Cameron Una May

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Biografie:
Großbritannien

Una May Cameron 1904-1987
In the summer of 1914 Una Cameron, with her mother and twin sister Bertha, were caught in Switzerland by the outbreak of war. They stayed on for two years in Montreux, where the girls went to school; and during holidays in the mountains (as her uninfected twin recalls) “the climbing bug got Una! and it never left her.”
Una was born at West Linton in Peebles-shire in 1904; she was Scottish in family, Scottish in speech, and firmly Scottish in drink - the family fortune was based on whisky, as she liked to tell her friends. From school in Switzerland she went to Cheltenham Ladies' College, then on to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. There she specialized in woodcuts, and she pursued this line further at art school in Rome, where she met Hazel Jackson, an American sculptor whose enthusiasm for climbing matched her own. Una had climbed a bit in her school and college days, but with this congenial spirit it became a real dedication. With Hazel she joined CAI expeditions to the Julian Alps and the Dolomites, and spent several seasons in the Western Alps. Her application to join the Ladies' Alpine Club in 1929 had a strong list of classic climbs, which included the Dent Blanche by the Viereselgrat, the traverse of the Matterhorn by the Zmutt and Italian ridges, the Via Miriam on the Torre Grande, the Via Dimai on the Punta Fiammes, the Guglia de Amicis.
In the Dolomites she climbed with local guides; from about 1930 she climbed almost exclusively with the Courmayeur guides Edouard Bareux and Elisee Croux (affectionately referred to as The Monster) - always regarded as friends and partners rather than employees. Courmayeur became her mountain headquarters, and the south side of Mont Blanc her climbing-ground. I don't think her record on the mountain has been equalled by any Briton. Between 1933 and 1939 she had traversed ir in most of the possible ways: from the Col du Geant over Mont Maudit and down to the Dome hut; from the Brenva Ridge and down to the Grands Mulets; from the Peuterey Ridge (two bivouacs) down to the Dome hut - then up to the top again via the Quintino Sella hut; tip the Innominata and down by the Aiguilles Grises; up the Brouillard and down by Tete Rousse; up the Rochers and down to the Col du Geant. She climbed two of the routes pioneered by Graham Brown and F S Smythe - the Red Sentinel in 1935, the Route Major in 1938 with descent by the Bionnassay Ridge! On the S-face, too, there were ascents of the Dames Anglaises, and a traverse of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey, with a first descent to the Brenva glacier in storm when they had to bivouac twice, and Una popped her drawing-book inside her trousers to make a seat at night. These separate ascents culminated in the climb of the whole Peuterey Ridge of 1935, when Una, Edouard and Elisee were accompanied by Dora de Beer and her guides. Dora, whose experience had been mainly in New Zealand, had been led by Una to believe that 'it was just one of the usual routes', and till it was over had no idea that they were the first women to go up it.
With Edouard and Elisee, Una went far afield. In 1932 it was the Caucasus, with Hazel Jackson joining them: in spite of rotten rock - 'a sinister mixture of stone books and suitcases that rattle down just as you are about to put a finger on it' - they climbed seven peaks in the Kasbek area ('as far as can be ascertained all first ascents') in the six fine days they snatched from a rainy season. In spring 1933 it was ski-touring in the Canadian Rockies round the Yoho Valley and Lake Louise. In 1938 it was East Africa, with ascents of Mt Speke and Mt Baker in the Ruwenzori, Kilimanjaro ('dull') and, not at all dull, Mt Kenya. From Nelion they traversed to Batian, where Una was the first woman, and where Edouard and Elisee were following those earlier Courmayeur guides, Brocherel and Oilier, who had made the first ascent with Halford Mackinder in 1899.
Once Courmayeur had become Una's alpine base she decided to build her own home there, above La Palud, near the old mule-track to the Mont Frety; later, the teleferique to the Col du Geant passed right above it. It was a solid stone house with marvellous views that exactly suited the character of its owner; she created an alpine garden, bringing back plants from as far as the Ruwenzori; the garage at the foot of the steep path housed her succession of fast
Italian cars.
During the war Una served first in the fire Service in London, then with the FANYs, mainly in Scotland with Polish troops, and for some months in 1945 in liberated Singapore. In 1946 she returned to Courmayeur and a heartwarming welcome from the friends who had made it their business to keep German soldiers away from the Villa Cameron. The garage had gone - but in an avalanche! - and 'my home with its red-leather chairs and books, even clothes and some bottles of fiery liquor, were all as I had left them and the house a great deal cleaner than if the owner had been in residence for seven years'.
After the war Una would speak cheerfully of 'getting into training for the Pear', the climb which would have completed Graham Brown's triptych on the Brenva Face - but the days of her great exploits were over; she had put on weight, she didn't want to be a liability to others. This was to the advantage of her friends, who were more likely now to find her in when they passed by the Villa Cameron. She would regale them with Italian food and Scotch drink ('fire-water'), invite them to camp in her basement, bathe in her swimmingpool. She would help with their plans, calling in Edouard (who became something of a majordomo to her establishment) to advise on a route or a guide, or where a large party with teenagers could be most cheaply accommodated at La Palud.
When the LAC was coming up to its Jubilee in 1957, there was no question who should be President. Una had the presence, and a climbing record known far beyond the Club; she had edited the Journal and cheered it up no end with her woodcuts, which also adorned the menus at Club dinners. The LAC meant a lot to her, and she never felt quite at home after the merger with the Alpine Club, and seldom came to meetings. She now travelled rather than climbed; she walked in Nepal and Borneo (though there she did go up Mt Kinabalu), she visited Mexico, the Galapagos Islands, China, Angkor Wat. Her horizons narrowed as her health declined; her last years in a nursing home were cheered by a smuggled kitten - cats had always played a large part in her life. She died on 15 October 1987.
Una Cameron was a great character, though not always an easy one, for she had strong prejudices which she didn't bother to hide. She had a large body - 'I felt it handy to be heavy' she wrote, after a storm had nearly blown her parry off the Brouillard Ridge - and great stamina. She stood out in any company elle porte le pantalon et elle fume la pipe, a Courmayeur man described her to me in 1934, when trousers on women were not so common off the mountain, and before her pipe gave way to villainous-smelling cigars. She belonged to Courmayeur in the way passing climbers couldn't. She was fluent in French and Italian, the two languages of the Val d'Aosta; she supported the local Waldensian church (as she supported St Calumba's Kirk in London); she knew everybody and everybody knew her. But that was in the days before the new roads, new hotels, the Mont Blanc tunnel and the huge extension of skiing- and before the death of Edouard. When she had to give up the Villa Camerorr; it was no longer the wrench it would once have been.
Una was able to climb in a style that must amaze today's young climber, with limited means and limited holidays - able to transport her guides overseas, to build her Alpine home. She was privileged, and she knew it - but what matters is the enterprising use she made of her money and leisure, and the way she shared with others the pleasures they made possible. She made many first ascents, and many more firsts by a woman. But though she was pleased by such successes, they were not what she chiefly climbed for. After the 1935 season she wrote in her diary: 'First the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey and then Mont Blanc several times, in fact employment that I would not swop for entertainment by archangels, with the Heavenly choir in the offing.'
Janet Adam Smith (Janet Carleton)
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 93, 1988-89, Seite 323-326


Geboren am:
1904
Gestorben am:
15.10.1987

Erste Route-Begehung