Page 55 - 2018 AMA Summer

chapters have appeared as articles in publications like Alpinist (arguably the current high water mark for the genre).
The chapters are often cut with memories, with the tides of ‘normal’ life. Childhood. Parents. Age. The tide going the other way back then. Sometimes it can take time, or a few more chapters, to see where that particular tide ebbs and flows in to the wider rhythm of the book. These reflections are extraordinar- ily well written. I get the feeling that, like a monk in a monastery, the nomadic van-based life that Nick has chosen, affords him far more time than many of us to think, to reflect, to tease out detail and observation and refine emotions.
In amongst writings about the climbs and events that you may have heard of in the climbing (and wider media) over the last fifteen years (that bear attack in Canada, the Piolet d’Or winning ascent of the North Buttress of Nyainqentangla South East in Tibet ....) there is a swathe of other very very well written stuff. The stuff that draws us as climbers in to books of this genre. The why ? The people left behind ? The sheer terror of the ascent of routes like The Bells The Bells, The nature and complexity of our climbing partners and relationships therein. There is no slack in here. There is much to relate to. Much to provoke thought within ourselves as we play the climbing game.
Tides ends with a chapter called Threshold Shift which was justifiably awarded the Best Mountaineering Article of the year award at the Banff Mountain Book Competition last year. Such is the calibre of this book that it’s possibly not even the best chapter in it. A contender for the Boardman Tasker Award 2018.
‘Tides gives a god insight in to what it takes to do super serious high-altitude mixed peaks and I was also impressed with Nick’s observations of both botany and the characters and motivations of some of his friends. Be warned though Nick is almost as morbid as me’
James McHaffie
KINDER SCOUT:
THE PEOPLE’S MOUNTAIN BY ED DOUGLAS
AND JOHN BEATTY
(by Vertebrate Publishing)
We made Kinder Scout, not
just metaphorically, or met-
aphysically, not just with our
stories and our battles, but literally changed its shape, from the peat washing off its summit, to the drystone walls that turn the hillside into a harmonious grid, the trees that are and more often aren’t there, to the creatures that we’ve allowed to remain and those we’ve done away with. It’s our mountain.’
In 1951 the Peak District was designated the UK’s first national park: a commitment to protect and preserve our countryside and wild places. Sandwiched between Manchester and Sheffield, and sitting at the base of the Pennines, it is home to Kinder Scout, Britain’s most popular ‘mountain’, a beautiful yet featureless and disorientating plateau which barely scrapes the 600-metre contour, whose lower slopes bore witness in 1932 to
a movement of feet, a pedestrian rebellion, which helped shape modern access legislation: the Kinder Mass Trespass.
But Kinder Scout’s story is about much more than the working class taking on the elite. Marked by the passage of millions of feet and centuries of farming, a graveyard for lost souls and doomed aircraft, this much-loved mountain is a sacred canvas on which mankind has scratched and scraped its likeness for millennia. It is a record of our social and political history, of conflict and community.
Writer Ed Douglas and photographer John Beatty are close friends and have a shared history with Kinder going back decades. In this unique collaboration they reveal the social, political, cultural and ecological developments that have shaped the physical and human landscape of this enigmatic and treasured hill.
Kinder Scout: The People’s Mountain is a celebration of a northern English mountain and our role in its creation.
‘An exceptional book. The writing is rich with original research, the photographs glitter with strangeness and beauty, and the whole book rings with the passion, knowledge and vision of two people who have explored their subject for most of their lives, and fallen into profound acquaintance with it.’ – Robert Macfarlane, author of The Lost Words and Mountains of the Mind
Vertebrate Publishing offers a significant discount off these books to members of the Army Mountaineering Association. Details are in the Members area of the AMA website.
ANDY KIRKPATRICK
UNKNOWN PLEASURES ‘I don’t give a f*** about Everest.’
Order direct from www.v-publishing.co.uk Save 30% with code: AMABOOKS
@VertebratePub www.facebook.com/vertebratepublishing www.instagram.com/vertebrate_publishing
2018
MAY
tides a climber’s voyage
nick bullock
‘Write a will, mate.’
AVAILABLE
NOW
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 55