Page 10 - 2017 AMA Winter

HOW IT ALL STARTED...
by Tim King
It all began with a rugby tackle. I was playing for Shrivenham against the Royal Navy and as a rather lightweight flanker I
decided to take on an enormous matelot winger who looked like scoring. I made the tackle but came off worst.
The MO said: ‘This is the second time you have damaged that ear playing rugby and there won’t be a third, otherwise you are out of the Army.’ I was miserable. Rugby had been my life. My old Airborne pal Baz Dickson took pity on me and suggested that I might like to try rock climbing with the RMCS club on Sundays. So on a cold February day in 1968 we made our way slowly (no M4 then) down to Avon Gorge.
Our first climb was Idleburger Buttress followed by Nightmare, both V Diffs. Baz led and I struggled with the exposure, the techniques and the whole concept but before long I was hooked. A fortnight later we returned and I led Idleburger. Soon we were leading through on most of the climbs and working our way up the lower grades. We tried North Wales that March (17 routes) and the next few months made a sustained series of visits there, returning to Avon Gorge when we did not fancy the long journey to Llanberis.
In the summer of 1968 I went to the Alps with Meryon Bridges and Taffy Morgan and we followed that up with a week on the Black Cuillins in September. Hugh Wright also persuaded us to join the AMA and it became central to all our climbing and exploration activities. By the time we had reached Christmas I had clocked about 80 climbs, ‘done’ Mt Blanc and was leading VS fairly confidently. That concentrated start was paying off and my life as a climber had really begun. At 72 I still can’t quite leave it alone
King leading Pharoahs Wall 04 Apr 1969
King and Friends Summit Mt Blanc 27 Jul 1968
8 ARMY MOUNTAINEER
Our kit was incredibly basic by today’s standards. Most climbers went bare-headed or wore a woolly hat. The only helmet on the market was the Compton and the only rope was 120 feet of hawser-laid No4 nylon. For footwear we had PAs, EBs and, later, Gollies, all ankle length and based on a light walking boot but showing signs of morphing into the footwear used today. At least the soles were rubber: some of us were still climbing in nailed boots on mountain crags.
Hawser-laid rope was notorious for twisting after being in tension and if the twists were really bad they would jam in a karabiner, often at the worst possible moment on a
long run-out. Abseiling was even worse and it was a relief in the early 70s to be able to obtain the braided ropes developed on the Continent.
Runners were becoming popular but we did not carry many. Until tape arrived they were made from an 8 foot length of No3 hawser-laid nylon spliced into a loop and carried round the neck by doubling the loop through a karabiner. Krabs were steel and very heavy. A typical screwgate weighed over 200 grams. Compare that to a modern DMM Spectre wire-gait at 35grams. Anything more than 4 or 5 runners was considered a little excessive but when tape and alloy krabs came in
Gamba 1968
Morgan leading Noahs Warning 04 Apr 1969