Antarctic Mountain Barrier

 1916 was a significant year in Irish history and it was but a few weeks after the rebellion of that year that another pair of Irish men were attempting to overcome the challenge of the barrier presented by mountains. They were Sir Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean who, along with Frank Worsley, traversed the uncharted mountainous interior of South Georgia. 

Crean

Shackleton

None of the three would claim to have been mountaineers but they undertook a feat of mountain travel using improvised equipment - crampons and ice-axe - that enabled them to complete what would be the first confirmed land crossing of the South Georgia interior.  Since they had no map, they had to improvise a route across mountain ranges and glaciers. They travelled continuously for 36 hours, before reaching a whaling station at Stromness.

Shackleton's men were, in Worsley's words, "a terrible trio of scarecrows", dark with exposure, wind, frostbite and accumulated blubber soot.

Shackleton had determined that the only way they could reach the whaling station at Stromness was to cross the island on foot, a feat that had never been done.  They were ill equipped for such a crossing, wearing only threadbare clothing and boots. They threaded screws through the soles of their boots for extra grip in the snow and ice and to remain nimble they carried only enough provisions for three days. 

Photo: Saróar Alam

At approximately 3am they set off into the unknown …At the end of the first day, the trio had ascended 3,000ft and could see Possession Bay to the north. They realised they needed to get to the bottom of the valley before nightfall,... the unthinkable – they would step off the precipice in front of them and slide down....The three men coiled up their pieces of rope into three ‘pads’, Shackleton sat in front, Worsley straddled his legs around Shackleton, and Crean sat behind Worsley doing the same. Without pausing, they launched themselves into the unknown below. In Worsley’s own words:....I was actually enjoying it. It was most exhilarating. We were shooting down the side of an almost precipitous mountain at nearly a mile a minute. I yelled with excitement and found that Shackleton and Crean were yelling too. It seemed ridiculously safe. To hell with the rocks!.... Worsley estimated they had travelled approximately 3,000ft down the slope in about three minutes. The men shook hands, and Shackleton wryly commented, “It’s not good to do that kind of thing too often.”

After a brief break for a well-earned hot meal, they continued on their way…

From Antarctic Heritage Trust where a full account is available.

See the Shackleton Experience for further info

J W Healy

(Fewer)

 John Healy was born in 1895, possibly in Kerry, but lived in Dublin as a teenager and walked extensively in Dublin/Wicklow hills.  The events of the second decade of 20th C in Ireland and Europe seem not to have affected him greatly -  he signed the visitor's book at Mc Guirk's on 1st November 1913 and recorded a substantial walk, with a couple of friends, of about 56km.

After graduating in medicine from UCD in 1918, he went to England that year and took up a temporary commission with the RAF that allowed him to further his hillwalking in Wales and Cumberland. He later worked as a doctor in the South Western Fever Hospital in Stockwell and became Deputy Medical Superintendent with London County Council.

Diablons. Wikipedia

Elected to membership of the Alpine Club in 1935 he recorded on his application form (as John Weston Healy) that he did a  'Traverse of the three peaks of Diablons - via Col deTrocuit & SE arete' in 1923,    a traverse of the Matterhorn fom Breuil to Zermatt in 1924 and climbed Mt Blanc in 1925.

  Dr. Healy was highly regarded for his technical knowledge of Alpine topography. Notably, he was a pioneer in identifying massive, steep climbing faces in Europe. During a notable club lecture, he introduced British climbers to the sheer face of the Glärnisch rising directly above the Klöntalersee lake. His analysis helped establish it among contemporaries as one of the premier vertical walls in the Alps.  Although he may not have climbed any really hard routes he was active in the Alps well into the 1950s, mostly with a guide in his early days and guideless in later years.

What is believed to be the first official meet of the Alpine Club was in Langdale in 1941, attended by its president Geoffrey Winthrop Young and others, including  J W Healy.  He was also a member of the Swiss Alpine Club (Association of British Members of SAC) acting as a Vice President from 1956 to '58; also the first overseas member of the IMC (Irish Mountaineering Club), if not one of its founding members. 

Djouce. Cormac Keenan

 After his retirement he returned to Ireland, lived in Sandymount and attended many IMC lectures. He died in 1975 and had claimed that his mountaineering inspiration ..

'for me it was the schoolboy's memory of seeing suddenly the summit of Djouce shining with snow in the sunshine'. (IMC Journal '73).

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