Walk on the wild side

But his words, a postscript to his quasi-biographical Scrambles Amongst the Alps, have endured and may have saved a few lives since. The basic principles about treading carefully in the hills have helped Professor Malcolm Slesser, one of the luminaries of Scottish mountaineering, reach the grand old age of 77 after a lifetime of adventure, most of it in some of the Earth’s more hazardous parts.

Slesser, who has explored his native land, Europe, the Arctic and the Tropics, and was a co-leader of an ill-fated expedition to the high ridges of the Pamir in central Asia in 1962, is a consummate survivor in a sport in which many of its more ambitious activists fail to make it to three score years and ten. Or even, in some cases, to one score years and ten. Of Slesser’s famous contemporaries, fellow Aberdonian Tom Patey was killed in an abseiling accident on a Scottish sea stack aged 38, Robin Smith was 23 when he fell to his death in mysterious circumstances on the aforementioned Pamir expedition, and Dougal Haston from Currie was 34 when he was buried in a Leysin avalanche.

All three deaths, and countless others he has either witnessed or heard of second-hand, could have been avoided, according to Slesser. He scorns the notion of chance and continues sublimely along a course strewn with what the layman would consider unseemly risk in the certain knowledge that his accumulated experience will ensure survival. His motto is: "Luck keeps no one alive for long. Safety lies in awareness."

So he climbs still, keeps a yacht moored at Oban and is an enthusiastic convert to ski-mountaineering, the equipment for which, along with a Tiso-shopful of boots and climbing hardware, fills large parts of his home in Edinburgh.

He really likes ski-mountaineering, he explains in his scholarly way, "because you are in situation of Thou Shalt Not Slip. You can put ski crampons on and do all sorts of things. There are steep slopes, crevasses, things like that. I am still exploring unknown territory, although it is my unknown territory."

Slesser first witnessed the casual brutality of death as a student at Edinburgh University when an equally youthful companion was crushed by a large detached block on Sgurr Dearg in the Cuillins of Skye. Since then he has lost countless climbing colleagues and there may be a certain amount of conscious irony in the title of his newly published memoirs, With Friends in High Places - always assuming that most mountaineers are invited upwards, rather than downwards, after death.

All climbers have friends in high places. Twenty-five years ago this summer my climbing partner David Waters and I, safe in a bivouac under an overhanging block, watched a huge serac avalanche sweep down our chosen route for the next day, the Via della Pera on the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc. Anyone on the climb would certainly have perished.

"This must be our lucky day," said my companion as we headed off into the dawn for the neighbouring Route Major on which, four hours later, David fell to his death off the third ice arte. The questions, all about the perversities of fate, came later, as I was attempting to identify the shattered remains in the tiny chapel of Courmayeur police station. Why did he fall? Why him and not me? What would have happened had we been roped? The academic Slesser, although they are not specific to that incident, provides many of the answers in his book.

"The crucial element in mountaineering is appreciating and understanding the nature of risk you are exposed to," he says. "It may be objective risk, like avalanche, weather, loose rock, stone-fall or melting ice. It may be subjective risk, like losing one’s nerve, poor route-finding, a weak companion, overconfidence, being out of your depth or being unfit in relation to the climb’s demands.

"And never forget fate laughs at probabilities. One man who escaped the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers died six weeks later in a plane crash.

"The lesson on that first accident on Skye for me was that safety lay not in avoiding risk but of being aware of all other factors. To stay alive, imagination had to ride shotgun at all times. To quote one example, I never, ever again, pulled up on a loose block.

"That death on Skye was an introduction to the whole thing, but I learned I was doing something that carried risk. But just because someone had been killed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it any more. I have seen quite a few people killed in the hills and I do think that it is a very important lesson to be aware of. The idea that you should be sheltered from the risks of life was nonsense. My children have grown up having experienced a few risks and I think they are better for it."

Slesser has crammed an awful lot into his seven and a half decades; in between climbing expeditions, he has worked in the oil, synthetic fibres and nuclear industries, before taking a post as Professor of Energy Studies at Strathclyde University. For three subsequent years he was head of systems analysis with the European Commission in Italy. He is also the author of more than 100 published technical papers and of ten books covering subjects as diverse as energy systems, environment, exploration, sustainable development and guide books to the Isle of Skye and ski-mountaineering in Scotland.

His most famous mountaineering work is, unarguably, Red Peak, his account of the disastrous international expedition to the Pamir in 1962 which is still remembered for two fatalities as notoriously intriguing as those of Whymper’s party on the Matterhorn.

Partly funded, bizarrely, by a Texan oilman to encourage dtente between East and West, Slesser’s co-leader was John Hunt of Everest fame, who had already led an expedition to the Caucasus in 1958.

But the regimented structure of Russian mountaineering was anathema to the British climbers, and Slesser also had problems with Robin Smith, a fellow member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club and former Edinburgh University student, who never bothered to hide his contempt for his companions, considering them old, unfit and technically inferior.

