Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
headed into town to see who was around. Alex was sat at a table in the Bar Nash
drinking with some friends.
'What took you? I've been here for hours,' he smiled. We were gobsmacked.
Within a couple of minutes of being dropped on the motorway, a wagon on its way
to Milan had picked him up and dropped him in Chamonix. He had slept most of
the way unlike the four of us crammed into a packed van.
His circle of climbing companions had expanded beyond the Leeds club during
the Scottish winter season. Among them were Terry King, Gordon Smith, Nick
Colton and the Burgess twins, all formidable climbers and all sharing a vision of
perfecting alpine style. In rapid succession, Alex did the north face direct on the
Grands Charmoz followed by The Shroud on the Grandes Jorasses in very bad
weather with Terry and Gordon. They followed this with an unroped ascent of the
Brêche de Triolet, this time joined by Nick Colton.
Alex then did the
Cornuau-Davaille
on the north face of the Droites with Tim
Rhodes. It was Tim's first Alpine route, during which he dropped one of Colton's
borrowed ice tools. Alex also soloed the
Swiss Route
on the north face of the Cour-
tes and did the
American Direct
on the Dru with Chris Handley, leading all the
pitches. After that he tried the Dru Couloir with Tim Rhodes. Having done the dif-
ficult first section, Alex got off route on the connecting aid pitches between the up-
per and lower couloirs, fell off and lost his axes. After their earlier success, Rhodes,
on only his second Alpine route, remembers being annoyed with Alex for getting so
high and then getting lost. Alex's only other failure of the year was on the
French
Direct
on the Aiguille Sans Nom, where he was stormed off from high on the face.
The most exceptional climb of his summer was the first British ascent of the
Bonatti-Zapelli
on the Grand Pilier d'Angle with the Burgesses and Tut Braith-
waite. The tale of this ascent is the subject of one of Alex's very few pieces of writ-
ing, 'The Big, the Bald and the Beautiful', published in
Crags
magazine. The twins
and Tut had been planning the ascent in secret for some time. Secrecy was often
part of the game. New routes and important repeats carried kudos in the climbing
scene. If a team's objective became known, a race might ensue, leading to too
many people on a route and bad feelings. It was better to remain silent even if it
meant snubbing mates.
In some cases, it was impossible to find out what people were doing until the end
of the season. Perhaps the most secretive British team in the early 1970s was Joe
Tasker and Dick Renshaw. They worked their way systematically through a list of
major Alpine routes but it was only when we read
Mountain
after the season was
over and saw their centrefold colour photos of the Eiger's north face that we
learned what they had been doing. More historically significant than the Eiger was
