This extract from a Climbers' Club Journal has been made available by kind permission of the Author and or Photographer and the Climbers' Club.

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1 This extract from a Climbers' Club Journal has been made available by kind permission of the Author and or Photographer and the Climbers' Club. Copyright remains with the author/photographer. It is provided in electronic form for your personal use and cannot be used for commercial profit without seeking permission from both the author/photographer and the Climbers' Club. Journal: 1997 Author/Photographer: George Band Copyright 2008

2 H a m i s h Nicol a n d the Alps in the early 1950s George Band Hamish Nicol was a natural choice as one of the speakers over Centenary weekend: CC President md one of the foremost British Alpine cumbers in the early 1950s. He had been billed to speak about his climbs with Tom Bourdillon, which re-established the post-war reputation of British climbers in the Western Alps. Instead, after his sad death in May 1997, following a Cornish climbing accident, I was asked to take his place. There was no way I could describe his climbs in detail; he and Tom took very few action photographs, but fortunately many articles flowed from his pen into the CC Journal, Alpine Journal and even the British Medical Journal. His wife, Mary, kindly provided what was available which 1 supplemented with my own largely personal account of the climbs undertaken by Oxford and Cambridge and other University undergraduates at that time. These early ascents led to the formation in 1954 of the Alpine Climbing Group, of which Tom and Hamish were successive Presidents and which was modelled on the prestigious French Groupe de Haute Montagne. One of its most useful roles as a 'ginger group' proved to be the publication in EngUsh of selected climbs from the French Vallot Guidebooks (with permission) and their dissemination to a wider British climbing public to encourage them to tackle the harder modern climbs as well as repeating the classics. Who were some of the names associated with this student revival in the early 1950s? From Oxford: Bourdillon, Nicol, Westmacott, Rawlinson, Viney, Cunnlngton, Saxby and, a year or two later, Blackshaw. From Cambridge: Cym and Nancy Smith, Chorley, Wrangham, Fisher, Francis, Streetly and, later on, Sutton, Downes and Langmuir. Others from the north were MacNaught-Davis, Patey, Slesser, Stuart and Vaughan. One should also not forget the slightly older immediate post-war generation of fine performers, mostly on the more classical alpine routes: Hunt, Cox, Goodfellow, Charles Evans, Emlyn Jones, Barford, Noyce, Murray and Ward. My apology for other worthy names which I may have unintenuonauy omitted. I never climbed with Hamish in the Alps. We really only first linked up for a week's climbing in the far north west of Scotland in June 1973 which was so successful that, with a handful of like-minded friends, we repeated the exercise annually for twenty one years until, much to our surprise and delight, his son married my daughter in June We parents decided to recuperate from the wedding by climbing in Corsica 23

3 Hamish Nicol and the Alps Instead. The Scottish pattern continued and we had already booked a cottage in Skye for June 1997, but sadly he could only attend in spirit. To complete this article, 1 would like to quote excerpts from Hamish's own account of his three most Important climbs with Tom BourdiUon in the western Alps: The North Face of the Petit Dru in 1950; the tenth ascent of the Ratti-Vitalli on the West Face of the AiguiUe Noire de Peuterey, and the fifth ascent of the East Face of the Grand Capucin these latter in To prepare themselves for the Dru, a serious 850m TD and for other harder climbs, they practised artificial climbing with pitons and rope stirrups on a tree in Tom's garden in Buckinghamshire. 'On July 25th Tom and I walked from Montenvers to the foot of the North Face of the Dru, and bivouacked on the rognon, with our backs to the huge and frightening cliff I wul never forget that night we spent huddled together on the cold rock. It was (a) clear and starut (night), and the town of Chamonix was a blaze of Ughts at our feet. It was my first bivouac, and our plan was to leave the sleeping bags there and climb over to the Charpoua Hut where our friends would be waiting for us. At that time the North Face of the Dru had a tremendous reputation. Thefirstascent had been in By 1949 there had been something like 30 or 35 ascents. For us it was a complete mystery. We did not even know if we could climb it. Tom and I left the bivouac at 5 a.m. the next day. We had a double nylon rope, with a spare rope for hauling up the rucksacks. We wore vibram soled boots. My ideas had had a good shaking up since We had some rope sungs, some karabiners, a few pitons, a hammer each, one ice-axe, and one pair of crampons. Luckily the rock was dry and in perfect condition. We hardly noticed the Fissure Lambert, which is regarded as the first major difficulty. 1 had certainly led part of it before I realised what it was. This time there were to be no errors in route finding as 1 had memorised the relevant pages of the Vallot guide parrot fashion. When we got to the hard bit, the Fissure Allain, there was no argument: we climbed the Fissure Martlnetti which is a lot easier, and much more sensible. The last 500 feet were steep and covered in verglas, which made them rather serious. We got to the summit without any difficulty at 1.30 p.m. having taken eight and half hours altogether. We finished off our food, and slept on the summit for an hour and a half. Our earlier plan to traverse over the Great Dru came to nothing. There was a thick fog, and the weather looked bad. Instead we descended the Petit Dru by a long series of tedious cind difficult abseils. Viney and Saxby were waiting for us in the Charpoua Hut. They gave us a tremendous welcome. I was all for doing another climb but my companions would have none of this. We must return to Chamonix and have a celebration.' 24

