Roger George

(Bearbeiten)

Biografie:
George Roger d. 1983
I feel compelled to write something about my old friend George Roger straight away before the journal goes to press. Tragically, he perished on the railway viaduct between Tyndrum and Bridge of Orchy on New Years' Eve, and on the occasion of the Scottish Mountaineering Club's New Year meet of which he was the organiser. It is not known exactly what happened because he was alone with his dog at the time. He was returning to the hotel at Bridge of Orchy having left his two companions to continue their walk and some hours later, when they too turned back and had to recross the viaduct, they found both him and his dog dead between the rails. The weather was bad at the time and it looks as if in the wind and rain and with the hood of his anorak up, he may not have heard a train coming.
But how very sad this is; and what a terrible shock for his companions on the SMC meet it must have been! Normally, I would have been there; but how glad I was, in the circumstances, that I had to miss the meet this time through last minute minor illness.
George Roger was elected to the Alpine Club in 1949 and since then he had over 30 seasons in the Alps and had twice been in the Himalaya. Never a really great mountaineer in the sense that he became a leader outside his own Scottish mountains George was, none the less, highly experienced. And what after all really matters, he was a true devotee of the hills and mountains. Many have been the occasions on which he has climbed with me; and Munroed with me, both in winter and summer, in Scotland. Memorable have been our excursions in the Alps together, both in the Val d'Aosta and Dauphine. But the episode which stands out most vividly in my memory of days out with him in the mountains was a last minute dash to that romantic peak in the Vercors, the Mont Aiguille, on our way home from a climbing holiday at La Berarde. What an unexpectedly memorable day that was, in more senses than one, on which we climbed the
'Mons Inasensibilis' of Antoine de Ville by his original route of 1492. We were lent a rope by a friendly French party once they had discovered that we were British and not German. The climb was steep but not too difficult, and it landed us on top which was a flowery meadow over which we walked to a cross on the summit to join up with our French friends in an Entente Cordiale.
George Roger, distinguished Ex-President of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, was always one of its most popular and hard working members. It was he who, of recent years, was our most efficient meets secretary. How terribly sad it is for all of us in the SMC, and in the AC too, that he should have lost his life on the very first day of a New Year meet which he had himself organised.
It was only last year that George was with us at the AC dinner and meet in the Lake District, together with some of our other Scottish members. Would that we still had George with us to encourage our two clubs to meet more often. But my salutation to the passing of a most important member of both our clubs and a memorable and much loved character.
Charles Warren
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 89, 1984, Seite 274-275


Gestorben am:
1983