Page 24 - 2021 AMA Summer

MISCARTICLE
39 YEARS
Duncan Francis recollects nearly 4 decades of service to the AMA
Well, it may be 39 years; I can’t honestly remember when I joined the AMA but my membership number is 2291, so it must have been a long while ago. I know that I went to Rhum to get my JSMEL in 1982, was climbing in the Alps with other AMA members from 1983, climbed with Nigel Williams on an AMA Meet at Twistleton in 1984, and went on my first AMA expedition in 1987, having been signed up in 1986, so it has certainly been a long time.
In the early years, I was like every other young Army mountaineer; broke, and needing AMA support to get out and do stuff. For trips to the Alps (living at Snell’s Field in Chamonix), AMA meets in North Wales and Yorkshire, and expeditions, the AMA sponsorship was a Godsend, and let’s face it, was the main reason for being a member. Later on, I had more time and more money, and tried to give something back, so I took on running the AMA Winter Meet, writing articles for this august organ, and trying to do other stuff to support mountaineers in the Army. My swansong was the AMA Ridges and Scrambles Meet at Dundonnell this May; I would have done more but the Army has finally decided that 62 is old enough to warrant refusing any more overage extensions! So now I have resigned myself to being a civilian mountaineering and climbing instructor; I am writing this during two weeks working on Skye.
Over the years there has been so much. My first big AMA expedition was to Xixabangma in 1987 with Lt Col Henry Day and the infamous Col John Blash- ford-Snell; a joint trip between the AMA and the Scientific Exploration Society. We didn’t get up, although Steve Venables got close, but I was involved in fixing the ropes up to Camp 3 on the (then unclimbed) East Face, and was one of the four(alongwithNigelWilliams)caughtout by a massive storm at Camp 2 (6200m); a close shave indeed. It was an amazing introduction to big mountain climbing. My last big AMA expedition was the 2017 60th Anniversary Expedition to Putha Hiunchuli (7246m). In between was, amongst other things, a sneaky trip with RAFMA to the
unclimbed Baihaizishan (5924m) in the Chinese Tatsienlu Massif; again, we didn’t get up (it is still unclimbed) but did make an ascent of Wupingfen (5672m). Sadly, my RAF partner on the trip, Rimon Than, was killed the following Winter in the infamous Chalamain Gap avalanche in the Cairngorms.
The AMA supported me in a number of other non-AMA expeditions, such as the 1986 first ascent of the SE Face of Salcantay (6217m) in the Cordillera Vilcabamba in Peru, and the 1989 first ascent of the SE Face of Shani (5800m), in the Naltar Valley of the Karakorum, the latter with another AMA member, Martin Oakes. There was also some financial
Putha Hiunchuli
24 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER
Duncan’s first articles from 1985