Geoffrey Dixon

Geoffrey Dixon Climber and Alpinist

A biography compiled, written and edited by John Allen

Geoffrey, ready to climb

Geoffrey, ready to climb.

Dixon archives

Photo Dixon archives

Geoffrey Dixon Climber and Alpinist

A biography compiled, written and edited By John Allen

In gratitude for an introduction to climbing and mountaineering

With major contributions by Oliver Dixon And editorial assistance by Brian Gill Word sketches by David Preston, Ken Edwardson, John Hyde, Brian Gill, John Gatiss, John Allen

Acknowledgements There are two people in particular whom I wish to thank at this point: Oliver Dixon, the eldest son of Geoffrey and Nancy Dixon, who took up my enquiries, exhaustively trawled family papers and stretched his memory to find answers and Brian Gill, who not only penned one of the word sketches, but also became fascinated with the whole tale and could offer perceptive advice that made Geoffrey’s climbing and mountaineering life story readable and coherent.

Contents Author’s note Introduction - The climber Alpinist turned Headmaster educationalist

1.

Beginnings

2.

Early life, school, Oxford – and Nancy

3.

1933 – 1939 - Early Alpinism

4.

Life put on hold – WW2

5.

New Horizons (1945 – 1949) - The Experienced mountaineer

6.

The Headship years from 1949

7.

In the Alps 1950 - Val d’Isère and Argentiére

8.

Two Nights in the Alps

9.

In the UK - 1950-1955

10.

A first visit to the Zermatt district 1951

11.

In the Alps - the Bernese Oberland 1953

12.

Reflections on a pivotal year - 1953

13.

The Zmutt Ridge 1954

14.

Climbing before the revolution in technical climbing equipment

15.

Climbing with boys from the Upper school

16.

Tall Tales from Long Ago: David Preston, Ken Edwardson, John Hyde, John Allen, Brian Gill, John Gatiss, Ken Milne; and James Honeybone (KGV staff 1964 – 1970)

17.

The Thornley Society

18.

The 1956 Alps Holiday to Arolla-Zermatt area

19.

The Mont Blanc district again: 1958 in the Alps

20.

The 1955 Lecture: Alpine Roundabout

21.

Geoffrey’s later climbing and mountaineering - reflections

22.

Outdoor Education and the Long Rigg Project

23.

Later Years

Appendix 1

Chronology of Geoffrey’s Alpine climbs

Appendix 2 A ‘Coast to Coast’ walk across Scotland by Oliver Dixon Appendix 3 Glossary of terms Appendix 4 Selective Bibliography Acknowledgements About the author

Photographic coverage from the Dixon archives, KGV archives and by John Allen

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Author’s Note Moving house helps to set priorities. You need to decide what to pack into large cardboard boxes stuff that will not lie in a loft until the next move, and what to throw in the skip. A mountaineer from the twentieth century will have numerous little boxes of 35mm colour slides. In my case there were also 35mm black and white negatives. None of these photographs went into the skip; I took them with me too, and at the new place began having them enlarged by professionals, in the modern digital fashion, then mounted and framed for display at home and eventual exhibition.

Probably my most treasured prints were those mounted in an old album from schooldays (along with the cricket team photograph, family walking holidays and a solo visit to Greece in 1957). These were the prints made by a climber/mountaineer and educator, family man, and eventual bridge player, golfer and bee-keeper, Geoffrey Dixon, who took me and another older ex-school student on a mountaineering expedition to the Alps in 1956.

This book is principally about Geoffrey Dixon the climber and Alpinist, and indirectly about the Headmaster educator. A complete biography would be for others. He had taken those black and white photographs that involved me in the most impressionable days of my early adult life. They will be found with the discs and mountaineering books that surround my ‘office’ life. I began organising and archiving personal diaries of my mountain holidays and hanging those photographic enlargements. My inclinations as a writer began to dictate that I should put some of it on a few sheets of paper.

Memory was a problem, from the start. It was easier to begin with what I had written as an early scribe when at age 17 I had been on that holiday in 1956 with Geoffrey Dixon, Headmaster of King George V Grammar School in Southport, Lancashire, and John Gatiss, ex-student there, age 18. I had written detailed letters home. They could form a reliable source for my autobiographical record.

In this context it quickly became apparent that in its own right a biographical account of Geoffrey Dixon’s early climbing and mountaineering record would be interesting to write about also. Continuing research in a relatively short period yielded such absorbing material that I might not get beyond this biography of Geoffrey Dixon, climber and mountaineer. My own autobiography has to wait, and by comparison would seem insignificant.

Coincidentally it would have been his 100th birthday on 30 October this year.

Fittingly perhaps, here is the biography.

John Allen

Stirling, 30 September 2012

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Introduction - The climber Alpinist turned Headmaster educationalist Geoffrey Dixon was a man of his time. Born before World War 1 of well-heeled parents, he was sent to public school, performed well there and obtained a scholarship to New College Oxford from which he took a teaching post at another public school, Uppingham, in 1934. He was obviously cushioned and even blinkered from the general hardships of the time, the First World War, the great depression and impoverishment of the main populace. He could even afford foreign holidays with his brothers and friends for a few years before World War 2.

From a mountaineer’s point of view he did not waste those long school holidays, carousing on a beach somewhere in southern Europe, but put his energy and experience to work as a climber. He had picked up enough from expeditions to the hills and mountains of England and Wales to feel confident in extending himself, with brothers Humphrey and Hugh, to scrambles and climbs in the faraway Alps of Austria and France.

World War 2 stopped all that, but he returned to his Uppingham teaching post in 1945, then had a two year spell teaching science to cadets at the newly reconstituted Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, Surrey before seeking a Headship – at a boys grammar school on the Lancashire coast far away from the comfort zone of the south of England. School Headships didn’t surface very often and he landed this one in 1949. His wife, Nancy, was informed by telephone from Southport that they were moving north. They were in their late thirties and faced real challenges.

Fortunately for him, the school, King George V Grammar School, Southport, had been under a very orderly regime since its foundation in 1920, with the same Headmaster throughout, but with a somewhat ageing staffroom. My memories after 1950 are of strong discipline at school, albeit backed by the threat of corporal punishment, a general respect for our elders (they had won the war), wartime austerity and no sign of affluence, no televisions, still on wartime ration books, few people owning cars, dinner money collection for school meals, children playing freely and unsupervised in the streets and fields, bikes and academic homework.

Geoffrey was still a young and thrusting adult, and now in an influential position as the Boss. In his 1976 retirement statement (quoted in the Red Rose 75th Anniversary edition in 2001) he said that the Governors had allowed him a free hand to appoint new staff without reference to them or any bureaucratic local education officials. He also used his freedom of action to take selected boys rock climbing on his own.

Hand-picked, personally selected, and one by one. Would that happen in the Twenty First century? Unlikely, nay impossible. But for Geoffrey the experienced rock climber, this was no more than a natural and positive initiative – a teacher extending the experiences that he valued highly to the pupils, and way beyond the classroom.

This was the beginning of ‘outdoor pursuits’ at the school.

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Outdoor pursuits? What were they in 1949? The term ‘Outdoor Pursuits’ did not exist as a school subject. When I started at the grammar school, rugby, cricket and school sports day were the only outdoor events, and they were part of the structured curriculum. There were ‘after-school’ activities such as the school play, the school orchestra, and the photographic society but nothing extra-curricular other than rugby and cricket matches on Saturdays against rival schools. On a Friday afternoon at 4.00pm most boys walked, biked or bussed away and forgot that the place existed.

Geoffrey accepted these norms, but had more to offer. He could extend our horizons, otherwise limited in those days, beyond our home territory. He knew that under responsible leadership eager youngsters are willing and need to be stretched, themselves welcoming new challenges and quickly picking up new skills. Mountains were Geoffrey’s enthusiasm, so in small numbers to start with, he could set up weekend and multi-day school holiday excursions that involved rock climbing in mountainous areas. Parents were happy, and in all probability he wouldn’t even have to make formal representation to the Education Authority. He could organise it and carry it out on his own authority.

He knew that exposure to remote and harsh landscapes, benign and stormy weather, and the challenges of steep and threatening heights, could bring out the best in people. Not only had he been there many times, but he was still willing to tough it out alongside these lads, and let them pit themselves against him. He was a hard man, able to lead by example. He could also pass on the passion and spirituality that he enjoyed in climbing mountains. Under his watchful eye we schoolboys learned out there about rock climbing, and more, in the natural environment. He opened our eyes to the world.

In his early years at KGV, certainly until 1954, he was still planning and executing his own mountaineering ambitions in the Alps. These were probably his best years as Alpinist, namely 1949 – 1954. There were no detailed climbing guidebooks in English. The best British climbers were only just catching up with the standards of continentals. As a member of the Alpine Club from 1948 he must have known some of them, but in 1949 fate moved him away from the London area where the Establishment climbing fraternity was waiting for a chance to attempt the still unclimbed Mount Everest.

Nevertheless, during these years of early Headship he set himself some fulsome climbing plans, and twice climbed the Matterhorn. His descriptive writings here betray some epic climbing conditions. He then even introduced senior schoolboys to Alpinism, but he was perhaps past his best and had decided to pass on the bâton and devote himself to fundraising for the school’s Golden Jubilee. This became focused on the purchase of suitable premises that could serve as an outdoor pursuits centre for the school. Long Rigg near Sedbergh was opened in 1970 enabling educational, cultural and outdoor experience visits by the school, its staff and parents.

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This memoire is about Geoffrey, the climber and Alpinist, and is compiled for its interest as such, to climbers and KGV Associates, and attempts to set him in a wider context both through the eyes of those who followed him as Pied Piper and through his own wonderful prose, much of which has not seen the light of day until now.

1. Beginnings Geoffrey’s first mountaineering experience was probably on a family ascent of Conway mountain, near Llandudno, N Wales about 1918 – 1920, when his father, Town Clerk of Withernsea, East Yorkshire, had been summoned to a conference of Food Officers immediately after WW1, and took his family with him. Geoffrey would have been about age 7. Conway mountain is only a minor summit on a coastal path walk, yet…who knows what experiences in childhood have significance.

Another and possibly more significant influence was through one of Geoffrey’s father’s friends, Walter Porter of Hull. Geoffrey’s Aunt Margaret married Walter Porter’s son Reginald. Through the family association with the Porters, Geoffrey would have met another of Walter’s sons, Robert (Bob), a maths master at Hull Grammar School, who took pupils out on the hills at home and abroad. This might have been one of the influences on Geoffrey later to take boys out climbing.

Bob Porter in the 1930 in the Pyrenees, dressed for the hills.

Photo Dixon archives

With a full head of crinkly hair, Geoffrey is coiling a hawser-laid hemp rope just as he taught to us boys.

Photo Dixon archives

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Bob Porter encouraged Geoffrey to take up climbing. Bob was also a founder member of the famous Fell and Rock Climbing Club, and Geoffrey would have been aware of this. Other founders in the years 1906/7 were George and Ashley Abraham, Ashley becoming the first President of the Fell & Rock Climbing Club. They were photographers who made a record of the evolution of rock-climbing in the Lake District in the years 1890 to 1920 and ran a photographic shop in Keswick. They had also pioneered many climbs in the Lake District, alongside their photographic exploits carrying large plate cameras with them.

Association with these contacts at an impressionable age could have been the further inspiration that fired Geoffrey into rock-climbing and even photographing such exploits. According to Oliver Dixon, Geoffrey’s oldest son, ‘Geoffrey recalled that Bob was not a particularly talented climber, but very keen….apparently had phenomenal strength, stamina and athleticism, according to his niece Rosamund Porter.’ His enthusiasm for climbing probably rubbed off on a youthful Geoffrey, whose nature likewise was to be enthusiastic, competitive and ambitious in everything he did. Bob Porter’s influence was possibly Geoffrey’s beginning as climber and mountaineer.

Oliver writes: ‘Childhood in East Yorkshire – one of the flattest parts of the country – school at Worksop in Nottinghamshire, holidays invariably at his maternal grandparents in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire (involving five changes of train!) were his very limited geographical horizons – as indeed everybody’s were in those days. Their brief stay at Llandudno Junction was the only certain mention I ever heard of any visit to a mountainous area.’

2. Early Life, school, Oxford – and Nancy Geoffrey Ferris Dixon was born on 30th October 1912, the first of four brothers. His was a very musical family, one which would gather to play music together in evenings of family entertainment; no crowding round a television in those days. He played the ′cello. There was an evening bible reading when on holiday with his maternal grandmother in rural Wiltshire. Universal travel was unheard of. Most people got about on foot, by bicycle, horse drawn cart, by train and boat. ‘Cars were as rare as hen’s teeth,’ said Oliver Dixon in 2004 about the 1920s, though both father and grandfather had cars by 1930. Only moneyed people owned cars – they were not generally affordable, and roads were not best maintained, rendering long journeys as somewhat uncertain expeditions. Trains were more reliable and preferred.

Geoffrey was sent away to boarding school at Worksop College, Nottinghamshire (1925-1931; in his last year 1931 won the Milner Science prize; First Rugby XV in 1930; won school carol writing competition - I have a copy of the carol - won a music prize on Speech Day, 1930). He attended Worksop College camps and might well have been on the international scout camp to Kandersteg, Switzerland but there is no definite list of attendees. On such a holiday he might have heard of the Matterhorn,

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and even seen it during an excursion from the camp. It was to have such an influence on his life later.

From school he won an Open Scholarship to New College, Oxford and got an MA (Physics, 1st class). It was here that he met Nancy at an afternoon tea party that she had arranged, and he was invited along to make up the numbers of males. They talked and were relaxed in each other’s company, and continued to meet up. She was horrified when she learnt that his passion in life was rock-climbing, but she went along with it, and experienced some degree of suffering (see later), as do most climbers and mountaineers if they keep it up for any length of time.

Nancy in shorts (very daring in those days, probably early 1930s), and nailed boots.

Dixon archives

3. 1933 -1939 - Early Alpinism From Oxford Geoffrey took up a science teaching post at Uppingham public school, thus securing income that enabled him to function independently of parents.

After the tea party Geoffrey made time to meet Nancy again. They were married in 1935, and Nancy made up the 1935 mountaineering party with the three brothers to Austria. Quite an undertaking, considering the state of roads and public transport at the time throughout Europe. Geoffrey took her up a peak, Habicht (3277m, 10,750ft), which he had climbed two years earlier. He recorded that on the descent they got benighted. I have been able to piece together this story, and the whole period of their pre-WW2 adventures, by reference to Geoffrey’s 1949 application form to join the Alpine Club, on which he detailed every climb and companion in support of his membership; and by reference to Oliver’s memory of what he was told.

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In 1933 with his brother Hugh and two companions he had been to the Stubaital and Zillertal and as ‘complete novices’ (his words) ascended the Habicht up and down by its ordinary route, a rock climbing scramble, grade I by present UIAA gradings (see glossary at end). With Nancy in 1935 he repeated the same ascent but this time he traversed the mountain and descended differently by the NE ridge.

On his application form to join the Alpine Club, he wrote, ‘Guideless with NB Dixon.

I led this climb which involved a bivouac during the descent.’ That simple statement concealed a wealth of meaning. What we don’t know is how the Alpine Club’s membership applications panel would have viewed the first entry ‘Guideless…’ by contrast with ‘…involved a bivouac during the descent.’ The first would seem to imply an adventurous and independent spirit, whereas the second suggests downright carelessness or incompetence. Or did the upper crust and hoary old gents of the Alpine Club of the day accept the second as a quite normal occurrence, one to be expected and even applauded as a further qualification for membership? The application form did not reveal that they were a honeymooning couple.

Years later Nancy also told Oliver that they were benighted on their honeymoon.

This 1935 alpine holiday had taken a format similar to the first holiday to Austria in 1933 of four in total, Geoffrey, Hugh and the two named friends. In 1935 there were four, namely Geoffrey, Nancy, Humphrey and Hugh. The record of the benightment indicates only Geoffrey and Nancy. Somehow Humphrey and Hugh escaped. Or did they think they should leave them alone at least for one night? Or was it Geoffrey’s ploy that to get a night alone with his new wife, he would have to feign an excuse/reason and in the circumstances an ‘unplanned’ bivouac was the preferred option?

‘Without specifically accusing Geoffrey of faulty navigation, it was obvious from her account that it was the problem. They spent the night with their feet in their rucksacks, sucking on the inevitable condensed milk,’ said Oliver later. So faulty navigation was the official reason? One can only imagine their midnight verbal exchanges! And how were Humphrey and Hugh persuaded to keep quiet about it later? Well, Oliver knew about it, from Nancy, and he was born in 1936.

Such rigours and privations did not stop either of them from more climbs together and again with Geoffrey’s brothers – in 1935, it was the Otztal group as above; 1937, the Silvretta group; and in 1938, the Dauphiné Alps of France. Eventually the group’s three visits to Austria clocked up some twenty peaks, which in the 1930s probably also involved extended approach walks with fewer huts and a greater glacier coverage than in recent years. Remarkably, Nancy is also recorded as being on these three expeditions, despite having an infant son, Oliver, born in 1936. John Dixon, Geoffrey’s fourth brother, was too young to have been involved in climbing then and we never hear of him as such.

None of the climbing routes that they did were technically difficult, in the sense of the great difficult or unclimbed routes then attempted and undertaken by top mountaineers of the day (eg routes on Mont Blanc, the Grandes Jorasses, and the North Face of the Eiger), but the initiative, drive, and spirit of adventure with

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determined purpose were certainly present. Such excursions abroad for UK based climbers in the 1930s were uncommon. Few Brits had experience of glaciers, such high mountains, altitude and the grand scale of things. Language problems usually compelled British climbers to be self-contained. On the mountain they would need to be almost completely self-reliant, necessarily expecting no external support or rescue.

There was certainly no sophisticated communication system as has developed apace later in the twentieth century. Their ropes, ice-axes, boots, rucksacks, and clothing have been museum pieces since the 1960s. This family group of three brothers and Nancy were embracing the essence and spirit of Alpinism, namely scrambling and climbing together to summits and back on established routes, tourist routes. There were no guidebooks in English, except Ball’s Alpine Guides and George Abraham’s Swiss Mountain Climbs – for Austria they would need to have some German, for France it would be French, and post World War 2 in Switzerland they would need both. The first of the GHM French guidebooks did not appear until 1949.

The 1938 expedition to the Dauphiné included WF Shaw, Bill Shaw, a fellow physics master at Uppingham School, and JHF Dixon, Humphrey, as well as FHF Dixon, Hugh. Bill Shaw would have been able to assess his potential Alpine companion while they worked together at school, before joining up on the Dixons’ holiday. He invited his sister Kathleen, consequent on which Hugh Dixon later married Kathleen in 1940.

There was also some successful climbing during this trip. Geoffrey and Bill Shaw climbed Les Rouies (3589m, 11,774ft) , and all six (ie including Nancy) are recorded as having done a traverse of Les Bans (3670m, 12,040ft), the ordinary route up Pic Coolidge (3774m, 12,380ft), the ordinary route up Le Rateau (3809m, 12,500ft), and the Aiguille Dibona’s (3130m, 10,270ft) south ridge. These mountains again are not difficult by the ‘ordinary’ routes, graded easy (facile) or a bit difficult (peu difficile), but require a tolerance of early rising (say 4 or 5am at mountain huts), route finding ability, glacier crossing, altitude, strenuous leg and arm work, possibly long hours and soft snow or poor weather conditions. Enthusiasm to keep doing this sort of thing can wear a bit thin on a holiday. It is probably a testament to Geoffrey’s drive, enthusiasm and physical resilience and durability that kept them going when fatigue, a lost route, or poor conditions played their hands.

By 1939 Geoffrey had organised and led four mountaineering holiday ventures in the Alps. In addition he had climbed on steep rock in the Lake District and North Wales; in his own words ‘rock climbing up to and including climbs of a severe standard, on all the main cliffs. I have led most of the rock climbs attempted.’ Whilst this was nowhere near the top standard of the crag rats of the day (eg Colin Kirkus, Maurice Linnell, Menlove Edwards–see Bibliography), he had certainly amassed considerable experience in many of the disciplines that make up a competent mountaineer.

It is also interesting to note that both in the UK and in the Alps, he wrote that he ‘led’ the climbs. On the day that probably meant that he went first on the rope. He would have found the way, and when a difficult rock climbing move had to be made, he was

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prepared to make it first. Protection for such moves in those days was completely unsophisticated; a rope belay around the waist of the next man, without a mechanically safe anchorage to the mountain, was usually all. Accurate judgement of the difficulty was imperative, co-ordinated with the skill and fitness of the leader.

This is the most rewarding aspect of rock climbing, namely leading, at its best in good company, and it relied heavily on not falling off. In the Alps, the meaning extended to being in overall charge of the day’s events, and of the safe return to base of all persons at the end of the day.

Geoffrey probably also went to the front on the rope over glaciers, thus taking the responsibility for a safe crossing by judicious and wary probing with ice axe and tentative footwork. There is no mention of falling into crevasses, so probably no-one did; such a tumble would most likely have made it into newsprint.

It is also worth setting Alpinism by the Dixons in the context of mountaineering by British climbers overall before World War 2. The Dixons were a privileged few who could afford to go abroad. A reasonable income confers opportunity, the Dixons knew of such opportunities, or at least Geoffrey did, and used regular ‘spare’ income to visit mountainous regions. Climbing the mountains themselves costs little, once in position, and they could afford to get to the Alps. Until the 1950s, only members of established mountaineering clubs in Britain or a few individuals like Frank Smythe regularly visited the Alps to climb, and that included the Oxbridge clubs (ie clubs of both Cambridge and Oxford Universities). Whether Geoffrey associated with Oxford University Mountaineering Club during his stay 1931 - 34 is not known, but unlikely.

He had ready-made companions within his own family, so long as they followed the enthusiasm and leadership of their elder brother, as they did.

Post World War 2, members of the Oxbridge clubs, who were also the active youth of the Alpine Club, ventured onto the harder routes around Chamonix, and showed that they were up to the higher Alpine standards of the day on the continent, eg GH Francis, IG McNaught Davies, H Nicol, T Bourdillon, A Blackshaw, GJ Sutton, N Mather. Concurrently in the early 1950s Joe Brown and Don Whillans and friends from the north of England and Scotland arrived in Chamonix and really put British climbers on the post World War 2 Alpine map. These characters suddenly pioneered big new routes, proving to other Brits that the Alps were for Everyman. In the 1930s the Dixons seemed simply to be applying to the Alps what they had learnt by experience in the UK and continued to learn as they went along, starting on straightforward ascents, finding the way and discovering that they could reach summits and descend safely without professional guides. In documenting their ascents for the Alpine Club, Geoffrey not only referred to his ‘leadership’, but also to the fact that they did not hire guides (‘guideless’ he wrote).

4. Life put on hold – World War 2 The Second World War then intervened. Towards the end of it sadly Humphrey was killed in Normandy. Geoffrey and Nancy had their first son, Oliver, in 1936, and

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Steven in 1939 with Paul arriving in 1944. His teaching post at Uppingham School, Rutland (1934 – 1939) was put on hold until 1945, and Geoffrey spent most of the wartime years at Catterick Camp as Chief Wireless Instructor with the School of Signals. The Dixons lived as a family unit nearby in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

That he was able to continue rock climbing in the Lake District in the war years was probably due to his work at Catterick and domicile at Richmond. By 1939 he would have known enough about the district to show others around and even take them up or direct ascents from ground level, and his companions would most probably have been drawn from the forces, no doubt under military discipline and not on holiday with friends and family.

Geoffrey and friend on Pisgah, Pillar Rock, in knee length breeches in 1944 .

Photo Dixon archives

In any event he had been lucky enough not to be involved directly in the hot war against the Germans. Was he a military man at heart; an authoritarian, disciplinarian, giving orders, himself enjoying the physical rigours of soldiery? We pupils could understand that of him. He was an orderly man, quiet, one of few words, of even a shy and retiring personality, but well organised, and had obviously a well-trained mind. One can also wonder if academic disciplines and his scientific background might have steered him in the direction of the code breaking activities at Bletchley Park that cracked the German enigma machine, or other covert investigative work. Of course he may have known nothing whatever about such nefarious activities.

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5. New Horizons: 1945 -1949 - The Experienced Mountaineer A further two year spell at Uppingham School followed after the war, and then he was appointed as civilian head of the Science Department at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Camberley, Surrey (1947 – 1949). The army war years in Yorkshire and later at Sandhurst had given him opportunities to continue some climbing activities in the UK, and these are recorded simply but fully in his application form to join the Alpine Club. In fact it is certain that at this time he also took his exploratory climbing interests underground, literally, as pointed out by Oliver. In the period from 1947 till 1949 while at Sandhurst he took cadets pot-holing in the Mendips. Was this a substitute for climbing above ground level? Pot-holing, aka caving, (eg by the Craven Pothole Club) was often practised by the established mountaineering clubs of the day, and was even written into their constitutions at the time (eg The Rucksack Club). That he got his young family involved can be seen from photographs.

After the Dauphiné visit in 1938 it seems that he next visited the Alps in either 1948 or 1949, or both years. The evidence is definite that there was at least one visit with cadets from Sandhurst, and that this one visit or both visits were ‘official’, in that the French Army Mountain Warfare School in Chamonix (L’École de Haute Montagne) were involved. In training for this Oliver remembers Geoffrey ‘filling a rucksack with stones and yomping up and down one of the small gravel hills near our house all afternoon.’ Oliver continues: ‘Because the party included at least one major, as the leader of the party the French insisted on addressing Geoffrey as ‘Colonel’, despite his civilian status. I have a book entitled ‘La Grande Crevasse’ (publ 1948), presented to Geoffrey with a dedication by its author, Roger Frison-Roche,the French mountaineer who was an associate of l’École,’ said Oliver.

Having led a party of Sandhurst cadets to the Alps, Geoffrey was presented with ‘La Grande Crevasse’, the book inscribed by Frison-Roche to Geoffrey as ‘Colonel’.

An obvious qualification for this expedition was the experience that he had derived from his family climbing holiday in 1938 in the Dauphiné Alps of France (see earlier) and current employment at the Royal Military Academy, which would probably have been a natural conduit by the French military in Chamonix for the invitation.

The 1938 holiday visit to the Dauphiné would have been noticed by the French.

British mountaineers did not often go there. The Club Alpin Français managed huts with resident guardians, often farmers and at the same time professional skiers and mountain guides themselves (see ‘Conquistadors of the Useless’, by Lionel Terray, publ Gollanz, 1963), and would have hosted the Dixons’ overnight visits at huts. In Chamonix these accomplished mountaineers were to become a centre of the French resistance against their German occupiers. As a former soldier, mountaineer and member of the staff at RMA Sandhurst, Geoffrey found himself in an ideal position for an exchange of personnel if an ‘invitation’ came from the French, resulting in the 1948 and/or the 1949 trips. Further deduction here suggests that there might have been both a 1948 visit and a 1949 visit, the former being somewhat ‘official’, before the less formal 1949 visit by ‘Sandhurst Mountaineering Club’ – see next paragraph.

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Geoffrey’s note in the Alpine Journal of May 1950 (Vol LVII; the Alpine Notes section) confirms that he was certainly active in the Dauphiné in 1949 when ‘a party from the Sandhurst Mountaineering Club had a narrow escape from stonefall’ on the Meije on July 30, at a point just below the Glacier Carré where the guidebook of the Groupe de Haute Montagne (GHM) warns of falls of icicles (‘chutes de stalactites de glace’) that later the same day killed a Swiss climber on reconnaissance. Geoffrey had recognised this danger and directed his party to a new line ‘by climbing straight up instead of traversing to the right towards the Glacier Carré. This alternative is technically rather more difficult,’ wrote Geoffrey. The Sandhurst party seems to have traversed the Meije on this occasion - see following paragraphs. The group included Alan Imrie, an Army captain and member of the Climbers Club with an interest in sea cliff climbing in Cornwall. Imrie climbed with Geoffrey the following year in the Zermatt area.

The Meije, Dauphiné Alps, France from above La Bérarde.

Photo John Allen

On the same 1949 visit to the Dauphiné there is another entry in the Alpine Journal of May 1950 that underlines both the pioneer spirit of Geoffrey and his group, and their general grasp of Alpinism and understanding of the possibilities in the Dauphiné region for his/their type of climbing. In the ‘Alpine Notes’ section of the Alpine Journal he writes of the Aiguille Meridionale d’Arves (3514m, 11,529ft) in the Dauphiné Alps ‘….have a reputation for being difficult of access and are seldom climbed. We were surprised to find that the Aiguille Meridionale d’Arves can be climbed comfortably in 9 hours direct from La Grave. It is a climb which is well worth while and provides excellent training for a traverse of the Meije, as well as

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being a superb viewpoint from which the Meije-Ecrins group can be seen in their true proportions.’

Now La Grave is 1481 metres (4858ft) above sea level. That is 2033 metres (6,670ft) below the highest point reached and presumably after 9 hours on the move. The modern-day grade of the route by the route ascended, the SE ridge, is AD+ (Assez Difficile Plus = the highest grade before Difficile). The party then had to descend and with all going well, this would amount to about another five hours without stops.

Thus at least a fourteen hour day would be clocked up; for instance a start at 6.00am would finish back at La Grave at 8.00pm – a long day but fairly normal within the scope of Alpine mountaineering.

He continued, ‘The mountain is approached up the valley of the Torrent du Maurian. A few hundred yards short of the Col Lombard at the head of this valley the SE ridge can be gained by a rocky couloir. This ridge provides an exhilarating climb of no special difficulty except for an overhanging passage near the top. The passage is probably harder than anything on the Meije traverse.’ And finally, ‘This expedition was made by A.Borwick, HM Caines, GB Howe, JJ Wilson, and the writer.’ This was a strong performance from a determined team, not unusual among Alpinists, and with a reference to a subsequent traverse of the Meije, which is not definitely claimed here by Geoffrey but seems highly likely in view of comments here and in the earlier note about ‘chutes de stalactites de glace’ from the Glacier Carré.

