Adventures in the Northlands E-Book

Tony Howard

• Herausgeber: Vertebrate Digital
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Lightning hit the cliff high above us, sending a dumper-load of rocks thrumming like jagged cannonballs out of the clouds to explode around us. Bill took a direct hit on his helmet, which was smashed. He hung limply and silently on the rope. His face, which was streaming with blood from a gash in his head, was a ghastly shade of white. For a horrible moment, we thought he was dead, but he came round slowly. We suggested bivouacking until he recovered but Bill, who always thrived in adversity, was having none of it. Having bandaged his head and reversed his helmet so that the hole in it wasn't over the hole in his head, and at his insistence bunged a fag in his mouth to keep him happy, we continued into the storm up the last 300 metres of the snow covered cliff. We emerged triumphantly over the cornice into the blizzard and whiteout, another first ascent in the bag.' Adventures in the Northlands is a collection of short stories written by British adventurer and mountaineer Tony Howard. From a life spent in the mountains and wilderness, Tony recalls epic tales of climbing, kayaking and adventure from Greenland, the kon and, his home-from-home, Norway. Journey with Tony into some of the most incredible wild places on earth. Vertebrate Mountain Shorts are collections of mountaineering, climbing, adventure and wilderness writing, published as ebooks and intended to be read in one go. Written by some of the world's leading outdoor adventure authors, they include rare, previously out of print and exciting new works. Vertebrate Mountain Shorts will always be inspirational, direct and to the point.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title Page

Introduction

One Adventures in the Northlands

Two The Trail of Ninety-Eight

Three Adventures in Greenland

Four In the Home of the Giants

Five Return to Romsdal

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About Vertebrate Mountain Shorts

Also by Tony Howard

Copyright

The author carrying gear up to base camp below the unclimbed south face of Ingolffjeld, 1973. Photo: Bill Tweedale

INTRODUCTION

‘May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.’

Edward Abbey – author, environmentalist and political anarchist

‘Adventure’, it seems to me, has become a rather overused and even misused term these days, diminished by TV shows purporting to show heroic deeds in hazardous places, yet where safety lies close at hand behind the cameras. Personally, adventure is something I thrive on, often deliberately sought out, sometimes happening unexpectedly, but always enjoyed, though sometimes more in retrospect than at the time.

Roy Brown, who I first met at the age of 14 in my home hills of Chew Valley in the Peak District, was my first climbing mentor. He lived in an old hen hut with the gritstone cliffs of Dovestones Edge and Wimberry just a half hour walk from his door. One of his favourite phrases was ‘When in doubt, brew up,’ which, if time permits, is not a bad plan when disaster looms. In fact, come to think of it, having a brew is always a good plan! In later years, Roy, for whom work was never a first choice, would turn up at Troll where I worked making climbing gear. Having scrounged a brew and dragged me not too reluctantly from whatever I was doing, he would leave with his favourite parting shot, always guaranteed to make me envious if the sun was shining; ‘Well, I must go, the day’s half gone and I haven’t had an adventure yet’ – an approach to life that has stood me in good stead over the years.

Between leaving school and starting Troll Climbing Equipment some seven years later in 1965, I worked as little as possible, just enough to get money together to climb, though sometimes the jobs themselves were quite adventurous in their own right. Being a partner in Troll allowed that ethos to continue over the next 30 years, though my partners were not always overly impressed with my prolonged absences. However, as I used to say, you can’t design climbing equipment if you don’t use it. After we sold Troll in 1995 I took early retirement, continuing a life based on climbing, trekking and generally having fun in the hills, which, for me, is what it’s always been about.

* * *

What follows is a collection of tales from the north; the first, Adventuresin the Northlands, first written in 1971, also provides the book’s title and describes some adventures I had while on time-off from Troll, working in northern Canada between 1970 and 1972. The second, The Trail of Ninety-Eight, written in 1971, describes a canoe trip of over 800 miles along an almost forgotten Klondike gold rush route through Canada’s arctic wilderness that I also did in that period. Next is a story of Adventures in Greenland, written in 1973 and updated in 1975, including an attempt on an unclimbed 6000-foot face in east Greenland in the early 1970s. The last two stories are of climbs and mountain adventures in my favourite European country, Norway. The Home of the Giants piece, written in 2003, takes place in Norway’s mightiest mountains, the Jotunheim. Return to Romsdal, from pieces written in 1968 and 1979, is a story of new climbs in the vicinity of the Troll Wall, of which I made the British first ascent with our Rimmon Mountaineering Club in 19651.

There are more where these came from, but I must go, the day’s half gone and I’ve not had an adventure yet.

Tony Howard

March 2012

Footnote

1 See Notes, page 53.

Teslin village, Yukon Territory, 1971.

ONE

ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHLANDS

Ode from a mountaintop dumpshack, while on nightshift, winter 1970,Yukon-British Columbia border

On the greenly phosphorescent snows,

Herald of the dawning, glows

The witchlight of the hidden sun.

Then blushing pink to swiftly run

The gauntlet of the clutching night,

Pale peaks reflect the morning light.

Deep down, darkly, hollows nestle

In the gloom where bull-moose wrestle,