Issue 9. September 2001
FEATURES
A Climb Through History
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Two Views from the Old Man of Hoy The sea stack of The Old Man of Hoy is an icon for both Scottish Climbing and the Northern Isles. It is probably the best-known Scottish climb to both climbers and the general public from furth of Scotland as it has featured on TV numerous times, famously in 1967 with Chris Bonington and Joe Brown, and later with Bown's daughter Zoe (who is now resident in Shetland and working as a fisherwoman) accompanied by Scots' climbing star Murray Hamilton with Lakes' star Pete Whillance. Recently, French climber Catherine Destivel was filmed soloing it whilst 3 months pregnant. Here we describe two ascents from different perspectives: A Wedding Present by Adrian Crofton Two Old Men By Mike Banks The Old Man of Hoy … there's no other chunk of rock in Britain like it. A slender fang, overhanging on all sides, it soars 450 ft into the northern skies of the Orkney Islands. Little wonder it has become a magnet to rock climbers. Even though I have climbed it before, I felt a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when a good friend, Dr Richard Sykes, "volunteered" me to climb The Old Man of Hoy, at the age of 77, to raise funds for the charity "Westcare" which supports sufferers from that potentially devastating disease, ME. But there was some good news: the climb would be led by Emma Alsford (34) from Cardiff, one of Britain's finest women rock climbers. Our plans, were further complicated by the modern demon of television which would promote public awareness of Westcare. We struck lucky because both our cameramen were experienced mountaineers, Robin Chalmers (ex-BBC and an old Himalayan colleague of mine) and John Alcock from HTV Bristol who spent hours suspended in space with a video camera. Emma and I were wired up for sound and obliged to chat away, revealing our innermost feelings, even when we were gripped with fear! It worked a treat and the film was duly screened on ITV Grampian and Bristol. So much for show-biz, but what of the climb itself? The first pitch is by far the easiest, so I led it. It was a joy to be warming up the climbing muscles and getting the mind attuned to the vertical. The next pitch was real corker and this is where Emma took over the lead. She traversed delicately sideways on rounded holds with a gulping drop clean down to the beach below her. She then forced her way up over a series of beetling overhangs which took her into a deep slot, rather like a vertical coffin. Progress then got really grim as she made a heroic sideways heave, apparently into tin air, to stuff her fist into a crack and pull herself into balance. Looking up she saw the crack soaring vertically above her for about fifty feet. The only way up was to jamb fists into the crack. This second pitch is the make-or-break of the whole climb and Emma vanquished it in fine style. Soon it was my turn. All the way I was accompanied by a grinning John Alcock, swinging free in the air, filming every move. I duly joined Emma who then led the third pitch up over a series of bulging walls. Above us soared a vertical corner leading up to the summit. "Feel like leading it?" Emma asked me. Sensing victory within grasp, I agreed. It was a superb end to a thoroughbred climb. As I heaved myself onto the summit platform I felt a wave of elation to be standing there, isolated, it seemed, in the sky on, what must surely be the most dramatic and exclusive little patch of grass in Britain. Happiness was complete when lovely young Emma joined me and gave me a great big hug! If you wish to support the ME charity please send contributions to: Westcare, 155 Whiteladies Rd, Bristol BS8 2RF Climb Through History
Literary CompetitionThis issue included two prize winning poems from our annual competition:
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Big Mountains, Big Issuesby Kathleen Caskie Everyone is used to seeing 'Big Issue' vendors working on the streets in Scotland's main towns and cities, trying to earn an income by selling The Big Issue magazine. But don't be surprised if you find a Big Issue vendor at the top of a mountain. Big Issue vendors and other homeless people, supported by staff and volunteers, have set up Grand Central Outdoor Activities Club designed to take homeless people out of their grim urban environment and into the countryside. The club offers its members the chance to learn new skills, to relax and to get fit. Interviewed on a trip to Glencoe, Big Issue vendor Brian Richardson said, "It gets us out of Glasgow. The first thing I really noticed was just how quiet it is because you're used to the noise in the city with the traffic and the buses. It takes you away from the shitty city centre and all the building works that we live in. You're going up onto the hills and you feel as if the mountains could just fall on top of you. It's very exhilarating. It's well worth the effort. It takes you away from all of the homeless issues. You're up in the mountains and that's great. It's just great." The chance to explore and learn about the great outdoors has been enthusiastically received by Glasgow's homeless people. Teams have visited and walked Ben A'an, Auchineded hill, Conic Hill, The Cobbler, Ben Venue, Ben Ledi, Ben Vorlich and Ben Lomond among others. Over fifty people have taken part in the activities. As well as hillwalking, homeless people have become involved in other environmental work. A total of 11 staff and homeless people have gained the John Muir Trust 'Discovery' award, with five having gained the more advanced 'Explorer Award', all working alongside Glasgow City Council's Countryside Rangers Service. The team worked to create a new pathway in the Linn Park on Glasgow's South Side. Seven individuals completed a course in Hillwalking Navigation offered by Alba Adventures – the group organised and carried out a sponsored walk to raise the funds for this. Through appeals in The Big Issue magazine the club had equipped itself with some of the clothing and accessories needed to be safe on the hills. Now that it seems that the countryside will again be made fully open following the Foot and Mouth closures, the group are champing at the bit to get back outside. In fact their plans grow even more ambitious. They are now planning a trip to the Italian Dolomites in summer 2002, and are setting up their fundraising programme for this. When you're homeless, it's easy to become socially excluded (to use the buzz phrase) from just about everything. Loneliness and depression are problems. The physical health of homeless people is generally poor, not helped by the lack of adequate diet and the ever-present risks of drug and alcohol abuse. In short, peoples' horizons are narrowed. But the Scottish countryside belongs to everybody, even those who are sleeping on the streets. Tricia Hughes, the Founding Director of The Big Issue in Scotland, explained why the company was supporting Grand Central Outdoor Activities Club. She said, "Grand Central is the next step on from selling The Big Issue. It's a range of services – education, training, health – which aim to help Big Issue vendors and other homeless people to move on into employment, and into society more generally. By setting up the Outdoor Activities Club, homeless people are learning and using important social skills, such as organisation, and communication. The activities themselves are teaching participants new skills, as well as providing a healthy alternative to sitting in hostels staring at the walls. Many homeless people have been told that they are failures all their lives, and they don't believe that they have the power to change it. But the simple achievement of making it to the top of a hill can help to turn that round. At the top of a hill everyone is equal. And while you may have left school with no qualifications, winning a John Muir award is an achievement that you can carry with you for the rest of your life." So, whether the sun is splitting the sky or the rain is pouring down, Grand Central Outdoor Activities Club will continue to give some of the most excluded people in Scotland a chance to participate in activities that they could only have dreamed of before, and, hopefully, a whole new outlook on life. If you are able to help Grand Central Outdoors Activities Club in any way, please contact Jim Brown at The Big Issue in Scotland, Oxford Street, Glasgow, G1 1QH, Telephone 0141 559 5555.
