Freedom Climbers....Review

 Wanda Rutkiewicz


And what rough beast,its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

WB Yeats: The Second Coming


When Bernadette McDonald's  Freedom Climbers first came to my attention, I confess I had no idea what the book was about? At the back of my mind I had it in my head that perhaps it was about some Bill Murray-esque character...the Liverpool born/Scottish climber not the Ghostbuster.... escaping from a war time concentration camp and making good  his escape across a remote mountain range; guided by the stars and wearing boots fashioned out of reindeer pelt. Rather like that Peter Weir movie, 'The way home' . I soon discovered of course that Bernadette's book was an in depth history of post war Polish mountaineering concentrating on some of the sports central figures.

Hmmmm...a book about climbers living in a communist state called Freedom Climbers. I can imagine the Canadian writer might have lifted that title from the back of an ideas envelope upon which..'scaling the iron curtain' and 'escape from the axis of evil' was also scribbled! Not that I'm an unreconstructed Stalinist you understand, but I find the title a wee bit..well...clunky! However, I'm delighted to say that clunky title notwithstanding, what lies within is pure gold ! The author has produced a diligently researched and authoritative account of a nation's mountaineering history which is engrossing and inspiring.

The opening chapters offer an historical perspective of a nation which in the last century has been continually dealt a bad hand by the Gods. No more so than when Poland found itself squeezed between the Nazis and Stalin's Soviet Union in that catastrophic decade....1940's. A period when 'a blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned'.
From those blood soaked and tangled roots a remarkable story of mountaineering achievement emerges but ultimately, it is achievement born at a remarkably heavy cost. By the time Polish mountaineering's golden age between the early 1970's through until the 1990's has ended, eighty per cent of its leading climbers are dead. Has any climbing nation ever paid such a heavy price for mountaineering success ? I rather doubt it.

Freedom Climbers brings into focus dozens of Polish mountaineers,many of whom will be unfamiliar to parochial English and American readers. However, three central figures emerge from the impressive cast list from which author not surprisingly, has concentrated her main focus on. Wanda Rutkiewicz, Jerzy 'Jurek' Kukuczka and Voytek 'Wojciech' Kurtyka, all born in the maelstrom of the 1940's and who blazed their own outrageously ambitious trails across the greater ranges until the former two climbers predictably paid the ultimate price.

Certainly there is so much to admire in characters like Rutkiewicz and Kukuczka but little to like. Driven as they were by pure selfish,naked ambition and willing to use partners as a means to an end even if it meant putting the lives of these friends and acquaintances on the line. Indeed,it's not mere speculation to suggest that several partners of Wanda and Jerzy  DID pay with their lives when their obsessively driven leaders pushed the envelope too far when circumstances suggested caution would be the better part of valor.
Wanda Rutkiewicz in particular comes over as a particularly sad, tormented soul. Brave, gifted and quixotic but when her life ended on Kanchenjunga, she appeared to have moved beyond the realms of reason and entered a twilight zone which existed between dreams and responsibility.

A curious UK/Polish socio/cultural parallel which emerges in the book is the similarity between the 1980's British 'UB-40' climber-a climber who lived on welfare benefits and/or who worked in short bursts and then went off on extended climbing trips-and the Polish 'stack climbers'. Leading Polish climbers who worked painting industrial towers in places like Katowice to earn enough to fund trips to the greater ranges. Certainly it would be hard in places like Kathmandu in the 70's and 80's to pick out the hairy bearded Brit from the hairy bearded Pole...Wanda Rutkiewicz excepted!

Curiously for a people living under the dead hand of an authoritarian regime ,the Polish mountaineers emerge as a remarkable resourceful and enterprising constituency. Operating a thriving import/export trade between their economically ravaged European home and the Eastern destinations to which they travelled.  Indeed,in a country were wages were poor and opportunities restricted,many of the leading climbers ended up relatively well off through their unique adoption of Western market economic dynamics!

In the early 1980's legendary radical Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda made what would become a hugely influential film 'Man of Iron' based upon the birth of the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland. Freedom Climbers suggests that anyone writing the definitive biography of a figure like Jerzy Kurtyka could do worse than borrow Wajda's film title. These Men-and women- of iron were forged in the fiery foundries of Warsaw, Gdansk and Katowice and tempered in the far eastern greater ranges. It is to Bernadette McDonald's enormous credit that she has brought alive this remarkable chapter in world mountaineering history and captured the unique burning qualities of a quite extraordinary collection of gifted individuals.

Given the aforementioned grim statistic which highlighted the astonishing price leading Polish mountaineers were willing to pay to achieve their goals, Freedom Climbers unequivocally suggests that mountaineers like  Wanda Rutkiewicz lived their lives in the firm belief that is was 'better to burn out than fade away'. For three decades, the achievements of Polish mountaineers blazed like a dark star over the international mountaineering firmament . 'Triumph and tragedy'...that hoary old mountaineering cliche, never more appropriate.Bernadette McDonald succeeds in bringing together all the elements of what is an epic tale and presenting them in a manner which is fascinating, illuminating and coherent. A fine achievement.

 Freedom climbers is available from Vertebrate Publishing










John Appleby

Bernadette McDonald's 'Freedom Climbers' wins Boardman-Tasker

Canadian writer,Bernadette McDonald has been announced as the 2011 winner of the Boardman-Tasker award for mountain literature. Her book 'Freedom Climbers' recently walked of with the prestigious Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival.

Bernadette McDonald's book, published by Rocky Mountain Books in October 2011, gives an account of the bravery and dedication of Polish climbers and their race for Himalayan peaks in the 1980s. McDonald puts forth the theory that the difficult conditions that martial law imposed on Polish society charged these climbers with the resilience to be the best in the world.

The book recreates the challenges that Polish climbers faced in pursuing their sky-high goals, detailing Voytek Kurtyka's remarkable conquest of Gasherbrum IV and Wanda Rutkiewicz's pioneer ascent of K2 as the first woman to do so in history, along with the personal stories of their friends and colleagues, many of whom perished in the punishing conditions of winter in the Himalayas.

Bernadette is the founding vice-president of Mountain Culture at the Banff Centre and the author of seven books on international mountaineering. She is the winner of numerous awards including the Alberta Order of Excellence, the Summit of Excellence Award from the Banff Centre, the King Albert Award for international leadership in the field of mountain culture and environment, and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal.

Winter 8000: Climbing The World’s Highest Mountains In The Coldest Season: Reviewed

 

Brief encounter!

