Mason Kenneth Lieut-Colonel, M.C.

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Biografie:
Lieut-Colonel Kenneth Mason, M.C. (1887-1976)
Kenneth Mason was elected to membership of the Alpine Club in 1914. He was at that time a junior member of the Survey of India, and although his duties had given him unique opportunities to travel in the Himalayas, he was not (as he pointed out in the preface of Abode of Snow) an expert climber in the modern sense. Since I, too, was never more than an enthusiastic mountain traveller, I can perhaps better appreciate Mason's contribution to Himalayan exploration than any of the technically highlyqualified younger generation of climbers to whom the Himalayas are a challenge, and nothing else.
At this point I should perhaps mention that I never met Kenneth Mason although it was at his invitation that I became a Founder-Member of the Himalayan Club in 1927 and at one time or another served on various of its several committees. Because of the nature of life in the British India of those days, opportunities to meet one's fellowmembers were infrequent and our business had perforce to be conducted by post.
The Times, in its obituary, rightly called attention to the results obtained by Mason as the first honorary secretary of the Himalayan Club, but failed to note that he was in fact its founder. In the first volume of the Himalayan Journal Sir Geoffrey Corbet briefly described the foundation. 'We hope great things of it,' he said; 'the geographer that the blank spaces on the map may be filled in; the scientist that our knowledge of the Himalayas, its rocks and glaciers, its animals and plants, its peoples and their way of living, may continually expand .... The mountaineer may dream of the first ascent of a thousand unclimbed peaks. My own hope is that it may rear a breed of men in India, hard and self-reliant, who will know how to enjoy life on the high hills.'
The Himalayan Club is now firmly established, and although no one person can claim credit for all that it has achieved, Kenneth Mason's continuous contribution remains immeasurable. He was awarded the Founder's Medal of the RGS in 1927, and upon retiring from the Indian Service in 1932 he became Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, a chair which he held until 1953. He was a Freeman and very active member of the Court of Drapers' Company, City of London, of which he became Master in 1949. He wrote only one book, Abode of Snow (Hart-Davis 1955), a history of Himalayan exploration and mountaineering, still far and away the best book on the subject up to that date, worthy to take a place on "the shelf beside The Playground of Europe.
It has always seemed odd to me that Mason was never invited to join any of the early Everest Expeditions. On his own admission he was not a skilled climber, but neither were some of those who were selected. But in the early 1920's The Alpine Club was a somewhat exclusive circle of friends and acquaintances, many of whom were accustomed to climb together in the Alps, and although Mason was already a member of the Club, he was absent in India for years at a time and was probably not known to more than a handful of members.
John Morris
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 82, 1977, Seite 271-272


Geboren am:
1887
Gestorben am:
1976