Nun Paul James

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Biografie:
Paul James Nunn 1943-1995
So the unthinkable has occurred. Paul Nunn, indestructible, cunning, cautious Paul, has been killed with Geoff Tier descending from the summit of Haramosh II (6666m) by a random serac fall. They were two of my closest friends, and for twenty years we had all shared climbs, tents, holidays, expeditions, meals, drinks (in plenty), stories and much laughter.
The passing of Paul leaves a void in British climbing that is too big to comprehend. President of the British Mountaineering Council, Paul had served on just about every important committee within the climbing world - a list that would easily fill the space available for this tribute, and one that would be doubled by including even the sketchiest inventory of his climbs and expeditions. But it is Paul himself who will be desperately missed. That great guffaw, the hand on the shoulder, the sideways glance, the sheer presence of Paul in a pub, on a climb, at a trade show, or in a meeting was for so long an integral part of our lives that we assumed he would last for ever. Hard to imagine now, the gritstone evenings without him, or the myriad Highland hostelries where Paul managed to be a local in everyone. No more lounging on Sennen beach in Cornwall with wives, children and dogs when Paul, after climbing all morning, would immerse himself in an historical text, quoting incomprehensibly learned criticisms with bellows of laughter to a bewildered audience.
And now no more wisdom - Paul was a mentor to many of us. Shrewd advice, freely given to anyone who asked for it under any circumstances, Paul had one of the brightest minds I have ever encountered. A natural curiosity, combined with rigorous academic discipline and a prodigious ability for hard work, meant that there was a vast breadth and depth of knowledge that he could call on to deal with day-to-day existence.
Paul studied at Sheffield University and eventually completed a Ph D an academic undertaking that competed for his attention with guidebook writing, articles, reviews, and all the many diverse subjects in which Paul became involved. He was for many years Principal Lecturer in Economic History at the University of Hallam. His deeply felt socialism made him a staunch defender of student welfare; it also made him an astute political animal and his untimely death has robbed the BMC of a personality who was capable of seeing a broad picture, of accommodating many different factions and opinions. He would surely have become President of the Alpine Club at some future date and his loss will be deeply felt by many in the Club who valued his incisive judgements.
Paul was born in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, Ireland, on 6 January 1943. He was adopted at an early age and brought up in Macclesfield, Cheshire. His parents, kind, gentle and supportive, indulged Paul's early passion for the outdoors, fired by the Boy Scout movement in Macclesfield where he was introduced to hill walking and rock climbing at the age of twelve. From this introduction he never looked back, making frequent forays beyond the Peak District, where he did his first climbs to the Lake District and Wales.
In the formative years of his climbing, Paul and his friends were already showing signs of burgeoning talent. Their solo ascents of routes on The Roaches and Hen Cloud were viewed as foolhardy in the extreme by the older generation of climbers. In the 1950s the foremost club of the day was the Rock and Ice, with Joe Brown and Don Whillans the leading lights. For years they had dominated the British climbing scene, providing a breakthrough in standards which was to become a bench-mark for others. In the late 1950s another club began to emerge which was to provide a leap forward in standards: the Alpha Club. One of its leading lights was a Manchester climber, Alan ('Richard') McHardy. Through Richard, Paul joined the Alpha Club and so began new partnerships and friendships which endured the changes and ravages of time. The Alpha Club was a loose-knit organisation with no particular geographic base, its only rule 'if you ask to join, you can't'. Entry was by invitation only, and the membership list of its early days reads like a Who's Who of climbing in the 1960s. The Alpha Club's philosophy was, to say the least, iconoclastic, mocking, self-critical and of living life in the fast lane. To experience the full weight of them on some weekend crag was chastening, deflating of egos, but above all inspiring, which might seem curious to the outsider; it provided the spur, you climbed harder and harder, you improved in standard almost overnight, or slipped into climbing obscurity. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Paul and other members of the Alpha Club produced a string of hard routes in the Peak District and beyond.
