Heroes.

Afootinthehills who comments here asked me to publish details of the Hamish McInnes/Ian Clough snow and ice course I attended in Glencoe back in 1969 after I had alluded to that event after watching a fascinating documentary last night on BBC Scotland - First Ascent. The programme was a self narration by Hamish McInnes detailing his life. I highly recommend it - I think it should still be available on iPlayer or whatever.

Hamish is a renowned Scottish rock climber and was also a pivotal member on several very serious Himalayan expeditions. He is a seminal equipment designer re-defining the design of ice climbing equipment and laying the foundations of modern day Mountain Rescue including the design of the standard stretcher which I think is still being used today. 

Ian Clough was known to me slightly as a fellow member of the Yorkshire Mountaineering Club back in the 60s snd his younger brother Peter was in my form at Bradford Grammar School. Ian was another professional climber who teamed up with Hamish in Glencoe and they did many first ascents together. Ian was, and I don't say this lightly, one of the nicest people I have met during my life. Unfortunately Ian was killed on the last day of the Bonnington Annapurna expedition (1970) by a collapsing ice serac.

The doings of these two and their contemporaries in British rock climbing, and alpine and Himalayan epics are legendary to a monumental degree - just have look at Wikipedia.

So, by chance, years ago I started writing up details of my own modest doings and have been able to lift the relevant stuff about my 1969 few days in Glencoe with these two legends.

Heroes

I suppose most people would choose their heroes from the ranks of the famous, and they would never know them personally, and it may well be a great disappointment if that were to happen, but I include one or two here, I hope with sufficient justification. First of all I want to recall an event in 1969 which produced a clear hero for me, and taught me something else I have never forgotten.

The event was a snow and ice climbing course in Glencoe run by Hamish McInnes and Ian Clough which ran over a period of a few days. There were about eight of us on the course, and I now only remember three in particular. We all assembled at, and stayed in a bunkhouse in Glencoe. At that time I was twenty nine years old. I drove to this event in my Volkswagen 1300 Beetle, and picked up a hitchhiker on the side of Loch Lomond, who turned out to be heading for the same course. This guy was a few years younger than me. Although it is not relevant to this story, coming round a bend in the road we came across an accident. An elderly lady had been driving from the opposite direction, and her car was upside down on the side of the road. Other people were already in attendance and help had been called, and the lady was not injured, but I was amused because she kept saying repeatedly,

“I wasn’t going too fast was I?”

My hitchhiker was a trifle arrogant, and I did not particularly take to him, but he did convey that he was an experienced climber of some ability. At the bunkhouse the next person who remains in the memory was another even younger lad who seemed to be clumsy and inept, but always willing to do more than his share of work, and make brews for everybody. I don’t think he did this to curry favour – he was just a decent sort of guy. The third person was a small fiftyish guy who turned out to be a bank manger and had no previous climbing experience at all - my immediate thoughts were that hewas too old and would prove to be a liability on the hill.*

There was not really enough snow and ice for the purposes of the course, and on the first day we were sent off on a navigation exercise across some wilderness in foul weather.

The second day we were taken up into The Lost Valley in Glencoe to do a mixed snow and rock climb which Hamish said was a second ascent. We ascended a steep snow gully, then broke out onto the righthand rock wall which was sparsely snow adorned. Halfway up this wall the young inept one lost one of his crampons, arising,I suppose, from not having properly strapped them which was predictable from previous observation of this character. We watched as the crampon fell down our previously climbed snow gully for about a hundred feet. We all knew that somebody would have to retrieve it, and everybody seemed to hesitate, and nobody wanted to volunteer, but unnoticed at first, the fiftyish “old” inexperienced bank manager had unroped and set off - he retrieved the item in a competent and modest manner, and I think we all felt a bit ashamed that we had held back and let this chap do the business.

At the end of this day my hitchhiker was muttering that the course was not hard enough. The next morning we assembled to meet Hamish and Ian. I saw Ian beckon to the hitchhiker and they went off together, and the rest of us went off up Bidean nam Bian with Hamish. I suspect Ian took that guy up some desperate climb and scared the hell out of him. All I know is that he was very quiet and subdued for the rest of the time.

My hero of course was the bank manager. The lesson I learnt, which I know is a cliché, is never to judge people on first acquaintance, and I have tried to abide by this ever-since. I am not saying that first impressions are always wrong or right, but it is always worth taking a step back and observing before making radical judgements.

* Pereception of age I now realise is proportional to one's own age at the time!