REVIEWS

UPON THAT MOUNTAIN.
BRENVA.
ZWISGHEN KANTGH UND TIBET.
MOUNTAIN CRAFT.
THE AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL, 1945.
THE LADIES' ALPINE CLUB, 1945.
THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, OCTOBER 1944.
THE JOURNAL OF THE MOUNTAIN CLUB OF SOUTH AFRICA, 1944.

UPON THAT MOUNTAIN. By Eric Shipton. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1943.

This is a semi-autobiographical book which deals with most of Shipton's major expeditions and many minor phases of his climbing life. A glance at the list of contents produces some misgivings that, after those two grand books Nanda Devi and Blank on the Map, this might be rather a pot-boiler. But such fears were largely groundless; in its own way this is as good a feast as the others. The title of the book is perhaps not entirely happy, but then it must be very difficult to think of a new title for a climbing book; the field is becoming too limited. The significance of the title, which is a quotation from Shelley's 'Mont Blanc', seems to lie in the word 'that', which must be taken to mean not any particular mountain, but that universalized mountain which looms again and again into the consciousness of climbers, and dominates the lives of the great ones.

The author starts with Whymper and dreams of Chimborazo, which early had stolen his heart away, and ends when the news of the War reaches him on the Hispar Snow Lake. The thread between wanders amongst some of the world's loveliest mountains. Many of these are illustrated by fine photographs which have suffered little through war economy standards. The pictures of the Weisshorn and Mount Kenya, made dreamlike by cloud-swirls, and the sublime austerity of the Shaksgam photographs are outstanding. Another remarkable feature of the book is its brevity; within the compass of 210 pages there are to be found accounts of expeditions in five of the world's major mountain groups and much general mountaineering wisdom besides. This shortness, the lack of technicalities and the pleasant style of writing make it an especially valuable book for non-climbers whose eyes may already be turning towards the hills. That it has had a wide circulation during the War may prove to be of considerable importance to Himalayan mountaineering. There must be many to whom it has brought the revelation that the Himalaya are accessible to ordinary men with ordinary means. And further, Shipton's authoritative case for lightness and mobility will do much to confirm the already widely held view, that this, and not what Geoffrey Winthrop Young in his foreword calls the 'majestic cumberousness' of the old days, will be the mode of Himalayan travel in the future.

It is difficult to define the quality of Shipton's style which makes the book so readable and right. There is a simplicity, a directness and an absence of straining after effect, but this is not all. The quality of a mountain book depends on two transferences: the author's appreciation of the mountain mood which all climbers get in varying degrees; and the transference of that emotion into words. The scientific writer attempts to eliminate emotion from both. At the other extreme, a climber who is also a poet must feel more deeply than the majority, and when he writes he runs a greater risk, for to convey the deeper emotion he needs a greater measure of skill; and it is the lack of skill rather than the falseness of the original feeling which produces these well-meaning purple monsters which sometimes appear in print. One would guess that Shipton is not a palpitatingly sensitive receiver of mountain feelings. He seems to go on inhaling them with no more fuss than a man breathing. And he gives them out again without dramatizing them, without stripping them to scientific nudity and without being coy about it. When there is glory, there is no need to disclaim or dodge it; it can be left where it belongs ... with the mountains rather than with men. The manner in which the mountain moods come through his books with so little distortion is reflected by the way in 'which we are encouraged to enter the world of the book without impediment. The reader is constantly being drawn in, to identify himself with the 'hero'. This is quite right. The reason is that Shipton, in spite of his heroic role, seems to be like any ordinary mountaineer; and his extraordinary abilities do not prevent the ordinary mountaineer from sharing something of his experiences, stepping into those badly battered boots and looking 'beyond the brink of the ice ledge, ... and immensely far below [to] a lake of vivid colour, at the bottom of which [was] the Sundardhunga river coiling like a silver water-snake, away into an ocean of cloud which stretched without a break over the foothills and plains of India'. Throughout the book such images are constantly evoked.

Then there is another attractive feature of Shipton's descriptive writing. He skips with great rapidity from the humble chores of camp to the heights and glories of the peaks, a style which reproduces much of the contrast that is the essence of mountain travel. In one paragraph he is taking castor oil, in the next he is lazing in the shade of the oak and pine woods beneath the sparkling peaks of Trisul and Nanda Ghunti, and in the next he is discussing pemmican and vitamin 'C'.

