On The Hills
1964
Raymond Harben and Bill Woodward spent two weeks in Chamonix and a week in Cortina. The weather was very mixed; they were able to get up the Aiguille du Chardonnet by the Forbes Arete but a two day traverse of the Domes des Miage, Aiguille de Bionnassey and Mont Blanc had to be abandoned after climbing the first peak. In the Dolomites the weather turned them back when they had nearly reached the summits of Tofana di Rosa and Monte Cristallo and they had to be content with climbing Cinque Torri.
Denny Moorhouse was in Austria where he did most of the harder climbs in the Kaisergebirge, which he found a most friendly place after the Laliderer Wall on the Karwendel. He was also in the Dolomites where he climbed the Brandler Hasse Direct on the North Face of Cima Grande (Grade VI+) and the Cassin Route on the North Face of the Cima Ovest di Lavaredo (Grade VI), the latter the only British ascent of the year.
Richard Gowing, David Smith, Penfold, Linford, Renton, Roger Allen, Frank Wilkinson and a guest found the Lotschen-tal a perfect valley with perfect weather. Though snowfalls at night kept them off the higher peaks, they climbed the Mittag-horn, Ebnefluh, Rothorn, Wilerhorn and three others. Gowing and Allen went on to Zermatt where they did the Dent Blanche by the Wandfluh, the Pointe de Zinal traverse and the Alphu-bel by the Rotgrat.
Harry Stembridge was ski-ing at Sestriere with Dick Cook in March. In the Dolomites in September, with Alf Gregory and Fred Hoyle, he climbed Catinaccio, Sella Towers 1 and 2 and Cima Grande di Lavaredo by the standard route, they also did a lot of pass walking.
Marsden, Tregoning and Turner, based on Mayrhofen, found the Zillertal extremely attractive; they climbed the Grosse Moseler, Schwartzenstein and Au Kogel. Hilton was touring in the Dolomites, based on St. Ulrich. Watts walked in the Bregaglia in August and in December attended a “wedel course” at Zermatt, he did not learn to wedel but enjoyed the course.
Ian Crowther and Ian Stansfield spent a week camping and climbing in Torridon. Peter Bell, mainly with Terence Good-fellow, carried out a comprehensive pioneering exploration of routes up the near-vertical and sometimes overhanging Pur-beck limestone cliffs extending for half a mile westwards from the Durlston Head Lighthouse, Swanage. They found many opportunities for first ascents and it seems that possibilities are by no means exhausted.
John Middleton was potholing with a party in the Tennenge-birge; they got about 550 ft. down the Edelweisserhuttenschacht on the Streitmandl when they were held up by a very deep shaft which the party was not strong enough to descend. Having gone 180 ft. down it they estimated its depth to be at least another 200 to 300 feet.
George Spenceley, with Pat and Peter Shorter of the Fell and Rock, visited Turkey, travelling overland by car. They climbed the Gross Venediger in Austria as a training exercise to break the monotony of a 3,000 mile drive, the main object of which was to visit the Ala Dag Taurus of Central Anatolia. From the village of Camardi, where they received unforgettable hospitality from the family of the muleteer whom they hired, donkeys were used to carry to a bivouac at 6,500 ft., which was sited at the foot of Demirkazik, 13,000 ft., believed to be the highest mountain of the group. From here a deep gorge leads into the heart of the range. The mountains are of limestone and an attempted first ascent of one peak had to be abandoned because of the dangerous looseness of the rock. The summit of Demirkazik was reached in 13 hours from the bivouac by the Hodgkin-Peck couloir, the 4th ascent by this route; the descent was made by the easier East Ridge. The party was caught out by nightfall and had to bivouac at about 10,000 ft. Total time for traverse 30 hours; main hazard, loose rock; chief discomfort, merciless sun and lack of water.
1965
Frank and Harry Stembridge, with John Godley, skied at Lenzerheide in January, Watts was at Gstaad and Grindelwald and in March Raymond Harben was at Kitzbuhel. Snow conditions were good right through the winter.
Moorhouse, driven out of Chamonix by the weather in August, fled to the Dolomites. He climbed the Carlesso-Sandri on the Torre Trieste South Wall and made the fifth ascent of the Hasse direct finish to this route (Grade VI+). During the two years 1964 and 1965 Moorhouse has completed 12 climbs in the Dolomites, of Grade V+ or over. At Christmastide he was again in the Dolomites, at the Rosengarten.
Marsden, Tregoning and Turner spent 8 days at Miirren in July, weather conditions prevented all ascents except the But-glassen. They tried to find the sun in Stresa and there the highest they got was the top end of Lake Maggiore in a steamer. The holiday finished at Zermatt with equally poor weather.
Crowther, with his family in Norway in June, did some climbing from the Juvasshyta Tourist Station and on the Jostadalbreen Glacier with a party of Norwegians, but found June a little too early, there was much snow. Richard Gowing, posted to Japan to erect a nuclear power station, climbed Fujiyama and spent a week ridge walking in the Northern Japanese Alps.
