(by Joss Lynam, from IMC Newsletter Autumn 2004)
An obituary.

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A civil engineer by profession, Seán went to work in England for some years after the War, but returned to Ireland in 1950. Already a practised hill-walker, one of his first acts was to join the IMC. In the Club he met Sheila Gorevan, a member since 1949, and they married in 1953. He was active in the Club for some years, maintained his membership, with a gap in the early sixties, up to 1979 and continued to walk the hills with family and friends. Our older members who frequented Roundstone will recollect the de Courcy family annual summer stay in "the Nissen Huts".

He was decidedly not a rock-climber, as his poem The Ascent of Gashed Crag in IMCJ 1952 (reprinted in the Golden Jubilee issue) graphically illustrates. He made a couple of the other amusing and satirical contributions to IMCJ, the most notable being The Seven Hundred Foot Vertical Crack.

He had an interest in the history of our mountains, and the lecture he gave to the IMC in 1952 on Mountains depicted on Irish maps before 1700 is reprinted in Vol 2 of the Irish Mountaineering and Exploration Society’s Journal.

He became a lecturer in Structural Engineering in UCD in 1964 and remained there until he retired in 1988, with the title of Professor Emeritus. After retirement he remained active in engineering matters and gained an international reputation. He had many peripheral interests (he is widely-known for his book The Liffey in Dublin) and to all of them he gave the full attention of his fine intelligence, as his writings in our field testify.

(by Joss Lynam, from IMC Newsletter Autumn 2004)
An obituary of the founder of the IMC.

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Bill Perrott died recently at the age of 78. His name may be unfamiliar to many IMC members since he emigrated to Canada in 1957, but we all have to be grateful to him for his work in the years before he emigrated. He was a leading member of a small group of friends in their late teens and early twenties who in 1942 formed themselves into the Irish Mountaineering Club. They climbed in Dalkey Quarry, at Bray Head and on Ireland’s Eye, but the Club died in 1943 as the members left Dublin. Bill, with J R Greening produced a short guide to their routes – hand-written with carbon copies! I have the IMC membership card that he gave me when we first met in the Indian Army in 1946. In 1948, when I came to TCD, I helped him re-found the Irish Mountaineering Club, as the first mountaineering club in Ireland with open membership. From a letter to the papers and a meeting of some sixty enthusiasts in the Central Hotel in December 1948 grew climbing and hill-walking as the vibrant and popular sport we know now. Until I emigrated in late 1951, I worked very closely with him (I was Secretary after him, and unlike him, had Alpine experience), but it was Bill who had the dream of an Irish Mountaineering Club.

Bill was Secretary of the IMC for the first year, which included hill-walking and rock-climbing Meets, an Alpine Meet and a big increase in membership. He continued to be an active member of the Committee for some years thereafter. Most of the members had little experience of hill-walking, let alone rock-climbing so organising Meets led by the few experienced members was very important. His wife Stella was also a climber and walker (she was on the first ascent of South East Ridge on Ireland’s Eye) and did not grudge the time he spent on Club affairs, though after the birth of their second child in 1951, family affairs took up more of his time.

He was one of the few members who had any experience in rock-climbing, though he did not claim to be a tiger. Before 1942 he had lived for some time in the English Lake District and climbed in that Mecca of rock-climbing (this is why many of the 1942 climbs in Dalkey are named after Lake District routes). It is proof of his use of this experience that within a couple of years the Club had a group of new climbers (Frank Winder and Peter Kenny to name only the most notable) making new routes of high standard and quality. He edited three rock-climbing guides, Dalkey Quarry with the writer in 1949 and two more on his own, Ireland’s Eye and Luggala in 1950. His name can be found on the First Ascent list of all these crags, and also on Bray Head. Fifth Avenue and Paradise Lost are amongst those that will always remain classics. He was always searching for new cliffs, and I vividly remember him stopping his rather battered old car on the road at the gate to Luggala Lodge, and pointing out the then untouched crag above Lough Tay. I got the message.

In 1957 he was forced, like so many others, to emigrate because of lack of job opportunities. With his family he settled in Calgary in Canada and remained there until his death. He was active in the Canadian Rockies during most of his time in Calgary and introduced his three children to mountaineering and camping. His son Ray writes that Bill disliked the loose sedimentary rocks of the Rockies and yearned for Wicklow granite. He was always interested in the activities of the IMC and read the Journal and Newsletter avidly. In the nineties his health deteriorated and he was frequently hospitalised with stomach problems. His last visit to Ireland was for the IMC Golden Jubilee (1998). Even then, though he concealed it well, he was often in pain, and this got worse over the next few years culminating in some months of misery before he died.

