers’ Club Journal. – The new Editor, Mr. H. R. C. Carr, has included in the number for 1926 interesting reprints, O. G. Jones’s not forgotten article “English Climbing from the Alpine Standpoint” and the vigorous reply to it, with two others by the late Mr. A. D. Godley and the late Mr. R. Todhunter. Sir Claud Schuster writes in his old pleasing vein on “The Middle Distance,” and in the previous number G. W. Young has a charming word sketch of an Irish mountain.

We acknowledge with thanks the receipt of LaMontagne and the Rivista Mensile.