Dr Kathleen Watson is perhaps not a name known widely in hillwalking circles yet the achievements and stories of this noted Munroist are worth remembering, according to Dave Hewitt.
The past week or so has seen a number of news stories in which hills and death have been linked. A late-winter crop of on-hill fatalities (on Beinn Eighe, the Mamores, a couple on Snowdon). Also the passing, aged 74, of Chris Brasher, notable not just for his mainstream athletic achievements (pacing Bannister, winning the Olympic steeplechase gold, kickstarting the London marathon) but also instrumental in introducing orienteering to the UK, holding office within the John Muir Trust and marketing perhaps the most comfortable of all lightweight hill boots.
Then there has been the extraordinary news story concerning the death on Ben Nevis, in 1962, of Dundee teacher Tim Keeley, originally treated as a tragic accident but now, suddenly, being investigated as a possible murder.
So it's not been a great ten days or so in terms of hills and happiness, and there has been one other hill-related death which, while never likely to make the mainstream news pages or bulletins, ought to be mentioned at least briefly, at least here.
Dr Kathleen Watson died on Saturday 1 March, less than one month short of her 91st birthday. Her name will not be familiar to those beyond her immediate friends and family and her colleagues in the Dundee-based Grampian Club, but anyone who has ever given more than a cursory glance to the list of Munroists will have seen her name.
She completed her round, accompanied by husband John (who is still with us, and to whom condolences go out) on the unlikely finishing hill of Aonach Air Chrith on the first day of July 1960. There will have been a few - although not many - completions on the South Cluanie Ridge over the years, but most (if not all) with have occurred on the end peaks, Creag nan Damh and Creag a'Mhaim. The idea of finishing on one of the middle summits is, if not endearingly eccentric then certainly individual, and gives a clue to the character of the Watsons.
Their Munro finish was also unusual in that the exact time was published. An interesting article by N B Johnstone (Grampian Club Bulletin 1961, pp5-10) records that the Watsons "placed rocks on the cairn" at 10.10pm, having camped the previous night beside the graveyard west of Ratagan, a site "free from the attentions of sensitive lairds and other west highland inconveniences".
The morning of 1 July 1960 had been a frustrating affair: "Herons were fishing on the loch, the glow of the rising sun was silhouetting Beinn Fhada and the Five Sisters, and there was a carpet of wild flowers in the grass and sea pinks on the beach over which the flood tide was rippling." But, Johnstone records, "the mist had risen too rapidly from the tops, and after breakfast the rains came". Bright too soon conditions, in other words. The Watsons and Johnstone had a day in hand and almost decided to wait, especially as the weather "had been perfect for the past fortnight". It seemed a shame to voluntarily miss the views when the next day might be fair.
They drove up Glen Shiel for a look. Here "it rained and blew harder until the precipitation was normal for Kintail". Discussions ensued, much of the day's food was eaten, and eventually, at about 2pm, the party set off up Creag nan Damh, Johnstone "panting" but the Watsons "in good fettle".
They made a mess of the navigation, faffed about below the ridge line near Sgurr Beag, and put it down to magnetic variation in the rocks. (Excuses never change.) The delay proved a benefit, however, as by the time the party had crossed Sgurr an Lochain and reached the third Munro, Sgurr an Doire Leathain, "the drizzle stopped, the mist became more patchy, and suddenly through a break we saw the new arm of the greatly extended Loch Quoich about three thousand feet below us. Shortly after, the great rocky corries and steep ridges on the north side of Gleouraich and Spidean Mialach burst through a gap in the mist."
It wasn't a perfect clearance - there was only a "weak sun" for the crossing of Maol Chinn-dearg - but it was undoubtedly better and, before too long, the cairn on Aonach Air Chrith had arrived, and with it completion. There wasn't time to hang around - just a few juddery photographs and the usual "celebration mouthful" - then it was down northwards to Strath Cluanie under "heavy clouds and mist which made it prematurely dark".
Five miles of after-midnight roadwalking were still required, and here a clue to the strength of Kathleen Watson emerges. Johnstone tells how he and John Watson flagged down a car by "waving vigorously in the middle of the road", the driver having gone on to pick up Kathleen "who was some way ahead" and who "was shortly back with our own transport". These two aspects - Kathleen having been what two people have recently described to me as "a strong goer" on the hill, and her willingness to take matters in hand and do the logistical necessities - are character traits that accompany pretty much every anecdote in which she appears.
Jim Cosgrove, her Grampian Club colleague and himself now past 90, recalls an attempted rescue on Skye in which, at the end of an already long day, Kathleen Jack (as she then was) was the strongest, most suitable and most willing person to go back out on the hill in an attempt (ultimately unsuccessful as it transpired) to save the life of a woman who had fallen sometime earlier.
The Watsons appear at numbers 41 and 42 in the published list of Munroists: Kathleen first, in the polite, gentlemanly way of those days. Their completions were first recorded - as were those of everyone listed before 1971 - by another of their Grampian Club colleagues, the late Eric Maxwell. He published an annual update in the Grampian Club Bulletin during the years 1960-1971 information which was reproduced for a wider public in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal. Once the list reached the 100 mark, Maxwell handed over recording duties to the SMC itself, initially in the form of Bill Brooker, then Chris Huntley and now the current list-keeper, David Kirk.
