David Smith

Richard Gowing writes:

Our member F David Smith of Nelson, Lancs., died of cancer on Saturday 5th April. He had recently achieved the age of 80, on 29th February. His funeral mass the following Saturday at Christ Church, Nelson, a Community Church shared by Methodists and his fellow Roman Catholics, was attended by most of the Yorkshire Ramblers' Club and our wives, including those of us also belonging to the AC, the AC being represented by our President Paul Braithwaite.

David was a dedicated member and Past President of the YRC, his list of club offices holding a record length in the Club Handbook. To me, he was a great friend and companion on the hills. We first met at a YRC meet on Hadrian's Wall in September 1957, when we climbed on High Shield Crag above Crag Lough, and went on to share many great days on the British hills and in the Alps, as well as underground in Yorkshire, where David with his climbing skills was always the last to get his feet wet! On the YRC's annual Long Walks I soon realised that if I could get going with David at the start, his steady pace would see me through the day.

To pick on a few highlights: the Cuillin Main Ridge in mist on the 1961 Whit Meet, with Roger Allen (who later joined the AC and sadly lost his life on the YRC Centenary Meet in Norway in 1992), followed 2 days later by Blaven and Clach Glas in warm sunshine. A rapid 700 ft. descent of Ben Lui in an avalanche on Good Friday 1963, with no casualties. Of the 6 of us, 4 were AC members! Summer that year in the Dauphine, again with Roger Allen. Our first outing was the Boell Route on the Dibona, David insisting that we carry enough gear for all eventualities so that we nearly did have to bivouac. As it was, David mistook the crux pitch, climbing the nearby Grade V+ one on a much harder route. We then had a great trip, traversing the Ecrins by its south face; difficulty following the complex route meant that we reached the summit ridge too late to go to the Barre, and satisfied ourselves with the lesser 4000m. top Pic Lory, before desecending the voie normale to the glacier below the hut, where we tried out our new lightweight bivouac tents rather than face the climb up to the hut! The ensuing glacier tour past the splendid Pelvoux, Coup de Sabre and Pic Sans Nom took us back to the Temple Ecrins, where we were greeted by the warden and a reporter who credited us with the first traverse of the season. We later moved to the Oberland, stopping off for Friday night at Chamonix. We toured the eating places there looking unsucessfully for one serving fish in that Catholic country before David accepted defeat and we went into the next, rather inferior, place that we came to. In the Oberland we climbed the Finsteraarhorn and had another great glacier tour, over the Gross Fiescherhorn on the way back to Jungfraujoch.

Just a sample of the great times I shared with a friend who, despite any impression I may have given to the contrary, was a most competent and accomplished mountaineer, whom I, as so many others, will miss deeply.



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