John,

Thanks for the link but the image has been in the LAShTAL.COM galleries since May 2009, having been uploaded by member 666TSAEB: http://www.lashtal.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-2181

It's been viewed more than 450 times, presumably on at least one of those occasions by the 'Crowleysite' people's source!

Our public library had the book in which that photo can be found, it was a slim black hardcover. I think this is part of it here:

http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/smcj/smcj017/smcj01707.htm

The figure on the right, looks like Crowley from around the 1940's. Quite curious.

Michael, which picture do your refer to above?

Using the search pane here for "Crowley" surfaces some interesting citations for specific pieces of information regarding the climbing excursions:

http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/smcj/index.html

I thought it might already have been posted on this site, but it was new to me so I thought people might like to see it. Sorry if it's old news. What's interesting about the picture from a climber’s perspective is that one of the figures appears to be carrying a staff of some kind. I suspect that its most likely use would be as an anchor to abseil off. Chalk climbing is not practised much these days so the tewchniques have passed into history.

John
http://thebeastreturns.com/

Please don't apologise! Crowley's mountaineering adventures are under-represented on this site and I was very pleased to see someone expressing an interest in something other than the usual magick-tarot-QBL nexus…

That is a shocking profile pic Mr lashtal.

That's Halloween and an iPhone app. Normal service will be resumed. In due course.

I think Crowley get's nothing like the recognition he should get for his mountaineering achievements. I’m performing as an after dinner speaker for the Scottish Mountaineering Club at their annual dinner in December in character as Crowley. Much of what I do is light hearted but I do describe his climbing career accurately and many people are surprised by his contribution and, I hope, inspired to find out more about him.

I also concur, AC did not get the overall kudos he deserved for pioneering some early routes in the alps, etc., with super primitive gear.  I've been climbing myself for close to 30 years now and I know first hand what he was up against using heavy, bulky, dubious equipment.  It's not fun, not to mention pretty scary.  But let me say, in re, climbing chalk, the old Crow had to be off his rocker.  I've climbed my share of loose stuff in the high-country and it can be fairly horrifying.  So to go and seek out something as friable as magnesium carbonate and climb it by punching and kicking holes in it is pretty nutso (however, some folks have tackled the suspect medium in recent years ala dry-ice using crampons and ice-axes with some success)

Btw, Crowley did his best to cover-up one of his most embarrassing moments in climbing when he got stuck half-way up the chalk on Beachy Head, couldn't ascend any further or down-climb so he and his partner hung out and shouted till the coast guard showed up and hauled his sorry ass of the crag (btw, it is documented in several sources for rescue and accidents in British Mountaineering)  http://www.riverocean.org.uk/ocean/webwalks/Beachy%20Head.html.  So, as ballsy and as good as he was, he was concomitantly foolhardy on more than one occasion.  Just plain lucky he didn't get himself killed but that was the old days of climbing.  You just stared at stuff from the bottom and if it looked interesting you took a stab at it.  Very few guide books, etc., to go by.  So to be fair to Crowley when it came to climbing chalk I'm sure he took the attitude that most of his contemporaries took when broaching the unknown: what do mean it can't be done?!

Thank you for the interesting post, Robert. I believe your last sentence sums up the spirit of magick quite nicely: "What do you mean it can't be done?"
On a side note, there may be a deeper relationship between mountain climbing and the occult. After all, Julius Evola is also said to have done his fair share of climbing, and he wrote the lovely little book "Meditations on the Peaks".

Markus

My bad, Calcium Carbonate, not magnesium carbonate as I stated above, which is what first comes to mind when  I mention chalk as that's the composition of the stuff most of us use to keep our hands dry with when climbing rock. 

You are welcome Markus.    I am familiar with Evola's book, quite a good one, and there are many books from the turn of the century that deal with the mystical aspects of the mountains and climbing.  It is fairly interesting to look at the evolution of the attitude towards mountaineering.  From the Romantics, Shelley,et al. who looked at the mountains as a sacred temple of nature of sorts.  Then during the Edwardian period, Crowley's day, climbing was considered foolhardy and tempting fate: that is within the popular press but the Romantic attitude obviously still lingered.  And now today, unfortunately, climbing has entered the realm of extreme sports, and is looked upon as a purely a physical challenge for the most part.  I find it a bit saddening, when I talk to young climbers these days where the propensity is to line up climbs according to the level of difficulty, and not their beauty or their sublime characteristics, for instance.  Climbing nowadays in its popular mode is largely an athletic endeavor, the sacred and rarified space of it being all but forgotten but to a limited group. 

Robert, 93!

I wouldn't call the publication of this story (minus the shouting) in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal Volume 3 Number 5 a "cover-up", in fact it seems he admitted the whole thing openly then, though not later in his Confessions.

see: http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/smcj/smcj017/smcj01707.htm

On the other hand I would be highly interested in these sources for rescue and accidents. Do you happen to have any copies or scans you would like to share?

Thanks in advance and welcome to Lashtal
Love=Law
Lutz

Oh boy, it's going to take some digging.  It's easy in the US as there's a journal,  Accidents in North American Mountaineering where it's all fastidiously documented.  I'm going to have to email a few people I've climbed with who are in the UK that are up on this.  Right off hand I'm at a loss so let me see what responses I am able to get. 

I think it would be pretty difficult to get anything on an incident like this so long ago. i don't think having to get help like this reflects badly on Crowley at all afterall he was pioneering at a time when the difficulty, or even feasablity, of many routes was unknown.  I'll ask the SMC if they have anything but I doubt it.