70: Everest 50 - Gear Innovation with Mike Parsons

The second of an extra special 5 part series celebrating 50 years since Doug Scott and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to stand on the summit of Everest, Cathy & Wayne are joined by Mike Parsons, the original owner of Karrimor and OMM.

Running the family business Karrimor, Mike was one of the key equipment sponsors for the groundbreaking Everest 1975 expedition and describes how working with the team to create bespoke equipment shaped the products demanded by customers as participation in outdoor activities rocketed. 

Listen ,learn and if you are able, please consider donating to our chosen charity: Community Action Nepal


The Climbers Shop and Joe Brown Shops | Outdoor Clothing & Equipment UK
The Joe Brown Outdoor Academy

Joe Brown Outdoor Academy

If you found this interesting then don't forget to download our earlier episodes:

Episode 69: Everest 50 with Sir Chris Bonington and Paul 'Tut' Braithwaite

Episode 67: Joe Brown and Kangchenjunga 1955 

Episode 66: Kit Lists - Alpine Climbing with BMG Tom Ripley

Episode 62: Community Action Nepal @KMF24

Episode 30: Kit Lists - 8000m Peaks With Jon Gupta

Episode 26: Kit Lists - Expeditions With Andy Cave

Episode 13: Joe Browns and The Climbers Shop Big History

Episode 10: Rucsacks - What's in Your Sack?

The video of this podcast is available on You Tube

Transcript

Wayne Singleton   0:14 
Hi there. Welcome along to outdoor gear chat. This is episode 70, what a milestone that is for us and yeah amazing that we're here to talk about the Everest 50th anniversary. This is Part 2 in our podcast of our series of those and I'm joined as always by Cathy Hi. 

Cathy   0:34 
Hi Wayne, I am Cathy and I'm the co-owner and director of the Joe Brown shops in Snowdonia and the climbers shop in Ambleside. And as I mentioned before, back in episode 13 we talked about the history of the shops. 
That are absolutely founded, the climate shop opened in 1959, the Brown shops opened in 1966, so they've been selling technical equipment to everybody from folks going out enjoying the hill, walking right through to expeditions. 
All through that time frame. So I'm actually delighted to have with us today. 
A guest who is an author, a historian, climber, skier and runner, and who ran the family business: Karrimor, who not only we've been our shops, have been selling for many years, but Karrimor was a key supplier of their Everest 75 expedition and our guest worked designing and building bespoke equipment and also later in his career was key to recreating the clothing worn by Mallory on one of the very, very early Everest expeditions. So welcome Mike Parsons. 

mike parsons   1:53 
Thank you. 

Wayne Singleton   1:54 
Yeah, that's incredible, isn't it? I'm fascinated by the whole tale, but particularly the recreation of the Mallory bit is just absolutely astounding. Would you humour me, Cathy? Can we start with that bit first? 

Cathy   2:07 
Are you messing with my questions? 

Wayne Singleton   2:08 
Is it gonna spoil our all the flow? 

mike parsons   2:11
No, it's better to come later.
 
Cathy   2:40
Literally from the early days. From those 1930s expeditions through to 1953, which was obviously the big expedition where Tenzing and Hillary stood on the summit of the highest peak in the world for the first time, and that pivotal expedition was announced on Coronation Day back here in the UK, which was a huge, hugely important day and a hugely important announcement, and I think it's obviously one of those moments in time where if you were there, you know, you remember where you were and what was happening. And Mike, I do know that you were there in 1953 to hear that, that, that sort of momentous news of the 1st climb of Everest but where were you and what did it mean to you?
 
mike parsons   3:35 
Well, I was 11 years old and I was camping on the side of Windermere at Fell foot. 

Cathy   3:42 
Oh yeah, yeah. 

Wayne Singleton   3:43 
Oh, how awesome. 

mike parsons   3:44 
The weather was awful. It was blowing the tent around and it was raining and gusting. We were out checking the pegs to make sure they weren't pulling out and so on. 
And my dad had his sock on mobile radio, which was the size of two bricks held up here and the aerial was extended and touching the top of the tent, and the radio was crackling away and he was listening to the broadcast of the coronation suddenly. 
One arm shut up in the air and he said, hey, they have climbed Mount Everest. 
And it's very curious, I find it curious that my thoughts were even at 11 years old, I could say that the British Empire was fading rapidly. It's amazing that I would think of that at 11 years old, and I wondered if this was some sort of revival. It wasn't, but it meant a huge amount for climbing and mountaineering. 