Anyone who knew him then will remember not just his climbing and the founding of the IMC, but his enthusiasm, good nature and wonderful smile.

Note: Barry O’Flynn has made reprints of the four guidebooks Bill edited and these are available in the Club Library

(by Bill Hannon, from IMC Newsletter Winter 2003)
An obituary of Ivan Rowe.

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It was with great sadness that many of the older members of the Irish Mountaineering Club heard of Ivan Rowe’s death.

Ivan’s grandparents emigrated from Russia, and Ivan was born into, and grew up in the close-knit Jewish community in East London. After national service he studied Forestry in Bangor and went to Scotland to gain practical experience. There he became interested in mountaineering and was introduced to rock climbing.

Back in London he climbed at weekends at Harrison’s Rock where he first encountered Irish “emigrant rock climbers”. When he met Jill they travelled frequently to North Wales where his path crossed that of the Irish Mountaineering Club. So when, in 1959, he came to Ireland to work he naturally joined the club.

Ivan and Jill became familiar figures at I.M.C. meets all over the country, returning with the club to meets in Wales, the Lakes, and Scotland. In later years he was one of the group who climbed on Sunday morning in the Quarry. During the sixties and seventies he sailed regularly with fellow I.M.C. members at Blessington Lakes. He also became an enthusiastic skier visiting many alpine ranges.

Fate dealt Ivan a cruel blow when he suffered a severe stroke eight years ago. Despite the devoted care of Jill, and his daughters, Rebecca and Laura, his life was much curtailed. However, he maintained his friendship with many in the I.M.C. and remained closely involved with his firm, BIRO in Ringsend, until he died.

Ivan’s pride and interest in the culture and traditions of his Jewish heritage deepened with the years.

His death has left a large gap in many lives, but his life has left us with many happy memories and we’ll miss his benign and tolerant presence.

(by Joss Lynam, from IMC Newsletter Autumn 2003)
Obituary of J.G.G. (Gwynn) Stephenson, 1922-2003, IMC member intermittently 1949-67.

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I first met him in Arolla. I was leading the 1951 IMC Alpine Meet based there and he strode up the path from Les Haudères looking, (as I wrote in my diary) the picture of an English gentleman climber so that one looked, but in vain, for the unobtrusive “AC” badge.

I was glad to see him – I needed another experienced climber and over the next two weeks grew to appreciate both his skills and his forthright manner. We clicked at once – we both enjoyed argument and it was the beginning of a long, very close friendship. He was then teaching at Sherborne, an English public school in Dorset and later he used to use our house in the Lake District (where I was working in the 50s) as a staging post when he took boys from the school climbing in Scotland.

In 1952 Nora, Gwynn and I went to the Oberland. We had a good trip, climbing the classics, including the Wetterhorn and the Finsteraarhorn. But what we remember most clearly is a bit of typical Gwynn; Nora and I were using new-fangled (!) vibrams with crampons and had to wait, not always patiently, while Gwynn, in tricounis, cut his way stubbornly up the slopes. That year we began to notice his bad eyesight – one eye was gone and the other just beginning to fail. (IMCJ, Winter 1952).

It was only Gwynn and myself in 1953; Nora sprained her ankle just two days before we left. We revisited Arolla and worked our way west to finish up Mont Blanc by the rarely-climbed Rochers de Mont Blanc route on the Italian side.

In 1955 Gwynn and I were in Zermatt in mixed weather with lots of snow. However we managed our best season ever, including the Matterhorn, Weisshorn and, best of all, the Rothorngrat of the Zinal Rothorn, an epic on snow-covered rock when wiser parties turned back. (IMCJ 1955-56)

1957 was Zermatt again, with Gwynn and two friends. There was a somewhat epic traverse of the Täschhorn, and an “interesting” traverse of the Nadelhorn group. However, our main objective, the Weisshorn traverse, was frustrated by bad weather. His article on the Nadelhorn climb in IMCJ 1956-57 was typical – mixing sarcasm, praise and enjoyment.

