As Cubby mourns the passing of the ice climber Godefroy Perrroux he meets with another great man of climbing Hamish McInnes who is one of the best ambassadors for climbing and from whom the younger generation can learn.
I was deeply saddened to hear that the well known French Mountain Guide and brilliant ice climber, Godefroy Perroux (pictured), died recently when an icefall collapsed on him near Chamonix. Godefroy was a popular and much liked figure in the Scottish winter climbing scene, especially on Ben Nevis where most winters he would guide his clients from a base at the CIC Hut.
There can't be many routes that he hasn't done on the mountain, not to mention having added a number of significant new routes of his own. Godefroy always spoke very highly of the Ben and with great affection. I bumped into him often over the last ten years or so, in a cafe or mountain in Chamonix but I really only got to know him towards the end of last winter while staying up at the hut for a few days. He was so open and friendly and we shared a number of jokes together with his clients and other climbers staying at the hut.
Unbelievably it was early May. The weather and conditions were too bad in Chamonix so he called his close friend in Glasgow, Robin Clothier, who suggested that it might be worth taking the chance to come over. Godefroy needed no excuse to come out for a few days such was his love for climbing on the Ben. It was beginning to thaw quite badly but even still, with his two clients, he climbed a line based on a new route (VI,6) that was put up only a couple of weeks previously by Jonathan Preston and Andy Nisbet. On the following day they did Albatross in conditions where most would have opted for the pub. A classic alpine day out on Tower Ridge followed and on the last day, they had an early start on Green Gully and made it down in time to catch the Glasgow bus and their flight home to France. My heart goes out to his family and to all those who knew him. The Ben and his friends will miss him.
On a lighter note and while on the subject of Mountain Guides, Richard Cross and Al Powell are trainee Mountain Guides, preparing for their winter assessment in a couple of weeks time. They are also Alpine and Himalayan Ambassadors (for want of a better word) and amongst the countries very best. And yet, there I was at the top of Broad Gully in Glencoe, as a seasoned guide, monitoring their progress. I had joined them for a few days on their winter training week. This is the only day in the training where they are given a genuine client. Two inexperienced West Coast babes, courtesy of West Coast Outdoor Leisure in Fort William. Having evaluated their ability and experience on the previous evening and kitted them out with crampons and axes etc. both Richard and Al concluded that some instructional skills should be woven into an otherwise good day out on the hill.
Both delivered an off-the-cuff, professional seminar on the theory of ice axe and crampon use. A practical session was too limited by the soft snow conditions and too soft for an extensive ice axe arrest session, a pity because I would have liked to have seen their demonstration or demos on the various techniques.
We then roped up and moved together alpine style, an area of the training, which is especially complex. It was a glorious day, one of the very few this winter and I was kicking myself for not taking a camera along. (I didn't think it would be very professional of me). At the top of Broad Gully we continued to the summit of Stob Coire. On descending, still roped up, I suggested we turn and go back down from whence we came, rather than going round the rim of the coire to the Aonach Dubh col. There was an uncanny silence. The response was not positive. Here I was with two of the country's leading alpinists, daunted at the prospect of facing out and heeling down Broad Gully. Of course it was not the thought of descending that sent shivers down their spines, its what, or who rather, was attached to the end of their rope.
Once committed however both of them executed the descent without any problems despite Richard not wearing anti ball plates. I was amused because I'm often asked the question, what are my most adventurous climbs? My reply is always the same - my days in the mountains with clients - and they think I'm joking!
It sounds crazy for a Mountain Guide but I have a problem with altitude, being very slow to acclimatise. Being with Al and Rich, and the likes of Matt Dickinson earlier in the week, did leave me feeling envious, knowing that that was the road I'd liked to have taken as a more seasoned climber. Anyway, I could not help but think of my old friend, Hamish McInnes. Did he do his own thing or what? I love that sense of individuality in a person and his nonconformist ways.
Hamish is not a qualified Mountain Guide as far as a piece of paper or a certificate is concerned but if ever there was a professional guide in Scottish mountaineering, it must be Hamish. Especially when you think about the Glencoe School of Mountaineering days, of which he was a founder and director for many years. All the best climbers worked for Hamish in the past, the likes of Iain Clough, Will Thompson, John Hardy, Nicholson, Knowles, Spence and many more. Even Docherty and Muir, although Hamish openly admits that the latter two were not always as reliable as they could have been! Sure, there have been other Mountain Guides, such as Collie's great companion, John MacKenzie, and in the 60s, Geoff and Brede Arkless from North Wales, with whom I served an early apprenticeship.
Hamish's guiding school is not so much in evidence these days, although if you are fortunate enough to own Scottish Climbs, Volume 1 + 2, or Scottish Winter Climbs, (all of which are now out of print), you will notice that not only is his contribution to Scottish mountaineering massive, and in winter especially, quite revolutionary - but many of his first ascents were often completed with students on his courses.
Thinking about change and revolution in Scotland, one tends to think of winter and the way in which the invention of the Terrordactyle has influenced climbing. To find out more I dropped by the Crafts & Things cafe to see if Hamish was about. No fear of him not being!
"We're very lucky you know, to have such a good cafi in the area," said Hamish, with a nod of appreciation and a twinkle in his eye. "The fruit scones are very good. Isabelle bakes them you know."