Throughout the book it is interesting to trace some gradual changes of attitude. There is the emergence of the faith in light expeditions, which, swinging between the poles of Everest 1933 and Spartan ventures with Tilman, finishes up somewhere between the two though nearer to the latter. There is his own widening horizon, which starts with a love of volcanoes and gradually develops through orthodox Alpine climbing to embrace, at the end, a deep interest in all aspects of mountain travel from the psychology of team-wort to the problems of surveying.

It is to be hoped, when paper restrictions are lifted, that the publishers will reproduce this book on a larger scale with an index and rather more detailed maps. Austerity, which may be desirable on mountains, and has been necessary in war-time mountain literature, should no longer be applied to a book as good as this.

R. A. Hodgkin.

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BRENVA. By T. Graham Brown. London: Dent, 1944.8 ½ X5 ½ inches; xv and 225 pages; 72 photographs and maps. 25s.

Professor Graham Brown has written a remarkable book which sets a new style in Alpine literature. In this intensely personal record, his mountaineering philosophy and his ambitions from his rock-climbing novitiate to his experience in great Alpine expeditions are all distilled into the Brenva face of Mont Blanc. His plans, his attempts and his achievements are described in the most minute detail and with the scientist's regard for accuracy of topography, of times and dates, and of other climbers' expeditions on the face. The ascents he describes form a remarkable climax in the technique in which he has achieved special distinction, namely that of making routes up faces which are threatened from above by hanging ice with a safety which he achieves by having made the closest study of their seasonal and diurnal habits. His route up the 'Pear buttress', the third panel of his triptych, must surely rank as a classic in this class of expedition.

Such is the emphasis on the Brenva routes that they are described even to the point of repetition, and the many subsidiary routes get little hearing. One would like to have been told more of his descent from the Col Major by the Kennedy route, and of his lantern-light traverse of the Aiguille de Bionnassay which is dismissed in three lines. One is told far too little about the incomparable Graven, that giant among guides, whose character no one, other than his own countrymen, knows better.

With the book narrowed down to Brenva alone the reader feels that, vast though the scale and the difficulty of this face may be, its description in such detail belongs to the realm of climbers' guides rather than of literature. In fact it seems a pity that when setting out to write a book with such care, and such richness of feeling for the mountains on the grand scale, Graham Brown did not draw upon his wider experience. What could he not have written if he had chosen for his tide Mont Blanc, for is he not internationally recognized as its leading exponent?

The photographs, which are all his own and were all taken on the first Leica to be imported into England, are a unique commentary on the climbs. Owing to war-time publishing difficulties they are all grouped together at the end, but this is no drawback since the text demands such constant reference to them that they are more readily thus found. The view of the face from the Fourche de la Brenva, which also appears on the dust cover, is fit to rank artistically with the greatest.

B. R. Goodfellow.

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ZWISGHEN KANTGH UND TIBET. Picture diary of a new expedition in Sikkim. Ernst Grob, Ludwig Schmaderer, Herbert Paidar. Published by Bruckmann, Munich, 1940.

The production of a book so beautifully and copiously illustrated at Munich in the year 1940 is remarkable. The end of Ernst Grob's quotation from his brother, with which he prefaces the introduction, might serve as its epilogue:

‘und uber allem Leid lipgt irgendwo
immer eine stille Versohnung.'
(... and over all suffering there lies always somewhere a peaceful reconciliation.)

That I think is the spirit in which we judge of this book: not as a thing of boastfulness, a triumphant Nazi gesture in the strength and defiance of 1940; but as a thing of pride certainly, yet of living and doing so full that it were impossible not to accept and enjoy them. At the close of the book the reader's feeling is of pity and sympathy. The suffering has come indeed, and swept with it this that was fine in the German spirit, along with the distortion and brutality that accompanied it. Now it is over.

The book is a description, mainly in annotated picture form, of the expedition of three climbers to Sikkim in 1939. At the end are given extracts from the diaries of the climbers. The chief goal of the expedition was the Tent peak (24,165 feet) north of Kangchenjunga. The illustrations of the long and very difficult ridge joining this to the Nepal peak (23,519 feet), which had to be traversed, are outstanding. (For the account see p. 46 earlier in this number.) Besides this ascent, the party reached the Sugarloaf saddle, made the first crossing of the Langpo La and the first ascent of the southern summit of the Langpo peak, this last under exceptionally bad conditions.

