Peter Livesey died
Titan
Peter Livesey, rock climber, died of cancer on
February 26 aged 54. He was born in Huddersfield
on September 12, 1943.
One of Britain's outstanding rock climbers, Peter Livesey
was the "father" of modern, athletic climbing technique,
which inspired a generation of younger climbers. He also
pioneered many new rock climbing routes, not only in this
country but in Europe and America. He was fiercely
competitive, yet his was a relaxed approach. Livesey
loved rock, and wrote two books on rock-climbing
technique. But he could never muster the same enthusiasm
for snow and ice.
A natural athlete who at school became a junior cross
country champion, Michael Peter Livesey began climbing
at the age of 12 on gritstone cliffs around his Yorkshire
home. But climbing was not at first a single-minded
passion with him. He enjoyed the competition of athletics,
too, running in the same club as the former world mile
record-holder Derek Ibbotson. He himself ran the mile in
a time not far short of four minutes as a junior. Indeed, he
used to say that it was his failure to win the AAA
Steeplechase at White City - where he came third - that
had prompted him to channel his energies into other
sporting activities.
At first these took the form of caving and cave diving,
where soon he was performing with the best of his day,
extending underground explorations in Yorkshire and
further afield. The year 1965 brought seven months of
expeditionary caving in Jamaica, surveying great river
caves for a millionaire plantation owner. He also took part
in an expedition to the Abyss of Provatina and to the Epos
Chasm (which he discovered), both in Greece, and to
Ghar Paru in Iran.
By this time Livesey had given up a career in electrical
engineering to become a teacher of outdoor pursuits,
where his first position was at the Bewerley Park Centre
in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He concentrated on
whitewater canoeing, before renewing his loyalty to
climbing, which he had never abandoned completely. By
now in his late twenties, he was supremely fit and
prepared to tailor a rigorous training schedule to the
specific problems presented by hard rock.
Traditionally, climbers had maintained that the only way to
get into shape for climbing was to climb, with any time not
spent on the crag passed convivially in the nearest pub.
But Livesey, with his athletics background, began to
develop a systematic training regime intended to raise
aerobic efficiency and enhance strength and endurance. At
the same time he worked on his psychological approach
and decision-making under stress. "His results were so
good," remembers Ron Fawcett, one of those who came
early under the Livesey influence, "that we can't now
imagine why the climbers of the 1950s and 1960s boasted
that their only training was 40 Woodbines a day and a
good spit."
Tall and rangy, yet with powerful shoulders, Livesey
possessed what many consider the ideal physique for rock
climbing. He had a long reach and natural agility. His
relentless training had given him phenomenal finger power.
This was sufficient, in his words, "not just to climb the
route, but to hang around long enough to select and place
running belays for protection, and then still have the
strength to go on climbing". When he said, "hang around",
he meant it literally, from one arm alone, if that was called
for. From his example other climbers began to develop
the simian acrobatics of the modern rock climber.
His caving colleagues had already remarked upon his cool
nerve. In climbing, this manifested itself in an almost
cavalier attitude towards protection. He wanted to climb
under his own skill and many of his early routes were
climbed solo, without equipment at all. He also embarked
on a programme of freeing existing hard routes of the aid
(in the form of pitons left in the rock for subsequent
climbers) which had been employed in their original
ascents. When he, with his regular climbing partner John
Sheard, after inspecting the difficulties on a top-rope,
dispensed with the last points of such aid on Face Route
on Gordale Scar, traditional Yorkshire mountaineers
could not believe it.
The ill-feeling left by his doubters made Livesey a stickler
for absolute truth in describing his achievements, or
challenging the false claims of others.
He was at the height of his powers in 1974 when he
established two routes that took climbing into the new
"E5" grade. (When he had started climbing seriously only
a few years before, at the beginning of the 1970s, no
climb exceeded E2 in difficulty.) Of these two routes,
Footless Crow, in Borrowdale, far exceeded anything
existing then in the Lake District; Right Wall on Dinas
Cromlech in North Wales was considered by Livesey at
that time as "the biggest and most glaring example of virgin
rock in Wales". In all, Livesey made between 30 and 40
important first ascents in Britain. He also climbed in
Norway, the Alps, Iran, Baffin Island, and made several
visits to the Mecca of big wall climbing, Yosemite
National Park in California, where he was responsible for
many new routes.
Livesey's importance, however, does not rest solely in his
legacy of new routes, but as instigator of a new wave of
athleticism, and a change of attitude towards hard rock
climbing. Not just in Britain, but in France, too, his
influence was widely felt. The guidebook he wrote,
French Rock Climbs (1980) was instrumental in luring
many other young climbers to the sun-washed South,
rather than the high Alps.
He had also written an instructional book for beginners,
Rock Climbing (1978), now in its (revised) second
edition. His many other writings are scattered through the
sport's journals and anthologies.
Although he gave up climbing at the competitive sharp
edge in the mid-1970s when he was over 30, Livesey
remained active, with his caving, orienteering, fell running
and some rock climbing. He did all these until his final
illness, which struck within days of his retirement from his
final teaching post at Bradford and Ilkley College.
He is survived by his wife Soma and by their daughter.