A few years ago on this blog, I posed the question Where are the humorous mountaineering books? The general thrust of the post was that while there is no shortage of humour in mountaineering literature, it’s often of the alpha-male kind. This contrasts starkly with the travel genre in general and other niches of sports writing, such as cycling, where gentle, self-deprecatory humour abounds.
Towards the end of last year, I discovered a hidden gem of mountaineering literature quite by chance: a collection of whimsical short stories that I believe would have had P.G. Wodehouse chuckling appreciatively.
The source was unexpected. Games Climbers Play is a famous collection of climbing essays compiled by the influential Ken Wilson, erstwhile editor of Mountain magazine in the 1970s, and founder of the publishing company Baton Wicks.
Ken Wilson’s reputation as a avid promoter of the elite end of climbing, and fierce defender of style and ethics in climbing, meant that I haven’t previously been drawn to his writing. (I had also been deterred from reading his most famous collections, Hard Rock and Classic Rock, after learning there was no mention of Jethro Tull in either them.)
I therefore embarked on Games Climbers Play with more curiosity than enthusiasm. The collection is divided into themes, including such worthy subjects as style, ethics, mountain rescue and education. I was unsurprised to see that of the 120+ articles in the book, only 5 were written or co-written by women, although this is also a reflection of its time (1978).
For about 300 pages the collection met my expectations: stream-of-consciousness first-person narratives, scholarly essays about style and character, and plenty of laddish humour. Now, understand: I’m not knocking any of this stuff if it’s your thing. Some of it I really enjoyed; it’s just that most of it is not my usual cup of tea.
Then, suddenly, I was jolted out of my lethargy by the abrupt and surreal opening lines of a piece called The Craggie by G. J. F. Dutton:
Just on the corner, the wheel came off. Fortunately, it was a right-hand corner and an off-side wheel. I was sitting in the front and saw it appear in the headlamp beams, skipping joyfully in its new freedom.
A serious accident, described somewhat jauntily. I was alert.
Luckily, the car slowed to a halt and its occupants were unharmed. The piece continued in the same breezy fashion as the narrator and his two companions, a doctor and an ‘apprentice’ continued with their adventure up an overgrown crag. I was a few pages in before I became certain that the account was fictional. They had company on the crag in the form of a botanist clad in tweed jacket and tartan skirt, who was examining the cliffs for rare lichens. The doctor, who appeared to be the leader of the party, coached his climbing partners on which vegetation was safe to cling to. Lycopodium inundatum, a clubmoss, could not be trusted, but Cryptogramma crispa was a good handhold.
Later on in Games Climbers Play, in the section on mountain rescue, there was another story involving the same trio of climbers. This one, with the title A Good Clean Break, was a little more slapstick and could not be mistaken for a factual account. The comic trio diverted from a climb to rescue a crag-fast climber on a nearby ledge, only to find that he was in no difficulty at all: he was playing ‘the casualty’ in a mountain rescue exercise. Unfortunately, the climbers who were supposed to come and rescue him were hanging upside-down in a tangle of ropes above him, and were in need of rescuing themselves.
This was my introduction to the tales of ‘The Doctor and his Friends among the Highland Hills’. By a strange coincidence, I met them again in the very next book that I read.
The subtitle ‘A look at mountaineering literature in Britain’ tells you all you need to know about A Rope of Writers by Graham Wilson. It contains a chapter on humour that dedicates 5 pages to G. J. F. Dutton’s Doctor stories. The stories initially appeared separately in various editions of the Scottish Mountaineering Club (SMC) Journal, and latterly as a collection entitled The Ridiculous Mountains.
Graham Wilson describes the gist of the stories thus:
Three companions set off on a venture of their own design, only to arrive at the outcome via a variety of unexpected deviations.
Which pretty much describes any trip to the hills. The difference lies in the unexpected deviations (which are the ridiculous part of the stories rather than the mountains themselves). Another difference is the character of the three companions: the Doctor (‘who represents all that is old school’), the Apprentice (‘who is all layback and state-of-the-art gear’) and the narrator (‘who vacillates between the two in an attempt to gain a position of moral, emotional and especially physical security’).
The stories sounded like my cup of tea. I went straight away to Amazon and Abebooks to find myself a copy of The Ridiculous Mountains.
