“Hands of a Climber. A Life of Colin Kirkus”
by Steve Dean
Reviewed by Bill Todd
Ernest Press, 1993, pp. 278. £15.95.
On a joint meet at the RLH a year or two back some of us did the scramble up Browney Gill. After negotiating a rather awkward section over a deep pool I hung around to see if the old gent behind me needed any help. Nobody will be surprised to learn that Hal Jacob sailed over the pitch a lot better than I had.
I was surprised again to learn from this excellent book that Hal was climbing in the 1930s with other Wayfarers members including George Dwyer who was still practising as a guide when I was climbing in the 50s.
Everybody likes to read about people they know and senior members will enjoy the reference to E.E. Roberts and Frank Smyth’s attempt on Chimney Route on Cloggy. This was finally done in 1931 by Kirkus and Menlove Edwards.
I was slightly apprehensive that his book would turn out to be a monotonous list of first ascents. Take courage, the book lives in every page. There are plenty of quotations (like “Hamlet”) and they enhance the read. Most of us must know “Lets Go Climbing” and this book is just as good. It shows that Colin Kirkus was just as nice a chap as his own book indicates and of course, a perfect dynamo as a climber.
The photographs are most interesting and some would say the book is worth having for them alone.
In short the book is a jolly good read, well worth having, and my copy is not available for loan.
Craven Pothole Club
Handbook & Record 1995
Reviewed by Bill Todd
Now I know why climbing equipment is getting so complicated and incomprehensible to superannuated former climbers. Climbers are tired of feeling like stone age savages when they see the technical expertise and sophisticated engineering tackle used by their caving colleagues.
The C.P.C. Handbook, in common with most clubs’ gives the constitution, hut rules, and a list of members. It also includes a list of meet leaders responsiblities, eleven pages on the organisation of the Gaping Gill Meet, and fifteen pages on the construction and use of ladders and belays. This must all be familiar to our pot-holing members but I was far from realising just how much practical skill as involved. In my ignorance I thought that potholers just used ladders where climbers used ropes and everything else was about the same expect for darkness and not getting rained on.
The Record is a quarterly connection of meet reports, notes of future meets and other matters of interest. I found the meet reports interesting in spite of lack of knowledge. There was one above ground meet in March at Crianlarich where mountaineering took place. Quite a lot of information was given about the forthcoming trip to Pierre-Sainte-Martin which looks like a really good thing to do. Finally, the lighter side was represented by a tongue-in-cheek propectus of the Great Sell Gill Expedition by former Y.M.C. member Dick Espiner.
In summary, a useful and entertaining addition to the club library.
Borneo Box-up
S.O.S. The Story Behind the Army Expedition to Borneo’s Death Valley
by Lt. Col. Robert Neill & Major Ron. Foster.
Reviewed by Bill Todd
Century, pp. 266 £16.99.
Imagine the Company Sergeant Major at muster parade of “D” Company of the Royal Logistic Corps on a morning of 1994.
“Pay attention and answer your names those people, Corporal Smith”
“Sir“
“Lance Corporal Brown”
“Sir“
“Private Thompson”
“Sir“
“You will report to Company Office at 1100 hours for Adventurous Training.
Uniform and blankets will be handed in to the C.Q.M.S. at 1050 hours and clearance certificates obtained. Major Foster will issue civilian clothing and expedition equipment.
In accordance with Standing Orders for Adventurous Training with effect from 1105 hours the above Other Ranks will be addressed as Tom, Dick & Harry. Major Foster will be addressed as Ron. All personnel will develop qualities of team spirit, courage, resourceful-ness, adaptability and good humour and will be retained on Company strength for all purposes except rations.”
The above scenario is by no means entirely imagination. Orwellian though it seems there really is an Army School of Adventurous Training at Ripon and a Ministry of Defence Document of Guidance. It is also apparently true that ranks are habitually dropped during adventurous training activities. Perhaps that is why the Lance Corporal who was the climbing and abseiling expert was allowed to get away, on the way up the mountain, with a display of petulant disobedience which in any normal military context would have landed him in close arrest.
This simple minded reviewer was under the impression that all soldiering was supposed to be adventurous and that it was the Parachute Regiment and the Commandos who specialised in tackling hazardous country.
I suppose most people know that an attempt was made to make the first descent of Low’s Gully, a precipitous water course running off Mount Kinabalu. It proved much more than expected, the advance party consisting of five British NCOs had to leave the gully and got to civilisation through the jungle with difficulty. The rear party of two officers and three Hong Kong soldiers spent over two weeks in a cave unable to advance or retreat before they were located and rescued.
It appears that the expedition would have had a chance of complete success if the three Hong Kong soldiers had not been included. They did not want to go anyway and repeatedly applied to be allowed to go back. But the officers jollied them along into continuing with the assurance that they would be looked after. To be fair that assurance was made good. But surely if you are setting up a training exercise for troops who are not experienced outdoor types you don’t choose a project that has never been done. In any case the Hong Kong soldiers were due for discharge within six months. Dare I suggest that when offered three places their O.C. had asked himself “Who can we spare?”.