The modern-day time for the Meije traverse is 9-12 hours at grade AD. I even suspect that Geoffrey would have known about the iconic status of the Meije traverse in advance and included it in his forward thinking, even part of his sports plan, as they say in the 21st century. Such is the nature of Alpinism, and of aspirants with ambition and tick lists, then and now.

It is not clear from any of Geoffrey’s written material here whether this 1949 trip to the Dauphiné was part of the École de Haute Montagne visit, or a separate holiday with Sandhurst cadets. He does not name any French people involved, nor indeed mention the joint nature of such an enterprise. The information linking Geoffrey to the École, also derived from Oliver Dixon’s memory, is not in doubt (viz FrizonRoche’s book). Perhaps contact with Sandhurst and/or the École’s archives, if any, would open new information, which would be welcome.

Ostensibly the 1948 Dauphiné visit would seem like an ‘official’ visit of civilian mountaineers in which the military on both sides had played a part in arranging and facilitating. The 1949 visit would have been a sanction derived from the 1948 visit that Geoffrey may well have organised informally with his army colleagues. One or both visits must have been most interesting Alpinism for Geoffrey and his five colleagues, one of whom, Alan Imrie, was to join him and two others on an even more ambitious holiday in 1951 to the Zermatt area.

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Geoffrey must have grown in mountaineering confidence with this 1949 trip, for back home he felt able to offer a level of responsible advice to future parties in France on one of their iconic mountains, the Meije (3983m, 13,067ft), in the DauphinĂŠ via written notes in the Alpine Journal. Perhaps too with this trip he had outgrown his family companions, for they no longer featured as names on ascents that he made with the Sandhurst party. Hugh may have been glad of this release; in any case in 1943 he had a family of his own. Perhaps too Nancy was unavailable, for she had three young boys to look after.

La Meije from Le Rateau.

Photo John Allen

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6. The Headship Years from 1949 In the early months of 1949 he followed up an advert in the Times Education Supplement seeking a Headmaster for King George V School, Southport, with a rental house attached to the school, and got the job (1949 – 1976). Nancy later said they would not have been able to buy a house at the time, and a job with a rental house seemed attractive. ‘And where was Southport?’ she asked, based in Surrey at the time. Geoffrey had never been employed in the State maintained sector of Local Education Authorities, but the Governors of the school obviously saw the public school and Oxford University background as irresistible for the Headmaster of their type of grammar school. Geoffrey made a momentous decision and took up the post in September 1949.

He had not given himself much time to settle in by the time the new term started.

We know that he was climbing in the Dauphiné Alps in France during the latter part of July and into August 1949. He and the family cannot have had much leisure time together after he returned, because term in State maintained schools had always begun in the first week of September, unlike in the private sector. This year he had to move three boys and Nancy to a strange new home town on the Lancashire coast. I cannot imagine the level of disruption to a settled lifestyle at Sandhurst when suddenly the whole family unit was literally and metaphorically pitched almost overnight into an alien bear garden.

However, house moving in 1949 involved fewer material possessions than later in the 20th century. Perhaps the austerity required of people in the years following World War 2 had its own disciplines. There was not much in the shops to buy, and most people did not have spare money. Fitted bathrooms and kitchens, fitted carpets and TV sets, electric kettles, plastic dinnerware, paper cleaning rolls, cardboard and plastic packaging were all items for the future. Sliced bread, bananas, nylons, central heating in homes, and fridge/freezers had yet to appear. Even basic clothing was officially rationed; I was brought up in the 1950s on the ‘make do and mend’ principle, able to use needle and thread to darn socks and pullovers, and to sew buttons onto shirts.

The problem of the Dixon boys’ schooling was solved by farming them out as day boys to Merchant Taylors School at Crosby near Liverpool, to which they could travel daily by commuter train. They could fight their own battles at a school in the private sector. Geoffrey had to ingratiate himself with a whole staffroom of mainly older teachers – not easy for him, I would guess, and they had difficulty in forming relationships with him. Wisely he let the school run itself for a while. And there was always Nancy in the background.

The family appears to have settled, and Geoffrey was not finished with climbing and mountaineering.

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7. In the Alps 1950 – Val d’Isère and Argentière Oliver continues, ‘Two Alpine trips stand out in my memory from those years. In 1950, Geoffrey decided that the post-war geopolitical situation was so bad that he should make one last attempt to visit the Alps and should ensure that the family should also enjoy the experience of foreign travel. Four of us (Paul was deemed to be too young and was left behind with his grandmother) drove in the old pre-war family Humber at a stately pace from Southport right the way across France to the Alps.

Firstly we stayed in Val d’Isère. There we were joined by Tom Peacocke, a master at Leatherhead School and kindred spirit of Geoffrey’s who lived for his trips to the Alps. He was accompanied by two boys from his school. I gather Tom’s ploy was to encourage the two boys to go home after a week or two, leaving him to take advantage of their (very limited) foreign exchange allowance so that he could prolong his stay. I think Geoffrey spent much of the time going off mountaineering with Tom, leaving my mother to entertain Stephen and me as best she could.’

Further comment on this would suggest that Geoffrey later did take note of Tom’s ploy, recruiting KGV schoolboys for climbs in the Alps, following suit later in 1953 and 1956 (see note at end of chapter 8).

Peacocke had written a book on mountaineering (‘Mountaineering’, publ 1941, A & C Black,) that went to several editions. In his review of the 1953 edition of the book in the Alpine Journal (November 1953), AK Rawlinson , a luminary in the Alpine Club, was very critical. ‘It is interesting, and not insignificant, how dated Mr Peacocke’s approach seems,’ and, ‘The equipment chapter is not fully up to date.’ Peacocke’s book in 1953 still recommended nailed boots for Alpine climbing, and he seemed unaware of down filled clothing. From his eminent position within the Alpine Club Rawlinson closely understood current attitudes and developments during the 1952 preparations for Everest. ‘Vibrams are now standard footwear for all Alpine expeditions,’ he wrote. Peacocke must have felt somewhat put down because in his defence he wrote a defensive reply that was published in the next issue of the Alpine Journal.

Oliver continued, ‘We then moved onto Argentière in the Val de Chamonix. Again, Geoffrey went off climbing – and with Tom Peacocke and others. The rest of the family were left to their own devices. I can remember walking up to the Col de Balme on the Swiss border to watch the annual cow fight.’

Oliver again, ‘I can also remember with amusement when he (Geoffrey) came back after a day out for a walk on the Franco-Swiss border. He had been approached by a customs officer who said, ‘Je suis douanier; vous êtes contrabandier,’ and made him turn out his rucksack. Nothing suspicious found and no harm done.’

Geoffrey certainly did go off on his own ‘mountaineering with Tom’.

While undertaking archival searches for this biography project, Oliver managed to turn up the following article, which clearly indicates what Geoffrey and three others did.

This splendid story takes the reader right into the heart of the Alps, into that most

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glorious and wild facet of Mont Blanc, namely the Brenva. It is so evocative of the Alpine mountaineering experience that I have included it in toto apart from a few very minor changes and corrections.

Importantly this is the first extant piece of extended writing that we have from Geoffrey’s own pen. It tells us an enormous amount about the man and his involvement with climbs in the Alps. He had already shown that he could organise a group for climbing in the Alps, and he could take the leadership of routes, with himself at the sharp end of the rope when route finding was necessary and technical moves had to be made. He fully understood how important early rising was, how long the day can be, how much effort was required throughout. He also showed that he could stand and stare at the wonders of nature with sensibilities that touched his soul – he revealed how in private moments the glimmers of spreading dawn light affected him, and how a night under the stars evoked awe and wonder.

They were a party of four, as recorded by Peacocke in the Alpine notes of the May edition of the Alpine Journal 1951, as FR Brooke, GF Dixon, TAH Peacocke, D Ross, August 21 1950. The article itself is all Geoffrey’s, not previously published:

8. Two nights in the Alps When my non-climbing friends ask, as they frequently do, what point there is in this climbing of mountains, I can only reply by describing just what we do and telling them of some particular expedition just as I am about to tell you now. Curiously enough I invariably find at the end of my discourse that our respective points of view are entirely unchanged by what I have said. Nevertheless the following story may interest even if it does not convert you.

It was about an hour after dawn on a fine August morning that four of us set out from the Refuge du Requin in the French Alps near Mont Blanc for what was to prove one of our most exciting and strenuous climbs. In a few minutes we were on the Glacier and began to make our way up the famous Géant icefall. Richard had been up and down through this glacier maze four times already in the last few weeks and so led the way. We other three followed rather sleepily as he led between the crevasses along the zigzag track made by the crampon points of hundreds of climbers; the ascent of the Col de Géant must be one of the most popular and well trodden glacier routes in the Alps. Above the icefall the glacier becomes quite easy and we trudged along following still in the tracks…the last shameful refuge of the guideless climber as someone has called them…until we branched off to the right into the great snowy basin which separates Mont Blanc du Tacul on the right and the Tour Ronde on the left.

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The Frontier ridge of Mont Maudit from near the Col de la Fourche.

Photo John Allen

Ahead lay Mont Maudit, the accursed mountain, behind and to the left of which towered the summit of Mont Blanc. Between Mont Maudit and the Tour Ronde lay a jagged ridge, almost horizontal in front of us but sweeping up in a great curve on the right until it was lost in the rock and snow near the summit of Mont Maudit.

This was the frontier ridge between France and Italy and the object of our next day’s climbing. In front of us the crest of the ridge was only about 500 feet above us but its flanking slope was composed of wickedly steep ice with a few projecting rocks here and there. All the way along the bottom was an open bergschrund, a yawning gap where the snow had sagged away from the ice above.

Tom took over the lead here and cut steps and handholds up almost vertical ice to reach the top of the bergschrund. Steps had also to be cut up the steep ice above, as it was covered with a layer of soft snow which made it dangerous to rely on crampons alone. This step cutting was warm work for the leader but the rest of us found the clinging wet snow very cold for the feet.

Before long we reached some rocks about one third of the way up the face and from here were able to make rapid progress up loose rock to the crest of the ridge, the lowest point of which is called the Col de la Fourche. The situation here was wonderful. On the far side the flanking wall of the ridge fell steeply to the Brenva Glacier and beyond lay the great Brenva face of Mont Blanc, the grandest piece of mountain architecture in the Alps, a 5000 foot high mountain wall of rock and hanging glaciers. Beyond it on the skyline far above us white and challenging was the smooth curve of the Peuteret ridge read about and discussed by so many climbers but trodden by so few.

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Dawn on the Frontier ridge by the Col de la Fourche; the bivouac hut is just to the right of the forked rock.

Photo John Allen

Overlooking the Brenva Glacier and just below the crest of the ridge stood the bivouac erected by the Italian Alpine Club, in shape like a minute Nissen hut with a smooth shiny metal exterior. In front there was a flat doorstep about two feet wide and beyond this was the precipice straight down to the glacier below. Clearly it was no place for sleep walkers. Inside there was a space about four feet from front to back, the “living room�, and behind this was a mattress bed stretching the whole width of the hut and providing sleeping accommodation for five. There were a few dilapidated cooking vessels and a primus stove which was clearly out of order. An empty Chianti bottle smelling strongly of paraffin completed the equipment.

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Our first task on arrival was to collect water and we set to work to fill all available containers with drips from melting snow. The metal room was warm in the sun and Tom soon had a row of cups and billy cans along the side to catch the drips. The rest of us concentrated on scattering snow over the warm rocks nearby and trying to guide the incipient trickles into the most suitable channels. It was a race against time before the shadow of Mont Blanc reached us after its steady march across the glacier.

Within a few seconds our drips had begun to dry up, whilst less than 15 minutes later the slushy snow round the hut had a hard frozen crust on it.

The next hour or so was given up to preparing and eating an enormous evening meal. In the Alps one gets used to the idea of one big meal at the end of the day and snacks at other times. Donald, who has done much cooking on ocean going yachts, prepared a soup of mighty strength, which contained the contents of various packets together with oatmeal, sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice. Tom was fond of explaining that the lemon juice was most useful in keeping scurvy at bay. This was followed by large quantities of bread and butter accompanied by sliced ham, cheese and jam. Two large cups of hot sweet tea completed the meal.

Tom created something of a diversion by wiping his hands inadvertently on a slice of ham! In the dark and crowded interior he might well be excused for mistaking it for our almost equally greasy cloth.

After supper we had a final look at the guide book to see what it had to say about our next day’s climb. It was sobering to think that the climb had only been ascended by about 25 parties, perhaps 100 people in all, since the first ascent in 1887. The book went on to say that the climb should only be attempted by “alpinistes de grande experience”.

We went to bed, to one of those nights which climbers know so well. We were in strange surroundings, uncomfortable and rather cold and at a height of nearly 13,000 feet. We pretended to sleep, and I think we did sleep for some of the time, but we did not get much continuous rest. I could see a corner of the sky through one of the tiny windows and each time I turned over I looked anxiously for the sight of a star or two to reassure myself about the state of the weather. Tomorrow was to be the climax of our mountaineering holiday, one of the greatest climbs in the Alps.

Who could sleep with such a prospect?

It was a relief when Tom’s alarm watch went off at 3.30. We lit some candles and prepared our morning cup of tea. We also divided up the provisions stowing them and our spare clothes in our rucksacks. By 4.30, I was ready to start while the others still had a few more preparations to make. It was getting light and Mont Blanc showed steel blue, cold and unfriendly in the grey dawn. I climbed to the summit of the col. The sky was dark purple above, merging into blue, orange and red on the horizon. In the distance, against the light, Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn showed up black in silhouette. Ridge upon ridge of grey hill and mountain lay between. The sharp outlines of the mountains showed clear and rugged like some artist’s impression of a lunar landscape. There was no sign

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anywhere of man’s handiwork. It was an impressive and a humbling thought that we had struggled up a mere two miles above the earth’s surface and had left the busy world so far below. Such moments as these, in which the beauty of the scene and the sense of littleness of man sink into the soul, are not uncommon in mountaineering, and are, I believe, a major source of its fascination. I turned back to the hut and we set out a moment or two later.

The bivouac hut at the Col de la Fourch; George Bintley overlooking the Brenva glacier.

Photo by kind permission of Allan Stuart, Wayfarers Club

It would be tedious to describe the details of our climb. The condition of the snow was not good and progress was slow. It was not until 11 hours later that we stood on top of our peak. By now it was late and we had some debate about our best course of action. Eventually we decided to return to the Refuge du Requin, by an easy route via the Col du Midi. The snow at this time of day was soft and we were frequently thigh deep. Weariness began to tell. In addition several steep sections had to be taken with care. On one of the steep parts the shaft of Tom’s ice axe broke, as he was using it to control his downward progress. Fortunately he stopped

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himself after a fall of only a few feet and we congratulated ourselves that this misfortune had not occurred on the ascent.

From the top of the Tour Ronde. Brenva face and summit of Mont Blanc are in the left third of the view; Frontier Ridge with Fourche clearly visible in bottom right leading to summit of Mont Maudit top right.

Photo John Allen

It was growing dusk as we reached the Col du Midi and we hurried on down the Vallée Blanche, confident that the Refuge de Requin was only two hours away and knowing that we had left extra provisions there for our return. The going was much easier here and we made good speed until we were almost down to the level of the main Glacier du Géant with its well-trodden track. Here we stopped to eat a few biscuits and raisins – we had neglected the inner man in our rapid march down from the summit – and to light our lanterns as it was now almost dark. Soon afterwards we joined the track and the marks of climbers’ boots and crampons in the snow were easily followed. The light of the Refuge appeared shortly afterwards, not more than a mile away. Richard took the lead and we soon approached the icefall, where the glacier takes a plunge of 500 feet or more to the comparatively smooth and level surface of the Mer de Glace below. The icefall itself is a confused mass of lurching and unstable towers or ice separated by deep crevasses, and is quite impassable even in daylight except at its western end where the lateral pressure of a small side glacier smoothes the turbulence of the main glacier stream and a way can be picked circuitously through the maze to the Refuge de Requin.

Just as we neared the icefall the snow gave out and it was much more difficult to see the tracks on the hard ice. But we continued confidently until we reached the

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edge of a large crevasse from which we could see, only 50 feet beyond, easier, smooth ice which led downwards towards the hut. But there was no way across. We cast about on either side. It was not easy to keep our bearings as sometimes we had to make a detour of 50 yards or more to, circumvent a single crevasse. We searched closely for tracks until after a time we suddenly realised that we were following our own tracks of only a few minutes before. An hour passed, and our hopes of a good meal and a comfortable bed in the hut began to recede. We went right back and struck the main track again to give ourselves a fresh start. Before long, sure enough, we were overlooking the same tantalising crevasse to the easy ground beyond. We cast about once more but it soon became obvious that the way through the maze had eluded us and we must resign ourselves to a night out on the glacier.

In a situation like this the essential requirement is to find a rock to sit on. Ice has obvious disadvantages in this respect and we certainly had no wish to spend the night standing up. Luckily we remembered that about a quarter of a mile back we had passed a large rock perched on the glacier.

When we arrived at our friendly rock it seemed in our state of weariness to be a most desirable residence - at least in comparison with the ice.

It had a level surface rather bigger than the average dining room table, and it stood about a foot above the level of the glacier. In addition it had running water, cold if not hot. A fairly substantial glacier stream ran behind it so that we could dip in a cup from where we sat. All spare clothing was donned, and we took off our wet boots and stockings. With spare stockings on, our feet in our rucksacks and with the rope as a seat we were able to remain tolerably warm throughout the night.

A mountaineering expedition is characterised by almost constant activity and once we had completed our preparations for the night it came as quite a shock to realise that there was nothing whatever to do except wait for the dawn. Sleep was out of the question and we had to devise ways of passing the time. Under these circumstances food becomes an item of major interest and importance. We counted out our stores with care; some biscuits and raisins, condensed milk in tubes, tea and a supply of solid fuel. We calculated that we could have a cup of hot tea every hour accompanied by a small meal. Donald brewed the tea for us and thus kept himself almost continuously occupied. To pass the time we tried telling stories and conversation on almost every subject under the sun. Tom revealed a surprising talent for poetry and recited the whole of a poem by AD Godley which he had learned from a climbing companion on a previous unintentional bivouac. He offered to teach it to us but I am afraid we were not very responsive, though I can still remember one verse: Though the hand of time be heavy; though your ancient comrades fail Though the mountains you ascended be accessible by rail; Though your nerve begins to weaken, and you’re gouty grown and fat, And prefer to walk in places that are reasonably flat…

Though you grow so very fat That you climb the Gorner Grat…

Or perhaps the little Scheideck – and are rather proud of that;

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Yet I hope that till you die You will annually sigh For a vision of the Valais in the coming of July For the Oberland or Valais and the higher, purer air, And the true delight of living and taste it only there.

Glacier de GĂŠant from SW ridge of Aiguille du Moine. GFD and party spent the night somewhere top left of photo. The Requin hut is on the rocks to the right.

Photo John Allen

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But in spite of the diversions there was nothing to do for most of the time except wait. I remember seeing the moon over the sharp finger of the Dent du Géant and forcing myself not to look at it for as long as I could. When I looked again it had moved perceptibly on its journey over towards the Tour Ronde. Some high cirrus clouds came over at intervals and blotted out groups of stars. Plotting the course of these clouds became an absorbing occupation. Listening to the sounds of the night was another distraction – the quiet murmur of the stream behind us; the sigh of the chilly wind that blew steadily down the glacier; the occasional distant fall of ice or rock. We had hung a candle lantern from an ice axe for company and I spent some time calculating how long the candle would last. But eventually slowly the sky began to pale, the moon was far beyond the Tour Ronde and we had our last cup of tea. After pulling on our boots we marched up and down for a few minutes to get warm.

Soon we reached the crevasse that had stopped us before but now the tracks were clear. We had been within six feet of the route at the critical point and missed it twice! A few minutes later we took off our crampons on the rocks near the hut just as parties outward bound for their day’s climb were roping up at the same point.

They looked as us curiously but politely refrained from asking any questions. We passed them and entered the hut almost exactly 48 hours after leaving it.’

The excursion described in ‘Two Nights in the Alps’ was graded Difficile in the Alpine Club’s 1990 edition of the Mont Blanc guidebook and described: ‘One of the finest ridges in the range and a major classic….long and mixed at high altitude….difficulties fairly sustained…..in magnificent surroundings.’

Peacocke wrote in his notes, ‘…the scenery and remarkable situations gave the climb its great charm,’ and described the route in considerable detail, but dismissed the bivouac, ‘Darkness overtook the party…’ and ‘The night was spent seated on a rock…’ Perhaps he was too cold to understand the joy and awe experienced by GFD. Though Geoffrey was spiritually moved by the wonders of nature at that dawn moment as he stepped out of the Col de la Fourche hut alone, and described other details from the bivouac stone on which they sat, he allowed the climbing in that spectacular natural stadium to be rather dismissed in a few words (‘..tedious to describe the details of our climb’). Maybe soft snow conditions made the route energy sapping and time consuming, which can happen at the best of times, and the enjoyment level drops.

I did this route with a friend in 1969, via the same bivouac hut at the Col de la Fourche, as did Geoffrey’s party. Although I have recorded my ascent with many photographs on this and other routes in the Alps (also see “The High Mountains of the Alps” by Dumler and Burkhardt, publ Diadem, 1994), nothing compares with the reality of being there and feasting on such a magnificent arena of light and wild mountain architecture. The views of the Brenva face on one side, pioneer climbing

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area of Frank Smythe and Graham Brown twenty years earlier and of the satellites of Mont Blanc on the other, are extraordinarily inspiring.

It was an unbelievably life-enhancing experience for me to have done this and similar expeditions in my active Alpine mountaineering years. (See also my inside cover photo in the latest reprint of the 2005 edition of G.Rébuffat’s book ‘The Mont Blanc Massif – the Hundred Finest Routes’.) What makes these expeditions so special is the whole experience of the 24 hour day out in such apparently remote, harsh yet beautiful environments, where you live your humanity at full stretch yet within the boundaries of personal risk and safety.

(Note: Interestingly, only the third ascent of this route (also known as the Kuffner; Mauritz von Kuffner having completed the first ascent with two guides) was made by RLG Irving in 1911. He was the schoolmaster at Winchester College who introduced HEG Tyndale and George Leigh Mallory to climbing as senior boys in their late teens.

Mallory, now aged 25, and Tyndale joined Irving on this third ascent – see 1916 Alpine Journal XXXII, pages 148 – 162. In AJ XXIV Irving wrote ‘Five Years with Recruits’, one of the ‘recruits’ being Mallory at age 17 while at school and was taken up Ben Nevis in winter conditions via Tower Ridge. Irving also took these boys to the Alps, where ascents of major mountains were climbed, such as the Grand Combin, the Dent Blanche, Monte Rosa, Aletschhorn and Mont Blanc.

It is entirely possible that Geoffrey knew of these exploits, and was merely doing the same thing in the 1950s with boys from KGV. However, even as early as 1909 an eminent member of the Alpine Club, TG Longstaff, in a ‘Condemnation’, had voiced his disquiet towards the leading of boys up potentially dangerous mountains, such that ‘A Disclaimer’ was published in the 1909 Alpine Journal, signed by TG Longstaff, GW Young, Claud Schuster, WP Haskett-Smitt and DW Freshfield in an attempt to disassociate themselves from any responsibility for encouraging Irving in such exploits. This was high level disapproval from influential men of repute.

The 1916 Alpine Journal article about the Kuffner route was written by Mallory who poured out his emotions felt by the wonderful ascent experience, the antithesis of a World War that had already killed some of his friends, he thought.

We have no means of knowing whether Geoffrey knew of such utterances within the AC, or knew of them but ignored them but Irving remained a controversial figure, writing books about his experiences into later life. He died in 1969 age 92.)

9. In the UK 1949 – 1955 This classic family photo at Kilnsey in Wharfedale in 1949 has Geoffrey in caving helmet.

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Back row: Geoffrey, Nancy, Kathleen (née Shaw, Hugh Dixon’s wife), Muriel (Humphrey’s widow), Hugh, Stephen. Front row: Paul, David (Hugh’s son), Humphrey jnr, Malcolm (Hugh’s son), Susan (Humphrey’s daughter).

Photo Dixon archives

‘My grandfather had arranged a holiday at Kilnsey in the summer of 1949, but had died the previous winter. My grandmother went ahead anyway. Led by GFD some caving was undertaken by most members of the family; also some hill-walking. I remember ascending Great Whernside with GFD, Stephen and Rosamund Porter (Bob’s niece),’ said Oliver.

He also remembers, ‘We also went camping in mountainous areas as a family at week-ends. The first occasion, probably in 1950, was in Yewdale from where we walked up Wetherlam. Other trips (I have no recollection of dates or the order in which they were taken) included the circuit of the Snowdon Horseshoe and walking the length of the Clwydian hills.

‘Longer camping holidays in the summer included the Scottish Highlands in 1951.

We camped first in Glencoe and then in Glen Nevis (notoriously wet). We walked the length of the Aonach Eagach Ridge in thick cloud, and we climbed a route on the north face (possibly Observatory ridge or Observatory Buttress) before reaching the summit of Ben Nevis.’

Comment: These family summer holidays would always have been towards the end of the six week break from school, because Geoffrey prioritised his Alpine climbing for the few weeks immediately after school broke up at the third week of July. For instance Geoffrey wrote in ‘A First Visit to the Zermatt District’ that on 19 th July 1951 he was at Randa in the Zermatt valley about to undertake a lengthy Alpine expedition with his friends. Thus it would have been possible for the family to have had at least

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a week or so towards the end of the normal school holidays late in August – remember, Geoffrey was a compulsive climber and a driven man.

Oliver again, ‘In 1952 we camped on the Isle of Mull, first somewhere on the Tobermory to Dervaig road, then at the head of Loch Scridain. I remember my father enthusing to his climbing cronies about the quality of the hill walking there.

We walked round the extremely rugged headland of the Ardmeanach peninsula, and walked to the top of Ben More Mull (again in thick cloud).’

‘In 1954, probably the last time I joined him on any mountaineering trip, they camped at Lochranza in Arran, while I stayed in the Youth Hostel. We walked up Goat Fell (thick cloud again). I have a photo of the family with Stephen carrying a climbing rope, but have no recollection of doing any actual rock climbing there.’

Left to right – Stephen (second son), Geoffrey, Nancy, Oliver (first son) with Paul (third son) in front; Arran 1954.

Photo Dixon archives

Clearly Geoffrey was keen to introduce his family to mountains and mountain activities. Oliver was then age 14 plus, Stephen 12 plus, Paul 7 plus in the period 1950 – 1955.

Comment: in the six weeks of school holidays in the summers (1949 – 1958 at least) Geoffrey could forget about his job, and as pupils we too switched off. Not only that, but neither he nor the teachers had to return to school until a date in the first days of September for the Autumn term. The school was locked up for the holidays, he and the staff did not need to return until the first week of September. ‘O’ and ‘A’ level results were communicated by post to pupils, and published in the Southport Visiter.

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There was no collective exam results hysteria on a date in the middle of August with pupils ecstatic or suicidal on the school site, reviewing their results with subject teachers. Effectively the school did not exist, except as a cracked and empty building sinking into the sands of Scarisbrick New Road. How different from later in the century, and different from the present day!

In 1954 he was again in the Alps, for he succeeded in his earlier ambition of 1951 in climbing the Zmutt ridge on the Matterhorn, and the Täschhorn—see later.

10. A First Visit to the Zermatt District 1951

By May 1951 he was planning a first visit to the big mountains around Zermatt, Switzerland, during the school summer holidays. He would have had to make plans and preparations to get there to meet other companions. In those days travel to Switzerland would take at least two days of continuous motion by rail, cross Channel ferry, then rail/Post Bus/rack railway (the Brig/Visp to Zermatt line).

Geoffrey wrote in ‘A First visit to the Zermatt District’, published in the Alpine Journal 0f November 1952, that on 19 July 1951 he was in Randa with one of his companions, Brian Howl. This time it was without Nancy and family, and only with his three climbing companions. The other two, Alan Imrie, one of his 1949 companions, and Alasdair (real name: Alexander) Kerr, arrived two days later to make a party of four.

Instead of waiting for them to arrive, Geoffrey and Brian made a start by looking at the map (they had no guidebook for this eastern side of the valley) and choosing to get acclimatised by climbing the Rotgrat on the Alphubel (4206m, 13,789ft) from the Täsch hut. They were slow for they took twelve hours from the hut, having started at 3.00am, to the summit, encountered deep soft snow on the easy returning route to the hut, and immediately continued down to Randa, arriving at 10.00pm; a nineteen hour day. The Rotgrat is graded ‘Peu difficile’ and likewise the East flank descent. I did it twice in the 1960s but stayed at the hut after nine hour round trips. We were already fit then and acclimatised. By comparison this was Geoffrey and Brian’s first day out – an exhausting day. He wrote: ‘very tired…hopeful that we were at least some way towards becoming fit.’

For many climbers then and increasingly throughout the rest of the century, summer holidays in the Alps were the objective of the climbing year – a two or three week culmination of winter mountaineering in the UK, followed by rock-climbing and hill walking during spring and early summer. Modern guidebooks in English for the main high Alpine regions did not appear until 1954 with the ACG loose-leaf guide limited to the Chamonix area and 1961 with the ACG/AC ‘Selected climbs in the Pennine Alps’ guidebook. Geoffrey either had only a foreign language guidebook (in German for the Zermatt region) or nothing other than the map. ‘We chose our climb from the map,’ he wrote.