Wayne Singleton   5:03 
Well, it's phenomenal, isn't it? And like, I think Cathy, you were saying that on an earlier podcast about that or it might have been a chat that we were having. But the timing of it and that it was kept secret, you know, and how all that worked to make sure it was reported and that the news didn't get out, so its fascinating hearing that. 

Cathy   5:16 
Yeah, It was so important. And there's a book written called Coronation Everest by a lady called Jan Morris and she was responsible. I think it was Sunday Times that she was working at. So she was responsible for breaking that news and the security around breaking that news. And I remember coming across the book and thinking that's strange. I don't remember any women on that trip. 

Jan Morris has got an incredible story herself because she was James Morris when she broke the news and in the 70s, went through a whole sex change. And she's written another fantastic book describing that process. Look her up. Jan Morris, she's an absolute legend. Unfortunately, she passed away just last year, I think. But she's a prolific writer and really really interesting.  

mike parsons   6:28 
I do just look at that as I look back now because I'm writing my memoir, I could see that there were two pivotable hhappenings and one was the Everest but some years prior to that was the family of the BMC. Now, that might not sound pivotal to you, but it was very pivotal because of the nature of our society. 

Because the historically Britain society is very structured Hierarch, hierarchical and climbing was related to the upper classes as only they could have the time to go out to the alps. 

Wayne Singleton   7:15 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   7:17 
After the family of the Alpine Club opened in 1857. Every other country, Alpine country, in Europe opened an Alpine organization which was open to everybody. 
But we remain very, very hierarchically structured. You had to be either a gentleman or a hell of a bloody good climber to enter this elite part of society. That's how society worked. So the BMC was founded in 46 and that was really, really super important because they published a book called Climbing in Britain and it was the first instructional book, not the first guidebook, the first instructional book. 
Telling you how to climb and that's sold. Wait for the number, 125,000 copies. 

Wayne Singleton   8:20 
No way. 

mike parsons   8:21 
And that was sold to the men returning from the war. 

Wayne Singleton   8:26 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   8:27
In 46, yeah. And that provided a foundation of people who were jumping into climbing.
 
Wayne Singleton   8:33
Yeah, and the boom. Loads of fit, active people come in. Well, soldiers I suppose that  would want to do that sort of thing as a pastime.
 
mike parsons   8:45 
Yeah, but something else happened that was critically important for our family business. You see, we had a bike shop in East Lancashire and the back shop was selling bikes, of course. But we also had a little workshop above the shop selling bike bags, which my dad had named Karrimor. 

 
And initially it was set up in 19. My dad was a racing cyclist. He set up and he held the local record for Rawtenstall to Blackpool, which was about 45-50 miles or something and he set up a bike shop in the start of the Great Recession because the cotton mills were in trouble during that period. 

But as the war came along, only essential articles were manufactured. So consumer goods were not made at all, and so therefore he had the idea he bought a couple of sewing machines and persuaded my mum and aunt to make some bags simply to sell in the store 'cause, there was nothing to sell and this was their livelihood.

Cathy   10:23 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   10:24 
However, he was working very, very hard and very late and he had an accident. 
And he splashed spirits of salt in his eyes and my mom nagged him, but he still didn't go and have it sorted for some while and he then did go to Moorfield’s 
eye hospital, which is still a leading eye hospital in Britain and in the world. 
And they operated but at that moment, a German bombing raid came across the sirens rang out and they had to move him. After an eye operation, you have to be kept very still. 

Wayne Singleton   11:16
Have to remain still, yeah.
 
mike parsons   11:18 
And after they put him back, they said sorry, Mr Parsons, we have lost it. 
So he didn't finally lose his sight until quite a few years later, but it was step by step by step, gradually getting worse. And I did one last ride with him on the bike before he finally lost his site. And then years later we started riding tandem. I did a lot of riding tandem with him. 

