Invisible on Everest: Innovation and the Gear Makers [Hardcover]

Invisible On Everest blends tales of high adventure and tragedy with a thoroughly researched history of the innovations that made mountain climbing, and other adventure sports, a multi-million dollar industry.

Particularly fascinating are the chapters involving women’s climbing apparel and widening middle-class participation of mountain climbing throughout the early part of the last century.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in climbing or in the history early cold-weather explorers and adventurers.

Invisible On Everest is an enjoyable read and great reference guide to understanding the evolution of cold-weather and high-altitude survival gear. It is fascinating to discover how the right gear makes the difference between success and failure.

Invisible On Everest blends tales of high adventure and tragedy with a thoroughly researched history of the innovations that made mountain climbing, and other adventure sports, a multi-million dollar industry.

Particularly fascinating are the chapters involving women’s climbing apparel and widening middle-class participation of mountain climbing throughout the early part of the last century.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in climbing or in the history early cold-weather explorers and adventurers.

Invisible On Everest is an enjoyable read and great reference guide to understanding the evolution of cold-weather and high-altitude survival gear. It is fascinating to discover how the right gear makes the difference between success and failure.

Even so, this in itself would normally be enough to send the non-specialist reader into deep coma after the first page. The pedigree of the instigator of this work, Mary Rose (a lecturer in 'Business Studies' at Lancaster University), certainly suggests you might be in for a densely footnoted, worthy-but-dull plod through familiar territory involving hobnailed boots and Grenfell jackets. And it's entirely possible that this may have been the case were it not for the fortunate fact that Rose took the decision to collaborate with the effervescent Mike Parsons (the former 'Mr Karrimor'). Parsons injects the text with an anecdote-rich vim which elevates it high above just any old stroll down memory lane.

The writing combo has instead delivered a book which is academic in spirit, but populist in delivery. There's something here for the serious historian or general reader alike. Gear freaks will certainly love it: if you've ever yearned to know how the Karrimat was born, or the origin of the word 'Backpacker' - this is the book for you.

Having said that, the early chapters on pre-Twentieth Century developments cover relatively well-trodden ground (apart pointing out that much early climbing gear was actually remarkably lightweight, if inefficient). The book really comes alive with Parson's tales of the growth of the big equipment companies like Lawrie, Blacks and later Karrimor and Berghaus. The straight narrative is mixed with humorous hints about the personalities of legendary figures involved in the trade such as Graham Tiso ('used to scare the pants off the company representatives') and climbers like Don Whillans who was remarkably influential in gear design in the 1960s and '70s. Parsons relates how some of his ideas never made it past the drawing board. The experimental Whillans Whammer, was an alleged ice axe with multi-tool facility which, 'could open cans, act as a screwdriver, be used as an abseil device - in fact almost anything except be used as an ice tool... Even for hard drinking climbers, an integrated beer can opening tool was no real alternative to a curved pick.'

But it's also the little revelatory asides that keep you turning the pages - like how pre-war climbers would wee on their 'rubbers' before starting climbing on order to make them stickier; or how Saxon climbers were doing E3 6a in 1920. Such startling information peppers the text, waiting to surprise you like factual handgrenades lobbed into the narrative.

True, there are one or two minor faults in the research: the famous Scottish climber Jimmy Marshall never owned a shop in Aberdeen for example. But perhaps a more serious criticism relates to the way the book concentrates on the mercantile development of outdoor equipment, largely avoiding the extent to which individual climbers experimented and adapted equipment, often to very high levels of sophistication. A good example is the 1930s Lakes climber Sid Cross (who is actually acknowledged in the references) and his friend Albert Hargreaves, who manufactured much of their own winter climbing kit - which was often years in advance of their time - such as waterproof overmitts constructed from the rubberised canvas used in soft-top cars. Old waxed jackets cast-off from wealthier folk were also re-proofed, cut down to waist level like modern technical tops, and served as robust waterproofs. They also designed revolutionary short ice axes and also specialised tricouni-style nails which gave them a real technical advantage in winter climbing. All this appears to have been missed by Parson and Rose.

On the other hand, it could equally be argued that such innovation tended to have little lasting impact on the evolution of gear for the rest of the hillgoing public, unless translated into commercial exploitation. From this point of view, the book's terms of reference rightly remain strictly relevant to the equipment environment the modern climber finds themselves living in today.

And arguably, it is the wider sociological aspect of this book which makes it far more significant than a mere narrative history of technical development. For 'Invisible' is as much the story of the consumerisation of climbing as anything. Parsons makes a convincing case that the main cross-over of outdoor gear from specialist hobby to the mainstream came with Chris Bonington's Annapurna expedition of 1970. The trip itself spurred technical innovation while the enormous publicity generated by the marketing flair of the Great Bearded One started a more business-minded trend in the outdoor trade. The subsequent drift of outdoor clothing and equipment into a wider constituency is well analysed by Parsons and Rose.

Ultimately then, Invisible on Everest helps to explain how climbing and its associated attitudes and tastes was winkled from a cultish ghetto in the 1960s and transformed by the gear makers into a mainstream 'lifestyle brand.' For better or worse, it's never been the same since.