‘It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear beginning to live!’...Marcus Aurelis

Bernadette McDonald continues to mine the rich history of the Polish ‘Ice Warriors’ of the 1970’s and 1980’s. For almost twenty years Polish mountaineers dominated the Himalayan winter climbing scene. Surely the most demanding form of climbing physically, and of the fourteen 8000 metre peaks, eight were first ascended by Polish climbers in that season, and a fact that is true, it was the example of that countries mountaineers which inspired other nations to enter this arena. One that is still the case, despite the improvement in equipment and technical knowledge, a form of mountaineering that can only be successfully overcome by those well versed in the art of suffering, whilst facing up to potential wind speeds in excess of 150 kph and temperatures as low as minus 50C.

But why was this type of climbing so suited to Polish-mountaineers? I learned first- hand in 1967 during a visit to their mountain range, the Tatra how hard physically they were. History had dealt them a challenging hand, for in the last war and the subsequent Cold War they were victims of ruthless neighbours, first Nazi Germany, then-Stalinist Russia. In 1967 camping with some of their climbing fraternity one realised how hardy they were, for their equipment was rudimentary, and some had no tent and just slept out covered by a blanket, living mainly on beetroot! This in a mountain area with less settled weather than the Alps; a higher rainfall and in winter almost Himalaya type of conditions.

The Polish climbers were as I learnt on a lecture tour post climbing in the Tatra, very good at ducking and diving and milking the communist system to their benefit. McDonald makes a good job of setting the scene in her introduction to ‘WINTER 8000’ , and she has already made an outstanding contribution in recounting Polish climbing history, for her two previous books ‘Freedom Climbers’(2011) and the ‘Art of Freedom’ (2017) were both Boardman/Tasker prize winners. However the Chair of the Judges at the first of these mused ‘how come a Canadian is writing the history of another-countries climbers?’I guess it is because despite the geographic separation Bernadette finds this history so compelling, and to be fair she is the author in total of eleven books on mountaineering and mountain cultures, the majority of which have little or no Polish connection.

Andrzej Czok and Przemysław Piasecki, on their way to Camp 2 during the Polish 1985–86 winter Kangchenjunga expedition. Photo: Krzysztof Wielicki Archive.

The story of this book comes to life with the Polish climbers Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy summiting Mount Everest (8,848 metres) 17^th February 1980. The leader of this expedition was Andrzej Zawada, and if anyone can be cited as the grandfather of Himalayan winter climbing it is Andrzej, someone who I personally counted a friend and who in 1975 led a party of Polish climbers to visit Britain as guests of the BMC. I remember lively discussions between Dennis Davis and Zawada about if it was possible to climb 8,000 meter peaks in winter, and why any climber would wish to risk such an ascent in the inevitable extreme conditions. Dennis was well versed in Polish climbing for he had lived and worked in that country in the mid-1960’s, based at Oswiecim near Krakow he had climbed regular weekends in the Tatra, including with Kurtyka and Rusieki making the first winter ascent of the super-directissima of the North Face of Mieguszowiski. 

A climb still held in high regard by the Taternik’s. Before the success on Everest, Zawada had built up winter experience on other mountains with a successful climb of Noshaq (7,492) the second highest Peak in the Hindu Kush range in February 1972 and led an attempt on Lhotse in the 1974/5 winter season. One has to agree with the author that he was some kind of visionary, and he had learnt that above all one needed patience for success on such ascents. With days and weeks spent at a lower height and or in a Base Camp waiting for a window of settled weather. But ready to make a summit bid if radioed in with a good weather forecast; such support especially provided for each expedition. By the decade of the 1980’s much was to change for the Polish climbing fraternity, with the political developments brought about by the Solidarity movement, they were now living in a democratic capitalist country. One of the ways that they were able to better finance their climbing was by what we call ‘Access’ work, especially painting and pointing the high factory chimneys around such cities as Katowice.

Post Everest the doors opened for Polish winter climbers, and next was to be Manaslu(8,163metres). An expedition led by Lech Korniszewski, and the summit reached on 12^th January 1984 by Maciej Berbeka and RysardGajewski. Followed by Dhaulagiri(8,167 metres) 21^st January1985, on an expedition led by Adam Bilczewski and summited by Adrzej Czok and Jerzy Kukuczka. The latter someone who became famous in his quest to be the first to climb all fourteen 8,000 metre peaks. He was the second to do so, and his ascents were notable in that they either were by a new route or in winter. Cho Oyu (8,188 metres) was also ascended in the winter of 1985 and Kanchenjunga on 11^th January 1986. Annapurna was to be climbed the next year by an expedition led by Kukuczka, who summited with Artur Hajzer.

Simone Moro on the summit of Shishapangma, having made the first winter ascent with Piotr Morawski on 14 January 2005. Photo: Piotr Morawski.

Post these six winter expeditions, the Poles joined up with other nations climbers to mount expeditions. One of the reasons they did this was because of the need for some hard currency, for the Zloty like the Pound had real difficulties in the 1980’s. Lhotse (8,516 metres) was climbed on 31^st December 1988 by a joint Belgian-Polish expedition led by Krzysztof Wielicki (who also summited Everest as above and Kanchenjunga with Kukuczka). Shisapangma (8,027 metres) was climbed on 14^th January 2005 by a Polish-Italian expedition, with the summit reached by Piotr Morowaski and Simone Moro.

This latter marked the end of Polish dominance of this field of climbing by the so called ‘golden generation’ of their mountaineers. Adam Bielecki was to observe later, ’Our Winter domination was the fault of Stalin and Beirut because they locked us in a cage. When others were doing the first ascents of the 8,000metre peaks we remained trapped behind the Iron Curtain. When it finally lifted we jumped out of the cage. We were very hungry’ (Beirut was a Stalinist style first President of Poland after the war). It also was the start of a new style of expedition, smaller, more compact, more in the style of Alpine ascents. This was only made possible by improved weather forecasting, and equipment. Makalu (8,485 metres) was the next to be climbed on the 9^th February 2009 by an International expedition led by Simone Moro, who summited along with a new 8,000 metre star Denis Urubko. The same team climbed Gasherbrum 11 (8,034 metres) on the 2^nd February 2011.