As a climber Paul was influenced at an early stage by Tom Patey, and he became the supreme opportunist, grabbing routes in the most unlikely circumstances; his new routes ranged from Cheddar to Cape Wrath with lots in between. He could be extremely devious - sometimes hedging so many bets for a weekend's climbing that he would succeed in outwitting himself. But his loyalty, kindness and friendship were absolutely unswerving, and he worked hard to maintain long-standing climbing partners up and down the country. In the last year, I have had more cause than most to value his care and concern as he single-handedly pulled, pushed and exhorted me down miles of frozen Scottish hillside with a broken leg, delivering me safely in the wee small hours to Fort William hospital.
It was Patey who, in a way, provided Paul with a spiritual home: the remote vastness of the NW Highlands of Scotland. Paul and Tom were both restless spirits, feverish almost in their pursuit of new challenges. They were not disappointed; the traditional cliffs provided endless new challenges all taken and accomplished. The NW Highlands, however, became a spiritual retreat for Paul and friends during the Whitsun holiday; he almost turned it into his particular fiefdom.
During the 1960s Paul never missed a season in the Alps, his ascents too numerous to mention here, and quickly established a reputation as a mountaineer. In the 1970s he was invited to join a succession of international expeditions: to the Caucasus in 1970 with Hamish MacInnes and Chris Woodhall, when they established a new route on the N face of Pik Schurovsky; and to Baffin Island in 1972 with 'Tut' Braithwaite, Dennis Hennek and Doug Scott, again establishing a new route, this time on the East Pillar of Mount Asgard. He returned to Russia in 1974 with Doug Scott, 'Tut', Clive Rowlands and Guy Lee.
Paul was of course a superb all-round mountaineer; like so many big men, he was beautifully neat and precise on rock, his technique honed by years of gritstone and limestone pioneering. Off the rock he was spectacularly clumsy, with a list of impressive breakages to his name. The sight of him leaving a tent, absentmindedly tucking the flysheet into his trousers and blundering across the campsite towing the tent behind him ranks with the occasion when he managed to drop an entire Chinese meal onto a moving record turntable. And the Great Bristol Sculpture Disaster is best left to the imagination.
Paul's life had many interconnecting strands, but running through everything was his devotion to his wife Hilary and two daughters Louise and Rachel. The rediscovery of his own Irish roots and the tracing of his family gave him great joy. It was also typical of Paul that his gregariousness should have been rewarded in his forties by a completely new set of relatives! Visits to Ireland became increasingly frequent, though it is with a pang of regret that I now realise that our Irish climbing holiday will never happen. But the Karakoram remained, to the end, his first love. He must have worn his own path to and from the Latok peaks, which exerted a fascination for him despite (or perhaps because of) the death of close friends Don Morrison and Pat Fearnehough on early explorations.
There was a marked contrast in Paul when he was on an expedition. His extrovert restless dynamism would be quickly replaced by a quiet reflective single-mindedness as life became simple for two months of the year. He was the most wonderfully tolerant companion to share a tent with, and over the years we made hours and hours of long rambling conversation, about anything and everything. His wily, shrewd judgements made him the safest of climbers, possibly even depriving him of success on some expeditions, though in the last few years he had redressed the balance with some fine first ascents. Last year, his expedition with Chris Bonington and Harish Kapadia, making the first ascent of Rangrik Rang, and, shortly afterwards, the third ascent of Manirang, was probably his most fulfilling trip, and one I am proud to have accompanied him on. And, of course, on Haramosh II he was also successful before the final curtain so quickly and cruelly descended.
There is no easy way to say goodbye to Paul, no brave words to hide the loss. I will always miss him. I will always remember him. So, thank God, will many others. Sharing the memories is the only comfort we can offer each other, and Paul Nunn, climber, writer, lecturer and friend provided a superabundance of these.
Jim Curran

Doug Scott writes:
Paul Nunn was at the centre of British climbing, its affairs and development. He was involved in every aspect: its literature, guidebooks and social life. He was a great yeoman of the climbing world and its servant. At the time of his death he held a leading post in the sport, as President of the BMC.
