Europe, The Untrodden Route

Publication Year: 1949.

The Untrodden Route. The Alpine Club (London) has lost four members whose names are known to all lovers of mountain literature. H. E. G. Tyndale, whose last book, Mountain Paths, appeared only recently, died at Winchester on 3 August 1948, while the November issue of the Alpine Journal was being prepared for the press. He has been succeeded as Editor by Professor T. Graham Brown. On 22 November 1948 A. E. W. Mason died in London. Of his many works, A Romance of Wastdale (1895) and Running Water (1907) will be particularly remembered by those who climb. Also in London, on 13 December 1948, Michael Roberts succumbed to illness, at the age of 46. In his Poems (1936) one finds frequent reflections of his experience of mountaineering; one recalls, for example, "St. Gervais,” “Val d’Isère” and “Elegy for the Fallen Climbers.” Finally, as we go to press, we learn of the illness and death on 27 June 1949, just over a week before his 49th birthday, of Frank Smythe. So numerous were his climbs in the Alps, Himalaya and Rockies, and so well known are his records of them in words and in pictures, that we shall do no more than recall that our journal of January 1949 included reviews of three of his recent books, in addition to one of his memorable photographs as frontispiece.

Even the briefest chronicle of these losses, it must be added, brings to mind their magnitude.