Hogg William Neil McGarel

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Biografie:
William Neil McGarel Hogg 1910-1995
Neil Hogg, who died in 1995 aged 85, was a man of exceptional talents and an all-round alpinist who was largely responsible for the revival of British ski mountaineering after the Second World War.
Neil was born into a mountaineering family on 21 February 1910. His father, the first Lord Hailsham, was himself something of a mountaineer and it was he who, in 1921, introduced his two sons to the Alps while they were still barely into their 'teens. The London Polytechnic chalets near Lucerne were used as a base for walking and climbing and from then on, bitten by the climbing bug, both brothers embarked on a regular succession of Alpine seasons. Neil's elder brother Quintin - our Honorary Member Lord Hailsham - tended to favour the French-speaking Western Alps while Neil preferred German-speaking Switzerland. Neil was an asthmatic, which ultimately led to his being removed from Eton by his parents for health reasons. However, by the date of his election to the Alpine Club in 1934 at the age of 23, he had already completed ten mainly guideless Alpine seasons with an impressive tally of classic routes to his credit, ranging over the Oberland, Pennine Alps and Mont Blanc massif.
Neil was to spend the greater part of his working life as a diplomat. At Eton he had been a scholar, as was his brother Quintin, but he subsequently achieved the almost unique distinction of passing into the Diplomatic Service without attending a university. A consummately talented linguist, who spoke German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic fluently, for almost 30 years he pursued an eventful diplomatic career, with postings to Lisbon, Baghdad and Washington. He was also a gifted if self-effacing poet.
In the aftermath of his father's death in 1950 Neil retired from the Foreign Service. After an interlude in the West Indies he took over the management of the Hotel Seeburg, Lucerne, a former Jesuit convent which had been owned by the family for over a hundred years. Thereafter, the Hotel Seeburg became the centre of his domestic life - a hostelry of convivial and gastronomic excellence where Neil dispensed legendary hospitality.
It was at about this time that Neil reverted to his passion of early youth - ski mountaineering. The British had originally been at the forefront of Alpine ski mountaineering under the leadership of an outstanding exemplar, Arnold Lunn. But between the wars Lunn's vision - that this branch of the sport might provide a bridge between skiers and mountaineers ? had met with formidable opposition from the Alpine Club's establishment. Moreover, in the immediate post-war years, travel restrictions imposed by currency controls, together with a dearth of younger people with the requisite skills and experience, had brought British ski mountaineering to its nadir. In the early 1950s the Eagle Ski Club had considered closing and in 1958 the Alpine Ski Club's President reckoned that that Club had no active functions to perform.
This defeatist mood changed when, in 1958, the Chalet Herrenschaft at Grindelwald became the centre of Neil Hogg's ski mountaineering operations. Neil provided the impetus and leadership to galvanise British ski mountaineering into renewed activity. Following his appointment in 1960 as the Eagle Ski Club's Honorary Swiss Secretary, he introduced a systematic training programme under the aegis of such Swiss guides as the peerless Hermann Steuri; he also promoted a wider-based membership of the ESC and encouraged ambitious ski tours. In 1962, on the joint initiative of the ESC and the Ski Club of Great Britain, Neil organised the first post-war ESC high alpine ski mountaineering training meet at Koncordia, thereby establishing what was to become a key feature in the Club's training programme for aspirant ski mountaineers. The fruits of these initiatives were a number of ambitious, unguided Alpine tours such as the 1972 British Ski Traverse of the Alps, led by Alan Blackshaw, and a spate of ESC ski mountaineering expeditions to the Greater Ranges.
Although, in the words of his elder brother Quintin, Neil was 'the most talented man I knew', no one could have been a kinder or more considerate mentor, wholly sympathetic to novitiate failings - as I came to discover on my first ski mountaineering essay on his 1964 Oberland meet. An ebullient host, his was spontaneous generosity and I particularly treasure his gift of Christoffel's La Montagne dans La Peinture, which he presented to me at Grindelwald after a 1968 summer saga on the Schreckhorn with Nick Allen.
Imbued with the skills and confidence that derive from youthful experience, Neil became the embodiment of the Alpine sage with a prodigious knowledge of mountains and mountaineering. He was a member of the Alpine Club for 61 years and an Honorary Member of both the Alpine and Eagle Ski Clubs. Twenty-one years ago, on the occasion of the ESC's Golden Jubilee in 1975, he predicted a revival of ski mountaineering with an extension and coalescence of langlauf, nordic and alpine techniques and equipment. He believed that the future of British ski mountaineering was assured provided the climbing fraternity overcame the prejudice and ignorance against ski which had characterised the inter-war and immediate post-war years. His prophesies have largely been realized British ski mountaineering will always be indebted to Neil Hogg for his vision and determination in reviving the sport he loved so much and which he adorned and proselytised with such charm and style.
JGR Harding
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 101. Nr. 291, 1996, Seite 322-324


Geboren am:
21.02.1910
Gestorben am:
1995