Dennis Gray is a legend of British mountaineering. Now, aged ninety and with failing health, he talks to John D. Burns about his life in the mountains. Despite his years, his intelligence and his love of climbing and the climbers he has known, shines through this interview.
Dennis Gray.
Photo Ned Kelly
From his early beginnings as a boy of eleven when a chance meeting on a bus led him to his first climb on the Cow and Calf at Ilkley, to his first steps on to the greater ranges of the Himalayas, Dennis gives a fascinating insight into the lives of climbers in the post war years. With little money and the most basic of equipment young people from the industrial cities of northern England set out to explore the high places of Britain and the world beyond proving that their passion for pushing the limits of the possible was unstoppable.
This Bradford Lad followed his dreams across the world and became one of the most highly respected mountaineers of his day. That he was also one of the pioneers of the indoor climbing walls that have become a feature of virtually every city in the UK speaks of his vision for the future.
Dennis Gray began climbing in 1947, aged eleven. By fifteen hehad tested himself on Yorkshire’s gritstone outcrops, Skye, the Lake District, North Wales, Glen Coe and, in winter, Ben Nevis. After school he studied printing and ran a photogravure unit reproducing Old Master prints. During national service in Manchester in 1954 he joined the Rock and Ice Club, climbing with Joe Brown and Don Whillans. He first visited the Alps in 1955, climbing in the Dolomites and Alps with Brown, before making the first ascent of the Manikaran Spires in 1961. Throughout the 1960s he organised expeditions to the then-unclimbed Gauri Sankar(7,134 metres) and, in 1966, to Alpamayo (5,947 metres) in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca; the expedition film of which, The Magnificent Mountain, won best mountain film at Trento.
Manikaran Spires
He went on to study social psychology at Leeds and in 1968 led a successful expedition to Mukar Beh (6,069 metres) in Himachal Pradesh. After a short spell in Kenya he returned to Britain in 1970. Appointed the British Mountaineering Council’s first professional national officer in 1971 and its general secretary in 1974, he served for eighteen years. His first autobiography, Rope Boy, appeared in 1970. With his former wife he launched the Boxing Day Chevin Chase in 1979, a seven-mile race in Otley attracting over 1,500 runners. After leaving the BMC in 1989 he led climbs and treks in the Himalaya and Morocco, then returned to academia in China, lecturing at four universities.
Sound editor. Derek Williams
Transcript
(may contain inaccuracies)
Audio file
Dennis Gray final edit.mp3
Transcript
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Outdoors in Scotland. I'm John Burns and this is my podcast for everyone who likes to be outdoors in Scotland or anywhere else for that matter. I'm talking to you today from a very wet, cold and miserable Inverness. We're in the grip of yet another named storm. I don't know where all these named storms come from, but I'm not finding them very good companions at the moment really, but I think we've got to put up with. I'm very honoured to have my guest today. The man I'm going to introduce today was climbing before I was born, and when you consider I'm 70, that's a fair old feat really, and he's still very active in writing today. I'm talking to Dennis Gray. We're going to be talking about his new, amongst other things, his new book, Essays from the Edge, 50 Years of Mountain Writing. Dennis is probably one of the most experienced mountaineers. around pretty well anywhere, I would say, right now. Hello, Dennis, how are you?
Speaker 2
Thanks for contacting me. Very good. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1
Lovely to speak to you. Lovely to speak to you. Some of your writing in the Essays from the Edge,
