PICTURE BOOK - One Day as a Tiger - page 67

'It was a long hike up,' John recalled, 'and we bivvied just as it was getting dark.
In those days we used to cook food in the valley and take it up in bags. [2] I remem-
ber we had liver and onions that night, a fact I could not forget all the next day.
The descent before dawn was terrifying. We abseiled into the darkness in hopes we
were on the right line to find the next station. The gear was sketchy. I remember
one hanging stance with just a single rusty peg. We'd only brought five pegs for the
route itself so we couldn't waste any getting there. We got to the start of the route
and fortunately most of the gear on the big aid pitches was in place, just as Roger
Baxter-Jones and Brian Hall had said. The only other aid Alex and I had done was
Cave Route at Gordale. We failed on that in the dark after the first pitch.'
John and Alex were well matched and keen to get as much climbing in as pos-
sible. As the summer weather deteriorated, they finished the year with a very rapid
ascent of the west face of the Petites Jorasses. Alex took a forty-foot fall near the
top when a ledge on which he was standing collapsed. He was badly shaken, but
recovered his composure. They completed the route in a faster time than their
more accomplished LUCC friends Roger and Brian, who had climbed the route
earlier that year.
In the dark and with a storm raging, they only just managed to find the refuge on
the Italian side. The weather had closed down for the season.
Returning to university, Alex continued his routine of climbing and studying. He
now owned his blue Ford van. This secured his position as a full member of LUCC,
perhaps even more than his growing reputation as an alpinist. He was not often
boastful, but he was known to tell people how great he was after too much to drink.
Alex was also the club treasurer in 1974, a bad year because the club had got it-
self into extreme financial difficulty. The reason deserves a short explanation. In
1973, Bernard Newman decided to produce a commercial version of the annual
journal. The idea was to produce a high-quality and entertaining magazine that re-
flected the modern British climbing scene. The result was snapped up by all the
climbing shops and even some bookstores and sold well. Proceeds were used to
purchase gear and fund the club's annual journey to the Alps that summer. The
cover set the tone. Chris Bonington's first book I Chose to Climb (1966) had the
great man on the cover hanging one-handed from a boulder problem at Ilkley, ap-
parently many feet off the ground. Our cover had many of the leading lights from
the club hanging in exactly the same pose. But the final photo of twelve frames on
the cover was the punch line. The ground is revealed to be just a few feet below the
holds, while Tim Jepson, on crutches and with his leg in a cast after a recent
ground fall, stares up hopefully. The caption read: 'They also chose to climb.'