Infl uence Gwen Moffat
Free-spirited female climbing pioneer. Famous for climbing barefoot, Gwen lived a fi ercely independent climbing life from the 40s to the 60s. She carved out a fragile living from climbing, becoming the fi rst female British guide decades before the idea of a pro-climber existed.
National parks
Nineteen years after the mass trespass on Kinder Scout, Britain’s fi rst national park, the Peak District, opened in 1951. Now with 15 national parks in Britain, it’s hard to imagine that we were once denied access to these wonderful wild places. Whatever did we do at weekends?
Alfred Wainwright
It’s a dark night in 1952, and Alfred Wainwright has just begun work on his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. For the next 13 years, he laboured at the steady rate of one page per evening to produce seven wonderous walkers’ guidebooks.
Conquest of Everest
In 1953, neatly boosting post-war British prestige, two non-Brits summited Everest and created a legacy that remains to this day. The Mount Everest Foundation, initially fi nanced from
surplus royalties, continues to fund exploratory British expeditions.
John Gill
John Gill, described as ‘the father of bouldering’, was a man out of his time, doing in the mid-1950s what it would take the rest of the world 40 years to catch up with. Power, dynos, training, bouldering grades and highballing, those most modern of concepts in today’s climbing world, all came from this quietly spoken American. He was also the fi rst climber to use chalk (Climbing cheat #2). A pioneer.
Discovery of Gogarth
It seems that truly great crags have always been known about since the dawn of climbing time. But imagine how it must have been for Martin Boysen and Baz Ingle to discover Gogarth in 1964 and realise they had one of the best and most extensive crags in the UK on their hands. Their fi rst route there, Gogarth, on the main cliff, started a wave of development that, produced some of the UK’s top climbs.
The Pennine Way
The king of dirty tramps? In 1965 Britain’s fi rst National Trail, The Pennine Way, opened. There are now 15 offi cial National Trails throughout England and Wales.
Plas y Brenin Serving legendary
Q Rusty Bailey climbing Suicide Wall, Cwm Idwal: the fi rst 'proper' extreme.
fl apjack for nearly 60 years, Plas y Brenin’s comforting stone walls have seen thousands of outdoor instructors set out into the wind and wild. After acquiring its new name, ‘The King’s Place’, as a memorial to King George VI when it was established in 1955, it had a near miss in 1996 when it was nearly taken over by a leisure company.
Threaded
nuts from Cloggy railway
In the history of climbing there have been six inventions whose arrival had such impact on previous climbs that they have been considered cheating: chalk, sticky rubber, Friends, bolts,
bouldering mats and this, the fi rst of them all, threaded railway nuts. Metal hexagons with slings through the middle made the dark art of ‘pebble slinging’ redundant. Sad times. Climbing cheat #1.
Hamish MacInnes
The Fox of Glencoe: early Scottish winter hotshot who invented the fi rst inclined ice axe in the 60s. A pioneer of Scotland mountain rescue, he set up the Search and Rescue Dog Association, the Avalanche Information Service and invented the MacInnes stretcher. Made the fi rst winter traverse of the Cuillin Ridge with Tom Patey.
Brown and Whillans
The two-headed fi st that knocked British climbing standards into the middle of next week in the post-war years. Two no-nonsense Mancunians who emerged from the rubble of that city and attacked gritstone and the Welsh mountains producing the greatest leap in standards this country has ever seen. While the partnership might not have lasted that long, their myth and legacy is defi nitely as alive today as it ever was.
SUMMIT#73 | SPRING 2014 | 51
PHOTO: JOHN CLEARE.
PHOTO: JOHN CLEARE.
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