Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
creep in; there would never be a time when you were completely focused on the
task at hand.
I realise now that Alex not only saw the future coming, he wanted it to happen
sooner. It would be part of his plan and style. To make a living from climbing
wasn't part of his safety plan, having a safety plan was part of his vision for making
a living from climbing. He was beginning to be good at creating tough clothing that
kept you warm and dry and was designing bent ice tools that wouldn't break your
knuckles. Perhaps what Alex wanted most of all was easy access to mountains and
an increased likelihood of rescue and survival; these couldn't come too soon. More
than anything else, he would have enjoyed the professional good looks of
everything associated with the outdoors today. His vision of life was one that fits
the world today.
There are at least two other key ingredients that placed Alex in the middle of the
rapid advances of the period - having the right challenges and grabbing the mo-
ment. Alex just happened to be around at the right time. In the late 1970s and
1980s, there was a concerted effort to climb all the remaining major unclimbed
ridges and faces on the 8,000-metre peaks. The points of the compass allow for
only so many, and by the mid 1970s the race was fast developing. Alex joined that
race.
Today the media has transformed the way we look at mountaineering. There
were a very few specialist magazines and a handful of films in the 1970s. Now
climbing is everywhere. Brands like The North Face commission films about their
own athletes. Red Bull has its own TV channel. Magazines are being replaced by
material that's free online and consequently ubiquitous. There are festivals all over
the world dedicated to climbing where professional climbers meet the public.
Climbing has become an established part of the entertainment industry.
Yet the pure adventure of climbing is still there for anyone who wants it. Even
now there are more unclimbed peaks over 6,000 metres than there are climbed.
Some older climbers dislike the changes in the climbing scene over the past thirty
years. Maybe I am one of them, believing that climbing has acquired too many of
the trappings of a sport, and is too driven by commercial interests. I think Alex
would definitely give me an argument about that and perhaps, as the creator of the
Kendal Mountain Festival in 1980 and SteepEdge.com in 2011, (both with our mu-
tual friend from the Leeds days, Brian Hall), I would be on a losing wicket.
I mentioned at the start of this chapter that several websites had caught my eye
when Googling for Alex. NEClimbs.com is the website of the New England climb-
ing scene. I wonder if its creators know how much Alex learned from New England
climbers? Looking around the site I found the quote that best sums up Alex's ap-