G. J. F. Dutton was a biochemist who worked at the University of Dundee and edited the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal in his spare time. As well as writing two collections of comic fiction, he wrote more serious general-interest books about gardening.
The Ridiculous Mountains is a book very much in the mould of The Ascent of Rum Doodle, involving incidents that are only marginally less surreal. It has a similar cast of eccentric characters described by an earnest narrator who watches events unravel with an air of helplessness.
The Doctor, who seems to be older than the other two and certainly more worldly, is clearly the leader of the group and driver of events, though the narrator does not appear to recognise him as such. He is well connected, invariably to blame for the situations they end up getting themselves into; but also the one to get them out of it with his breezy self-confidence in any company and unorthodox resourcefulness.
The Apprentice is meant to represent his diametric opposite: an impassioned and principled youth, he really should be climbing with others his age and ability, but somehow ends up as one third of this odd trio. He is much the best climber of the three and often the subject of romantic interest.
The narrator is a more vanilla character, presumably deliberately, enabling him to describe a series of absurd events with deadpan humour. He is clearly more naturally inclined towards the Apprentice, but quite incapable of providing the teamwork the pair of them need to gain the upper hand.
A number of other characters make multiple appearances. My favourites are Geordie and Wull, a pair of inveterate peak baggers, circumspect and habitual in their ways:
Wull was particularly cautious. He carried two of everything, just in case; maps, compasses, pairs of gloves, bootlaces, braces, primuses, even a spare rucksack – packed, somewhat illogically, within the other one.
Geordie and Wull persuade our three protagonists to accompany them up a peak with two rocky summits they believe they will have difficulty climbing on their own. At the top they encounter a pair of randy red-deer stags who chase them up the pinnacles then don’t allow them down again.
Set in Scotland, the 20 stories are principally about climbing and hillwalking, but also cover a surprising breadth of outdoor activities and themes. One, Flies, conjures a scene that will be all too familiar to anyone who has been persecuted by a swarm of highland midges. In Finishing Off a Top, the Doctor persuades his two companions to carry flags to a mountain with three summits. The plan is for the three of them to climb separate summits and wave their flags so that the Doctor can triangulate the peaks and calculate which is the highest. The narrator and the Apprentice reach theirs without difficulty, but as they are waiting for the Doctor to reach his, the clouds sweep over. After waiting two hours for a break in the mist that would allow them to make an observation, the narrator realises that he’s forgotten which way he came up.
Other themes include shooting, caving and sailing. Perhaps the most memorable story is the one about aid climbing, Chalking It Up, which is also described by Graham Wilson in A Rope of Writers. It’s a perfect antidote to the various essays in Games Climbers Play about style and ethics. The Apprentice, who is opposed to artificial climbing aids, is perturbed when the Doctor turns up to climb a route on Ben Nevis called Constipation with a chalk bag attached to his belt. The hapless Doctor escapes from a tricky section of Constipation by means of a pendulum swing, but then finds himself astride a much harder route called Purgative. His only means of exit is to climb the crux: a holdless slab that has been moistened by a fine rainfall. Unperturbed, he reaches into his chalk bag and pats the rock with its contents. Little by little, he makes his way spider-like over the crux.
It turns out that there was nothing artificial in that chalk bag. The previous day the Doctor had been to the beach to harvest limpets, creatures that can cling to rock like a Scotsman to his wallet.
The Ridiculous Mountains isn’t always laugh-out-loud funny like The Ascent of Rum Doodle, but it’s full of clever plot twists that put a smile on your face with every turn of the page. Unlike Rum Doodle, which is patently ridiculous, the scenarios described in The Ridiculous Mountains contain just that grain of truth and familiarity that make you think, well, perhaps it could happen… I thoroughly recommend it to those of you who like a good chuckle.
I could have discovered this book much sooner had I been paying attention. I went back and re-read my blog post Where are the humorous mountaineering books? while writing this one. At the end I asked you, my readers, to recommend any other humorous mountaineering books that you’ve come across. There in the comments is one by Ian Barton:
You might try reading GJF (aka Geoff Dutton’s) books. If you have “Games Climbers Play” by Ken Wilson” there are a couple of articles in there.
He even provided a link to The Ridiculous Mountains on Amazon. Sorry, Ian. I should listen to you more.
I am surprised that you hadn’t come across Dutton’s writing before. I’ve enjoyed them for years.