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This was adventurous stuff, but in those days mountaineering was much closer to original pioneering than subsequently. Later, not only were English texts available but also affordable English guides, training courses, and mountaineering holidays, all packaged as a leisure or adventure commodity available to a relatively affluent society. We should, however, note that much of the attraction of Alpinism still involves finding the way in weather and ground conditions that can vary from day to day, nothing being as precise, shall we say, as colour-marked rocks on the path or moulded holds on a modern indoor climbing wall. (Note: there had always been Ball’s Alpine guide books from earlier in the 20th Century, and of course Swiss Mountain Climbs by George D Abraham, published in 1911, but neither of these provided the same detail of routes).

Weather and ground conditions can have an important effect on holidays in the Alps, but so far the weather had been perfect. They had encountered much snow on the upper rocks of the Alphubel, indicating a ‘snowy’ summer so far. Now a foursome, the group went up to the Monte Rosa hut, where an extra fall of snow occurred that evening and they could only manage the Cima di Jazzi (3804m, 12,481ft) next day, normally just a snow plod classified easy (‘facile’) but which proved hard going on soft snow. The following day they ascended the Dufourspitze, the highest point of the Monte Rosa group (4634m, 15,304ft), by the easy normal route. Excessive snow on the rocks made the further traverse inadvisable so they returned that night to the Monte Rosa hut. Next day after a fine frosty night they completed a round trip to Castor (4226m, 13,854ft) in eleven hours, a ‘sporting ascent’ with ‘considerable exercise in route finding,’ wrote Geoffrey, and descended to Randa on the same day, hoping that the good weather had come to stay.

By now they had synchronised their climbing with the best of the weather, a byproduct of which would be increasing fitness and confidence. They lost a day (July 28) with washing and purchasing provisions for their next foray, namely to the Weisshorn hut for a traverse of the Weisshorn (4505m, 14,780ft) by the Schaligrat, and descent by the east ridge back to the hut, ‘the first of a rather ambitious series of climbs during the next ten days.’ In good conditions the ascent alone would require 8-11 hours at a harder grade than so far (‘Difficile’, with grade IV rock); it had route finding difficulties from the start in the dark, and a descent unknown to them and which would take a strong party about four hours, so long as they didn’t make route finding mistakes. Knowing of these problems, Geoffrey himself made a solo three hour reccy of the route ahead from the hut, and of the possible descent. It was still going to be a very long and stressful day.

They did not sleep long for he recorded that they were on the move at 1.40am. They overcame all manner of technicalities (snow covered rock, technical rock climbing at grade IV and route finding difficulties) but did not reach the summit till 5.40pm – sixteen hours from their start time, and now possibly heading for an unplanned bivvy somewhere on the descent. They were tired, had to light their lanterns, experienced stone-fall and loss of morale: ‘Our behaviour became irrational, a failing I have noticed before when caught out late at night and very tired on a mountain. We lacked the energy and will to think

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out a logical way out of our difficulty. Kerr suggested to me that I should get out the map and guide book and study them but I said I was sure this would be no good.

My real reason was that the effort of taking my rucksack off and getting out the map and guide book seemed so burdensome that I could not face it Then we thought we would go across the Schalligletscher to a patch of rocks we had passed on our way up on the previous afternoon. But when we were half way across it seemed obvious that we were on the right line so we came back again only to find that we were wrong. We went up and down the top of the cliff again covering the same ground as before. At this point we began to look round for a suitable place to bivouac and with the light of the hut shining not so very far away I was reminded of an occasion during the previous season when the party of which I was a member under very similar circumstances had had to spend the night above the Géant icefall unable to find the way down in the dark and with the light of the Requin hut shining tantalisingly near. However, after one more excursion across the glacier we ultimately found our way round the bottom end of the rock wall and trudged across the remaining glacier and snow slopes more asleep than awake to arrive at the hut well after midnight. ’ The previous occasion when they were actually benighted was described in ‘Two Nights in the Alps’.

Dawn from high on the Dom. Weisshorn on right (Schaligrat is left hand ridge); also right to left Schalihorn, Zinal Rothorn, and Dent Blanche far left.

Photo John Allen

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Geoffrey and his group descended the left hand skyline late in the day, finishing in the dark after starting before 2.00am on the other side of the mountain.

After this minor epic the party needed to rest. They were neither downhearted nor depressed by their performance on the Weisshorn. Geoffrey wrote: ‘Two days later, having thoroughly slept off this adventure, we went up to the Schönbühl (sic) hut bent on further conquests’.

Their plans still shone with enthusiasm in the time available for further climbs during the latter stages of their holiday. Geoffrey was probably in his prime as an alpinist; age thirty nine, two weeks into a strenuous climbing holiday started immediately after the end of his second year as Headmaster in July 1951, he was still looking forward to a grand climax in the last days of the holiday. He had worked out that if everything was to go to plan (ie the weather obliged with favours), they could traverse the Dent Blanche (4356m, 14,293ft) by its east ridge, the Viereiselgrat, with descent by the normal route, the south ridge; and then traverse the Matterhorn (4477m, 14,690ft) by the Zmutt ridge, with the descent by the normal route, the Hörnli ridge; all this beginning at the Schönbühl (aka Schönbiel) hut. The grand finale was of course to be the Matterhorn.

The wind now blew from the south, resulting in doubtful weather with cloud swelling up from Italy. They left the hut at 2.30am and during the course of their ascending they seem to have decided on the south ridge via the Wandfluh, thus abandoning the Viereiselgrat traverse. They reached the summit of the Dent Blanche out of the clouds some time before 11.00am. The weather then turned nasty with strong head wind and blinding snow. They made good progress, and the snow turned to rain as they descended, with rain and snow for the rest of the evening at the hut. This put paid to their plan for the Zmutt ridge on the Matterhorn next day.

With four days of climbing holiday remaining, they were still keen to climb high and far, so evolved a plan that would include the Matterhorn by the Hörnli (normal) ridge but not before they had kept themselves active from the Schönbiel hut. In the now unsettled weather next day they traversed to the Mountet hut over the Pointe de Zinal (3791m, 12,437ft) and were caught in a violent thunderstorm late in the day.

Hail ran off the slopes ‘as if somebody was pouring countless gallons of milk down it.’ Wet slushy snow on an ice slope caused them all to slip but arrest each other’s falls with the rope.

As night began to fall they kept the hut in sight ahead, but ‘we were wet through in the pouring rain, and inky darkness, making our way down a strange glacier towards a hut we could not see, vivid flashes of lightning showing up the glacier every few seconds. Looking back, it was the most memorable experience of the holiday.’ Ultimately they reached the hut and a hot meal.

‘We still had this fixation about climbing the Matterhorn,’ Geoffrey wrote. Earlier he had written, ‘It is a pity that the Matterhorn has such a reputation with nonclimbers. We all felt, I think, that whatever happened we must reach the top of this peak if only to retain any standing with our non-climbing friends. As a result all

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our subsequent movements were coloured by the efforts to give ourselves a chance to “do” the Matterhorn.’

He did not sleep well that night, worried about how they could squeeze it in. They needed to get back to Zermatt and up to the Hörnli hut, despite the doubtful weather.

He devised a route over a col north of the Trifthorn and this was agreed for the day.

Waist deep snow did not stop them over the Col du Mountet and they descended past the Rothorn hut to Zermatt. They were now in a position to strike for the Hörnli hut next day and their last climb.

Matterhorn from Colle Superiore della Cima Bianche (2882m), June 2011. The Hörnli ridge climbed by Geoffrey and his party in 1951 is the right-hand skyline.

Photo John Allen

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On the way there they were dismayed by the ‘large number of other people’ who seemed to share their good idea of climbing the Matterhorn. The tragedy of Whymper’s first ascent party in 1865 and the spectacular profile of the mountain have created its popularity with tourists, wannabe climbers and genuine climbers alike. ‘Was this the way to climb the Matterhorn for the first time?’ he wrote. On arrival they got on the wrong side of the guardian by putting rucksacks on bed spaces prematurely. He told them that there might not be space at all for them in the hut.

As a result, they enquired of accommodation at the so-called hotel next door and got ‘two very small double beds, for which we had to pay an exorbitant price.’

Meanwhile Geoffrey and Alan Imrie spent two hours in reconnaissance of the route for the morning, so as not to get lost in the dark. When they asked the time of early morning calls, the management was ambivalent. ‘Our cup of misery was full. There must have been 80 or more people all ready to climb the Matterhorn the next day…a gigantic Cook’s tour up the mountain and back again.’ They decided to ‘set off hours before the mob.’ Then, ‘We spent the night feverishly trying to remember to wake up …and eventually did so at 2.15am.

‘We crept out of the hotel boots in hand feeling like guilty absconding guests, but, though we went quietly we were not unobserved. We entered the hut to make ourselves a hot drink and there a few minutes later were caught red-handed by the guardian, trying to light his precious stove. He was highly indignant…at 3.15 we set off.’ ‘No wind, rather warm.’ ‘Warm’ in the Alps generally presages poor weather.

They took three hours to reach the Solvay hut (a survival shelter close to the summit) with no special difficulty. ‘The rocks were covered by new snow so we had to make our own route. There were no signs of the scratched rocks with which the route is allegedly covered. Above the hut at once we got to the real thing. The rocks were covered with verglas… Imrie had decided to wear his Vibrams and we had all left crampons behind. Imrie’s feet slipped about alarmingly.’

Alan Imrie ‘led the way with great skill over rocks which increased in treacherous difficulty… Icicles formed round our beards and eyebrows…Above the shoulder the ice on the rocks was considerably thicker and we were able to chip out small steps.’

And, ‘When we reached the fixed ropes above the shoulder we made unashamed use of them.’ The angle of the mountain then lessens to a path, on this occasion obliterated, with deep snow now well above their knees and wind blowing in their faces. ‘At last after seven hours climbing we reached the summit’ in thick mist.

He adds a quirky personal perspective at this point. ‘I dare say you think it odd that we should have persisted in climbing this mountain in a thick fog, but to the uninitiated I suppose it would appear only that some mountaineers are a little madder than others. Actually to me it only added to the mysterious charm of the mountain…..and now on the Matterhorn it seemed as if the mountain had mocked the tourist climbers and only admitted us into her secret.’

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After half an hour on the summit, they set off down. Their tracks had disappeared.

They lost the route, returned to the summit, found the topmost fixed rope and ‘abseiled down most of the way to the Solvay hut.’ Thereafter there were no incidents and they returned to the Hörnli hut far below where the fog had remained as thick as ever.

No other party had left the hut that day. The guardian would only believe that they had reached the Solvay hut, and not the summit. Other by-standing climbers appeared to believe the guardian, to the extent that our tired group of four was happy to get away without asserting themselves or arguing.

‘I could not stand the place any longer,’ wrote Geoffrey. It was dark when they reached the rain-swept streets of Zermatt, several hours later. ‘We found a restaurant and went in. It was full of horribly clean people eating food. Dirty, tired and bearded we were shown to a table well out of sight round a corner and we ate thankfully what was put before us. Then we took to the road again. Our first resolute purpose to walk right down to Randa soon weakened and we turned into a hay barn within half a mile of Zermatt. It was damp and draughty and rather cold, but the hay smelt of flowers and we slept with the sound of the river in our ears, feeling content that we had, at last, reached the real Switzerland again.’

Genuinely stirring stuff with memories to envy. I am sure all of us who have done any strenuous mountaineering either in the UK or elsewhere will recognise much of the above, especially the feelings of fatigue and interminable yearning to reach the Weisshorn hut in the dark, and trudging more asleep than awake, and being too tired to argue and present an assertive front to a crowd that doubted their Matterhorn ascent, and the restaurant: ‘… full of horribly clean people eating food.’

The plainness of language intensifies the raw meaning in these few words, written when the vivid memory returned through the pen. The self-imposed physical exertions, mental concentrations and privations of a near starvation diet during a hard sixteen hour day over the Matterhorn are presented at the restaurant door in their unwashed state, happy to be segregated from the apparently idle, sweetsmelling, well-heeled and well-fed tourists of Zermatt. I know many mountaineers who can empathise with all that. He concluded, ‘We did ultimately succeed so that perhaps the bogy is now laid and we can go back and climb the mountain properly one of these days.’

And ‘climb the mountain properly one of these days’ must have burned in his mind, because…..well……wait and see. Read on.

This description of their ascent of the Matterhorn, in fact the whole article, reflects so many of the real aspects of Alpinism that it reads as a model of experience for future aspirants, who needs must set themselves into their own style, and purposefully ignore others around them, yet acknowledging alternative options and being wary of potential pitfalls. Their strength of character and effort carried them above and beyond the followers of ordinary climbing.

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Their Matterhorn climb was quite typical of their whole holiday of climbing, a repetition of the mountaineering ethos they had practised earlier on the Alphubel, Weisshorn, Dent Blanche and elsewhere. It was here while ascending to and at the Hörnli hut that they met up with others challenging for the same climb, potentially time wasters that cause delay at bottlenecks. Geoffrey’s party knowingly set themselves apart from the herd of other would-be climbers by following their own instincts and convictions of attitude, behaviour, reconnaissance, early rising, speed, handling conditions of rock, ice, snow, cloud and wind; and safe descent. After a tough day on the mountain, it made for a long day to go all the way down to Zermatt, even with the beckoning of a meal and sleep in the hay.

On a first visit to the high peaks around Zermatt, they had everything to go for. They climbed eight peaks, six of which were over the magic 4000m mark (13,125ft) in a period of three weeks, a considerable achievement even by today’s standards. They seemed to have caught the mountains in a normal summer, ie with some settled weather, and unsettled periods through which they persevered and managed a full programme by dint of understanding the possibilities in advance and making the best of conditions. They were in their prime, fit and quickly became acclimatised to altitude. It was probably Geoffrey’s best climbing season to date and must have been hugely satisfying.

The article in full was printed in the Alpine Journal Vol LVIII, November 1952.

11. In the Alps 1953 – the Bernese Oberland Despite limited information about this trip, there is enough to realise that it must have been one of the best. Geoffrey hired Villa Tyndall above Belalp (2137m, 7,011ft), high above the Rhône valley above Brig. As an introduction to the Alps for impressionable young people, or indeed anyone, it could hardly have been bettered.

Trevor Braham (author of ‘When the Alps Cast their Spell’, publ 2004, The In Pinn) writing in 1993, ‘The great charm of Belalp is its relative isolation which has enabled it to preserve an atmosphere of unspoilt beauty so rarely found nowadays in an alpine resort. Once considered difficult of access, Belalp can today be reached by motor road from Brig via Naters and Blatten 1322m. At Blatten a cable car transports summer visitors (and winter skiers) in 15 minutes….But a much more interesting approach from Blatten village is along narrow well-worn tracks through rich mostly conifer forest….A single foot-track stretches across the alp from west to east providing a panoramic terrace facing south….the only major building in the area, the Belalp Hotel.’ The alpine wildness of Belalp had appealed strongly to John Tyndall, so that he got permission to build a villa on the Lusgen meadow above Belalp. He considered this to be the ‘most beautiful view in the Alps.’ Tyndall was a noted scientist (he succeeded Michael Faraday as Superintendent of the Royal Institution), benefactor of the villages of Naters and Blatten, and first to traverse the Matterhorn from Breuil to Zermatt (1868). This villa became the holiday reserve in 1953 of Geoffrey Ferris Dixon, his family and friends.

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Back row: Chris Ineson, Neil Booth, Oliver, Billy Janvier, Bob Davidson. Seated: Donald Ross, Nancy, Geoffrey, Alasdair Kerr. Front row: Stephen, Paul. At Belalp, Villa Tyndall, 1953.

Photo Dixon archives

Oliver didn’t see the holiday quite the same way as Geoffrey and went off cycling. ‘It was a very inconvenient and inaccessible location. A postbus service only went as far as Blatten from which it was a good two hour walk uphill to the villa. There was only a rucksack lift for heavy goods, no cable car. I took little part in the climbing activities of the majority of the party, being much more interested in going off on cycling trips, but I did join one expedition over the mountains behind Belalp and then down the Grosser Aletsch glacier, staying overnight at the Konkordia hut, dramatically situated at the confluence of glaciers at the Konkordiaplatz.’

Oliver later admitted to his personal cycling effort on that trip. He cycled over the Simplon Pass on an ordinary sports bike with a three speed hub gear – the same kind of bike that I got from my parents for passing the eleven plus in order to attend the grammar school. The more modern derailleurs were still a thing of schoolboy wonder and admiration in 1953. It was his first and last Alpine pass. However, in

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fact Oliver had already asserted his own independence on this trip. Curious as to how he had his bike on this holiday, I found out that he had ridden it much of the way, namely Southport to Newhaven in three days, and Dijon to Brig in a further three days. And all this with three others including Neil Booth, son of a former history teacher at KGV. The whole group consisted of Geoffrey, Nancy, Oliver, Stephen, Paul, Alasdair Kerr (a dental officer at Sandhurst while GFD was there – see 1956 trip to follow), Donald Ross (a regular army officer, possibly known from the Sandhurst days and companion on the ‘Two Days in the Alps’ expedition – see earlier), Bob Davidson (exKGV), two KGV pupils namely Neil Booth and Chris Ineson, and a friend from Oliver’s school, Billy Janvier.

Did Geoffrey hope to train up his offspring and contemporaries as mountaineers?

Parents who do this simply seem to overdose them into future rejection of mountaineering – at least in part – perhaps it’s a matter of degree. Sons, or daughters for that matter, generally do get the point about the outdoors, but don’t necessarily want to partake with the same intensity as their parents.

The Aletsch glacier from above Märjelesee towards the Konkordia hut in distance.

Photo John Allen

The party walked up the Grosse Aletsch glacier to the Konkordia hut. Oliver is clear that no peaks were climbed from the hut on that occasion. They returned down the glacier to Belalp. It is certainly a long glacier walk from Belalp, and days out from the Konkordia hut can also be long and arduous. I can speak from personal experiences of several mountain excursions hereabouts, having myself been to the summits of all in the Bernese Oberland over 4000m.

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It is the November edition of the Alpine Journal for 1953 that provides the most significant material about Geoffrey’s 1953 Belalp holiday. Under his own name GF Dixon as contributor, two ascents were recorded, the Nesthorn (here abridged) and Point 3,675 (here unabridged): ‘The Nesthorn (3,824m) By the south-east ridge from the Unterbachhorn, August 11, 1953. AC Kerr, D Ross and GF Dixon.

‘The party left Belalp at 2am and gained the east ridge of the Unterbachhorn, via the small Unterbachhorn glacier, at 6am……rather poor rock…..at the Unterbachjoch the rock changes to an excellent red granite, and the ridge rises very steeply…four formidable towers…..instead of turning the third and fourth towers close to the ridge on the north east a shallow couloir was crossed and a subsidiary ridge was climbed for about 350ft until the main ridge was rejoined. This rib gave excellent climbing on magnificent rock and may not have been done before. Above this point the ridge was followed, giving sound, steep and exposed climbing to the summit. Times – Left Belalp 2.00am, Unterbachhorn 7.00am….summit of Nesthorn 2.00pm, return to Belalp 8.30pm.’

I now include an unabridged version of Geoffrey’s description of the party’s ascent of Pt 3,675 as printed in the AJ, November, 1953; unabridged because there is additional evidence that the description might be of a first ascent of a peak, and first ascents have always been a source of added distinction: ‘Pt 3,675 August 4, 1953. GF Dixon, AC Kerr, D Ross. Pt 3,675 is the most welldefined point on the ridge between the Geisshorn and the Aletschhorn, and from the Mittel-Aletsch glacier looks quite impressive. The ridge beginning at the snowy saddle to the north-west is of good granite and very sharp – the last hundred feet or so to the peak itself giving a good rock pitch – perhaps grade III. The summit is very small – a single piece of rock and there were no signs of previous visitors.

There is good climbing for 300-400ft along the ridge to the south-east of the summit including one small abseil which is probably not strictly necessary. Beyond this the quality of the rock deteriorates sadly towards the Geisshorn. We left the ridge here and made our way down rotten rock to the snow slope below.

The small glacier leading up to this peak from the Ober-Aletsch glacier appears to have no name. It is fairly heavily crevassed but quite negotiable. GF Dixon.

Note 1. We have been unable to trace any record of an ascent of this point and it may well be a first ascent – Editor, Alpine Journal, 1953.’

Geoffrey did not claim a first ascent, and my subsequent research in 2012 seems to show that this peak Pt 3,675 may well have been first ascended and traversed on 10 August 1892 by L Kurz and H Reickel with guides F Graf jnr and C Lauener (see ‘Bernese Oberland Selected Climbs’, L Swindin for the Alpine Club, publ 1993).

For the ascents described above on 4th and 11th August Geoffrey and friends would have made two separate visits to the Oberaletsch hut from their Tyndall Villa base at Belalp but only he, Alasdair Kerr and Donald Ross are included in his accounts of

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mountain ascents. The names of other people in the Belalp party are not included in ascents, but they probably entertained themselves on shorter, glacier excursions from the hut, not recorded. Geoffrey, Alasdair and Donald certainly got two rarely visited routes in the bag here.

12. Reflections on a pivotal year: 1953 1953 was Coronation year, when TV (in black & white) really began to influence our lives; Winston Churchill was knighted, a jet plane flew across the Atlantic non-stop west to east for the first time, the Russians and Americans were testing hydrogen bombs, Joseph Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev took over in Russia. For the first time in my life I began to think for myself, and to fear extinction by imminent nuclear war. This fear lasted for at least twenty years for many people.

1953 was also the year that a British team made the first ascent of Everest. This venture was largely organised by the Establishment (ie an organising committee from members of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society) and the team derived in the main from the old school of climbing (public schools and Oxbridge climbers), with notable exceptions, eg Alfred Gregory, Edmund Hillary. In a broad sense Geoffrey also was a member of the Establishment and public school system. In his case as a boy he had been educated in the public school (Worksop College) system, was science master at Uppingham, and while at Sandhurst joined the Alpine Club in 1948, proposed by HH Hardy, Director of Studies at Sandhurst.

He certainly could have cultivated friendships in the ‘best’ mountaineering circles.

Did Geoffrey miss out somewhere, in that he was an experienced Alpinist but had no experience of the greater ranges? Or did he shy away from social mountaineering, that of mixing with like-minded climbers at home-based events at the Alpine Club’s address in South Audley Street in London? His academic background, military connections and alpine climbing record would have enabled him to blend seamlessly with the ‘in’ crowd. Had he ever met the active members of the Alpine Club such as Charles Evans, George Band, Hamish Nicol, Tom Bourdillon, John Hunt, Anthony Rawlinson or Roger Chorley? Could his association with Tom Peacocke have branded him as from the old school of traditional climbers? We will never know.

By taking up an appointment in Southport in 1949 he had removed himself from the centre of affairs, namely London. What we do know is that from 1949 while in England Geoffrey indulged his energies in his family and his school, driven by motivations that also in his own leisure time propelled him to the tops of mountains.

Once he had switched off from being Headmaster, and abroad from the UK, his 1950, 1951 and 1953 holidays in the Alps show us that his greater mountaineering career was still alive and well. What of subsequent years of Alpinism, if any?

We find that Geoffrey had begun to introduce rock climbing into the school where he was now Headmaster. Outdoor pursuits as we know them in education from the later twentieth century and beyond simply didn’t exist. From his earliest headmastership days he began by selecting choice specimens of proven physical

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stature and subjecting them to the rigours of rock climbing. That all sounds very arduous and privileging. The 1953 Belalp holiday was the first on which we find KGV boys in the Alps. His most significant climbing then was still with his old colleagues, Donald Ross and Alasdair Kerr, but quite possibly there was one young apprentice, ex-KGV prospect, namely Bob Davidson, who was about to step up to the higher level and join Geoffrey on his most yearned for ambition – the Zmutt Ridge on the Matterhorn.

The opportunity to pick one or two from his school and climb outwith the family group probably first offered itself in 1954 when he could venture again to the Alps.

Who were his companions on this holiday? The only certainty here in the recently discovered article is that he refers to ‘Bob’, and by a combination of deduction and surmise, I would like to think that it was Bob Davidson.

There is another mystery too. Did the participants climb only the Zmutt ridge during their holiday? Geoffrey does not refer to any other climb, except in passing, when writing ‘Alpine Roundabout’ - see later. He gives brief mention to the ‘Taeschhorn’ (aka Täschhorn), a fairly difficult 4000m mountain that lies opposite the Weisshorn, further down the Zermatt valley than the Matterhorn. Early in the article he does mention climbing an ‘easy neighbouring peak’, but omits to tell us its name, and possibly thus it might have been Mont Durand or the Pointe de Zinal from the Schönbiel hut. It would be very unusual for a pair of climbers to come to the Alps to do just this one route, the Zmutt Ridge, on a summer holiday visit. Most people do a training climb or so before aiming themselves at the real meat of an Alpine visit – witness Geoffrey’s first climb, the Alphubel, with Brian Howl at the start of their 1951 Zermatt venture, and later intention to try for the Zmutt.

Whatever other routes, if any, were attempted or not in 1954, Geoffrey chose only to write here about the Zmutt, an article discovered when Oliver Dixon was ‘clearing out the loft’ at my bidding in search of gems from his father’s climbing years. The article is a brilliant piece of vivid writing, full of the life of an Alpinist, passionate about his climbing and reliving an epic of survival under pressure. I include Geoffrey’s article in its entirety:

13. The Zmutt Ridge The Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn is one of the great climbs of the Alps and many ambitious climbing parties have it on their list to be done when opportunity permits. It is a very long climb and requires perfect weather conditions and usually only a few parties each year succeed in making the ascent. My party had been thwarted by the weather in 1951 and so we were all the more eager to attempt the climb this summer.

The Zmutt ridge forms part of the right hand skyline as one looks at the mountain from the famous Zermatt viewpoint. A gently sloping snow ridge leads to a steep indented rocky ridge flanked by an enormous overhanging wall on the left. The rocky ridge is followed until it abuts against the overhang. To avoid this impasse

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the climber makes a difficult excursion across the steep Tiefmatten face until the angle relents sufficiently to make further upward progress possible. This ascent leads to a sloping ledge, the famous “Galerie Carrel” which stretches across the whole face and allows a traverse back to the Zmutt ridge above the overhang. From here comparatively easy rocks lead to the summit.

We spent the previous day in climbing an easy neighbouring peak. We could view the Matterhorn in comfort from here but found it to be rather a demoralising sight.

Most mountains when viewed from a distance show some weaknesses and comparatively flat sections to comfort the timid but not so the Matterhorn. It is uncompromisingly steep and apparently unassailable from all sides. I remember seriously considering whether to suggest another mountain instead for the next day but the confident expression on the face of Bob, my climbing companion, shamed me into silence. Later in the day we inspected the route from close quarters and were more encouraged to see that at least the first part would obviously “go”.

That evening the hut guardian was rather amused to hear that we wanted to get up at 12.30 to start at 1 o’clock the next morning, but we did not intend to take any risk of benightment. However when the time came and guardian woke us it was only to see a wet grey mist outside. Reluctantly we agreed that the climb must be off under the circumstances and I went back to my blankets. However at 2 o’clock he woke us again to say that it was now fine and did we want to start? We decided that we might as well look at the first part of the climb in spite of the doubt about the weather and 2.30 saw us sleepily making our way down the rough moraine on to the glacier below the hut. Clouds were scudding across the sky from the south west and the air was too warm, forecasting soft snow knee deep or even worse on the mountain above – a correct forecast as things turned out.

All went well and we turned the base of the ridge on to the Tiefmatten Glacier and made our way up steep snow on the rocky slope which led to the snow ridge above.

Here we stopped for breakfast just as it was getting light. The weather was apparently getting no worse or so we persuaded ourselves and we pushed on. A long steep snow slope lay above the rocks and led to the snow ridge. The snow was atrocious, an apparently firm crust giving way under one’s full weight and we waded thigh deep gaining only a few inches with each step. It was most exhausting and we were glad after a prolonged struggle to reach some steep rocks near the ridge. These were too steep to be climbed direct and we had to cut steps up some steep ice. It was here that it started to hail and I remember making a decision to turn down the ridge and make our way back as soon as we reached it. But when we did eventually reach it the hail had stopped and I found myself going upwards. My excuse was that we could always turn back at the top of the snow ridge. We reached this point with no further trouble and had another breakfast to celebrate, though it was now not far short of noon.

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The Matterhorn from the summit of the Dent d’Hérens. The Zmutt is the left edge of the mountain.

Photo John Allen

Our subsequent race up the rocks to the overhang was uneventful and only enlivened by another heavier hail shower which left the rocks with a somewhat unpleasant covering of slush. Now was the moment of decision. Whatever happened we must not be caught in bad weather on the Tiefmatten face which under such conditions becomes exceedingly dangerous through falling stones.

However, the sun was now shining and the weather looked good enough for several hours although there were some nasty looking thunder clouds in the distance over Italy.

We decided to go on and for the next two hours were absorbed in difficult and interesting climbing up ice and smooth sloping rocks. Nothing fell down the face while we were on it except an incessant shower of small icicles loosened by the warm afternoon sun. We reached the final slope of the ridge and rather wearily made our way slowly up it. This, as we thought, was anti-climax. We little knew what the mountain had yet in store for us.

We reached the summit at 4 pm and passed the great crucifix on the Italian side and sat down on the Swiss summit surrounded by the orange peel and sardine tins left by the innumerable parties which climb the mountain every day by the usual route up the Hörnli ridge straight from Zermatt. We had glimpses of view between the clouds while above us the sky was clear. There was no sign of the thunderclouds.

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After another breakfast we set off downwards along the well marked route to Zermatt. The normal time to the hut at the foot of this ridge is about 4 hours so we could expect to reach it before dark. The easy snow slopes at the top went quickly and we took the first two fixed ropes which aid the climber up the steeper rocks just below.

Final part of the Zmutt Ridge before the Tiefmatten slabs.

