Musings...

 

DESERT ISLAND CLIMBS – MIKE BROWELL

Johnny Jones Desert Island Climbs challenge is based on the timeless simple format of Desert Island Discs, where celebrities pick just eight favourite pieces of music and tell their life story. Vinyl discs are easy to carry and don’t take up a lot of space on a desert island. Plenty of copies left for others to enjoy.

Add a chatty presenter, pick the eight discs, then decide which single disc to save from the waves, and finish by selecting a favorite book and a luxury - which cannot be useful.

The celebrity has to decide how to link the discs, most going for a life story. Sometimes the discs are part of the story, sometimes ‘knowledge show-off’ vanity choices and sometimes simply ‘of their time’.

Desert Island Discs - is it truth or lies? Is there a Desert Island? Yes, why not, there are plenty out there? ‘I’m a Celebrity’ has a real jungle, so why not DID? Does the celebrity receive the discs? I hope so. And the books? Certainly, the BBC has a big budget. And the luxury? Well maybe sometimes.

An interesting challenge but with a demonic twist! Eight favourite climbs! Compared to vinyl records, rock climbs are very big, so I hope the desert island is like a Tardis! Each one is unique: there are no copies. If I selfishly pick eight climbs, say Cenotaph Corner, Dream of White Horses, Fern Hill, Great Wall, Strand, Saxon, Vector and Wuthering, there are going to be lots of disappointed climbers who turn up at the foot of the crags and find them gone. By the time all Grumpies have had their choice, some crags may be closed down.

As I write this in March 2020, all crags have been closed down by COVID-19.

I like this challenge because it has an ethical dimension. Are Grumpies going to selfishly take their favourite climbs away to a Desert Island? Would they still be able to climb them? Or are they taking them to bask forever in the glory of their days in the sun?

My ethical decision is to made 50% of my selection from routes which have disappeared already, or are well on their way. No-one will miss them.

I suggest that climbers need to be interviewed by a better informed presenter, someone who really knew rock climbing. Ken Wilson would be my choice. It’s Ken who gave me my climbing tick-list by publishing Hard Rock in 1974, and Ken who kickstarted the next generation of Indoor Climbing Walls. He might become the Patron Saint of Climbing Grumpies.

The eight climbs I have picked were all climbed between 1975 – 1980, so you are not going to get my full life story. Neither are these my best or hardest climbs but they are a best-fit to my self-imposed brief. They are all in the UK so there should be no export licence difficulties. Physical removal and cross border freight of routes from Yosemite, Verdon and El Chorro would be just too difficult.

Those five years were the Hard Rock Years of my outdoor climbing life, bridging between university and professional life. I then moved on to a mission for the newly formed BMC Climbing Wall Committee, chaired by Ken Wilson. Mission Impossible was to gather together a group of climbers to build a modern climbing wall for Sheffield, the Rock Climbing Capital of the UK. We persuaded Sheffield City Council to provide a building which they did at the Collegiate Polytechnic, and to manage it and keep it free for climbers. The Alan Rouse Wall (free!) duly opened, followed very soon by commercial operations: Foundry, Edge, Climbing Works. And eventually Awesome Walls. Initially conceived as training for elite climbers they have morphed into Day Care Centres for Grumpy Old Climbers. I’m quite surprised that so far no indoor climb has featured in Desert Island Climbs!