The Naziisms peep in, at moments. Flags are hoisted glucklich on summits. Pride is exhibited in the achievement of Grossdeutschland. But the authors are too busy enjoying, not only 'the struggle' but the flowers and goatherds that they photograph. They forget themselves, happily. But they forget also, at times, their Sherpas. The porters who were left alone in the camp under the summit of the Nepal peak, with very little food and in a state of anxiety about their sahibs' return, showed a huge fortitude which is hardly appreciated. It was little wonder that they began to fall to pieces on the descent. An uncertain relation with their porters has always been a characteristic of Germanic climbing. It is perhaps partly that the Germans seem often to be competing rather than co-operating. But for the Drei im Himalaja there is clearly among the porters a feeling of admiration and willingness to suffer with them. The Sherpa Pansy's remark: 'where you go sahib I go too' has the ring of comradeship. And admiration is the taste left at the end. This thing may have gone wrong, may have become distorted and hideous. But something fine has been lost besides in the ruin. With that something we would be reconciled.

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MOUNTAIN CRAFT. By Geoffrey Winthrop Young. 4th edition, revised. Published by Methuen, London, 1945. 25s.

The appearance of this new edition of the standard book on mountain craft is extremely welcome. The author states in his additional Preface that 'it has not been possible to bring up to date our chapters dealing with specific ranges now unattainable' and therefore that 'the body of the work, in which the theory and practice of mountain and climbing craft were set out and to some extent first formulated, I am reissuing after a full revision'. In point of fact the omission of the chapters on ski mountaineering and the various ranges may seem to many an improvement, and for two reasons. The volume is easier now to handle; and it is the coordinated work of one author (except for a part of the Equipment Section) who has concentrated in it the quintessential wisdom of mountaineering practice. Mountain Craft is become now the completed corollary to On High Hills.

It is remarkable how little has in fact had to be revised. The book remains what it has always been, the best of all reading on the subject, both for the beginner and for the man who feels that he knows a little about mountaineering and needs to be humbled. Mr. Winthrop Young derives his knowledge from his experience in the Alps and Great Britain; but everything that he says applies to the Himalaya, and the additions that might be made would concern the specialized problems of high altitude equipment, porters and siege technique. These are, anyway, a study in themselves, and would need to themselves a special section or probably a special book.

The most important 'reconsideration’ is in respect of modern rock technique. This covers sections on 'expert belays', 'kinetic belays', 'psychical belaying', &c. It is, perhaps, well to have these tabulated; though it is difficult not to wonder how many first-class climbers had consciously considered their classification before. Some may be surprised to see old friends under new names, as the poets would be surprised to see the modern criticisms of their more spontaneous versification.

There is no need to add here remarks about the literary quality of Mountain Craft. The book is written in a prose style as distinguished and varied as that of On High Hills, and the new edition gains in being a single composition rather than a compilation. It is the rarest of all pieces of writing—a text-book become a work of art.

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THE AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL, 1945.

THE LADIES' ALPINE CLUB, 1945.

THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, OCTOBER 1944.

THE JOURNAL OF THE MOUNTAIN CLUB OF SOUTH AFRICA, 1944.

It is a pleasant sign of more fraternal mountaineering days' return to be greeted with overseas Journals. In the American Alpine Journal outstanding is the account of climbing and exploration on and around Aconcagua by Arthur Emmons, undertaken during 1944. The account of the Bolivian Andes explored by Prem in 1939 points to further possibilities of greater mountaineering in South America. Those who maybe could not be active physically have speculated upon the hills, delving back into the old, perhaps profitless but irresistible questions of Mountain Mysticism; or turned historical, as in the High Adventure of Mr. Randall. It is to be hoped that in the next years the Americans will be able to stretch themselves farther, and to return to the Himalaya on the lines of their best expeditions of the past.

The Ladies' Alpine Club has produced a most competent and serviceable number, to the year 1945. Very much has been done and thought about mountains, and even from the Alps comes on article by Claire Engel describing ascents near Kandersteg. It is to be hoped that the L.A.C. practice, parallel to that of the Alpine Club, of holding meets in Britain will continue, and will link up with the greater mountaineering movements in post-war years. Certainly men of the climbing clubs would be ready to assist again; or to encourage such projects as those faintly suggested in Winifred Murray's article.

The exciting feature of the Sierra Club Bulletin is the photography of J. N. LeConte. 'Sentinel Rock' and 'The brink of Yosemite Fall' have a quality very rare in photographs, other-worldly like a background to Poe. 'The Sierra Club farther afield' shows a healthily mountain loving membership, mainly homesick for its mountains.

Some pleasant and some difficult climbing has been done by the South Africa Mountain Club, and we are grateful for the record of it and for the persistent enthusiasm it shows.

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