My daughter sent the link of this article yesterday, (now days on, due to unforeseen computer problems) Also it put me sidewards a little. She and my son had met Doug many years ago, my first meeting with him was not planned, at the time me and my nephew were spending some time around the mountains of the area, and at that time of year the scenes can be impressive, the snowy view from the top of Snowdon (Yr. Wyddfa), and the peeks of Glyder Fawr and Glider Fach with their mountain top Pinnacles at the time looking like shards of glass, whilst covered in ice, how it can all look to one’s eyes, perhaps a world of monochrome has low fresh clouds bring a fresh coating of new snow fall, It could make one dream of surreal worlds.
A few days later the weather turned so harsh, we had to retreat from the mountain tops, these are the times when the pubs look good, and that traditional pint of bitter is most welcomed. There was word of Doug Scott giving a lecture on the high Himalayan mountains, we decided to go along for the interest, and why not we were not going back up the hills just now, it would not be until the weather calmed down anyway.
You could say we enjoyed the lecture, it may have also had part, that led to a small welcomed turning point in both our lives, it wasn’t long before my nephew and myself had encountered new adventures in the distant places of the Himalaya mountain range in the northern parts of India, climbing and trekking in the areas of Manali, Dharamsala, and Sikkim, there to get a glance of mount Kanchenjunga.
Since that lecture at the National Outdoor Centre, Plas y Brenin a few years had passed, and It would be a few years later that I would see Doug again. I was in my final year of business studies, but gaining my teaching certificates in my aim to be an outdoor instructor, but this was not to be that of my full-time work, only vocational, due to the time I had for myself and that of my children, being that of a single parent on my arrival back to the UK. When the course and my studies were complete, I now would have no choice but to return to my normal fulltime work. I had been to France, the Dordogne area on my year one work placement, and then again also on a second teaching visit, mainly school groups, also adults of the French rugby team. My certified and ability skills, being water sports and rock climbing. I was being paid for the teaching/instructor work, including benefits of food and accommodation, return transport, from my home in the UK to the outdoor center. I had a bonus too, this was that my children had the 6-week summer holidays with me at the center, free of charge and to have their own choice of daily activities.
I had one work placement to complete my course, I was a mature student at the age of 30I had actually secured a work placement at my old high school being an assistant game’s teacher, but they could only give me half of the time period that I required. I contacted Doug asking him if he could offer me the remaining period of the work placement, because I had already committed to the schools offer.
Doug’s answer was “yes okay”, but what do we have to do? I arrived higher past the lake district at Doug’s home, and he said so what are we going to do? I actually worked in the office on behalf of his Nepal business. After the first week, I was to drive home for the weekend, Doug said to me that I was welcome to bring my children with me on my return, it worked out good due to Doug having a young family too at the time.
Later I was to join him at Manchester town hall. This venue he would be lecturing to the audience, also I was where other British climbers would be involved, the Likes of Chris Bonington and Rebecca Stephens. We had previously designed a kind of display stall, again promoting the business, I was to secure a large wooden carving of the Hindu God Ganesh for the display, only thing it was around 7 foot tall and was an unbelievable weight, that I could not manage alone. I had some help with it to locate into place in the building. The venue went will for everyone. I was approached by a group of the elite with introductions, your Andy! We all Know of you, (said one female mountaineer) pitching your tent in Doug’s garden, “good show” Bonington too has a good sense of hummer, I was carrying the statue down the large staircase with Doug’s help, I said to him, I will have to put it down just for a minute. I was lowering it to the floor, and Doug just scooped it up with one hand, due to him having a box of books in his other hand, effortless he carried it like a new born baby, now I know how he climbed with his strength. He also was a man of wisdom and Knowledge, kind at heart, it was not all about his climbing, he had concerns of the environments where he had and did climb, also the wellbeing of people. I never knew of his illness, he called me a few months into this year, the main purpose of the conversation, because he didn’t talk like he would lecture, in fact I found he did not talk a lot but his words would be meaningful, the last words of the conversation were, Andy it’s all going to be okay. I will miss my friend like many others will, I hope you found peace and the gods of the high Himalaya.