A new Polish winter programme initiated by Artur Hajzer fired up a younger generation of their mountaineers and on the 9^th March 2012 during an expedition led by him, Gasherbrum 1 (8,080 metres) was summited by Janusz Golab and Adam Bielecki. Unfortunately Hajzer died in a fall during the expedition. The following year an expedition to Broad Peak (8,051 metres) led by another Polish winter guru Krzysztof Wielicki which was successfully climbed by Maciej Berbeka, Adam Bielecki, Artur Malek and Tomas Kowalski on 5^th March 2013. Finally Nanga Parbat (8,125 metres ) was climbed after many attempts on 26^th February 2016 by Alex Txikon, Ali Sandpara and Simone Moro. Included in the new Alpine style of expeditions was a more comfortable life experience whilst waiting out for good weather windows in Base Camps. A generator became de rigeur, providing access to the outside world, with phone connection and social media. Simone Moro it seems is a star on these latter with so many likes and followers he could be a part of a cutting edge Rock Band.

Only K2 (8,611 metres) remains of the 8000 Peaks to be climbed in winter but this is not from want of trying. Polish, Russian, Italian and International teams have all tried. Zawada inevitably was drawn to this mountain of mountains and put together a joint Polish/Canadian/British attempt in 1987/8 where the realities of the geographic situation of this mountain, being further north than Everest, and its higher reaches swept by winds emanating from Sibera have made it the most challenging of all the winter objectives. However the Poles have announced they will make another attempt in the coming winter 2020/1.

Climbers on the Polish 1979–80 winter Everest expedition in base camp, listening for messages from their families and friends back home. Photo: Ryszard Szafirski.

There is so much more to McDonald’s book than I have so far intimated, in some aspect it is a grim ‘thanatos’ story with death a possibility looming on almost every other page. In Appendix A at the rear of the work is the list of the climbers involved in this story. And of all the climbing games, attempting the highest peaks in the Himalaya in winter must be the most dangerous. More than a dozen have died in this form of mountaineering some of whom were well known names to British climbers: Anatoli Boukreev the elite Kazakh alpinist died in a winter attempt on Annapurna on Christmas Day 1997, Jerzy (Jurek) Kukucska one of the stars of Himalayan winter climbing died on Lhotse in 1989, and Wanda Rutkiewicz disappeared on Kanchenjunga in 1992. Wanda was one of the key note speakers at one of the BMC National Conferences in Buxton. And her mountaineering record was impressive, for she had climbed eight of the 8,000 metre peaks, including the first female ascent of K2, and when she was in the UK we intended to do some climbing in the Peak but as usual the weather in mid-March, the time of the Conference it was too bad.

There is however much that it is uplifting in this story not least the rescue by four climbers taking part in a winter K2 Polish expedition which also included Denis Urubko, who left that mountain to take part in the rescue high on Nanga Parbat in 2018, of the French female climber Elisabeth Revolv. Her partner had died and through a super human effort, Adam Bielecki and the ethnic Russian Urubko raced up thousands of feet to reach her, for she was too high for a helicopter rescue. Revolv eventually made a complete recovery and returned to Himalayan climbing.

Inevitably in such a demanding arena there are personality clashes, and though McDonald does not over egg these she does cover them with some diplomacy. One dispute is to whether winter ascents in the Himalaya should cover the Calendar winter, starting on 21st December and finishing 21st March, or the Meteorological –winter, starting 1^st December and to be completed by the end of February. Simone Moro who has made first ascents of four winter 8000 metre peaks is a proponent of the latter view, and he has carried out quite a strong campaign over this, disputing winter ascents made in March! This has not enamoured him to those making such claims.

8000 WINTER is I believe the most outstanding work of McDonald’s three Polish mountaineering history books. Her research and detail is so thorough, the only weakness is in the writing up of dialogue. It seems that Polish mountaineer’s in particular only talk to each other in platitudes? ‘Have you put your down trousers on?’ is a typical example of a Base Camp call to a climber at a camp higher up the mountain. I suspect that like British climbers in such a stressful situation the language would be more- fruity!

I will finish by quoting directly from WINTER 8000, as a tribute to those climbing friends from that ‘Golden Generation’ of Polish mountaineers including Andrzej (who succumbed to cancer in 2000), Tadeuz who died on K2 and Wanda who disappeared on Kanchenjunga in 1992; ‘These imperfect tales are all that we have and in sharing them, we can try to understand the souls of the Ice Warriors, those men and women who find the greatest fulfilment in the highest mountains in the coldest, shortest, darkest days: the cruel days of winter’

Climbing on Manaslu, winter 1983–84. Photo: Lech Korniszewski.

Everything about WINTER 8000 is excellent, as someone who once studied graphic design I think Vertebrate have excelled themselves on this production; and it is for me their best yet.

Winter 8000.Climbing The World’s Highest Mountains In The Coldest Season. Bernadette McDonald.256 pages black and white text including some relevant pictures plus 2x8 page inserts of colour prints, case bound with dust jacket cover. £24.

Dennis Gray: 2020

 

Clean Climbing

Any old Iron?:Pete Livesey circa mid seventies.Photo John Cleare

There used to be so few climbers that it didn't matter where one drove a piton,there wasn't the worry about demolishing the rock. Now things are different.There are so many of us and there will be more. a simple equation exists between freedom and numbers; the more people the less freedom.If we are to retain the beauties of the sport,the fine edge, the challenge,we must consider our style of climbing; and if we are not to destroy and mutilate the routes,we must eliminate the heavy handed use of pitons and bolts

Royal Robbins 

Ten years ago I gazed in awe at one of Britain's tigers at work on Malham Cove's Right Wing Girdle. From a basking stone I watched in admiration as Dennis Gray rested on a sling before a difficult move. Perhaps I marveled more at his skill in placing a sling good enough to rest on than at his ability on the climb. I could only dream of the day when I too would have the skill and daring to place a sling and rest on it. Here was rock-climbing at it finest, the most modern and ultimate of challenges — or so I thought! It is almost a contradiction to talk about the ethics of such a wonderfully anarchistic pastime as rock-climbing. Ethics, someone will reasonably point out, are entirely personal and are nobody else's business. True, but everyone must have some historical background on which to base his personal ideas on rock-climbing behavior.

In the beginning it was the Alpine Club, then the Climbers Club and the Fell and Rock who, by suitably caustic ethical comment in their universally read journals, moulded the axioms on which the individual based his ethics. How the cutting comments on pitons in the Fell & Rock Journal shaped the ethics of Lakeland climbers for years to come! In later years, when news of the doings of Brown and Whillans had filtered through to the climbing world in general — perhaps three or four years after the events — people realised that aid had been used on many routes. But Joe and Don were the best, their routes were much harder than any before, and the new ethic was accepted.

