Dave Hewitt returns to the stories of the early Munroists by speaking to Colin Macdonald, who was part of the first father and son pair to complete the round back in 1958, and who tells his tale from his faraway in Africa.
Right, back to Colin Macdonald and his 1958 Munro completion - you'll recall that I introduced this a couple of weeks ago before becoming briefly distracted by the funny old funicular. You'll also recall that Colin Macdonald has been tracked down to Lesotho, from where he has been kindly emailing a Munro memoir. His hill career is inevitably entangled with that of his late father, James Younger Macdonald, also a Munroist. Theirs, as mentioned last time, was the first combined father/son completion, the end of the round coming on Ben More on Mull, 28 August 1958.
Colin George Macdonald, like Anthony Charles Lynton Blair some years later, attended an obscure school called Fettes. Born in 1934, he was there as a pupil from 1948 to 1953 and returned as a teacher from 1956 to 1960. This is significant in terms of how he was tracked down. Research often progresses by way of asides prompting unexpected responses and last year I was in correspondence with a much more recent Munroist, Gordon Jarvie of Edinburgh.
He was one of several people to complete a Munro round 100 years to the day after A E Robertson's finish on 28 September 1901, and in the course of discussing this I mentioned my attempts to learn more about early Munroists. "Ah," said Gordon Jarvie, "I was taught by C G Macdonald at Fettes." One thing quickly led to another and within a couple of weeks we had electronically found him in the unlikely location of Masitise School in Lesotho.
Colin had swapped Fettes for Africa in 1960, "enticed to teach at a Church of Scotland mission school in Calabar, Nigeria. It was to be for two years but I liked it there, and two years turned into seven. It was the Nigeria-Biafra war in 1967 which finally forced me to leave, but by that time attempts had been made to head-hunt me from Ghana, so I moved there in 1968 as deputy head of Navrongo Secondary School, close to the border with Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta). In 1969 I became headmaster, and stayed until 1980.
"I came to Lesotho as headmaster of Moshoeshoe II High School in 1981, and moved to Masitise High School in 1994. I should by rights have retired at the end of 1999, but the ministry and the school board both seem happy for me to stay a bit longer, and it keeps time from hanging heavy on my hands. What I would really like is to retire gradually, by spending six months of the year at home (you can guess which six). If I were a doctor or a clergyman, this would be simple, but as a headmaster it is not possible. I come home (to St Andrews) for most of June and July each year, in what is our winter vacation here."
Colin's father, James Macdonald, was born on 17 October 1902; his first Munro was Cairn Gorm, climbed five times before he tackled any other hill. "This," his son says, "came about because my grandfather was an ultra-cautious climber. He would only venture out on the hills if the weather had been fine for three consecutive days, and if he had climbed this particular hill before with someone who knew the route." (This three-day caution seems a curiously self-defeating approach; maybe the weather was more settled in those times, but nowadays three days of high pressure is just about the point at which the next storm system lines itself up.)
Colin continues, "They (his grandfather and family) used to go to Nethybridge for their holidays, and someone showed him the way up Cairn Gorm, so that was where he took his family whenever the sun was shining. Later, he got someone to show him the way up Bynack (More), so that became my father's second Munro. Whether they climbed these on foot all the way from Nethybridge, or whether they hired a pony-trap, I do not know. They certainly did not have a car at that time."
"(My father) began his serious climbing with the Edinburgh Junior Mountaineering Club of Scotland, and later joined the Scottish Mountaineering Club." (He applied for membership on 31 August 1928, just short of 30 years before his eventual Munro completion. His form - for sight of which thanks are due to Robin Campbell of the SMC - gives Goatfell on Arran as his first ever hill, in September 1910, just before his eighth birthday.)
"He did quite a lot of rock-climbing in the 1930s, much of it with Prof H W Turnbull, who was later President of the SMC. (This is Herbert Westren Turnbull, born 1885, also of St Andrews. He was, I believe, related to my most recent locum in this column, Ronald Turnbull.) They did a first ascent on Ben Nevis, a short gully which branched off to the left, high up No 4 Gully. Being a professor of maths, Turnbull named it 3.75 Gully.
"After I began climbing, (my father) used to take me to the SMC New Year and Easter meets regularly, and introduced me to a number of interesting characters. I had always planned to join the SMC myself one day, but he told me that I needed more experience on rock before I would qualify. I did occasionally try to bag rock routes with this end in view, but I was much more interested in collecting Munros. My father's death in 1960 and my departure from Scotland soon after meant that I never applied for membership of the SMC.
"After finishing the Munros, I think my father only climbed one more, and that was A'Mharconaich (on the west side of Drumochter). He took me to the SMC New Year meet at Newtonmore in December 1958, and on the way there we climbed A'Mharconaich on a beautiful cold but sunny day. I remember watching the sun setting from the top. Next day, he had a stomach pain and did not climb; I went out with another party and climbed something on the east side of Drumochter. After that, we went home. The stomach pain turned out to be the beginning of the cancer from which he died just over a year later and I do not think he ever climbed again."
