London, 1957, 1st edition. 1957 pp, 16 illustrations, mapped end papers. Red cloth hardcover with black title plate and gilt titles with clean and unmarred dust jacket. Book and jacket are Fine condition.
Climbing near Mount Snowdon and the development of rock climbing in Wales.
Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876 – 1958)was an English climber and author of several notable books on mountaineering. He began rock climbing shortly before his first term at Trinity College, where he studied Classics and won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse two years in a row. While there, Young wrote a humorous campus climbing guide, a satirical parody of pompous early alpine guides.
During the Edwardian Period, and up until the breakout of hostilities heralding World War I,Young made many new and difficult ascents in the Alps and on local rocks in the Lake District and Wales. He was elected president of the Climbers' Club in 1913, and he organized the Pen-Y-Pass gatherings that propelled the advancement of rock climbing and included such technical luminaries as J. M. Archer Thompson, George Leigh Mallory, Siegfried Herford and Oscar Eckenstein.These parties, beginning in earnest about 1907, and sometimes reaching sixty men, women and children, flooded the hotel and overflowed intoEckenstein's miner's cabin and various tents. They came to an end in1914.
During the War, Young was, at first, a correspondent for the liberal Daily News, but later was active as an officer of the FAU, the Friends' Ambulance Unit. He received several decorations, but on August 31st of 1917 an explosion took one of his legs, and his service in the War was over.
He continued to climb for a number of years with an artificial leg, ascending the Matterhorn in 1928. To support himself and his family he worked for the Rockefeller Foundation and spent much time in Germany, and – having met Kurt Hahn before the War – helped Hahn immigrate to England in 1934. The Outward Bound movement, after World War II, owes a considerable debt to their friendship.
During World War II, Young was president of the Alpine Club, and it was through his untiring efforts that the British Mountaineering Council, the umbrella organization for climbers in Great Britain, was created in 1945.