In July-August 1958 with two friends, David and John, we went to Spiti in the Indian Himalaya. It was a wonderful trip, exploring and mapping as well as peak-bagging. The climax was crossing two unmapped glacier passes and two unknown valleys from the Spiti Valley to the Bara Shigri glacier in Lahul. The crossing was only possible because Gwynn self-sacrificingly went round the long way with the heavy baggage to meet us (IM 1958). It was typical of his generosity. We completed the trip by driving back to England. This was an epic for sure, we were broken down for four days in the desert in Iran! We’d had a training climb in Scotland in the Spring, which ended with the four of us and two Sherbourne boys falling 100m down the big gully on Bidean nam Bian, finishing in a heap of bodies, axes and crampons. Total damage one broken thumb!

In 1961, while working in India, I joined Gwynn and two others in the Bara Shigri again. This time climbing was the main objective and we made the first ascent of the highest peak at the head of the valley, Shigri Parbat (21,800 ft.).(IM 1962). Gwynn crossed a col to the head of the Khamengar valley, nearly to the point reached from the other side by Paddy O’Leary and Co almost forty years later.

In 1962 Gwynn, David and I (I was on leave from India) climbed in the Bernina-Bregaglia. The highlight was the Biancograt of the Piz Bernina, just escaping a storm which hit us when we were barely past the difficulties.

That was the last of our big climbs together. Looking for more challenge than an English public school could offer he went to teach in Kenya. On his holidays, using a jeep he covered most of East and South Africa. He said once that the African years were the best years of his life. My sister was working in Uganda, and we met Gwynn when we joined her in Kenya for a family holiday in 1972. We went to Mount Kenya to climb. Gwynn led my son Nick up Pic Lenana, while the A-team for Mount Kenya itself, Ruth and myself, groaned with altitude sickness in the hut and had to stagger down to a lower altitude. Gwynn was already packing to leave for his next challenge – a Comprehensive School in London’s East End. We wondered how he’d get on with his English upper class accent. We needn’t have worried; what came across to the pupils was his great feeling for young people and he was a great success. After retirement he settled there, perhaps the only white face in his street of terrace houses.

His blindness was worsening, but it never stopped him travelling; the scrawled postcards came from five continents. He came to Ireland quite often, to see his family here (his sister Euphan was an early IMC member) and we mostly got on the hills together. The photograph shows him on a typical day on Djouce. He always stood us a restaurant dinner when he came over, where we always argued joyfully and loudly about anything and everything – somewhat to the embarrassment of the rest of the party.

“Registered blind”, he still walked, sometimes alone in nearby Epping Forest. Nora and I joined him there one day, and he directed us through the forest, with complete confidence, though where at one place he directed us to turn left and Nora protested it was a wall of brambles, he said “oh, I just push through them!”. When he came to Dublin it became increasingly difficult to find hill walks to suit him in Wicklow – they had to be hill walks. There were more phone calls from London – “time I phoned you for an argument”.

Then eighteen months ago he had a stroke, became totally blind and diabetic and confessed to having cancer. He fought on and persuaded the social services to let him stay at home. We saw him last April, weak and in pain, but still reminding me of all my sins in our climbing days together. Over a takeaway from his favourite curry house at the end of the road we had a great evening of chat. He died five days later – a release.

He often climbed in Scotland, but I only remember three climbs with him there. About 1954 a joyous ascent of January Jigsaw on Rannoch Wall, in 1958 the aforementioned catastrophe on Bidean and in 1978 a traverse of Aonach Eagach with him and Liam Convery. He climbed surely and quickly along the ridge, but as soon as he started the descent he became painfully slow – the sloping ground that bit further distant a blur to his failing sight.

He climbed at least once in Norway – Ronnie Wathen describes climbing with Gwynn in Lyngen in IMCJ 1955-56.

His name is in the Dalkey guide – he made the first ascent of Charleston with the late Charlie McCormack in 1958.

As he requested, his ashes were scattered from the top of the Great Sugarloaf on 27th September.

Re-reading what I have written, perhaps Gwynn comes across as opinionated and obstinate; but his purpose – good-tempered but with wicked grin – was to rouse you to counter attack. In her funeral oration, his great-niece Beatty summed him up perfectly – irrepressible, impossible, irreplaceable.

For Nora, Ruth, Clodagh and I he is … irreplaceable.