The Guardian

Doug Scott obituary

First Englishman to climb Everest who dedicated his later years to Buddhism and helping the people of Nepal

Doug Scott, left, and Hamish MacInnes in an icefall on Everest in 1975. Photograph: PA
Doug Scott, who has died aged 79 from cancer, was the first Englishman to climb Everest, but it was what happened afterwards that made him famous in the mountaineering world.
Scott and his Scottish partner, Dougal Haston, were part of Chris Bonington’s 1975 expedition to climb Everest the “hard way”, via the south-west face. Having left their top camp soon after dawn, the pair faced testing delays as Haston’s oxygen equipment iced up and unconsolidated snow, chest-deep in places, slowed their progress. It was already 3.30pm when they finally reached the lower south summit where the two climbers paused to melt snow for a much-needed drink.
Should they go on? Haston suggested stopping for the night but Scott reasoned it was better to push on and get it done. Two hours later, at around 6pm, they were at the top.
Scott was exultant and despite the late hour spent time taking in the view before descending. By the time they regained the south summit, their headlamps had failed and it was too dark to continue. With their bottled oxygen finished, Haston and Scott faced a brutal night of hypoxia and cold. No one had ever spent a night out at this altitude. Even worse for Scott, he had left his down-filled suit behind because it was too constricting to climb in. All night they struggled with hallucinations and the threat of hypothermia but both survived without frostbite and were able to descend at first light.
Scott’s reputation for physical stamina and mental strength was only enhanced two years later following the first ascent, this time with Bonington, of the fearsome Karakoram peak known as the Ogre. Abseiling from the summit, Scott slipped and swung into a rock wall, breaking both his legs. Marooned at 7,200 metres with no possibility of rescue, on a mountain of considerable difficulty, Scott crawled on his knees back to base camp through a storm, helped down by his teammates Mo Anthoine and Clive Rowland. It remains one of the great survival stories in world mountaineering.

