Tributes and Other
Articles
about J.B. Glover.
I am very pleased to be able to include this material about the man who gave his name to the Glover Highlander walk. The material was sent to me by Alan Tees of the North-West Mountaineering Club in November 1997. I think all of us who have enjoyed this demanding walk will be interested in the person who it commemorates. Even at a distance in time and space we can feel something of what his friends thought of him. |
TRIBUTE TO A MOUNTAINEER |
The familiar figure of Joey, in brick-red sweater and
clashing yellow anorak, striding at an absurd pace over
some distant summit, or zig-sagging steadily upwards into
a mist - far ahead of the exhausted group traipsing along
behind him - has, for the past quarter-century, been not
so much an eccentricity as a fact of life in the Donegal
highlands. And following him as less a hobby and more a
way of life for those of us he introduced to the mountain
ranges of the west of Ireland, through the North-West
Mountaineering Club that he founded with friends in 1955
and that he has been the key figure of ever since. His natural leadership was never in doubt; for all the crazy deviousness of his short-cuts by car, and for all his knack of getting a line of vehicles stranded, sunk to their back axles in very remote bog on some highly dubious track, his sense of the quickest way - or of the most interesting and varied way - of traversing a mountain proved unfailingly accurate. Many an enterprising effort to overtake him by apparently shorter route foundered; he had an intimate knowledge of the terrain of Donegal, accumulated over years of experience, which is almost certainly unequalled. The loss of such a wealth of unrecorded knowledge is great; it is less than the personal loss felt at his death by every member of the Club. It is a rare individual who can, by sheer force of enthusiasm, generate enough zeal in a group to get everyone in it doing things like lugging firewood up Errigal one frosty night to burn the New Year in on its peak. Who but Joey would have conceived of the race over the highest ten peaks of Donegal, beginning at midnight, the Marathon from Muckish, and the 'Sperrin Skyway', and actually got us all racing like lunatics across them? Under who else's auspices, I wonder, would we ever have watched a sunrise over the Bluestacks from the summit of Lavagh Mar one icy 3 a.m.? And during those exciting annual 5-day Easter trips to Scotland, Wales, the Lake District, Kerry or Connemara, it was always a very brave person who, in face of Joey's tireless enthusiasm and undiminished energy, would at last initiate rebellion when the rest of us could hardly move a muscle. His tenacity was astounding. Who else, having climbed Ben Nevis by mistake, would have promptly descended and rushed another 4,000' up the originally intended Aonachs? Who but Joey, indeed, would have climbed Ben Nevis accidentally in the first place? Ben Nevis was only one out of his 1,275 summits - his passion for statistics was secondary only to his passion for mountains. Having bagged 181 3,000' peaks in Scotland, all 2,000' peaks in Ireland north of a line between Galway and Dublin, and all the 1,000' peaks of Donegal, he made off to the Alps and Dolomites. But it is on the north-west ridge of the mountain he climbed 85 times, - Errigal - that we hope to erect a memorial to him. |
-- The North-West Mountaineering Club. |
Mr J.B. Glover | |
Sportsman of the Week, a feature article. | Although Mr. J.B. Glover (Joey) Glover only took up
mountaineering at the age of 32, a time when most
climbers are thinking of hanging up their boots [sic], he
has already 'topped' an impressive total of 1275
mountains. "I find that increasing age is no hindrance in a pastime which appeals more to the extrovert individual, as against sports which are controlled by rules, team effort and restrictions of playing space," he says. |
Climbs | Mountaineering can involve either hill-walking or
climbing, which requires training and the use of
specialised techniques. If a mountain is described as
"any definable height over 1000 feet", Joey has
climbed all those in Donegal and almost all those in
Ulster and Connaught, including all peaks over 2000'
north of the line from Dublin to Galway. A 'Munro' is a peak of 3000 feet or more and Joey has topped all eleven in Ireland, all four in England, all fourteen in Wales and 118 of those in Scotland. |
82 Climbs | "My favourite mountain must be Errigal, as I
have climbed it 82 times," he explained. "I am
always seeking variations of known and unknown routes and
have watched sunrise from it on two occasions." He has also done a considerable amount of walking in Switzerland and the Dolomites, but there it consisted mostly of pass walking because he had not the training or the experience for climbing in the Alps. Mountaineering
requires good boots, adequate clothing, a compass, a
torch, and a map, but 'experience' is probably the most
useful attribute a mountaineer has. "It is important
to know and recognise the limits of one's endurance in
relation to the weather conditions," he explained. "The secret of hill-walking is the knowledge of how to pace yourself with the maximum relation and minimum effort," he emphasised, "and I am sometimes amused to hear beginners complaining of the effort expended in climbing up the mountain though they must realise at the start that this the only way to get to the top!" |
The North-West Mountaineering Club. | The North-West Mountaineering Club, of which Mr.
Glover has been chairman or president for most of the
time since its inception in 1955, would like to see more
youngsters taking up the sport as there is so much
wonderful country within easy reach of the city. The
club will be celebrating it 25th anniversary with a
dinner dance on April 4 (1970), and about fifty past and
present members are expected to attend. Guests at the
dinner will include Mr. Richard Doherty, chairman of the
Londonderry District Sports Council, and representatives
from the Ramblers' Club, in Dublin. The Club has set a target of two long-distance walks
from the summit of Muckish to the summit of Errigal and
the Sperrin Skyway, from the highest point on the
Feeny-Draperstown Road to the head of the Butterlope
Glen. |
Variety | As an indoor activity Joey is very keen on
progressive jazz on the piano, and is a fan of Oscar
Peterson. He plays the occasional game of golf for
variety, but finds it a poor substitute for
mountaineering. "It is a game where one is committed as soon as one starts playing," he says, "and it is subject to the rules and disciplines which are foreign to the hill-walker." |
The original source of this article is unknown to me -- Simon Stewart. | |
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