Harry Stembridge spent Easter walking in the Merrick area, walked in the Pindus mountains of northern Greece with Alf Gregory at midsummer and in September was fishing with Bob Chadwick and Jack Dossor in the Shetlands.
Paul Roberts, in August, was camping and climbing in the Encantador region of the Pyrenees, in the area of Salardu and Espot. For days he did not see a soul and had the mountains to himself. Much of the rock was rotten, swimming in the little lakes delightful and the sun shone, which it did not do in the Alps. He advises the use of mules to carry food up the long valleys but to settle the cost before starting off.
Hilton toured the northern Highlands in August in good weather. After exploring the extreme north and west he crossed to Skye, visited Glen Brittle, where he first started rock climbing in 1920, and inspected the new S.M.C. hut. He walked up the track from Loch Hourn Head towards Barrisdale to get the view of Ladhar Bheinn which he had missed at the Knoydart Meet.
Rusher, with eight members of his parish Youth Group, crossed to Cork at the end of July and hired two horse-drawn caravans at Matt Murphy’s Caravanserai. They drove to Loo
Bridge, on to Kenmare, over Moll’s Gap to Killarney. They soon learnt all about the horses, but had a little bother with the brakes on the steep twisting road down from Moll’s Gap. Their only mishap was on the last day when one of the horses rushed a narrow gate; fencing wire served to mend the broken harness and held things together till they reached base.
Watts, in a hired Volkswagen, explored Crete and the Peloponnese, looking for remote Byzantine churches and visiting the ruins of Minoan and Mycaenean palaces. He also made the railway journey through the Postojna Cavern, near Trieste, with about 500 other folk.
John Middleton and Judson, with a strong party, went back to the Tennengebirge determined to bottom the deep shaft found the previous year in the Edelweisserhuttenschacht. Their disappointment can be imagined when they found that at some time during the foregoing twelve months an enormous cavern collapse had filled and sealed off the big pitch with a tottering mass of boulders and debris. They were only able to get 60 ft. further down than did the 1964 party. They did bottom the Fieberhohle, on the Fieberhorn, to a depth of 722 ft.; at this point it also was blocked by a boulder fall.
David Smith, Roger Allen, Renton and S. Allen were at Zermatt where they climbed Mont Durand, traversed the Zinal Rothorn from the Mountet Hut (1st ascent of season), climbed the Taschorn (1st ascent of season) and the Dom. Bad snow conditions on the Zermatt side of the Zinal Rothorn caused them to miss the A.C. Dinner.
Farrant, in July, finished the last of the 2,000 ft. peaks in the Lake District; his list stands at 190 but is contradicted by others as regards the actual total. In November, with one companion, he had a very cold camping week end near Tum-mel Bridge, but with an excellent day on Schiehallion.
George Spenceley was again travelling by car in Turkey. He did no serious climbing but toured the very beautiful mountains and coastal district of south-west Turkey.
1966
Frank and Harry Stembridge, John Godley and Douglas Mahoney again enjoyed perfect snow conditions at Lenzer-heide; Harben and Woodward, at Mayrhofen, had some of the finest deep powder snow they had ever experienced and Watts, at Gstaad, could ski from the Wasserngrat into his own garden until mid-April.
Tim Smith, in March, ascended Table Mountain by cable route and found it both airy and unsafe. Watts, in Persia in May, explored the ruins of Persepolis and Pasagardae; during a 6-hour delay at the Turkish frontier at Bazargan he had ample opportunity to appreciate the majesty of Mount Ararat.
Moorhouse spent Easter at Berchtesgaden. From a hut on the summit plateau of the Untersberg they tried for two days to find the snow-covered entrance to a pothole, said to be an easy way to the foot of the South Wall, which they wanted to climb; in the end they had to abseil. Storm-bound half way up the wall they abseiled again and, to avoid wet snow avalanches, took the pothole route back to the summit, thinking that a quick dig through the snow stopper at the top would soon get them there. They dug at it for 3 hours, bivouacked in the cave and dug again for several hours next morning before breaking surface at the end of a twenty foot tunnel.
Richard Gowing, in Japan, took a boat down the Inland Sea, visiting the boiling mud springs at Beppu and Shuhodo Cave on Miyajima Shrine Island, huge formations but much of their beauty lost by their now being dry and dead.
Farrant camped in Glenshiel at Easter, he climbed three of the Five Sisters of Kintail and The Saddle via the Forcan Ridge, a truly magnificent snow and ice route of at least 2,000 feet. This was followed by a week of unbelievably good weather in Torridon, with successful ascents of Beinn Alligin, Beinn Eighe, Slioch, Stuc a’ Choire Dhuibh Bhig (on Liathach), Bheinn Liath Mhor, Sgurr Ruadh and Maol Chean-dearg.