Dougal Haston

Dougal Haston, (19 April 1940 – 17 January 1977), was a Scottish mountaineer famed for his exploits in the British Isles, Alps, and Himalayas. He died in an avalanche while skiing above Leysin, Switzerland.

Biography

Haston was born in Currie, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Early in his career he climbed several new Scottish routes with Robin Smith. Routes such as The Bat on the Carn Dearg Buttress of Ben Nevis helped establish the pair as future stars. Smith died in an accident in 1962 but Haston lived on to realize his early promise. In 1970, he and Don Whillans were the first to climb the south face of Annapurna on an expedition led by Chris Bonington, and in 1975 he and Doug Scott were the first to conquer Mount Everest by the south-west face, also on a Bonington led expedition.

Haston's memorial in Currie mistakenly claims he was the first British climber to ascend the north face of the Eiger. In fact, it was Bonington and Ian Clough in 1962, but he made the first ascent of the Nordwand by the direttissima, or most direct route, in 1966 with Jörg Lehne, Günther Strobel, Roland Votteler and Siegfried Hupfauer. American John Harlin was killed when a rope (chosen by him over Haston's request they be thicker) snapped; the route was subsequently named in Harlin's memory.

In 1967 Haston became director of the International School of Mountaineering at Leysin, Switzerland, a position he maintained until his death in a skiing accident in 1977.

Haston was killed by an avalanche in January 1977 while skiing alone above Leysin on the north-east face of La Riondaz to the Col Luisset. It appeared that he had been choked by his scarf. He is buried at Leysin.

Quotations

"In winter, the mountains seem to regain their primitive, virginal pride, and no more do the howling, littering summer masses tramp their more accessible slopes." — Dougal Haston quoted in Jeff Connors' biography (p 104)

"...that most impenetrable of big walls, the mind of Dougal Haston." — from a review of Connors' biography.

Filmography

Haston: A Life in the Mountains BBC2 2006.

External links

• Peter Donnelly, ‘Haston, Duncan Curdy McSporran [Dougal] (1940–1977)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 18 May 2007