Peak practise

My friend Bill sent me this photo last night with a note:

Piz Palu this morning near St Moritz.

I’d never heard of Piz Palu so I looked it up.

It’s a mountain on the Swiss-Italian border that has three peaks - central, western and eastern summits.

Bill (at the back) and his fellow climbers (I’m guessing there were three of them including the one holding the camera) climbed the eastern summit (3,882m or 12,726ft).

The eastern peak was first climbed in August 1835. (There appear to be no records for when the central and western summits were first climbed).

Almost a century later a German silent film was made called The White Hell of Piz Palu (1929) with a fabulously tragic storyline.

You can read about it here.

I’m told that Piz Palu also features in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009).

I should add that Bill is an old schoolfriend. We met at Wormit Primary School in 1969, when my family moved to Scotland, and after that we both went to secondary school (Madras College) in St Andrews.

I later went to Aberdeen University and Bill went to Edinburgh, where he studied law.

After working in Edinburgh, then London (but only briefly) his career as a corporate lawyer took him to Hong Kong, Bermuda, and then the Cayman Islands.

Twenty years ago, possibly longer, he ‘retired’ to Ireland with his wife and family and I visit them whenever I’m in Dublin.

Since then his ‘hobby’ has been climbing mountains or going on expeditions to the Antarctic and other remote places.

In 2011, as part of a small team of climbers from Ireland, he even climbed ten previously unconquered peaks in Greenland, a feat reported by the BBC here.

I like to take some credit for all this because when we were at school we spent our summers camping, walking, and cycling, which must have been when he got the bug.

We began modestly and gradually got more ambitious.

In 1971, when we were 12, we camped overnight in a wooded area next to the beach overlooking Wormit Bay, a few hundred yards from my house.

We cooked sausages on an open fire until they were carbonised and my mother supplied a chocolate cake.

The following year we camped in a wood in Balmerino, a tiny hamlet overlooking the River Tay, four miles from home. We cycled there on our bikes, carrying our tent and supplies.

In ‘73 and ‘74, with two other friends from school, we pitched our tents in or near Pitlochry, 27 miles north of Perth, where stayed on local campsites for a full week.

(Pitlochry ‘74 was the year we were introduced, with terrible results, to Newcastle Brown Ale. Put it this way, I’ve never touched it since.)

In 1975 the four of us were driven to the Lake District by Bill’s father, whereupon we walked from Windermere to Keswick via Scafell Pike, camping in fields or campsites overnight.

Finally, in 1976, Bill and I spent a week or so cycling around central Scotland, staying at youth hostels including one at Loch Lomond that was more like a castle. It even had a library.

Today, while my old friend climbs some of the world’s highest peaks, I am happy to put my feet up on a cruise ship or chill out at an all inclusive resort.

I have enough memories of (modestly) walking, climbing and cycling to last me a lifetime!