Unencumbered by the restrictions of a patriarchal establishment the Rock & Ice had created new rules for themselves, and as established folk heroes their rules were rapidly mimicked — as one might expect. Lesser climbers adopted codes allowing themselves one or two points of aid per route; the difference now however was that Brown, Whillans and their colleagues could have climbed these routes entirely free. As early as 1939 Colin Kirkus had written . . nobody has the right to climb with pitons a route which is conceivably possible without . .

Colin Kirkus: Ethically as pure as the driven snow!

Another decline in the traditionally clear division between artificial and free climbing came from that forcing-ground of British aid-climbing- Derbyshire Limestone. Fiercely steep routes, sometimes old aid climbs, were being attempted and it became acceptable to rest on-piton-or nut runners so long as height was not gained through their use. A smug complacency settled in — we could always compare ourselves to the peg-packing, etriered continentals and claim our climbing ethically pure — the real rock-climbing. But had we known it, six thousand miles away Americans were rock-climbing with such ethical simplicity that even Brown might have thought again about his routes; had we known it, the rot in Britain may not have penetrated so deeply.

Cenotaph Corner would still carry a HVS A1 rating while Vector would be XS A1 under a purist grading system of the type much used in America. In fact any climb employing a point of aid would incorporate an artificial component in its grading. Hopefully; But I'm back where I came in — and resting on runners and suchlike, all acceptable! Had anyone bothered to step back and take a look it would have been obvious that under this system even the most extremes of routes would be climbed by the many. That is the point in any sport when the sociological factors governing the existence of the game, no matter how anarchistic, begin to modify the ethics. A ball game becomes dull if it is too easy or too difficult to score; governing bodies regularly adjust rules in the light of modern performance and equipment to avoid this very danger. And so in the last few years leading British rock-climbers have gradually rejected more and more of the aid-climbers devices.

We are leaving routes which would require a point of aid now, for better climbers later. We will fail on already established climbs if it seems likely that we need to rest on a nut. I talk of leading climbers in this context because it is they who set the ethics in our game at present. Either by their example of by their writings they are hopefully and continually improving our ethical standards. This is where many readers will grab for their pens and start writing . . . . . but I saw you using a tied-off an ivy frond on the Fang — what kind of example is that? . .' Well, yes, I did — but it saved my life. It was ethical foul but I'm still here. What kind of example is it best to pass on, an example of the worst of one's own ethics — or the best?

Why go into print to publicise one's own ethics? If ethics are a personal code then why not just leave it to teaching by example — and make sure that example is good?  There are two reasons: the first is that today's leading climber is no longer a folk hero as he was in the Rock and Ice era, he is much more of a fly-by-night character. His example, no matter how good, may be forgotten in his wake were it not for the posterity of the printed word. Secondly, the climbing publications do much damage to climbing ethics by their image and content. A climber's own ethical comment is needed to redress the balance. I am frequently driven to despair by such advertisments as... You too can go right up the wall with ease' (with our gear) or You need the best equipment available and . . . takes you! to extremes. Worst of all to my mind was one recent advertisement-Bring Everest down to size!  If those are not blatant ethical fouls then I don't know what is, and to suggest that one can buy one's way up a mountain (despite recent attempts) is surely foreign to any spirit that may remain in climbing.

What then are my ethics, and how did they develop? At first they derived from the example of other climbers, and then my own ideas started to predominate. It is astonishing how quickly they change. Three years ago I would have top-roped a new route anywhere had I thought it necessary. Now I would confine that particular foul only to the boldest of local gritstone problems. Today I would not use aid to force a new route, unless, even with a point of aid, it was making possible a route harder than any before. The excuse for a foul creeps in again! I call these 'tricks' fouls, but when I analyse the situation it strikes me that everything beyond a man climbing a mountain alone and naked is a foul: we must keep our tally as low as possible for our own era in history. All fouls are born equal, it is only local accent, at this point in time, that decrees the use of chalk a worse foul than nut protection.

Here Royal Robbins has something to say: he has the.. concept of climbs as not just lines but as creations containing line and style. To this I would add my own more important concept of creative quality in a new route — that of the aesthetic enjoyment possible from the physical movement involved in the climb — the exhilaration felt after ascending a series of continuously demanding moves. A climb must have this quality to be a worthy creation. On a new climb at Ilkley recently I had a choice: should I take a bold and beautiful little arete that required a piton for a handhold and protection half-way? Or should I scrape out a nearby scoop of soft rock to construct a useable hand-hold and then top-rope the route as it would be protectionless? I chose the latter alternative — the scraped hold and the top-rope — not because pitons are nasty at Ilkley but because the finished product is as fine a series of moves as you'll find anywhere. To have used a peg would have been to break the flow and spoil the prolonged physical sensations.

The tension would have been broken by the escape point in the middle. Again the letter writers reach for their pens: ' . . how can you justify any environmental ethics when you use chalk and scrape holds? Why rid the crags of defacing pitons on the one hand and paint them a different colour with the other?  Well, I have no ethical qualms about the environment; I have never rid a route of its pegs or its aid because it makes the route/crag/national park/ country- a cleaner and more natural place. I just consider that the removal of aid can turn many of the fine aided lines into tremendous climbing experiences as well. How can the climber complain of environmental damage to his climbs when he drives as close as possible to them in his noisy noxious gas-spewing car?

How can the guide-book writer professional hero complain when he condones the building of a modern rescue box as close as possible to the crags? How can the National Park Warden complain as he roams the countryside in his Landrover with his yapping dogs planting obscene signs and turning all available land into expensive camping-car-park complexes? These are my views today. But as I have said, they may change tomorrow, and they do frequently modify but always I hope to permit less fouls than before. Messner has something to say, something that we might consider a pointer for the future: It is impossible, or pointless, to grade a move when you are within ten feet of your last piton - (or nut!)

Pete Livesey: First Published in Mountain Life-June 1975

Bernadette McDonald's 'The Art of Freedom....Reviewed

The Art of Freedom- The Life and Climbs of Voytek Kurtyka .
Bernadette McDonald.

Published by Vertebrate Publishing. Under licence from Rocky Mountain Books, Canada. Price £24.


Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible
Dostoevsky

Voytek Kurtyka is one of the most outstanding climbers in the history of the sport, equally significant as a rock climber and mountaineer. One of the leaders of a Polish led revolution that redefined Himalayan climbing in the 1970’s and 1980’s. His visionary approach marked him out even from many of his own countries mountaineers, with an emphasis on alpine style ascents on the highest mountains of the world. Born in 1947, it was when his family moved to Wroclaw that he started to climb at a local outcrop, persuaded to try this by a female fellow student whilst studying electronics at the local university in 1968. He was immediately smitten, and began to visit the rocks as often as he could, much to the chagrin of his father, a writer who later became well known in Polish literary circles. 

I was fortunate to visit Poland and the Tatras in 1967, the year before Voytek started to climb, and from later experience in the following decade, climbing in Czech, Slovakia and Bulgaria (the Rila mountains), all communist countries in that era, I was to find climbing was ‘organised’ along lines that fitted into the prevailing political system, with tests and examinations, and you were only supposed to climb unsupervised when you had passed these. The Wroclaw Climbing Club was teeming with good climbers, Wanda Rutkiewicz, Bogdan Jankowski and Kryzysztof Wielicki all future stars of Himalayan exploration and Voytek soon provided an intriguing addition to that grouping, but he was from the first, a non-conformist.

He never bothered with instruction and the tests set nationally by the Polish Mountaineering Association (PZA), but by the time he finished his degree he was one of the best rock climbers in Poland, known by a soubriquet as the ‘Animal’. Why this nick name I am not sure, but in looks he was compared with the brilliant Russian dancer, Rudolf Nureyev. Having met (once) this latter person, and looking at photographs of Voytek in his early twenties, the comparison is apt for he too was lithe, of medium height and moved sinuously. I did meet him at that time but I guess he will not remember.

The Tatra Mountains are a proven training ground for Polish and Slovak mountaineers, and in some ways, they are for me reminiscent of the Cuillin Mountains in Skye, but their higher altitude and eastern continental position mean severe winter conditions. And it was in these mountains that Voytek over the next few years honed his mountaineering skills, pioneering rock routes harder than the then existing grades and winter ascents such as the Sciek(The Sewer) and the Pajaki (Spiders) on the huge Kazalnica wall. Working at a succession of jobs, climbing began to dominate his life, but he was operating historically in a tumultuous period politically and of religiosity in Poland.

The Roman Catholic religion held sway despite the Communist masters, but for the climbers, it was freedom that they sought, and for Voytek he was neither caught by religion or politics he was keenest on developing his climbing and travelling experience, despite the travails caused by money and equipment shortage. He also had literary ambitions and was moved by art and music. A most telling quote about his winter climbs in the Tatras was his attitude to bivouacs, ‘you had to learn how to live on the mountain, making comfortable and safe bivouacs. This is the knowledge we later took to the Hindu Kush and the Himalaya’.

A surprise to me is there is no coverage in the book of Voytek’s Alpine climbs. Because of his outstanding routes in the Tatras, he with some other Polish climbers, were able via PZA arrangements with the Ecole National (ENSA), to visit Chamonix. Voytek made repeats of some of the areas classics, and in 1973 a new route on the North Face of the Petit Dru with Jerzy Kukuczka and Marek Lukaszewski, and in 1975 with the same partners a new Polish Route on the Grandes Jorasses North Face.

However, prior to these Alpine routes in 1972, he had been on one of the multi member Polish expeditions to the Hindu Kush, in which ten climbers from Krakow took part. They were a feature of that countries mountaineering in that decade, by ducking and diving, with limited funds, somehow they transported themselves and their equipment by truck or by train to reach Afghanistan. On this trip Voytek made three first ascents including one of the first Alpine style climbs over 7000 metres, the North Face of Akher Chioch 7,017m with Piotr Jasinski, Marek Kowalczyk, and Jacek Rusieki; an experience that was to influence his approach to high mountains in the future. This first expedition was a happy one and all the participants returned to Poland as friends. But it’s a good job none of us know what lies ahead in our lives, for three of these close friends of Voytek’s from this trip were all to die subsequently in road traffic accidents! 

In 1974 Kurtyka took part in a repeat of the French Direct on the Troll Wall in Norway, in winter. This really was a test of endurance taking 13 days to complete. But somehow it was not what Kurtyka came to be about, neither was his participation in a large Polish winter expedition to Lhotse 8.516m in 1975. This was led by Andrzej Zawada who had the idea that Polish climbers with their winter climbing experience in the Tatras, were uniquely suited to such ascents. This was the first ever winter attempt on an 8000m peak, Voytek reached 7.800m and Zawada with Heinrich 8.250m.The following year Kurtyka was a member of another Polish expedition, this time to the North East Ridge of K2, reaching 7.900m.

Voytek Kurtyka on the Lhotse expedition:Bogdan Jankowski.
1977 was to be the year that Kurtyka began to climb with mountaineers from the West, and I had a little to do with this. Whilst I was at the BMC we had started holding invitation International meets, and one of these had been with Polish climbers. John Porter had been a volunteer helper on this gathering, and got along with this group led by Zawada famously. The PZA subsequently invited a group of British climbers to the Tatra, and then subsequently in 1977 to join one of their trips to the Hindu Kush. John Porter was up for both of these, and persuaded Alex MacIntyre to join him. The rest is history, and Kurtyka, Alex and John, climbing Alpine style made the impressive first ascent of the North-East face of Kohe Bandaka, 6.843m.

The following year Voytek, John, Alex and Krzysztof Zurek ascended the south buttress of Changabang. These two ascents, although at the time not so lauded as some others, were in retrospect game changing for they confirmed to such as Kurtyka, Kukuczka, Alex MacIntyre, Doug Scott, Rene Ghilini and others, that to tackle Himalayan peaks you do not need large parties and fixed ropes. Alex was by this date working with me at the BMC, and we had many discussions about how this climbing style might develop over ensuing years.

From that date on for two decades, Kurtyka was active at the forefront of Himalayan climbing. Dhaulagiri, Makalu, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum ll Gasherbrum l, Trango Tower, K2, Cho Oyo, Shishapangma, with some successes, and some failures. Outstanding with Kukuczkza was the first ascents of Gasherbrum ll, 8.034m by its South East ridge and Gasherbrum l, 8.080m by the South West Face, and the Broad Peak 8.051m traverse.  For me, Kurtyka’s two greatest climbs were the West Face of Gasherbrum 1V, 7.932m (The Shining Wall) with Robert Schauer in 1985, and a new route on the Trango Tower, 6.239m by its East Face in 1988 with Erhard Loretan.