Photo John Allen

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Then it suddenly started to snow hard. Within a minute the rocks were covered by deep slippery snow and it was running off in small avalanches down the steep sides. We put on crampons but we could only proceed at snails’ pace. The snow was so thick that it was impossible to tread with confidence until one had cleared the snow from each ledge and all traces of previous parties were of course completely obliterated. Our rope became coated with thick rime and was more like a hawser between us and seemed as difficult to handle. We struggled down the remaining fixed ropes and uncertainly on, making several false casts for the route. At last the iron stakes on the snow slope of the shoulder came into view. We welcomed these as showing us that we were at least still on the route.

By this time we had decided that we must spend the night in the Solvay Hut, the tiny cabin about 1500 feet below the summit which must only be used by climbers in distress. I had been this way only once before and remembered it as being just below the shoulder and immediately below a prominent tower on the ridge. Just then we saw a tower a short distance below and I felt sure that this must conceal the hut. We climbed carefully down the steep rocks and rounded the tower. There was no sign of any hut.

Hope gave place to despair. Though we had seen the hut that morning from the Zmutt ridge it had now apparently vanished. There was no sign of any other tower and I began to doubt the very existence of the hut. We went on much more slowly and uncertainly than before. Our hands were numb and we were soaked to the skin and were by now so tired that it required a positive effort to put one foot in front of another. ‘“What’s it like to bivouac under these conditions?” ‘“Not very pleasant” I replied.

What an understatement! We should have been half frozen even if the weather got no worse and it continued to snow as hard as ever. A smallish tower appeared ahead. I had no real hope of seeing the hut behind it but decided that I could just struggle on as far as that because there might be a little shelter to be found on its lee side. We fought our way ever more slowly onwards and at long last reached the top of the tower just as it was beginning to get dark. Bob climbed slowly down out of sight round its side and presently his voice came back.

“There’s an unnatural object of some sort round here.”

What curious use of language we employ when we are tired! He told me afterwards that he dare not trust himself to say that it was the roof of the hut in case it might suddenly vanish into thin air. But so indeed it was. We let ourselves painfully down the doubled rope as the rocks were so steep here that they were too difficult to climb down under such conditions. We entered the dark and smelly hut which was as welcome as any 4 star hotel to us.

The rest was food and sleep and a gloriously sunny morning to follow. Our adventure on the Matterhorn was over.’

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The Matterhorn from Riffelsee above Zermatt.

Photo John Allen

Not quite. They still had to descend from the Solvay hut at 4,000m to Zermatt at 1,600m – 2,400m (nearly 8,000ft) of descent; but that was for tomorrow.

Again he wrote of this experience at a later date (see later, ‘The 1955 Lecture’): ‘We were descending the Matterhorn last year rather late when a sudden snowstorm came on, catching us only about 500ft from the summit. Within two minutes the rocks were completely masked by snow which began trickling off them in a series of small avalanches. All landmarks were completely obliterated and visibility reduced to a few yards. Our pace was reduced to a crawl and we took five hours to reach

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the tiny Solvay hut half way down the ridge instead of the one hour we had expected.’

This Matterhorn experience had a deep and lasting effect. Writing this article about a year later with such clear recall indicated how it was engraved on his memory, probably with an appendix secretly attached, eg ‘we were lucky to get away with that one.’ Having been in the same position myself on mountains, and with dire consequences, I have little doubt that that these two guys were fighting to save themselves.

For us he has put it on paper, possibly never published or seen elsewhere (eg by family), and maybe for fear of allowing readers from the nonmountaineering world to condemn irresponsible behaviour of a respected Headmaster and family man; or to avoid a wife’s sharp tongue. Such vivid writing stemmed from the urgency and stress of finding the way under very difficult conditions, as also on the Weisshorn and Matterhorn in 1951. Some would say that there is a limited number of occasions on which you can escape more serious consequences if you continue to practice this level of commitment.

14. Climbing before the revolution in technical climbing equipment: 1950 - 1959

Geoffrey Dixon ready to climb. Photo Dixon archives

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This is a splendid photo of Geoffrey, apparently ready to begin a rock climb, taken after Geoffrey had given up active participation in the sport. Oliver Dixon thinks that it may have been deliberately posed later in life. But it does show the primitive nature of the climbing equipment in general use up to that time, and we are grateful for that pose. As novice rock climbers in the 1950s, this is as we knew him when out of school, out of his black gown, and military stance, and distanced from that corridor of power and authority that ran the length of the ground floor classrooms.

Until the early 1960s, and right from Victorian times in the mid-1850s, the only changes in equipment had been the rope (from hemp to nylon), and to boots (from nailed boots to ‘Commando’ Vibram rubber soled boots).

However, serious climbers were beginning to work on the design of equipment specially for rock climbing; in particular, the sit harness; metal mouldings (aka ‘nuts’) for fitting into cracks, threaded onto taped sling loops to protect the leader of a pitch; light-weight carabiners; and of course, helmets. Slender fitting rock boots (and plimsolls!) had already just made their mark (late 1950s) as most suitable for the more difficult climbs than the general mountain boots seen here.

The popularity specifically of rock climbing within the general scope of mountaineering meant that the young modern pioneers of ever more difficult climbs for first and early ascents were driving the obvious desire to survive a fall from a crux move at the limits of possibility. Though nylon has great elasticity, a fall by a leader with a rope around the waist, tied with a bowline knot as here, could break ribs and cause strangulation, despite the stretchiness that would cushion a sudden stop. A belayer holding a falling leader could also be badly injured if the mechanics of an unsound belay failed, or if rope handling techniques were poorly understood. In fact, special belay plates (‘Sticht’ plates) were invented for threading onto the belayer’s rope and the anchorage, and that revolutionised the technique of belaying from the old fashioned ‘over the shoulder’ technique of earlier times that was mechanically suspect.

In the late 1960s the ‘sit harness’ was invented by active pioneer climbers – a waist belt made from a webbing fabric, with two leg loops; this ensured increased safety and comfort in the event of a fall. The wearing of this along with connection to the nylon rope through the sticht plate and a mechanically improved belay system to the rock face revolutionised the rock climbing experience, and especially its safety.

Then there were ‘nuts’ – originally machined nuts removed from their bolts, with screw threads drilled out and each strung onto a tied loop of rope so that with an accompanying carabiner it could be wedged into a suitably sized crack and the leader’s rope clipped into the carabiner, as he proceeded, to limit the length of a leader fall. There followed a rapid development of dedicated, preferred mouldings of ‘nuts’, exquisitely shaped (eg the ‘moac’), and fitted onto taped, sewn, nylon slings and no longer knotted as in the photo. Later short wire slings and lightweight alloy carabiners were designed, tested and manufactured by specialist climbing entrepreneurs. The technique of frequently placing nuts for protection by the leader became truly sophisticated and enabled more difficult climbs by ‘average’ ability

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climbers as well as ‘experts’. Helmets – well the use of helmets is now obvious to us, and these were developed by climbers. Damage to the head in a climbing fall without a helmet is usually serious or fatal. But in the 1950s we never gave them a thought.

There were none anyway.

It is difficult for the modern climber to appreciate how pre-1960s climbers coped with the obvious dangers and risks. Quite simply they had a different mental attitude to them. ‘The leader must never fall off,’ was the common maxim. Note also that the leader was not a harum-scarum dare-devil prepared to take a chance, or to show off.

He knew what was at stake, felt the link with the team (quite literally on a rope), and kept a level head. On a climb where a rope was used, the leader had to be the most able climber, for the remainder had the security of the pull of the rope in front of them, if needed. The leader developed a tolerance to exposed positions, and could comfortably proceed on lengthy, unprotected leads. I know this because I did. I do wonder now how modern climbers can develop that sense of exhilarating comfort high above their last runner, looking forward to the next move without too much fear, and often highly motivated to succeed.

In the 1950s at KGV with Geoffrey we had none of the above paraphernalia that began to preoccupy rock climbers of the 1960s and onwards. In this matter of rudimentary equipment we were almost as much pioneer rock climbers as the Victorians, with a relaxed attitude to risk and safety, yet an alert awareness to consequences (ie a touch of controlled fear made for extra care and attention).Because we chose to take up rock climbing with Geoffrey, and inescapably followed his example, we learned as if by accident how to overcome difficulties, behave and function for our future survival in the world.

Members of the Old Georgian Mountaineering Club outside RLH

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15. Climbing with boys from the Upper school We have seen how Geoffrey kept up his personal climbing and mountaineering routine into his school Headship years, but now he also offered it to selected boys from the upper school. Even from 1950 the headache of World War 2 still hung over the general population (ration books, no widespread television viewing, foreign holidays were rare). Our Headmaster had privileged access to cheap accommodation in property in the Lake District and North Wales for short stays, via his association with the Climbers Club, and the Wayfarers Club based in Liverpool just down the road from Southport.

He would gather together self-selected pupils from the upper fifth and sixth forms and pit them against himself, testing their endurance of late finishes on days out in North Wales or the Lake District. Darkness, poor weather or both together were just part of the experience, as more than one ex-student can testify. Unplanned bivouacs occurred too. This was roughing it seriously.

By the time he was at KGV, his young family of three boys had got wise to this slightly eccentric and extended ‘after hours’ mountaineering, and did not themselves enthuse for more. Likewise staff at KGV, and boys, but they had to learn to handle him, and themselves to keep up with him, or fall by the wayside. All were impressed by his powers of leadership by enthusiastic example and durability under these selfimposed stresses. Climbing and mountaineering have no rules, except to survive; a bit like fighting a war, but surviving all the battles; and performed like sport, for fun, not necessity.

The mountaineering that we did while at school often included a long walk before a rock climb. We boys didn’t drive cars and so had to walk in order to reach some of the well-known rock buttresses. It was rather like nowadays with the ‘long walk in’ principle for Munros in Scotland; reminiscent too of the cross country runs on wet Wednesdays across the fields near KGV, but all day long. Remember them? When the playing fields were too muddy for afternoon rugby? Walking to Great Gable to rock climb on the Napes ridges from the Robertson Lamb hut (RLH) in Langdale was a bit like that, at forced march pace on controlled rations, lasting all day there and back, and with a heavy rucksack. Geoffrey himself could do all that himself and we were psyched into following, like lemmings. Or was it gerbils? The exercise wheel never seemed to stop.

John Gatiss adds, ‘The longest day we did was from the Robertson Lamb Hut, Langdale, to the Pillar, a round trip of 25 miles carrying rope etc for the climb. The most memorable climb was Napes Needle along the side of Great Gable, a blunt finger of rock made famous by the Abrahams, Photographers, Keswick.’

Geoffrey was the only climbing member of staff to have a car, as far as I remember, but even so it was a long drive to get to the celebrated rock climbing crags in the Lake District. North Wales was a bit different in that the Climbers Club huts, Helyg near Capel Curig, and Ynys Ettws in the Llanberis Pass, were both on the doorstep of recommended rock faces. I particularly remember hearing gossip there about the

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derring-dos of Joe Brown and friends in the Pass, and being frightened by the very thought of the severity of the climbs at the Very Severe grade and above, but found myself able to do some of them within the next ten years.

One of the week-ends at the end of the summer term featured a Falklands style attempt to walk over all the North Wales peaks over 3000ft in a single continuous yomp from the Pen y Pass Hotel to Aber on the North Wales coast. There are fourteen of these, spaced out over about twenty miles and crossed by two main roads at conveniently one third and two thirds along the twisting route. As I remember, parents would say goodbye to their sons on Friday afternoon, packed with goodies full of energy bars and sweets, and expect them back, some time. Geoffrey would have hired a vehicle to get the group to the start at the Pen y Pass hotel for the first scramble over the Snowdon group, beginning about 10.00pm on Friday. After the start boys would make their own pace, perhaps in sight of Geoffrey or another lucky member of staff, or perhaps not. On occasions when bad weather (rain, strong wind and heavy cloud, or even excessive heat) terminated these attempts before the finishing post, parents got their sons back early. But there were successes.

16. Tall Tales from Long Ago Almost immediately on appointment as Headmaster at King George V School, Southport, Geoffrey was introducing boys to rock climbing and mountaineering eg David Preston (1944 – 1952), Ken Edwardson (1945 – 1953), John Hyde (1947-1954), John Gatiss (1949-1956), Brian Gill (1949-1956), John Allen (1950 – 1957), Ken Milne (1952 – 1959), and staff member James Honeybone (1964 – 1970).

When Geoffrey moved to the unfamiliar soil of west Lancashire, it seemed that he had found a goldmine full of bright nuggets ready to be moulded into climbers, once they had reached the Sixth form and performed well on the athletics track or rugby field. Enter David Preston (1944 – 1952), who wrote the following piece, slightly adapted here from a Red Rose article: Ken Edwardson reminds me of an incident which occurred in about 1951 when Geoffrey Dixon and I were climbing in North Wales. It was one which I was never able to talk about when he was alive in case it would embarrass him.

As a pupil I never found Geoffrey the easiest of men to talk to, except that is when walking on and climbing a mountain. It was there away from our relative positions, when sometimes you depend on each other for your lives, that he showed a much gentler side to his character and a willingness to reveal his own vulnerability.

This particular week-end the two of us were staying at Helyg near Capel Curig.

Geoffrey had said that he thought that I should join the Climbers Club, pointing out that the then Club rules stated that ‘only genuinely strong candidates’ should be considered for membership. Naturally I felt quite pleased that he felt that I

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belonged to that category. So when he said that we were going to climb the Great Gully of Craig Yr Ysfa together I felt ready to show my mettle.

It was a long walk up to the foot of the gully but time went quickly and we began our ascent taking it in turns to lead. Unfortunately when I was following, we came to a chockstone in a cave (as I remember). I handled it so badly that I came off.

This wouldn’t have been a big deal if the leader had been belayed; but he wasn’t, and my falling had pulled Geoffrey’s head forward onto a rock. Clearly he was in trouble for, when I eventually reached him, blood was pouring down his face from a nasty gash in his temple and he was somewhat dazed.

I can’t remember how long it took us to get back to Helyg. But with the headmaster’s arm around my shoulder and a bloody handkerchief around his head we must have looked like soldiers coming out of the trenches. Fortunately the gash was not too deep and the next day we drove back home where he could get some treatment.

The next week at school I was subject to (I hope) joking comments from some members of staff suggesting that ‘could have made a better job of it’ – which even then I thought rather unprofessional.

From that day Geoffrey never offered any criticism of my climbing efforts; in fact he went ahead with his proposal for membership of the Climbers Club which I joined in 1952. Nor did he ever mention the incident again.

But each summer when he got a little sun-tanned, a white scar on his forehead revealed itself to remind him – and me – of an incident which had brought us together and which only we could share.

Now enter Ken Edwardson (1945 – 1953) – The Old Georgians Mountaineering Club: ‘Less than two years after joining the KGV staff, Geoffrey Dixon invited selected senior boys to join with him and enjoy rock climbing in the hills of Wales and the Lake District and beyond. I was never quite sure of the criteria he used to invite us.

My personal experience was when, on one lunchtime, he found me suspended by my arms from the central part of the metal roof supports in one of the classrooms. “I will see you in my office at four o’clock,” he said and left. At the appointed hour I presented myself, expecting either a Saturday morning or six of the best. Instead, he asked me to accompany him on his next climbing trip in North Wales.

Never having been on a mountain, let alone climb one, it was an experience never to be forgotten. We stayed at Ynys Ettws , a climber’s hut down the Llanberis Pass.

John Hyde and I joined Geoffrey to attempt a climb known as ‘The Parson’s Nose’ on Clogwyn y Ddysgl. It was here that we learned the rudimentary skills of rock climbing. On the same afternoon John and I were told to climb Crib Goch Buttress.

Taking turns at leading alternate pitches, somehow or other we succeeded without coming to grief. From then onwards we were captivated by the sport.

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I will always remember my first night in a climbing hut. I think it was Helyg, near Capel Curig, North Wales. Rows of bunks, an upper and lower layer – canvas supported on scaffold poles – the sudden rude awakening of GFD’s voice, “Come on, get up!” as he prodded the underside of the bunk with an ice-axe. Then the statutory breakfast of ‘brose’ - a pile of dry oatmeal topped with a knob of butter, perhaps sugar and then made sodden with boiling water. It was traditional.

On one heavy rainy winters night Peter Brunt and myself were being driven by GFD in his large Humber saloon to Cerrigydrudion. The road was dark and the car lights not of the best. We soon became aware of a soft bump on the front nearside mudguard. We had hit a fellow on his way home from the pub. His coat sleeve had been caught and ripped off by the side light. He was on the ground, but fortunately unharmed. I think the alcohol content had lowered his pain threshold! We picked him up – no injuries were discovered. He was not at all worried. Geoffrey apologised and offered him ten shillings for the damage to his jacket – and with that we drove off to the valley.

Helyg, the Climbers Club hut near Capel Curig in 2012.

Photo John Allen

In those early days, nylon was just being introduced to the world. We used hemp ropes, which would absorb water and double in weight. Our boots were shod in iron clinkers and tricounis. Vibram soles had not been invented. Nobody wore helmets and in Britain, the use of pitons was considered to be cheating! On climbs that had very small holds, the use of tennis shoes was allowed, hence “the tennis

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shoe climb” on the Idwal slabs. During those climbing meets, long and lasting friendships were developed, and continued long after leaving school.

In 1953 Peter Brunt and I decided that we should still continue to enjoy such companionship after leaving school, so we formed “The Old Georgians Mountaineering Club” – known as OGMC. Geoffrey Dixon agreed to be the President, and we would act as Chairman and Secretary. A small fee was required on joining to cover costs such as postage, guide books and other items. Peter was a member of both The Wayfarers and the Fell and Rock Clubs, and I was a member of the Climber’s Club. This gave us access to all the climbing clubs in Britain.

In the early days we held a minimum of three meets a year – at New Year, Easter and summer. Membership rapidly increased amongst both boys who had already left KGV by 1953 and others who left later. Often GFD was invited to join us, which he did with great enthusiasm.

Ynys Ettws, the Climbers Club hut in the Llanberis Pass in 2012, with Dinas Cromlech behind.

Photo John Allen

‘There were times we would meet in Glencoe or Skye. Being impecunious students, our only mode of travel was hitch-hiking – the motorways had yet to be built. On average, it took us three hours to travel from Southport to the Lake District or to the North Wales valleys. Skye was two days, camping overnight. One year , when Geoffrey was holding a climbing meet in the French Alps, Neil Booth cycled all the way there, climbed for two weeks, and cycled back again.

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A few years after we left KGV, the school purchased what had been the Isolation Hospital for the town of Sedbergh. This was a fine Victorian edifice nestling at the foot of the Howgill Fells, and was converted by members of the staff into a hostel and field studies centre. Having been offered use of the building during the winter, we enjoyed many happy days walking and climbing in the Howgills.

Many years have passed, but we still meet each winter to walk in the high fells.

Last February we had our 55th winter meet in Borrowdale. Nine of us experienced the splendid days on the hills and the excellent food and drink at the Scafell Hotel.

We usually meet in early February, and Old Georgians are always welcome to join us.’

Now for a tale from John Hyde (1947 – 1954): ‘Geoffrey Dixon was a person I did not warm to during my time at KGV. It was only afterwards that I began to appreciate the enormous debt of gratitude I owed him. He literally changed the course of my life by summoning me, and telling me that I was not putting my back into my school work, sport, or life in general. He told me to change my attitude and start contributing to the school. He was going to keep an eye on me. I was shaken like a bolt of lightning from the Almighty. It worked. I made it to Head Boy in 1953/4.

Quite separately the Boss encouraged me to join his rock climbing trips to North Wales and the Lake District. On the first trip he decided that Ken Edwardson and I could climb the Milestone Buttress on Tryfan, as a pair while he and others watched from below. As I was leading on a pitch I managed to get my foot firmly stuck in a crevice.

I solved the problem, stupidly and dangerously, by undoing my boot, taking my foot out, and recovering the boot whilst holding on precariously with one hand.

Many years later at one of the ODG dinners he said to me, ‘Hyde, I will always remember that idiotic incident with your boot. At the time I could see my whole career in ruins, with responsibility for a tragic climbing accident.’

(ODG: initial letters of the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel, famous hotel at the end of the Langdale valley- Editor) David Preston was not the only boy to get ‘practice’ in falling off while rock climbing on a school outing. While I was climbing with other boys, I had two experiences of my own. The first was when we were staying at RLH in Langdale but went to Dow Crag to climb. I know this is correct because fifty odd years later I was reminded of it

by Peter Cockshott, a near contemporary of Oliver Dixon at Merchant Taylors, Crosby, who sometimes accompanied the KGV party.

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Tryfan, with Milestone buttress bottom right.

Photo John Allen

I was climbing with my classmate Bill Brookfield on Abraham’s route on ‘B’ Buttress and Bill fell off while leading while I held the rope as second at the belay ledge. I don’t remember much of a pull from his weight suddenly transmitting through the rope to me. I think he was out of my sight, so probably the rope got caught over a projection that saved me from the main stress of a direct pull. He was a bit chastened by the experience and retreated.

Next day Peter and I found ourselves on ‘A’ route (I think) on Gimmer Crag where I fell out of Amen Corner while leading, and landed not far below directly on the ledge.

No harm done, except being dumped on the ground and feeling rather foolish. Peter remembered this better than I – perhaps I had deliberately forgotten it!

Geoffrey had started me rock climbing with a KGV party at Helyg, probably in November 1955. My first experience was with him leading the rope of two of us up a route on Tryfan called Gashed Crag. Next day was more serious. He chose to take us all up Great Gully on Craig Yr Ysfa, which I now know he had done previously (with David Preston).

The whole school party of about six, including a new member of staff, George Ellison the Latin teacher, straggled up the long ridge and over the col to the foot of this gloomy north facing and slimy place. In November (possibly the October half-term) daylight is short and the climb is long, so by mid-afternoon not much daylight filtered through to the cave pitch at the top, where we could just begin to feel rain.

No-one could work out how to get out of the cave. I know I feared the worst – a night out on a bare, no, a cold, slimy, wet, dark mountain. Then a boy called Bob Charter

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cracked the problem and we all slithered and scraped and teetered on and across a slippery wall to the outdoors and heaven – a bare mountain with rain. In the dark no-one can see both how miserably damp you feel and yet elated at having your life back. We stumbled back to Helyg, each with his own thoughts.

George Ellison leading in search of the route; no helmet, no runners, rope tied simply round waist.

Photo KGV archive

On another occasion we walked from RLH to and from Great Gable where lies the Napes Needle, which we climbed. After that Geoffrey teamed himself with me for Eagles Nest Ridge Direct. When it came to the crux pitch he gave me the sling and the carabiner, saying that they were to belay with at the top. So off I climbed in my school gym shoes, got to the top and belayed. Obviously I had complete trust in his judgement that I should lead this pitch, and I don’t remember thinking twice about it. However, I had no protection gear other than the hawser laid no 3 nylon rope which stretched to the top from Geoffrey’s belay for 70ft (23m). I have recently read that the modern grading is Mild Very Severe, 4a. Twenty five years later as an regular rock climber in 1981, I led the pitch again and could agree with the established grade. I found it hard to protect and testing – a quality pitch, MVS, 4a.

Brian Gill (1949 – 1956) now recalls the early days of the ‘Thornley Society’ with adventures above and below ground. Geoffrey was probably as enthusiastic about caving as about climbing, as Brian’s tale below will reveal. Apparently limited opportunities in Europe for caving, where he could practice Alpinism, may well have focused his attention above ground there. The Thornley Society was the name Geoffrey gave to the school group that seemed to form randomly around his personal selection of boys for rock climbing trips. Of Thornley’s earlier life see later in chapter

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16, and the nature of his last expedition as described in volume 16 of the Himalayan Journal (1950).

Brian Gill now writes, with the title of Colin Kirkus’ book in my mind, and begins: Let’s go climbing!

I went to KGV in 1949 when Geoffrey Dixon was the newly appointed head. I remember him telling us that in his opening remarks at the first assembly, but until my fifth year I knew him only as a somewhat remote and certainly forbidding black gowned figure standing in the school corridors at break and between lessons. By his presence he instantly calmed the turbulent waves of boys leaving classes into a silent tide which quietly divided with averted eyes past his rock like figure. We called him Dracula.

So when Geoffrey came to teach us physics in the fifth year he came to us almost as a stranger and we were cautious. His teaching was formal rather than inspirational but we quickly realised as exams approached that his notes were sound. I certainly began to feel safe with him and half way through the year went to see him to ask if I could drop out of music ‘O’ level where I was having a miserable time with a teacher I couldn’t get on with. He refused my request of course telling me in effect to stop feeling sorry for myself and get on with it! I was hearing his philosophy for life, and for the hill of course, but it was sound advice. I stuck it out and passed.

Unknown, in a tight situation.

Photo KGV archive

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When the chance of a rock climbing trip in the Lakes at Easter was mentioned I was one of a number of eager volunteers. As it turned out we all took to Geoffrey’s approach to rock climbing and mountaineering like ducks to water and a year or so later we became the sixth form nucleus around which the Thornley Society was fashioned. I kept a diary of that week which I have long since lost, but as soon as I could afford to buy the FRCC guides to the Lakes I transferred entries into them.

One in particular typifies that week and my experience. (FRCC = Fell and Rock Climbing Club - Editor) The route was Scafell Pinnacle – High Man via Steep Ghyll and Slingsby’s Chimney – 335 feet. Moderately Difficult’ (Editor’s note: I have gone back to my own orange/brown hard back copy of the original FRCC guidebook of that era and confirm my pencilled entry of my own ascent in 1958 in the margin). Against it I have written “Easter 1954 with G.F. Dixon and J.K. Grundy. Howling gale, icy rocks, numb fingers. How is it I enjoy this?” Everything about that seems to illustrate what Geoffrey stood for. A mountaineering route and not too difficult, though the exposed, polished and overhanging Slingsby’s Chimney on the North Face of Scafell is never a push-over; and before it, as complete novices remember, we had been led up Bowfell Buttress after an Alpine start from Langdale on a rough breakfast of porridge oat ‘brose’ and after the climb the descent of Broad Stand, which nobody does these days, and the trek back to Langdale down Rossett Ghyll in fading light, a ride in Geoffrey’s Humber from the Old Dungeon Ghyll, then a sit by the fire in the Robertson Lamb Hut, supper and tales of the wild. No wonder we loved it. It was part of the new world of experience which Geoffrey’s grammar school opened up for us. This was what ‘men’ did! How privileged we were!

Geoffrey with KGV Tony Whitehead, John Gatiss, Brian Gill and another with rope Photo KGV Archive

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My other climb with Geoffrey that week was the more technically challenging ‘B’ route on Gimmer with John Gatiss. I think I can still hear Geoffrey whistling to himself as he made the entry to Green Chimney above Amen Corner. He used to say that whistling helped him think on the difficult bits but I am inclined to the view that it was his way of savouring the moment; an expression of relaxation, confidence and enjoyment.

My other climbing companions that week were our sixth from mentors Ken Edwardson and Denis (?) Dandy, and from our year, Bob Charter. We did Little Gully on Pavey Ark and the Needle Ridge on Gable. I also have a memory of a walk over Crinkle Crags in foul weather and deep cloud with Ken Edwardson and Peter Brunt navigating. I was convinced they were taking us down into the Duddon valley but they had the compass and thankfully they were right. My family will never let me forget the occasion many years later when even with the compass in my hands we found ourselves on the wrong side of Dow Crag heading for the Duddon! I am sure I offered them Geoffrey’s advice to stop feeling sorry for themselves and just get on with it of course but unsurprisingly they were not receptive!

We made return visits to the RLH in Langdale the following year. Geoffrey had said that the time was right to form the Thornley Society as an exclusive climbing club. We felt very tough and privileged but on one occasion at least we weren’t able to meet the alpine standards of endurance and determination which was Geoffrey’s aspiration for us.’

Bob Charter on end of rope.

Photo KGV archives

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One cold Easter day we had set off to do a long rock climb near the summit of Bowfell. It took about three hours to walk to the foot of our climb but by midmorning Geoffrey had roped up and led off. By the time we had got to Bowfell summit it was about two o’clock. Geoffrey’s party had eaten lunch and he pointed across the top of Eskdale to the Scafell range in the distance. “Finest crags in England on Scafell! Worth a look! Only a couple of hours! We should make it back before dark. You follow!” With disbelief we watched him disappear as the skies darkened.

In the gathering gloom we debated the attraction of looking for the finest crags in England in a blizzard, and headed for the valley. Our misgivings grew with every downward step. We knew that the fury of the storm would be as nothing compared with Geoffrey’s mood when he returned. Hour upon hour we waited as we pictured Geoffrey on the summit of Scafell Pike wondering where we had got to; and then walking the long miles back to base in the dark. We were consumed with guilt. The least we could do was prepare supper and Bob Charter had the idea of making a gigantic meat and potato pie, crowned with a pair of horns protruding from the crust. About half past eight the door burst open and out of the night a very wet Geoffrey and his two companions marched in. Geoffrey gave us a thunderous look and strode to the settle by the fire. Later he took his place at the head of the table, still silent, and with trepidation we set the enormous ‘cow pie’ before him. He stared stonily for a moment and we waited. Then, examining the pastry horns, he shook his head slowly, smiled and raised his eyes to meet ours. We were forgiven. We didn’t let him down again and we would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

Bob Charter climbing inside the Helyg roof.

Photo KGV archives

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We followed him to Helyg and Ynws Ettws in North Wales and made two attempts on the Welsh 14 peaks. My own passion for climbing grew and I got better at it but as I look back at this period with the hindsight of my own life experience as a benchmark Geoffrey’s energy, determination and commitment to us amaze me. And amongst this he also found the time to introduce us to caving and the delights of exploration underground.

How thoroughly evocative of that period, Brian! The ‘Cow Pie’ tale referred to Desperate Dan, the unbelievably tough comic strip character of the ‘Dandy’ comic paper. Dan’s pies had a complete cow with its horns poking out of the crust.

