"He was probably the world’s greatest rock climber”. An Ode to Joe Brown.
Joe Brown in 1963. Image Via Daily Post.
Browsing the web one-night last week I came across a brilliant black and white image of a man sitting on an outcrop of rock. Wearing two boiled wool hats, a marvelously well-worn twill overhead jacket, plus fours with wool socks pulled up underneath. Wearing proper leather walking boots, around his neck was a long piece of knotted rope with a carabiner which he was holding in one hand and a finished cigarette in the other looking into the distance.
The same climb, October 1963 Via Daily Post
As I looked at the image, Josh walked into my office with a cup of tea for me, looked at my screen and said ‘oh Joe Brown, he was an amazing climber, lived in the village. He passed only last month’. I had never heard of Joe Brown but I had heard of Joe Brown’s shop in Llanberis where we live.
Josh being an avid climber and a frequent visitor to North Wales before we settled here knew exactly who Joe was and told me a little bit about him. Being a novice climber and a bit scared of heights I don’t climb as much as I should but I do love reading and watching films about climbers as I am in awe of their fearlessness.
So I settled down with my cup of tea and began reading about the life of Joe Brown.
Joe Brown was raised in Ardwick, Manchester, and was the seventh child. Living in a small terraced house and by 14 was training to be a plumber. Joe regularly escaped the city and took the bus to the Pennine Moors with his friends to go exploring old mineshafts and at Alderley Edge with ropes taken from roadmenders’ huts.
In early 1947 being 16 years old at the time, Joe was climbing the rocks of Kinder Downfall, above Hayfield in Derbyshire in hobnailed boots and unfit for purpose backpacks. After a few more trips to Kinder Downfall he met a pipe-fitter from Stockport, Merrick “Slim” Sorrell and went onto to venture to North Wales to tackle new climbs.
In North Wales they attempted Lot’s Groove on the cliffs of Glyder Fach, a climb which, they had been told, was only to be tried after an initial ascent on a top-rope and after a bar of chocolate. They neither had a bar of chocolate or constructed a top rope but climbed the route easily and couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Moving onto ‘Suicide Wall’ in Cwm Idwal, the known hardest climb in Britain at that time, Joe couldn’t understand what the fuss was about it either so after this he began making new climbing routes.
After a while in national service, Joe and a group of fellow climbers formed the Rock & Ice Climbing Club and with one member Don Whillans Brown formed a partnership which, while never exclusive or even particularly amicable, was to become the most significant in modern climbing history.
Joe Brown and Don Whillans. Photo Credit Ken Wilson.
On a bank holiday in 1951 both climbers traveled from Manchester to North Wales and the Llanberis Pass to attempt a tenuous climbing route up the right wall of the great feature of Cenotaph Corner on Dinas Cromlech. Going home that night back to Chester, Joe saw a bus with the destination ‘Cemetery Gates’ and decided to call their new climbing route that exact name which is still referred to and respected today.
Centopath Corner - Llanberis Pass
Joe went on to travel around the world on climbing expeditions, the most famous of which was an expedition in 1955 to Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest peak and its highest unclimbed one at that time. His name began to become well recognised throughout the climbing world.
By 1956 Brown had established himself as the greatest all-round mountaineer in the history of the sport in Britain. He continued to climb into his old age and enjoyed many other pursuits.
In 1965 Joe moved to Llanberis and opened the first of a small chain of outdoor equipment shops under his name Joe Browns which still exists and thrives today. It is the type of shop that walking in you feel like you are in a place which sells the best of the best to the best. Being a (practicing) painter I can compare it to Green and Stone in London, an art shop for which you could spend hours there, where you wish you knew what everything was and what everything did and if that was possible you would surely be the best artist in the world. I get the same feeling walking into Joe Browns.
He was a person who reached the top of his craft, a pioneer, a legend. He was from a working-class background and mixed with many different people from all types of backgrounds all around the world. Awarded an MBE which was advanced to CBE in 2011. Joe Brown lived in my village and I didn’t know until today.
If you would like to read more about this epic sportsman, my readings and research came from the below links;
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/04/17/joe-brown-greatest-british-all-round-climber-20th-century/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/joe-brown-death-climber-mountaineer-everest-age-cause-a9486546.html
and this is a gem of a video via ukclimbing from 1985 featuring Don Whillans and Joe Brown joining again to climb Cemetry Gates. I love 2.30 mins in, Don rocks up on his bike, rope over shoulder and cigarette in mouth. Joe greets him “hello kiddo, is that helmet to protect your head or keep your fag dry”
https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2020/04/don_whillans_last_climb-72284
About Yr Helfa Fawr
Located on the foothills of Snowdon, close to the village of Llanberis Yr Helfa is a beautiful old renovated Welsh farmhouse from where we run our business Crashpad Lodges. Formerly part of a settlement of farms Yr Helfa was once a smaller building that housed both farmers and animals, now home to many wonderful guests who visit Snowdonia every year.