Hamish walked away with, in his words, ‘the gait on an ungainly ballet dancer’. Hamish shrugs at such events. What more is there to say? One makes their decision and lives with the consequences. He’s used to identifying and fixing problems and used to having agency. Or at the very least living with the consequences of that agency. ‘Accidents occur in the mountains just as they do anywhere else’, he suggests in his 1973 publication Call Out . ‘Even if the casualty is guilty of negligence, the experience of an accident is generally chastisement enough.’ Things balance out in the mountains and Hamish has been around long enough to be comfortable with taking the rough with the smooth. For a man used to this darker side of mountain rescue, it was affecting to see the change in him as our talk turns to his time in hospital in Glasgow. The memories are still fresh, arguably fresher than the lifetime’s worth of mountaineering that has recently come back to him. He’s guarded as he talks of life in hospital, his experiences were clearly harrowing. Screaming patients, confusion, and imposed routine that was not his. Now he’s back to the familiarity of operating on just a few hours’ sleep a day; he runs, walks, lifts weights and this return to his natural rhythm has seen him not only increase his physical strength but mental fortitude as well. He talks briefly about his future plans. [As we speak] Final Ascent , the film about his experience, is on the horizon. An even deeper exploration of his recent journey and a delve in to his own mountain history. It was well received at screenings in NZ, Kathmandu, and
previewed at Kendal in 2018. The UK premiere was at Glasgow Film Festival. Hamish though, wasn’t there. ‘I don’t want to go back there,’ he says. Dragging up his memories of hospital has
Death is something that is all too familiar and he had a fair share of his own close encounters.
Top: Hamish on bivouac below difficult crack in 1957 on the Eiger North Wall © Chris Bonington Picture Library. Above: Hamish’s old home in Glen Coe © Bob Sharp.
Memory is incredibly fragile, certainly more fragile than the mountains with which he is so familiar. Walking away down the garden path however, I can’t help but think there’s something else that is just as immoveable as the mountains. Looking back over his films and photography it’s apparent Hamish was never surprised at seeing himself on these huge faces, even if he couldn’t initially remember it. Memory it seems is fallible, yet Hamish’s character has remained as fundamental as ever. ✪
smiles at this. ‘These modern climbers are so strong, I’m sure he’ll be fine.’ There’s an interest as well in revisiting many of his life’s accomplishments. Unpublished memoirs are being written which often take him back to the late 1940s to revisit his early climbs in Austria and Italy as an eighteen year old. Forgotten memories have also been unearthed again and he talks of remembering a self-rescue off Waterpipe Gully on Sgùrr an Fheadain in the late 1950s. The trigger was a painting of the gully shown to him by Graham Hunter.
been difficult and feels out of place where we are now. It’s obvious the film hit very close to home. He’s back to living independently and relishes being amongst Glencoe’s current cutting-edge developments again. He needs that stimulation. The likes of Dave MacLeod and Glencoe Mountain Rescue Leader Andy Nelson are still regular visitors. With the former, Hamish is consulting on a comparison climb of Raven’s Gully in which Dave reclimbs the route using the gear that Hamish and Chris Bonington would have had to hand back in 1953. He
JONNY DRY IS A WRITER AND FILM DIRECTOR WHO ALSO WORKS FOR THE MOUNTAIN HERITAGE TRUST, ALPINE CLUB AND MOUNT EVEREST FOUNDATION. FIND HIM ON TWITTER @JONNY_DRY.
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