Don Willans was by common consent one of the two or three finest mountaineers Britain has ever produced. He had a record on British rock and on Alpine and Himalayan mountains equal to that of any other climber in the history of the sport. The catalogue of his achievements ranges from short and brutally gymnastic problems on the gritstone outcrops of the Pennines which even at a distance of 30 years from their first ascents still command respect, through explorations on the great cliffs of Snowdonia, the Lake District and Scotland, to season after season in which he repeated, in fast time and good order, the major routes of the Alps. The climax of his career came in 1970, when, with Douglas Haston, he was successful on the epoch-making climb of Annapurna's South Face. All this is no more than the kind of career-outline to which any outstanding mountain-pioneer can lay claim. Amongst his peers, the fame of Don Whillans lies less in the bald list than in his bold concept of what was climable. Along with Joe Brown he was responsible for the leap in standards which put British climbing in the forefront of world mountaineering in the 1950s.
His climbing was done with panache and an unerring instinct for survival, and he kept it up until his early death, of a heart attack at the age of 52, in 1985.
- ISBN10 0340405368
- ISBN13 9780340405369
- Publish Date 31 December 1999
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 11 September 2004
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
- Imprint Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English