Brian continued, Into the depths Where and how Geoffrey had acquired his experience and love of pot-holing I don’t know. (Oliver Dixon says that they did some pot-holing as a family, firstly in the Mendips from Sandhurst, and in Yorkshire - Editor) As a member of the Climbers Club Geoffrey was certainly part of a network in which caving developments would be discussed. The Wayfarers Club for instance which had close links with the Climbers Club and owned the Robertston Lamb Hut had always embraced caving as an activity. There is no doubt that Geoffrey had caving experience and in the early Thornley Society days it became evident that he was well aware of the important discoveries that were being made in the Lancaster Hole - Easegill Caverns system on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. Several of our expeditions in the mid-fifties were devoted to trying to rediscover the underground link between these systems. It was genuine exploration and we and Geoffrey were captivated by it.

I remember first an introductory trip to Alum Pot. This is a spectacular open chasm two hundred feet deep which sits on the flank of Ingleborough above Ribblehead. To descend it directly requires a lot of expensive ladder equipment but it is normally entered by a side system of caves – the Long Churn system through which a stream flows which debouches into Alum pot some way below the surface.

Splashing our way for half a mile or so down the Long Churn stream was adventure enough for us as we tried out our newly acquired miners helmets and acetylene lamps. At this time I don’t think the society had the rope ladder equipment to complete the descent and getting hold of ladders to tackle more serious caves was obviously an important budgetary issue. As the head of the school Geoffrey must have had access to a substantial budget but he was clearly constrained by his responsibility to other school activities and he shared that perception with us. We did eventually acquire a number of lengths of rope ladder made of 2 inch hemp rope with 12 inch wooden rungs spliced into the hemp. They were bulky and heavy and hauling them through narrow twisting cave passages to get to the pitches where they were needed was very strenuous.

I think our first serious outing with these ladders was to Gaping Ghyll on the other side of Ingleborough. This is famous for the 350ft decent by winch into its massive

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cathedral like chamber but this was only operated at bank holidays by the pot holing clubs. Our route was via the Bar pot entrance which involves a scrambly descent through twisting dry slabby passages and then two ladder pitches into a larger passage which eventually leads into the spectacular main chamber. This was exciting but Geoffrey had his eye on the frontier of exploration – Lancaster Pot and Easegill.

We started with Lancaster Pot. This had been discovered in 1949 when a current of air coming from between two boulders was noticed on the open fell a few miles east of Kirkby Lonsdale. It turned out to be a tiny window in the roof of a chamber over 100 feet high which was the centre of a network of caves radiating in all directions.

The Three Counties system as it is now called currently has 87 kilometres of interconnecting caves, the largest system in the UK. But it was the connection between Lancaster Hole and the nearby Easegill system which drove the early explorations.

In the early fifties the exploration of this system was hindered by legal disputes over access but in 1955 when we camped at nearby Bull Pot farm the entrance window was covered with a hinged iron lid. I was very nervous on our first descent. We weren’t even sure if the rope ladders we rigged would reach the bottom and though we were safely top-roped it was scary to discover after a fifteen foot descent down a narrow chimney that the ladder then hung free in space beneath us. With our rather feeble acetylene lamps the bottom of the chamber was out of sight. Geoffrey as always seemed unperturbed and obviously had every confidence that we would cope. And cope we did. When we got to the bottom there were caves in all directions to explore, some with very impressive formations of stalactites and stalagmites.

On one of our trips we did have a genuine scare when after several hours of tiring exploration we returned to the entrance ladder. We had left a doubled rope in place and Geoffrey went up first. When he reached the top he belayed and threw the top rope down for the next man to come up. Waiting in the queue was a young English master called Woodcock who was on his first (and last?) trip with us. I remember him as a popular and enthusiastic teacher of literature and keen on sport. He was game enough and fit but had little experience of rope-work. When his turn came he set off and disappeared into the darkness above us but about fifty feet up his progress was stopped. He called out that the rope was pulling him down and he was having difficulty hanging on! Geoffrey quickly realised that what must have happened was that when he threw the rope down it had passed between the rungs of the ladder. Our unsuspecting English master had quickly climbed past this point but then found the rope attached to his waist going downwards to where it had passed between the rungs. As Geoffrey tightened the rope it pulled up the ladder from below and the poor man was carrying the weight of the ladder as well as his own weight on his arms. Little wonder that he was fearful of falling off. Geoffrey slackened off the rope and the situation was eased but it now required that Woodcock should climb down a few rungs, belay himself to the ladder, untie, disengage the rope from the ladder and tie back on again. In his exhausted state he

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felt that this was beyond him and in the end we had to mount a rescue in which Bob Charter climbed the ladder fixing runners every few feet then belayed his teacher to the ladder and disentangled the rope. The situation was saved but it had been a nasty episode. Geoffrey didn’t show it but he must have been shaken by this incident, but what was remarkable was the confidence he showed in ‘his boys’ to sort it out. Nothing more was said of it and a month or two later having switched our attention to the Easegill system we found a passage from a shelf 10 feet or so above an underground stream bed which turned out to be the key to making the link with Lancaster pot. I think we came back another time actually to make the link but it was with a real sense of triumph that we stood in the chamber of Lancaster pot having come not down the ladder but from an insignificant entrance cave in a dry stream bed a mile away. ‘In my second year in the sixth form I was made a prefect and one incident related to this shows that I was still thinking about pot-holing and climbing as much as my ‘A’ levels. It also says something about Geoffrey’s commitment to our education.

We continued to be dissatisfied with our heavy, bulky and exhausting rope ladders.

We knew that in the top circles of the pot-holing establishment these were being replaced by much lighter and more compact ladders with steel cables and aluminium rungs. We had seen photographs of these in use on the continent but they were not freely available and would in any case have been far too expensive for the Thornley Society’s limited budget. They remain expensive to this day. To ladder the entry pitch to Lancaster hole for instance would cost upwards of five hundred pounds at current prices.

We began to wonder if we could make something ourselves but we couldn’t work out how to fix tubular rungs onto wire cables. One weekend I borrowed my Dad’s workshop and knocked together a prototype using half inch copper pipe as rungs and a length of wire cable which I think had started life as the mainstays from a sailing dinghy. (I was a Sea Scout!) . I drilled holes in the rungs, threaded the cable through them and fixed them in place by first separating the wire strands with a nail and then driving a wooden wedge through them. It was very crude but I tried out my ladder by hanging it from a bedroom window and climbed up successfully.

It rolled up into a fairly neat coil and on Monday I put it in my rucksack and took it to school to show the others. Unfortunately it was quickly discovered, thrown playfully around the prefects’ room and then dangled out of the window where it rattled against Geoffrey’s study window directly below. In no time at all Geoffrey’s secretary was at the door to collect the person responsible!

Geoffrey was alarmed, it would be fair to say very alarmed, that we might be engaging in unofficial activities using such dangerous equipment without his consent. I tried to re-assure him that this wasn’t the case and after a frosty moment or two he actually began to look at my prototype with interest before confiscating it. A few days later he gave me the address of someone in Hemel Hempstead who he had heard might have a proper design for wire ladders. Where this came from I don’t know but the address stuck in my memory because I had never heard of the place. I wrote the letters and got typewritten designs and diagrams. Shortly

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afterwards we all met in the school workshop with Geoffrey and the metalwork teacher to see if would be a feasible and cost effective project. Before I left that summer the Thornley Society had its first ten metre length of lightweight wire ladder.

It was I think very typical of Geoffrey to recognise initiative and channel it constructively. He was a true educator. When I left KGV that summer for national service and then university he had set my life on a different course. I am very confident that I am not alone in feeling that.

Brian has described situations in the sport where and when the outcomes were not guaranteed and were not certain. Geoffrey must have been a leading light with young people in pot-holing. He had begun in relatively known underground caves and found that the boys were happy in the darkness with their lamps and other straightforward equipment, and did not noticeably suffer from claustrophobia.

Then he felt he could stretch the adventure level with them and effectively enter virtually unknown caving systems; that is pioneering. The group had become sufficiently experienced to want to improve their equipment; essentially from cumbersome, thick, hydrophylic, hemp rope ladders to flexible, durable wire ladders with alloy rungs. Additionally they had the inquisitiveness and skill to design, and the inventiveness to make home prototypes and then manufacture the ladders in the school workshop. In late 20th century schools that would be a major school project in its own right. Beyond all that it appears that they then could and did find cave systems not otherwise known.

For interest, I can add that for three years 1976 to 1979 I had been the first salaried Executive Officer of The Young Explorers Trust. This is an organisation comprising exploration groups from schools and major institutions such as the British Schools Exploring Society, the Yorkshire Schools Exploring Society, and The Brathay Exploration Group.

YET’s main function was and still is advisory and educational in the area of school level exploring, helping among other things, to push students beyond the level of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award ventures, and even including original science in the form of facet filling projects (geological, botanical) outwith the UK and primarily in the Arctic. For example I was available to advise on organising and carrying out school expeditions to places such as Iceland and Norway.

YET also had an exploration fund, bankrolled by the then Lloyds Bank, with an attendant approval service and a tempting amount of financial sponsorship. I administered the system. We were always seeking innovative projects. In my years of association with YET from its formation in 1972 up to 1980, we never came across school groups involved in pot-holing. Geoffrey and the boys were doing in the mid1950s what we had never come across even twenty years later. I am sure that if they had applied for approvals and grant aid from YET, we might have found that they could teach us something, and that they would quickly have become the top authorities on pot-holing for students in the UK, even allowing for what was being

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achieved at the emerging outdoor centres such as White Hall in Derbyshire (see earlier) and Ghyll Head on Windermere (Manchester Education Authority). It is possible that the Yorkshire Schools Exploring Society would have had similar experience in North Yorkshire, but I never learned of it from them. They were busy with visits to Norway.

The point I am making now is that KGV was doing these things fifteen or twenty years before even a national organisation existed that might have included pot-holing as an acceptable adventurous activity for school age pupils. Geoffrey was at least that far ahead of his time in these adventurous activities.

Next, John Gatiss,(1949 – 1956), ‘uncut’, as the film-makers say; the raw, ‘noholds-barred’, full script: Dixon was an austere man. Between us boys he was 'The Head', 'Dixon', 'The Boss'.

When addressing him it was 'Sir' and we were addressed by our surnames 'Charter', 'Allen', 'Gill'. When I met him fifty years later I still had difficulty changing to 'Geoffrey'.

Austerity, a formal distancing and a commitment to 'character' underlined all the reminiscences of the small group of us who willingly submitted to his climbing regime.

Geoffrey joined KGV in 1949 when he was around 40 years old. I joined in the same year, but to me he was part of the existing institution. Brian Gill clearly describes the discipline he imposed on the boys by the mere possibility of his being around the corner of the next corridor.

Geoffrey had established a core of climbers in the Upper VIth by the time I reached the Upper Vth, aged 14; the likes of Dave Preston, Ken Edwardson, Peter Brunt, Graham and Neil Booth. Geoffrey had had no success in recruiting from the Lower VIth. So after a Physics lesson he asked me to sound out recruits from my year. To my puzzlement I was the only boy wishing to take up his offer, and I joined the next trip to the Robertson Lamb Hut in Langdale.

On the first morning, bright and early, I took a dip in the stream next to the Hut. This was a conditioned reflex from my Scout camping holidays. As I rose from the stream, starkers and dripping water, there was Dixon gazing at me in some bewilderment. 'What on earth are you doing, Gatiss?' 'Just a dip, Sir.’ Somehow I had out-Spartaned Geoffrey himself and my credit rating must have increased.

Brose for breakfast, lads. The dried rolled oats were poured out onto the plates, surmounted by a blob of butter and moistened with boiling water. All washed down with a mug of brewed tea. 'Don't eat too much for breakfast. It slows you down,' was the message.

Packed lunch, no matter how long the day, was two slices of bread sandwiching cheese or corned beef; an orange for sharing between two and a bar of chocolate between four. 'You carry enough food stored within you to last the day. You don't

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want to load yourself down with unnecessary weight.’ Water was never carried.

We relied on the streams in the hills.

On the next trip Dixon had recruited members of the Lower Vth, principally Brian Gill, Bob Charter, Tony Whitehead and Ken Grundy. The five of us formed the permanent climbing core for the next three years. We were joined intermittently by John Allen, ? Sutton and others. Usually there would be a party of 10 each half term and at Easter. This second venue was the Helyg Hut in North Wales. We had a mishmash of equipment. Hard hats only came in decades later. I had fitted some army boots with nails and wore a faded blue boiler suit. Bob Charter had hobnailed boots with steel toe plates. Idwal Slabs proved somewhat of a challenge to him and this led later to an interesting glimpse of Geoffrey's somewhat rigid and uncompromising attitude. On our second trip out, us erstwhile novices would lead the climbs.

When the time for the next trip came round, I presented Geoffrey with the list of the boys who wished to attend. 'Charter!' he said gruffly. 'No, I am not having him.'

Sensing an injustice emboldened me to ask for the reason. 'Oh, because of those hob-nail boots. Totally unsuitable.' It was only after I explained that Charter had just bought a brand-new pair of boots with the latest technology – Vibram soles that Geoffrey relented. A somewhat intransigent management style!

Outside the Robertson Lamb Hut in Langdale: left to right are Bob Charter, Brian Gill, Bill Brookfield, Tony Whitehead, Glyn Jones, George Ellison (teacher), Unknown, Unknown, Geoffrey Dixon, John Allen, Ken Grundy, John Gatiss.

Photo Dixon archives/KGV archives

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As well as the sense of adventure and the open air, rock climbing brought us boys face-to-face with death and our own mortality. On one seminal occasion we were on the first day of a Langdale trip. By then I was a seasoned climber and was climbing Scout Crag for the umpteenth time. I was third, Trevor Williams was second and Dixon was leading. Trevor had come on the trip but had strict instructions from his parents not to rock climb. But somehow he found himself drawn in and was probably somewhat nervous. Dixon and Trevor were up at the first stance and Trevor was managing the rope for me to come up. I was blazĂŠ and careless, not too worried if I slipped, for the rope would hold me. Unfortunately it didn't. It slipped off Trevor's shoulders and I bounced down the steep rocky hillside.

'Ah, so this is what dying is like,' I thought, as I battered from one rock to another, stars and flashes filling my closed eyes. After coming to rest I gingerly made my way up to the first stance. Dixon kept his hands concealed and continued the climb.

It was only later that I noticed his bloodied and pulped palms where he had grabbed the running rope trying, in vain, to arrest my fall.

One February Geoffrey decided we needed some snow technique to round us off.

For with Geoffrey rock climbing was not an end in itself but a prelude and preparation for 'real mountaineering', by which he meant the Swiss Alps.

On the Saturday, near Helyg in Wales we stamped steps up steep drifts. On the Sunday we were off to scale Great Gully (unlikely; more probably Avalanche Gully or similar - editor) on Craig yr Isfa, a climb of some 500 to 800 ft. There were around 12 of us including two youngish teachers, perhaps Mr Ellison and Mr Bevan. The gully was technically easier with the snow in it, providing good footholds. But our progress was slow. By 4-o-clock it was dark and we were still 50 ft from the top of the gully. 'Right, we stay the night here,' says Dixon. We built a 4ft wall of snow across the gully to protect us from the wind. The sky cleared, the diamonds of stars shone, the moon rose. It was magic. We were consoled also by the thought of the three remaining Spangles in our pockets. After a long night, pale dawn arrived and we started the final 50ft. The two teachers were grumpy. No doubt they thought this was somewhat outside their terms of contract. But we jollied them along and we arrived back at the hut to breakfast on the remains of cold Gorgonzola cheese and stale sliced bread. It was a great maturing experience, giving me a feeling of the resilience and toughness of my body.

The episode also illustrates the army class system in which Geoffrey operated. We, the boys, were the ranks, the teachers NCO's and Geoffrey – not so much a General as a Major. He seemed a reserved man. In all the hours I spent in his company, I never had a real conversation with him. The only two boys who broke through this reserve were Peter Brunt and Ken Edwardson, who, by dint of their irrepressible impudence and disregard for formal authority, penetrated the persona and made genuine contact.

The longest day we did was from the Robertson Lamb Hut, Langdale, to The Pillar, a round trip of 25 miles carrying rope etc for the climb. The most memorable climb was Napes Needle along the side of Great Gable, a blunt finger of rock made famous by Abrahams, Photographers, Keswick.

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In my last year the Head decided to tackle the 14 peaks in Wales over 3,000 feet.

This allowed for the involvement of more boys. It took a number of attempts over several years before success. The atmosphere is well described in Ken Milne's contribution.

KGV group with GFD near the summit of Snowdon during a Welsh Threes attempt. Left to right are Brian Gill, John Gatiss, Tony Whitehead, Geoffrey Dixon, plus three others.

Photo from Dixon archives/KGV archives

On this the first attempt we were thwarted by the fantastic weather. Starting at 1.00 a.m. with a Heath Robinson array of flashlights strapped to our heads, some 20 of us went up to the Crib Goch ridge and on to the summit of Snowdon as the sun rose. The sky was blue and the sun intense. We made our way down into the valley and up the Tryfan range. The weather had been hot for weeks and the streams had all dried up. We had no water. Near mid morning we stumbled to the top of Tryfan resembling members of the Foreign Legion in the Sahara. 7 peaks done, 7 to go on the Carnedd range. We had had it. Geoffrey at the outset had been quite bouncy, sporting his first pair of jeans; a most unconventional attire for him. But even he was wilting. We still had a long trek to the Carnedds on the other side of the valley.

Exhausted, down we went from Tryfan. In the valley, a river flowed next to the road. We tumbled in, slaked our thirst and soaked our clothes to cool down.

Geoffrey was noticed prone in a shallow, but dry, ditch by the side of the road, sleeping off the fatigue in his new jeans. It was a pity that cameras were too rare and expensive in those days. So this unusual icon of vulnerable authority went unrecorded.

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As most of us climbers had served an apprenticeship in that excellent organization the Boy Scouts, we were all able cooks. But the cook par-excellence was Bob Charter. We looked forward to his Beef Flapjacks: large discs of flour-dough spiced with chunks of corned beef fried to a golden brown in lard. After the meagre fare of the day, the evening meal was gargantuan and packed with calories. We slept like logs, until The Boss woke us the next morning with a prod from the spike of his ice axe into the canvas undersides of our bunk beds.

On leaving School in summer 1956, John Allen and myself accompanied Geoffrey to the Alps. A friend of Geoffrey's had to pull out after the first day due to a ricked ankle. John gives a more detailed description of the trip elsewhere, but the following events give some light on Geoffrey's approach.

10 days were spent acclimatizing ourselves. Never before or since have I been so fit.

There was a feeling of supreme energy, the essence of life flowed in and through me.

We were then to climb over to the Zermatt valley for several high ascents. We reached the Dent Blanche Hut above the snowline. From there we had to climb up precipitous rock to the sharp ridge and thence down to Zermatt. We were snowed in the hut for 2 days. Glumly we looked at the blizzard through the windows, played interminable games of Patience and endured the fug of the other occupants. Finally Geoffrey lost patience, memorized the route in his French guide book and we set out into the blizzard. The other guests were horrified. One implored me not to go as it was 'trop dangereuse'. Their baleful eyes followed us from the warmth of the Hut windows. Up we went into the world of mist and snow, visibility 5 yards. I could sense Geoffrey was getting concerned at identifying the track. Then out of the gloom two surprised figures lumbered towards us. 'Est-que-ce la route à Zermatt?’ we asked in our impeccable French. 'Oui,’ they replied, as they vanished behind us.

Shortly we reached the crest of the ridge and so lived to climb another day.

Later we were climbing on the ridge of the Zinalrothorn. We were held up by three men, well equipped but moving rather slowly. It was sometime before we found a passing place. When passing they told us they were from the Outward Bound Centre in Eskdale, a most prestigious climbing establishment. Geoffrey's illusions about the Centre were shattered. He went about with mutterings of contempt for the rest of the day.

Finally we returned to the Dent Blanche Hut. John Allen had a stomach bug. So Geoffrey and I tackled our last climb up the Dent Blanche. We overtook a party of French climbers, also staying at the Hut. Geoffrey's pace quickened. I sensed he was going to tell them how speedily it could be climbed (in a restrained British manner of course) when they arrived back that evening. We reached the top.

During our rapid descent my ice axe slipped out of my grasp and rattled 200 feet down a side gully. Geoffrey was beside himself. 'Go and get it,’ he snapped. I unclipped myself from the coiled rope between us and retrieved the axe; not a very safe procedure. Even so we made good time, but the competitive side of Geoffrey had surfaced.

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Dent Blanche. The Dent Blanche hut is on lower sunlit horizontal rock band in the right hand half of the photo.

Photo by John Allen

Around 1954 Geoffrey in his way of the supreme amateur decided we should go potholing, an activity then very much in its infancy. He looked at the Ordnance Survey maps around Skipton and found a dot marked Cow Pot. He wrote to the farmer (probably with a grid reference for an address) and gained permission to camp and investigate Cow Pot. Rope ladders were ordered from British Ropes in Liverpool, which had to be collected. We arrived in very wet weather, a party of around 10.

The next day we explored Cow Pot. It was a miserable pot hole of about 4 foot diameter, nearly all vertical. Where it widened out at one point we had to use some 20 foot of this cumbersome rope ladder. Our lighting was with candles. For a helmet I had my father's ‘Dad's Army’ tin hat tied around my chin with two lengths of cloth. Finally the pot got so narrow we had to stop. All its rock was covered in mud. Still we enjoyed ourselves. Brian Gill gives more insight of this pot-holing activity.

On future occasions we updated our equipment to acetylene lamps and miners' laminated helmets. Old rugby boots proved excellent footwear as the leather studs with nails protruding gave a good grip on the slimy rock. They were even better if they had a split in the side as this let out the surplus water. The stud nails often worked through the insole and gouged the bottom of our feet. The mud oozing through the slit was often streaked with blood.

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During our exploration of Lancaster Pot, (see Brian's contribution), I have two memories.

Once we came across an oilskin package a long way from the entrance. It contained a carefully hand-drawn map of the system as far as it had been explored by its owner; both plan and side elevations. Its value to its owner must have been immense and its loss immeasurable. But who was the owner? I think Geoffrey later sent it to the Red Rose Caving Club, who we knew to be active in the area.

After descending the 120ft drop into the hole, we tended to split up into small exploring groups. The Head, myself and possibly Brian Gill found ourselves in a very dry part of a system of passages. After an hour the water in our acetylene lamps was running dangerously low and the lights became small and feeble. I concocted a plan of peeing into mine, but the social protocol of the day prevented me from sharing this plan with Geoffrey. Just as I had decided that escape from death was more important than taboo, a trickle of water was found and decorum remained intact.

Did I prefer rock climbing to pot-holing? I favoured whatever I had done last.

Rock climbing was the overcoming of the dangers of nature, the hard rock, the control and the discipline. Pot-holing was exploration, being soaked but warm, snuggled into a narrow passage with several hundred feet of solid rock above you, feeling totally safe and protected by Mother Nature; a womb-like experience.

Geoffrey was the ultimate amateur. Self-taught. He took a gaggle of strangely equipped school boys to share – what? The rocks and the hills in part. But more to share his approach to life. The independence, the strength within each individual, the incredible resilience of the human body and mind. He didn't do this by preaching but by enabling. Technology and equipment were not important; all we had was rope at the beginning.

Recently a friend said she was travelling by car to pick up a kid. On asking how old the kid was, I was told, '19 years and coming back from college'. Geoffrey would never have demeaned us with the word 'kid'.

He always respected our physical strength, our minds, our ingenuity. We were young adults who needed to take responsibility for our own lives and the very lives of our companions. On the rocks he trusted his own life to our own good sense and capabilities. He trusted us to behave with responsibility and integrity. We never let him down.

In the process we became men.

What a stirring memory of times, events, situations and people from a past age! And how interesting to be able to read about 0ne’s own history! I will not be the only person to gasp at the yawning gap of time that has elapsed since those 1950s days.

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Now Ken Milne (1952-1959) recalls the end of summer term day/night expeditions to walk over all the Welsh Threes in Snowdonia non-stop: In 2001 I had the opportunity to write an article for the 75th Anniversary edition of the Red Rose. Casting my mind back to the years when I was a pupil, there was one clear highlight which will ever remain with me. I called the article “My Finest Hour” and it related my achievement in completing the 14 peaks in North Wales which were over 3,000 feet in height. I related how pathetic I was in the field of sporting activities and how I had never been one of the privileged rock climbers. ….PG de C Elliott and I decided we would take part and, at this point, a confession must be made. We trained. Admittedly it goes against the grain, but we spent one half hour on the beach and walked up three sand dunes. There! That’s out so I feel so much better. PG and I not only trained but we also prepared. Bags of raisins and bars of chocolate went into our Army & Navy haversacks – boots for going downhill, plimsolls for going uphill. Preparation with a capital P.

The Crib Goch pinnacles on the Snowdon Horseshoe.

Photo John Allen

The climb began at about 10.00pm on a summer evening, somewhere near a ridge called “Crib Goch”. It became all too obvious that this was not to everyone’s liking and, before long, a number had dropped off (a technical term, not an act of suicide).

All through the night we plodded on; day dawned and still we plodded on. Off came the boots and on went the plimsolls. Raisins were chewed and chocolate bars were munched, although we never stopped to consider the effect this mixture might have on our internal plumbing. The number in the party gradually dwindled and, by the time we had reached the end of our ordeal and found the bus, we realised

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that very few of us had stuck to the task. But PG and I did. So did P Pond and maybe one or two more. But was there a medal, a certificate or even a word of praise from on high? Not a bit of it. But we couldn’t help grinning when we thought of all those superheroes giving up, while we kept on to the bitter end.

One incident not mentioned in the original article concerned the fact that the weather was awful and we all wore our Black’s anoraks with the hoods up, shorts, socks and boots, and from behind one climber looked very much like another, so when P Pond trudged up behind what he presumed to be me, plodding along in the rain, his greeting was roughly “…bloody awful weather, eh?” Imagine his horror when his remark had been addressed to GFD himself, who simply replied, “Yes, Pond.”

There is, however, a postscript to the story. Within days of the 2001 Red Rose being published I arrived home and noticed an envelope sticking out of the letter box. On opening it I discovered a letter from GFD himself, congratulating me on my achievement over forty years earlier.

It is likely that this success story was one among failures on the Welsh Threes, because I had taken part in attempts in 1956/57, which foiled me because of similar bad weather that Ken, PG and GFD endured and won through. But the weather didn’t stop everyone on that expedition in 1956, as the following extract from the Southport Visiter relates:

Accent On Youth THEY CLIMBED 14 PEAKS IN UNDER 24 HOURS Test of Endurance by School's Sixth Formers Last week-end saw a group of Southport sixth formers return somewhat wearily for the last week of term at King George V School after a feat of endurance possibly unparalleled in the history of British schools.

They had succeeded in climbing within a time limit of 24 hours every Welsh peak over 3,000 feet high. There were 14 in the party and 14 peaks to be tackled.

The venture - part of the syllabus of the school's Thornley Society - was made by the head master, Mr. G. F. Dixon; a master, Mr. F. Beckwith, and 12 sixth formers.

Setting off quietly in a little local bus, the group - equipped with maps, compass and lamps - reached the top of Llanberis Pass at 10.37 at night. Then began the night's endurance test with the climbing of the 3,023 feet of Crib Goch, which they left at midnight.

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Crib Goch from above PYG Hotel.

Photo John Allen

From then onwards through a night that was rather cold, but fortunately without rain, they tackled the exciting Snowdon summits. These were quite narrow in parts, and every peak was heavily wreathed in cloud. They came down to the east of Llanberis by 8 a.m.

Half-way along the ridge of the Glyders - it was at the Devil's Kitchen - a decision was made that nine of the boys should not proceed further, but should return with Mr. Beckwith to their base.

"Don't think for a moment that they had not done well." Mr. Dixon told the Visiter, "None of them had a great amount of experience, and some could hardly have realised how difficult it was going to be. They were feeling the cold and had put up a jolly good show.” The remainder: R. B. Charter, M. D. Heeley, G. K. Grundy and the head master, carried on.

QUITE A TEST OF ENDURANCE At two o'clock in the afternoon they were over Nant Ffrancon Pass and then tackled the fairly formidable Carnedd group, consisting of six peaks over 3,000 feet, of which Carnedd Llewellyn was the highest with 3,484 feet.

It was a tired quartette that ended the journey with a seven-mile downhill drop into Aber. They had covered a total distance of 36½ miles with a total climb of 12,300 feet in 23¼ hours.

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"Quite a good test of endurance," was the head master's appraisal of the feat yesterday. He is not unaccustomed to this business of mountain climbing.

The object had been fulfilled. It was something that the Thornley Society had not before accomplished, although last summer, in terribly hot weather, they had attempted some of the peaks. They wanted to have another go - in more suitable weather.

It is a feat that this same group is hardly likely to attempt again. Sixth formers all, they will be leaving K.G.V at end of term to-morrow, going to universities, training courses, commercial pursuits. School, and all the links of the past several years, will be behind them.

But they will hardly be likely to forget the day when they beat the Welsh peaks and enjoyed every moment of it.’

17. The Thornley Society James W Thornley died on Nanga Parbat while making a winter reconnaissance in December 1950. He was with his friend WH Crace who also died. The third man of the party of three, RMW Marsh, reported that the two climbers had been prospecting the route ahead at about 18,000ft (5486m), and moving strongly. They pitched a tent which continued to be visible for three days, but then a storm blocked it out and they were never seen again. Marsh went up with two Sherpas to search for them but could not reach the place where they had last been seen. A subsequent air search found nothing.