Wayne Singleton   11:52 
Right. Wow. And did that how, how did that impact upon the, the work? Sorry, Mike We very excitedly have questions. I'm really sorry to disturb you. Did it stop him doing any of the work at all? Or did your mum pick up on carrying making the bags? 

mike parsons   12:19 
My dad's disability was, he was still a really good ideas man always came up with ideas. But also he was very frustrated because he was limited in what he could do. 
I left school in 1960, and I worked in the back store. I Learned how to build a wheel and do the usual sort of maintenance jobs on a bike and then we mutually agreed our shift over to the manufacturing. 
But something I mentioned, the BMC because the BMC and ever since on had a huge impact because we were a Raleigh bike dealer and Raleigh at that time was like BMW. It's a really, really important brand. But during a war period, Raleigh had of course not made any bikes. They had only been making shells, millions and millions. I have the original book of that, showing how many millions of shell cases that they made? Yeah.  
And anyway looking forward to the boom in bicycles they opened a second factory, 20 acres can you imagine? however shortly afterwards the bike market completely collapsed for reasons of all people deserting bikes. For two reasons. One, they were getting on the crags. but also there was a very strong sociological factor that if you were riding a bike you were regarded as an impecunious bleeding peasant. 

Wayne Singleton   14:48 
Right, yeah. 

Cathy   14:53 
Yeah. 
Right. OK. 

mike parsons   15:05 
So over the following years, there's a huge shift towards motorized transport, whether that be a motorbike or a car or whatever, and then motorways started to open. 

Cathy   15:20 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   15:21 
And the national parks and long-distance parks and long-distance pathways started opening up. So that's what the start of the BMC did.   

Cathy   16:13 
Yeah. And that I suppose I know 1960 to 1995 has sort of been termed as the Golden Age of equipment and or certainly for as far as outdoor equipment and technology is concerned. So obviously that all kind of sat on the knife edge, I suppose that the family business there with what had happened to your dad and the general sort of societal changes and everything. 

I know 1958 was a key year and with the introduction of the Karrimor sac de grande pere and the Joe Brown Pack in 1950, and I suppose those two styles almost herded the beginning of Karrimor’s dominance of UK’s rucksack market pretty much for 30 years, really. I mean, certainly when I started in the trade Karrimor was a huge, huge name and that was heading into clothing as well at that point.  

But going back to the rucksacks, which were really important, how did you build on these styles? And then as the new technologies arrived and  customers taste, I suppose changing over that time because 30 years it's a long period of time, isn't it? 

mike parsons   17:33 
Good question. First of all, a quick fun story about the label. We use sac de Grimpeur 

Cathy   17:41 
Yeah.

mike parsons   17:42 
And what happened was my dad said look, we need a label for you know we got a couple of people asked for a slim, no climbing rucksacks were being made at that time because the rucksacks were from usually from Bergenhus or somebody like that in Norway and they were framed and they were clumsy and they weren't suitable for climbing and so on. So a climbing rucksack was completely new. It didn't have a frame. It was narrow. The sort of room to get your arms back and so on and very simple.  

So he said, “Look, we need a label and a name for the pack. We need something French because the French seem to be leading there. You know, the French climbed Annapurna in 1950, so that was a really sort of grim story because of the.
Amputations after frostbite sort, so we need a French word. So being a bike rider…

Wayne Singleton   18:48 
It's you, yeah. 

mike parsons   18:50
My bike riding French came up with the word Grimpeur. The name was completely erroneous. It's it should have said, sacked Montaigne or sacked de Montagnier or something like that but curiously, not a single person over the years queried it.
 
Cathy   19:35
None.
 
Wayne Singleton   19:39 
I love that. That's brilliant. There's just so much about that. That's fantastic, isn't it? I'm sorry. I was furiously Googling Grimpeur just as you were talking then. So it just popped up at the right moment for me. That's absolutely superb. 

mike parsons   19:53 
I’ve just been watching the last few days, the Giro d'Italia because I'm, you know, I still follow cycling sport, because that was my first sport for many years. I was riding 8,000-10,000 miles a year for several years. You know, that's where I got my legs from. 

Wayne Singleton   20:00 
Yeah. 
Yeah. Wow. 

mike parsons   20:15 
Anyway, back to the longer story, you know? Yeah, it's an interesting question. Yeah, we dominated the scene for 30 years.  

I was invited by the Oriad Climbing Club of Derby last November and one of them turned out to be a former customer of mine. And so he was intrigued and what surprised them also surprised me, because they thought I'd just sat in an office.
And I didn't, when I started there was like 6 people so when somebody went ill or as frequently happened, people were not, you know, changing the job and this that and the other, I did that operations.
 