James Macdonald was not the only family member to influence and encourage Colin's hill exploration, "I think my mother climbed Ben Lomond about ten times before she did any other, and that was long before she met my father. She was brought up in London, but her grandparents had a house near Milton of Campsie, and when they visited in the summer Ben Lomond was a regular outing. I do not think she ever counted up her Munros carefully, but I am sure she climbed at least 100. One noteworthy expedition which she did with my father, and which I have never done, was the four 4000ft peaks in the Cairngorms in a day: Braeriach, Cairn Toul, Ben Macdhui and Cairngorm." (Of course since 1997 Sgor an Lochain Uaine has been added to the 4000ft-Munro club.)
"She did this with my father in 1936, and I suspect may have been the first woman to do so. I base this on a claim made by (I think) J H B Bell, writing in a newspaper column, that his wife might be the first woman to complete this expedition. They did it in the late 1940s. My father never wrote up the expedition, so there was no way Bell could have known about (the earlier traverse)."
Colin Macdonald's own first Munro was Meall Glas, on the south side of Glen Lochay. "I did it in August 1947, at the age of 12. August 1947 was remarkable in that not a drop of rain fell in the whole month. Later that month I climbed Meall nan Tarmachan and Ben Lawers, bringing my total to three in the first year. Somehow, during the course of the next year, my attitude to climbing changed, why I do not know, probably because I was growing up.
"It would be a gross exaggeration to say that I was dragged kicking and screaming up my first three, but a certain amount of parental persuasion was required to get me started. In 1948 we rented a house at Loch Awe and I had made up my mind that three was not enough, especially when I discovered that it was sometimes possible to save a great deal of effort by bagging two Munros in the same expedition. We did Ben Laoigh and Beinn a'Chleibh, then Beinn Eunaich and Beinn a'Chochuill, then the two on Ben Cruachan.
"By now, I was definitely collecting - and while completing the whole lot was an impossibly remote dream, I was setting myself more accessible waypoints, such as reaching double figures. For this, one more was needed before the end of the holiday. There was also one Munro which was a waypoint in itself, and that was Ben Nevis. I figured out from the map that Fort William was not an impossible distance from Loch Awe, even in those days of petrol rationing, so I asked my father if he would take me up. He asked "Are you prepared to take three days over it?" I was surprised by this, but willing to go along with whatever it took to get there. He said "I have climbed Ben Nevis 18 times, and never once by the path. I do not intend to start now."
"So we drove to Fort William and climbed up in the afternoon to the CIC Hut. Next day, he took me up the Castle Ridge, and I was duly instructed in rope handling, belaying etc. Once at the top, I looked around at the view and the first thing which caught my attention was Carn Mor Dearg. "Is it 3000ft?" I asked my father. "Yes," he said, "it is more than 4000ft". "Can we do it?" So we went down the arete and up Carn Mor Dearg. Arriving there, I spotted Aonach Mor and Aonach Beag, and wanted to go on to them as well, but was firmly told, "No. Tomorrow if you like."
"Next day, we climbed back up Carn Mor Dearg with all our heavy equipment. Five yards from the top, (my father) told me to stop and think for a moment. "If you want to become the first person to climb all the Munros once and once only, then stop there and do not come up to the cairn." I decided that while climbing Munros for a second time was generally a waste of effort, it would be absurd to ban myself from ever revisiting any of them, and that this was a record I would not pursue. I walked on to the cairn, and Carn Mor Dearg became my first duplicate. It remains the only (Munro) I have climbed twice on successive days. We continued over Aonach Beag and Aonach Mor, and down to Fort William.
"My father did eventually climb Ben Nevis by the path. This was in 1958, a couple of weeks before we completed the Munros on Ben More. He was taking my brother and sister up, then aged 10 and 14. It was his 20th ascent.
"In September (1947), back in St Andrews, I began getting restless again. I had often overheard adults talking about a place called Braemar, and from what they said I figured it must be a nice place. I wanted to go there. I knew that the petrol ration was finished, so I suggested bicycles. Maps came out and plans were made. We would spend a night at Braemar youth hostel and come back the next day. My father laid out the map and suggested that once we were at the top of the pass above the Devil's Elbow there was a short diversion we might make on foot, to the top of a small hill which overlooked the pass. I was very sceptical. I was not in the business of collecting small hills. "Is it a Munro?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "What are we waiting for?" was my reply.
"So we did the Cairnwell. I am happy to be one of comparatively few people to have done the Cairnwell entirely through my own physical efforts from sea level, and also to have seen it when it looked like a Munro, and not like an industrial scrapyard. We were almost blown off the top. There was a full gale blowing, so we had to push our bikes most of the way from Braemar, and were almost having to use the pedals down the Devil's Elbow. But once past the Spittal of Glenshee the wind was behind us and helped us in quick time back to Dundee.
"So I reached the stage which all Munroists must necessarily pass through, when my total overtook my age. At the age of 13, I had done 14 Munros."
More in due course about the latter stages of the father and son's rounds, about Colin's meeting with the Reverend A E Robertson - and about the hills of Lesotho.
Dave Hewitt
11/4/2002
You can contact Dave at Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
