Geoffrey Hastings FRGS (1860–1941) was a British mountaineer who made numerous first ascents of rock-faces and peaks in the Lake District, the Alps and Norway, and helped to lay the foundations for mountain-climbing as a sport.
A week after his successes at the Bradford regatta in 1885, he persuaded his brother Cuthbert Hastings to join him and their friend William Ecroyd in exploring the cavern below the Gavel Pot shakehole at Leck Fell (part of what is now known as the Three Counties cave system).
[11] Hastings was introduced by Slingsby to a wide circle of mountain enthusiasts and began to climb with Walter Haskett Smith, Edward Hopkinson, Albert Mummery and John Wilson Robinson.
In 1887, with Slingsby and Haskett Smith, he made the first ascent of Needle Ridge on Great Gable, and he led the first party to climb Shamrock Gully on the east side of Pillar Rock.
[12] In July 1888 he, Haskett Smith and Hopkinson made the first ascent of Great Gully on Doe Crag near Coniston[13] and, augmented by Slingsby, the same group were first to climb Scafell Pinnacle by Steep Gill.
[14] In June 1886 Haskett Smith had attracted considerable interest when he climbed Napes Needle, a free standing pinnacle on Great Gable, and in March 1889 Hastings became the second to do so.
[15] In 1891, with Haskett Smith and Slingsby, he made the first ascent of Pillar Rock by the north face, regarded as "a remarkable feat for the period",[16] and in the winter of 1891/2 he was in the party that first climbed the Great Gully of the Wastwater Screes.
[17] With him in this latter endeavour was Norman Collie and, together with Robinson, they made the first ascent of Scafell's Moss Ghyll on 27 December 1892 (all previous parties attempting the climb having declared it impossible).
[20] In August 1892 Hastings had visited Chamonix and, with Collie, Mummery and C. H. Pasteur, made the first traverse of the Aiguille du Grépon by the north ridge, descending by the south.
[23] He again returned to Chamonix in the summer of 1894 and, with Mummery and Collie, crossed the Mont Blanc range from the Argentière Glacier by the steep approach to the Col des Courtes, the first time this route had been taken.
[26] In 1894 Hastings and Mummery agreed that, if they could obtain Indian government permission to visit the relevant part of Kashmir, they would attempt to climb Nanga Parbat (8,126 metres) in the following year.
Reaching Rakhiot after two days, Hastings and Collie looked by telescope for traces of steps cut in the ridge offering Mummery the only feasible descent from the col.
[28][note 7] When returning from the Himalaya, Hastings failed to observe certain conditions that the Indian government had imposed on the expedition, and the resultant protests led to his resignation from the Alpine Club.
[41] On the latter visit, as was often the case during his Norwegian expeditions, he took charge of the party's commissariat and, when camped near the head of the Ostnes Fjord, his tent was said to have "the appearance of a really first-class gipsy encampment".
Their party included Arnold Louis Mumm and his Swiss guide Moritz Inderbinden who, two years earlier, had made the first ascent of Trisul, the world's highest summit to be reached.
Their own climb was interrupted so as to avoid an overnight stay on the mountain, and what was intended as a temporary retreat was followed by three days of continuous rain, causing the party to abandon their expedition.
[46] Hastings was "always the strong man of the team", ready to act as the beast of burden for his party[note 11] and, according Eleanor Winthrop Young, possessed of a "weird energy at all times which left us rather breathless".
[47] Haskett Smith spoke of his "great muscular strength, grim determination, and manual dexterity", his particular skill in step-cutting ("rapid and untiring"), and his unfailing mettle ("be the difficulty and danger what they might, non-one could wish for a stauncher comrade").
[56] The couple lived in Welbury Drive, Manningham, until Hastings' death in February 1941, when an obituary tribute in the Yorkshire Post described him as "one of the finest men Bradford has produced.