Obituary

1929–2019

Al Alvarez, author of Feeding the Rat, died on Sept. 23 from pneumonia. He was 90 years old. Although Alvarez was a lifelong climber, he never considered himself as someone who was leading the way. In Feeding the Rat, he wrote, “Every move has to be worked out by a kind of physical strategy, in terms of effort, balance, and consequences. It is like playing chess with your body.” Alvarez would spend much of his climbing days at a sandstone crag south of London called Harrison’s Rock. He was often referred to as a mountaineer, but Alvarez considered himself a rock climber. He often climbed with Sir Chris Bonington, Don Whillans, Jim Curran and Ian Macnaught-davis. In 1964, Alvarez met climber Mo Anthoine in the Dolomites. On the Cima Grande’s Comici route, they spent a night huddled down in a snowstorm. Alvarez wrote that the climb “registered very high on my epic scale and hardly at all on Mo’s.”

In the late 1950s, Alvarez was part of a six-man team that climbed Old Man of Hoy in Scotland. George Band climbed it with Alvarez and later wrote, “On the second pitch Mo had left a sling dangling as an extra foothold but Al didn’t need it and the crack widened above until one was straddled inside as in a chimney. Above, it was blocked by a roof, but the rope snaked up through a diminishing slit on to the outer wall which overhung. I could hardly believe that was the only way. Fortunately for me, previous parties had left slings or wooden wedges in place here and there and I had no scruples about using them … I soon thankfully joined Al – my guardian angel – crouched in a niche amid coils of rope. We had climbed the crux.”

Alvarez became a critically acclaimed writer who authored a number of books, including The Savage God, Life After Marriage and Where Did it All Go Right? He spent his final years in Hampstead, U.K. He is survived by his second wife, Anne, and their children, Kate and Luke, as well as four grandchildren.—gripped