UKC

Brilliant essay on Ken Wilson on footless crow - old news to some but new to me
http://footlesscrow.blogspot.com
Quite eloquent

In reply to pneame:

Thanks for that, I hadn't read the original & its a while since I looked at Footless Crow. I only met a couple of times, the first when he visited some folk camped close to us on Snell's Field & seemed to talk (loudly) late into the night while we were trying to sleep before a dawn start (we were students with no money and had taken to walking up to the Aiguilles very early to avoid bivying).

Has he mellowed with age ?

In reply to Doug:



I sincerely hope not, Ken has influenced for the good so much of British climbing, in fact world climbing.
For my own part there would be a lot of classic routes on Gogarth that would not have existed for years without his brilliant photographs of the crag. I was a member of the CC committee along with Ken that got the restriction on women members overturned. He was an abrasive friend, always.

In reply to pneame:

Great article and thanks for the link. I met him once - he visited our new school in Bedford around 1973 to look at the new climbing wall - a rarer thing in those days. Our headmaster - an elderly Brian Kemball-Cook who had been an alpinist before the war, entertained him to school lunch. The climbing club then gave Ken a demonstration by running up and down a few routes, but he was mainly interested in what we had done on grit!

In reply to Doug:

He was still pretty vocal at the last CC meeting I attended.

In reply to Doug:

It doesn't look as if he has mellowed at all!
http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=1787

Good...

In reply to Al Evans:


When was that, out of interest?

In reply to pneame:

yeah really enjoyed that.

In reply to pneame:

That is a lovely essay, agreed. How come Drummond fell off Pontesford Needle? I never heard that, but if he was trying to solo that horrid HVS to the right of the crack it makes more sense. Gave me a real fright once.

Also interested by the essay on Livesey and Footless Crow itself. I always thought the name was taken from the side of a hippy's van, but they seem to think Livesey made it up himself.

jcm

In reply to pneame:

Great stuff. I first encountered Wilson via "The Black Cliff" and Mountain in the mid-70s and he helped consolidate my thoughts about politics, the environment, celebrity culture and, of course, climbing. I then go to know him a bit when I worked at Pindisports, the most memorable episode being when Stevie Haston chopped a crucial hold on the Sobell Wall's "last great problem". "Why?" "Because it was too easy."

One of the biggest influences on my life.