GUEST ARTICLEForesters Can Be Mountaineers TooBy Malcolm Wield & Phil Whitfield You might be surprised how many of us are mountaineers (even MCofS members). Many of us probably got involved in forestry as a way of earning a living close to the hills, so we often have a personal as well as an official interest in mountain issues. This is often serious and long standing, as the membership of Mountain Rescue teams by forestry people testifies. Terry Confield, FC Workshop Manager at Torlundy has for example made an immense contribution to Lochaber Mountain Rescue for the past 38 years. We aren't always the best communicators though, so we may have ourselves to blame for a lack of understanding of modern forestry. MCofS policy, such as that on Hill Tracks and Access, might make us cringe a bit but if you still think of forestry as a threat to the countryside, then we've got to start communicating more effectively. We've often got forestry wrong in the past, at times the wrong trees were put in the wrong place. Now there is a real desire in the Forestry Commission and its staff on the ground to get it right, to sort out our legacy from the past as well as take forward new sustainable forests. So what are we about? Firstly it's important to remember that these are your forests. It's of paramount importance to us that all users of the forest are able to see more and more benefits appearing as time goes by. We work with our local communities and try hard to involve and inform them about our plans. Nowadays, all of our proposals have been through local discussions before we take any decisions. We have an incredibly wide remit, aiming to balance wildlife conservation, recreation, timber production, landscape, culture and heritage. The plantation type forestry that established most of today's forests, stressed a managed approach of intervention and manipulation: cultivation, fencing, uniform monocultures, crop improvement and use of fertilisers to name but a few. Now, we see real benefits in a less intensive and more natural approach and are converting our plantations into forests. We're working with rather than against nature and developing forests that are better for wildlife, more attractive, provide no unreasonable restrictions to access (for a mass of activities) and give people opportunities for rural development that are only limited by their imagination. Growing a forest is a long term business. Past mistakes aren't always easy to correct over night and the plantation legacy isn't always that easily naturalised. In our windy climate, some trees just blow over if we work small scale and so we're sometimes forced into much larger areas of felling than we're happy with. The approach to Ben Wyvis from Garbat is a good example of this. None of us like to walk past such huge clearfells but in this case we had a tree species that grew extremely poorly and next time round, things will be different. Forests these days are carefully designed to fit closely into the landform, use a variety of species including broadleaves, have trees of different ages and plenty of open space. One example we can be proud of is the Glen Affric pinewoods. From a fairly cautious start the area of woodland with primacy of nature as its management objective has gone from 1200 hectares in 1960 to 15,000 hectares today. Access to the fantastic hills that surround Affric has never been more secure or popular. Joe Duffin of the An Teallach Mountaineering Club has been working closely with FC for several years now. Joe is unequivocal. "When we first started exploring the possibility for regular access to a hut in Glen Affric, we were not optimistic. But we found the local foresters helpful, encouraging and supportive. Doors were literally opened. We now have the use of a hut in the heart of the glen and an access agreement which works well for everyone." As a result, Glen Affric will shortly be awarded the accolade of National Nature Reserve. The forest will only get richer and more attractive - good news for mountaineers and everyone else. We don't always get things right and MCofS has recently given us one or two useful prods to remind us of that! Right now we're consulting with Mike Dales on track construction in mountain areas and we will only build access tracks where they are essential and design them carefully with advice from a Landscape Architect to reduce visual impact. Things clearly take a long time in forestry. We can't put everything right over night, but we can certainly improve the process immediately. Our (your) future forest is growing right now, and we hope to leave a rich legacy for all our successors. We are very enthusiastic about working with MCofS in future. We have so many shared objectives. We are passionate about the mountains; we do want to account for views of mountaineers and to act as good stewards of our mountain heritage. So let's work together as much as we can. If you have any questions about what we do or issues to raise, please call your local Forest District office – in the phone book or www.forestry.gov.uk.
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