Sleeman Cyril Montague

(Bearbeiten)

Biografie:
Cyril Montague Sleeman (1883-1971)
Sleeman was elected to the Alpine Club in 1922. Before the First World War he had done a small number of expeditions abroad, and after it, he completed his qualification by three extensive seasons in the Alps, mostly climbing guideless with J. A. H. Bell and W. T. Elmslie. By that time he had led many of the standard climbs in the Lake District and North Wales. He was then a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, where I was an undergraduate, and I first methim when he provided suggestions for a walking tour in the Lake District-not a difficult matter to arrange in those uncrowded days when a bed could always be obtained without previous notice. He led me on my first rock climb, the Arrowhead arete on Great Gable, which to a novice seemed distinctly exposed. This was the first of many expeditions with him in that region, some from Burnthwaite, and later on from his delightful house in Great Langdale.
About that period he took me for a variety of climbs in the Alps, and a few clear-cut memories remain of those distant days. We were weather-bound at an hotel at Bourg-St-Pierre, and as the lounge accommodation was limited, Sleeman was compelled to sit in what is pointed out as Napoleon's chair. However, from time to time he was forced to rise sheepishly when coach loads of dripping tourists invaded the room. But this depressing experience was followed by a pleasant ascent of the Blümlisalphorn. Another year the party, strengthened by M. H. Slater, climbed the Matterhorn. Later we climbed the Tsa, traversed the Aiguilles Rouges direct from Arolla, and crossed the Pas de Chevres, not then an iron staircase, with some difficulty because Sleeman was showing the first signs of the muscular trouble that so restricted his activity in later years. At Easter, 1928, we visited Corsica in company with A. E. Storr and G. Manley, where we were much hampered by the last snowfalls. Sleeman was an admirable companion, extremely energetic, decided in his views, and always on the look-out for the ludicrous and the absurd.
Over the years he acquired an extensive knowledge of the Alps, and he also embarked on expeditions further to the east, which are all described in the AJ* Information was hard to come by; indeed, one mountain successfully ascended was identified only later by the chance purchase of a picture postcard. In 1926 with L. A. Ellwood, Storr and Elmslie he climbed Musalla in the Rhodopes, the highest mountain range between the Alps and the Caucasus. The party then paid a fruitful visit to Olympus, and on the way home climbed Ljubeten on the western border of Yugoslavia. In 1928 Sleeman was again on Olympus, where brigandage had become so rife that the camp was compulsorily guarded by soldiers. The following year he visited Albania, finding the finest mountains of all and the toughest conditions of travel. In 1933 Sleeman, with Ellwood again, visited the mountains of Bulgaria.
The Cambridge University Mountaineering Club has good reason to be grateful to him. Between the wars it was quite small and it often met in his rooms in college. He was for long a senior member of the committee and was much in demand as a lecturer. He had hoped to retire from academic life at the end of the statutory 25 years' tenure of his fellowship, but it was not until after the war that he was able to give up his house in Cambridge and use Great Langdale as his permanent home. Thereafter he was rarely seen in the south. But he and his wife welcomed callers with great hospitality, except during the dark part of the year, which they evaded by long visits to Mrican and Mediterranean countries. A. M. Binnie
* AJ39 86; 41 377; 42 55; 46 159.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 78, 1973, Seite 290-291


Geboren am:
1883
Gestorben am:
1971