And just as an example, I want to show you. Only three or four years ago, I had a friend come to the climbing hunt next door to us, which my wife, Marilyn is the warden of and he said Mike, he said I've got this old rucksack and there's nothing wrong with it. It's still functional but I'm going to update it, but I thought you might like it. I said. Oh, OK, let me have look. And I looked and I said, good heavens, this, this, must be late 60s. He said, yeah, I bought it in 68. And so I looked at it.
And.

Wayne Singleton   22:12 
Wow. Wow. Wow. 

mike parsons   22:13 
I said. 
Good heavens. 
You know, you see that stitching there I did that.   

Wayne Singleton   22:17 
That's my stitch work. 

Cathy   22:21 
Fantastic. 

Wayne Singleton   22:24 
Brilliant and sorry for those, of you can’t watch him. What Mike's just done is literally raised up a rucksack and shown us the stitching on it that that you did in the 60s, Mike. That's fantastic. 

mike parsons   22:39 
Well, there's no doubt that I, I've no doubt that I did it because there's only one machine that did that. 

Wayne Singleton   22:42 
Yeah. 
Right. 

mike parsons   22:45 
It was a very, very special machine and no one else would like to use it, so I did the all the operations on that thing. I'll go back to the oriad and they surprised me I you know, for me manufacturing is getting involved so. 

I didn't make the patterns for the Joe Brown pack 'cause, my aunt had done that, but I learned from how they'd done that, and the next one was Don Whillans arrived. I was upstairs cutting leather at the time and Eric, the shop manager who was my training partner, he was a national client champion. 

He called up the stairs because there was no separate entrance to the to the workshop. It was just up the stairs through the shop, so they just called out somebody to see you and so I went downstairs and there's this short squat guy. 
Say hi. How are you? I'm Don Whillans. You might have heard of me. I've come from. I live up the road near here and you're making a pack for a mate of mine. Joe Brown. Can you make one for me?  

Cathy   24:09 
Brilliant. 

mike parsons   24:10 
I said yea, just tell us what you want because there was no strategy. That's what we did, you know? And so, you know, we were looking, looking for things to make. 

Cathy   24:14 
Yeah. 

Wayne Singleton   24:21 
Right. And so yeah, it literally was that bespoke. It was, yeah, you can we can make it for you for want of a better phrase. Was that what you were doing back? You weren't churning out for want of a better phrase. Loads of the same sort of pack? 

mike parsons   24:35
We made them available. As I say, I didn't do the patterns my aunt did. The patterns for the Joe Brown the first version, but there was something like 3 or 4 versions of the Joe Brown pack I think we did.
 
Cathy   25:11 
Well, I think that sort of is really key though to sort of going on to that sort of 30 year domination because from the outset you had a clear understanding of what was involved in the manufacturing aspect of those items. But you're an active user as well. So you could go out and test them. And then as you sort of work through your career. 

And over your career, you work with some, some of the best climbers of their eras.
Listening to their feedback and translating that back into product and putting that product back out into the marketplace to become commercial. So I think that whole cycle, if you think that you as one person doing all of those roles versus let's think about a larger corporation where there's a department that does the design, they may or may not speak to the department that sources the fabrics and they may or may not speak to the department that deals with returns and knows what goes wrong, you know with products. And so I think that that kind of pot of knowledge and expertise all the way through the process, I think that must have been really important and pivotal to the products speaking for themselves for such a long period of time.

mike parsons   26:29 
 What was important was listening, my strength was listening to people.  Listening to Joe Brown listening to Don Williams listening to Douglas Haston listening. Yeah, and not assuming that I knew so that was one of the small things that kept me ahead in that period, including my hands on approach. 
 
Being able to make the patterns I didn't continue making the patterns throughout the whole lifestyle of the period eventually. When did I stop? 
I was careful, I got my brother-in-law, my brother-in-law became my pattern maker. 'cause. I didn't want to teach anybody else. 

Cathy   32:20 
Right. Yeah. Keep it in the family. 

mike parsons   32:23 
And that would not be until the 70s. 

Cathy   32:33 
Right, right. 

mike parsons   32:33 
I made all my own patterns through that, yeah. 

Cathy   32:36 
All the way through to. Yeah. So that put you in a perfect position in 1975 or it might even have been 1974 in the build up to the Everest Southwest Face Expedition. 
To work with the team to create bespoke equipment for that trip. I guess, didn't it? What were the sort of things you worked on? 

mike parsons   33:00
Well, could we jump back a little bit because. Don was the equipment officer first of all, on Annapurna. 
Cathy   33:12 
Yes. 

mike parsons   33:13 
Yeah, and Chris, on his 90th was interviewed by Nile Grimes at the BMC. 

