'The world depicted in your magazine (Climber - Nov, 1996) seems to be a macho affair, where it is appropriate to set out the achievements of individuals when faced with the challenge of the most inhospitable cliff faces.
I note that the cover of your September issue features a climber not wearing a helmet, and that inside the issue there are four pictures at Los Mallos de Riglos featuring climbers not wearing any protective headgear. My son Mike lost his life on Los Mallos following a head injury caused by a rockfall. may I ask why your article and photographs encourage youngsters to disregard basic safety precautions? How many parents such as myself have to watch their children die after you encourage them to take unnecessary risks?' R A Pinson, Helsby, Cheshire.
Climber magazine of course was / is not alone in encouraging young climbers to disdain the use of correct safety equipment. The so-called British Mountaineering Council (BMC) is the foremost organisation to encourage such an attitude both in print and via climbing photographs in its publications. If the BMC had put as much money into safety procedures as it has wasted in the promotion of bolts - so many young lives would have been saved and many more parents would be looking forward to a life with their children / grandchildren. Many parents, wish that their offspring had never heard about the - BMC.
Two Very Lucky Climbers - guide and his client
The tall, sun tanned person standing on the narrow topped pinnacle in front of us was resplendent the bright sunlight glinting on his UIAGM badge. He was stood there, unbelayed, lowering his female client down a short vertical rock wall on the Cosmiques Arete. The drop the left, 3,000 feet; the drop the right 700. The lady disappeared down the wall and traversed to the left, out of sight.
Whilst this was going on, I lowered a rope down the side of the wall to be used as a fixed rope, when our turn came. As the guide prepared to follow his client I motioned to him to use the already fixed rope. He looked at me, down his nose and waved me away with a solitary finger. Stepping forward, he tripped over his crampon; fell the full length of the wall disappearing fortunately as it turned out, to the left down a steep, snow filled gully. Fortunately, his female client had taken a belay (two turns around a rock) which eventually brought the guide to a shuddering stop. he fell at least eighty to ninety feet.
After a period of silence, the guide could be heard climbing back up the gully to finally join his client. He was totally unscathed considering that he was not wearing any head protection; he was not wearing a helmet. If his client, who likewise was not wearing any head protection, had not taken a belay, she would have been catapulted out from the mountainside and both of them would have been killed on the jagged rocks below. Ineptitude on a grand scale.
Of course, had the guide been seriously injured then once again, we would have been involved in another (we had in fact already been involved in rescuing 30 other climbers only one of whom subsequently died) avoidable accident.
Courious, dangerous behaviour
Standing at the foot of the 'crux' pitch on the Cosmiques Ridge on the Aiguille du Midi above Chamonix we could see him coming. After many years of struggling with badge driven guides in the end, it was obvious that the best course of action was to - stand aside. They apparently climb; mountaineer by a different 'set of rules'. Waving him and his client past he attacked the short wall studded as it was with 'metal rods' which he used as attachments for slings (footholds) and he was gone. His client followed. All quiet now, I climbed the wall and took a belay from which to safeguard the next person. There was shout in French from below apparently, someone was shouting the guide ahead of me to return and give a 'top rope' to the people arriving at the foot of the wall. It mattered not that we were 'in the way' as he returned; descended and demanded: 'Out of the way.' In the ensuing struggle (my number two was halfway across the 'crux') the spare ice axe on the back of my rucksack caught him squarely between the eyes and he stormed off resuming his ascent.
Gerald, I will call him Gerald, then made the mistake of staying in the summit resturant of the Aiguille and was sitting at the far side of the table surrounded with 'admirers' when we entered. "Out side you", my request fell on deaf ears. "Outside you bastard", brought a short man sat next to the object of my tirade to his feet: "This Sir, waving his arm in a dignified sweep, this Sir, is a guide!. "Then I rest my case", was my derogatory reply. With that, Bridget Pyot who was working in the restaurant came over: "What is the matter Dennis?" "This, just tried to push me of the ridge and he won't come outside" She turned on him and as her torrent of French subsided with "...and its also very dangerous", he left, skulking from the premises.
