Allen and Bancroft Colton-MacIntyre Route
The route that set a thousand alpine ambitions afl ame. In 1976, Nick Colton (current BMC deputy CEO) and Alex MacIntyre (former BMC offi cer) grasped the possibilities offered by the revolutionary MacInnes Terrordactyl axe with both hands, climbing their eponymous test piece on the Grandes Jorrasses. At the end of that year, they scribbled down a list of three big routes, originally done using fi xed ropes, that would go alpine style: the Desmaison and the Voie de l'Amitié, both on the North Face of the Grande Jorasses, and the Harlin Route on the North Face of the Eiger. By the end of the summer of ‘77, all had been done. Siege tactics were dead in the Alps; and alpine style was heading for the Himalaya.
John Allen and Steve Bancroft hold the same position in the 1970s Gritstone Renaissance as Leonardo and Michaelangelo hold in the Renaissance of late 15-century Florence. As with their earlier counterparts, these two swept an artistic eye over the blank gritstone canvasses and created masterpieces. Their routes, Allen’s in particular, are the fi nest on grit.
Friends
Ray Jardine invented them and Mark Vallance brought them to the world. The Wild Country Friend was the revolutionary contraption that changed crack climbing from being a test of skin and bottle to being the sport climbing of the traditional world. Changed a lot of the toughest climbs overnight bringing speed and safety to the art of the fi ssure. Climbing cheat #3. Not content with changing climbing, in 1996 Ray invented modern lightweight backpacking with his controversial Pacifi c Crest Trail Hikers Handbook, giving rise to the modern lightweight backpacking movement.
Eric Jones
This man deserves a knighthood for services to tea. The man behind the kettle at his famous Tremadog café is one of the world’s original extremists. Whether it’s skydiving, base jumping, soloing the Eiger or racing motorbikes, this Welsh legend has done it all and still shows no signs of slowing down.
Ron Fawcett
The fi rst British rock star? The moustachioed marauder who tore round the UK in the wake of Pete Livesey adding a grade to last great problems everywhere. A climbing machine who combined natural talent with Livesey’s methods to explode standards everywhere he went. Well loved.
Sticky rubber boots Lycra tights
The sport-climbing revolution of the 1980s meant that death and danger were no longer prerequisites for a day on the crag. Instead preening, self-love and a new physique became the hegemony. Large, hunched shoulders and withered leglets were the look and what better way to show off than Lycra tights? Out went manliness and wool: the dominant force behind climbing was having a gender-crisis.
Climbing shoes had gone through all sorts of mutations for over a hundred years: nailed leather soles, thick cleated rubber, Woolworths gym shoes, then onto PAs and EBs in the 1970s. But that was OK as everyone agreed on the principle: they had to be useless. But then in the 1980s Boreal invented ‘sticky’ rubber boots with the Firé. All of a sudden, climbers’ feet stuck to the rock and smearing went astro. This was no good! Jerry Moffatt product-placed his way up Ulysses and Master’s Wall and the rest is sticky history. Climbing cheat #4.
Jim Perrin
The language of landscape is the mother tongue of the most signifi cant climbing writer of his era. The poetic
I Chose to Climb
When writing this book in 1966, a young mountaineer called Chris
Bonington couldn’t have imagined where it would lead: so many expeditions, so many books, sadly so many friends lost. Helped by this fi rst book, Chris pursued the life of a professional adventurer with ruthless zeal, opening the doors for the many who followed in his snowy footsteps.
Perrin peregrinates past times spent with Joe Brown, developing Pembroke, Llanberis life and locals and remains to this day a favourite among those who climb to be in beautiful places.
Free-climbing bolts
In the 1950s and 60s aid climbers merrily bashed bolts in willy-nilly and nobody cared because it was generally on limestone. Jump on to the 1980s and every bolt that is placed is a dagger in the heart of British climbing. The free-climbing bolt arrived from Europe – France of all places, our natural enemy! Before you knew it people weren’t surviving a day’s climbing, they were enjoying it. Where did it all go wrong? Climbing cheat #5.
Stoney Middleton
In the mid-1980s the beating heart of Peak District climbing was Stoney Middleton. Between the crag (polished climbing), the café (cups of stewed tea), the Moon Inn (half-pints of beer) and the woodshed (bad night’s sleep) the top climbers of the day shuffl ed or struck out to put up the hardest climbs in the country. A hotbed of enthusiasm, slander and unemployment, its like will never be seen again.
Pat Littlejohn
Prolifi c extreme trad climber and leading alpinist of his generation. Put the South-west fi rmly on the climbing map. Refused to use chalk until 1984 and went to Kalymnos to put up trad lines. In 2007, a letter from 10 Downing Street popped onto Pat’s mat. Initially he thought it was a wind- up, but Pat was the fi rst mountaineer to receive an OBE who hadn’t been associated with Everest.
Stephen Venables
Prolifi c climber and writer who was catapulted into the lecture limelight in 1988 when he became the fi rst Brit to climb Everest, via the gigantic Kangshung Face, without oxygen. His three companions had turned back but, undeterred, he continued alone. By the time he approached the South Summit, he could manage only two steps between long, gasping halts.
Ben Moon and Jerry Moffatt
Nostalgia time: there was an instant in history, some decades ago, when Britain could claim to have the best climbers in the world. Jerry Moffatt travelled the world in search of its hardest routes and fl ashed them. He won competitions. Ben Moon soon emerged from under his shadow and adopted the French game of redpointing and added the hardest routes in the world. “I am the greatest,” Jerry bellowed. “And I’m even better,” Ben muttered.
SUMMIT#73 | SPRING 2014 | 53
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