Draft:Colin William Wyatt

Citations have now been given. The section on reliable sources has been read and followed to the best of understanding.

I am omitting these and giving just a few examples.Understood now and being removed.Understood and removed.Other Wikipedia entries confused me; think I have removed all such links now.See above.See above.

COI has been stated.

''The writer requests that the entry be "Colin Wyatt". An editor changed it from the full name of "Colin William fforde Wyatt "to "Colin William Wyatt." The subject never used the name Colin William Wyatt. The subject used the name "Colin Wyatt". The full name was given to distinguish from a very different Colin Wyatt; the writer has been reading about disambiguation and, in due course will seek further advice and clarification.''

Colin Wyatt, FRGS (8 February 1909 – 18 November 1975) was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in October 1950. He had a variety of specialised interests. A British champion ski-racer, ski-jumper and ski mountaineer, he also was an artist who exhibited in England, Australia and Canada. He was a lepidopterist and field collector, with a private collection, now in the Karslruhe Museum, Germany. . Wyatt was fined for the theft of butterfly specimens from two Australian museums. He was a published writer, photographer and documentary film-maker and lecturer.

Born in England, Wyatt emigrated to Australia in 1939. During World War II, he worked for the Department of Home Security and served in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as a camouflage expert.

After World War II, Wyatt lived in Canada and England.

Family, education and early life
Colin William fforde Wyatt was born in Marylebone, London, the son of James William Wyatt, a civil engineer, mountaineer , lepidopterist and botanist, of Bryn Gwynant, Beddgelert, North Wales (of the Wyatt line of architects and land agents ), and Margaret Ellen Nicol, of Ardmarnock, Tighnabruaich, Argyllshire, Scotland (only daughter of Donald Ninian Nicol, MP). He was an only child. At the age of 10, he contracted bronchial pneumonia and his mother took him to the Swiss Alps where he recovered. He attended Le Rosey school, Switzerland and studied painting in Paris before going to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge to read modern languages. He captained the Cambridge Ski Club and Cambridge Ski Jumping Club.

In 1939 Wyatt married and emigrated to Sydney, Australia. In 1951 Wyatt married for a second time and emigrated to Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Ski-ing
In downhill, jumping, slalom and cross-country ski-ing, Wyatt won numerous cups and medals during the 1920s and early 1930s. Newspaper sports results covered the Oxford and Cambridge races, Inter Varsity Winter Sports Games, European Ski Championships, Anglo-Swiss Universities' races, International University Winter Games , and Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) championships.

Arnold Lunn, founder in 1908 of the Alpine Ski Club, wrote in 1929 of the British taking part in long distance, jumping, slalom and downhill, and said: "The best all-round performance was that of Colin Wyatt, who distinguished himself in all four events."

He captained Cambridge University ski team twice and represented GB as a ski jumper on numerous occasions, including Norwegian ski championships and European ski championships.

In 1933, Wyatt was the first English competitor to take part in the famous Holmenkollen ski-jumping contest, in Norway. He took part in the first international slalom and downhill contest to be held in Norway, coming 1st in slalom, and 4th in downhill.

He broke the British ski-jumping record three times (1928, 1929, 1931) and achieved the most wins in the British Ski Jumping Championships (discontinued in 1936) in 1931, 1934 and 1936. Wyatt set the official British record of 57m (187ft) in 1931. This achievement remained in the Guinness Book of Records for decades. Tim Ashburner, in his book "The History of Ski Jumping," writes of Wyatt's jumping achievements as one of Britain's first 50-metre ski jumpers in the early 1930s.

In the In Memoriam section in Ski Survey, published by the Ski Club of Great Britain, fellow Cambridge ski team member James Riddell wrote of him as "someone utterly unorthodox, bohemian, versatile, controversial, unpredictable".

In 1936 Wyatt was invited, as council delegate of Ski Club of Great Britain, by the New Zealand government and the Federated Council of New Zealand Alpine Clubs to to visit all the ski-ing centres and advise on ski-ing development and competitions and the development of winter resorts.

Travels, climbing and ski-mountaineering
Colin Wyatt's achievements in ski-mountaineering include being the first to make the double winter ski traverse of the 12,000ft Main Divide of the New Zealand Southern Alps (1936-37); the first to cross Lapland on ski in the winter from Kebnekaise to North Cape, 350 miles (1938); and the first to make the first crossing of the Tiferdine - m’Goun ranges (13,000ft) in the Central High Atlas of Morocco to the Sahara (1950).

John Harding, in his 2016 book "Distant Snows: A Mountaineer's Odyssey", refers to Wyatt as "a forgotten pioneer ski mountaineer" and writes that "Wyatt's exceptional ski mountaineering achievements have all but been forgotten." In an article in the Alpine Journal in 1988 titled Ski Mountaineering IS Mountaineering, Harding wrote of the 1930s as an era of animosity between traditional British climbers and those embracing "the new-fangled sport of ski-ing and, by extension, ski mountaineering". He describes Wyatt as "the outstanding British ski mountaineer of the immediate pre- and post-war years" and describes how Wyatt undertook ski mountaineering journeys to what were then wild parts of the world. He comments on how Wyatt's "achievements went largely unrecognised."

