My father, Stuart Kaye, who has died aged 82, was a committed and determined walker and mountaineer and, in his younger days, a talented rock climber.
He was born and brought up in Jackson Bridge, Huddersfield. His father, John, a miner, died in an accident at Sally Wood Pit, New Mill, in 1944, when Stuart was nine. His mother, Hilda (nee Holmes), a caretaker and cleaner, was left to bring up Stuart, his sister, Barbara, and their stepbrother alone. In order to help financially, Stuart left school aged 15 without any formal qualifications to take a job his uncle Joseph had found for him at the Co-op. A few years later, against his mother’s wishes, he became a miner, at Park Mills pit in Clayton West.
In 1954 he discovered a passion for rock climbing, initially in the Peak District, and later in the Lake District and North Wales. Two years later he was a member of the British Tysfjord-Rombaksfjord expedition to Arctic Norway. This expedition went some way to breaking through the social barriers of the mountaineering world at the time, as most previous expeditions had been largely composed of members selected from the major climbing clubs, universities or the services. The press dubbed the climbers the “Working Men’s Expedition”.
They were funded by a grant from the Mount Everest Foundation, and other sponsors included the photographic company Ilford, for whom in return they exposed rolls of various types of film to different atmospheric conditions, altitudes and temperatures. Between May and July 1956 they completed several first ascents.
Around this time, Stuart developed rheumatoid arthritis and had to leave the pit on doctors’ orders. In 1958 he married Patricia Jennings, known as Pat, with whom he had begun to climb. In 1959 a climbing club was founded in the living room of their home in Wooldale, Holmfirth. The Phoenix Club was where several climbing luminaries cut their teeth, Pete Livesey and the twins Alan and Adrian Burgess among them.
My father was able to rock climb for several more years, mainly in the Peak District, the Lake District, North Yorkshire and Scotland, but as his condition worsened he had to give up. However he continued to undertake extended high level walks in the Alps into his 50s, and to walk in the Lake District, Scotland and the Hebrides.
After leaving the pit, my father worked as an apprentice fitter at the engineering company David Brown and then as a fitter at Hepworth Engineering. Meanwhile, he studied for O-levels and A-levels at night school, in 1968 going to James Graham teacher training college in Leeds. In 1971 he took a job at Black Combe primary school in Millom, Cumbria, where he taught until his retirement in 1985.
He continued to live in Bootle, Cumbria, and managed to keep walking until he was 80. He was an avid rugby league supporter, of both Whitehaven and Millom RLFCs (he had played as a hooker in his younger days).
Stuart is survived by Pat, their two children - my brother Duncan and me – six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
