Reflections

by Peter Dixon

I’ve never been what you would call a proper climber but I have loved the hills for more years than I care to remember.

My earliest memories of mountains were actually the black and white photographic enlargements that covered the walls of the geography room of my otherwise unremarkable prep school. They were the work of J Hubert Walker, a name revered by mountain walkers, rather than climbers, from the pre-war and immediately post-war years. He loved the mountains of Austria and Scotland with a passion that was palpable and lugged a huge camera complete with glass plates with him on all-too-brief trips to the hills. In the 1950’s he published “Walking in the Alps”, a highly selective but wonderful book that included not just his photographs but sketch maps that exposed the structure of various alpine ranges laid out like enormous skeletons of long extinct beasts. That book was the inspiration for Kev Reynolds’ volume with the same title in our generation and Kev pays a heartfelt tribute to JHW in his introduction.

My first actual encounter with a hill was in the late 1950’s – Scafell Pike in a schoolboy mac and black everyday shoes. After a sighting of the recently opened Windscale power station on the skyline as we headed up from Wasdale Head, we saw nothing and got wetter by the minute as the rain poured down unceasingly, but I was hooked. Mountains joined boats as my drugs of choice and more than 60 years later nothing has changed.

Rock climbing was inevitably the next thing and Harrison’s rocks with the Scouts, but by now with plimsolls rather than my black leather shoes, became a familiar weekend rendezvous. A first trip to the Alps and the Stubai Wildspitze in 1962 at 16 and I was all set. Wild camping and rock climbing in Corsica with Monte Cinto (2706m) as our objective was the next adventure, the only downside being a disagreement with the water supply in Ajaccio that saw me using the whole team’s supply of loo roll. 24 times in 48 hours (I was counting) and when my girlfriend met me at Victoria station on our return she was confronted by an open rucksack with a loo roll leading from it down the stairs to the gents’ toilet. She did eventually marry me, bless her.

Then my climbing came to an abrupt end. A rugby accident required surgery on my knee which failed to fix the problem and the next time I went to Harrison’s, the knee gave way and I peeled. Not a big deal, but I came to the conclusion, rightly or probably wrongly, that I was going to be a liability to others and should give up climbing completely. Another operation ten years later with the prognosis that knee replacement (then in its infancy) would be needed before long, confirmed my decision.

Not that I would stop going to the hills and for the next thirty plus years I walked over the Lakes with family forays to the Alps in summer, looking longingly at snow covered peaks that I lusted after but did nothing about.

I can’t now recall what made me think that I really should stop being a total wimp and I decided on a modest Alpine trip with an English guide recommended by an old friend. I did warn him that my knee could well give out at an inconvenient moment and he was totally unfazed. Having taken the plunge, or so I thought, I had to cancel the trip when a work commitment suddenly went pear-shaped and I was forced to spend a week dealing with grumpy bankers. As a consolation prize, my son decided I needed a week in the Lakes and we devised a wonderful hostelling trip, threading our way through all the best bits and over most of the 3000 footers.

The next year I did make it to the Alps with the Gran Paradiso as my first 4000m peak in my mid-fifties. I could not believe how wonderful it all seemed. The views, the huts, the excitement and adrenaline rush of success on even modest climbs. Other trips followed for the next 20 plus years, nothing beyond PD+ and all in the company of one of my old Scouting companions from the 1950’s (our much-esteemed editor) and usually with Robin Beadle as our guide. Picking out highlights is hard as there were simply so many: a landscape covered in fresh snow as far as the eye could see from the Brandenburger Haus en route to the Weißkugel; amazing clarity of the views from the Jungfrau before a descent to Concordia, including an involuntary visit to a small crevasse when a snow bridge collapsed in the late afternoon heat (we were a bit slow); a scary electrical storm just below the summit of the Fründenhorn with static crackling all round us as we hunkered down in a snow scrape – my rendering of Tom Lehrer’s “We shall all fry together when we fry” did not go down well; a night at the Rauhekopfhütte in the Ötztal which an early-season work party (accompanied by a four year old lad who had walked in via the glacier) opened up specially for us; a traverse of the Weissmies from the Almagellerhütte where the weather and the timings all worked out perfectly to give us a fabulous climb and views both south and north that I shall never forget.

The scenes from some of these adventures still hang on the walls of my home office. Memories that will, quite literally, last a lifetime, with more adventure, more companionship and more beauty than anyone could reasonably ask for.

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