Essays from the Edge

Dennis Gray began climbing in 1947, aged eleven. By fifteen he had tested himself on Yorkshire’s gritstone outcrops, Skye, the Lake District, North Wales, Glen Coe and, in winter, Ben Nevis. After school he studied printing and ran a photogravure unit reproducing Old Master prints. During national service in Manchester in 1954 he joined the Rock and Ice Club, climbing with Joe Brown and Don Whillans. He first visited the Alps in 1955, climbing in the Dolomites and Alps with Brown, before making the first ascent of the Manikaran Spires in 1961. Throughout the 1960s he organised expeditions to the then-unclimbed Gauri Sankar (7,134 metres) and, in 1966, to Alpamayo (5,947 metres) in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca; the expedition film of which, The Magnificent Mountain, won best mountain film at Trento. He also climbed in Yosemite. He went on to study social psychology at Leeds and in 1968 led a successful expedition to Mukar Beh (6,069 metres) in Himachal Pradesh. After a short spell in Kenya he returned to Britain in 1970. Appointed the British Mountaineering Council’s first professional national officer in 1971 and its general secretary in 1974, he served for eighteen years. His first autobiography, Rope Boy, appeared in 1970. With his former wife he launched the Boxing Day Chevin Chase in 1979, a seven-mile race in Otley attracting over 1,500 runners. After leaving the BMC in 1989 he led climbs and treks in the Himalaya and Morocco, then returned to academia in China, lecturing at four universities. He completed three research projects at Oxford and later served a term as a Churchill Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. Mountain Lover, his second autobiography, was published in 1990, and later books included stories, a novel, essays and poems. In 1995, he cofounded the Leeds Wall, the UK’s second climbing centre. He has travelled to over sixty countries and remains in touch with friends worldwide.