When the ascent of Everest in 1953 was being celebrated some people said “It wasn’t climbing for fun, it was a military operation,” alluding to the fact that the team leader was a serving officer. I cannot help feeling that this expedition would have been better if it had been organised on more military lines. While obviously and by a long way the second senior rank in the team Major Foster does not seem to have acted as second in command. He did not step in and take over when Co. Neill was incapacitated by a viral infection. Also no-one was placed in formal charge of the advance party with the result that Cpl. Mayfield assumed command and ran it to suit his own ideas.
This book is well worth reading and is more gripping than many fictional adventures. Although by the leaders it is well and objectively written in the third person. If you don’t want to buy it, borrow it, it will make you think.
Craven Pothole Club Gouffre Berger August 1994
Craven Pothole Club Record July 1995
Reviewed by Bill Todd
There are two good reads here even if you are not a caver. This is a very active club as the meet reports in the Record show and a lot of fun activity is enjoyed at all times of year. Apart from flash floods I suppose caving is exempt from the rigours of surface weather except when you have to strip in a blizzard as Simon Parker had to do on the Quaking Pot meet on 4th March last.
Caving meets have also been held in Belgium and Mallorca, a chilling taste of the future was experienced in Belgium. Some of the members went climbing on a road side Crag and were challenged by the “Belgian Rock Police”. Did they have a Belgian climbing card? They got away with it by claiming membership of the BMC in the hope that the Belgian organisation was an affiliated body. A narrow squeak, some natives were sent off, no argument.
The Gouffre Berger seems to have been a magnificent experience and the members’ accounts of their individual achievements and reactions glow with enthusiasm. It’s nearly enough to make me try an easy pot myself.
Elderly Celebrity – Second Class
Geoffrey Winthrop Young. Alan Hankinson
Reviewed by Bill Todd – September 1995.
Hodder & Stoughton, pp. 365 £18.99.
In late 1958, after going up Ingleborough, my fiancée, Joan, and I went into the Hill Inn. I had to ask Mr. Kilburn if the picture on the wall was of the late Geoffrey Winthrop Young. It was, of course, and Mr. Kilburn volunteered that on his last sojourn at the Inn, Geoffrey had been failing.
Here is a book that tells us the story of the life that began in 1876. I found it most interesting to read about a man who was a member (honorary) of the YRC for fifty years from 1907 to 1958, and son-in-law to one of our most distinguished past presidents, W. Cecil Slingsby. Before the first World War he took part in many first ascents in the Alps; his record in the war was exemplary, he did not fight but commanded an ambulance unit spending a lot of time under fire while organising the evacuation of wounded on the Italian front. It was here that he lost his left leg. After the war he continued to climb with an artificial leg and must have been an inspiration to others. During World War II he was elected president of the Alpine club and took a leading part in founding the BMC.
His contribution to the sport, and to education, would have earned him a decoration if not a title these days but he had to be content to remain plain Mr. Young. He was however received by the Queen, the present Queen Mother, in 1947. Not bad for a second class celebrity, his own description.
Geoffrey was an educationist as well as a mountaineer, in fact he had taught at Eton and served as an inspector of schools. He was conscious of the narrowness of existing secondary education and was an ally of Kurt Hahn whose school at Salem, Germany was a precursor of Gordonstoun and of the Outward Bound movement.
When the National Socialist government seemed to be threatening Salem, Geoffrey saw the then German Ambassador, Herr von Ribbentrop, in an effort to save it. Unavailingly, of course, but at the conclusion Ribbentrop may have revealed more then he meant to when he congratulated Herr Young on having been born in England.
Geoffrey was not a prolific writer, but what he wrote was memorable. I first heard of him as author of “Mountain Craft”, the definitive text book of mountaineering up until Alan Blackshaw’s book. His pre-war climbs are described in “On High Hills” and “Mountains with a Difference” is an apt title for his post- war handicapped activities. I also enjoyed reading “The Grace of Forgetting” which is not about mountaineering at all but about his early youth and travels with his diplomat brother in the Middle East. We should not forget his poetry either. “The Cragsman” is in a lot of anthologies and puts a lot of the joy of climbing in a nutshell.
Although Geoffrey visited the Gritstone Club hut at Ribblehead in the fifties I myself never came within a mile of meeting him. But it was interesting to learn from the acknowledgements that we had “Mutual friends”, notably Bobby Files, Rawson Owen, Sid and Jammy Cross. It was also fascinating to learn that while staying at the ODG Geoffrey had insisted on going into the public bar and enjoyed the company there, including the mural, presumably, of Black Jack. I wonder if he saw in the convivial evenings then the democratic successor to his famous Easter parties at the Pen-y-Pass.