Kerr Faye

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Biografie:
Faye Kerr d.1980
If you ask anyone what they remember best about being with Faye, it will be something about the feelings that she engendered of peace, of completeness, of being at one with the outdoor surroundings.
She was born and brought up in an outback sheep station on the Wakool River in New South Wales, and something of that wide outdoors became an essential part of her.
It was when studying Geology at Melbourne University part time, and training as a Kindergarten teacher, that she first came in contact with the climbing fraternity. She joined the rock-climbing club there, climbing in many local areas plus the Warrenbungles and Tasmania.
Her training completed, ·she and a girl friend set off to work on backcountry stations in Queensland, with Faye as governess and the friend as cook. The same team moved to sheep stations in the North Island of New Zealand, and it was here, in the mid 1950s that she first made her mark in the alpine climbing world. With an Australian companion, Max Cutcliffe, she literal1y climbed her way all over the Southern Alps. Included in those climbs was a very near miss on a 1st ascent of Coxcomb Ridge of Mt Aspiring.
Then it was back to Australia before going to Europe for 8 years. She worked both in the UK, where she joined the Ladies' Alpine Club and was actively climbing with them, and then for 5 years, in Switzerland. Faye and her friend Dorothea Borys caused quite a stir by putting up many first 'unguided, all women's' climbs in the Alps.
Back in the UK, Faye became very interested and involved with the outdoor adventure aspects of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, in Wales. When she returned to Australia in the mid 1960s she directed her energies to helping set up an Australian equivalent outside Adelaide, which included running adventure trips to the McDonell Ranges, as well as a skicentre for children at Falls Creek in Victoria.
Then it was back to New Zealand for another couple of years' climbing before moving to Canada at the end of 1967. Between spells of work she fitted in three expeditions; twice to S. America and also to Alaska with the Women's McKinley Expedition.
In late 1971 she returned, to New Zealand. From a work base at Mt Cook National Park she continued to explore and climb her way around the mountains and we began planning for our Himalayan Expedition in 1974.
The Himalaya (the mountains, the tragedy of lives lost, and the love of the local people) changed our lives. Back in New Zealand; still climbing, still living in the mountains, Faye spent much of her free time developing, in the company of Helen Irwin, her new-found skill of painting in oil pastels. Work as a Park Assistant and Ski Patroller gave her opportunities for climbing in the summer and skiing in the .winter, but she worked as hard on her days off, climbing to vantage points to paint - it was difficult to see where work finished and recreation began. In a joint exhibition with Helen she displayed her Himalayan and New Zealand paintings. A further trip to Alaska in 1978 resulted in another crop of paintings; lyrical studies of glaciers, clouds, and iceberg lakes, and another painting exhibition followed.
A summer as hut warden at Routeburn Falls allowed Faye to wander around in the Aspiring National Park, then it was back to Mt Cook as Ski Patroller and Park Assistant until early 1980.
Faye's last climbing trip in New Zealand was a sojourn in the Wilkin-Siberia region. It was new to all 4 of us, mid-February, warm, with the upland basins awash with alpine flowers. Our last climb was to the Volta via Ruth Ridge, where we gazed on the other face of the Coxcomb Ridge. Funny, said Faye, to think she had come full circle after all those years, to look at the route she had very nearly climbed back in 1953, but there was neither time nor desire to attempt it again just then. Faye was on her way back to the Himalaya, as part of the Australian Annapurna expedition, to be followed by a trekking and painting sojourn in the Garhwal with John Herbison.
And paint they both did, as they wandered up the valleys and mountains, but she became progressively weaker with a bug she couldn't throw off, and which claimed her finally in Madras.
So where is our friend, our companion of the high hills? She is everywhere we have shared with her, taking pleasure in the simple gifts of nature. To paraphrase an unknown author in a Himalayan hut book:
'There were no jewels buried in the sand,
The treasure that she sought was little worth.
She went, but oh so few will understand,
To tread some unknown carpet of the earth'.
Margaret Clark
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 88, 1983, Seite 282-283


Gestorben am:
1980