Bill McLeod is one of New Zealand’s finest alpinists. His friend, fellow mountaineer Ross Cullen, traces Bill’s fascinating 25-year career in the book Bill McLeod: Mountaineering Legend.
(Listen to this interview.)
Who is Bill McLeod?
Bill completed a remarkable number of first ascents in the New Zealand mountains. Despite starting climbing at 30 when he arrived from Australia, he has climbed amongst the hardest routes in the country – and a lot of them. He made a huge contribution to advancing New Zealand climbing from the late 1970s to the early 2000s.
Many of his 100-plus first ascents were solo and in winter.
Yes, he began climbing solo because of his job [as a hotel porter] in Te Anau. Nobody else had Tuesdays and Wednesdays off so he climbed by himself, which he did for a long time. His holidays were in the winter so he went to Mount Cook and did solo winter ascents, which astounded everybody because it was an unusual thing to do. He continued with that pattern until he got to know more people and after a few years had weekends off.
How did you meet Bill?
At a crag called Long Beach in Dunedin in the 1980s. Then we climbed together at Freestone Hill, a crag Bill was developing near Te Anau. We kept in touch and after Bill moved to Christchurch, where he lived out of his van at Coes Ford, we started climbing together. In 1992, I began work on an NZAC guidebook, Baron Saddle to Mount Brewster. I gave Bill an early draft, which included provocative statements like ‘there’s an obvious climb here which nobody has done so far’. So, he and Peter Dickson said “Well, we’ll just go and climb it”. And they did. They provided me with a lot of information that fed into the first edition of the guidebook.
What’s he like as a person?
He’s very driven and single-minded. He wants to do things his way. He was physically very capable – he could withstand the cold and hardship more than most. Even though he’s reclusive, when you were climbing with him he loved conversation. He does enjoy company when he knows somebody, but he is a very private person.
Excerpts from Bill’s many letters to fellow climbers are in the book, as well as their recollections of him. Why did you structure it this way?
I find Bill an extremely interesting personality and I always had this idea that it would be good to write a book about him and his accomplishments. But I was nervous about doing it, because I wasn’t sure how he’d react to the idea. Over the years I kept accumulating these letters from Bill – there’s over 220, mostly to me. Bill’s letters are so rich and insightful about what he’s done, his thinking, concerns, fears and joys. I would not have been able to write the book without them. The only other way would have been to do a lot of interviewing, and Bill wouldn’t have had the patience for that.
What does life look like for Bill these days?
He’s 78 years old. His health is not fantastic; he’s can still cycle but he can’t walk very far. He lives by himself on a cul-de-sac in Twizel. Winter is the best time for him, probably because it’s the quietest time to enjoy being in the magnificent Mackenzie Basin – an area he’s spent so much time exploring.
What was Bill’s response to the book?
He loves it, actually. I sought his permission before we started and then kept him abreast on progress. He read drafts, and in the book I’ve quoted a letter he wrote to me that read ‘once I started, I couldn’t stop reading’, which was great news. He wrote to me not long ago to say he has read the published version twice.
– Bill McLeod: Mountaineering Legend is available in the Wilderness store. Subscribers get a 10% discount.
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