Stephen's Blog

8.05.2012 - Cambridge pioneer dies

Nares Craig has just died, aged 94. He was a climbing partner of Wilfrid Noyce and a prominent Cambridge night climber – photographed here – most elegantly – on St John's New Tower at dawn.

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8.05.2012 - Glen Esk

This year I managed a couple of return trips to Craig Maskeldie in the lovely Glen Esk, with Duncan Tunstall. At the end of the absurdly warm March fine spell, we did a nice new rock route called 'The Artist'. Back in February it was more normal winter conditions and we managed a nice new winter gully/chimney line called 'Snow Lake Reunion' this being the 25th anniversary of our Snow Lake expedion with Phil Bartlett. Some pictures below.

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10.03.2012 - Freedom

Enjoying Bernadette McDonald’s Boardman-Tasker winning Freedom Climbers. This lovingly researched book tells the story of the ‘Golden Age’ of Polish Himalayan climbing during the seventies, eighties and early nineties. What makes it fascinating is the political climate in which Polish climbers had to operate. Many of them, like Wanda Rutkiewicz, were born before or during the Nazi occupation; all of them lived through the almost equally oppressive Russian occupation that followed. Hence the title: in the mountains they found freedom, beauty and an escape from the grey drudgery of communism.
For me, the book evokes memories of my own brief brushes with some of these extraordinary mountaineers. I remember buying surplus food supplies from the great Andrjez Zawada, in Kabul, in 1977. He had just climbed the huge North Face of Kohe Mandaras with the actor Terry King, while Voytek Kurtyka, Alex MacIntyre and John Porter dared their way up Kohe Bandaka’s even more awesome North Face. A decade later we had a wonderful evening in London when Andrjez came to stay at the house of Maggie and Victor Saunders, whilst preparing for his futuristic winter attempt on K2 (that summit eluded him, but he did lead successful winter ascents of Everest and Cho Oyu). I also remember the sound like thudding hooves of huge burly Poles coming through our Karakoram base camp in 1980. Piotrowski and his friends had just made alpine style first ascents of two 7000 metre peaks. They couldn’t afford to pay for porters, so they were carrying everything home themselves. Their rucksacks towered high above broad shoulders and their handshakes were devastating. They stared rather incredulously at Dave Wilkinson, Phil Bartlett and me, thinking – I presume – these puny specimens can’t be serious. (We were serious, but we didn’t make it to the top of Kunyang Kish, and we certainly weren’t in the Polish league).
Bernadette’s book illuminates and amplifies my own haphazard recollections of an extraordinary group of Himalayan climbers who used guile, cunning, talent, patriotism and sheer hard graft to play the communist system to their advantage. It brings back to life those heady days in the early eighties, when Solidarity began to challenge the might of Soviet Russia. It also reveals something of the complex psychology of an obsessively driven generation of climbers, many of them – like Wroz, Kukuzcka, Rutkiewicz and Piotrowski – doomed to die young.

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8.02.2012 - Glen Esk

Back yesterday to Glen Esk with Duncan Tunstall. A beautiful day, with swans on the icy loch and birches purple in the winter sun. We biked in, crossed the river on dodgy ice (one wet boot), then climbed a nice little new route on Craig Maskeldie, tentatively named Snow Lake Reunion: it is 25 years since our Snow Lake trip to the Karakoram.

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31.01.2012 - Shipton review

Nice review of last night's show at the Lowry Theatre. "Venables is clearly a fan, and his engaging delivery and aptitude for telling a good story make Shipton a great subject. I don’t climb mountains, but I found The Legend of Eric Shipton a wholly compelling and satisfying experience." Full review at: http://www.thepublicreviews.com/stephen-venables-the-legend-of-eric-shipton-the-lowry-salford/ Amsterdam tomorrow, then Scotland next week.

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