Bentley Beetham

Bentley Beetham (1 May 1886 – 5 April 1963) was an English mountaineer, ornithologist and photographer, and a member of the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition.

[3] For some years after leaving school Beetham worked in an architect's office in Darlington, then from 1903 to 1914 he was busy with field research, writing books and articles, photography and giving lectures.

[3] Beetham started rock climbing in the English Lake District, although his re-ascents of the sea-cliffs on the north-east coast, once he had captured images of birds on photographic plates, involved much use of the hands.

[3] After the war, Beetham and Somervell started climbing in the Alps, initially under the supervision of the 60-year-old Godfrey Solly in Chamonix, and subsequently on their own and without guides.

[8] In his 2012 book Into the Silence, Wade Davis argues that Beetham – whom he considered an ill-advised selection for the expedition – prevented the most qualified and promising English climber of the period, Richard Graham, from joining.

Beetham made numerous expeditions to other ranges in the world, including the Tatra Mountains of Czechoslovakia, Chile, the Drakensberg, the Lofoten islands and Spitsbergen.

You go to Pillar or the Napes, to Scafell or Dow, and there are the climbs all spread out before you, like goods in a shop window; and having paid due regard to the price—the standard of difficulty of each—you make your choice and up you go.

In this last there is, I think, a hidden virtue, useful as training for the Alps, where a slight deviation from the intended route may lead one to an impasse, to less interesting climbing, or to a wrong destination altogether, and so wreck the whole expedition.