Cathy   33:25 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   33:26 
Ask what his favorite things that he still remember, and he remembered his climbs in in the alps with Don and said probably Don was the best man that Britain had ever produced but bloody awkward to manage, yeah. 

Cathy   33:44 
There is actually, if you if you search deep on YouTube, there's an episode of ‘This Is Your Life" with Don Whillans

mike parsons   33:54 
Alright. 

Wayne Singleton   33:54 
Oh alright. 

Cathy   33:54 
Yeah. There's a few famous faces on there. 

mike parsons   33:56  
So anyway, so he was popping in an and out you know, he'd come to collect the royal or to check on something. And then one day he came in and said. 
You know that canvas you're making my pack out of? Yeah. 
he said look well, could you make me a tent out of that if I made an angle iron frame. 
Could you make me a tent up or something?  

So I made him something pretty basic and he wanted that for Patagonia, because that's where his first idea came from. And in my mind, where I'm talking about, I've got the original pictures from Chris because he said this story needs to be told.  

So I got all Boningtons original pictures and what Don did in Patagonia, he actually... the tent kept being blown down, so he eventually found some boxwood on the local farmstead and erected that halfway up. They wrote on it, club Britannic or members only because they were competing against the Italians and so on.

 So I've got the picture showing that written on the doorway. So this is actually fantastic and so what he wanted, he went back again to Patagonia, of course, and saw what he wanted was something to be reliable instead of having to trust a lot, finding some scraps of wood and so on and so on. So that's what I made for him. 
And that was about mid 60s and then comes Annapurna.  

Don was asked by Bonington to be the equipment officer. So he came along and said, OK, you know, could you do one for Annapurna? 
I said, Oh well, they're gonna be a bit heavy,  
he said, It doesn't matter as long as they're not heavier than a Porter load. 

So he gave me very little instruction. I made all the aluminum frame because by that time we were making aluminum pack frames and I made the corner pieces. 
And I knew that people disliked a tunnel entrance because their feet got caught up in it, so I made an entrance at both ends. I made a big U shape zip one end, and if you've seen the one that was on display. 

Cathy   38:26
Yeah, there was one on display at the Everest exhibition in Rheged recently, wasn't there.
 
mike parsons   38:28 
Yeah, there's a big U-shaped zip one side and which of course, as is it, you know there could be problems there. Yeah. So you could shut that up completely and then just use the tunnel entrance and so on, so on. So that was a fail safe. 
But the actual canvas pulled around the frame and tensioned underneath and then lined it with yellow carry mats, which was starting to become famous at that time. 

Cathy   39:02 
Yeah.

mike parsons   39:03 
And the idea was that and this was, this was Don's genius. He realized that he couldn't get a wedge shaped tent in. It would be crushed by the spin drift and the snow coming down the slope and the idea was that they dug in the tent. 
And pushed it into a sort of a cavity there. And occasionally what they did also was put some tarp lines and things up on the slopes pinned up by some dead men, you know, into the into the snow just to help it off.  

But when we got to Everest was the next step by that time Chris tried, The Germans tried it, John Cleare. I'm just doing a story on him at the Alpine Club next week. John Cleare was on the German early climb in 72 because the whole world was having a go, Everest was going to be the big prize by this time. Whoa, everybody wanted that for sure, yeah. 

Cathy   40:16
But it got so popular they announced the team on the 10:00 news. It was such big, big business, wasn't it? 
 
mike parsons   40:48 
What happened was that I was driving home listening to Radio 4 and. Headline news,  
Don Whillans has not been accepted for Chris Bonnington's 1975 expedition. 

Cathy   41:14 
Yeah. Yeah, it was huge.   

mike parsons   41:15 
And sometime after that, I said, hey Chris, that was a tough call, wasn't it? He said. I didn't make that call Dougal did, Dougal said. If that man's going, I'm out. So sadly, Don wasn't on it, but he was. He was a genius and very, very practical. Hands on to solve. I mean it was a genius to think that you could use a box tent to solve the Annapurna and Everest problem. 

