Robert Lock Graham Irving

The mist was thick and night was closing in as I came cautiously and wonderingly down the steep southern face of Great Gable, while my parents in the vale of Newlands were sending out a man to blow a horn upon the hills, in the hope that the missing son was near enough to hear.

[13] According to Irving's address to the Alpine Club, entitled 'Five Years with Recruits', the Ice Club's series of controversial expeditions to climb some of the highest mountains in the Alps began in 1904, and peaks such as the Grand Combin, Dent Blanche, Aiguille du Blaitière, Bietschhorn, Aiguille de Bionnassay, Grunhorn, Mittaghorn, Aletschhorn, Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc were successfully ascended.

[14] Rock climbing trips were also undertaken to Snowdonia, using the Pen-y-Gwryd hotel as a base, and snow craft was practised in the Scottish Highlands in winter.

[15] The feelings of the Alpine Club towards the leading of boys up potentially dangerous mountains were expressed in a 'Condemnation', in which Tom George Longstaff stated that he "did not think that members would agree with him about the advisability of such expeditions".

[16] This was followed by 'A Disclaimer', published in the Alpine Journal for 1909 and signed by mountain climbers including Longstaff, Geoffrey Winthrop Young, Claud Schuster, W. P. Haskett Smith and D. W. Freshfield, in which these members of the club, and nine others, '[desire] to place on record that we disclaim responsibility for any encouragement which Mr. Irving's paper may give to expeditions undertaken after the manner therein described'.

[21] Irving kept up to date with mountaineering developments in the Greater Ranges, writing of the Muztagh Tower (7,273 m) in the Karakorum that it was "Nature's last stronghold – probably the most inaccessible of all the great peaks, its immense precipices show no weakness in its defence".