Shipton Eric

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Biografie:
Quelle: Mountain 1977, Nr. 55, Seite 16 f
Quelle: Alpinismus 1977, Heft 11, Seite 44
Quelle: American Alpine Journal 1977/78, Seite 667 f

Eric Earle Shipton (1907-77)
The appearance of an obituary notice on Eric Shipton in The Times at the end of March 1977 must have come as a shock to many of his friends. One had got into the habit of thinking of Eric as the grand old man of mountain exploration who went on for ever whilst, as the years passed by, he became ever more distinguished-looking in personal appearance and bearing. I remember attending a committee meeting of the Club at which, in the absence of the President, Shipton was in the chair. An item under discussion was nominations for the next Presidency. Suggestions were being made but then, suddenly, we all saw the light and realized that the obvious heir to the throne was in our midst. His protestations that he might be in Patagonia were brushed aside and we convinced him that we wanted a President who was still active in the field and that any defections from club functions while he was on I1.Ctive service, so to speak, could be looked after by the V.P's.
I suppose that with Howard Somervell, that great man, Eric Shipton must have been one of our most distinguished Presidents of recent years. Certainly he was deeply respected by young and old alike, both for his great achievements, continued activities and, above all, for the integrity of his outlook on mountaineering matters. A speech that he made at a[l annual dinner during his Presidency was one of the finest Elder Statesman pronouncements on a mountaineering philosophy that the Club has ever been given and the Editor of the AJ at the time, realizing its significance, wisely captured it for the pages of the Journal.
'One of the splendid things about Eric Shipton was that, although he ended up by being a highly professional explorer, he always managed to retain the emotional integrity of the old master amateurs towards mountaineering as a sport. Never, at anytime, was he willing to sell his soul for a mess of mass-media pottage. Talking of a small expedition he took to Patagonia he says: 'My own motive for launching it was to satisfy a desire, of many years standing, to make the acquaintance of this strange region: for, like Tilman, I had long been intrigued by its remarkable geography.' This kind of statement explains a great deal about Eric. It tells us why he became our greatest mountaineer explorer instead of just the 'conqueror' of Everest; a title that would have made him feel acutely embarrassed. And although many of us would have liked him to have been the leader of the expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Everest, I for one, can understand why he was not, eventually, chosen to do so-the truth of the matter is that, by that time, his heart was not truly in it. Having discovered the route to the top by way of the South Col he had really played his part, as the great explorer he was. For him it was the discovery that counted, not the conquest.
Shipton was undoubtedly one of the greatest mountaineer explorers there has ever been. One could enumerate his exploits indefinitely, but fortunately for us he has placed them on record, for our delectation, in the admirable books he wrote; and in his numerous articles in journals. Two of his books have become mountaineering classics. His first, Nanda Devi, was pronounced by Winthrop Young-'among the best books of adventure known to me'. But the one that has always appealed to me most of all is: Upon That Mountain. On a front end-paper of my copy I find that I have pencilled: 'Possibly Eric's best book; and certainly the one that states his mountaineering philosophy in his most forthright manner. This is what we heard so often from his lips during the Tibetan Everest expeditions.'
But now, to become more personal, what kind of a person was Eric? The first time I heard of him was when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the great days of the CUMC. He was then active in the Alps and stories of his extrication from a 'moulin' on the Mer de Glace and of an entangled adventure on the Aiguille Ravanel were then legendary. But it was not until 1935 that I first became personally acquainted with him, when he invited me to join his now famous and at the time little publicized, but most successful, Reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest.
This must surely have been one of the most enjoyable, as well as the most scientifically productive, of all Mount Everest expeditions. We were instructed to examine post-monsoon snow conditions on the mountain, which we did up to a height of 7000m. And then, having established that they became impossible above that altitude, and highly dangerous on the slopes below the North Col, the expedition retreated and proceeded to explore and map the environs of Mount Everest in a systematic manner.
Not the least enjoyable aspect of this expedition was the part played by its members in helping Michael Spender, our professional surveyor, with his photogrammetric survey. We all took part in this; which inevitably involved exploration of new country and ended up with first ascents of 24 mountains of over 6000m in height. Shipton was in his element in all of this, and it was in the course of these explorations that he and Dan Bryant, the New Zealander, climbed a peak on the watershed to the W of Mount Everest which gave them the glimpse of the Western Cwm which led to Eric's epoch-making suggestion that an approach to the mountain up the Khumbu glacier might turn out to be the best way to the summit.
In the course of 3'expeditions through Tibet to the mountain I spent much time talking to, and arguing with, Eric and this was most stimulating. He always delighted in taking up the opposite point of view in any discussion, arguing that black was white just for the Devil of it. His reasoning was often wrong; but in the course of these arguments something stimulating always came out of them so that the journeys across Tibet and the long hours sitting about in tents on the mountain were never dull when one was with him. In the course of such conversations I learnt that his great regret was that he had never had the opportunity of a formal training in anything once he left school. He would have liked to have been trained as a surveyor, a geologist, a zoologist, or what-you-will in the line of his general interests of exploration, and at the time I knew him closely I gathered that this worried him and made him feel insecure. But the marvel is that through sheer integrity of outlook he trained himself to become the World's greatest mountain-explorer. Perhaps it was just because of his lack of formal training in one narrow field that Eric, who was a dreamer of dreams, became the great man he was. At heart he was a poet and, although he did not actually write poetry, his books were full of the stuff that poets' dreams are made of. Despite his lament over his lack of a specific professional training he managed to establish a reputation as a natural philosopher on mountain exploration. His many published statements on the subject have left us in no doubt about his thinking on the matter. And it is interesting that some recent exploits on very big mountains have tended to endorse his constantly expressed contention that small expeditions, even to the World's greatest mountains, are potentially capable of being as successful as large and expensive ones.
For those of us who have had the pleasure of travelling and arguing with Eric Shipton in some remote mountain ranges, the news of his unexpected death brought sorrow, and feelings of sadness at out loss. One is consoled however by the certain knowledge that he has joined the ranks of the immortals amongst our brethren of the Mountain World.
Charles Warren
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 83, 1978, Seite 271-273


Geboren am:
1907
Gestorben am:
28.03.1977