The Munroists' list isn't strictly chronological, and the numbers allocated don't mean much beyond historical curiosity. Maxwell originally listed the Watsons as Munroists 32 and 33, but various post-dated notifications, along with the curious alphabetisation of the 1960 Munroists (which seems to have occurred after the information left Maxwell's desk) has seriously jiggered the ordering. The current edition of Munro's Tables suggests that Kathleen Watson was the sixth female Munroist, after Annie Wells (aka Mrs J Hirst), Beth Ferrier, Mary Linklater-Shirras, Anne Littlejohn and Nan Rae (aka Miss A D Miller).
In reality however she was the third of these women, and was almost the second. Annie Wells was well clear of the pack - completing with Ben More on Mull on 28 May 1947 - but Anne Littlejohn completed only six days ahead of the Watsons, having climbed Ben Lomond on 25 June 1960 (and, from what we know via Johnstone's article, in "perfect weather"). Mary Linklater-Shirras's completion remains mysterious (any clues gratefully received - I know she lived up Culloden way and died around five years ago), but Nan Rae finished with An Teallach on 21 August 1960 and Beth Ferrier opted for a rare east-of-Scotland completion with Beinn Mheadhoin on 17 September that same year.
Straightening out the timeline, the Watsons appear to have been the 37th and 38th Munroists among those listed in the book. Overall, however, four unlisted pre-1960 completions have come to light, plus there are two quite-likelies and no doubt a few more about which nothing has thus far emerged. Adding those definite four (James Gall Inglis, Chris Andrews, Alf Slack and Tim Tyson) into the equation neatly brings the Watsons back to positions 41 and 42 as things stand.
Of course 1960 was a long time ago, and Kathleen Watson climbed many a hill in the subsequent decades. It was this which initially brought her to my attention, as in the late 1990s I started compiling a list of Corbetteers (now available online read it here) and quickly learnt that the Watsons had followed up their Munro round with a full set of the Scottish 2500-foot hills. They finished together on Beinn a'Chuallaich above Kinloch Rannoch on 29 October 1977, and these were, according to the current extent of the research, the ninth and tenth Corbett completions (although I'd be very surprised were there not quite a few more in the 1960s and early 1970s - again any research tips appreciated).
The Watsons were the first to finish their Corbett rounds as a couple; the next were Robin and the late Geraldine Howie on Canisp, 26 April 1986, then Frances and Munro Dunn on 26 June 1988, again on Beinn a'Chuallaich. (Frances Dunn, incidentally, is Robin Howie's twin sister.)
There is an account of the Watsons' last-Corbett day in the 1987 Grampian Club Bulletin, pp9-12, but I was interested in when and where people started their rounds, not just when and where they finished them. So I rang the Watsons' number and, after the usual explanations and pleasantries, asked Kathleen if she could recall when she had first reached the top of a Corbett. I expected considerable vagueness, or at least an interlude while diaries were rummaged through, but almost instantly the reply came back, "It was Ben Vrackie, I remember it well." And the date? Here a touch of vagueness did creep in, "I was just a girl, so it would have been in the mid-1920s: 1926, I think, or maybe 1928. No, almost certain it was 1926."
This made me laugh then and still does now. Dr Watson was in her mid-80s at this stage yet could recall a day from 70 years earlier with remarkable clarity. We talked a little about what Ben Vrackie was like in those days - no forestry plantations, dodgy roads (although the A9 would have been less of a racetrack), far fewer people on the hill and so on. Kathleen then shouted across the room to her hard-of-hearing husband and established that he had begun his Corbett career on Quinag in the almost-modern year of 1939. More than happy with this glut of information, I thanked them for their time and rang off.
I never spoke with Kathleen Watson again. A plan was hatching for her to be one of the interviewees in an oral hill history radio series on which I'm currently working with a BBC producer, but we visited a few other old-timers first and once plans for a trip to Dundee were being discussed Kathleen was entering her final illness and it was too late.
She deserves to be remembered though, and remembered well. Others who really knew her, who knew of her life and work beyond the hills, will have good things to say. There will be reminiscences in the Grampian Club Bulletin, and the Dundee Courier will doubtless include a short piece. But Kathleen Watson merits recollection in the more mainstream hill outlets as well - the glossy magazines (which used to include more obituaries than they now do) and the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, which is the nearest thing Scottish hillgoing has to a journal of record but which has proved patchy in recording the passing of non-SMC members, especially women.
Bob Aitken - a man with both SMC and Grampian Club links - mailed me recently and spoke of Kathleen Watson's "brisk kindliness and consideration in helping the weaker brethren or folk in trouble" and of her having been "altogether an indomitable spirit". She was also very modest and self-effacing, as with many mighty-deed-doers of that generation but the stories and the memories will emerge over time. For now, there is merely gratitude for a life well lived, and sadness that another link with mid-20th century hillgoing has been lost. The names on Eric Maxwell's first-100 list are markedly thinning out - as, of course, time insists that they must.
Dave Hewitt
6/3/2003
Dave can be contacted on Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
