UKC

Fraser McKechnie charts his evolution from bouldering newbie to keen trad and alpine climber, a journey made possible through his membership of a University club.

Read more

I can totally relate to this ! Nice article 👍 

I started climbing whilst I was at university and it's basically governed my life ever since. I owe a lot to BUMS (Bangor University Mountaineering Society) and the friends I made within it, because they genuinely changed my life.

Excellent article!  It's quite a journey from bouldering to alpine climbing and university clubs have always been a real training ground for getting people outside.  They really struggled during Covid and this, plus the extra pressures from nervous student unions and sports departments (certainly compared to the laissez faire days of my undergraduate years) were a real threat to exactly the sort of adventures Fraser has discovered.  

As you can probably tell, I'm a massive fan of University clubs. As Rob says, they can change your life.  Thanks especially to the Birmingham and Oxford clubs, with which I still have many links.  

Big up Fraser, great article. The Gumclub is special indeed!!

Nice article Fraser! I liked the spiritual allure of the Glasgow Bouldering Guide

Great article, my first Alpine trip was with the GUM club back in 90 or 91 and I am still climbing with many of the friends I met back then. Great times and brilliant to hear they are still really active.

Really nice description, Fraser! And you might like to know that the fascination with this sport learned through a Uni club lasts a LONG time. I learned through the University Lairig Climbing Club in Aberdeen at the end of the sixties - and I am still fascinated by the sport, at the age of 79. I go to the climbing wall through the winter (live in Switzerland now) but still get out on the rocks each year in summer. The grade drops of course with age, but still getting up 5c or ever 6a routes and the fun never wears off!

Keep it up!

Charles

Having done some hill walking and scrambling with my parents, almost the first thing I did when starting at Manchester University in 1974 was to join the MUMC. It changed my life. 50 years later I'm still climbing and sometimes with the friends I met in the club back then, I've never got into either bouldering or alpinism, but rock climbing been my sport since then.

Great article Fraser, thanks.

Amazing stories. I am currently on the committee for Birmingham's Society and I am going through the exact same process. I am planning on going out to the Alps this summer having learned to trad last year through the club. I'ts also amazing to see how many people University clubs got into the sport from reading the comments.

I was a couch potato throughout my teenage years and I was doing nothing but playing games. On my fourth year of Uni I joined the University of Nottingham Explorers Club and a few years later the Climbing Club (then known as the Mountaineering Club that did no mountaineering). I still occasionally help out both clubs now, as I'm still local 18 years later.

This changed my life in such a fundamental way it's hard to overstate. Everything, from where I live to my social circle has circled around climbing and the outdoors, even in the few periods of time that I was doing very little actual climbing. I went from couch potato to enjoying endurance sufferfests.

Hell, my musical endeavours in the past few years have been in genres I was introduced to by the Sheffield climbing community.

Looking at everyone's messages here, it looks like Climbing Does That™.

Great article. I'm similar, getting involved with HUMS enabled a lifetime of climbing obsession for me, and more importantly, we're all still good friends decades later. Changed my life without a doubt

Nice writing, not a dissimilar story to myself. I used to solo easy boulders that scare me now, in the woods on Anglesey in my canoeing boots.  It's all I had, there were no walls to climb on in them days not that I could get to on my bicycle. Then at 18 I went to Durham, joined DUMC, Met lifelong friends,and have loved mountaineering ever since. 

Cheers, don't fall off!

Joining Loughborough Students Mountaineering Club had a significant impact on me through my 20s, it drove career decisions (a circle centered on London with a radius that went as far as Loughborough where I decided not to bother looking for a job which ruled out my employer for my placement years as a graduate employer), helped drive an interest in product safety (unfortunately including a 2 year foray into rail vehicle certification which took me away from the design tasks which I love), showed me how useful clubs are early in your career when you've not got loads of cash and are being sent on secondments all over the place.

The stuff I'm most thankful for is really with the clubs which my time with LSMC led me to join (London and Northumbrian Mountaineering Clubs, although I am no longer a member of these along with the Oread Mountaineering Club and the Climbers' Club which I still do bits and pieces with).

Go gumclub! I left in 2012, they have a great setup for getting stuff done though it sounds like a uni minibus might be missing for Alps trips? I will get to more reunion meets as I free up more time...

I went up Pen y Fan in Freshers' Week, sat next to a nice girl on the coach. Then bottled it and never went out with the club again. It's one of my life's regrets. All the things I wish I'd done... 

My club (I was a member twice 25 years apart) was first time around very deeply routed into the traditions and history of Scottish mountaineering and that shaped a lot of opinions and attitudes to the hills which are probably a bit (not in a creepy way) outdated now. Also baptism of fire - failed head torch on a Steall hut walk in and I was eviscerated in the journal. Second time around things had changed. Dinner meets outside Scotland and you did not have to wear serious clothing and munro bagging was acceptable*, and rather than being a figure of ridicule, I was invited to be the speaker at a dinner meet. 

Loved both periods of my hill going life.

* I had grown out of it by then