I spent a week sharing a hotel room with Robert Schauer in 1986, when we were both on the jury of the Trento film festival. After which I also went rock climbing with him at Arco, and to hear first hand from him about The Shining Wall ascent was truly dramatic. This ten day epic was as close to the edge as one can get, for they ran out of food and gas, had nothing to eat or drink for two days and only just survived. It is still one of the most impressive ascents recorded in the Himalaya, and is now referred to by the pundits as ‘the climb of the century’.

There is much soul searching in this book, for Kurtyka is troubled by the many accidents that happened to his former climbing partners. Alex MacIntyre had made a big impression on him and his death on Annapurna in 1982 really hurt, as did the death of Erhard Loretan in the Swiss Alps. He became disenchanted with his most famous climbing partner Kukuczka for seeking out recognition in a ‘race’ with Messner to become the first to ascend the 14 highest peaks in the world. The more so because in this he felt that safety considerations were being ignored, resulting in the death of several of his companions. However, Kukuczka is not alive to defend himself for he too perished, on the South Face of Lhotse in 1989. The death toll amongst the leading Polish alpinists became frightening around this date, four died on the west ridge of Everest that same year.

Rather like the British earlier when Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker, Alex MacIntyre, Nick Estcourt, Roger Baxter Jones, Dougal Haston, Al Rouse, Julie Tullis, Paul Nunn all perished in the mountains. However no one ever died sharing a rope with Kurtyka, several times he turned round when he felt conditions were not safe. Like Reinhold Messner observed ‘the best climber is the oldest one’.
Kurtyka continued pioneering into advanced age, in 2003 he was still making new routes in summer and winter in the Tatras, and his last major Himalayan climb was the Biacherahi Central Tower, 5.700 metres in the Karakoram, a new route on its south face with Japanese climbers Taeko and Yasushi Yamanoi in 2001. He confesses that he is impressed by Japanese culture and thinking, and it seems that he does have something of a Zen like approach to life.


The book starts with Kurtyka agonising over and refusing to take part on several occasions when he is invited to receive recognition over a Piolets d'Or award, becoming ever more impatient with the organisers for inviting him. I empathised and although I have never been invited myself for any such award, and never will be I am not sure that mountaineering needs any such form of recognition. I am not against competition, in fact, I founded one of the best known athletic events in Yorkshire in 1979, the Chevin Chase, won for the last six years by one or other Olympic Triathletes, the Brownlee’s, Alistair and Johnny. But what a climber experiences in the mountains is not like kicking a ball, or running along a track, it has elements of Chan, which is actually where Zen thought comes from.

A fusion of Daoism and Buddhism, and it is beyond description and too precious to confuse with awards, however well intentioned. However ‘Art of Freedom’ ends in 2016 with Kurtyka accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award, at a Piolets d'Or ceremony in La Grave, leaving the reader to ponder which road rock climbing and mountaineering will now travel down, with Olympic recognition looming and climbing imagery becoming a mainstay of consumerist advertising.

Tadek Piotrowski and Voytek Kurtyka in Camp II (7,300 metres) on the Lhotse Wall, waiting for the weather to improve. Polish autumn–winter 1975/1975 expedition. Bogdan Jankowski

The author of this biography, the award winning writer Bernadette McDonald has crafted an outstanding book about a mountaineering legend. It is a warts and all portrait of Kurtyka’s complicated personality and relationships, with partners, family, the law, risk, and an uncompromising lifestyle whilst meeting his climbing goals. She has produced a thought provoking master work. The publishers are also to be congratulated for such a well presented volume, copiously illustrated with many personal and historic photographs. 





Dennis Gray: 2017

Available Direct from Vertebrate Publishing

The Battle for Kinder Scout

The problem of gaining and preserving freedom of access to crags and mountains is becoming acute in certain areas. Where access itself is unrestricted, mountaineers may still find their freedom threatened by increasing interference from sundry officials. In the United States, control over climbers’ movements is in some areas already a common occurrence. In this article an historic mountain incident is recalled, one whose lessons are no less valid today. Kinder Scout is the wild heart of the Derbyshire Peak District: it is the final Southerly clench of the backbone of England.

On every side of this area of ‘outstanding natural beauty’ industrial towns bristle. For the millions in the conurbations of Manchester, Sheffield and the West Riding, a short road or train journey brings these moorland fastnesses within reach. ‘The Manchester Rambler’ can be up and away before his Southern counterpart has reached the station. In 1932, although these moors lay on the doorsteps of many who considered them their birthright, they were owned by a handful of landlords, who had reserved these unrivaled acres for their own private enjoyment. A few score of very wealthy ‘sportsmen’ spent the autumn months slaughtering the grouse that flourish there. The local record for one day was 1,421 brace, shot by nine guns over the Broomhead Moors in August 1913. To make such carnage possible the people were excluded not only during the nesting and shooting seasons but throughout the whole year

In 1932, P. A. Barnes, author of Trespassers will be Prosecuted, a famous pamphlet campaigning for free access, wrote: "Throughout the moorland areas in and adjacent to the Peak District (about 215 square miles) there are only about twelve footpaths." Ramblers and climbers were affronted by "Keep Out" signs everywhere, and small private armies of gamekeepers patrolled their masters’ estates with forelock-touching earnestness.

There is a long tradition of moorland walking among Manchester and Sheffield workers. At this time, tens of thousands of young people would hike from tram termini each weekend, bound for the Peak. As the dole queues lengthened, more and more turned to rambling as one of the few sporting activities they could afford. In 1932, there were 66,000 unemployed in Sheffield. At a time when many were questioning the institutions and ideology of capitalism, the almost feudal restrictions on access to the moors were an intolerable outrage. Confrontations with gamekeepers became more frequent and more violent. Obviously working to instructions from the landlords, moorland patrols increased their vigilance, and the indignation of the ramblers escalated apace. As early as 1923 the Manchester Evening Chronicle had contained an amazing Wild West style "wanted" notice. It showed two photographs of walkers on Kinder Scout, and underneath it read: "Kinder Scout Trespassers, £5 reward will be paid for the name, address and occupation of any of the persons represented in the photos. Apply Cobbett, Wheeler 8 Cobbett, Solicitors, 49 Spring Gardens, Manchester”. Grandfather William Cobbett, the early nineteenth century radical, must have been squirming in his grave at the role his offspring were playing.