Some of Smith’s behaviour, as Slesser remembers, was extraordinary. While swimming in a lake at Dushanbe in Soviet Asia, Smith held his leader’s head under the water until he almost drowned and then, later, urinated into Slesser’s tent. On the hill, though, he was unmatchable and uncatchable.

"Robin and I only climbed once on the same rope," recalls Slesser. "He really scorned us. It wasn’t that we were beneath his contempt, just that we were nothing as far as he was concerned. He was so far ahead in ability and attitude he just regarded us as old men.

"That was very much revealed on the Pamir expedition. He would have matured into a remarkable person intellectually as well as in his climbing. His death was a great tragedy."

A great mystery, too. Smith and the English climber/poet Wilfred Noyce, the only member of the party the Scot considered anything close to his equal, were descending Pic Garmo when one of them slipped, dragged off the other, and both tumbled 4,000ft to their deaths.

The witnesses to the accident agreed never to reveal who had slipped first, but according to Slesser both men "were an accident waiting to happen".

"Noyce and Robin, along with two Russians, Ovchinnikov and Sevastianov, had successfully climbed Garmo and were heading down an easy, but steepening, snow slope. For reasons we will never know, Smith unroped from Ovchinnikov and roped up with Noyce. It was a very strange thing and we will never discover the truth. It was a very silly accident but in many ways both were an accident waiting to happen.

"Both of them were confident and very carefree climbers. I remember watching Noyce, pipe in mouth, one hand in his pocket and the other cradling his ice axe, crampon down steep snow on Ben Nevis without a care in the world. And Robin would probably not have lived long, anyway. He would have taken up solo climbing, and everyone who does that is killed sooner rather than later. He was very careless on easy ground, too - reckless even. So many brilliant climbers have died through trivial accidents rather than by any great piece of heroism."

The first chapter of Slesser’s new book is titled ‘Constructive Boldness or Destructive Folly?’, which just about represents the varying views of climbers, and non-climbers, of the sport.

Slesser firmly believes that most of the Destructive Folly comes from what he contemptuously calls the nanny state, an institution that embraces bodies as diverse as the government, writers of guide books, the constructors of the Cairngorm funicular and Edinburgh City Council.

"Happily, the urge to explore and discover is alive and well. My generation was lucky to start climbing when horizons were wide and there were still unsurveyed areas on maps. My generation was also lucky in that political correctness had not yet run amok.

"It was quite acceptable for a single, competent mountaineer to lead a group of lads and lassies on the hill, and to camp with them. Unstructured adventure was the norm. This has all gone under uncomprehending authorities, to the detriment of future generations of young people.

"We live in an over-regulated society. It’s depressing. No one is left to make their own judgment any more. Look at Arthur’s Seat - the council in its wisdom is suburbanising Arthur’s Seat with those steps up one of the steep parts. I am appalled, too, with the Cairngorm funicular. It’s a waste of money and an eyesore. I deplore guide books, although I have written several. Some things should be left to the judgment of individuals.

"My prayer is that mountaineering by individuals remains beyond the reach of the nanny state. It is the last sport or activity where decisions and conventions are left to the good judgment of its practitioners. Long may it remain so."

Slesser has seen much of the world and quite plainly intends to see a lot more, probably in a boat, the vehicle for his early explorations in Greenland. As he puts it, in many ways his life has come full circle since the 1950s when he set out into the unknown and uncharted Arctic.

"To sail thousands of miles of Greenland coast and see all of those virgin peaks was an amazing experience. I was one of the first people to see the Staunings Alps in 1954, a fantastic alpine terrain which is full of marvellous, unclimbed peaks and with continuous daylight in summer. On a long route, instead of sitting out the night shivering on some cold, miserable ledge, you can sit it out in daylight.

"As you get older and stiffer and less able to get to the foot of crags, sailing provides you with some adventure. It’s an intellectual activity - you need to be thinking about what you are doing. And there is adventure in it. It is certainly a better outlet than golf, which is what a lot of mountaineers seem to gravitate to.

"I still go on the hill, but my limitation now is getting to the foot of the crag, rather than up the crag itself. And my strength to weight ratio is not good enough now. If it involves balance and skill I can do it, so I tend to head for places like the Etive Slabs, on Beinn Trilleachan in Glen Etive. My favourite mountain area in Scotland is Wester Ross. It’s similar to Greenland, although not quite so dramatic. From my bothy on the west coast I can see the mountains of Mull, and I joke that sometimes I can see New York. There is a sea view and a mountain view. Perfect."

It says much for Malcolm Slesser’s studied approach to several hazardous pastimes that his closest shave in his long career came, not in Europe, Greenland or even the Pamir, but on Edinburgh’s token wee hill, Arthur’s Seat, where he once fell off while rock-climbing illegally in one of the quarries.

"Climbing is very safe," he points out. "It’s the technique of making yourself safe that counts. But I must say that at my age any form of quick exit would be very much appreciated, when the time comes." u

• With Friends in High Places (Mainstream, 15.99) is published tomorrow