LAKE DISTRICT: An old man of 93 sits contentedly, surrounded by his mountain pictures and his memories, in a room that looks out over one of the finest views in England. He is the last living link with the deerstalker and Norfolk jacket pioneers who founded the sport of mountaineering in this country and the man who first popularised the sport with his photographs and writings. For not only did he take his heavy plate camera into desperate places to picture determined-looking men hanging on to rocks by their eyebrows, but he also found new ways up vertical crags in Scotland and Wales as well as his native Cumberland. And there is even a jagged aiguille high above Chamonix that bears his name. Remarkably, his memories of adventurous days 30, 60, even 70 years ago are almost as sharp today as the wonderful photographs that line the walls of his home. He even remembers his very first climb - Pillar Rock by the old Slab and Notch with the help of his mother’s clothes line. “There were some Alpine Club men on that Rock that day,” he recalls, “and they were very kind and helpful and didn’t laugh at our silly rope. I thought, ‘What wonderful men’ and decided to become a climber.” And he remembers, as if it was last year his first discovery of a new route - a wet, vegetatious gully in the hills to the east of Keswick. “There was a steep bit about half way up with a waterfall streaming down, and I had a drink before tackling it. But when I pulled myself over the top of the pitch I found a dead sheep lying in the water, and the next day I was very sick.” He was still climbing at 70, but today he can only lift his eyes to the hills that have been his whole life.
Harry Griffin’s diary refers to George Abraham, who, along with brother Ashley, recorded the evolution of rock-climbing, particularly in the English Lake district. George died on 4 March 1965, an obituary appearing in the Guardian the following day. See also The Keswick brothers by Alan Hankinson (Alpine Journal, 1974). His daughter, Enid Wilson, was a country diarist for over 30 years.