He pioneered an enormous number of new routes on Derbyshire limestone with members of the Alpha Club, in Borrowdale with Paul Ross, and in the NW Highlands, making the first ascent of the Old Man of Stoer in 1966 with Tom Patey, Brian Robertson and Brian Henderson; and the first ascent of Eastern Stack at Whiten Head with Patey, Brian Fuller, David Goodwin and Clive Rowlands. It was here, on the descent, that Patey died. Patey was Nunn's mentor - as he was for so many other climbers and imbued him with a love for the NW Highlands. Nunn established scores of new routes, such as Megaton on Skye with Paul Braithwaite and Martin Boysen, Pilastre, again with Boysen in 1973, on Foinaven; and Emerald Gully on Beinn Dearg with Fuller and Tony Riley.
In the Alps and/or the Dolomites, Nunn climbed many of the classic hard routes. In 1959 he climbed the Cassin route on the Cima Ovest in 4 1/2 hours and in 1963 made the first British ascent of the Phillip-Flamm route on the Civetta with Boysen, then considered the hardest rock climb in the high mountains of Europe. Four pitches from the top Paul was hit by a large rock which broke his leg. With Boysen's help and by using slings to take the weight off his injured leg, Paul made it to the top for a bivouac and descent next day with assistance from other British climbers in the area.
In 1970 Nunn and Chris Woodhall joined Hamish MacInnes in the Caucasus. MacInnes led them up a steep new route on the N face of Pik Schurovsky. This was the first time MacInnes's great invention, the terrordactyl ice axe, was used on a high mountain route. They achieved a very fast time to the astonishment of Russian friends in the area. On the descent, Nunn suffered from a combination of asthma and the altitude, problems that were to dog him intermittently on the highest mountains.
In 1972 he joined Paul Braithwaite, Dennis Hennek and myself to makea new 4000ft rock climb on the East Pillar of Asgard up on the Arctic Circle in Baffin Island. In 1974 he was back in Russia with Clive Rowlands, Guy Lee, Paul Braithwaite and myself for a new route on Pik Lenin. At about 6500m Nunn had to descend with altitude sickness. In every other way Paul Nunn was the ideal expedition climber. He was not given to homesickness, he was always supportive of other members of the group and was a craftsman where technical climbing was concerned. Undeterred by his problems with altitude, he simply threw himself into expeditions to lower peaks, principally in the Karakoram. He returned to Pakistan or India almost every year, with the occasional visit to Nepal.
But this list of his climbs outlined - and those not - hardly does justice to Paul Nunn's contribution to world climbing. He sat on many important committees at the Alpine Club, the Mount Everest Foundation and the British Mountaineering Council. In the 1960s he was instrumental, along with Nat Allen and Dave Gregory, in reviving the BMC's commitment to producing climbing guides to the Peak District. He contributed to all the main magazines and international Alpine journals. In particular, his book reviews were always refreshing to read. He was a leading contributor to the influential Mountain magazine from its inception. His balanced views helped the founding editor to raise the standards of mountain journalism to new heights. It is well worth reading his essays as collected in At the Sharp End, published in 1988. Paul Nunn was also a formidable economic historian. He was an expert on the management of eighteenth century estates and did his doctorate in this field. He contributed to the prestigious publication Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire (1976). Through original research he was able to solve the mystery of where capital originated to finance the Industrial Revolution. Together with John Salt, he developed an independent history degree course at the Sheffield Polytechnic, a very lively course specialising in regional history.
Paul Nunn had time for people and he really cared for those down on their luck. He made time to visit me in hospital recovering from broken legs after the Ogre climb and while languishing in a Nottingham isolation hospital with a mystery disease in 1980.
Just before setting off for Haromosh II he found time to write a warm and sympathetic letter on the death of my father. He was generous with his time, never had a bad word for anyone, was always positive and, most of all, kind.
It was these qualities that encouraged the climbing fraternity to vote him in as President of the British Mountaineering Council. He had half completed his term of office but had already made his mark, making the BMC a much friendlier organisation than formerly.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 101. Nr. 291, 1996, Seite 325-329


Geboren am:
1943
Gestorben am:
1995