My friend Fred Smith, who has died aged 96, was an accomplished climber who set up the Merseyside Mountaineering Club with a group of friends in 1958. He was invited to be its first president, and it still thrives today.
Some years before the MMC’s foundation, Fred had joined Liverpool’s senior climbing club, The Wayfarers, and had partnered, among others, the pioneering rock-climber Peter Harding, making a number of new routes in Snowdonia. He was also a regular visitor to the Alps and, accompanied by some of the leading British mountaineers of the day, including Dennis Davis and Ray Colledge, climbed peaks such as the Matterhorn, Täschhorn and Monte Rosa.
