num_pages: 363
description:  [Wild Country] chronicles not just the mountains [Mark] has climbed but the part he played in bringing to market a little piece of sporting equipment that revolutionised mountaineering and saved countless lives.  Sarah Freeman Yorkshire PostIn early 1978 an extraordinary new invention for rock climbers was featured on the BBC television science show Tomorrows World. It was called the Friend and it not only made the sport safer it helped push the limits of the possible. The company that made them was called Wild Country the brainchild of Mark Vallance. Within six months Vallance was selling Friends in sixteen countries. Wild Country would go on to develop much of the gear that transformed climbing in the 1980s.Mark Vallances influence on the outdoor world extends far beyond the company he founded. He owned and opened the influential retailer Outside in the Peak District and was part of the team that built The Foundry Sheffields premier climbing wall  the first modern climbing gym in Britain. He worked for the Peak District National Park and served on its board. He even found time to climb 8000-metre peaks and the Nose on El Capitan. Diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in his mid fifties and robbed of his plans for retirement Vallance found a new sense of purpose as a reforming president of the British Mountaineering Council.In Wild Country Vallance traces his story from childhood influences like Robin Hodgkin and Sir Jack Longland to two years in Antarctica where he was base commander of the UKs largest and most southerly scientific station at Halley Bay before his fateful meeting with Ray Jardine the man who invented Friends in Yosemite.Trenchant provocative and challenging Wild Country is a remarkable personal story and a fresh perspective on the role of the outdoors in British life and the development of climbing in its most revolutionary phase.
language: English
title: Wild Country: The man who made Friends
publisher: Vertebrate Digital