Wednesday 8 November 2017

Henry Russell: 1834-1909


Today’s Depeche du Midi had a story which caught our eye mainly because it concerned a figure from the days of great explorers and climbers: Henry Russell. An eminent Victorian we thought, but no – Henry Patrick Marie, Count Russell-Killough was born in Toulouse and died in Biarritz. Although his father was Irish from an old Catholic family, it was in the Pyrenees that Henry made his name. In fact the highest peak on the French side of the range is called Pic Russell.

Not content with just conquering the Pyrenean heights, he developed the idea of “base camps” from where the next stage could be attacked. But no flimsy tents clinging to the mountainside: Russell hacked out caves where he and his companions could bivouac. Especially  taken with the Vignemal, which he first climbed in 1861, he hacked three caves between 1881 and 1896 (he rented the mountainside for 1 franc per annum). But these caves were eventually covered by a glacier and he had others made lower down. Lined with Persian carpets these were ideal for lavish entertaining but lacked the splendour of the higher sites. Eventually he dynamited a cave just 18 metres from the summit, “without permission” as a modern expert comments ruefully.

The story is relevant today because the shrinking glacier had revealed the three original excavations for the first time in many years. Henry Russell celebrated what he called his “silver wedding” in the highest cave: a “man who married a mountain” as his biography is called