Mountain Clients

Dennis Morrod

In the years after leaving the Royal Marines, I went on to climb many difficult classic climbs including numerous first ascents. Some of these first ascents are still not often climbed even with modern climbing equipment. For instance, it is not known if Black Panther (now being over-bolted, bolts that will be chopped when the retro-bolting is complete ) at Cheesewring Quarry, Cornwall has had a second ascent.

My alpine climbing started in Chamonix (French Alps) in 1958, and by 1993 I had climbed many of the classic, alpine routes. Although two attempts on the North Face of the Eiger were thwarted by bad weather, I have made 132 ascents of Mont Blanc. I visited Mount Kenya, East Africa, as early as 1960 and have since made seven ascents of that mountain and thirty two ascents of Mount Kilimanjaro. I have visited; climbed on Aconcagua twice and also Mt McKinley. The bolting of the ‘finest looking mountain in the world’ Cerro Torre (the Rape of a Mountain) by a UIAGM mountain guide, is a typical example.

Having climbed in many parts of the world, I am appalled by the use of expansion bolts in unquarried rock and agree with Reinhold Messner that climbers who carry bolts are carrying their courage in their rucksack. I also believe that potential new climbs should be left for a better, future (ground-up) climber rather than practising for an ascent of these potential climbs with the use of a top-rope.

In 1985 Dennis Gray, the then general secretary of the British Mountaineering Council (BMC), offered to give full publicity to any problems (as a professional climber/guide) that I might have in the future. There have been no problems. My safety record as a guide/instructor has been, and I hope will continue to be, exemplary. The BMC, never made the same offer to the BMG with that organisations lack of a perfect safety record.

My clients and I have brought in 32 climbers who had over extended themselves in the Alps only one of whom, subsequently died.