Hanging on: A Life Inside British Climbing's Golden Age

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The name Footless Crow was a brilliant piece of imagination from Livesey who claimed that as there was almost nowhere on the route where he could rest he had to hop about like a footless crow. a b Fanshawe, Andy; Venables, Stephen (1995). Himalaya Alpine-Style. Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-64931-3. Martin ‘Basher’ Atkinson, Andy Pollitt, Mark ‘Zippy’ Pretty, ‘Scottish’ Ben Masterson, Mark Leach, Craig Smith) I have lots of good memories. 1959 is one of the best. It opened out all of the hard climbing of the day. Joe Brown and Don Whillans’ routes were being climbed for the first time. It was very exciting and I felt I was really breaking into the scene. How to jam. I've progressed from City and Guilds and now hold a very lowly Ordinary Degree in jamming. Martin on Rab

Kohli, Mohan Singh (2000). The Himalayas: playground of the gods: trekking, climbing, adventure. New Delhi: Indus Publishing Co. pp.126–140. ISBN 9788173871078. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. I’ve recently been reading The Everest Years by Chris Bonington, during which he states that he was the 7th Brit to climb Everest. In fact, on official lists he is usually described as the 6th. One of his predecessors’ ascents is uncertain (though Sir Chris himself obviously has no doubts). Much has been written about the Whillans, including Jim Perrin’s recent detailed biography. But now Don, as always, is having the last word, being the subject of my posthumous film. The film, supported by the BMC, and to be premiered at the Kendal Film Festival, features some of the many epics in Don’s climbing career - spanning the Alps to Patagonia, Annapurna to Everest. It also brings out some of Don’s tremendous humour and devastating wit. In 1976 they were members of a joint British-Nepalese army expedition led by Lt Col Tony Streather (who had reached the summit of Kangchenjunga in 1955 the day after Joe Brown and George Band made the first ascent). As was the practice at the time, it was another siege-style expedition. Like Scott and Haston the previous year, Stokes and Lane proved to be the expedition’s strongest climbers and were nominated to form the first summit party.Willis, Clint (2006). The boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the tragedy of climbing's greatest generation. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-78671-579-4. A lesson learned from the 1973 Japanese expedition (and the 1952 Swiss expedition) was that any attempt should be as early as possible after the monsoon was over and this meant the trek from Kathmandu to Base Camp had to be during the monsoon. Another attempt using the "Whillans Chimney" above Camp 6 would have meant establishing a seventh camp and so a route to the left of the Great Central Gully would be taken on the same line that the earliest Japanese climbers had tried. Camp 6 would be established on the upper snowfield and a long traverse would be taken to the Southeast Ridge. To complete the traverse, climb the ridge, and return would be a very long day – a bivouac on the return might well be necessary. To get into a position to do this a large support team would need to make a rapid ascent up the central gully so very careful logistical planning would be necessary. [18] Supplementary oxygen would be used above Camp 4 for climbers and Camp 5 for sherpas and 4,000 metres (13,000ft) of fixed rope would be used up the face (fixed rope in the Icefall and climbing rope would be additional). [19]

If a mountain is likened to a pyramid, a face is a triangular relatively flat part and an edge is the sharp part where two faces join. Often it is easier to climb an edge rather than a face. It's a hard choice right enough, but I think people are ludicrously overestimating the contribution of recent generations. Owen Glynne Jones and perhaps Siegfried Herford both deserve far more consideration than they’re getting. Fowler – a great climber and no error, but how influential was he, in the sense of making a difference to the direction climbing took? I also wonder about John Dunne. What’s happened that wouldn’t have happened if he’d been around? Same with Fawcett, in a way. The best of his day and one of the best ever, of course, but I’m not sure that’s the question. I don’t know that Pete Crew didn’t have more influence than he gets credit for, also. Certainly in the way of introducing professionalism I’d say he was as influential as perhaps any climber before or since. Redhead was also very influential in keeping the flame alight – more so even than Dawes, perhaps.

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Ralling, Chris (1994). "Filming on Everest" (PDF). Alpine Journal: 116–124 . Retrieved 5 October 2014. At the time the Guardian described it as being like "spending the night in a sheet sleeping-bag in a deep freeze, with the oxygen cut by two-thirds". [64] As well as being the first people to summit Everest by the Southwest Face, they were also the first Britons to reach the summit by any route. [note 12] [66] For the time, it had been the fastest ever ascent of Everest, 33 days. [note 13] [67] The second summit team arrived at Camp 6 to find them safe and well and by afternoon Haston and Scott had jumared down to Camp 2. [56] Boardman, Boysen, Burke and Pertemba [ edit ]

John Porter: Bandaka and Changabang. American Alpine Journal 1979, pp.29–35 (pdf file, see especially p.32, and Plate 16, K. Żurek in headwall). Html version available: americanalpineclub.org. Both retrieved 20 October 2017.Gillman, Peter, ed. (1993). "Everest – the Thirteen Routes". Everest: the best writing and pictures from seventy years of human endeavour. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0316904899. First climbed as an aid route by 50's Lakes legend, Paul Ross and then called -The Great Buttress-. Livesey's much rehearsed test piece was finally led on the 19th April,1974 to the wide eyed astonishment of the UK climbing community. One well known climber was said to have hung up his climbing boots after witnessing the ascent ! The Everest apprentice". Witness: On this Day 24 September. BBC. 24 September 1975. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016 . Retrieved 4 October 2014.

Direct South Face, Wojciech Kurtyka (Pol.), Krzysztof Żurek (Pol.), Alex MacIntyre (UK) and John Porter (US-UK), summit reached 27 September 1978. [7] In December 1973 Bonington heard that a team had withdrawn from its 1975 time slot. It was for post-monsoon so when he applied for the slot he was again intending to attempt his lightweight South Col—Southeast Ridge scheme. Permission was given in April 1974 when he, Haston and Scott were starting on a Changabang expedition (which was to be another first ascent) and Haston and Scott were able to persuade Bonington to try the Southwest Face again, despite it having to be in the autumn. [16] The scheme eventually turned into what has been described as "the apotheosis of the big, military-style expeditions". [17] Preparations [ edit ] Tasker, Joe (1977). "Changabang, West Wall". American Alpine Journal. New York, New York, US: American Alpine Club. 21 (51): 248–249. Ray Jardine (for inventing the Friend and thus making a whole swathe of routes, especially on grit, safe for the masses) Venables, Stephen (2005). The British on Top of the World (audio). BBC. – 2005 radio programme by mountaineer Stephen Venables with contributions by Bonington

Horrell, Mark (14 October 2015). "The first ascent of the Southwest Face of Everest". Footsteps on the Mountain. Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. For more than two decades, Boysen was also one of Britain’s leading mountaineers. A crucial member of Chris Bonington’s team that climbed the South Face of Annapurna in 1970, Boysen was also part of Bonington’s second summit team on the South West face of Everest. In 1976 he made the first ascent of Trango Tower with Joe Brown. a b "Everest the Hard Way (1975)". BFI. British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 24 April 2023.