Shortlisted for the 2010 Boardman-Tasker prize, Simon Thompson's Unjustifiable Risk-The Story of British Climbing can be seen an ambitious attempt to pull the together the distinct and often conflictual elements of British mountaineering and put them in a chronologically ordered, socio-cultural context. It's an intrepid journey in itself which could be seen as a literary equivalent of making a first ascent...but does he make it ?
I don't know much about Simon Thompson but I was initially wary of his credentials when I read his background." Former director of Anglo American and chairman of Tarmac who currently sits on the boards of companies headquartered in Sweden,The UK and USA. In short a corporate Fat-Cat ! Shouldn't someone with this background be writing a book on Golf or Recommended tax havens? Putting my reservations about the author to one side and looking at the work objectively, let me say from the outset,that after turning the final page,I had to conclude that Unjustifiable Risk was every inch a successful assault on the intrepid heights of climbing history.
Simon structures the book in a chronological sequence which begins in1854.
Before which-Coleridge and others aside-the mountain environment was seen as a dark and forbidding place.By the middle of the Victorian century a new romanticism has taken root with commentators like John Ruskin finding a spiritual element in the high places.Enter the Victorian Gentleman who quickly found in ascending mountains by the easiest way possible, a new sport to compliment his other sporting passions. After dominating early Alpine climbing,the British mountaineer began to take a belated look at his home turf.Previously dismissed as nothing more than a training ground for Alpine Climbing.
From here on in Simon constructs each chapter laterally to include developments in The Alps..The Greater Ranges..N Wales..The Lake District..Scotland and Outcrops. It's fascinating to watch as each decade throws up new heroes,ethics and advances in equipment and consigns the previous era's activists, techniques and mountain philosophy all too quickly to irrelevant redundancy. Certainly this is true in the 19th century where the gentlemen of leisure who were guided up Alpine peaks by local peasants before later getting their act together and pioneering routes for themselves,were quickly superseded by the new breed of activist. By the turn of the century the lower middle classes had gained a foothold in what was previously an upper class sport. People Like Archer Thomson and Owen Gwynne Jones became the type of proto activists who would shape each subsequent decade.
Climbing technically harder routes and moving out of the gullies and onto the faces. Pioneering routes on outcrops and building up their strength and technique through practice and exercise.
It's fair to say that each subsequent era from here on in throws up ever more interesting personalities and developments. Apart from the 1920's which was something of a fallow period after the carnage of WW1- notwithstanding the Mallory/Irvine Everest chapter- by 1930's an identifiable modern climbing hero was emerging from the tweed and plus fours milieu. Climbers like Menlove Edwards and Colin Kirkus were by now climbing modernistic test pieces which have more than stood the test of time.Technical developments began to see-saw back and forth between N Wales and The Lakes as British climbing in The Alps and Greater Ranges is equally broken by periods of stagnation and advancement.
By the 1950's the working class climbers were now breaking through and making big inroads into the previously dominant middle and upper class sport. Official and unofficial clubs scattered around the country like The Rock & Ice,The Ptarmigan,The Bradford Boys and The Creagh Ddu were providing activists which were more than a match for the establishment clubs like The CC, The Fell and Rock and The Alpine Club. Despite the huge advances made by people like Brown, Whillans, Cunningham and Birkett,those who pulled the strings were still very much of the old order.Witness the make up of the 1953 Everest expedition. Climbers were still being selected based on class on not ability. Gradually these class barriers were eroded but not without resistance from the Hooray Henries who controlled British Mountaineering at the time. By the sixties and seventies, Simon Thompson describes the dramatic shift in climbing ethics fueled by the new ideals of sixties hedonism and libertarianism.Increasing wealth saw working class climbers able to buy a van and doss out in the Alps for a season. Perhaps even have a stab at one of the Himalayan giants.
Commentators like Jim Perrin have described the drug and booze fueled climbing culture which underpinned the activism in places like N Wales. At the same time, advances in climbing equipment and footwear led to a rapid rise in technical standards both at home and abroad.
By the mid 1970's the new breed of rock gymnast in the form of people like Pete Livesey,Ron Fawcett and Jerry Moffatt had begun to eschew the hedonism of the sixties and had become focused on climbing at new previously unimagined technical standards. Standards that continued apace through the activities of the Johnny Dawes Ben Moon,John Dunne et al during the subsequent decades.
By the time we reach the new century Simon Thompson introduces a new device.He looks at where we are at and how we got here.However,more interestingly, he considers the ethical and psychological make up of the cutting edge climber in the late 20th,early 21st century. It is in the nature of the beast that those who climb at the highest standards,particularly in the greater ranges,suffer disproportionately from relationship break down and divorce. Furthermore they are most at risk of premature death or the experience of loss of friends and colleagues through climbing accidents . Simon Thompson posits the view that those who continually 'push the envelope' are in effect dysfunctional human beings. People of low self esteem and with a chronic inability to relate to 'real' people outside of the small circle of equally dysfunctional peers for whom they feel they have to continually perform to attract the attention and praise they so badly crave to nourish their fragile egos. Controversial stuff !
At the same time,climbing in the greater ranges has,according to Simon, become a circus where a fat executive or celebrity can stagger to the top of a Himalayan summit if he has sufficient funds to finance the ascent.An ascent where well paid guides and Sherpas will effectively 'carry' him to the top! The base camps of these popular peaks now resembling stinking rubbish dumps with the trekking routes in to these places heaving under the pressure of white middle class trekkers and mountaineers who follow the 'things to do before you die' Sunday Supplement route. It's not a pretty picture !
Has climbing now come full circle. Has it re-embraced the Victorian concept of mountaineering based on conquest and is it becoming once again a class ridden activity ? It's interesting that in the UK in recent years there has been a trend for educational authorities to close down their outdoor pursuits centres in the mountain areas of N Wales,Scotland and the Lakes. The financial pressures which have always been there,grew ever more pressing in the Thatcher era and as I write in 2010, we are well aware of the huge cutbacks and financial pressures which face departments right across the public service sector. For many working class children and for those from an ethnic minority background for whom outdoor activities have never been part of their culture; these centres were usually the only way they would ever experience activities like rock climbing, kayaking or hill walking. The steady closure of these centres can only see a return to pre 1950's era when climbing was overwhelmingly a white middle and upper class activity.
It is to Simon Thompson's credit that his history of British climbing is never just a tale of derring-do, rather a socio-cultural treatise on the sport which uncovers and brings to the surface some disturbing home truths about the activity.
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