UKH

I was inspired by the sad news about Jimmy Marshall to ask if anyone here had any memories of my dad’s brother Andy Wightman?

As far as I know he climbed quite a bit with Marshall including the fa of Sidewinder on Nevis but unfortunately like so many of his students he was outlived by the master and died about twenty years ago. 

I didn’t get into climbing until I inherited his library so I don’t really know what he did apart from a few things… 

There was an epic with Dougal Haston on the Eiger which features in the Haston biography and he seconded Robin Smith on the fa of Boggle. 
I just learned from an EUMC link on the Marshall thread he did the first ascent of one of the pitches on the 1000ft girdle traverse of Aonach Dubh. Not a route you hear much about!

Anyway, I might have left this a few decades too late, but you never know who’s reading!

You should ask Robin Campbell. He and his friends would have memories of him I'm sure.

Thank you.  He was great friends with Robin and I did actually ask him about ten years ago. He was going to look in the smc archives but I never heard back. Maybe it’s been long enough now for a gentle reminder!

I remembered another highlight - the second ascent of Zero Gully in the company of Smith and Haston which took place in the dark and is well written up somewhere. I think the piece is called Nightshift in Zero but I can’t remember where it appears and couldn’t find a mention of it online.  

'Mirrors in the Cliffs' - pages 51-54.

Remind Robin via archives@smc.org.uk and you should get some comeback.

Thank you! Don’t think I’ve got that book anymore but I was trying to remember, was the account written by Haston? Or someone else? I seem to remember they’re all referred to in the third person. 

Thanks for that info. I had imagined having to find him again through facebook, which wasn’t that tempting!

Written by Haston for the 1962 EUMC journal originally. 

Wightman was a relative novice at the time but could apparently hold his own with the other two forceful personalities:

"...the still lonely silence of glorious nature in all its twilit splendour was broken only by the sweet schoolboyish voice of Wightman uttering foul vicious oaths and tirades against the uncertainty of the origins of his partners on the rope"

!!

Night shift in Zero is also I think (mostly) reprinted in a chapter of the Robin Smith biography (High Endeavours)