Storr Alec Edwin

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Biografie:
Alec Edwin Storr (1899-1954)
Alec Edwin Storr's home was in Bedford and as a boy he went to the Bedford Modern School. He came up to Cambridge in 1919. It was then that I first met him as one of my pupils at Queen's College. He read for the Natural Sciences Tripos, which he took in 1922 with a main interest in biological subjects. He stroked the College boat for three years in a remarkable series of successes on the river. At the close of his school-days he was taken by one of the masters at his school on a long camping and wandering holiday in central and northern Wales, an event which was to mark the beginning of his lifelong love of hills and mountains. On this holiday a little climbing was done on Craig-yr-Ysfa and Lliwedd. During his undergraduate days in 1921 he organised and went on a camping-mountaineering holiday with a party of Cambridge friends to the Pyrenees. He was a keen member of the Cambridge University Mountaineering Club, of which he became Secretary. This was in the days when mountaineering was rapidly developing among young climbers of undergraduate age, and Storr did much to help the Club, then reviving after the 1914-18 war.
In the summer of 1922, after he had taken his B.A. degree, I went on a tour abroad with him. We went to the Central Graians and the mountains of Cogne, climbing a number of well-known peaks. Later in this year we also traversed the Matterhorn from the Col du Lion to the Hörnli, returning to Breuil by the Furggjoch in the afternoon. We finished the season in the Oberland mountains.
After coming down from Cambridge, Storr became a schoolmaster and for a number of years he taught at Bedford Modern School. Almost invariably in his spring and winter holidays he climbed in the Lake District or in North Wales, in the summer going abroad. I was with him on many of these holidays, other of his climbing friends in these days being W. T. Elmslie, M. H. Slater, L. A. Ellwood and A. M. Binnie. On tours abroad we usually arranged to cover a good deal of country. Communication by road was rapidly improving, while bus services made it easy to go from one mountain group to another. Storr's activities spread from Switzerland to pretty well all the mountain groups of Austria and Northern Italy and often considerably further afield. I think he enjoyed climbing and walking in the Austrian mountains more than in any other part.
The summer of 1926 was one of the most memorable of his seasons. In that year with Slater and myself he started with some weeks of climbing in Tyrol, the Ortler group and the Brenta Dolomites. Here Slater left us, and, accompanied by Elmslie and Ellwood, we went on to climb in the Balkan countries. There the appeal was rather the pleasure of travelling in unfrequented and fascinating country than of making climbs of any difficulty. Musallah in the Rhodope mountains of Bulgaria, the highest of the Balkan mountains, was ascended with a bivouac just below the summit and a descent the following day to the astonishingly picturesque monastery of Rila. We went on to Greece and climbed the different summits of the Thessalian Olympus. This was a delightful expedition, involving a certain amount of rock climbing on the two highest peaks. After some more wandering and climbing in the Greek mountains we came home through Yugoslavia, with a diversion to make the ascent of the rather out-of-the-way mountain of Ljubetin, near the Albanian frontier. In the spring of 1928 Storr was in Corsica, camping near the upper limit of the forests in the Viro valley and the Foret de Valdo-Niello. Several peaks, including Paglia Orba and Tafonato, were climbed.
Storr joined the Alpine Club in 1926. In 1929 .he married Sylvia Guy. For the first part of his married life he was a biology master at Bedford Modern School In 1932. he became hous.emaster at the School House at the Perse School, Cambridge. Here, with the invaluable help of his wife, he spent many vigorous years ; but after the war he resigned from the post of housemaster, though he continued at the school. At the Perse he was Commanding Officer of the Combined Cadet Force. He was also a County chess player. After his marriage he rather confined his activities to the British hills, but his keenness in no way diminished.
One hesitates to assess the climbing abilities of one's companions on the hills, but on looking back on my climbing days with Storr I can recall, as I think all "his friends, could do, what. exceptional capability he had for organisation ; also the judgment, deliberation and silent efficiency with which he approached all mountain problems. He died suddenly at Cambridge on December 19 last. His wife, daughter, and son survive him, for whom all his friends feel the deepest sympathy.
C. M. Sleeman
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 60. Nr. 290, 1955, Seite 161-162


Geboren am:
1899
Gestorben am:
1954