Featured Meets – Page 22 – The Rucksack Club

Good news…organised outdoor meets are recommencing in England

26th March 2021 Tim Taylor Featured Meets

Good news…organised outdoor meets are recommencing in England. The Committee have agreed that organised single day Club Meets should recommence from March 29th with up to 20 participants. BMC Guidance based on Government policy must be followed. This does bring its challenges, but I hope that it also brings significant benefits to Members and Associate Members. I intend to run a Meet in the western Peak on Easter Saturday with numbers restricted to 12 given this is likely to be a very busy weekend [details to follow before 31st March]. Members of the Committee have worked very hard to develop detailed guidance; information on the meets available will be added as members volunteer to co-ordinate a meet. You will need to be logged in to access this information as it is held within the Members Only Documents area of the Website, which can be accessed here. Ad hoc ‘Rule of 6’ mini-meets are also permitted and we imagine that members are likely to take advantage of these too, although they are out-with the Club organised Meets. Log in and check the Members Only Documents area for regular updates on organised day meets close to your locality…we encourage members to stay[…]

Further Reminiscences of Doug Scott

21st March 2021 Tim Taylor Featured Meets

Lyn Noble adds some reminiscences of Doug Scott from their formative days … Here are a few much earlier memories of Doug. We first met as students at Loughborough College. He was training to be a PE teacher. I was a “chippy” (trainee craft teacher). We did the usual sort of stuff, bivvying in the heather above Gardoms and waking (if we ever slept) covered in frost then on to the old classics. Most of the time Doug climbed with is Nottingham mates whilst I teamed up with Colin Mortlock and other college pals. However once a year we joined forces for a bit of indoor aid climbing. The Victory Hall at Loughborough was a massive, grim building with steel rafters in the roof… more like a hanger than a sports hall and doubling up as an examination room. Forty feet above the desks and chairs were the rafters, perfect nesting places and ideal for bombing exam papers. Although most of the college staff and students had little idea what climbers got up to Doug and I were seen as a convenient and cheap way of evicting the birds. We had great fun and cleared out one or two nests[…]

On the hill with…Tim Taylor

20th March 2021 Andy Tomlinson Featured Meets, On the hill with

Welcome to “On the hill with…” and thanks very much to our current Website Secretary, Tim Taylor, for agreeing to be interviewed…my last such “On the hill with…” as I hand over to Tim from now on…just got him in time! Tim at the top of Notch Arete, Tryfan (2018) before heading to Beudy for some Anniversary drinks! (Les Watt) How did you get into walking and climbing? Family walks and then school outdoor pursuits. We lived on the edge of the Peak District. My mother’s side had been in the area for a few generations and knew the local footpaths, which we walked. This was in the days before rights of way were marked on the OS maps, and existing footpaths were sketchy. We came across Peak and Northern signs further into the hills and followed these too. Then a school trip to the Lakes for a week, walking the hills around Ambleside with an overnight camp. All in for £5. I wanted to do more. This was around the time of the TV spectaculars, climbs like the Old Man of Hoy and Gogarth, along with main stream media coverage of expeditions like Annapurna South Face in 1970. So,[…]

Classic RCJ Articles: Skye’s Cuillin Ridge in Summer

15th March 2021 George Wilks Classic Journal Articles, Featured Meets

After Joe Fisher’s slideshow of his winter traverse of the Cuillin Ridge (still available in the Virtual Meets Gallery) I thought we could look back at some summer expeditions along this magnificent ridge. Basil Goodfellow in the 1925 Journal (click here) after providing a convincing case for tackling the traverse from south to north (Gars-bheinn to Sgurr nan Gillean) then gives timings and tips for his own crossing with Frank Yates in the opposite direction! Goodfellow also mentions the fast traverse by Somervell. This was particularly remarkable: not only did Somervell extend the route from Gillean to Sgurr na h-Uamha but, after the first half where he was accompanied by Rucksacker Graham Wilson, he soloed the rest of the ridge including Naismith’s route on the Bhasteir Tooth. Howard Somervell is better known for his exploits on two Everest expeditions, partnering Norton on the second summit attempt in 1924. On 29 May 1953 when two other guys were topping out on Everest, Ted Courtenay and Vin Desmond were heading from Manchester to Glen Brittle on Ted’s BSA 350. You can read about their epic attempt on the Cuillin Ridge in the first part of this article from RCJ 1954. In view[…]

Reminiscences of Doug Scott

12th March 2021 Ian Helliwell Featured Meets

David Nightingale has shared his personal reminiscences of Doug scott in this excellent article: DOUG SCOTT – some personal reminiscences by David Nightingale Note: you will need to be logged-in to the site to see this content.

