Before the boom in Munro bagging the milestone mark of 100 Munroists was passed in 1971 and Dave Hewitt has been uncovering the stories and connections of these early compleaters.
Having written, just after the turn of the year, that one of the themes for this column during 2002 would be discussion of pre-1971 Munroists, I'd better make some kind of a start - it is almost Easter, after all. The significance of 1971 in terms of Munroists is that this was when the published list, which nowadays forms an appendix to the Scottish Mountaineering Club's Munro's Tables, passed the 100-name mark. Such has been the exponential explosion in hill activity over the intervening three decades that the tally of those who have climbed all the Scottish 3,000ft hills is itself now closing in on 3,000 and has almost certainly already passed that figure if "undeclared" completions are added in.
The 100th name in the published list is that of the late Mike Geddes, believed to have been the youngest Munroist when he completed on 13 September 1970 aged 18 years 315 days. (He was to die in 1985.) The 101st name is that of the well known hill writer Richard Gilbert (12 June 1971, Bidean nam Bian) but such is the nature of the list that there are at least nine "missing" names pre-1970 and almost certainly considerably more. Put another way, although Mike Geddes is listed as number 100, his "real" number is 109 minimum. If pushed to speculate, I'd guess that he was really around number 120.
In due course I'll write about the straightforward omissions from the list (people such as Chris Andrews who simply aren't there) and about those misplaced on the timeline (step forward Alfred Slack, currently slotted in at 835 despite his having completed on the Saddle on Armistice Day 1950). There also needs to be discussion of "possible" Munroists, people such as Molly Fitzgibbon or the celebrated journalist James Cameron, for whom there is either contradictory information or thin evidence.
The first people I want to write about, though, are two names that do appear in the published list, at positions 31 and 32 - Colin George Macdonald and Dr James Younger Macdonald. The shared surname is no coincidence - they were father and son, the first known cross-generational pairing to complete the list. I've recently been in correspondence with Colin (the son - his father James died in 1960 in his late 50s) and over the next couple of weeks, outside interventions permitting, I'll pass on some of the Munro memoirs that Colin has recently taken the trouble to send me from Lesotho. (Yes, Lesotho - that's where he is. Strange but true.)
By way of introduction, however, and to set their achievements in some kind of context, it should be noted that the Macdonalds weren't the first joint completers. The first joint finish was almost certainly that by Jimmy Robertson and George Garnett Elliot, numbered as six and seven on the published list. I don't have definitive details on this at present (and so would be very interested to hear from anyone who knows more) but Robin Campbell has kindly dug out the SMC application forms for both men and they're virtually identical.
Robertson and Elliot were members of the Junior Mountaineering Club of Scotland who worked together as shipping clerks at Leith docks. Each gave his first hill as "1927 April: Ben Nevis by pony path - only reached about 3,000ft owing to shortage of time" and they climbed pretty much everything from then on in each other's company. Naturally, they applied for SMC membership on the same day - 19 August 1931 - and with the same proposer and seconder. It was seven years later when they completed their Munros and I'd put good money on their having been swapping drams on whatever mutually agreed summit it was. Elliot died on 15 August 1984; I don't as yet know the details for his mate, the second Robertson to complete (after AER of course - not that he really did complete but I'd better not get started on that just now otherwise we'll be here all night).
So Robertson/Elliot was surely the first joint completion, venue unknown and the second came on Mull's Ben More on 28 May 1947 when the Southport-based Hirsts, husband and wife, became the ninth and tenth names to be listed. Their entries in the list display a hefty degree of bygone manners, as while John Hirst appears as J Hirst, his wife merits nothing better than Mrs J Hirst. She was actually Annie Wells - known universally as Paddy - and was if anything, a more accomplished hillgoer than her husband. She was a founder member (and second president) of the women-only Pinnacle Club, in which she was joined by her sisters Trilby and Biddy. John Hirst died in October 1970, Paddy in 1973. Again, more on them in some future column.