Anyway, what happened was that Chris got Hamish MacInnes involved on that Everest 75 one and there was some risk that in that case, Chris had been monitoring from various expeditions what the snow depth, what the conditions were and everything and so on. So they realised that there could be places where they wasn't enough snow to dig out. 
And that would be a real problem. 

 So Hamish who made a completely different design of frame and he made it so that the outer struts on the downward side were adjustable in length, so you could adjust it. You could put it in place on a slope without deep snow. 

 Cathy   42:56 
Right, right, right. 

mike parsons   43:09 
And therefore there was a full platform inside it, yeah and I made the tent that covered it again. 

Cathy   43:26 
Incredible. And you can read in the in the descriptions, you know how important it was for the team to sleep on a flat platform. And I think there's also description at some point because of condensation and cooking. They were sleeping on the carry mats, but they're also using them to insulate on the top to stop the condensation.   

mike parsons   43:42 
And also there was one other important change. 
Sounding small, but the original Annapurna Box tent was sort of specified in size by Don, who is rather less tall than Dougal. 

Wayne Singleton   44:05 
Alright. 

mike parsons   44:05 
And so the 75 tents were made rather longer. 

Wayne Singleton   44:10 
Alright. And  as a talley, I can relate to that. Yeah, I'm 6 foot six. So I can, yeah, I can understand that one. Blimey. Yeah. Goodness. 

Cathy   44:17 
He's sleeping with your feet out the tent. So as well as the box tent which was obviously extremely important for expeditions of that time, you made the rucksacks as well, didn't you? 

mike parsons   44:32 
Oh yeah. I mean, what I meant. Oh, yeah. 

Cathy   44:36
He’s going in. Going in this cupboard again. What's coming out?
 
mike parsons   44:39 
What they wanted for the '75. They wanted some further modifications of the pack. The pack that Don had done actually for Annapurna wasn't that good. I redesigned it and it became a big commercial success as the Annapurna pack. Yeah. 
However the specification for the '75 pack was that they wanted somewhere to hold the oxygen bottle upright, so I made a pack with a sleeve on the inside that held a bottle upright, it wasn't flopping about. 
And also they were having problems with the exchange valve and it freezing up and so they wanted some way of holding the exchange valve inside the pack so that it  wouldn't freeze up, it wouldn't be open to the air and so this is one of the original packs, yeah. 

Cathy   45:59 
Oh, look at that. Oh, wow. So for those who listen to the podcast, we are looking at a brilliant red canvas rucksack with Karrimor Everest '75 on the logo. 
With beige straps coming down the front with metal clasps and very kind of rectangular pockets on the side. and then Mike's just holding up. And what's that? There's something strange on the bottom of the side packet there.

mike parsons   46:29 
So the pack is proofed nylon, of course regular, but for it to hold the exchange valve at the bottom there was a separate pouch there and this was in windproof fabric, not quartered and then the exchange valve was, let me just raise it a little bit further. The exchange valve was in that section there and the tube supply and the oxygen came out of here and you drew that up with a draw cord. Yeah. And went on to the, you know, the breathing mask on the face. Yeah. 

Cathy   47:06 
Right. 
OK. And then so it was critical that the fabric around that exchange device was windproof but not coated, so that there was no build up of condensation to create ice basically. 

mike parsons   47:22 
Correct, well done. 

Cathy   47:24 
Awesome. Awesome. Oh, what a treat to see an actual pack from the trip there. That's superb. 

Wayne Singleton   47:32 
And then it's got just back to where what you were saying earlier about sort of redesigning packs for climbing that one out of like really like rigid poles, on the back, didn't it. 

mike parsons   47:43 
By that time, patrons have come in. You know, in many cases you see when once they got to a certain altitude, the number of sherpas they able to do that was limited and so they needed something which was a good loading you know, so you've got a full hip belt there. 

Wayne Singleton   48:09 
Yeah, cool. 

mike parsons   48:11 
And so at that time, this was before hip belts were had been designed into soft packs, yeah. 
However, when I delved into details. You never know what actually is going to be used for sure on an expedition until you delve into things. So I said, Dougal wrote me a piece about them bivvying they descended, highest bivvy ever. 

Cathy   48:44 
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Wayne Singleton   48:47 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   48:47 
And they used my yellow carry mats and they survived that thing and I still recall. 
Dougal with Doug coming down and they had this overnight bivvy, and they were checking that they were.... We talked about creeping into action and checking their reactions. If they're sort of reactions, just throwing snowballs in the air just as they restarted to see if their mobility and climbing reactions had been degraded with the lack of oxygen, you see.  

