High jinks as club marks its 50th
By Tom Waghorn
It's the latest in mountain madness. If you're in Snowdonia's Ogwen
Valley tomorrow and see a fearsome looking "executioner" carrying an
axe up a crag above Llyn Idwal, you could be excused for thinking the
climbing world had gone doolally.
The executioner will be wearing black apron and trousers, studded
cuffs and a cowl. And 49 other mad cap climbers in fancy dress will
be swarming up the Slab Route Direct on the Gribin Facet to celebrate
the 50th anniversary of Manchester's Karabiner Mountaineering Club.
"I made the axe and fancy gear for a Rossendale Ski Club party," says
the executioner, Bowden Black, whose home is the appropriately named
Scaffold Meadow at Rawtenstall. "They'll be just the job for our
50-on-a-climb birthday celebrations. But don't ask me what the others
will be wearing. They're keeping things secret till the last minute."
The weekend jollity's will be based at the club's Welsh hideout the
Powder Hut. A former quarry building above Llanberis with great
eyefuls of views of mountains and sea. They coincide with a clutch of
club member's birthdays, Bowden, an ex-president, is 70 today, Derek
Seddon is around the same landmark and Iain McCallum and Bob Anderson
are marking their 60th birthdays. Like many other good ideas, the
club was born at a pub - the Nag's Head, Edale, Derbyshire, on
November 11, 1944. There were just seven members: the following week
three more joined and were awarded the distinction of being founder
members.
Now the Karabiner is one of Britain's most active and prominent
outdoor clubs - a bustling 130 climbers, bogtrotters and mountain
potterers. One club party is just back from climbing unexplored
mountains in Greenland. The Karabiner is a club in which
distinguished names go side by side with the ordinary. Everester Lord
Hunt, for instance, is a member together with one of Manchester's
most famous sons, Joe Brown. Of the founder members two are still
active - Len Stubbs, the current president, and Norman ("Plum")
Worrall, the Aviemore ski instructor. The club has always spawned
zany characters and Plum - nicknamed because he was a plumber in his
Manchester days - is one of the wackiest. Plum has gone down in club
folklore as the man who called the heir to the throne a "Charlie".
It happened on the Cairngorm ski slopes when Plum was teaching Prince
Charles to ski. Nowadays the Prince is an accomplished skier, but it
wasn't always so. "Why do they call you Plum?" queried Prince
Charles. Quick as a flash came the reply; "For the same reason that
I'm going to call you Charlie".
This weekend's fun will be tinged with sadness, however. Earlier this
year Millie Black, Bowden's wife and the toughest woman walker
Manchester ever produced, died aged 67. Club treasurer for 18 years,
Millie won the 50-mile Fellsman's Hike, ticked off the Scottish four
- thousand foot peaks in one continuous 90-mile trek and tramped 120
miles in 62 hours from Snowdon to the Brecon Beacons, taking in all
the uplands on the way. Weather permitting, some of this weekend's
partying will be on the terrace outside the Powder Hut, looking
towards Snowdon. It was a mountain Millie particularly loved and the
first one on that historic trek nearly 30 years ago.
For the uninitiated, a Karabiner is a metal snaplink used by climbers
for attaching ropes together.
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