Hamish continues his culinary conversation and with an inventive mind he explains how he has developed a technique of consuming the oversized portion of homemade jam without wasting any! We digress from our conservation on the front pointing era. Hamish has a vested interest in raspberries for when he lived in Achnacon, he was delivered 400 canes of raspberry bushes instead of the 40 he ordered. The resultant crop was over a ton of raspberries annually, which he would trade off for locally poached salmon and haunches of venison. Everyone in the area was being supplied with Hamish's raspberries. It wouldn't surprise me if he even paid his guides with punnets of raspberries, as he had done in the past using rolls of film, or so rumour has it!
Our conversation on raspberries sidetracked even further, to elderberry and birch wine. Hamish's elderberry wine stories are well known locally but the hooch he made from birch sap sounded like something else.
"It's very smooth and naturally bubbly, a bit like champagne, it's too easy to drink. It blows your head off! I remember after a rescue, Paul (Moores), Hugh (McNichol) and Big Iain came round for a drink and consumed over a litre each of the stuff. I went to bed but they literally had to crawl home from Achnacon all the way to Glencoe village." Hamish laughs to himself, "it's pretty lethal."
I suppose the climbing media perceive Hamish to be a person who is an authority on mountain rescue, designer of the McInnes stretcher and the Terrordactyle, and a mountaineering icon in the mould of Bonnington, Scott and Messner. It's easy to forget that, he was just like the young hot shots of today in alpinism and Himalayan climbing, in the 50s, 60s and 70s. We talked about the so called front pointing revolution and its gradual departure from the step cutting era but Hamish was quick to point out that he never cut steps, which really throws a spanner in the works!
He spent two years in Austria where he said the local climbers had done some very impressive things on ice. Secretly I suspected that he was influenced by his experiences there. In the ice climbing world, he was perhaps recognised most of all for his design of the Terrordactyle. Once again, Hamish is quick to point out that very quickly he found himself getting bored with ice and it was mixed climbing that really caught his imagination, "That's what the Terror is designed for," he said.
Of course it proved to be equally effective on ice as Big Iain Nicolson demonstrated so impressively with his solo ascents of Point Five and Zero Gully in the early 70s and getting down in time for a lunchtime pint in the Fort. The first prototypes of the Terrors were used by Bugs McKeith during the first ascent of The Squirrels Pillar, on the North Face of Eiger. But they were used to great effect, really for the first time, when Hamish with Paul Nunn put up a number of first ascents in the Caucauses.
"It was perfect for the Terrors," says Hamish. "It was just like doing two big Scottish winter routes, one on top of the other. As far as I know, the route I did with Paul remains unrepeated." They were fascinating stories, material that had never been written or talked about before but I began to feel slightly awkward as I was talking too much about climbing. So I thought I'd change the subject and asked him if he still had the E Type Jaguar. "I've had five actually Cubby," he replied in his typically droll manner.
That was so typical of him. I knew that he had modified the suspension on one, to improve its cornering and I remember hearing a story about him doing 130mph round a sweeping left-hander, going north before the Glencoe Hotel. One day while working with Hamish's Mafia on a film, we were picked up by helicopter while Hamish decided to drive his E Type to our base in Lochyside outside Fort William. James Bond style we were racing him along the A82 and whenever there was a clearing in the trees we'd swoop down to just above the car rooftop to give him a fright. It was a real hoot! He's never lost the spark as far as fast cars are concerned. The E Types have long since gone but he owns a Cosworth, all 350 bhp.
"It's very powerful. I put it off the road last year - blinkin' deer. Don't know how I didn't hit any, a whole herd of them were crossing the road," Hamish chuckled to himself. "I had to slalom through them all. I was doing about 110mph! The car was alright."
After another of Isabelle's delicious fruit scones, Hamish opens up and we go off on another adventure. This time we're in New Zealand, en route to Everest. "Fantastic place. Have you ever been there Cubby? I've been several times," enthused Hamish. "But I don't know what it is, I couldn't live there." Weather wise I thought to myself, it's probably not miserable enough. After all, the Scots revel in a bit of bad weather.
On one visit to New Zealand he spent two years there working and climbing. "We did quite a number of new winter routes, which was really frowned upon by the local establishment," Hamish muses to himself. "But when I named one of the new routes after the local climber, what could he say!" He talks about meeting the lads out there. The lads, being the Creag Dubh, Cunningham, Tommy Paul, Blondie and others. "But they didn't seem interested in going into the mountains. They just went cragging all the time." Frustrated, Hamish set off on his own and successfully completed the first ascent of Mount Couloir in the Aerosmith Range. It's a big wall, about 3,000 feet high. "Not that difficult," Hamish points out, "about grade V rock but the rock was poor in places and at one point I had to place a piton and make a semi tension traverse."
The locals refused to accept that Hamish had climbed the East Wall of Mt Couloir. It was not until many years later that the route finally received its long, overdue respect and only then because the second ascentionist discovered the tension peg (which was left in place). Hamish is very defensive about the use of the peg however and points out that it was used more because of the loose rock than out of technical difficulty. Hamish himself found out about the second ascent because the father of the repeat ascentionist was on holiday in the UK and made a special detour to apologise to Hamish for his son's lack of respect - so there you go. Many other new routes were completed, such as the East Face of Mount Rudolf and the West Twin of in the Darrens but I'm afraid I've run out of space - and we didn't even get to Everest!
Yip, there's no doubt about it, this man is a true Ambassador and I'd like to finish by saying good luck to all the trainee guides on their winter assessment, which starts this weekend.
Cubby
15/2/2002