And I still remember that description. And Dougal wrote that up for me, and I put that, put that in the Karrimor catalogue. So that sort of story in the Karrimor catalogue, I mean, you asked me about what the domination was. Well, I had some terrific stories in the Karrimor catalogue. That’s a collectors piece you know. 

Cathy   49:50 
Yeah, yeah. 

mike parsons   49:50 
However, when I delve further into Dougal's things, I found that he'd he had customized or asked somebody to customize a soft back for him with a sleeve in. 
For certain parts of the route he wanted. He still wanted an Alpiniste yeah. 

Cathy   50:15 
Right. 

mike parsons   50:17 
But with a tube. We're holding the upright thing, but, until you ask the question penetrate, you don't know for sure. 

Cathy   50:22 
So he was he was adapting your designs on the go. Almost basically, wasn't he on the mountain? Yeah. 

mike parsons   50:34 
Yeah. but working with leading climbers, you very often.....they only knew what happened if there was a problem, but they didn't know how it had happened and so on. 

Cathy   51:00 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   51:01 
And that was getting proper stories out of them for feedback was  quit problematic. Yeah, but I just was good at asking questions. 

Wayne Singleton   51:14 
Yeah. 

Cathy   51:15 
And then translating it. Yeah, translating that into the name. So we're kind of we're zooming through time. But I know Wayne, you're really keen to just to hear a bit more about later in your career, Mike, when you collaborated with Doctor Mary Rose. 

Wayne Singleton   51:33 
Yeah, the re-creation. 

Cathy   51:38 
It’s an academic project to recreate the clothing worn by George Mallory, who went missing near the summit of Everest in 1924. I think it was. It was really, really early, wasn't it? 
Can you just very, very briefly sort of tell us you kind of explained how it became possible and how you became involved, but what did what key elements did you learn from that project? 

mike parsons   52:01 
OK, let me tell you first of all, why it happened during the period. Mary and I were writing the writing on researching the book, invisible on Everest. 
The American Heritage Trust was established, and it was set up at Rheged. As you probably recall. 

Cathy   52:27 
Yes, yes. 

mike parsons   52:30 
I decided I said to Mary, this sounds important. I'm going to get involved. 
And so on and see if I can help and so  I did some of the writing of the boards and. 
I was helping the set up because we were still knocking nails in and doing all sorts of things at 10:00 PM on the evening before. 

(Prime Minister) Tony Blair arrived to do the official opening? Yeah and so the only the evening before the pieces had arrived back from Mallory's body. And so they just took out some key pieces. And one key piece was his name tag on his jacket that they put there and some goggles. So that was very nice. So I said, oh, is there anything else? He said Oh, yeah. Well, there's three boxes. So I went back the day afterwards and there's three boxes and I unscrewed them and there's all these layers interleaved with tissue, but the original blood is still kept on there. 

Cathy   53:42 
Oh gosh. 

mike parsons   53:43 
I thought. 
However, at that moment something clicked and connected because when Mary wrote to me about collaborating on the book. She had quoted George Bernard Shaw in 1927 Who said" The 1924 Everesters were dressed as though for a picnic in Connemara, but surprised by a snowstorm. "

Cathy   54:16 
Right. 

mike parsons   54:17 
And Mary quoted that quote to me on an e-mail and I said, you know I don't think that is correct and she was very surprised by me as a manufacturer of modern equipment, saying that. And so that was part of the thing that jells together, she's saying, oh, hang on, somebody different here and so then several years, sometime later, as I'm opening the boxes. 
 
On the phone to Mary. Mary, this is what I'm finding. Do you happen to know anybody who is in the business of restoring ancient textiles?  
And she was running a trust, pass all trust based on Ladybird and they used to discuss thing and she was chairing that and she said yes. One of the members of my trust is a rresearcher at a University Department linked to Southampton, but based just north of there. I'll give her a call. This person was on study leave or something for a month but nevertheless came along pretty soon and said ‘Yeah. Look, we, we deal with things much more difficult than that’. So, the problem was this needed money that this is not going to be done for fun.   

