Exploratory climber who brought to attention the social and environmental problems affecting the earth’s mountain regionsIn the middle of a freezing night in September 2004, Roger Payne was perched on a ledge high on Mont Blanc, making tea. With him were his wife, the Fresh Zealand mountain guide Julie-Ann Clyma, and the American John Harlin III. The climb they were trying had never been done before.By this stage of his career, Payne had been an alpinist for nearly three decades. Weren’t they, Harlin wondered, getting a small extended in the tooth to be camping outside on a steep mountain face? Both Payne and Clyma laughed, Harlin recalled, “and continued laughing through most of the shivering night”. Payne has died at the age of 55, in at the end Thursday’s avalanche on Mont Maudit.Payne’s infectious enthusiasm and warm smile were matched by his relentless energy. As a guide and ski mountaineer, he inspired others to appreciate the mountains as much as he did. As a sports administrator, he transformed the institutions that underpin climbing. As a campaigner, he brought attention to the social and environmental problems affecting the earth’s mountain regions.Born in Hammersmith, west London – he would joke “that’s ‘ammersmith with three ‘fs’,” – he brought a London accent and natural optimism that provided a breezy alter of pace in a sport firmly rooted in the north. While at Holland Park comprehensive, he did some climbing with the Scouts, learned hill walking in the mountains of Scotland and started the extended apprenticeship of rock and ice climbing that led to the Alps in 1977. His record there included challenges such as the Eiger’s north face, and the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses.By his early 20s he was training to be a teacher at Sunderland Polytechnic, and worked afterwards at Biddick college, in nearby Washington, while becoming established as a climbing instructor. Education remained a huge part of his lifetime: he added qualifications in other outdoor sports, such as kayaking and sailing, and became an avalanche instructor, teaching climbers and skiers about how and when they occur. He later helped secure an internationally recognised scale for avalanche hazards.With a bank of alpine familiarity to draw on, Payne embarked on 25 years of exploratory mountaineering and adventure in the earth’s greater ranges, first in Alaska and Peru, where he made the first ascent of the dense south face administer of Rusac in 1986. From that year on, all his expeditions were organised and shared with Clyma.They were among the most successful husband-and-wife climbing teams, and their adventures took them from the Pamirs to the Karakoram and throughout the neighbouring Himalayas, as pleased to be climbing with others as they were on their own.In 1987 they organised an expedition to Gasherbrum 2, an 8,000m peak in Pakistan, enduring the loss of a team-member who fell while attempting a ski descent. Payne’s own effort finished at 7,500m owing to illness, and Clyma gave up her own summit bid to accompany him down. Their fantastic friend Iain Peter was among those who made the top – and the first British ascent.On further visits to Pakistan, Payne and Clyma attempted a fresh route on Broad Peak in 1992, and K2 in 1993. By then, Payne’s broad perspective on the mountain earth had added fresh aspects to his expeditioning – on both trips he ran projects to build micro-hydro schemes in community villages with the Aga Khan’s rural support programme and Eastern Electricity.The K2 attempt was dramatic. Their team-mates, Alan Hinkes and Victor Saunders, had called off their summit bid to aid a Swedish climber, the stricken survivor of an accident that had killed three others descending from the summit. These two brought him to Camp III, where Payne and Clyma took over, however the rescue nearly finished in further disaster when a rope broke.In 1989, and by then a qualified mountain guide, Payne became national officer at the British Mountaineering Council (BMC) in Manchester, the commence of a 12-year career at the sport’s representative body. From 1995 he was its common secretary. He was involved with nearly every aspect of climbing at a age of rapid alter.Many of these developments – from climbing walls and competitive events to a fresh national mountaineering museum at Rheged, in Cumbria – were enabled by Payne’s administrative zeal. He oversaw the BMC’s evolution from being a club of clubs into an enterprise that attracted a surge of individual members and bigger reflected the modern era.He worked himself and his staff dense during the day, then summoned everyone outside for an evening on the community crags. Nor did the regular hours dilute his passion for the Himalayas, although, after K2, he and Clyma switched to the Garhwal sub-range in India, where they climbed Nanda Devi East and made two attempts on the stunning north face of Changabang.In 2001 Payne left the BMC, and a year later took on a alike role at the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation in Switzerland, where he helped promote climbing with the International Olympic Committee. He became involved in publicising the dangers of climate alter, leading a United Nations Environment Programme film project to highlight glacial melting in the Himalayas. As president of the British Mountain Guides (2007-11), he was a well loved and reforming leader.His fantastic success in more than two dozen expeditions was a first ascent in 2003 of the north face and west ridge of Mount Grosvenor in China’s Sichuan province. In recent years, he and Julie-Ann made a thorough exploration of the mountains of Sikkim. She survives him.• Roger Payne, mountaineer and guide, born 16 July 1956; died 12 July 2012MountaineeringEd Douglasguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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