Alan Mullin

Alan Michael Mullin, mountaineer: born Irvine, Ayrshire 25 February 1972; married 1992 Marion Mohlmeier (one son, one stepson, one stepdaughter); died Inverness 9 March 2007.

In three winter seasons around the turn of the millennium, Alan Mullin, a previously unknown climber, burst onto the scene, and became the most daring and accomplished performer in one of the toughest forms of mountaineering: Scottish winter climbing.

Routes such as his first winter ascent of The Steeple/Bad Karma (one of the first climbs to be graded IX, 9) on Cairngorm's remote Shelter Stone Crag in 1999 brought gasps of amazement from even the most hardened and grizzled of Scottish climbing veterans - by reputation one of the hardest climbing constituencies in the world to impress. Mullin and his partner Steve Paget spent 31 hours on the incredibly steep, technical and strenuously sustained route and finished suffering from exhaustion and hypothermia. "We both vomited a lot and I lost the feeling in my fingers for one week," Mullin admitted afterwards.

In December 1999 Mullin decided to make things even more desperate for himself by tackling another seriously dangerous route - this time alone. On his solo climb of Lochnagar's Rolling Thunder (VIII, 8) he attempted a previously unclimbed route, "on-sight", with no prior knowledge, with only the dubious security of a trailing back-rope. The climbing, up a steep, slabby line with little to stop a fatal outcome in the event of a fall, was not made easier by the fact Mullin tackled it in a full-scale blizzard. On a day when no other climbers ventured onto the cliff, his solitary figure was captured by the telephoto lens of Niall Ritchie climbing the route "while avalanches crashed down either side of him". It remains the only grade VIII climb to have been pioneered solo.

Such outrageous risk-taking did not impress everyone. Mullin attracted many critics, disdainful of his superficially reckless approach. He also did not help his cause by his often pyrotechnically outspoken comments about what he perceived as his rivals' lesser routes and abilities. Nor did the fact that he sometimes employed ethically controversial tactics, such as taking rest points on equipment, using hammered pegs and "copperheads" that damage the rock, as well as occasionally climbing routes in conditions some considered insufficiently frozen to count as true winter ascents.

In the arcane world of Scottish winter-climbing etiquette style is regarded as extremely important - an ideal ascent involves complete self-reliance, with only removable lead-placed protection and no artificial aids. But Mullin had little respect for tradition: "I don't give a fuck. To explain . . . I'm on the lead, I'll put in whatever I want to put in and if it doesn't come out I don't give a shit. I don't necessarily deliberately leave [pitons] but sometimes they won't come out, so I'll just leave it, although it is important to me to remove my gear from a route, being Scottish and a bit on the tight side."

Despite the flaws in his approach, Mullin could not be ignored. "The impact of his routes on the Scottish winter climbing scene was electric" , the climbing pioneer Simon Richardson wrote. "As someone new to the Scottish winter game, Alan was unencumbered by the weight of history and almost unknowingly smashed his way through psychological barriers." Other climbers began to note the advantages of an intensive training regime and average climbing standards rose a grade amongst the leading pack of winter "activists".

Mullin had come to winter climbing, remarkably, after being invalided out of the army with a spinal injury aged 24, following eight years' service with the 2nd Battalion Royal Green Jackets. Based near Inverness and with time on his hands, he began winter climbing in the nearby Cairngorms, initially finding the experience frightening. "It was my first-ever winter route in Scotland and I was so happy to have not died soloing it, as it was mental and I had never climbed like this before", he said of his first route, a lowly Grade II snow gully.

But, displaying the ferocious determination that would become his trademark, within a year he was leading some of the harder winter lines then ascended, such as Smokestack Lightning (VI, 7) and The Crack (VI, 8) in the Northern Corries of the Cairngorms, before beginning to surpass them with his own achievements. Such was the force of his ambition that, in the words of Simon Richardson,

He attacked the mountain with an aggression that was almost frightening and this momentum would often carry him several metres up a pitch in seconds, covering ground that would take other strong climbers half an hour to puzzle out.

The efforts of critics to throw brick-bats at the fiery Scot's escapades only seemed to encourage him to try even more desperate climbs. In winter 2001 Mullin flung himself, solo, at one of the most iconic of Scottish rock climbs, Ben Nevis's Centurion, finally climbing the line in his third attempt over a period of two days at the grade of VIII, 8. The fact that he abseiled off the line in between attempts, and employed such Californian big-wall tactics as hammering swaged copper-headed blocks into cracks while his crampons scraped up this most hallowed of classic traditional summer Scottish rock climbs brought the expected (and possibly hoped-for) howls of opprobrium. Other groundbreaking solo climbs included After Dark (VII, 7) (climbed at night by headtorch), and Migrant Direct (VIII, 7).

Not all successes came easily. After Mullin finally succeeded on a project to subdue a short, fiercely overhanging line in Coire an Lochain, The Demon Direct (IX, 9), following attempts spread over three winters, he remained perversely unsatisfied by the outcome. "I spent three years on The Demon," he said. "Think of the other things I could have done instead of spending 20-30 hours on 30 metres!" It was a sentiment which presaged a temporary change in direction towards Alpine climbing when Mullin visited Patagonia in 2000 with Kevin Thaw, making the first free ascent of the difficult Czech Route on Fitzroy's West Face.

But by 2002 he was back in the thick of hard Scottish climbing, making a winter ascent of the extreme E3 Lochnagar rock climb, Crazy Sorrow, at the barrier-smashing grade of X, 11 to produce Frozen Sorrow, then the hardest technical winter pitch achieved in Scotland. It proved to be his last hard climb.

In 2004 Mullin abruptly announced he was "retiring", exhausted by the constant criticism and decrying what he saw as modern trends in winter climbing. Increasingly he carried chronic injuries, particularly to one of his knees, thanks to his punishing regime. Few realised he was also suffering from bipolar disorder. He became delusional and a series of attempts on his own life followed. This culminated in an incident during which he began smashing up his own house. Following a five-hour police siege he was remanded in Porterfield Prison, Inverness, where he finally succeeded in committing suicide.

"I don't care what anyone thinks of my climbing, as it's mine and I enjoy it", he had written in a riposte to his critics when he ended his climbing career. "Why must you people be so serious about all this? It's only climbing, for God's sake, and I am doing it for one reason and one reason only, and that's because it makes me feel alive."

Colin Wells