The "Access to Mountains Bill" was first brought before the House of Commons in 1888, but its main clause, stating that " . . . no owner or occupier of uncultivated mountains or moorland shall be entitled to exclude any person from walking or being on such land for the purpose of recreation or artistic study, or to molest him in so  walking or being," caused apoplexy among the predominantly Tory members. Successive attempts were backed up outside Parliament by the Ramblers’ Federation and the Footpaths Preservation Society, whose campaigning went no further than polite petitioning and the holding of an annual rally at which ramblers were merely asked to support the actions of M.P.s and officials. By and large the predominantly middle-class leadership of these ‘responsible’ bodies looked with some alarm at the increasingly bitter clashes between keepers and working class ramblers.

In fact the idea of a ‘mass trespass’ seems to have first arisen at one of the camps organized by the British Workers’ Sports Federation, held at the village of Rowarth in 1931. This organization had been set up on the initiative and under the influence of the Young Communist League, the Communist Party Youth Movement, and it presented the question of access to the hills in open class terms. A ramble from the camp, led by Benny Rothman, thesecretary of the Lancashire Federation of the B.W.S.F (and now a Trade Union Convener in a Manchester Engineering Factory), who more than anyone can claim to have been the organizer of the mass trespass, was turned back by the keepers before the objective, Bleaklow Hill, had been reached. New plans were laid during the bitter and angry hike back.

Rothman visited the Manchester Evening News on April 18th, 1932 and gave an interview to a reporter (who was later used as a witness by the prosecution that had Rothman convicted for his part in the events), and next day the plans were headline news: "Mass Trespass over Kinder Scout", with suitably lurid references to "shock troops" and "assaults”. The Sheffield Ramblers’ Federation made its position quite clear: "We have nothing whatsoever to do with this demonstration of which we thoroughly disapprove. We do not consider these people to be bona fide ramblers." Those damn Reds even get under the heather.

Unemployed like at least half of those taking part, Rothman and a friend cycled to Hayfield early in the morning of Sunday April 24th, the day of the trespass, to reconnoitre the proposed route. Had he been able to afford the train fare he would have been stopped at the station by the police with an injunction restraining him from taking part in the meeting at Hayfield Recreation Ground with which the demonstration had been advertised to start. Rothman estimated that the sunken playing field was a natural trap, and that the one-third of the full Derbyshire Police Force present in the village intended the meeting to be the start and finish of the day's proceedings. Word was immediately passed to the assembling ramblers to set off at once along the footpath to William's Clough, and the high moors beyond. Police desperately ran along the column to try and head it off, but they were too late. Unused to such exercise, a contingent of perspiring bobbies fell in at the rear.

The delayed meeting was held in a disused quarry amphitheatre beside the path. Rothman scrambled on to a boulder and spoke to the crowd, now numbering about 600. He emphasized that they wanted an orderly and disciplined march. "Our grouse is against grouse", he said, "we are determined to trespass en masse everywhere where we canclaim with justice to have a right to go." The crowd of young people wheeled eastward out of William's Clough, striking up the hillside towards the forbidden crest of Kinder. Spontaneously this unorganised and picturesque demonstration adopted self-protective tactics to prevent any arrests by the following police. At each stile the entire march would halt and only proceed when the last straggler was safely through.

The keepers had anticipated this route and were waiting on the crest. What followed has passed into legend. A dozen or so keepers and specially enrolled villagers raised their cudgels. From the press reports one could be forgiven for assuming they were describing ‘going over the top’ in a First World War battle. The most ‘accurate’ of them was the Sheffield Independent: "Over the rough moorland men struggled and rolled down the steep slopes. Every minute it appeared that somebody would hurtle to the bottom." in fact a few brief scuffles were all that were needed to brush the keepers aside. One of them, Edward Beever, was injured, the occasion for later charges of grievous bodily harm.

The ramblers had reached the summit plateau, sacred ground from which they had hitherto been officially excluded. A contingent from Sheffield who had 'trespassed’ from Edale joined them for a victory meeting. They brought news that the roads to the east were lined with police, and it was decided to return by the same route. As they marched back the hills echoed to shouts of ”Down with the landlords and ruling class". At Hayfield a line of police awaited them. Five ramblers were arrested and variously charged with unlawful assembly and committing a breach of the peace. ‘Trespass’ was not amongst the charges. The law had long since been repealed l The day's events were headline news, as were the trials of those arrested. Rothman conducted his own defence on what amounted to the political platform of the British Workers’ Sports Federation, but politics were brought into the case by the prosecution too.

Much was made of a copy of the Communist Review found on one of the defendants, and the sinister discovery of a pamphlet by a "Mr. Lenin" was emphasized. "ls that the Russian gentleman ?” asked the learned judge. Five of those on trial were members of the Young Communist League, and according to the Progressive Rambler, a magazine of the time, the jury consisted of "two Brigadier Generals, three Colonels, two Majors, three Captains, two Aldermen - and eleven of these were country gentlemen"  Sentences ranged from two tosix months, with one dismissal.

Mr. Stephen Morton, secretary of the Sheffield Ramblers’ Federation, was quoted as saying: "For many years we have been endeavouring to obtain access to mountains and moorlands by legitimate means. This move, on the part of the Lancashire people, would throw the whole thing back at least twenty years.” The opposite was the case. The mass trespass gained the cause of free access to mountains more sympathetic publicity in one day than the Ramblers’ Federation had won for it in the previous thirty years.

Demonstrations of solidarity with those jailed, and the organization of other trespasses, such as the ‘Abbey Brook’ march in September of the same year, carried forward the tempo of the movement. Many more battles were necessary before the Access to Mountains Bill was finally put on the Statute Book by Atlee’s Labour Government, but it was "The Battle for Kinder Scout" that lifted the movement from the level of private members’ lobbying to that of mass politics. Its  memory still echoes whenever the right to ramble or climb is threatened.

Original Photo: Ken Wilson

Dave Cook:

First Published in Mountain February 1974

Under Adam Rib

There's something disturbingly sinister and at the same time gigglingly innocent about standing for the first time in a huge empty cwm. In front of us the black curtain of Cwm Du was bristling with buttresses which were each lit at the top by the early evening light. The left-most of these is Eden Buttress and flaming like a candle was the crux top pitch of Adam Rib, a 400ft two-star Severe first climbed in 1911. But here was a whole cwm of delights, for up every buttress there held a starred Severe, sunlit, naked, and like Adam Rib, as dry as a bone. The cwm seemed newly created, an untouched Eden.

