Taylor Colin Henry

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Biografie:
Colin Henry Taylor 1937-1974
The accidental death of Colin Taylor on 15 August 1974 has swept from the Club and the climbing world a many-sided enthusiast, and no mean mountaineer. He died on the S face of the Obergabelhorm, on the crucial portion of dubious rock which forms a rib below the summit. It is probable that the ledge on which he was standing, looking for a belay after leading the pitch, collapsed in entirety, taking him with it. The resulting rockfall struck, fused and broke the rope below him. He fell about 900 feet and was killed outright.
He started climbing when he was at school where the activity was regarded with disfavour, and pursued it further in the RAF during his National Service. It was there that he met his early Alpine companion-a character who is only a name to his later friends-'George'-but with whom he shared many early exploits including the Hörnli ridge on the Matterhorn in his first season in 1956. But it was at Oxford that his climbing career bloomed. He was elected in successive years to the Honorary Secretaryship and Presidency of OUMC, but more important he came into contact with and became one of an active group seeking harder routes in the Alps.
In 1962 he made an early British ascent of the N face of the Petit Dru and he kept climbing to a consistently high standard thereafter. He left Oxford with a Doctorate as a theoretical physicist in 1964, worked for a while with the UKAEA, but soon settled down as a Lecturer at the University of Salford.
In the Alps he preached mobility. He thought nothing of driving from Chamonix to Innsbruck or from Grenoble to Pontresina if a move seemed justified by conditions. Moreover his studies of weather were a good deal less hapazard than many, and his scholastic approach to the sport led to him culling a fine crop of good but unknown routes via various magazines and libraries. He was perhaps at his best picking up plum routes in a bad season when others were returning home luckless. In this fashion he played a part in opening up for British parties the limestone routes of the Vercots and of the Saussois. He never attempted the routes which gain the limelight but many of them were well within his skill. It was his ambition to climb the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, for which he was well equipped. But he would not do so unless companion and conditions combined to give the opportunity. He was a very safe, competent and sure mountaineer.
For 10 years or more he was attracted by skiing, at which he quickly became adept. By dint of careful planning he organised his affairs to permit himself a skiing as well as a climbing holiday abroad, and he was rapidly becoming an expert on the ski-touring possibilities of the Bernese Oberland.
His principal contribution to the mountaineering world lay not in his new routes, though he accounted for many, both in Wales, the Lakes and the Alps, but rather in what he gave to its various organisations. He was General Guide-Book Editor of our Club from 1968 to 1973 and successfully edited the Alpine Climbing Group Bulletin. He sat on the Committees of the Fell and Rock, and the Climbers' Club, and had just been elected Hon Treasurer of the latter at the time of his death. He sat too on the Management, Future Policy, and International Committees of the BMC and the Management Committee of the MEF. He was much in demand both because of his common sense, and his widespread knowledge and understanding and because of his acceptability as a person to the more forward elements of the climbing world. It was at his suggestion that the matter of the admission of women to our Club was raised in 1973.
Colin loved a good argument, being of a naturally disputaceous and inquiring disposition. Indeed he prepared himself at one stage to read law at Oxford, with a view to practising at the Bar. If he espoused a point of view he was difficult to shift. Having convinced himself of his own logic he was imperturbable. A few days before his accident he argued in favour of the safety from electrical storm of a particular col for the placing of a bivouac, and when the storm struck later that night with lightning bracketing the site within 30 yards on each side he was perfectly prepared to use the 2 discharges as evidence in favour of his argument.
At mountaineering dinners, of which he was a great devotee, he would insist on smoking cheap bent Swiss cheroots-the type that need straws through the middle so that they will draw. He firmly, and perhaps accurately, believed that he was following a tradition begun or at any rate fostered by George Finch. As the initiator and encourager of great mountaineering plans at dinners and elsewhere, he will be sorely missed. As a companion he is irreplaceable. To his wife and small child-a bare 2 months old at his deathmust go the deepest sympathy.
Mike Baker
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 81, 1976, Seite 274-275


Geboren am:
1937
Gestorben am:
15.08.1974