Nelson Peter Stalker

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Biografie:
Peter Stalker Nelson (1930-1958)
Peter Nelson was killed in a fall in the Northern Cwm of Saraghrar, Chitral Himalaya, in August 1958. In his short life, he held to a remarkable degree, more perhaps than any other British mountaineer of his generation, the respect and affection of his fellow-climbers and friends. Although a fine climber, he was not one of those mountaineers who live only for mountains ; he was a complete person with a mature and objective mind and his judgment of people and situations, while balanced and logical, was always illuminated by humanity and humility. He was never overawed by mountains or men or gatherings of men ; if he belonged to a society, then he examined the structure of that society critically and constructively, and he had the courage to voice his opinions. Had he lived I believe he would have had a considerable influence on this club, and our loss is thereby the greater.
At the time of his death he was an Assistant Principal at the Ministry of Power, where he was acting as Private Secretary to the Parliamentary Secretary. He had entered the Civil Service after taking a second in Modern Greats at St. John's College, Oxford, and in 1956 went to West Africa for six months to work on the Volta River scheme.
He started climbing at Oxford, where he was a member of the O.U.M.C., but it was not until after he went down that he began to climb with an intensity of purpose which raised him in a few years to the standard of Peter Harding's hardest routes in Llanberis. He was elected to the Climbers' Club in 1954, the Alpine Club in 1956, and the Alpine Climbing Group in 1957 ; for the last of these he edited the Bulletin in 1958.
Wales and the Lakes he knew best, climbing most often with Oxford parties, quickly reaching climbing maturity in September gales on Scafell and Pillar, snow and sunshine at Ogwen in April, and shirtsleeves in the Pass in June, and in the following Aprils and Junes and Septembers he went back to the meets, equally happy to coax the novice up Milestone Ordinary or the tyro on Slape, until an Oxford meet without Peter was not a proper meet at all. He had a curiously disjointed appearance in the hills : the upper half of his body rather untidy, a pale, longish face with a straight lock of hair hanging down his forehead and wearing an old hockey shirt, all red and white and hanging out at the waist, but the lower half clad in neat breeches and closefitting kletterschuhe with a determined look about them which was not belied by his climbing. On a hard climb he was emotionally tense, climbing quickly, with authority and determination and always intelligently, for he didn't like to waste energy or time. A difficult route took a lot of emotional energy and he was not afraid to admit it ; thus, on the crux of the East face of the Rothorn : ' Only twice before in the Alps have I been so frightened once when I lost my way on the Aiguille Croux and once in an electric storm on Mt. Brule .... Determined to protract the agony no longer, I made straight for the top of the crack .... The absence of belays was only partly the cause ; it was more my state of mind. Danger, like other spices, makes a horrid diet. Give me more than so much and thought dries up. I don't even think about falling off. My mind is lost in the emergency. I simply climb. And when it is over it is like the end of an exam. The result may be published· on the summit but the glorious moment is now.'
His Alpine beginning was at Arolla and although in the succeeding seasons he climbed throughout the Western Alps, he always retained a particular affection for the Valais. His record was considerable, his best year being I956 when, in a poor season, he climbed amongst other routes the Younggrat on the Breithorn, the North ridge of the Peigne and, his finest route, the first British ascent of Roch's route on the East face of the Zinal Rothorn. After describing this climb in a lecture to the Alpine Club the following year, he suggested that the best British Alpinists might be less single-minded in their choice of Alpine centres and that they would do well to look to Zermatt as well as to Chamonix, for the hardest and finest routes. In I957 he climbed the North ridge of the Piz Badile, but his greater ambitions were thwarted by bad weather, and so he looked to the following year for the chance to attempt the greatest Alpine routes. Early in I958, however, he accepted an invitation to lead the Oxford Chitral Expedition to Saraghrar ( 24.110 ft. ). His death in August cut short a career which promised the highest achievements in the Alps and the Himalaya.
It is difficult to write of Peter with the detachment and lack of sentiment which he would have liked. It was not easy to know him well and I doubt if anyone knew him completely, because he had a very clear concept of the boundaries of personal relationship and of the demands which any relationship makes on the integrity of an individual. He had a clear and enquiring mind and was concerned above all with the real world, and, through the real world, the truth. An accurate and impartial observer of the curiosities of men's behaviour and the tensions and conflict in and between them, he had no illusions where men or mountains were concerned. He loved climbing but he did not attach any mystical or symbolical significance to mountains ; shortly before he left for the Himalaya, during a discussion on whether mountaineering was worth the risk, he said, ' Of course it isn't worth it, but one goes on just the same '. Mountaineers were no better than other men, and the motives and emotions behind their actions were no different from those of people in other circumstances.
Once I was climbing on Great Eastern with him. It had rained all the previous day and night, and there was wet cloud thick about us ; the rock was streaming with water and covered in thick brown slime ..I was leading, and at the crux I stuck. I spent half an hour trying to get up the vital few feet but the slime was too thick to be cleared from the holds and eventually I descended to the stance and invited Peter to try it. He had led it easily in clean conditions the previous summer but he paused a moment, looked quizzically at me and said, ' If I lead it, how much will you mind my leading it? ' He knew exactly what I was thinking, just as he did a few minutes later when, having tried the crux himself, and failed, he came down to the stance, looked at me, and we both laughed.
Laughter was very much a part of him, in his conversation and his writing, for he wrote the way he thought: clearly and with humour. His enemies were the complacent, the pompous and the bogus, but they didn't make him angry ; he laughed and let his wit demolish them. And yet he probably won't be remembered for his wit because, so like Peter, it was never carefully polished or delivered, never consciously underlined, but simply erupted, often preceded by a sort of explosive hiccough of laughter which softened the blow. I shall not remember him in any one way. Sometimes there will be a sudden bite to a conversation, or a fatness and fullness of words overheard, or an elaborately contrived absurdity, or just a mad wind whipping across a wet wall of rock ; and I shall think, ' How Peter would have laughed .'
J. A. G. Emery
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 64. Nr. 298, 1959, Seite 104-106


Geboren am:
1930
Gestorben am:
08.1958