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Steve Ogden

A Tribute to Steve from Michael Winterbottom.

"When I went out for the first time with the Club, we climbed Tryfan by the north ridge. At one point that I found awkward, someone said to me: ‘I see you use your knees.’ It was Steve Ogden. The last time I met him, I reminded him of this incident; he replied that he had become less purist on knees.

Of course I walked many times in groups large or small with Steve and Ruth in Wales. Nearer home, Nicolette and I went on a memorable excursion with them to the Malverns, and more than one walk in the New Forest. In the Lakes, I remember luring them into climbing Rossett Pike, no. 116 on my hit-list of Wainwright peaks. After the successful ascent, Steve said: ‘Let’s go up Bowfell this way’, and he led us up a trackless face I should not have thought of attempting. I expect I used my knees then too.

But what will remain most in my mind was a walk Steve and I went on alone, not long before his tragic death. It was a magical day last November. The sun shone all day from a cloudless sky; it had snowed in the night, and the snow line was around 1800 feet. I don’t suppose the temperature ever rose above zero all day. I was still peak-bagging, and we started by going up Troutbeck Tongue (no. 255), before crossing the valley and slanting up to the ridge below Froswick. The snow was so crisp that following Steve up the last slopes I could barely see his footprints. We went on over Ill Bell and Yoke, and came down the long descent to the Garburn Road. Beyond, two new Wainwright peaks were in our sights, Sallows (no. 178) and Sour Howes (no. 212). Steve had got into the bagging mode as well, though he talked derisively of ‘Sour Grapes’; and we climbed both. It seemed a long way back, and the dusk was falling when we made it to the car. I was completely exhilarated by this walk, and Steve hardly less so: back home, he got straight down to working out how far we had walked and how many feet we had ascended.

This will stay in my memory as one of my great Lakeland experiences: but especially because I then for the first time felt I was getting to know Steve properly. The expedition, slight as it must have been for Steve (who had just trekked all those miles in Nepal), began to bond us. It is a great personal sorrow to me that I shall not be able to walk with him again.

He was a man of many talents. One he described to me in November: he had a photographic memory, on which he could imprint the route for the day by just looking at the map beforehand. He was a wonderful companion in the mountains; one trusted him implicitly, without having any hope of keeping up with him. And he was, most of all, an incorrigible enthusiast. His death is a grievous loss to Ruth and his family, and to all of us who were privileged to know him."

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