The Ox: Joe Brown and Pete Cargill get a lift from Slim Sorrell.Photo-G Kitchen Collection.
There'll never be another Slim Sorrell. Powerful climber and
instructor, Gritstone and Cloggy pioneer, founder member of the Rock and Ice
and a friend who was always cheerful in the face of adversity—Slim had many
qualities. In fact it was the many good sides to his knockabout nature which
highlight even more the manner of his death at the age of 47 in a macabre
shooting incident at Cardiff. Slim, a hard-up pipe-fitter from Stockport,
served his climbing apprenticeship in the tough, clinkers and-clothes line
Manchester school of the late forties. The mines of Alderley, the barns of
Castleton, clashes with the tar-pouring farmer of Windgather, bivvying in all
weathers on Kinder and gritstone edges of the Peak. He was one of the early
rope-mates of Joe Brown and the two of them joined one of the greatest of all
small clubs, the now-defunct Valkyrie from the Derby-Nottingham area.
Nat
Allen, Wilf White, Don Chapman, Chuck Cook and Don Cowan were among the leading
spirits of The Valk. Slim and Joe joined them in exploring the
Froggatt-Curbar escarpment when new routes were ripe for the plucking in those
golden days of 1948 and 1949. Joe and Slim produced the impressive Eliminates
and The Peapod and Slim's, name is perpetuated in Sorrell's Sorrow and
Sorrallion. Over at Stanage Slim seconded Joe on the first ascent of the Right
Unconquerable, one of the classics of grit. And when the 1957 Stanage and
Froggatt guide was produced Slim was an obvious man to join the writing team.
The Rock and Ice was the natural successor to the Valkyrie Club and in 1951
Slim helped to get it going with Joe and other names which were to become
bywords in cragsmanship. Don Whillans, Ron Moseley and the ever-present Nat
Allen.
Down in Wales Slim took part in the first ascent of Hangover
on Clogwyn y Grochan and Diglyph and Octo on Cloggy. Joe led all three and
Slim- ever-resourceful- seconded part of Diglyph by swarming up a knotted rope
when the climbing became too technical even for him. My happiest memories of
Slim are of those halcyon days when the Rock and Ice bivvied under Stanage or
Froggatt and slept among falling plaster in the ruined farm of Bryn, Coch near
the Snowdon railway. After a hard day on the crags Whillans and Moseley would
be competing to see who could do the most press-ups or pull-ups. But it was
Slim, with his boyish sense of fun, who invented the wilder games. When he
tired of wrestling (having won all the bouts) he would organise a
stone-throwing battle up and down the Llanberis Pass, an eating competition, or
just a plain sleeping-bag fight.
Stories about Slim are legion. Once while
bivvying on Dovestones in the Peak one wintry weekend he threw away the sheep's
heart which was part of his ration. Next week the inseparable Brown and Sorrell were there
again. Running out of food, Slim went to search for his sheep's heart, found it
preserved in the snow and cooked and ate it! One raw, foggy day Brown was
demonstrating the Cave Crack at Froggatt. Climbing in nails he moved out under
the overhang, grasped the knob which was the key to the climb and pulled up
into the jamming crack. When he was belayed Slim, a heavily-built character,
began to follow him up. All went well until he came to the pull-up, when his
hand slipped off the wet rock and he fell backwards. The rope broke and the
horrified onlookers saw him plunge head first among the sharp boulders.
Brown
descended with incredible speed and everybody ran to help what they assumed to
be the injured climber. But Slim had fallen luckily and his main concern seemed
to be the rope. He and Brown tested it with their hands . . . and once again it
snapped. "My God," mumbled Slim, "to think we were using that
rope on Cloggy last weekend!" Eventually the burly Slim became Constable
Merrick Thomas Sorrell of Stockport Police. (Only his wife Dot ever gave him
his Sunday name of Merrick among our gang). He won many commendations from his
chief for when it came to chasing and apprehending, no thug or thief was any
match for Slim. While on point duty in the centre of Stockport Slim would
mischievously hold up four lines of hooting traffic while he strode across to a
Stanage bound car and discussed the latest routes.
One of his jokes while in
uniform was to grab one of his climbing friends in a Stockport street. Only
after a curious crowd had gathered, thinking they were watching a smart
arrest, would Slim let the victim go. After 13 years in the police Slim became
an instructor at Ullswater Outward Bound School in the Lakes and later at
Ashburton Outward Bound School in Devon. Slim put a brave face on one of the
great tragedies of his life. His wife Dot had been one of the most adhesive
woman climbers in the Peak. She is pictured leading Allen's Slab on Froggatt in
the 1957 guide, and Dorothy's Dilemma on the Roaches is named after the
problems she had in seconding the first ascent.
But she caught polio and
became an invalid. Eventually the marriage ended in divorce. Then,while they
were doing Gillercombe Buttress above Borrowdale in 1972, Slim's instructor
companion fell to his death. Slim eventually married his friend's widow and
suffered a certain amount of innuendo in the Press. He was shot dead at a
Cardiff college- ironically while 120 police constables were sitting an
examination nearby.
Slim's death shocked the members of the Northern climbing
fraternity-particularly Joe Brown (Slim was best man at his wedding) and his
former friends of the Valk and Rock and Ice. We cherish the Memory
of one of the great characters of the crags.
Tom Waghorn: First published in Climber and Rambler Jan 1976