For the Himalayan Club Journal 1950, RMW Marsh wrote an appreciation in memoriam in these words, “Jim had been an outstanding schoolboy both at work and games. He too joined the Army and was eventually posted to the 3rd/8th Gurkhas, where he became Adjutant. On leave in the Zemu valley he climbed alone above 22,500ft (6858m), searching for a man who had been lost some months before.

“In 1947 the three of us made an attempt on Kabru. At 20,000ft our head Sherpa fell 70 feet into a crevasse. Jim at once climbed down after him, and Bill (Crace, see above) spent several days alone there with the injured Sherpa, while we went down for help.

“In July 1950 we again sailed for India with plans to spend a year surveying and climbing in the Karakoram. After we had been in the field for three weeks the Pakistan Government withdrew the permission they had given us. Rather than return to England at once with everything lost, we decided to make a recce of Nanga Parbat, and it was on this mountain that they lost their lives.

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Nanga Parbat from the air.

Photo John Allen

“Thornley and Crace were both extremely determined. Thornley, for instance, marched 165 miles to Nanga Parbat over the Babusar Pass, wearing a pair of gym shoes, in six days, and was in no way fatigued at the end. They were a fine pair of friends and it took an expedition of this sort, where we lived close, in difficult conditions, to bring out fully the great qualities of endurance, patience, and kindness which were so characteristic of them.”

James Thornley was born in Ormskirk in 1923. He arrived at KGV age 11 in 1934 and in the Red Rose in 1936 and 1937 he was reported as a good bowler in the Colts XI. In 1939 he was listed in the School Certificates and played for the Second Cricket XI. In 1940 he was Vice Captain of Edward’s, played for the First Cricket XI and Rugby 2nd XV. In Upper VI Modern he passed his Higher School Certificate in History, Geography and Economics and this enabled him to get a Borough Scholarship and Rathbone Scholarship for Liverpool University. I have no further information about his years during World War 2 or thereafter except for what is written by RMW Marsh above.

The following most interesting note came from John Gatiss: One afternoon after school some of us were summoned to the Head’s Office. Once seated, the door opened and a tray loaded with egg mayonnaise sandwiches arrived from the kitchen. Never had the school been so magnanimous. While we savoured the egg mayonnaise, the Head said that he wanted to make the climbers into a formal club. He had thought for a name and come up with the Thornley

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Society. Thornley apparently was an Old Boy who died in 1950 sussing out the approaches to Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas. Seemed a good pedigree to us.

Dixon had contacted Thornley’s parents and they were delighted to have their son’s name used in this way. Softened by the sandwiches, we concurred. The Head made me Chairman, being the most senior and Ken Grundy was Secretary. The meeting ended. As far as I know this was the first and last formal meeting of the Thornley Society.

Thornley’s name had been given to the select group who stayed the course of rock climbing, caving and hill walking until as individuals they left KGV. James Honeybone (ex-Outward Bound School instructor, and staff member at KGV 1964 – 1970 teaching History) took over the Thornley Society from Geoffrey when the latter got deeply involved in the Long Rigg project leading up to the opening in 1970. After leaving school some of them, the self-styled ‘Thornley Society Remainders’ under James Honeybone, continued to visit the hills into their later years. In April 2012 James and friends, mostly ex-KGV, returned to camp in Glen Brittle; no doubt the ghost of GFD was hovering nearby.

18. The 1956 Alps Holiday to Arolla – Zermatt area From Southport, Lancashire to Arolla, Switzerland

by John Allen None of the mainstream outdoor education developments seemed to reach KGV during the 1950s or even 1960s. The most influential world mountaineering event was the first ascent of Everest in 1953 by a British team, and the spin-off to climbing encouraged teachers and youngsters to take an interest.

I was captivated by the thought of travelling unimaginable distances to reach such fabled mountains and the forbidden lands in which they stood. Most journeys then to these countries took place by boat. I had seen the huge liners in docks in Liverpool. Then somehow, I found myself going to the Alps with another older boy from school, John Gatiss, and Geoffrey Dixon, the Headmaster. I think the whole business of being associated with the Headmaster on holiday spooked my classmates into considering me an oddity. I felt rather shunned and isolated, not a leper, but more a teacher’s pet (surely not at KGV!). But by then I was hooked by an influence that enabled me to cope with such an uncomprehending public – the pull of mountain country, of being among mountains and functioning among them in every way.

Geoffrey must have put it about that he was planning to take a few of us climbing in the Alps in the summer holidays. This was big mountains, a change of scale, upgrading familiar heights of mountains from about 3000ft to 13,000ft; and adding a completely new type of environment with glaciers, permanent snowfields and rarified air.

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I must have put my hand up in class at the suggestion and told my parents. My mother seemed to trust the Headmaster implicitly, as perfectly capable of leading her son safely anywhere. Little did she know what we got up to! She set about borrowing stuff – an ice axe, a bigger rucksack (a Bergen) – and assembling serviceable clothing that would see me through. I remember having Dad’s old trilby hat for a sunhat, and a dark green smock style anorak, not waterproof. Boots were bendy, with Commando soles, from Timpsons.

I would be sleeping in a tent (had never done that), cooking on an open fire (had never done that) or a paraffin primus stove (never done that before). I got a passport. On the Boss’s instructions I bought three 1lb tins of stewing steak as hard tack to be heated up on stoves in the Alpine huts with spaghetti. I joined the French Alpine Club (the cheapest at the time) for budget reciprocal rights accommodation in Swiss mountain huts. I was going abroad, without parents, aged 17, with ‘O’ level French, and Swiss francs in my pocket. With them I bought crampons in Sion, Switzerland for the snow and ice. The journey was by car, cross-Channel ferry, train, taxi, train, bus, jeep, foot.

View of Mont Collon from Arolla in 2010. In 1956 we camped in the grassy meadow below left of picture.

Photo John Allen

Quite suddenly when the travelling stopped, I was helping John to pitch his Scout tent on a slightly sloping grass field above a swirling torrent of grey and gritty glacier water. ‘Don’t ever drink it,’ said the Boss. ‘It’s just for washing and cooking.’ By gum, washing was cold, and from then on I fought against it; never wash, I decided.

John showed me how to cut hollows from the ground beneath the ground-sheet for

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my hips and shoulders (no lilos or softee mats); and don’t ever touch the sides of the tent when it rains, or rain would come through the canvas, he said. I was finding my place, learning from superiors.

Then there was ‘brose’ for breakfast. I think the Boss must have learned this from prisoners of war, or clansmen in medieval Scotland – dried oats with a knob of margarine and sugar with hot water, a kind of poor man’s porridge, uncooked, chokingly dry and sludgy.

Whereas I was a complete beginner in these matters, John Gatiss possibly less so, Geoffrey (henceforward sometimes known as the Boss) must have been able to work out a possible programme for climbing these huge mountains in advance. After all he had been in the area in 1951 when he climbed the Dent Blanche, the Weisshorn and the Matterhorn with three of his contemporaries. This time he had two late teenage boys, practised only in UK excursions. Alasdair Kerr, one of the 1951 climbing team, did start with us but damaged an ankle and had to retire after the first climb.

This misfortune might have changed Geoffrey’s thinking, since there would now be three not four climbing together, and obviously as a single roped party, and not as two twos or a rope of four. At times when there was more than one option, realistically he had no one else’s opinion to consult – we would do as he said. This might have been a bonus for him (ie no potentially contentious discussions with friends), but safety margins might have thereby been narrowed. The Boss made the plans, we accepted and followed as best we could. Not without fatigue and permanent hunger, nay starvation, on my part, and no little excitement along the way for all of us.

Our first outing, a sort of training climb, was to be a traverse of the Petite Dent de Veisivi (3186m, 10,452ft), a popular PD graded scramble with pitches of II/III, and a PD descent, all achievable in a day from Arolla (1998m, 6,555m) and back. We completed this in guidebook time (about 8/9 hours). My letter home recorded: ‘2000ft sheer drop down both sides’, and ‘from the highest point a marvellous panorama of mountains including the Weisshorn and the Matterhorn all covered in snow.’ Not recorded was my memory of a severe ticking off from the Boss for jumping straight down onto a ledge that the others had climbed down. ‘Never do that again,’ he stormed. It was either bad form to jump, or he was taken by surprise and he thought I had fallen off.

The holiday now developed into a routine of buying food in a valley shop (pasta, dried oats, bread, margarine, tea, sugar, tinned fish, cheese, jam, chocolate, biscuits) and taking this with a 1lb (454gr) tin of steak carried from the UK to a Swiss Alpine Club hut or huts for the guardian to cook at night or provide hot water at breakfast (for brose). We carried food for from two to four nights, then had to descend to a valley shop to replenish stocks. A day would begin about 4/5am with a wake-up call from the guardian, fold blankets, quick breakfast (the Boss said bogey was half an hour from wake-up to setting out - a rarely achieved feat), and start walking with crampons on crisp snow that had frozen again after the previous day’s softening by

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the sun. We would aim to reach our summit before mid-day and be back in the hut or next hut by mid-afternoon, before the sun softened the snow again; then have a snack, a long draught of tea, and sleep for a couple of hours before dinner at seven and bed by nine.

Petite Dent de Veisivi above Arolla.

Photo John Allen

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This general routine is still frequently followed by groups today, except that people now expect dinner, bed and breakfast to be provided in the manner of half-board at the same huts but which have become mini-hotels. No longer are self-supplied provisions welcome – too much trouble for the guardian to handle the varied diets of individuals and nationalities. Very long day excursions would require starts in darkness with torchlight and/or moonlight – magical – but starts at midnight or two in the morning were rather draining of energy when sleep is usually deepest.

The first session within this routine took us from Arolla to stay at the Cabane de Bertol (3311m, 10,862ft). Next day we climbed the Aiguille de la Tsa (3668m, 12,034ft), followed by next day the Bouquetins (3838m, 12,591ft), then next day traversed over the Ferpècle glacier to the Dent Blanche (Rossier) hut (3507m, 11,506ft), followed next day by failing to climb the Dent Blanche (4356m, 14,293ft) because of bad weather and so descended to Les Haudères and back to Arolla for a rest day. Phew! The pace hardly slackened.

Aiguille de la Tsa from the Aiguilles Rouges side of the Arolla valley .

Photo John Allen

Continued existence at altitude over 10,000ft gave me headaches and listlessness, deprived of sea-level oxygen, but I acclimatised as the holiday wore on. There had been no guardian at the Rossier hut when we arrived so we had to light the stove and provide for ourselves – an irritating extra chore when weary from a day out. The early rising pattern upset my lie-in on the rest day in Arolla, and I spent a wet night in a wet sleeping bag – my fault for touching the sides of the wet tent. Still there was compensation from relaxing at a lower altitude in the sun, and eating and drinking like a camel at an oasis to top up, thereby building some sort of hump.

We then gave up Arolla as a valley base. Via Les Haudères on a hot day we flogged up and over to the Moiry hut (2825m, 9,268ft), next day after a 3.00am wake-up

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climbed the Grand Cornier (3961m, 12,998ft), then next day traversed over the Pigne de la Lé (3396m, 11,141ft) to the Mountet hut (2886m, 9,468ft), followed next day by ascending the Trifthorn (3728m, 12,231ft) in stormy weather and descended to the Rothorn hut (3177m, 10,423ft). We then climbed the Zinal Rothorn (4221m, 13,838ft) by its ordinary route and dropped down to Zermatt where we stayed in the basement bunkhouse at Bernard Biner’s Bahnhof Hotel. Phew again!

Up till this point none of the ascended routes had been technically difficult. I suspect that the Boss was quite pleased with our progress – in fact a guide on the Rothorn had said to him how well we seemed to function as a group. Now in the Zermatt area, the Boss was on familiar ground, having been here in 1951 and perhaps sensing the potential of the group henceforward. Little did we appreciate that he was about to launch us into the most arduous remaining days of the holiday. I have wondered how Geoffrey’s adult friends managed him, and handled all this laborious, and sometimes tedious, work just to reach summits of mountains.

Alphubel from summit of the Täschhorn. The Alphubel was GFD’s first mountain in 1951 by its easiest route, a snow plod used for acclimatisation. In 1956 GFD, John Gatiss and I ascended the Westgrat, in shadow here at bottom right of the flat snow plateau. We finished in a snow storm, and wandered about for over an hour trying to find the easy way off the flattish summit.

Photo John Allen

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In 1951 Geoffrey had ascended the Rotgrat (graded Peu Difficile) on the Alphubel (4206m, 13,789ft) with his companion, Brian Howl, from the Täsch hut. I remember that at the time he made John Gatiss and me aware that he wanted to try a different climb on this mountain that he said had only once been done previously, and not at all by a British party. We would therefore be making the second ascent and the first British; also the first without guides. This was a ridge further across the west side of the mountain called the ‘Westgrat’ and it finished close to the summit. He could be expected to know the way off, having already done so in 1951, descending to the Täsch hut. First and early ascents were, and still are, prized targets. And by now he must have thought that he had a pair of greyhound monkeys at his heels, yapping for more of the same! Or was he distracted by his own ambition, confident in his own competence to get even schoolboys to perform circus tricks to order?

My letter home to my parents records, written at the Täsch hut the morning afterwards, ‘…..here with the prime object of making the first guideless ascent of the Westgrat…set off under a rather dubious sky in the dark. After two hours silent tramping we reached the base of the rock climb which took the first and only previous party + guides, 6 hours. On reaching the ridge we found it dry and noniced but the rock was very unsound and often we sent huge boulders hurtling down.

Thunder rolled in the valley and clouds soon swirled around us, lashing blinding snow in our faces.

There were two very difficult parts before we were to attempt the last hard part and these J.G. lead (sic) up very well, after the Head had failed. By now the rocks were covered with snow and ice but we were only 600ft off the top and nobody thought of retreat. We attained the summit of the 3000ft rock climb and though the snow was preventing views of more than 10ft, we were highly delighted. On a day of good conditions the descent is an easy downhill snow walk, but we spent an hour and a half with compass and map, trying to find the descent ridge. We found steps cut in the ice and soon could see out of the cloud into the valley. From there the descent was simple but we were tired, and on reaching the hut we were so tired that two days rest were decided upon. In a few minutes we shall be returning to Zermatt, a three hours downhill crawl. The rain is still dropping steadily outside and we shall have to wear wet clothes for we were drenched after yesterday’s hard work….’

Written the morning after our ascent, it now seems to say much that can be said of the experience of Alpinism with the Boss. He was a determined and driven man; even a bit deluded, beguiled by his past successes into thinking he could go on doing this for ever?

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At Täschalp below the Täsch hut in 1956 with John Gatiss and John Allen before the ascent of the Westgrat on the Alphubel. In background is the Weisshorn which Geoffrey traversed in 1951 via the Schaligrat (left ridge) descending east ridge towards camera.

Photo G F Dixon

I should add that part way up the route I broke my wooden shafted ice axe, so was no longer the greyhound. In fact on another level I now feel that I have an immediate connection and instant relationship with the Victorian pioneer climbers of the 19th century, so much does my description feel like the exploits of Leslie Stephen or Martin Conway on a particularly arduous first ascent. That was the era to which Geoffrey’s mountaineering belonged, namely nineteenth or early twentieth century Alpinism, and he bequeathed it to us, but without the Bouvier wine of AF Mummery.

As a continuing practitioner through and beyond the twentieth century, I feel that I belong to a privileged and very small minority of mountaineers with such links to the past.

Of this climb the next English edition of the guidebook to the Pennine Alps East (Collomb) added: “V.Diff. standard with a few harder moves, AD+, pitches of III/III+ and the crux IV+, 900m. First British (third) ascent: J.T.H.Allen, J.W.Gatiss, G.F.Dixon, 6 August 1956. Now climbed frequently.” It is not known if Geoffrey was ever aware of this guidebook entry, but you can be sure that he would have had something to say, and to correct the impression of my eminence as apparent leader.

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The later Alpine Club guidebook (Swindin/Fleming, 1999) grades the route Difficile with pitches of III/IV+ but does not mention our ascent.

Incidentally I had to hire another ice axe in Zermatt for the remainder of the holiday and did so for 32 Swiss francs, which I recorded in Sterling equivalence came to £2.13s 0d. This exchange rate provided about 12 Swiss francs for £1.00 Sterling. In 2012 the rate is about SF1.4 = £1.00.

After the Alphubel we descended (without the promised rest days) to Zermatt, stayed again at Biner’s bunkhouse before attempting the Ober Gabelhorn from the Schönbiel hut. Bad weather took its further toll on us en route and we gave that up in favour of diverting to the Dent Blanche hut for the Dent Blanche itself, which Geoffrey had climbed in 1951 but without much by way of views from it because the weather was cloudy. My energy levels were so depleted that I stayed in the hut to eat and lie down, instead of climb. In practice I knew this would only affect my street cred later, for we were only a couple of days from having to start for home anyway.

The other two succeeded in their climb on a sunlit day, the descent of which would have turned John Gatiss’s parents grey if they had known what he had got up to. He says that he dropped his ice axe beyond reach from the end of the rope. Geoffrey got annoyed with the clumsy oaf and lowered John until he was at the full extent of the rope, and still outwith its reach. So John was instructed to untie and proceed to recover the axe, return to the rope and tie on again. John did as he was told, didn’t fall out of sight and into oblivion, and there was a happy ending. The pair even overtook another descending party, thus proving something. For more detail, see John’s own tale in the earlier section ‘Tall Tales from Long Ago’.

As for the climbing holiday, that was that. We descended to Les Haudères, and caught bus, trains, cross-Channel ferry and returned home. I went back to school.

Mr Dixon put on his gown, returned to his rigid military stance at the end of the corridor to keep order while boys changed classes on the bell and aloofness returned to my relationship with him. He held assemblies in the school hall. I left school after another year and went on to University in London. Then to work in Manchester where there was the Peak District on the doorstep, and the Lake District and North Wales only a two hour drive away, once I could afford a car. I never went back to the old school. Never. I regret that. It was knocked down in 1982, thus bulldozing an era for good.

I was not ungrateful to the school; had just moved on. The best and most permanent thing I took from the school was the climbing. I never got over that marvellous 1956 Alpine trip, for it marked me for life, and at age 73 I’m still able to climb mountains, albeit lower ones.

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Matterhorn, with Täschhorn, Dom, Alphubel in distance.

Photo John Allen

19. The Mont Blanc district again: 1958 (or 1959) in the Alps

By John Allen Two or three years later, I cannot remember exactly and did not keep an accurate record, we met again – in the Alps, at Argentière in the Chamonix valley, in order to continue this shared passion of climbing mountains. He had brought his youngest son, Paul, born 1944, and Nancy managed the family base camp tent. His other sons were doing their own thing. I was climbing with Tony Buckels.

The character of the expedition was very different from 1956. There were four of us climbers, which meant we proceeded as two pairs, but as a group, and stayed together throughout. The climbing area lends itself better to single ascents from the valley via a hut and then a climb and return to the valley, as compared with the short four-day tours involving summits between hut overnights, as in the Arolla/Zermatt region in 1956.

Our first jaunt was to the Albert Premier hut with the intention of doing the East Ridge of the Aiguille du Chardonnet (3824m, 12,546ft), known as the Forbes Arête.

The weather did not promise perfection from the start, and I think we were the only people on the mountain. However, right to the summit there was only cloud, but it was becoming threatening. We began the descent of the west ridge, thus making a traverse of the mountain to regain the hut relatively easily.

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Aiguille du Chardonnet from Aiguille du Tour. The Forbes Arête is the jagged ridge leading from left to summit on right.

Photo John Allen

Thereupon the very father of all thunderstorms broke out; very impressive; from above great flashes blasted the cwm below us, followed almost simultaneously by ear and body splitting bangs that had just time to begin echoing all around when the next roar boomed out. Daylight had been excluded by dense cloud. Blinding flash followed blinding flash that caused some disorientation in me; that’s my excuse for losing my footing at one point and falling awkwardly on one hand and chipping a bone in my left thumb. It hurt, but we were British, so it only hurt a bit. For the rest of the holiday I had a sensitive and limp left hand. Accurate diagnosis had to wait until I was back home. And by the time we reached the hut again the storm had passed.

I was probably preoccupied with my own discomfort and did not notice how Paul age 14 or 15 had fared. Tony Buckels was his usual jovial self. We returned to our tents in the valley and Geoffrey to his and Nancy’s tent.

The Forbes ridge had not been an exhausting excursion with distance, heavy sacks, route finding or altitude problems. The weather certainly made an impression, but the storm died away as quickly as it burst upon us. We had got our peak and were ready for some more. The construction of the Mont Blanc tunnel had not yet been started. Somehow, and I cannot remember how, we moved to the other side of the mountain range to Courmayeur and camped in the Val Veni at Le Purtud (approx 1600m, 5,249ft), immediately below the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey (3773m, 12,378ft). The East ridge was Geoffrey’s next objective for us.

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It was an impressive, even oppressive camp site, especially if you knew that your destiny might lie up those steep and dominating cliffs. No doubt this place was a really benign, non-threatening, agricultural pasture, with cattle, shitty eggs, fresh produce from the farmstead, and soft grass for tents in meadowland. That was not how the presence of huge rock walls affected me when the sun had gone down and put us in shadow. Huge slabby precipices reared up from the campsite and blotted out the sun after mid-afternoon. We were destined to climb up there the next day.

In practice it wasn’t quite like that. The route of approach was lit by cheering dawn sunlight, took shallow grooves, zig-zagged about, with small trees and streams tumbling freshly about with sparkling abandon. Then after two hours or so we were in the Fauteuil des Allemands, a kind of hanging cwm full of boulders and rocks that had tumbled off the mountain in past centuries into a huge bowl.

We passed close to the Noire hut at 2316m (7598ft) and continued. Geoffrey was with Paul, I with Tony. Beyond the hut area I have only a vague memory, but the route finding was complicated, the rock climbing nowhere really hard. We did reach the summit, but it had been sucked into benign cloud with no views.

Descending the mountain required good route finding ability, because nothing seemed as during the ascent. At one point Tony and I were ahead of the others but had difficulty getting off the rock and onto the snowfield because summer melting had separated one from the other. We spent ages wandering about under the top edge of the snow covered glacier looking for a way onto the upper surface. Of course we succeeded somehow but still had to get down the early morning route over much uncertain ground that did eventually, by midnight, put Tony and me back in the meadow with the tents. We had climbed about 7,000ft up and down in the day with plenty of grade II/III climbing, and I carried a damaged thumb.

Nancy had a huge pot of stew waiting, and for that I bless her to this day. Geoffrey spent the night out with Paul in the open somewhere on the last stretch down from the Noire hut. Do we call that another impromptu bivouac? They arrived back at camp in the early daylight of the next day while I was unconscious with sleep.

Paul said of it in 2004, “The pinnacle of my mountaineering – he (Geoffrey) took me up the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey…it really was him going up one pitch and hauling me up on the end of the rope.” Paul would have had a hard time; likewise Geoffrey, and for different reasons. I have some dramatic photographs of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey, all taken in years afterwards. I would completely understand if Paul turned down a gift of one. Despite this baptism into Alpinism, Paul did enjoy the less hazardous activity of hill walking and completed the three Peaks walk of Pen y Ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside in Yorkshire with his father some time later.

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Bad weather then affected the rest of our 1959 adventure. We achieved no summits despite attempts. The next excursion was to the Triolet hut (2590m, 8497ft), which is situated above the minor road at the top of the Val Ferret. From the moment we reached the hut there was nothing but rain. We set out next day to climb something in hope, but aborted, and descended to the valley in rain. We even hitch hiked a lift down the valley on a three-wheeled farm vehicle, where rain still got at the three of us in the open on the back, tightly squeezed into soaking wet clothing and rucksacks.

In view of this bit of memory on my part, I am pretty certain that Paul was not with Geoffrey, Tony and me.

The Aiguille Noire de Peuterey is on left, the sloping rock ridge to the summit being our route of ascent and descent.

Photo John Allen

We all moved camp to the other side of the Col Ferret into Switzerland. Geoffrey must have felt that Paul was not going to feature in future climbs on this holiday.

The Dixon’s Humber (a large black limousine style of 1950’s) took the group via the Great St Bernard Pass and via Orsières to Praz d Fort in the Swiss Val Ferret. From there Geoffrey, Tony and I walked up to the Saleina Hut (2691m, 8,828ft) but again the weather intervened and drove us back to the valley. Tony and I got together for some beers, nicked a few strawberries from an open garden plot en route to our tent late at night, and the climbing holiday ended without further excitement.

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20. The 1955 lecture Among the recently discovered documents there is one that tells us more about Geoffrey the mountaineer than is revealed in his other writings, all of which describe his ascents to summits except this one, which is reflective, literary and historical.

This is also chronologically his last known piece of writing about the Alps, and may even have been his last word on the entire subject of Alpine climbing.

The 1955 lecture interests me greatly because climbers like Geoffrey simply do not usually stop climbing and writing. They continue to climb, and often write about their experiences (whether in simple personal logs or for specialist climbing books), especially if their ascents have been memorable, as were some of Geoffrey’s. In the modern idiom, climbing is a lifestyle choice, whether made consciously or unconsciously, and subconsciously underpins every 24 hour day, even when away from mountains. Such people always yearn to be back among mountains. Yet I fear that with this piece Geoffrey is foretelling his conclusion as a mountaineer.

Once he gets over the technicalities of the presentation of the lecture, he attempts, as so many before him, to ‘describe the magical fascination which the Alps have for climbers’ and immediately admits that such ‘feelings….are really incommunicable.’

Having thus failed at the start, he touches on traditional attitudes, and on the dread of mountains, which then evolve through science and the sporting challenge to reach all the highest points, to acceptance and even reverence via poetry; and the part of women climbers – which must have appealed to his female audience. As a teacher introducing novices, even sons of the women present, he is intrigued – how is it that some apparently unsuitable boys take to it and others not? He has no answer.

What he has really come to tell the audience is that for him, there was one mountain that mattered, not Everest, but the Matterhorn; and one climber, AF Mummery.

Both had motivated his mountaineering ambitions. By 1955 Geoffrey had climbed the Matterhorn by Mummery’s route, the Zmutt, in addition to the normal or Hörnli ridge in 1951.

The Matterhorn has always been the iconic symbol of a mountain, the Zmutt ridge was the most desired route among mountaineers, and he had climbed it, after much heartache and striving (it nearly killed him). In 1955 the audience would almost certainly have had Everest in mind, so soon after the celebrated 1953 British ascent and the attendant lecture tours. For Geoffrey the Matterhorn was his Everest. With his long-term ambition fulfilled, I sense a feeling of project completeness for him; job done, move on. Others had climbed Everest.

He continued to climb in the Alps, but arguably he was less driven; and with young men from his school and not with his accomplished mountaineer friends. Behind him as the driving force, others had at first to trail along, but some youngsters found that they could keep up with him, and even outperform him. On the 1956 trip John Gatiss led the difficult pitch on the Alphubel after he had failed, and kept up with him to the very end on the Dent Blanche. I can remember the relief that I felt on the Alphubel, when John succeeded, because a few minutes earlier I had broken my wooden shafted ice-axe, and felt vulnerable, stripped of strength.

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At least in retrospect Geoffrey should have felt some satisfaction that he could literally hand over the lead and pass on the flame of Alpinism.

There follows Geoffrey’s 1955 ‘lecture’:

Alpine Roundabout Talk given to the Business and Professional Women’s Club, Southport, 19th September 1955 and to St Philip’s Guild, Southport, 20th October 1955 A lantern lecture, apart from being a rather out of date entertainment, is one which is full of snares and pitfalls for the lecturer. He is apt to spend half his time with his back to the audience gesticulating wildly with a large wand and thereby becoming both inaudible and effectively blocking the view. The enormous close-up of his slides is also apt to have a hypnotic effect causing him to wander from the point and to reminisce unduly. His audience then, after gazing at one picture for ten minutes or more is rushed breathlessly through the next dozen at almost cinematographic speed in his frantic efforts to catch up. I don’t think I am exaggerating the position, because I know that I am describing only too accurately some of my own efforts in this direction.

Therefore, with your permission, I want to try quite a different method tonight. I always think it is more satisfactory to have a prepared paper. I want you to imagine that you have been given one of those large and glossy books which consist almost entirely of beautiful photographs and contain a minimum of text. You look at the pictures while I read some of the text to you. You all have, I hope, a piece of paper with the titles of the slides. I have asked the operator to put on each slide for one minute exactly. Since there are 41 of them this will act as a effective hour glass such as preachers used to use, though I hope you will find the pictures more interesting and varied than grains of sand. I promise to keep my back resolutely to the screen so that I shall be in no danger of digressing. May we have the first slide please?

I am afraid that my title “Alpine Roundabout” is somewhat vague. Those who never climb a mountain may sometimes wonder what, if anything, goes on in the minds of those who do [missing]. All I shall attempt to do is to try to give you some idea of the magical fascination which the Alps have for climbers, though I fear that the feelings I attempt to describe are really incommunicable. One of the oddest things about a love of climbing mountains is its selectivity. I suppose I have had more experience than most people in introducing young beginners to climbing and I can never tell beforehand which of them will like it. Sometimes the most promising looking recruits, often good athletes in other fields, find in it nothing but drudgery and weariness of the flesh. With others, who may often appear unpromising, a day, or even an hour, on rocks, glacier or snowfield lights a lifelong flame of passion for the mountains in their hearts.

For ever after, only to read about mountains is enough to quicken their pulse. It is quite beyond my powers to analyse the qualities of physical and mental makeup which give us the one type or the other. Perhaps the climbers are those who are

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most nearly akin to our remote ancestors. What is certain is that nobody can tell to which class he belongs until he actually rubs his nose on the mountain.

