Hockenhull Harold Kenneth

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Biografie:
Harold Kenneth Hockenhull (1910-1980)
Kenneth Hockenhull joined the Alpine Club in 1964, quite late in life. He was a retiring, independent personality, and I think he joined because he felt he could not keep out any longer. He came to the dinners and not much else. He was little known in the Club except in a very closed circle and did not want more, but he was in fact one of the most remarkable mountaineers in this country over the last half-century. He climbed all but one ortwo of the 4000m peaks of the Alps, and constantly throughout his life. In his reticence he was the very antithesis of the understatements in mountaineering which are in reality closer to romantic overstatements.
He was a distinguished solicitor in Crewe, and well known there as operatic conductor and in scouting circles. His mountaineering doings were superimposed on these rather separate activities, and his stamina was extraordinary. I remember one occasion when he went to Zermatt without a climbing companion and took a guide, very unusual for him, and traversed on his first day the Breithorn, Pollux, Castor and Lyskamm, continuing to the Signalkuppe. I remember another occasion, which can I suppose be recounted now, when he set out one Friday evening to drive from Nantwich in Cheshire where he lived toJohn O'Groats and back, and he told me that on his return he completed thejob by continuing to Land's End and then back home again. I asked him ifhe stopped at his house in passing, and he replied that he thought if he had done so that he might not have been able to gather the strength to proceed. But when I suggested he should write up thi.s remarkable performance he said no, for some hearing he had done such a thing might doubt his reliability. Such was Kenneth Hockenhull.
The one occasion when he broke dryly through his reserve in the AC was after the Matterhorn centenary in 1965. Basil Goodfellow heard of his exploits and persuaded him to give an account at the subsequent meeting of the Club, introducing him as a mystery contributor. On the day of the centenary he characteri"stically decided to climb the Hornli Ridge alone, and on his way down he was held up by the television party which was accompanied it seems by some of the pundits of the Club. When he protested he was told he ought not to be there because the mountain was 'closed' on that day, and the account in AJ. 70197 is one of the few hilarious episodes in this illustrious but perhaps not entirely satirical journal. The Vaucher party climbing the N face on that day, including the first lady to do so, arrived at the summit at the same time. Not even the AC got quite the whole story here, for the Geneva newspaper interviewing Madam Vaucher reported her as saying that on reaching the summit the party was greeted by a spirit from the mist which offered them cherry brandy. I remember saying to Kenneth that this was a surprising thing for a climber to have with him, and he told me it was not cherry brandy but sherry.
His climbing record was very extensive over 50 years, in the High Alps, Dolomites, Tyrol, Norway, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Corsica and throughout the United Kingdom, with countless British climbs. In his application form for membership in 1964 he referred to climbing in the Dolomites in 1934, Austria in 1935 and thereafter constantly in the Valais, Oberland and other parts of the Alps. In the hiatus of the war years he was a Naval Officer, but after that it was the High Alps again almost every year, with a few divergencies to Norway and elsewhere. In looking at his application form, with its long list of peaks, I was reminded and saddened to see the record of our climbing the Wetterhorn, Finsteraarhorn, Aletschhorn and Schreckhorn together in 1948. I still clearly remember our finding our way up the Hasler Rippe of the Aletschhorn in that far-off year and Kenneth with his habitual mild irony pointing out on the final, tiring snow slope that I was lifting my feet up and down in the same steps.
With so many classical climbs and summits to his credit it is superfluous to list them. Over the last 15 years or so he climbed largely with his son and daughter, also accomplished climbers. Indeed I recall the 2 of us taking his daughter up Avalanche on L1iwedd at the tender age of 8 years, and though we should have been ashamed of ourselves the result was that at 13 she .climbed the Miltelegi with her father, certainly the youngest to have climbed either. He leaves his wife and this son and daughter, and such consolation as we can offer is to say that nobody who knew Kenneth Hockenhull is likely to forget him.
C. G. Wickham
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 86, 1981, Seite 266-267


Geboren am:
1910
Gestorben am:
1980