Watson Walter Fox

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Biografie:
Walter Fox Watson (1920-1964)
Walter Fox Watson, who was announced to be missing, presumed lost, on the Weisshorn early last September, was born at Windermere in 1920 and spent his early life in the Lake District. He was thus bred to the mountains, and moreover from boyhood showed a natural ability for many sides of sport and athletics. His talent for cricket even tempted him, on leaving school, to take it up professionally, but eventually he took his degree in Physical Education at Loughborough College before joining the R.A.F., in which he spent the war years. Since 1948 he was sports master at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury.
Alpine mountaineering only became the great hobby of his life some years after the war. His first visit to Switzerland was with a Holiday Fellowship walking party, but he soon found his natural sphere among the high peaks. 'I started by paying a guide to take me up the Hörnli ridge', he used to say. Thereafter, he was in the Alps every summer, serving his apprenticeship in mountain craft with his great friends Adolf Schaller and Bernard Biner, to whom he always paid tribute as the finest of teachers and advisers.
Soon he started guideless climbing, and during the last decade achieved an annual programme of routes and ascents of all kinds, as the leader of large and small parties, the extent of which it is impossible to indicate in the available space. His most important climbs are in the files of the Alpine Club.
Chamonix, Zermatt and Arolla were his favourite centres. He made full use of his school holidays, spending several weeks taking courses for the Mountaineering Association, giving unstintedly of his energy and experience to his pupils and friends. The last fortnight he usually devoted to cherished plans of his own.
W alter W atson brought to mountaineering a formidable combination of qualities: great ingenuity for adapting new devices to the technical problems of mountain craft; exceptional physical strength; invincible resolution and the eagerness to accept a challenge.
A middle-weight Hercules, he carried physical training to the highest pitch, towards both endurance and gymnastic attainments. He took a boyish delight in discovering that he was able to increase his total of consecutive pull-ups from 33 at the age of forty-one to 95 at the age of forty-four. He once confessed that portaging nearly 120 lb. of kit (including ironmongery and tinned food) across Paris exacted all his training.
His pertinacity is shown by the following events. In 1955 he had a very bad fall in Borrowdale (he always avowed that he could not remember the moment preceding his fall). Laid up for weeks in hospital, he decided to take the examination for professional guides set by the British Mountaineering Council. 'I felt it was a kind of challenge', he would explain apologetically. He recovered completely, both physically and psychologically, from his injuries and got his guide's certificate.
He was elected to the Alpine Club in 1959 and in 1961 he was elected first President of the Wessex Mountaineering Club.
'A Solo Traverse of the Matterhorn', which is to be found in the Alpine Journal for 1962, well illustrates his method of careful preparation as well as his endurance. We shall probably never know what mishap cost him his life on the relatively easy East ridge of the Weisshorn (where he was last seen), but one can be sure that the reason was not lack of fore-thought.
Since I met him in 1960 at Argentiere I had the great good fortune, living fairly near to him, to climb with him frequently in Britain, and the honour, as I shall always remember it, to follow him on some fine routes in the Alps. I often used to think that, as a mountaineer, he resembled his hero, A. F. Mummery. Watson had the same originality of approach to problems and the daring to put his ideas to the test. To see him tackle a heavily-crevassed snow-field was a lesson in confidence and initiative. Watson was an excellent photographer, a diligent student and analyst of mountaineering practice and history, a dedicated teacher in his chosen field of physical education. At one time he was a tutor to an Outward Bound Centre. As a sports master he raised the standard of a large school. He was a wide and eager reader.
His outstanding characteristics were enthusiasm, single-mindedness, loyalty and humour. I recall a delightful instance of the latter when we were ascending the steep valley that leads from Les Hauderes to the Dent Blanche hut, whence we were to do the Ferpecle ridge. Heavily-loaded and drenched with perspiration, we halted by a delightful stream at Bricolla. From the road nearby two tourists, a man in silk shirt and daks and an extremely personable blonde in bathing attire, approached the stream to find two middle-aged mountaineers, equipment cast aside, laving their heads and chests. The blonde beamed prolonged approval as she and her companion passed on. Waiter was shaking with laughter. 'I couldn't help contrasting,' he said, ' the look of smiling approval on her face with that of utter misery on his!'
Watson, on his more serious side, had a deep faith in God. He believed that Providence was a reality in spite of evil and vicissitude. To his friends the news of his disappearance brought a shock of incredulity that has become a growing sense of loss. He was a fine and generous personality.
P. H. W. Wallace.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 70, 1965, Seite 188-190


Geboren am:
1920
Gestorben am:
09.1964