Robin Smith (climber)

Robin Smith (30 August 1938 – July 1962) was a British climber of the 1950s and early 1960s. He died together with Wilfrid Noyce in 1962 on a snow slope in the Pamirs, during an Anglo-Soviet expedition, at the age of 23.

Born in India, Smith was sent home to Scotland aged eight, attending Morrison's Academy in Crieff then boarding at George Watson's College. He enrolled at Edinburgh University in 1956, where he studied philosophy. However with his entry into the University Mountaineering Club (EUMC) these studies were to remain in second place to his climbing obsession, but his academic abilities were more than apparent through his published commentary on his climbing exploits, which remains unparalleled even today.

He planned to study for a doctorate in philosophy at University College London. He was never to marry.

Smith left behind a string of more than forty new summer and winter routes, many made at the highest level for the period and still considered as great classics of Scottish Mountaineering.

His ascent of Shibboleth on Buachaille Etive Mor's Slime Wall in Glencoe in June 1958 was particularly notable, as were his ascents of The Needle on Shelter Stone Crag in the Cairngorms and Yo-Yo on the north face of Aonach Dubh.

Although Smith was to climb with a variety of talented and notable partners there are two individuals with whom he was to be most productive. His partnership with Dougal Haston is probably the most well known, resulting in routes such as Gob on Carnmore in Wester Ross in April 1960 and Turnspit on Aonach Dubh in 1961. His account published in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal entitled "The Bat and the Wicked" described their bruising ascent of The Bat on the Carn Dearg Buttress of Ben Nevis; this piece has entered climbing folklore. Indeed legend has that whilst discussing this buttress with the older and fiercely short-tempered Manchester climber Don Whillans. Smith was to remark that whilst Whillans had forged the groundbreaking routes of Centurion and Sassenach on Carn Dearg, Smith and Haston had simply climbed the difficult bit in between. The most recent Ben Nevis climbing guide refers to Smith's article, claiming that the climb was "named after the great swooping falls taken on the first ascent, much of which was reputedly climbed at night."

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