Mountaineering is certainly not for lovers of comfort and a bare catalogue of the discomforts a climber has to endure does not sound very attractive. Even in the Alps, to say nothing of more lofty ranges, extremes of heat and cold have to be endured. I have seen unwary beginners with blisters the size of pigeons’ eggs on their face after only an hour’s incautious exposure to the sun on a glacier. On the other hand when the sun leaves the mountain side at great heights freezing sets in almost immediately and undue exposure may easily bring frostbite. Last year, when making the ascent of the Taeschhorn I had a small polythene water bottle inside my rucksack when we left the hut at 2 am. Two hours later when I opened the sack at dawn the water in the bottle was frozen solid. Considerable weights may have to be carried. It must be remembered that two days must be allowed for climbing up and down a major Alpine peak to and from the valley and all one’s provisions and spare clothing must be carried as well as all the necessary climbing paraphernalia, ropes, ice axe, crampons etc. More often than not it may be four or five days between visits to the valley and during this time one probably never gets a chance to take off one’s clothes or even have a wash. Add to these discomforts a certain nervous strain imposed by the necessity for continual alertness when climbing, the difficulties of route finding – mountains are most confusing places when one is a little too close to them – and a mistake in route finding may easily lead to a night out if no worse; also there are certain places where a certain limited risk must be taken, the weather is a constant anxiety and indeed the inexperience and slowness of beginners in one’s party also adds to the nervous strain. All this I realise adds up to a somewhat unattractive picture. But if one were to take the notes of a Beethoven symphony and analyse them scientifically in their relation to each other I am sure the result would be equally unsatisfactory. The magic would be gone. Of course the charm is there – the adventure and the views – from an armchair but one can only climb a mountain by the sweat of one’s brow.

Nevertheless the answer to the question “Why do we like climbing mountains?” has always puzzled climbers and even the most able of them have been unable to find a satisfactory answer. This is how Lord Schuster attempts the answer at the end of a description of an expedition up the Matterhorn.

“It all sounds aimless. I had worn two holes in the knees of my breeches, broken my flask, rubbed the skin off my fingers, slept on a most uncomfortable stone, incurred a certain, not very great, amount of risk, carried my body up 9390 feet and as many down. I cannot tell what had made of these prosaic happenings an adventure of surpassing value. Browning’s musician claimed for his art that Here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

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So it is with us; the glorious heat of noonday, the majesty of the night, the marching stars, the wide vision, the suggestion of peril, the rhythmic movement of the body, the fellowship, the toil, the attainment – all these together make some new and precious thing which lives in us and with us till thought and feeling die.”

Such love of climbing mountains is a comparatively recent development. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century mountains had been regarded with almost universal dislike and dread. It was perhaps only natural that such infertile and stormy regions should be so looked upon in days when man’s standard of living was low and little energy was left for such profitless pursuits. The creation of climbing as a sport was the work almost entirely of a small group of comparatively wealthy Englishmen in the mid nineteenth century. It started by the urge to undertake scientific work in such regions. Little was known at the beginning of the nineteenth century of the geography or geology of the Alps. Large regions in the Alps had never even been mapped. The movement of glaciers had never been investigated and nothing was known of the meteorological conditions at high altitudes nor of the reactions of the human body to such conditions. The most prominent early pioneer was Professor Forbes of Edinburgh who travelled extensively in the Alps in the thirties and early forties and did important scientific work on glaciers (JD Forbes, 1809 – 1868, Prof of Natural Philosopy - Editor).

Forbes made no attempt to climb any high peaks, but he was soon followed by others who did. These early pioneers were laden with scientific paraphernalia, thermometers, barometers, clinometers, boiling point apparatus and a host of other things with which more or less useful observations were made. This scientific emphasis of early climbing has an echo even today in the title page of each number of the Alpine Journal which states that it is “a record of mountain adventure and scientific observation by members of the Alpine Club”. The truth was that in the early days public opinion would not have tolerated the climbing of mountains merely for fun. It is difficult for us to recapture the sense of fear of the unknown and dread of high mountains which must have possessed people at that time. But for many of the climbers themselves scientific investigations soon became merely a cloak for the purely adventurous side of their explorations. Even so it was with a certain sense of guilt that they did so. As late as 1880 a President of the Alpine Club (Charles Edward Mathews – Editor) could write “I appear, then, as a member of that class of perhaps not altogether respectable persons who ascend hills merely for pleasure”.

This conflict between the scientific and the sporting approach became most acute between Professor John Tyndall and the other members of the newly formed Alpine Club. Tyndall was a great mountaineer as well as a great scientist. Only two years ago our party occupied his old chalet at Bel Alp above Brig and we were very interested to find carefully packed away in a drawer much of the scientific apparatus which he used in the Alps still in perfect condition. Tyndall had two faults. He had no sense of humour and he was far too ready to take offence and to conduct prolonged feuds with anybody who disagreed with him. His writings on the Alps are not read very much now but they are well worth reading in spite of a stilted style and an incongruous insertion of pieces of scientific information. For

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instance after an extremely interesting account of one of his expeditions he describes his return to Zermatt and finishes by saying “the temperature of boiling water on the dining table in the salle à manger at the Monte Rosa Hotel was 204.35o F.” Of course this sort of thing invited parody and gave rise to one of the most famous jokes in the Alpine Club. Sir Leslie Stephen, President in 1862 at the Winter Dinner gave a mock heroic account of an ascent of the Ober Gabelhorn and ended by saying: “And what scientific observations did you make?” will be the enquiry of one of those fanatics who, by a reasoning process to me utterly inscrutable, have somehow irrevocably associated Alpine travelling with Science. To them I answer that the temperature was approximately (I had no thermometer) 212° Fahrenheit below freezing point. As for ozone, if any existed in the atmosphere, it was a greater fool than I take it for.” Tyndall left the Alpine Club forthwith and it was more than twenty years before he could be persuaded to attend even as a guest.

This joke has entered into the tradition of climbing and one frequently comes across it in various guises. In 1910 H Symons describes a bivouac on the Taeschhorn and ends by saying “I should estimate our height at 10000 ft but, in the absence of an aneroid and a thermometer, I can only record the rudely empiric observation that the boiling point of soup was uncommonly high.”

The year 1865 saw the conquest of the Matterhorn and the disaster which followed on the descent. This prompted Queen Victoria to ask the Prime Minister whether mountaineering could not be stopped by law. Nothing came of this but the event itself was enough to cast a blight over mountaineering for half a generation.

Nevertheless by 1875 all the major peaks of the Alps except one had been climbed, the vast majority of them by Englishmen. Other nationalities were by now taking up climbing with enthusiasm and the last quarter of the century saw large numbers of men and women of all nationalities following in the footsteps of the few who had gone before. The outstanding figure of this period and perhaps the greatest climber of all time was AF Mummery whose book “My climbs in the Alps and Caucasus” has become a classic. Mummery opened up new and difficult routes in many parts of the Alps and the claim can fairly be made for him that he was the Father of modern climbing. Many stories and legends remain among climbers of Mummery’s deeds – the famous bottles of Bouvier which were opened on each new summit, the participation of Mrs Mummery in many of the difficult ascents, the famous Mummery crack on the Grépon – and many other incidents. He left a recipe for an open air stimulant, which has probably never been given and never will be given on Woman’s Hour so I will give it now. It is known to climbers as Mummery’s Blood.

Take equal parts of snow, Bovril and rum; heat; drink. It should be consumed in a blizzard at a height of at least 12000 ft when it is guaranteed to be an effective stimulant.

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The Matterhorn from above Zermatt.

Photo by John Allen

The pioneers of Alpine climbing were in many cases very eminent men and they have left behind a distinguished literature recording their adventures and comments on it. To the modern climber a considerable factor in his enjoyment is the sense of history and of pilgrimage which surrounds him in the Alps. Last summer my party climbed the Zmutt Ridge on the Matterhorn, one of Mummery’s climbs and one which is still considered long and difficult, so much so that in an average season no more than three or four parties accomplish it. The landmarks in

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Mummery’s description were eagerly recognised and the accounts of other pioneers were also recalled so that we were on something of a literary pilgrimage as well as a climb.

This would perhaps be a suitable place to mention the early lady climbers in the Alps. Climbing is one of the few sports at which women are at little or no physical disadvantage compared with men. The qualities of physique which are of most value are stamina and a good balance and neatness of movement. Great strength and neatness of foot are rarely required. It has been said with some truth that the balance and movements associated with ballroom dancing are nearly akin to the type of movement required in climbing. Therefore it was not surprising that even in the early days a few women were among the pioneers in spite of the sheltered lives led by women in the middle of the 19th century. Pride of place should, I think, be given to Miss Lucy Walker of Liverpool whose father was one of the first members of the Alpine Club and whose brother was also a distinguished member. Miss Walker climbed regularly for over twenty years and was invariably seen in a long dress which swept the ground as she walked. She was the first woman to climb the Matterhorn (in 1871) and also the Wetterhorn and she took part on the first ascent of the Balmhorn. Altogether she climbed nearly 100 major Alpine peaks. Here is a description of her by a continental climber who met her by chance in 1862 at the Theodule Hut. “We were extremely surprised when, creeping into this dark den, we saw a young woman endeavouring to dry her garments, soaked with water and crisp with frost, in front of a wretched fire. The guides told us that she was a young English lady who travelled by herself. She was coming from the top of Mont Blanc and was going to the top of Monte Rosa; indeed she climbed it a few days later. Her name was Miss Walker. A moment later, we saw her going away. She had two guides.

One was going in front of her, the other behind her and a thick rope tied round her slender waist bound her to both hardy mountain natives. She was walking quickly, though floundering in the snow, and was very soon out of sight behind a thick mist and sheets of drizzle driven by the blizzard.”

Poor Miss Walker! She was born in the wrong century.

There were many other early women climbers. Gertrude Bell has left a vivid account of some of her adventures in her letters. And Alpine climbing provides perhaps the most pathetic story in the history of the emancipation of women. Mrs Aubrey Le Blond completed the traverse of the Zinal Rothorn with her party only to find to her horror on nearing Zermatt that she had left her detachable skirt at the top of the mountain. Rather than descend to the village she chose to go right back over the mountain top and down by the way she had come, picking up her skirt on the way. Only somebody who has done this long and strenuous climb, at least 10 or 12 hours of it, can really appreciate the heroism behind that decision.

The women pioneers have, of course, been followed by many others. Recently the first all women expedition to the Himalayas was organized. But the number of

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women climbers, even today, remains comparatively small. In view of their skill and aptitude for the sport this is rather surprising.

One of the most engaging qualities of mountains and one which is most flattering to human vanity is their ability to appear impossible of ascent. Nobody, even a seasoned mountaineer, gazing up at the Matterhorn from the streets of Zermatt for the first time can really believe that its summit is attainable by man, so impossibly vertical does it seem. But in fact about 40° appears to be vertical when viewed from straight in front of it. The Matterhorn ridge which points directly towards Zermatt is at an average inclination of only 35°. The pioneers seeing it so frequently from the usual position in the town never even considered it as a possible route for years until one day, returning down the valley from another peak they had a good look at it from the side and realised that it was much the easiest of the four ridges. The successful ascent was made the next week. I remember once sitting on top of one of the Aiguilles Rouges to the north of Chamonix and trying to work out with my companions a possible route up the next peak which looked to be a particularly tough rock climb. There must have been some 500 ft of the ridge. To our amazement, however, when we reached the foot of the peak we found that we could walk up it without even having to use our hands. This sort of thing flatters the mountaineers while keeping the rest of the world gasping at their desperate deeds.

Of course this is not to say that there are no very steep or even overhanging cliffs, but it must be remembered that a distant photograph always fails to show the comparatively small hand and footholds that are all that are necessary for perfectly safe progression. Climbers after all are human, or almost so, and cannot stay up with nothing to support them. Being human too they are, like anglers, sometimes tempted to exaggerate and we may be sure in reading their more purple passages that they lose nothing in the telling. But I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that any able bodied person of either sex under that age of 50 who takes the trouble to train and become fit could, properly led, get to the top of any major Alpine peak without undue difficulty. But I do not want to carry my debunking activities too far. The most difficult part of climbing is not generally the technical difficulty of the ascent, but the route finding. Inexperienced climbers can only too easily stray on to difficult and dangerous ground and lose precious time in finding the way. The clean cut ridges of a distant view are often extraordinarily complex on close acquaintance and present a whole series of problems only to be quickly solved by the eye of experience. Bad weather can transform an easy route in an incredibly short space of time and make its passage very difficult and dangerous. We were descending the Matterhorn last year rather late when a sudden snowstorm came on catching us only about 500 ft from the summit. Within two minutes the rocks were completely masked by snow which began trickling off them in a series of small avalanches. All landmarks were immediately obliterated and visibility reduced to a few yards. Our pace was reduced to a crawl and we took 5 hours to reach the tiny Solvay hut half way down the ridge instead of the hour we had expected. (This is an obvious reference to his ascent of the Zmutt Ridge in 1954, retold earlier in his own words here – Editor.)

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I have spent some time in discussing a few aspects of climbing the Alps. There are many more I could have mentioned but time does not permit. It is beyond my power to weld these aspects together for you to give the climber’s vision as a whole.

Life in the plains is complex, difficult and often mean; on the mountains it is rough, simple and true. Escapism possibly, but as a poet has put it: “Here is the world made real, not vision only; Here with the scented spruce and mountain pink And the rough touch of rock The hills are one.

From the far shining peak and burning rock-rib, Here, in a patch of sunlight, in the pinewood, The streams are glacier-cold And falling, talk.

Over the timeless blue, as through the mind, Moves, in dissolving white, the summer cloud, And the mind’s eye is dark, and dazzle with The simple truth.

Living at full compass, we were one With the four elements, and knew the rock, And the sweet smell of earth, And ice and fire; Graceful, blue Tsanteleina, beauty’s pattern; Granta Parei, stark meditation; and, Dark as a falling breaker, fringed with foam, Silent, snow-corniced Sassière.

Here, in the summer night, the spirit waits The silence, and the beauty, and the moonlight, Under Mont Pourri, and the wilderness of seracs, and the rock, And cannot sleep, Here, in the velvet dusk, the mingling bells From the far grazing herd and the white chapel by the cataract will drown In the last waves of sepia and violet and warm Wild-honey gold.”

Val d’Isère, by Michael Roberts

I would like to conclude with an illustration, namely a short account of a not altogether successful adventure of my own in the Alps. It happened a year or two ago and may serve to illustrate the points I have been trying to make.’

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Unfortunately the text finished here. Maybe Geoffrey continued informally with slides, and I would like to think that he described his ascent of the Frontier ridge of Mont Maudit, or his ascent of the Matterhorn on the Zermatt expedition in 1951, as described in his articles printed above, or even the traverse of the Weisshorn in 1951.

What slides did he show? Did he ever use colour film? As far as I remember he had only black and white negative film in his camera on the 1956 holiday with John Gatiss and me. I have about twenty small prints from that trip. He had processed them in his home dark-room.

Such climbing talks usually have an informal style, allowing for a structured presentation to be interspersed with impromptu remarks that are unscripted and occasioned as the slides are projected and the audience gets warmed to the subject.

Unlike a delivery of subject matter to a room full of 11-16 year old boys at school, this was in the first instance to the Business and Professional Women’s Club, Southport, on 19th September 1955, and later to St Philip’s Guild, Southport, on 20th October 1955. The document is more a lecturer’s script as if for delivery to a learned institution, word by precise word. Did he actually deliver the talk in the manner described: 41 slides at one minute intervals, each member of the audience squinting in a darkened room to read the descriptive detail of each image on a piece of paper, and at the same time absorbing Geoffrey’s diction? Most unusual and awkward for both speaker and audience.

One wonders how this talk ever came about, and perhaps Nancy had a hand in it through her own social network. It was an opportunity for Geoffrey to sell himself to some of his public, namely parents and associates of the KGV local grammar school.

The enjoyment of travel to places in unfamiliar Europe, the sights of different landscapes, beautifully framed views of high alpine mountains, set within rural foregrounds, local customs and clothing would seem to be the obvious pictorial subject matter for the target audience. One can never really know how an audience will accept one’s material, and I would suggest that this script with its literary and historical references if strictly adhered to, would have best suited an audience of likeminded alpinists in the Alpine Club’s hallowed precincts at South Audley Street London rather than the respected womenfolk of Southport. But maybe he abandoned the script on the night and followed an anecdotal style as the slides in sequence refreshed his memory.

The text makes it clear that Geoffrey was well acquainted with the main mountaineering literature of the Alps. His lodestar was AF Mummery (‘…perhaps the greatest climber of all time…’ he had written), first to climb the Zmutt Ridge of the Matterhorn, which Geoffrey had for a long time high on his hit list, until success in 1954. He refers admiringly to Mummery’s book ‘My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus’ and to Mrs Mummery’s participation in many of the difficult ascents. He probably had his own copy of the book.

He must have been already steeped in Matterhorn history before the family holiday of 1953 at Professor John Tyndall’s former house at Belalp where the whole group stayed. What a privilege to have been able to stay there! Tyndall had made the first

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traverse of the Matterhorn from Breuil to Zermatt (up the Italian ridge, down the Hörnli ridge in 1868). At the time of the 1955 lecture Geoffrey must have felt that he knew the Matterhorn well from a physical, historical and literary angle. The fatality that blighted Whymper’s career when four men fell to their deaths from the top section of the Matterhorn in 1865 must have at one time or other crossed Geoffrey’s mind – his own writings hint at the potential disasters that his parties faced in the same area of the mountain on two occasions.

My conclusion, and it is a strong hunch, is that the Matterhorn occupied Geoffrey’s mind for many years, possibly from earliest years while at Worksop College when he could have been one of the young visitors there while on the school scout camp at Kandersteg in the early 1920s, perhaps 1926 or so. Post World War 2 Geoffrey seemed keen to get to grips with the biggest of the Alps (maybe also Mont Blanc, the highest, on the 1950 visit, but we have no record), and 1951 pitted him against the giants of the Zermatt area. Despite an aversion to a perceived vulgarity of ascent by the ‘tourist’ (Hörnli) route in 1951, he was compelled to submit to it because of weather conditions that precluded an attempt on the Zmutt. Maybe he felt that he should satisfy his public’s expectations, and get the tick. He was also resolute enough to return for the Zmutt in 1955. This was probably his most satisfying achievement.

Possibly from then on, he had no other ‘Matterhorn’ in his sights, such that the 1956 and 1958 holidays showed signs of the end of his alpine mountaineering career. The 1956 holiday was with two inexperienced late teenage boys, not his contemporaries; the 1958 holiday was with Nancy and Paul, and two ex-KGV boys hoping for some general alpinism in the company of someone who was a master at the game.

21. Geoffrey’s later climbing and mountaineering - reflections The trail of research into Geoffrey’s later Alpine mountaineering seems to finish here.

There is no evidence that he ever went to the Alps to climb after 1958. This is hard to understand. He was only 46. Alpine climbing had meant so much to him. Why would he call it a day? Was it something to do with this 1958 family Alpine holiday when rain finished us off? Was it the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey ascent/descent and bivouac with his 15 year old son? Or were there other influences?

The future would never hold any certainty that KGV could supply sufficient talent on a regular and continuing basis for climbs, whether in the UK or the Alps. Once teenagers have left school, they turn their attention to their onward lives, even if they continue with some of the activities inherited from school (eg myself – I never went back to KGV, and have been a climber and mountaineer all my life).

If Geoffrey had not kept up climbing activities with his contemporaries (eg Tom Peacocke, Donald Ross, Alasdair Kerr), then he might well have found himself high and dry, or at least becalmed.

Regular and continuous involvement in mountaineering requires a twenty four hour daily attention span, at its most intense, which was the way Geoffrey operated. And Geoffrey was not one for half measures.

Judging by the nine or so years leading up to 1958 it would not have been normal for

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him to have no plans to climb in the Alps in the summer, and 1957 had been a blank year – at least he left no record of Alpine climbing in 1957.

After the 1958 excursion to the Alps, he has recorded nothing about any planned or actual rock climbing or Alpine ventures, whether with school associates or friends or other companions. None of his sons seemed to wish to follow Geoffrey’s mountaineering with the same intensity as perhaps Geoffrey’s brothers had done in the 1930s. Thus at least temporarily he might have run out of climbing companions.

Anyway his sons had begun to leave the nest of home and follow independent life courses.

Most unusually for such a committed mountaineer and member of the Alpine Club, he resigned his membership in 1959. In view of this fact appearing in the AC Register, I enquired further of the Hon Archivist, Glyn Hughes. His deeper researches revealed the following: “Committee Minutes 12th January 1960 – 7 resignations – no reasons given – Hon Sec to contact them.

Committee Minutes 2nd February 1960 – no reply from Dixon.

Committee Minutes 1st March 1960 – Dixon not able to change his mind, and resignation noted.”

I enquired if there might have been letters of resignation retained in the archives, as I was seeking possible comment by Geoffrey and even reasons, but such a letter was no longer available, even if written.

He had only been a member for eleven years. Membership of organisations can be ‘lost’ through non-payment of subscriptions, but that seems unlikely in Geoffrey’s case. Members of such clubs normally only resign if they develop a deep-seated disagreement with a new direction taken by the club at the time. eg to move its clubhouse out of London into the provinces. More probably Geoffrey began to ‘retire gracefully’ from the mountaineering scene, now that he had some satisfying successes under his belt.

It is entirely possible that Geoffrey returned to enjoying the British mountains at a personal level only, where for him and for most of us the climbing and mountaineering begins and ends.

Of course there were external influences bearing down on those who would organise ‘outdoor pursuits’. The Government’s Wolfenden Report in 1960 reads (unabridged extract): “….In most other sports beginners can at wish or need teach themselves by simply trying and practising. Trial and error will not usually lead to disaster, but in many outdoor activities there is an element of danger. In fact this element of danger may not only be integral to the sport but part of the attraction to those who wish to pursue it. It is not that the actual danger is enjoyed for its own sake; its presence usually means that the situation has got out of control. What is clear is that the means of

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mastering potential dangers is to be found only in technique and applied experience.

Supervision in this type of activity demands a high ratio of instructors….”

It had become clear from the Government downwards that the teaching of ‘danger’ sports such as rock climbing and general hill walking and mountaineering was henceforward to be through professional, qualified instructors and formal certification. This was the death knell of learning by experience, by the trial and error methods to date. As Headmaster at a respected grammar school, Geoffrey would have been compelled to take notice. In fact he would have been foolish to ignore the Wolfenden report, which henceforth probably coloured his attitude to introducing people to the mountains. In the cold light of day he could already reflect on what might have been, on what some would say were unjustifiable risks.

By 1964 he seems to have decided that as far as KGV and climbing/mountaineering were concerned he wished to pass it on to another, and he found a subject teacher who was also an ex-Outward Bound instructor, namely James Honeybone. When Geoffrey interviewed him for a teaching post at KGV, he told him that he wanted someone to take over the school climbing club, namely the Thornley Society, and James was keen to do this. Geoffrey expected James to take a party over the Welsh Threes and a party to Skye annually, both of which James was delighted about.

James made lifetime friendships with some of the boys, and in 2012 they were still enjoying the annual pilgrimage to the Isle of Skye over forty years later.

This appointment was probably the strongest indication of Geoffrey’s relaxation of his own direct involvement in these outdoor pursuits, certainly with KGV boys. In 1964 he would be only 52, and soon began to turn his considerable energies towards a project that became Long Rigg. He was not too old for the Alps, not too old to be a colleague in the Alps with contemporaries from his era, or with younger men, for example ex-KGV boys. For him Alpinism was in his soul. But he would no longer be active in the Alps.

He did continue minor climbing activities in the UK, and it is just possible that the Frontispiece photo of him was taken by his school secretary, Jean Buck, sometime in the summer holidays of August 1964. Oliver remembers that he undertook to take her to Dow Crag above Coniston, roped on a rock climb, perhaps to demonstrate what in practice had formed a line of enquiry during term-time on Monday mornings after a particularly active week-end.

One strenuous solo excursion had taken Geoffrey to the Isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, when he walked from the Feolin ferry point over the Paps of Jura and back. In about 1980 he and Nancy visited their younger son Paul in New Zealand where he had emigrated with his family in 1975. Geoffrey, ever adventurous, walked solo over one of the major peaks of North Island.

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22. Outdoor Education and the Long Rigg Project Outdoor education as we came to know it in the last half of the 2oth century was virtually non-existent when Geoffrey took up his Headship at KGV in 1949. The original main inspirations of outdoor activities for boys had come from Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement in 1907; Geoffrey Winthrop Young, climber, educator, poet, writer, visionary; Kurt Hahn, who with Winthrop Young, founded Gordonstoun School (1933) and the Outward Bound movement (1941); and later, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme, founded in 1956. The Youth Hostel movement, founded in 1930, also played a part.

The educational benefits of activities for young people in the outdoors only gradually became recognised in the first half of the century. The First World War, social unrest, the Depression and general poverty in the Twenties and Thirties, poor transport and lack of cheap accommodation, followed by the Second World War held back any practical interpretation of ideals. Only the privileged few, and university groups, could take part in anything like further education, indoors or outdoors.

In the later stages of World War 2, Geoffrey Winthrop Young set about organising the existing mountaineering clubs into a cohesive unit, and the British Mountaineering Council was founded in 1944. Soon afterwards Penguin Books published ‘Climbing in Britain’ by JEQ Barford in 1946. In 1951 the first residential Outdoor Pursuits Centre was opened near Buxton in Derbyshire. Motivation for the latter came from Jack, later Sir Jack Longland (1905 – 1993), Chief Education Officer for Derbyshire, a respected climber and Everest pioneer of the 1930s, who followed the basic ideals of the physical, social and educational benefits of activities for underprivileged youngsters in the outdoors.

Without specific evidence it is hard for us to know how much of these and other initiatives were known to Geoffrey. What we certainly know is that quite independently from his teaching career, from 1933 Geoffrey had been an active climber and serious mountaineer, and he must have been aware of the activities by British climbers immediately after World War 2 (viz his Alpine Club membership, his 1952 article in the Alpine Journal, and notes in the current AJs). Mountaineering experienced an upsurge in public respectability through lecture tours by members of the successful 1953 Everest expedition (no-one was killed). I think it is safe to say that he was widely read in the general background of British mountaineering literature (note his references in ‘Alpine Roundabout’ above). As a teacher and Head of Science at Sandhurst, he had taken cadets rock climbing – in the real outdoors – in the period 1947 - 1949, before any outdoor pursuit centre existed. His own educational background at public school, linked with his teaching career to date and knowledge of climbing and mountaineering equipped him to further these activities in his own school, should the opportunity arise.

When he began in 1949 at KGV, and almost immediately took one or two senior boys onto rock climbs in North Wales and the Lake District, they must have been very rare events indeed. He had personally known that Bob Porter had done so as a schoolmaster, and so had Tom Peacocke. Other teachers such as RLG Irving at

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Winchester College (taught George Mallory – see note, end chapter 8) and Wilfrid Noyce at Charterhouse public schools had also taken boys rock climbing. As the appointed Headmaster at KGV he was in a position to initiate any activity and he chose to pioneer rock climbing at his school because that was his specialism – it wasn’t just one of several alternative disciplines available for him to choose from, such as orienteering, sailing, caving, hill walking, canoeing and rock climbing, that later became the bread and butter classroom teaching and outdoors experience of outdoor centres in the future. Rock climbing was simply his passion, worth teaching to youngsters. The Government’s Wolfenden report of 1960 was still in the future.

Having established a core of rock climbing activity at KGV by forming the Thornley Society, he passed it over to a new and enthusiastic member of staff in 1964, James Honeybone. At about this time (1966) he became aware of the need to celebrate the school’s Golden Jubilee in 1970 and started a fund. His inspiration was to buy a suitably large property in a mountain environment and to set up the school’s own outdoor centre. My gut feeling is that he knew the education world in general was in favour of broadening the experiences of pupils by boarding them out in residential centres for the purpose of introducing physical activities other than the standard fare of weekly soccer, rugby, and cricket, as well as field studies connected to the environment. Knowingly or otherwise he was following the ideals of Jack Longland at the White Hall Outdoor centre in Derbyshire.

He brought this initiative to the notice of the Parents Association and Staff.

Referring to a date, probably 1967, George Wakefield, Deputy Head, in a tribute in the Red Rose 1976, wrote of Geoffrey on his retirement, ‘It is for his imaginative leadership that we are most notably in his debt. Almost every boy in the school, over the past nine years, has had his conception of the possibilities of school life transformed by one project, Long Rigg, the Sedbergh field studies centre….it would have been impossible, even unthought of, without Mr Dixon’s vision and enthusiasm. This is happily no time for a memorial, but when that time comes, I believe he would ask for none better.’

In Geoffrey’s own words on retirement in 1976: ‘When I suggested that the school would benefit from an outdoor pursuits centre to mark the Golden Jubilee in 1970, they (the Parents Association) took up the idea and, by sheer hard work and organization, brought it to fruition. They held countless social and fund-raising efforts, and took a most active part in finding a suitable building near Sedbergh, which was subsequently named Long Rigg. The formal opening ceremony took place in the summer of 1970.

‘The benefits of Long Rigg were not only the obvious ones of an ideal environment to teach Geography and Biology, but also the boarding experience of the boys in the most beautiful surroundings. Relationships between staff and boys blossomed, and discipline in the school and the academic performance of most boys developed and expanded. We were able to create the right blend of authority and friendliness in

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the school, under which young minds could expand and mature.’ (The Red Rose 2001 – 75th Anniversary edition of the KGV Old Georgians Association magazine).

