Pioneering British climber whose achievements in Snowdonia and the Peak District were stamped with a certain elegance
Arthur Birtwistle, who has died aged 95, was the last survivor of a group of pioneering 1930s British cliff climbers. His achievements in Snowdonia and on the gritstone crags of the Peak District still elicit respect. Modern opinion views them as the ultimate expression of the balance style of their day, and a foreshadowing of the bold and gymnastic mode established by Joe Brown, Don Whillans and others in the postwar years.
Birtwistle was born in Bury and won a scholarship to Bury grammar school. He went on to take first-class honours in geology and anthropology at Manchester University, and was also a fine gymnast and high-board diver. Those two disciplines prepared him well for a climbing career that began in Holcombe Hill quarries, near Bury, still a popular venue with northern rock-addicts.
While at university he was active in the mountaineering club, serving as its secretary, a post that helped him progress to membership of Manchester's Rucksack Club, a fine old northern climbing institution. In August 1938 Birtwistle made two leads on Welsh cliffs that rank with those of Jack Longland, Colin Kirkus and Menlove Edwards as among the outstanding prewar climbing achievements: his ascents of the Diagonal Route on the ice-polished dolerite of the Nose of Dinas Mot and of the Drainpipe Crack on the fearsome East Buttress of Clogwyn Du'r Arddu – Britain's finest cliff – on the northern flank of Snowdon.
Diagonal was acclaimed among climbs of its time as "perhaps the most remarkable for technique in Britain," was not repeated for 10 years, and still provides a chastening experience of tenuous delicacy accentuated by scant protection. The Drainpipe Crack is steep and forbidding, as well as long and sustained, and was climbed by Birtwistle in error – he thought it an earlier climb of Kirkus's. It was widely regarded as the most difficult pitch of its time in Wales. On the same visit to Clogwyn Du'r Arddu he made a determined attempt on the White Slab – perhaps the finest of all courses on Welsh rock, its ascent not completed until 1956.
During the same period he also produced a handful of outcrop climbs on Peakland gritstone that are still regarded as serious test pieces: Priscilla Ridge at Laddow Rocks, Pulpit Ridge on Ravenstones, and the Embarkation Parade in Kinder Downfall's amphitheatre. All bear a certain stamp of elegance allied to bold exigence which has come to be seen, along with their excellence, as the defining quality of Birtwistle's climbs – all of which were accomplished using hemp ropes and wearing black rubber Woolworths pumps that were a size too small.
The climbing achievements, however, were largely interrupted when he left for Egypt in 1940 with the Royal Artillery. He reconnoitred the battlefields of El Alamein, was decorated, promoted to captain, then almost demoted again after provoking a diplomatic incident by climbing the pyramids at Giza. Later in the war he helped develop radar-assisted anti-aircraft guns to counter the threat of V1 and V2 flying bombs.
At the end of hostilities he was in Scotland, instructing Royal Marine commandos in mountain craft at Achnacarry, where he was introduced to the presiding interest of his later life – sailing in small boats to destinations such as St Kilda, Brittany, Spain and Ireland. During the later years of the war he also embarked on the adventure of marriage. What his wife Margaret made of a honeymoon spent in Snowdonia cooking for his climbing pals is not on record. At an early age their two sons and one daughter, who survive him, were also duly initiated into the outdoor mysteries, as were the grandchildren who followed them.
After the war Birtwistle worked as an exports manager for a chemicals company, travelling around the globe. But he still climbed, producing notable gems on Kinder Scout, Tremadog and Pillar Rock. Spare in physique and genial in discourse, he remained active on the sea and on the hills to the end of his long life. Margaret died in 1995, and in 2004, at the age of 85, he married Elizabeth, who inculcated in him an appreciation of classical music to complement his lifelong hearkening to the sound of wind on the sea and across the northern moors and crags. They were passions they shared right until his life's end in Altrincham.
• Arthur Birtwistle, rock-climber, born 25 March 1918; died 27 November 2013