In reply to Jack Geldard - Assistant Editor:
Cast your mind back to early December.
The faithful are dusting off their tools in keen anticipation of the Scottish Winter. Surely it will be a good one this year. Wait and see….
And then…..BANG! Like a ptarmigan rising from the snow capped hills of the Highlands….Sam Loveday’s iconic photo…..What’s this? THAT line on The Ben has been climbed.
WOW!
BY WHO?
WHAT STYLE?
We want NEWS. We want photos. We want video. And we don’t want them in a few months time, when the magazines come out. We want them now.
And we got them.
So how did we come to THIS….?
Oh dear UKC. You were (rightly) quick to jump on Simon Richardson’s words and slap them into a news article covering one of the most inspiring ascents in the British climbing year. Yet only a few weeks later folk logging on for the latest news in the mountaineering world are subject to this sponsored terminally tedious trivia.
Of course, taking the piss is a great part of the British climbing scene and legends have evolved around it. Whillans, McNaught-Davis, Rouse….not to mention most of your mates….All as quick with a one line put down as a swift layback. But, as many folk have already pointed out, an essential ingredient in this, is that it is actually funny. (And based in reality.)
It all smacks a bit of that very 90’s phenomena – ‘It can’t be that hard because he doesn’t live in Sheffield’. Happily, Fort William resident, Dave Macleod, and many others, blew this out of the water years ago.
I’ve had dozens of emails from folk inspired by Andy’s new route.
Sam’s photo, published worldwide, will bring folk to winter climb in the Highlands.
Talk is cheap but inspiration is divine.
The Secret remains….blissfully indifferent to all this posturing.
And it’s always up there. Often liberally covered in verglass and thick hoar as on the first ascent….
Aye, Rob(in).