Chris Bonington Mountaineer: A Lifetime of Climbing the Great Mountains of the World

A story of a fascinating life.

Loved it

Mountaineer is a new edition of the photographic autobiography released by Chris Bonington in 1989. It tells Chris’s life story in photographs and words. The book is dedicated to Ken Wilson who wrote of the original book,“It is a record replete with incident, tragedy and adventure.”And he was not wrong. This book has everything. We travel from the British crags through the Alps to the Himalayas. We read of the greatest first ascents in the most beautiful lands whilst sharing the loss of too many enthusiastic young men taken by the mountains. The book is packed with beautiful images mostly taken by Chris himself. They depict stunning landscapes and amazing climbing and they share wonderful portraits of people from many different civilisations around the world.There are five new chapters which update the story from 1988 to Chris’s 80th birthday celebration climbing The Old Man of Hoy in 2014, almost 50 years after his first ascent of the mighty sea stack. The text reveals the many emotions that filled Chris’s mind as he fought against a ‘reluctant’ body to push himself to achieve this incredible feat.The new book is smaller in size than the original and I felt that the photographs lost just a little of their impact because of this.The book is filled with Chris’s enthusiasm for the mountains and life. He writes about every ascent as if it were his first. He simply loves mountains. How wonderful to be able to hold images of Everest, Annapurna, Changabang, the Ogre, Kongur, Shivling, Drangnag-Ri and so many more mighty mountains in your mind and to have such fantastic stories to share about them all.Mountaineer is a very important book. Surely it should sit proudly on the bookshelves of anyone with an interest in mountaineering and the outdoor world. It recounts so many great British climbing successes and it tells, in photos and in words, of some of the really remarkable characters who joined with Chris and set off to climb the world.

Ask a non-climber to name a mountaineer and odds on they’ll say Chris Bonington. Now the answer might be ‘that French girl who climbs in shorts in the desert without ropes”, or more recently “the nerdy American guy in Free Solo”. A few may even be misguided enough to say Brian Blessed. But “Bonners”, “His Nibs”, “Mr. Mountaineering” or simply “Sir Chris”, is without doubt the headline act. Now in his 80’s, he’s a national mountaineering treasure.It was not always thus. I started climbing in the 1960s, a decade after Bonners, and throughout my early years he was stereotyped by the tribe of dirtbag rock climbers as a posh ex-army officer, a self-publicist, and maybe more cathedral choir than rock and roll, but his climbing achievements then and later have stood the test of time. Perhaps the churlishness was due to a touch of historical prejudice?Before the Second World War, the stalwarts of British climbing were, with a few notable exceptions, drawn mainly from the upper classes – double-barrelled names echoed around the mountains, professors boldly forged classic routes in Scotland, and the occasional Knight of the Realm and senior army officer made forays to the big peaks on other continents, at a time when exploration and mountaineering were seen as inseparable. However, in the post-war era, it was the time of working class heroes – Brown and Whillans, the plumbers from Manchester, and the Creagh Dhu from the Glasgow shipyards. The standard of rock-climbing rose dramatically during the 50’s and 60’s, and Bonington was very much a part of it, even though at first he seemed a rather gauche intruder, he forged powerful partnerships with Don Whillans and Hamish MacInnes in particular.His reputation grew in the public eye as he not only succeeded on difficult climbs like the Eiger North Face, the Central Pillar of Frêney on Mont Blanc, and Annapurna but turned to photo-journalism which helped him raise the sponsorship and profile needed for the big Himalayan expeditions he led throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.His image amongst the Rock and Roll rebels of British rock-climbing initially remained ambiguous – no-one doubted his climbing credentials and drive, yet there was still an inverted snobbery at work that was typified by the prank played on him by Pete Livesey in the Channel 4 Lakeland Rock TV series, when Livesey dangled a £5 note at him from above on the hard climb Footless Crow to encourage him past a difficult section. The subtext was that “Bonners” was motivated by money, but this was nothing more than the naughty boys taking the piss out of the headmaster.Bonington has now written 20 books. He writes well and has a lot worth writing about. This revised edition of his 1989 coffee table book “Mountaineer” continues the story of his remarkable career with 5 added chapters bringing us up to date, concluding with an account of his return to climb the Old Man of Hoy in Orkney at the age of 80, and 48 years after his first ascent of this spectacular sea stack. The original event was the subject of a live TV broadcast and brought a youthful Chris, and rock-climbing itself, to the general public’s notice, although by then his climbing exploits were well-known to the climbing world. His skill as a photographer is evident, and capturing the moment in extreme locations guarantees that an illustrated book will be a delight. The first edition of Mountaineer at 32cm x 24cm showed these photos off to great advantage. Scale is a critical component in mountain photography and this slightly smaller revised paperback edition (24 x 19cm) has lost some of the staggering grandeur of a few photographs, and there is an inevitable re-formatting of some pages from the original chapters, but this is made up for by the crispness, colour and contrast of this expanded edition. The 5 extra chapters bring a further 120 or so new photos to the party, although many are small and more like holiday snaps than the big hitters in the original. This is my only criticism of an otherwise excellent addition to the Bonington tales.He’s lost a lot of friends in the mountains, because they are dangerous places – avalanche, rock fall, storm, altitude sickness, cold and exhaustion are not risks that can be 100% managed. Boningtons’ accounts of the loss of friends are written with emotion, openness and self-examination. He is as courageous when tackling personal grief in his writing as he was on his hardest climbs, and his brief account of his wife’s death from Motor Neurone Disease and his subsequent finding of love at 82 with the widow of an old friend is the mark of a man who has faced life with fortitude and positivity.This book is a visual feast for climbers and non-climbers alike, and the text tells each story with a refreshingly light and easy style. Highly recommended.