However, the general developments in outdoor education in the 1960s and 1970s had overtaken what KGV (ie Geoffrey) was doing in the 1950s. Geoffrey could show rock climbing to a few individuals at a time, teaching by experience, ‘old-school’ style; and we learned by his example and his experience, or common sense (eg it’s cold, so put on a string vest or woolly pullover; none of the ‘base layer’ modern jargon). We learnt how to tie onto a rope round the waist with a bowline, which is really only one step beyond tying a bootlace; and how to coil a climbing rope. And as for the formal teaching of skills that was it. The extra bit for us at KGV in the 1950s, privileged rock climbers that we were, involved travelling away from and beyond home, learning to cook, eat and sleep with our contemporaries in self-catering accommodation as well as do the rock climbing adventure with all its attendant risks. By Geoffrey’s example and presence we also learned to live together, to cope as individuals, and could test our abilities and fitness against and within the outdoors. He was already doing outdoor pursuits for us favoured few in his own way before the State began to sponsor them widely and for all-comers in the 1960s in the wake of the Wolfenden report.

Long Rigg at the opening ceremony on 27 June 1970.

Photo Dixon archives

I don’t think Geoffrey’s Long Rigg project was intended to re-invent the Outward Bound system, but was to show that physical activities in the outdoors were not necessarily survival expeditions but chances to appreciate the natural elements through his type of physical exercise.

Additionally, the old public school experiences of living together, beyond home life, would encourage a sense of teamwork beyond the standard fare of school games. In absorbing these experiences individuals became more self aware and able to cope

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independently as well as a communal group, be more considerate of others, be more physically fit and even be more adventurous, better at risk-taking.

In the country as a whole from the early 1960s outdoor education became an end in itself, especially for the trainers, the training and the trained. The teaching of individual skills developed (eg canoeing, orienteering, rock climbing, skiing), with careers in outdoor education flourishing. Instructors were needed. Courses were developed to teach instructors, and they needed to qualify, with certificates. The Mountain Leadership Training Board was founded in 1964, and the acquisition of certificates became obligatory for instructors and school teachers wishing to show pupils these activities.

At the time in the 1950s some would have scoffed at the need for a course in outdoor education, or any of its constituent parts as now defined by colleges and the Government sponsored outdoor centres, namely Plas y Brenin in North Wales (which happens to be only a couple of miles from Helyg, one of Geoffrey’s choices for mountain activities for KGV boys) and Glenmore Lodge, near Aviemore, in Scotland.

You learn by experience, the traditionalists had said: by getting lost in the mist and finishing in the wrong valley, you learn to trust the map and compass next time; by exposing skin to overmuch UV sunlight or strong wind, you learn to use better sun cream in future; by getting wet, you learn to use better waterproof clothing next time, and avoid the threat of exposure and hypothermia. But some were not so lucky and paid with their lives before they had learned their lesson. The traditionalists’ methods declined under pressure from respected reports (eg Wolfenden 1960). The visionary leadership of Winthrop Young and Jack Longland and others had done its work. The establishment in 1964 of the Mountain Leader Training Board and attitudes to safety invoked by the press, parents and Government agencies set the seal on an era.

In its time and for him Geoffrey’s one man selection and supervision system for rock climbing and mountaineering worked. No-one was ever seriously hurt. But it was of its time, that brief period between 1949 and 1960, before the rest of the outdoor education world caught up in the 1960s and overtook, so to speak, where Geoffrey as Headmaster had been showing the way, in his own way.

As long as Government policy remained fixed through the late 1970s and 1980s, the Long Rigg project was ultimately unlikely to succeed because state funding for such projects would be channelled into the new specialist centres that could cater for all the outdoor pursuits, and staffing at KGV was principally dedicated to academic studies. The upkeep of such a facility by a single school would be too onerous. The Parents Association couldn’t be expected to maintain Long Rigg without sponsored funding and the new wider Sefton Education Authority (no longer Southport Education Authority) could not be expected to make up any shortfall.

In the early 1980s KGV Grammar School became a Sixth Form College in the wave of comprehensive education sweeping the country. Long Rigg had been useful for an 11 to 18 year old’s school but 16 to 18 year olds had different priorities after school,

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including the need for part-time jobs. The then Secretary of State Kenneth Baker introduced training days for teachers (‘Baker Days’) and regulated their hours. The voluntary provision of unpaid effort after hours by teachers vanished overnight, so that sports activities declined and outdoor pursuit teachers stopped giving up their week-ends to supervise outdoor activities at places such as Long Rigg. There was no longer a need for Long Rigg, as the College was not using it, despite the support from Sefton (eg safety regulations enforced the installation of new fire doors, etc) to keep it open.

Geoffrey had retired and was no longer in charge, but must have been well aware of developments. Soon after the Sixth Form College came into existence, Long Rigg was sold to Buckinghamshire Education Authority (for £70,000; it had cost about £5,000) for continued use as an outdoor pursuits centre, and is still operational as such today in 2012. The proceeds were used to set up an Educational Trust Fund, income from which would support local students to undertake extra-mural activities that they might not otherwise manage from their own funds. As his legacy in the name of King George V School Southport, Long Rigg would no longer remain. Yet students from the Milton Keynes area (Buckinghamshire) would still be able to benefit from its original visionary foundation (see ‘Action4Youth’ at www.longrigg.org.uk). How did Geoffrey feel about all this? In the words of one close commentator, he was philosophical. His own will provided a bequest to the Educational Trust fund that was the result – now and ultimately his most lasting legacy.

Along with our memories, and this record from descendents of his school.

Geoffrey in the Howgills.

Dixon archives

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23. Later Years In his later years, rock climbing became scrambling and hill walking as well as golf, bridge playing, and crossword puzzles. Anecdotally Oliver Dixon remembers: ‘In retirement he showed a phenomenal ability (aided by Nancy) at solving the most excruciatingly complex crosswords, mostly in the “Listener” and won a large number of dictionaries.’ There was also Alpine gardening, genealogy, family history and (more recently) digital photography.

Geoffrey did revel in joining the Old Georgians annual bash in the Lake District, as individuals remember well.

Ken Edwardson again, Peter Brunt and I invited Geoffrey to be our guest for a week-end at the Scafell Hotel in Borrowdale. A day on the hill would be followed by a good meal in the evening. He recalled the day on Tryfan when John Hyde (see above) had got his boot stuck at a very exposed place while leading a climb with me. John had released his foot from the boot and continued on to the next belay without it. I was able to free the empty boot and bring it up. Geoffrey admitted that was one of his worst moments – expecting a serious accident and envisaging the end of his career of taking boys onto the hills and also perhaps the end of his Headship.

One day after we had been to the summit of Great Gable, we descended to the Napes ridges, one of our old climbing grounds. Before I could stop him he was on to the second pitch of Needle Ridge. No rope of course. But when I explained that an eighty year old man without a rope falling off the ridge would most certainly make newspaper headlines he very reluctantly came down.’

Geoffrey with Ken Edwardson on a late 1980s Old Georgians Mountaineering Club meet in the Lake District.

Photo Dixon archives

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Ken Edwardson continues, ‘He was in his late seventies or early eighties when I had the privilege, as surgeon, of operating on him at Clatterbridge Hospital on Merseyside. All went well. On about the third or fourth post operative day, I had to go to a meeting for a few days, so decided to transfer him to Arrowe Park Hospital for the continuing care in my absence. On my return he was in a six bedded bay, and said, “Thank God you are back.” “Why?” I asked. “Well,” he replied, “See that man over there. Within an hour of getting here, he came over to me saying, ‘You look intelligent, so I’ll talk to you,’ and he has never stopped. Please get me back to Clatterbridge.” Which I did.

When Geoffrey was Chairman of The Old Georgian’s Association for the second time, he inaugurated the ‘Chairman’s Week-end’ – a chance to meet and make reacquaintance with old boys. In March 2004 the meeting was held in the Yorkshire Dales. I knew that he was unwell so I called in to see him at home en route. He was very ill and it was obvious that the end was near. Nevertheless he asked for pen and paper and with great difficulty he wrote this message: “The Chairman’s weekend is one of the highlights of the year for me. I am desperately sorry to miss it. No Headmaster of however famous a school could be more proud of his Old Boys than I am of the Old Georgians for their careers, achievements and great kindnesses.”

I think that I was the last Old Boy to see him alive. He died a few days later.’

Nancy, on the occasion of the scattering of Geoffrey’s ashes with (left to right) Peter Brunt, Paul’s wife, Ken Edwardson, Paul Dixon, Sir Miles Irving; 27 th March 2004.

Photo Oliver Dixon

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Oliver Dixon wrote, ‘Geoffrey died on 12th March 2004. His ashes were scattered at Blea Tarn pass in full sight of the Langdale Pikes and the Lakeland Fells which he loved so well. In addition to family members, the occasion was attended by three OGs who had been his most stalwart companions on his mountaineering trips – Sir Miles Irving, Ken Edwardson, and Peter Brunt.’

Finally a short tribute from John Hyde (at KGV 1947 -1954): During his life at KGV Geoffrey dedicated his life to three things, the school, his climbing and his family, and I believe in that order of precedence. No-one could have done more to raise the standards at the school in those post-war years. He could perhaps have achieved a more important Headship, but he stayed the course at KGV. He was very forthright to the point of inflexibility, but he did strongly support what he saw as worthwhile talent and ability in anyone. I believe he was under-rated as a man, who did not make relationships easily; hardly a social climber, reserved, even somewhat brusque, and rather lacking in charisma.

However, he had a wry sense of humour, not often uncovered. Although he rather despised my out of school tennis and badminton (Tennis? Not at KGV thankyou!), I performed well enough for him to comment, unexpectedly: ‘Been messing with those racquets again, I see. Well done!’

As a climber, although not famous, I am certain he was tough, fit, adventurous, and determined enough to climb anywhere with anyone and that includes Everest when it was a supreme challenge; a forceful leader who engendered loyalty and admiration from those who climbed with him. He was the sort of man who could have gone to the South Pole with Scott.

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Appendix 1.

Chronology of Geoffrey’s Alpine Climbs

(details of 1933, 1935, 1937 and 1938 climbs taken from GFD’s application form to join Alpine Club in 1949) Only ascended summits are recorded here; other climbs were attempted but not completed.

1933 Stubaital - Habicht ordinary route Zillertal

- Tristner from Ginzling - Schwartzenstein ordinary route from Berliner hut - Grosser Magner from Bärenbad

Companions: JHF Dixon, W Beeston, HA Fynes-Clinton 1935 Stubaital - Habicht traverse from Innsbrucker hut, descent by NE Ridge, incl involuntary bivouac during descent. Guideless with NB Dixon.

Otztal – Ramolkogel ordinary route from Ramolhaus, ascent via Groser Gurgler Ferner, descent via Langtaler Ferner to Obergurgl (ie Hochwilde traverse).

Guideless with NB Dixon.

- Similaun ordinary route from Samoar hut - Kreuz Spitze traverse, ascent from Samoar hut, descent to Hochjoch Hospiz - Fluchtkogel ordinary route from Brandenburger Haus Last three all guideless with NB Dixon, JHF Dixon, FHF Dixon All climbs in 1935 led by GF Dixon 1937 Rhatikon – Scesaplana ordinary route from Douglas hut - Zimbaspitze west ridge - Klein Turm, Gauertal south Silvretta - Gross Litzner and Gross Seehorn, traverse east to west - Schneeglocke and Silvrettahom, traverse north to south - Piz Buin ordinary route from Wiesbadner hut - Dreilander Spitze ordinary route from Wiesbadner hut - Fluchthorn ordinary route from Jantal hut All 1937 routes guideless with NB Dixon, JHF Dixon, FHF Dixon, and most led by GF Dixon

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1938 Dauphiné - Les Rouies ordinary route with WF Shaw who led - Les Bans traverse west to east -

Pic Coolidge ordinary route

-

Le Rateau ordinary route from Promontoire hut

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Aiguille Dibona south ridge

All guideless, last four with WF Shaw, K Shaw, NB Dixon, JHF Dixon, FHF Dixon; Les Bans and Pic Coolidge led by GF Dixon 1948 Probable visit to Mont Blanc area, at the joint instigation of L’École de Haute Montagne, Chamonix and Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst on an ‘official’ basis 1949 Dauphiné - Aiguille Meridionale d’Arves, direct from La Grave, guideless by A Borwick, HM Caines, OB Howl, JJ Wilson, and GF Dixon (as reported in Alpine Notes of the Alpine Journal, May 1950 by GF Dixon ) - Meije, traverse, from Promontoire hut, guideless by A Borwick, HM Caines, WJ Hill, OB Howl, AJ Imrie, JJ Wilson and GF Dixon (see also Alpine Notes, Alpine Journal, May 1950 by GF Dixon) 1950 Mont Blanc area - Mont Maudit, Frontier ridge from Col de la Fourche bivouac hut, descent via Col du Midi and unplanned bivouac close to Requin hut. Guideless, with TAH Peacocke, FR Brooke, and D Ross.

Possibly also at this time (1948 – 1950) Geoffrey climbed on the Aiguilles Rouges, rock peaks above and north of Chamonix. He makes passing reference to this in his 1955 lecture ‘Alpine Roundabout’ delivered to the Business and Professional Women’s Club, Southport, on 19 September 1955, and again to St Philip’s Guild, Southport on 20 October 1955.

1951 Zermatt area - Alphubel, traverse by Rotgrat from Täsch hut with descent by east flank direct to Zermatt - Cima di Jazzi walk from Monte Rosa hut and return - Dufourspitze (Monte Rosa summit) normal route from Monte Rosa hut and return - Castor normal route from Monte Rosa hut and return - Weisshorn traverse via Schaligrat from Weisshorn hut and descent via east ridge - Dent Blanche via south ridge from Schönbiel hut and return - Pointe de Zinal traverse from Schönbiel hut to Mountet hut, then descent via Col du Mountet (by Trifthorn) to Zermatt

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-

Matterhorn normal Hörnli ridge from Hörnli hut and

return to Zermatt 1953 Bernese Oberland - Konkordia hut; no record of peaks climbed - Nesthorn, SE Ridge from Unterbachhorn - Pointe 3675m, traverse by north ridge from Oberaletsch hut and return by south ridge.

1954 Zermatt area - Täschhorn (mentioned in ‘Alpine Roundabout’ in Appendix 3 as Taeschhorn, but no detailed record or direct claim) - Matterhorn, via Zmutt ridge from Schönbiel hut, descent via Hörnli ridge to Zermatt. Guideless, GF Dixon, possibly with Bob Davidson, exKGV pupil 1956 Arolla – Zermatt area - Petite Dent de Veisivi , traverse from Arolla and back.

GF Dixon, A Kerr, JTH Allen, JW Gatiss - Aiguille de la Tsa, from Bertol hut and return - Les Bouquetins, from Bertol hut and return - Grand Cornier, from Moiry hut and return - Pigne de la Lé, from Moiry hut to Mountet hut - Trifthorn from Mountet hut and descent to Rothorn hut - Zinal Rothorn, normal route from Rothorn hut and down to Zermatt - Alphubel, traverse from Täsch hut via Westgrat and descent via east flank – the second ascent, the first British ascent, and first guideless - Dent Blanche, from Dent Blanche hut via south ridge and return by GF Dixon and JW Gatiss All above peaks by GF Dixon, JTH Allen and JW Gatiss except where stated 1958 Chamonix - Aiguille du Chardonnet, traverse from Albert Premier hut by Forbes ridge with descent by West ridge and return - Aiguille Noire de Peuterey, ascent of east ridge and return direct from valley Above peaks done by GF Dixon, P Dixon, JTH Allen, A Buckels

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Matterhorn from high on the Tiefmatten glacier, High Level Route.

Photo John Allen

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Appendix 2. Oliver Dixon’s ‘Coast to Coast’ How did Geoffrey’s three young sons take to all this mountaineering? To start with they had no option but to go along with it. As such, and as far as I can tell, they could all three cope with the physical demands made by walking and climbing to their level at whatever age, but was there a time when each individually came to the conclusion that it was not for them at the same intensity as their father’s? In simple terms the answer is yes, because some time in teenage or late teenage, they ceased accompanying Geoffrey as climbers. Oliver seemed to have taken to cycling (viz at age 16 in 1953 at Belalp), and Paul’s climb of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey in the late 1950s came as a surprise to Oliver when told in 2012 – he did not know of this.

Stephen does not feature even as a teenage climber.

However, inasmuch as having curiosity and inquisitiveness into adult life, all three seemed well endowed – evidenced by their travels to and life in distant countries.

Oliver, now resident in the UK for many years, even has a tale to tell about his walk across a bit of northern Britain.

The following expedition across Scotland, before the official ‘Southern Uplands Way’ came into being, was devised and carried out by Oliver and two of his students.

In 1975 he had been looking for a personal challenge, a quest for a sense of achievement, and had been captivated by the walking potential and scenery of Southern Scotland. In July of that year he set out with two students from the sea at Girvan on the west coast to walk to the sea at Dunbar on the east coast – incidentally the birthplace of the great conservationist, mountaineer and founder of the National Parks movement in America in the 19th century, namely John Muir. This is the same John Muir as of the John Muir Trust, the conservation and wild land organisation in the UK, more especially with properties in Scotland.

Oliver considered that the Pennine Way was rather a commonplace, even in 1975 and ‘not sufficiently remote from civilization’. A crossing of the Southern Uplands might supply ‘comfortable sustained walking for day after day’. It was long before the ‘Southern Uplands Way’ was established. Oliver and friends needed to plan and fit such an expedition into a fortnight and facilitate transport at each end. On 21st July the three friends were telling a local reporter of their intent; he had never heard of the Southern Uplands. Oliver takes up the tale: A stiff breeze was developing as we took a ritual walk along the jetty and descended to the beach for a ceremonial paddle in the Firth of Clyde. We seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in Girvan – putting off the moment when we must actually cast loose of civilization. Having stocked up at the butcher’s and baker’s with good fare that we can only dream of in southern England, and eaten a ‘fish supper’ – for lunch – we finally plucked up courage and set off through the upper streets of the town – somewhat hazardously as our over-wide rucksacks kept on colliding with passing lamp posts. Soon enough we had to face up to our first climb – to Saugh Hill. Although only a thousand feet high, in retrospect this was one of the hardest parts of the whole walk. After the initial sting, an easy two hours walk

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brought us to our first campsite just west of Barr (this hill is now occupied by a very extensive windfarm). Our camping routine had already been worked out in a trial week-end in the Black Mountains in south east Wales and we were soon tucking into our evening meal which for the first night out from town consisted of fresh supplies.

There is much more to sustain the reader and propel him onwards: Friday morning saw us over Cairnsmore…..Lonely country this – we did not see a soul all day and indeed went at this stage for 43 hours without seeing another human being… (This area is now much changed. Forestry plantations…..and Windy Standard is crowned with a wind farm!).

Saturday was technically our rest day, although we had already covered nine miles. We pitched at the official campsite and availed ourselves of the ultimate in luxury – a hot shower and a washing machine. The cost of this luxury was the noise and disturbance of a recognised campsite at the height of the season. Next to us was a miniature Gorbals on wheels – a tiny caravan housing an incredible number of Glaswegians. On Sunday morning, ignoring the gibes of fellow campers who were quite unable to comprehend the idea that we could be anything other than hitch-hikers, we were happy enough to climb back into the lonely hills.

Thursday dawned fine and warm for climbing the Moorfoot Hills. On approaching the summit of Windlestraw Law, our last two thousand footer, an extraordinary sight met our eyes. Our third encounter with people on the hills was four energetic folk playing cricket on the summit. The game continued fast and furious as we collapsed in a heap round the trig pillar, although one of the cricketers did at least pause from the game long enough to turn and say, “It’s murder when we have to get the heavy roller up here!”

All too soon for the reader, Oliver and his team reached their destination, Dunbar.

Having deposited our rucksacks, we indulged in ice-creams and made our way through the town to the old harbour with its striking rocky entrance, down to the edge of the Firth, to the sea. It seemed unbelievable, but there we were! We had made it – 165 miles, 27,000ft of climbing, 13 days – not an outstanding achievement perhaps by some people’s standards, but we had tested ourselves fully and revelled in the satisfaction of achievement. We had crossed the best of walking country in a well-planned expedition that went along without a single hitch. We were content.

Geoffrey Dixon, take note! ‘…without a single hitch’ – something perhaps you could learn, and from a son at that! From this article it is clear that Oliver himself inherited the adventure gene – adventure in the sense of wanting to prove himself against a target in the outdoors, with a whiff of pioneering attendant upon it. While still at school (Merchant Taylors, Crosby, nr Liverpool) Oliver aged about 13 or 14 went with Geoffrey on KGV school trips to the Robertson Lamb hut, Langdale, and did rock climbs on Middlefell Buttress, and Great Gable (Needle Ridge). Later on he reached Scafell Pike’s summit ‘on a solo walk’. As mentioned earlier (“Family

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mountaineering, Part 2�) Oliver cycled much of the way from Southport to Switzerland with Neil Booth, a friend he had made from the ranks of KGV boys.

Though neither Stephen nor Paul have contributed in this biographical account about Geoffrey, that they chose to follow lives abroad (Hong Kong and New Zealand respectively) is some evidence at least of a desire to travel and have a new life driven by their own ambitions and targets.

The full article description with appendix (a table of days, distances walked daily and heights etc) is with Oliver Dixon.

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Appendix 3. Glossary of terms I provide these technical details to aid an understanding of climbing grades used in the text: UIAA: the Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme – the International mountaineering and climbing federation, founded in 1932 as a predominantly European organisation but now recognised by the International Olympic Committee as the international federation for mountaineering.

Gradings of climbs (rock, ice, mixed): a general level of technical difficulty is described adjectivally, starting with F Facile (easy), PD Peu Difficile (not very hard), AD Assez Difficile (fairly hard), D Difficile (hard), TD Tres Difficile (very hard), ED Extrémement Difficile (extremely hard), with further refinements possible by adding plus and minus signs to these grades (eg AD+, TD-).

The UIAA has established a numerical grading system for all rock sections, namely grades I, II,III, IV, V, VI ad infinitum (in theory) – using these Roman numerals – with further refinements of plus and minus signs (eg III+, V-).

The UIAA grades are not exactly comparable with the British (or French or American) systems. Just as a ready example, the UK grade of V Diff to Mild Severe would be UIAA grade IV-/IV, of which Geoffrey and party would capable when at a good level of fitness.

GHM: the Groupe de Haute Montagne is the group of élite French climbers who made it one of their rôles to publish guide books.

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Appendix 4. A Selective Bibliography The Red Rose: the magazine of King George V School, Southport Alpine Journal Vol LVIII November 1952 for full text of ‘A first Visit to the Zermatt District’ by GF Dixon, a paper read to the Alpine Club on April 8, 1952 Swiss Mountain Climbs by G D Abraham first published in 1911 by Mills & Boon Ball’s Alpine Guides to The Central and Western Alps by John Ball, first published in late 1800s, and revised by Alpine Club members under WAB Coolidge A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby, first published in 1958 by Secker & Warburg; especially chapter 3, The birth of a mountain climber, and photograph of 2 climbers on the Milestone Buttress, Tryfan, 1956 (just as I was roped to GFD in the same year, 1956 on my first rock climb – Editor) My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus by AF Mummery first published in 1895 by Fisher Unwin Let’s Go Climbing by Colin Kirkus originally published by Thos Nelson in 1941; republished 2004 by Ripping Yarns Scrambles amongst the Alps 1860 – 1869 by Edward Whymper first published by John Murray in 1871 Mountaineering by Alan Blackshaw, originally published by Penguin Books in 1965 Mountaineering by TAH Peacocke, first published by A & C Black in 1943 On High Hills by Geoffrey Winthrop Young first published in 1927 by Methuen Samson - the Life and Times of Menlove Edwards by GJF Sutton and W Noyce.

(Edwards was born in 1910 at Crossens, near Southport, where his father was vicar) The Mont Blanc Massif – the Hundred Finest Routes by Gaston Rébuffat first published in 1973 by Éditions Denoël, re-published in UK in 2005 by Bâton Wicks The High Mountains of the Alps by Helmut Dumler and Willi Burkhardt published

by Diadem Books in 1993 with reprint 1996 The Springs of Adventure by Wilfrid Noyce first published in 1958 by John Murray When the Alps Cast their Spell by Trevor Braham published in 2004 by The Inpinn Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, compiled and introduced by W Unsworth – selections from the Alpine Journal, published by Allen Lane 1981. Use this for text by GL Mallory, and about RLG Irving (‘Condemnation’ and ‘A Disclaimer’) ‘Living at our full compass’: article by Penny Bradshaw about the 1930s mountaineer and poet Michael Roberts, who was quoted by Geoffrey Dixon in ‘Alpine

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Roundabout’ above. The article was published in the 2012 Alpine Journal Vol 116 and is recommended for a further possible insight into Geoffrey’s Alpinism.

Personal papers by Geoffrey Dixon and Oliver Dixon made available for this project

by Oliver Dixon Private letters sent home to my parents from the 1956 Arolla/Zermatt holiday

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Acknowledgements I have been greatly assisted in this project by the following: Oliver Dixon, who reminisced deeply and provided textual material and archival photographs; and constant help and support Brian Gill for helpful insights, criticisms and encouragement when needed Alpine Club Library via Glyn Hughes and the Alpine Journal Robin Campbell, Honorary Archivist, Scottish Mountaineering Club Neville Chipulina, for computer assistance Paul Bagshaw (Editor of The Red Rose) Walter Tait Sir Christopher Hewetson Jane Collard (Worksop College) Tony Land, (Uppingham School) Peter Cockshott (contemporary of Stephen Dixon at Merchant Taylors School, Crosby, and member of the Rucksack Club) Gillian Atkinson for being a missing link for contact with Oliver Dixon Frank Procter, Rucksack Club, for checking and advising on details of Dixon’s climbs in Austria Allan Stuart (Wayfarers Club) for permission to use the photo of the Col de la Fourche bivouac and Ben Stroude (Wayfarers Club) for facilitating the Col de la Fourche bivouac photograph Tony Scott (Climbers Club) David Preston, Ken Edwardson, John Hyde, Ken Milne, John Gatiss, Brian Gill and James Honeybone for stories and anecdotes, and writing down printable versions.

Also John Seddon, Robert Fletcher, Harry Foster, Mike Dodworth, Peter Dodworth, Jon Elliot. By association with Geoffrey Dixon, all of the above and many more were the winners. We will ever be grateful.

John Allen, Stirling, FK8 1BZ

30 September 2012

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About John Allen (1939 – present day) Introduced by parents to mountains soon after World War 2 from home in Bolton, Lancs, where local hills supplied open uncluttered country (no Winter Hill TV mast; only cairns, Rivington Pike and apparitions of highwaymen – or were they the mists and clouds?)

First excursion outwith home was via declension of Latin ‘bonus, bona, bonum’ in school class without stop/mistake, followed by conjugation of ‘amo, amas , amat, amamus, amatis, amant’ without stop/mistake, the reward being a place on a school trip at age 10 to a wet YHA Patterdale and ascent of Place Fell in rain Thereafter parents joined other families on Easter week-ends and summer B & B holidays annually to the Lake District With KGV schoolmaster, Mr Woodcock, and early year boys on day walks to the Bowland Forest north of Preston, Lancashire With KGV Headmaster, Mr GF Dixon and upper school boys to North Wales and Lake District for rock climbing. Also in 1956 with GFD to Arolla/Zermatt for climbing in the Alps; and 1958/9 to Chamonix/Courmayeur with Tony Buckels to meet up with GFD and family to climb With King’s College London MC to Harrisons Rocks, Ogwen in North Wales and Llanberis 1957 – 1960, and Skye. Also to Dolomites and Zermatt in 1960 with friends from KCLMC. After University in London, I moved to Manchester and sought climbing/walking contacts. The Rucksack Club (founded 1902) caught my eye, I joined and had many happy years with friends made there, eventually becoming President (1976 – 78).

Still a member They regularly undertake strenuous walking and climbing trips within UK, incl rock climbing in Peak District, North Wales, Lake District, Scotland; incidentally I have done the Welsh Threes x 3 (once in winter conditions in 1965 January) – also failed it 3 times; Lakes Threes, Scottish Fours, all 284 Munros, Skye main ridge x 2. Many climbs at VS - E2. 3 attempts at Skye main ridge in winter with all done on separate attempts. Winter climbs incl Tower/Observatory/NE Ridge on Ben Nevis, Point 5 gully. Etc. Member of Scottish Mountaineering Club since 2004 incl Committee member 2008 -2011 Mountain photographer with many photos in well respected UK and Alpine guide and coffee table books.

With friends in summer holidays to Alps 1960 – 1998 to climb summits; have done 47 of the 52 x 4000m peaks and many others lower, with rock climbs and walks (incl High Level Route Chamonix – Saas Fee, and Tour de Mont Blanc), and many informal tours. Member Alpine Club 1971 – present day. No guides used – only guidebooks

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With friends to Karakorum (1968), Nepal (1970), India (1973 & 1974), Kyrgyzstan (2001) for exploratory climbing, summits 5,500m - 7,000m, if possible, in remote unvisited mountain areas. No guides used – no guidebooks either; there were none!

Only maps used. We made the routes Other holiday expeditions to North America to climb in Yosemite (Half Dome, etc), and in Sierras; also recently travel in New Zealand, walking in Lofoten Norway, Italy, France Assisted schools expeditions as joint leader to Greenland (1972) and Svalbard (1976) Was the first Executive Officer of the Young Explorers Trust 1976 -1979, now based in RGS, London Hon Sec Schiehallion Group, Perthshire, and Chairman of Schiehallion Steering Group 2000 for the John Muir Trust Writer of articles for magazines such as The Scottish Mountaineer, and mountaineering club journals such as Rucksack Club Journal, and others (eg ‘Loose Scree’ magazine, Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal) Have been walking regularly (ie once per week at least) and climbing in the Scottish Highlands through winter and summer since moving to Scotland in 1996 Have recently held a photo exhibition of mounted and framed black and white enlargements from 35mm negative film taken in the Scottish Highlands in winter and the Alps in summer, all from the period 1960 to 1990. This was before the introduction of digital cameras, and the use of professional inkjet printers and archive quality materials

John Allen

Photo John Allen

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Copyright Š 2012 John Allen