In Memory of Ian Angell

1939 to 2006

Just over seven months after Rob Milne’s death, the SMC lost another of its office-bearers when honorary librarian Ian Angell died in a fall near Arrochar on 14 January, aged 66. Possibly the only son of Norfolk to have combined passions for campanology and crampons, he was a kind and knowledgeable man who did much work cataloguing the SMC library in Hutchesons’ Hall on Glasgow’s Ingram St. His passing will be felt by club colleagues (he was in the Alpine Club as well as the SMC, had connections with the JMCS and was a founder member of Wasdale MRT in his Lakeland days), by hill-history researchers, and most of all, of course, by his family and close friends to whom condolences go out. St Columba’s at Largs was overflowing for the funeral, on a fine winter’s day with Arran and the Clyde looking great. He had been desperately unlucky, having slipped (probably on ice) and fallen into a slit-cleft on the lower slopes of A’Chrois. When Arrochar MRT found his body the next day they estimated the cleft to be less than a metre wide at its opening, but 10m deep and hidden by vegetation. This is a notorious area for such mantraps, so for the sake of future accident prevention it’s worth giving the grid ref: NN294063, near the treeline on the Succoth / Glen Loin side of the hill.

Reproduced from The Angry Corrie with the kind permission of the editors. Ian Angell’s family is grateful to the editors for dedicating the Feb – Mar 2006 edition of the magazine to his memory.

Ian on Sgor Gaoith Summit