4 Hamish Nicol and the Alps This was the climb that particularly established their reputation, and with it, the reausatlon that many harder climbs were within the grasp of that generation of British climbers who previously would have stuck to the old classics or might never even have thought of visiting the Alps. Three years later, in 1954, Joe Brown and Don Whillans made the third ascent of the West Face of the Petit Dru (ED) and followed it up with a new ascent of the West Face of the Blatiere, including the famous offwidth 'Fissure Brown'. British climbers had truly arrived in the post-war Alps. Bourdillon and Nicol's climbs in 1955 rode on the crest of this wave: Thanks to our earlier recce, and some handy steps across the Freney Glacier left by a descending party, I was already starting up the West Face of the Noire at 6.45 a.m. It was steep at first, and one has to aim for a littieridge which is a feature of the middle section of the face. The ridge is quite easy, and we could move together carrying coils of rope. The end of section was marked by a snow-filled gully. Tom pulled the ice-axe out of his rucksack and cut steps across it. On the other side of the gully the cumbing suddenly became more serious, the rock blacker, steeper and more greasy. It was very cold. I was looking for the grade-six crack which was going to take me up to the great bivouac ledge. The crack was wet, and here and there were patches of ice. Then 1 was struck clean on the forehead by a drop of water. Another followed. The water came from the lip of the great overhang, and fell a clear distance of 200 feet. Somewhere up there was a space where the bivouac ledge must be. 1 turned my attention to the crack. It was 2 to 3 inches wide and for eighty feet 1 jammed it, laybacked it, and was sometimes forced to bridge across the corner. 1 emerged onto the Ratti bivouac ledge. Quite a few important climbers had spent the night here. They had left their cigarette packets and sardine tins behind as mementoes. It was wide enough to lie down full length, but its chief merit was the huge overhang which acted like a roof. One might have been indoors. From the ledge a crack could be seen running up the overhanging wall, and in it were placed half a dozen pitons. Tom hitched the doubled rope to his waist, and then the single rope for hauling up the rucksacks and set off up it. By 5 p.m. we were both up, and could see the summit quite easily, about 1,000 feet away. At 6.45 p.m., exactly 12 hours from the glacier we reached the summit of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey. Tom pulled out the zinc box from the summit cairn and wrote a laconic message in it. We bivouacked on the East Ridge, a few feet below the summit, and made Courmayeur quite easily the next day. The washerwomen at Entreves turned and stared as we walked past. My trousers had a huge tear in them, and I wondered if Francesca would be able to mend them. For 5 days It rained, and Tom and 1 sat in our tent in Chamonix. On the 5th day it cleared enough to make an attempt on the East Face of the 25

5 Hamish Nicol and the Alps Grand Capucin possible. This climb is so steep that it clears rapidly after bad weather. Our rucksacks contained food for three days, bivouac equipment, 35 pitons and wooden wedges and 370 feet of rope. It was a hardflog up the glacier in soft new snow, sometimes wading thigh deep. The bivouac platform which is well placed within 50 feet of the first grade- 6 pitch was covered with two feet of soft snow. It was 8.30 p.m. and it would soon be dark. After a bit of shovelling with piton hammers an area 9 foot by 3 emerged with a gravel base, much better than one might have expected. Tom lit the petrol stove, I cut a few lumps of ice from the cornice behind me, tipped our 20 hard boiled eggs out of the saucepan in which they had travelled protected, and started to make soup. Our bivouac gear was quite primitive. There were two reasons for this, we were too poor to buy any, and ifyou carry a lot of stuff you will almost certainly have to use it, because it slows you down. We each had a cagoule and an eiderdown jacket, and nothing else. A bad storm would have caused serious problems. At 3 a.m. two little lights could be seen crossing the glacier. Competitors! So, breakfast was a hurried affair and we started climbing at 6 a.m. At this point two French parties appeared and we exchanged greetings. "Qui etes vous?" they said. We told them our names. Tom and I pressed on upwards quite slowly, at a rate of about five feet per hour. Each pitch needed ten or fifteen pitons or wedges and few were in situ. By 4 p.m. we had reached the forty-metre wall which is said to be the crux of the climb. This wall is continuously overhanging and has to be done in two sections with a stance in the middle, standing in etriers, most precariously. It took us four hours to climb the wall, so that it was 8 p.m. by the time we reached the second Bonatti bivouac. This was the largest ledge on the climb so far. It was covered in three feet of snow but a lot of vigorous stamping and sweeping produced a sort of cave. Just big enough for two people to sit down but not stretch out. I had a cigarette and waited for dawn, chin on knee. Breakfast was eggs, soup and super milk concentrate, pretty nauseating, and took two hours. It was still too cold to move off, but by 7 a.m. 1 was into the seventy-five foot sinuous crack which in those days had not a single piton in it. I put in fifteen, and it took an hour to lead. Shortly above this, Bonatti spent his third night. He must have been standing on one leg. At 5 p.m. we reached the summit, abseiled down into the gap behind the Capucin, and rejoined our rucksacks by descending a snowy gully. We made the Requin Hut after midnight in the dark.' After the cruel accident to Bourdillon and Viney on the Jagihorn on 2nd July 1956, which robbed Hamish of his main climbing partner, his medical studies and career intervened and he never climbed again at the same high level. The epitaph on Bourdillon and Viney's grave in Visp applies equally to Hamish: 26

6 Hamish Nicol and tlie Alps They are most rightiy reputed valiant, who, though they perfectly apprehend both what is dangerous and what is easy, are never the more thereby diverted from adventuring.' '.../or eighty feet I Jammed it, laybacked it, and was sometimes forced to bridge across the corner.' Hamish Nicol on the Grade-6 crack, West Face of The Noire Photo: Tom BourdUlon Picture removed awaiting Copyright permission ' Hamish Nicol on the Grade-6 crack, West Face of The Noire by Tom Bourdillon 27