Featured Meets – Page 24 – The Rucksack Club

“On the hill with…” Will Harris

30th August 2019 Andy Tomlinson Featured Meets, On the hill with

After a summer break our occasional series of “On the hill with…” interviews with Club members returns. It’s the turn of Aspirant IFMGA/British Mountain Guide, Will Harris, who also heads the Club’s Expedition Grant awarding sub-group. How did you get into climbing? I started climbing on a dusty climbing wall at the back of sports hall in the Midlands. I was totally captured by it and progressed from there to bouldering and sport climbing outside, and then on to everything from big wall climbing to alpine climbing in expedition destinations. Who has had the most influence on your mountain experiences? A lot of people have influenced my climbing, but my biggest debt is to the friendly folks at my local wall who took me under their wings as a keen teenager and introduced me to climbing in the outdoors. How did you come to join the RC? In a way it was a family affair with my father-in-law, Robin Illingworth, a member. My first introduction to the Club came from meeting Dominic Oughton and Bill Deakin in Yosemite; Dom was president at the time and was working hard to welcome younger climbers into the Club. What[…]

2018 Rucksack Club Expedition Grant Awarded

10th May 2019 Andy Tomlinson Featured Meets

The Rucksack Club is pleased to announce that its first Expedition Grant [2018] has been awarded to Felix Terrell and Will Rupp who are final year undergraduate students at Manchester University, members of MUMC and Associate Members of the Rucksack Club. Will and Felix on Naranjo de Bulnes Felix and Will write: Yosemite, the Bugaboos, cirque of the unclimbables…Jordan? The list has only kept growing, making any decision ever-increasingly harder. Will and I have been climbing together for the last few years and, when there’s spare time or bad weather, studying at the University of Manchester. But we’re in our last year now and the time for a big trip is on the horizon – hopefully a jagged horizon with cliffs poking out; and if the last four years have taught me anything it’s that there’s nothing like a deadline to finally bring about some action… After much deliberation, researching and a trip to the pub, we decided on a trip to Madagascar, applied for and were lucky enough to get awarded the Rucksack Club grant. The granite cliffs of Tsaramoro Massif pose the perfect blend of adventure, difficulty level and big walling – neither of us have had to[…]

Snap-shot of members activities in 2018

20th January 2019 Andy Tomlinson Featured Meets

Snap-shot of member activities 2018 Many members have been very active over 2018…this is just a small Snap-shot of some of the things that have gone on over the year. For more pictures of these, and other activities, please visit ‘The 2018 year in pictures’ in the Gallery. Mike Zeidan and Helen Pritchard kicked off the year with a 33hr double-double Marsden-Edale to join an elite band of Club members who have completed this feat of endurance of around Over the first weekend in January Mike Zeidan and Helen Pritchard completed a Marsden -Edale double- double, covering the 90 miles and 6000 metres in all variety of weather conditions. The first double was completed in under 12 hours so there was time for a break before joining the doublers as they started their night venture. The excellent support, good company and mountain hares stay in my memory the most…reportedly the doublers found it hard to keep up with them on their final leg! Andy Llewellyn completed a long held ambition of completing a ‘circuit’ of the 100 highest Wainwrights’ within 5 days, accompanied by Helen Pritchard [yes, that lady again!], covering a distance of 167 miles and 57,000 ft[…]