Wilfrid Noyce - Early Climbing

Early Climbing

By the age of eighteen, Noyce was already a fine climber, from 1935 regularly climbing with John Menlove Edwards of Liverpool. Before the Second World War, he helped Edwards to produce rock climbing guides to the crags of Tryfan and Lliwedd in Snowdonia. Like other leading British climbers of the prewar period, such as Mallory, Jack Longland, Ivan Waller and A. B. Hargreaves, Noyce became a protégé of Geoffrey Winthrop Young, attending his parties at Pen-y-Pass.

In the late 1930s, Noyce was one of a small band of Britons climbing at high standards in the Alps. He was well known for his speed and stamina, and in two early alpine seasons, 1937 and 1938, climbing with Armand Charlet or Hans Brantschen as his guide, he made major climbs in very fast times. In 1942, in North Wales, he achieved a non-stop solo climb of 1,370 metres. During this period Noyce wrote that he suffered three serious accidents:

The first was a fall of 200 feet with a damp ledge that came away on the Mickledoor Grooves of Scafell in 1937, when I was nineteen years old. The last, in 1946, found me blown bodily by a gust off an easy rib of Great Gable, onto my leg, which crumpled and broke under me When I returned to the Alps and fells, it was often to introduce boys or to explore new corners. Though I still climbed rock, I preferred to be led at 'Very Severe' standard.

The first fall refers to an incident when he was held on the rope by Edwards after falling, despite damage to the rope.