The hill that the Hirsts chose - Ben More on Mull - was also the scene of the third joint completion, by the remarkable Colin Valentine Dodgson (listed as number 16) and his unlisted sidekick Tim Tyson. Dodgson could well be labelled the greatest walker of his generation and as well as working through Munros and Tops he also found time to complete the Corbetts (Garbh-bheinn, 4 May 1975) and what we now know as the Grahams (Beinn a'Mhuinidh, 4 July 1984). A version of this latter list appeared in the three hill-table books published privately by William McKnight Docharty (himself an early Munroist: the western Aonach Beag on the last day of May 1948, then wrapping up the tops a few minutes later with Stob Coire Bhealaich). Dodgson worked systematically through Docharty's books, a feat all the more remarkable given that he was tied down to running his Grasmere tearoom all summer every summer.
Harry Griffin wrote about Dodgson and Tyson in a Manchester Guardian piece entitled "The Peak-Baggers", published on 7 November 1951 - the month after they completed. "Almost every summit has been under snow," Griffin reported and then said of Tyson, "The little cobbler, with 70 years of age just around the corner, is perhaps not the sort of man you would associate with record-collecting, and you would be right, for his total falls quite a few short of that of the younger man. Tim admits he has missed out a number of the subsidiary tops, concentrating on the main tops only. "And don't go writing a lot about me, either," he says." A further piece followed, on 14 November 1959, to mark the completion of intrepid pair's bid to bathe in 463 Lake District tarns. Once they had achieved this, in a tarn on the shoulder of Esk Pike, Griffin wrote, "Mr Tyson is unknown in the mountaineering world but he completed the ascent of all the 276 "Munros" in Scotland - the lifetime ambition of hundreds of younger men - several years ago (nearly always in winter) and kept his mouth shut about it. He was almost as reticent about the story of the tarns."
For the next few years there were, I think, no joint completions. In most cases I've managed to pin down enough details to confirm this, while the most likely looking pairing, that of Graham Ritchie and Jimmy Stewart, numbered 18 and 19 and both Grampian Club presidents, appears to have been split over two different occasions. Anderson, according to a later edition of the Grampian Club Bulletin, completed on the In Pinn in the company of Gilbert Little and Eric Maxwell - no mention of his other clubmate, Ritchie. (More on the Dundee-based Grampian Club and Maxwell another time: the early Munroists' list was their list, something that has been largely forgotten beyond Tayside.)
Two of the mid-1950s completers had family links with later finishers without actually having shared simultaneous final summits - Edward Lawson, number 24 in 1955, was the father of Alistair Lawson who wrapped up his own round in 1974. (The son is nowadays well known in Scottish Rights of Way Society circles.) And John Ferrier, who finished on that ol' Mull hill on 12 June 1956 was the husband of Beth Ferrier, a rare eastern Munroist when she completed on Beinn Mheadhoin in the Cairngorms, 17 September 1960.
Anyway, back briefly to the Macdonalds. They finished together on 28 August 1958, when Colin Macdonald acquired the "title" later held by Mike Geddes, that of youngest Munroist, he was aged 23 years 275 days at the time. His father James was what was then a more traditional Munroing age, he was 22 years and 40 days older than his son.
And the hill? Is it really any surprise that it was Ben More on Mull? This remains the most frequent last Munro to this day and was popular from the start. I currently know location-details for 62 of 112 pre-1971 completions (the 100 listed plus 12 definite/likely omissions) and Ben More crops up 12 times, or 19%. Next nearest is Ben Lomond with six finishes, then Ben More Assynt and the In Pinn with three each. All told, the 62 completions feature 37 different hills - including one on a hill that isn't now a Munro.
That's enough by way of introduction. Next week, all being well, a letter from Lesotho by the 31st listed Munroist. Any input on any Munroists in the pre-1971 timeframe is always welcome.
Dave Hewitt
27/3/2002
You can contact Dave at Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
