Wordsmith cont’d
amazing valley, or be based
in Grindelwald, Wengen and
Mürren for weeks at a time
while working on other writing
projects.
Now, I was just happy to be
back. Rain or no rain.
Awake before dawn, I knew
at once the rain had stopped
overnight, so snuck out of the
tent, tiptoed across the damp
grass and tapped on the camper
van’s door. Dad’s face appeared
at the window. I beckoned him
out, and a few minutes later he
slid open the door and followed
me out of the campsite. Neither
of us said a word.
I led the way in the
unpromising half-light towards
the Staubbach Falls, then took
the path upvalley. Tatters of
mist outlined the course of the
river, while Dad and I shivered.
But yesterday’s clouds had
vanished overnight and I smiled
in anticipation of what would
happen next.
Suddenly and without
warning, day entered the sky
and flooded the mountains with
light. Upvalley the Breithorn
blushed, its summit snows and
hanging glaciers warmed to
the sun (which we could not
yet see), and Dad and I stood
still. Within minutes the valley
was transformed, as were the
mountains that walled it. Had
we been up on one of the high
alps, we might have seen more,
but this was something special -
for Dad and for me. For the very
first time we were sharing the
magic, and his eyes were moist.
Fast forward another twenty-
five years…
Dad’s health was failing. We
sat in his old person’s bungalow
and leafed through his photo
album. He lingered over a print
of Mum, Min and the girls in
a meadow outside Mürren.
In the background stretched
the Lauterbrunnen Wall. You
could see all the way from the
Jungfrau to the Breithorn; a
scene dominated by mountains,
snowfields, glaciers. And
waterfalls.
Without looking up, he said:
‘That was a cracking holiday. I
know what you see in mountains
now.’
www.kevreynolds.co.uk
4 Outdoor focus | winter 2019
line drawings of the various routes. In
their place, apart from general, scene-
setting drawings of each route and the
unsurpassed detail of his panoramas
visible from each summit, his mountain
photography now matches some of the
best taken in his beloved Lake District.
Highly recommended.
The Lake District Fells:
Wasdale: The Scafells,
Great Gable, Pillar and
Langdale: The Langdale
Pikes and Bowfell
Mark Richards
Cicerone, £14.95 (pb)
T
he latest incarnation of Mark
Richards’ long-running Fellranger
opus are these two handy, pocket-
sized volumes covering the fells around
the popular centres of Wasdale and
Langdale.
The diff erence is that each of the
“fell-friendly” routes to the 25 summits
of the heavily used hills featured in each
volume have been carefully selected
by the author with a view to minimising
erosion.
As he explains: “One of the
underlying impulses of these guides is to
protect these beloved fells by presenting
a diversity of route options for each and
every fell – and also…. recommending
‘fell-friendly’ routes to each summit
which are less susceptible to erosion.”
So in the Wasdale book for example,
alongside the ever-popular Brown
Tongue and Corridor routes to Scafell
Pike, also included is the less-frequented
Brotherilkeld route via Mickledore or
Little Narrowcove.
Richards now seems to have
abandoned his Wainwright-inspired
Chasing the Dreams
Hamish Brown
Sandstone Press, £8.99 (pb)
I
well remember skimming up a
Svarlbard fjord in an infl atable with
Hamish Brown when the main topic of
conversation was his perceived similarity
of the surrounding snow-clad peaks to
certain Scottish mountains.
Chasing the Dreams, this legendary
mountain traveller and writer’s latest
biographical excursion and the
companion volume to his recent Walking
the Song, takes the reader even further
afi eld.
Culled from his regular contributions
to journals such as the Glasgow Herald,
the Scots Magazine, Scottish Field and
The Great Outdoors, this collection of
essays surely confi rms Brown as one of
the world’s greatest mountain explorers.
Starting from youthful escapades in the
Cuillin, Jura, Sutherland, Caithness and
the Cairngorms, we are transported
to the wildernesses of the Alps, Rishi
Ganga in the Himalaya, Kilimanjaro and
the Drakensburg mountains of South
Africa.