Anthoine, Mo

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Biografie:
Teilnehmer an der britischen Ogre-Expedition 1947 im Karakorum mit den Landsleuten: Douglas Scott, Christian Bonington, Tut Braithwaite, Clive Rowland, Nicholas Estcourt.;
Quelle: Archiv Proksch (Österr. Alpenklub)

Julian Vincent Anthoine 1939-1989
It was an unusually bright, clear day in North Wales when Julian (Mo) Anthoine was buried in Nant Peris cemetery. The little stone church, across the road from the house he had built and lived in for most of his life, was packed with 350 or so of Mo's friends and family. Outside, lining the path from the church to the grave, were over a hundred more. Most of them were weeping.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground, a lonely figure could be seen with his arms above his head outlined against the clear blue sky near the top of Y Garn. It could almost have been Mo, wondering what all these climbers were doing in the bottom of the valley on a day when they should have been climbing on the crags. But it wasn't Mo: that extraordinary personality of the British climbing world had died of a brain tumour the previous weekend.
Mo had lived a life of freedom - free to travel, to climb, to carouse, to adventure, to bring up a family and to behave just as he liked. He ran a business making climbing helmets, ice-axes and outdoor clothing, but this seemed tohave more to do with dissatisfaction with the quality and performance of existing gear than with a drive to make money. Despite all the hard work he put into these enterprises, he never seemed to allow them to interfere with or limit his freedom to go on 'trips', as he called them.
The first time I came across Mo was in 1961 when Jim Swallow and I heard that some instructors from Ogwen Cottage had spent several days putting up a new, hard route on Llech Ddu in North Wales. At the time we believed anyone from 'Og Cot' earned their meagre keep pulling beginners up easy slabs. But the next day we made what was probably the second ascent of the route, and realized that the guy with the French-sounding name, with his pal Cam, were a climbing force to be reckoned with. He had an epic three-year trip, raising hell across the Far East with his boxing pal Fox, ending up by having to be rescued from some dreadful asbestos mine in Australia. The stories of this 'trip' alone would have been worth a book but Mo, one of the great humorist raconteurs, was too keen on planning his next adventure and recounting stories of the last one over pints of beer to settle down to the tedium of writing.
During the sixties his climbing was mainly In the Alps, where one well documented adventure on the N face of the Cima Grande di Lavaredo showed his capacity for survival. Leave late, under-equipped, ignore weather forecasts, bivouac half-way up in a storm inadequately clad, survive the night half-frozen with your companion half-dead, climb to the summit and emerge triumphant. The impact this had on Al Alvarez, who was with him, was the cornerstone story of Mo's biography that Al wrote. The seventies saw the start of Mo's expeditions. El Toro, Fitzroy, Trango Tower, Gasherbrum IV, Brammah II and the Ogre where, with Clive Rowland, he accomplished an incredible rescue of Doug Scott, who had broken his legs just below the summit, and Chris Bonington who smashed his ribs on the descent. Mo, typically, took no credit for this epic.
All of these were small expeditions where Mo took a major role in leading and organizing. His outspokenness, with a few well-chosen words and a scornful smile, could deflate and discredit the inflation and exaggeration that were synonymous with the large, well-financed Himalayan expeditions of that time. Mo's non-conformity and outrageous behaviour were simply unacceptable to conformist expedition leaders, and these attitudes probably reached an all-time low when he was blackballed from the Climbers' Club during one of its more intolerant and parochial periods. To Mo's delight he was made a member of the Alpine Club in 1969 and he remained a member for the rest of his life.
The eighties saw even more expeditions which gave a better insight into Mo's character. His stubborn determination showed when he attempted to climb Thalay Sagar in the Garhwal during four consecutive years; and his firm belief that climbing a mountain was never worth the sacrifice of a human life however much effort and expense had been put into the attempt - was
demonstrated when he turned back just below the summit rather than risk an accident induced by exhaustion. As he put it: 'when Joe fell off and didn't know why, I became safety conscious.' He climbed Mt Kenya and Mt McKinley and made two attempts on Everest, the last one after having the first operation on the tumour which killed him. He will be remembered by many for his hospitality, and by even more for his waspish repartee. He firmly believed that his constant climbing partner Joe Brown had invented the handjam. Whenever they climbed together on some gritstone outcrop, Mo's fun was to try to extract royalties from anyone using a handjam within sight of the Master.
As a friend he was more generous than anyone I have met in giving real help and caring when most needed. With him as a climbing companion you knew you were totally safe wherever you were, and he seemed to have the magic of being able to fix protection above his head before he did any hard move. To go out with Mo for an evening was full of unpredictable consequences. If there was fighting, it always seemed to be others doing it, but somehow you had the idea that in some mysterious way Mo had triggered it off. His verbal assaults were against the pompous, the bullshitters, and his weapon was humour wielded like a deadly rapier. As a family man he was fortunate in finding and marrying Jackie Philippe, who has endured and enjoyed his eccentric lifestyle for many years. He was proud of his two children and, when one of them couldn't read at the age of two, he said: 'he is so backward that all he can look forward to is being the head of an outdoor pursuits centre' - several of these, of course, being amongst his best friends.
And so, finally, amongst the sad slate tombstones of Nant Peris his friends and family came to mourn him. A climber who valued the traditions of climbing, who set an example of what can be done if the energy, the love and the enthusiasm are there. A rich, generous and unpredictable character. We all miss him.
Ian McNaught-Davis
(Shortened version of an obituary in Mountain 13 o. Reprinted by permission.)
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 95, 1990-91, Seite 311-312

Anthoine Vincent Julian „Mo”, * Kidderminster, später Birmingham, Coventry, Nant Peris (Wales)
Zahlreiche Expeditionen ins Himalaya und Karakorum.
1973 1.Beg.Tepui Roraima-Ostwand „Schiffsbug“, (Venezuele,Brasilien,Guyana)
1976 1.Beg.Trango Tower(Nameless Tower)-Südwestwand,VI,6251m, (Karakorum,Pakistan)
1977 Teiln.Britischen Ogre-Expedition, (Karakorum)
G.Schauer


Geboren am:
01.08.1939
Gestorben am:
12.08.1989