March Update: new Social Media pages, Covid-19 and Meets/Huts

2nd March 2021 Andy Tomlinson Featured Meets

Welcome to the March Update. We had a lively ‘Zoom’ Committee meeting at the end of February and following on from this there are three things to highlight: Social Media: thanks to the hard work of four new committee members, we launched a new Club Instagram page and updated our public Facebook page on March 1st. We hope that by using these platforms to share photos and information about club activities it will make it easier for people to discover, and get involved with, the Club. You can help our social media presence by following either of these pages if you are already on Facebook or Instagram. Alternatively, you can find us on both at The Rucksack Club, or via the links on the Home Page of the website. Please tag/hashtag us in your posts on Instagram. If you have any photographs that you would be happy for us to share please email them over via Photos@rucksackclub.org and please include some information about the photos. Covid-19: On 22nd February the government published its plan on how it hopes England will exit lockdown and the restrictions that have limited activities over the past year. It outlines how life could get back to normal and the[…]

Classic RCJ Articles…Tal y Braich, the second Club hut…and a breakthrough on Cloggy

19th February 2021 George Wilks Classic Journal Articles, Featured Meets

Five years after the Club’s lease of Cwm Eigiau ended in 1921 a sub-committee was formed to find a replacement “in some local climbing or tramping area but not so difficult of access as was the Cwm Eigiau hut or even so far off as the Langdale Valley”. A search for premises close to the Kinder/Bleaklow area proved fruitless but then Herbert Carr, Hon. Sec. of the Climbers’ Club and former Rucksack Club member, suggested Tal y Braich Uchaf, a small farmhouse near to Helyg, the CC’s new hut in the Ogwen Valley. A lease was signed in February 1927 and we are fortunate to have in the archives Keith Treacher’s unpublished history of Tal y Braich covering the next seventeen years, which can be found here As Keith says, this was a particularly active period in the Club’s life and he highlights the impressive list of first ascents recorded in the hut’s log book. Several of these were the subject of Journal articles and I have selected Lindley Henshaw’s entertaining account in the 1928 Journal of the attempts and final ascent of what became Pigott’s Climb on Clogwyn Du’r Arddu’s East Buttress. This represented a major breakthrough. In his[…]

February Update: Anabasis MC, Handbook and Covid

8th February 2021 Andy Tomlinson Featured Meets

I plan to Post a brief update of RC related information/activities at the beginning of each month [ideally a bit earlier than this one!]. There are three things I would like to highlight this month: Firstly, a very warm welcome is extended to all former Anabasis Mountaineering Club [AMC] members who have now joined the Rucksack Club. The AMC decided to dissolve after 60 years of activity as a result of losing the tenancy on their hut in Snowdonia. They approached the Rucksack Club to discuss whether their members could join us and I am delighted to say that our Committee and AGM approved this transfer. The last few months must have been very difficult for the Anabasis membership, but we hope they enjoy their new found home. RC members will have noticed that they have not yet received the 2021 Handbook, which is normally published about now. We decided to hold back on its publication so that we could include as many ex-Anabasis members’ details as possible, which our Secretary and Membership Secretary are currently working on. Our aim is to get the Handbook to all members by Easter, which will almost certainly be before any form of Meet[…]

Classic RCJ Articles…two more articles on the first Club hut [Cwm Eigiau] from 1918

31st January 2021 George Wilks Classic Journal Articles, Featured Meets

In an earlier post in this series Andy Tomlinson gave us Tim Wyldbore’s amusing account of Cwm Eigiau’s transformation from a remote shepherd’s cottage to Britain’s first climbing hut, together with Roger Booth’s detailed history of the hut up to the end of the Club’s tenancy in 1921. Mike Dent’s Archivists Report 2020 refers to a visit to Cwm Eigiau hut in 1917 by Walter Haskett-Smith (the ‘Father of British rock-climbing’) and Mr and Mrs Scott-Tucker and the reports by Haskett-Smith and Mrs Scott-Tucker (the ‘Commissariat Officer’) from the 1918 Journal can be accessed here. The accompanying photograph of Cwm Eigiau Cottage was taken in May 2006 shortly after a crack Wednesday Walkers team set off on a three-day tour of the Welsh 3000s. We found the hut (maintained by Rugby Mountaineering Club) little changed, with basic facilities, no electricity, bottled gas instead of the ‘capricious’ Primus stoves for cooking and access on foot only: a proper mountain hut!

Classic RCJ Article: Recuperamo On the Walker Spur by Nick Wallis [2006]

17th January 2021 Andy Tomlinson Classic Journal Articles, Featured Meets

In his On the Hill With, Nick Wallis made reference to his ascent of the Walker Spur. Along with fellow Club member Martin Cooper, 2006 proved a very successful alpine season and this article encapsulates all that can be had from an alpine trip, accessed by clicking here. This is my last Classic Article…George Wilks has kindly agreed to take over this occasional series, giving me time for other duties I’ve taken on!