I just started re-reading Dougal's novel - highly autobiographical - which he finished shortly before his death. A quick read, a nice forward by Doug Scott, thin characters, but a definite window into the heart and soul (heartless would be more apt) of a man at the cutting edge of 1970s climbing. The dust jacket photograph taken by Mick Burke is from a winter bivy on the North Face of the Matterhorn. Dougal's climbing career, more or less, followed the traditional progression: Scottish rock, Scottish ice, hard routes in the Dolomites, a tour of the classic hard routes of the Western Alps, winter routes in the Alps, and then the Himalaya.
Dougal made several attempts on the North Face before he finally had success in the early 1960s.
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