We searched for a spot flat enough for a tent,not realizing then how it would get in the way later on.
Of course, it came as no surprise to come over the lip of this cwm on the north side of Mynydd Mawr and find it deserted, even after weeks of dry weather. The previous week we had been the only climbers in the cwm when we climbed the Pencoed Pillar of Cader Idris. In the Moelwyns this very morning there had been queues of climbers on Mean Feat, but no one on the brilliant Hard Severe called The White Streak. These are the secrets really worth knowing.Adam Rib escaped the books and The White Streak escaped the stars. Both are full of surprises and routes of remarkable character. I don't mind sharing these secrets with you because Adam Rib in particular needs regular attention.

One of its surprises is loose rock.`What about doing one of these other ribs tonight and Adam Rib in the morning? It'll probably get the sun early on', I suggested to Norman.`No. If we're going to do it, we'll do it now. You don't know what the weather will be like in the morning.' All I could see was a blue sky and a wonderland of rock waiting to be climbed. It had not rained for three weeks and it was unlikely to rain in the morning. But Norman was already heading towards the scree.`Well I'm not carrying a sac,' I called as I scurried after him,just trainers.'

At last I stood where I'd wanted to be ever since I discovered the quality of Angel Pavement on the other side of this hill – and that was under Adam Rib. The evening was young and the tents were below There was no need to rush up the long reclining rib to the sunlight. And this was just as well, really, because it quickly became clear that it was not the climbing that was going to give us innocent fun, but the situation beside an amazing emergence of minarets on the left, and the beautiful basalt-type columns of Fluted Buttress on the right. Similarly it was not the shadowed presence of the black crag that would be sinister, but the loose nature of the holds that would give an edge of seriousness to this climb. We would need the time.

The rock of the first pitch so disturbed Norman that he belayed at half height, reducing the potential rockfall by 50ft. Leading the second half of this easy pitch I found the holds to be flat-topped blocks which sometimes eased free of the face. Then, in his turn, moaning with unease and his rucksack, Norman faced the prospect of a groove to the left of the arete, a traverse further left on to a subsidiary- rib followed by- a traverse back right again. He insisted that I belayed him directly below the groove (and in the line of fire) the better to hold him should he fall. My survival was assumed. I shivered in shorts, helmet less again. The serpent was beginning to uncoil on Eden Buttress.

Fortunately, Norman threw down more curses than rock. When I followed, I found that at every touch of a suspect hold there was one that was sound within reach. It was a matter of listening to the rock. I remembered a recent rope advert: 'Just you and the rope against Nature'. Whoever wrote that has not been here, or on Cloggy, or in Chee Dale, or on Pillar, or in Scotland. In fact Where have they been? Obviously only on the bolted sport climbers' crags. Perhaps this is the difference between the sport climbers and the rock climbers: the former have to fight against nature to win a hollow conquest, whilst the rock climber has to listen for hollow holds in order to tune in with nature, attentive rather than assertive, receiving rather than taking, reading what is given rather than problem solving with technology. This is why the art of placing runners is so integral to the rock climber's way of reading the rock.

Having said which, there now appears a peg in this story, at the start of the next pitch. It is ancient and unnecessary and I clipped it because it's there. On Eden Buttress this is not an original sin, merely an acknowledgement of the serpent's presence. I found the moves past the peg quite testing, but belaying above, on the narrow spine of the arete, I thought this next pitch was going to be the crux. Herbert Carr's 1926 guidebook description conveys something of the Alpine atmosphere of this final pitch: 'The rib narrows to a knife-edge which curls over on the left in a cornice of rock, leaving the straightest of paths set at an uncomfortably steep angle.' Belaying in the sun now, I watched Norman cunningly protect the moves above the cornice and teeter up, left toe on the edge of the overhang, right fingertips locked in the crack above his wires. Suddenly the rope was running out fast and he was shouting about what a brilliant pitch it was, how you really felt the exposure and how well Mallory did to climb it in December. I'll simply say that when my turn came it made me think a bit.

Dave Williams negotiates pitch three of Adam Rib

On the top we sat awhile, looking east to Snowdon's summit, then turning to the west to see blinding sunlight on the sea. To the south Y Garn's ridge stood stark and green. On the north side below us the land lay- open to the golden beaches of Anglesey. In Greek the word 'Adam' is made up of the four initial letters of the points of the compass, so Adam Rib can mean simply 'the rib leading to Adam – the viewpoint for everywhere'. But this is not the real significance of this route-name. That came to me only after a night under Adam Rib.

Camping is not allowed in Cwm Du. It is Crown Land to which the uncrowned may have access solely 'for air and exercise'. We'd fulfilled the exercise part of this requirement and, having unbuckled our harnesses, we lay where we fell, taking in air and alcohol. We got into our sleeping bags as the air chilled, and, one by one, we fell asleep beside our tents. We were therefore not actually camping, just taking maximum air after our exercise. I woke to find this tent pitched in the way of where my feet wanted to be.

To sleep out under Adam Rib after the experience of that climb is to rediscover an original state in which the world is whole.Adam Rib is an image that is both male and female. It is a climb om darkness into light that requires a certain fusion with nature to negotiate splintered rock. It is an experience of both the athletic and the aesthetic, just as it is an experience of both the sinister and the silly: This was the integrated art of rock climbing before the Fall.

And this is not a backward-looking nostalgic notion. Nor is it a flat-earth attitude to progress. It is simply to say to the sport climber, 'This is the way the rock is now. Before you bolt it, think about how you're going to take away the freedom of others to use and to see only what is given in this place. You don't have to be manipulated by the commercial interests into using equipment against nature.

The alternative, more demanding discipline, of listening and learning is still available.'In fact, the reintegrating art of rock climbing is available to anyone who stands under Adam Rib.

Terry Gifford:

The Joy of Climbing: Whittles Publishing

Top Photo: Terry Gifford Collection

Tony Howard's Troll Wall..Review

Like most climbers who came into the game in the 1970's and 80's, my first encounter with the name Troll in a climbing context was when I was  casually flicking through the pages of the UK climbing magazines- Climber and Rambler and High. Troll'...they make climbing gear right... Like Clog, Wild Country, Mo Anthoine's Snowdon Mouldings and Mountain Technology up in Scotland? In fact, I'm sure my mate's Whillans harness is made by Troll. Come to think of it- I think my Mark 6 job a Troll ?'