Mandy does his bit for the he-men of Hartlepool

IS THERE any controversy free from the influence of Peter Mandelson? In one of his last acts before elevation to the Cabinet as Trade and Industry Secretary, the maligned former Minister without Portfolio played a small part in the battle to save rock climbing from those who would take adventure out of the sport and make it safe.

Nothing sinister was involved. In fact it's a penny to a pound Mr Mandelson did not know, when he accepted a pounds 1m Lottery Sports Fund cheque towards a recreation park in his Hartlepool constituency, that he was helping to strike a blow for climbing's traditionalists - those who think if the element of dicing with injury or even death is eliminated, the sport ceases to be "climbing" at all.

Hartlepool's pounds 2.3m Summerhill project will see the creation of a countryside sports park on 100 acres of council-owned farmland. Orienteering, cycling, archery and rock climbing are among the activities planned for the site, which lies between two housing estates.

Deliberately, the climbs will not be on the kind of walls that have sprung up across Britain, indoors and out, with bolted-on holds and top ropes to prevent physically damaging falls. Unless Hartlepool Borough Council loses its nerve in the face of safety-obsessed bureaucrats, it will be possible to get hurt on the Summerhill boulders.

The bouldering park will be unique in Britain - a compact version in textured concrete of the exotically-shaped natural boulders of the Forest of Fontainebleau, the traditional playground of Paris climbers. When it is completed - and it is due to be finished by the end of this year - it will make those who want mountaineering made safer quake in their climbing boots.

Set among the trees - 65,000 have been planted - will be half a dozen or more artificial boulders, the largest as big as a bungalow, reaching up to 4m in height - plenty high enough to get nervous if you are clinging on fingernail-depth holds with just friction for your feet. Routes will be fashioned for all abilities. Pseudo-natural features, such as thread holes or spikes, will be sculpted on top of the biggest boulders so a rope can be used for beginners, but there will be no steel rings bolted into boulders as a means of easy security.

Summerhill thus represents a beacon of hope for those climbers - by no means all - who feel the adventurous spirit of their game is under threat on several fronts - from the Continental (especially French) penchant for safety bolts, fixed ropes and chains, taming classic mountain routes in the Alps and Himalayas, and commercial outfits ready to guide relatively inexperienced punters to the top of Everest for the price of a mortgage.

Eye bolts placed with cordless power drills remove the need to exploit natural fissures in the rock for protection. The climber can fall with impunity, held by the rope and the bolt.

To purists like Ken Wilson, publisher and former editor of Mountain magazine, those who rely on routes being rigged for their convenience, as is increasingly the case in the Alps, are not taking part in climbing at all, just "extreme mountain exercise".

"Being a 'climber' is a proud term that implies the ability to conduct oneself safely over mountain and cliff terrain by one's own skill," Wilson writes in the latest volume of the prestigious Alpine Journal. Fortunately for the anti-bolters, Wilson, who relishes a good verbal scrap, is the British Mountaineering Council's representative on the Hartlepool project.

As a sport without formal rules, if it can be called a sport at all, climbing relies on an unwritten code of ethics, largely about the style of ascents. It is the source of endless argument. Alongside Wilson's article is one by Doug Scott, one of Britain's most experienced Himalayan climbers, lamenting the abdication of personal responsibility inherent in commercial expeditions.

Clients, whether in the Alps or greater ranges, may be "little more than a dog on a leash" but increasingly they, or their next of kin, are ready to sue if things go nastily wrong. The base camps of the world's highest peaks - those above 8000m - have become circuses with companies from around the world pandering to well-healed clients and the media. Higher up, sometimes in admittedly hostile weather, mountain comradeship can give way to appallingly selfish behaviour. Everest has seen cases of summit- fixated climbers ignoring, and even stepping over, dying members of other teams.

Ed Douglas, incoming editor of the Alpine Journal, believes commercialism is at the root of climbing's ills. Everyone, from equipment manufacturers to governing bodies in Europe, guides and publishers, wants to increase the number of people going to the crags and mountains and the only way to do that is to make them safe, he said.

"The question is whether you want to live in a processed world where the thrill of life is removed or whether you accept that your life might be in danger."

If all goes well at Hartlepool, it will make a boulder-sized statement for the risk takers.

t `The Alpine Journal 1998', is published by Ernest Press, pounds 18.50.