Jenkins Frederick Llewellyn

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Biografie:
Frederick Llewellyn Jenkins 1914-1994
Fred Jenkins, who died in December 1994 aged 80, will particularly be remembered by the climbing fraternity for his institutional role as Honorary Padre to a host of mountaineering dinners. But as a member of the Alpine Club for half his life of four score years, Fred was first and foremost an alpinist who had climbed far and wide in unfamiliar places. And his was a disconcerting knack of trumping would-be claimants to priority.
Fred was born in 1914 at Aberdare, a scenic mining town deep-set amidst Glamorgan's uplands. This had also been the birthplace of General Bruce who led the 1922 and 1924 Everest expeditions. In his racy autobiography Himalayan Wanderer, Bruce recalled youthful excursions running around these homeland hills which were to impart 'a love and understanding of mountain country without my appreciating it at the time'. Close to the Brecon Beacons and within sight of Glamorgan's culminating scarp 'the World's Forehead', something of the genius of the place must also have touched the young Fred to sow the seed of his lifelong preoccupation with mountains.
After schooling in Aberdare, Fred graduated from St David's College, Lampeter, trained for Holy Orders at St Michael's, Llandaff and was ordained in 1938. For six years, from 1939 to 1945, he was curate of Bishop's Castle, Shropshire and it was to the village of Trefonen, set square on Offa's Dyke, that he and his wife Audrey eventually retired to spend his last years in sight of the Cambrian hills, with a panoramic view overlooking the Shropshire plain.
During the Second World War Fred combined pastoral duties with parttime service in the National Fire Service. But in 1945, aged 31, his career took an adventurous change of direction when he joined the army as a padre. In 1947 he qualified as a parachutist with the 6th Airborne Division and for the next 17 years travelled extensively on military service to Italy, Cyprus, Germany and India. It was during this period that Fred's mountaineering career burgeoned. He had already climbed in the Alps, Corsica, the Pyrenees and the Valais before a two-year posting to Trieste in 1952. From here, he systematically explored the local cliffs, combining rock climbing with numerous solo forays into the Carnic, Julian and Styrian Alps. Fred was developing a taste for mountain exploration in what were then little-known ranges such as the Turkish Ala Dag and Picos de Europa. He also became heavily involved with the Army Mountaineering Association, visiting Sikkim, Tibet and the Rockies; he took particular pride in his Deputy Leadership of the 1959 AMA/Pakistan expedition to Malubiting. Fred's interest in ski mountaineering was awakened with a solo ski ascent of the Cyprian Olympus in 1947 which was to preface a number of individualistic solo ski ascents. But his most fruitful mountaineering years on ski were with Jeremy Whitehead - a 16-year partnership which Jeremy affectionately recalls in his own tribute.
Fred was a committed climbing clubman and already a member of both the Fell & Rock and Association of British Members of the Swiss Alpine Club when elected to the Alpine Club in 1954. In 1976 he was elected to the Alpine Ski Club; from 1977 to 1989 he served as that Club's Honorary Secretary and in 1991 became an Honorary Member. The brevity of Fred's minutes were rivalled only by that of his pre-prandial graces.
lowe a personal debt to Fred, for it was he who introduced me to climbing. In March 1954 he was the Guards Training Battalion's Padre at Pirbright when I was a 19-year-old Ensign. Discovering that Fred was something of a mountaineer, I enveigled him into taking me to the Cairngorms. I imagined that I was teaming up with Methuselah but Fred, at 40, was then at the height of his powers. During a week of seemingly interminable eight-mile marches in and out of invisible hills swept by unremitting blizzards and possessed by malign Old Grey Men, it was an educative introduction. Throughout the experience Fred was indefatigable and unflappable but invariably a kind, good humoured mentor embodying the wisdom of an Old Testament prophet without the homilies.
Fred's no-nonsense graces were a mirror of the man. Tough, stoical, commonsensical and tolerant, his religion was his staff but never a stave. He will leave behind a host of warm memories. We send our condolences to his family and his widow Audrey who was herself so courageous during his last months.
JGR Harding
Jeremy Whitehead writes:
Though I had encountered Fred Jenkins on various occasions, I did not get to know him well until 1960 when we met on a Ski Club of Great Britain tour of the Ötztal. During a week of memorable peak-bagging and ski-running he suggested that I should join the Alpine Club. Since that time, when he was chaplain of the Royal Masonic School, we skied and climbed together a great deal till he was forced to curtail these activities.
In 1970 Fred joined my guided ski tour in the Valais, and then between 1973 and 1983 he was a regular member of the ski tours that Jim Roche and I led for the SCGB. Thus we visited together most areas of the French Alps including three trips to the Dauphine, the traverses Nice-Briancon and Briancon-Tarentaise (conditions preventing the continuation to Chamonix) and traverses in the Vanoise and Maurienne. Though he was never a very good skier, it was a great comfort, in a party of skiers often with little knowledge of mountaineering, to have Fred's expertise available if needed. His good humour and fund of anecdotes were always much appreciated.
In 1978 the pair of us initiated the custom of a tour in the French Alps during the Christmas/New Year period, often preceded by a week's resort skiing. These tours could be mildly adventurous. Our first essay resulted in an impromptu bivouac in a happily-placed ex-customs hut in the Queyras, the result of my leading to the wrong col rather too late in the day. On another occasion, on Christmas Eve in the highest hut of the Beaufortain, an encounter with a large and hospitable French party led to our consuming almost all our provisions prematurely. In the next hut, Christmas dinner consisted of a packet of soup and some rice fortunately left by previous occupants. These trips continued after Fred's retirement, when he was the ideal person to take over as Secretary of the Alpine Ski Club. In company with a few other friends, we continued these Christmas tours until the last one in 1985.
In the summer of 1975 we climbed Pelvoux but failed on the Ailefroide in a memorable three-day excursion from La Berarde. In 1978 we were in the Oberland when a knife injury to my hand, incurred on the Wetterhorn, resulted in the doctor's order 'No climbing, only walking!'. We still managed to 'walk' up the Lauterbrunnen Breithorn and the Blümlisalphorn. Later, the stitches out, we made the traverse of Palü and a double traverse of the Bellavista on the same day. From 1981 no Alpine meet seemed complete without Fred's little green tent, with him sitting under his umbrella drinking tea (or wine) in the rain. In that year we climbed the Weissmies and Dom. The next year we left the Chamonix meet and moved south, traversing Mont Pourri by the N ridge, visiting the Aiguilles d'Arves, climbing Pic de l'Etendard in the Grandes Rousses and finally Monte Viso by the E ridge. This was Fred's last major summit. He was going very slowly but reached the top by 4.30pm, while we still had a clear view of the Pennine Alps - Mont Blanc to Monte Rosa - territory we both knew so well.
Fred continued to attend the AC Alpine meets until 1989, though he often prefened to remain in the valley. But in 1984 we did the splendid walk over the three summits of the Wildstrubel, from the Lämmeren to the Wildstrubel hut. In later years he experimented with Nordic skiing in Scotland, but decreasing mobility after a hip replacement prevented his visiting the mountains he loved so well.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 101. Nr. 291, 1996, Seite 316-318


Geboren am:
1914
Gestorben am:
12.1994