Doug Scott saw his life in the mountains as part of a spiritual journey. Photograph: PA
Understandably, such famous stories of hardship and human endurance sometimes overshadowed the complexities of a man who saw his life in the mountains as part of a spiritual journey, studied Buddhism and dedicated his later years to helping the people of Nepal.
The son of Joyce and George Scott, Doug was born in Nottingham on 29 May, the date upon which Tenzing and Hillary would climb Everest 13 years later. George was a policeman and notable boxer, in 1945 the British amateur heavyweight champion, but gave up his Olympic dream to focus on his family and tend his allotment. Doug inherited his father’s powerful frame and his green fingers, growing organic food wherever he settled.
Many climbers of Scott’s generation found childhood inspiration in the film of the 1953 Everest expedition, but Doug was a fidgety boy, ticked off for not sitting still when his class was taken to see it. His route to Everest began more in exploration of his own neighbourhood, building dens or roaming with friends. School was too dull when there were adventures to be had, but, having failed the 11-plus, and having been shown what it was like working in one of the local coalmines, he knuckled down at his secondary modern, taking extra classes and discovering a love of reading. He moved on to grammar school and to Loughborough for teacher training.
Scott discovered climbing during an Easter scout camp in 1955, when he saw men scaling Black Rocks above the Derwent Valley. He was smitten instantly. A fortnight later he cycled the 20 miles back there from Nottingham equipped with his mother’s washing line. Burly and broad-shouldered, Scott was brim full of energy.
Married at 20 to Jan Brook, through the 1960s he juggled a teaching career (often taking his charges into the hills), a growing family, rugby and climbing. There were exploratory expeditions with a group of Nottingham friends, first to the Tibesti mountains of Chad in 1963 and then in 1965 the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan, travelling overland by truck.
By the late 60s, Scott had earned a reputation as an “aid” climber, placing pegs in the rock and hanging on them where necessary, in this way making the first ascent of the Scoop, up the wildly overhanging cliff of Strone Ulladale on the Isle of Harris; as well as several hard ascents in the Dolomites and the Troll Wall in Norway.
He also discovered Yosemite, climbing with the American star Royal Robbins and then making the first European ascent of El Capitan’s Salathé Wall with the Austrian Peter Habeler. The freewheeling Californian scene appealed to Scott; he tried acid, once and rather by accident, and became switched on to a less self-absorbed way of living, something that would only deepen when he discovered the Himalayas and more mystical ways of seeing.
By then he had quit teaching, having been refused leave of absence to climb Mount Asgard on Baffin Island and was earning a living as a jobbing builder. In the bath one morning in February 1972, he got a call from the Salford climber Don Whillans inviting him on an international expedition to Everest’s south-west face. They would be leaving for Nepal in a few weeks. “I don’t suppose,” Scott wrote in his memoir Up and About (2015), “if I had remained a schoolteacher, Don would have asked me along.” The expedition was fraught, but Scott discovered his true milieu, the otherworldly, physically punishing world of high-altitude mountaineering.
Performing strongly, he was asked on Bonington’s first attempt in the autumn of 1972, beginning an intense period of cooperation that saw them climb Changabang in the Indian Himalayas before the successes on Everest and the Ogre. Then, in 1978, in the middle of an expedition to K2 and following the death of a teammate, Nick Estcourt, in an avalanche, this productive relationship ended, although the two would later restore their friendship.
There were many more expeditions, including more attempts on K2, but Scott’s greatest climb was arguably a demanding new route up the world’s third highest mountain, Kangchenjunga, climbed without bottled oxygen and with only four in the team. Climbing style had become of increasing importance to Scott, the way being more important than the goal.
This reflected a growing spiritual interest, sparked in part by his discovery of Buddhism as a schoolboy, a discovery that deepened as he explored the Himalayas. Milarepa, the 11th-century Tibetan master, was one inspiration. So too was the mystic philosopher George Gurdjieff. After he had a number of intense, out of body experiences in the mountains, it was perhaps unsurprising that Scott should find himself a seeker.
Always generous with his friendship, as he entered middle age Scott became a mentor to new generations inspired by the idea of lightweight climbing and the ideas he espoused. Bonington called him “a tribal chieftain”. And when his climbing career wound down, he served on committees and was president of the Alpine Club, standing up for what he saw as the sport’s ethical soul.
Most important to him was helping the communities he met on his Himalayan expeditions, pouring immense energy into the charity he founded in 1989, Community Action Nepal (Can). This was established initially to improve working conditions in tourism but later had broader development aims with a significant budget. It was typical of Scott that he should use his last illness as a final opportunity to raise money and awareness for CAN’s work, with a sponsored climb of his staircase.
Scott was twice divorced. He is survived by his third wife, Trish (nee Laing), whom he married in 2007; by three children, Michael, Martha and Rosie, from his first marriage, to Jan; and by two sons, Arran and Euan, from his second marriage, to Sharu (nee Prabhu).
• Douglas Keith Scott, mountaineer, born 29 May 1941; died 7 December 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... t-obituary

A trans woman took the photographs of the first successful ascent of Everest her name was Jan Morris. It was her who took the photographs on the expedition she only died last month. I guess it was her photographs and words which inspired him.

flea wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 1:30 am A trans woman took the photographs of the first successful ascent of Everest her name was Jan Morris. It was her who took the photographs on the expedition she only died last month. I guess it was her photographs and words which inspired him.

You can have a good guess, I don't rightly know of his inspiration. But you have got everything mixed up with your assumptions, Jan Morris, you are right took photos of the first ascent of the mountain, not of the one in 1975.

DaveG did you get it to rock?
What about tryfan did you ever use the north face.
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AndyKK wrote: ↑Sun Dec 20, 2020 3:19 am

flea wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 1:30 am A trans woman took the photographs of the first successful ascent of Everest her name was Jan Morris. It was her who took the photographs on the expedition she only died last month. I guess it was her photographs and words which inspired him.

You can have a good guess, I don't rightly know of his inspiration. But you have got everything mixed up with your assumptions, Jan Morris, you are right took photos of the first ascent of the mountain, not of the one in 1975.

ok fair play I didn't really read the story that clearly but I just wanted to pass on that little bit of information I found it interesting when I found out recently