Cathy   56:33 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   56:34 
So we put together a project, a proposal to the Heritage Lottery Fund. 
But they wouldn't provide 100%. So Mary had some funds within the passall and she provided £3/4/5000 or something like that and the Heritage Lottery Fund provided. 
£20/21,000 thousand. Yeah. So the total cost was £25,000 and Mary did a brilliant job. She, coordinated 5, yeah, it was 5 universities, yeah. 
Just amazing. There's all those different skills.

Cathy   57:22 
Wow, yeah. 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   57:26 
And we had two pieces. 
I mean, Mary did a brilliant like I said, if you if ever you wanted to exit from academic you make a brilliant product manager, you know. 

 
Cathy   57:40 

The whole project is incredible from start to finish and we might actually have to come back and do a separate podcast on that specifically because it's absolutely fascinating. And there I've been lucky enough to see the recreated suit and my gosh, I mean, it is so tactile, the fibres are just beautiful. The amount of layering is absolutely fascinating. 

Wayne Singleton   57:47
Yeah. Wow.
 
mike parsons   58:08 
And so when we tested it, we  did two tests, what we had one guy who got 25,000 feet and he said yeah if the weather had been good I would have been willing to summit in this outfit and it was incredibly free and flexible and so on super and it was also tested at Loughborough University and certainly it was equivalent to sort of things you would use on a poor trip. What? Of course, within those layers was lacking was down equipment, which was used for, you know, mainly for overnights and things like that. 

Cathy   58:53 
Yeah. 

mike parsons   58:54 
Down, if you recall, the guy, the guy who George Finch, he had invented a down jacket in 1922. 

Cathy   59:09 
Everybody laughed at him. 

mike parsons   59:09 
He was Australian and didn't on with anybody and they didn't get what on with him. So I didn't invite him back again, but actually it was a brilliant opening. He's probably better than Murray and so they missed the Down jacket and so my theory is that when George Finch did his talks in Germany and Paris. A rather important person called Pierre Alain. 

Cathy   59:51 
Ah rock boot fame.

mike parsons   59:53 
Of rock boot fame and Fontainebleau. He was the instigator of Fontainebleau 

Cathy   59:56 
Yeah, yeah. 

mike parsons   1:00:03 
I have a good bet that he heard Finch and so when we came to Everest 53. The Down equipment was French made because there wasn't yet any British makers or down. 

Cathy   1:00:25
But 75, of course, Peter Hutchins and mountain equipment, they had it covered.
 
mike parsons   1:00:31 
But also when if you're talking about Kanchenjunga. 

Cathy   1:00:41 
Hmm. 

mike parsons   1:00:44 
The Everest 53, had a brilliant, absolutely brilliant piece of footwear. Which was used again on Kanchenjunga and probably used by Joe I'm sure. 

Cathy   1:01:00 
Yes. Yeah. 

mike parsons   1:01:01 
And it was forgotten about and never used again. 

Cathy   1:01:04 
Right. Really. 

Wayne Singleton   1:01:05 
All right. 

mike parsons   1:01:07 
Completely forgotten. Yeah. because there was no market there was, there was no entrepreneurs involved and so on it was a technical project by Griffith Pugh, the government scientists. And it was a brilliant boot. I have pictures of that boot and I can give you a picture if you need it in comparison with the modern boot. Yeah. 

Cathy   1:01:08 
Right. Well, that that's a date, Mike. 

Wayne Singleton   1:01:33 
Definitely. 

Cathy   1:01:34 
Because that's just fantastic. Oh, amazing. I mean, we can literally carry on and  talk all day, but unfortunately, we are very much out of time.  

But you can see a Joe Brown original, Joe Brown caramel pack which is on display permanently in our Capel Curig shop and we do have at the moment a display of old, I think we've got old Jaguars, Sac de Grimpeur. We have an original Sac de Grimpeur on display in our Ambleside shop, the climbers shop. So please do come along, they're just up in the stairwell to go and see. 

You will find in the show notes links to Mike's book association with Doctor Mary Rose Invisible on Everest, which is all about the clothing and the project involving the Mallory clothes. And Mike, you're obviously working on a fascinating memoir at the moment so be sure to check our website when it because it will be there when it's available and you can find that on https://www.climbers-shop.com/  And there is also a wealth of additional information. There's also a article on the history of the Kanchenjunga 1955 expedition as well that Joe Brown was part of that Mike just mentioned and that is available on our blog and also via our Joe Brown Outdoor Academy which is https://www.joebrownoutdooracademy.com/