Hutchinson Stuart John Grant

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Biografie:
Stuart John Grant Hutchinson (1926-1991)
Stuart Hutchinson, who died on 3 October 1991, was born in Leatherhead but had family connections with Grantown-on-Spey which led him to explore the Cairngorms from the age of ten. His school encouraged him, so he developed a strong sense of independence in the mountains at an early age. After school he started at university but broke away to volunteer for the armed forces and as a young officer went to the near and middle east. He managed to arrange to have some of his training in North Wales.
On returning to civilian life he became very active with the Midland Association of Mountaineers as well as taking up caving, pot-holing and white water canoeing (which nearly cost him his life). Much later he took up small boat sailing; then, when nearing 60, skiing and, even later, ski mountaineering. He climbed regularly in the Alps and throughout the UK, including visits to the sandstone outcrops in Kent, and Pembroke, Devon and Lundy. He made one visit to the Rockies and trekked up Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya. He often expressed regret that his life was too full to join in our Club activities. He served on the BMC management committee at the time when he was also president of the MAM.
In his private life he was active in the solid fuel industry which led him to take a leading part in establishing a new livery company, the Worshipful Company of Fuellers.
On the Kenya trek in 1989 something seemed amiss because he allowed a porter to carry his 'light' day sack. Skiing at Wengen and climbing at Fort William in early 1991 were clearly a trial and he did not survive the operation which had become inevitable.
All who knew Stuart Hutchinson will remember his unique sense of time: he really had to be persuaded to return home before darkness or a calamity followed. On Mt Edith Cavell he was quite happy to sit not far below the summit to watch the sun go down, despite anxious companions some five hours below and the prospect of an unplanned bivouac.
Let Geoffrey Winthrop Young's words end this tribute:
I have not lost the magic of long days;
I live them, dream them still;
Still am I master of the starry ways
And freeman of the hill.
Shattered my glass ere half the sands were run,
I hold the heights, I hold the heights I won.
FR Robinson
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 98, 1993, Seite 320-321


Geboren am:
1926
Gestorben am:
03.10.1991