His list of mountaineering travels 1930 to 1950, submitted to the Royal Geographical Society in support of his candidacy to become a fellow, include various summer and winter climbs in the Swiss and Austrian Alps, on foot, on ski, or both; Norway; Albania; Canada; Papua New Guinea; New Zealand; Lapland; Australia; Morocco.

In 1936-1937 in New Zealand, Southern Alps, Wyatt made the first ascent Mt. Wilycek (10,001ft); the first double winter ski traverse of Main Divide, via Tasman, Franz Josef, Fox and Haest glaciers and the first winter ascent of Mt. Annan. In North Island, he made a winter traverse of all Ruapehu-Tongariro group of volcanoes, and winter traverse of Mt. Egmont.

In 1938 in Lapland, he made the complete winter crossing of Lapland on ski from Kebnekaise to North Cape, 350 miles.

In 2021, Darren Hamlin, photographer and film-maker, and a team were planning to make a film of a winter crossing of the Kebnekaise. During research, he came across Wyatt's November 1938 article "On Ski through Arctic Lapland to the North Cape" in The Alpine Journal and realised that their winter crossing would not be the first. Hamlin's 2022 film "The Arctic 12" paid tribute to Wyatt, and included some of Wyatt's photographs.

In 1949 Morocco, North Africa, he made the complete traverse of the Toubkal Range, High Atlas, in winter (13,000ft) with several first winter ascents and in 1950 he made the first crossing of Tiferdine and M’Goun (13,000ft) ranges, to Sahara, in almost unknown country, E. High Atlas (and spent five months painting in Morocco).

Further travels included seven months travelling the Northwest Territories, Canada; and trips to Kashmir, Nepal, India, Himalayas, Afghanistan, Afghan Hindu-Kush, High Atlas Morocco, Kara-Dagh and Elburs in Azerbaijan, north-western Iran. Post 1966, he travelled regularly to Canada and the USA as well as Europe, and up to his death in Guatemala was making regular trips to study and photograph archaeological sites in Central and South America.

Art work
He attended the County Council Central School of Art and the Slade School of Art, London, and the Academic Decluse, Paris. He also attended the Grosvenor School of Art, with tutors Claude Flight and Iain McNab. He made a few works of sculpture.

Between 1928 and 1941, his work was exhibited at the Paris Salon; The Alpine Club ; St Moritz, Switzerland ; “Grubb Group” exhibition at Quo Vadis Restaurant ; Connell Galleries, 47 Old Bond Street, London ; Grosvenor School of Modern Art at Storran Gallery;  Contemporary Art Society’s 3rd annual exhibition, Sydney

One-man exhibitions
''Citations have now been given. The section on reliable sources has been read and followed to the best of understanding.''


 * 1932                       Alpine Club Gallery
 * 1934                       Alpine Club Gallery, Connell Galleries, 47 Old Bond Street
 * 1938                       Palser Galleries, London
 * 1944                       MacQuarie Galleries, Australia
 * 1947                       Walker's Galleries, Bond Street, London
 * 1954                       Coste House, Calgary, Canada

Online exhibition
2018                           Louise Kosman Art

Lepidoptery
As an entomologist and field collector, Wyatt specialised in butterflies of the northern hemisphere (Alpine and Arctic especially), discovering new species and sub-species, and writing numerous scientific papers and articles for entomological magazines worldwide in various languages. In 1960, on an expedition to Afghanistan and the Koh-i-Baba mountains and the Hindu-Kush, Wyatt rediscovered one of the rarest Asiatic mountain butterflies, Parnassius autocrator. The results of his expeditions to this area and also to Kashmir, Nepal up to Mount Everest and Mount Annapurna, and also Sikkim, have been published in the journal of the Lepidopterists' Society.

His field collecting involved travelling far off the beaten track and using his ski mountaineering skills; he always took his butterfly net when travelling. For example, in 1950 he was crossing the m'Goun range of the High Atlas in Morocco as an alpinist, on skis. At 13,000ft he noticed a migration of Pieris daplidice (L.) passing over from the Sahara, from south to north, and other migratory species.

As well as describing species and sub-species new to science, he studied complicated butterfly relationships. His particular interests included Apollo and Erebia. He had a private collection of more than 90,000 butterflies, and, on his death, it was acquired in its entirety by the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe, Germany.

An article in the journal Bonner Zoologische Beiträge by Otakar Kudrna includes an annotated list of the butterflies named by Colin W. Wyatt.

In May 1947, in London (West Ham), he pleaded guilty to stealing 1,600 butterfly specimens from the Australian Museum, Sydney, and the South Australia Museum, Adelaide, and was fined. His legal defence referred to the break-up of his first marriage on his return from being in the RAAF in the South West Pacific during World War II, and, to quote The Sydney Morning Herald of 21 May, 1947, “not in full command of his faculties”. The court case was well-covered in newspapers at the time. Wyatt co-operated fully with police and most of the stolen specimens were recovered. An article in the journal Australian Entomologist by W. John Tennent, Chris J. Müller, Axel Hausmann and Simon Hinkley specifically discusses these thefts.

Books
1952    The Call of The Mountains; published by Thames and Hudson, London, also MacMillan, Canada, and 1953 New York.

1955    Going Wild (subtitled: The Autobiography of a Bug-Hunter); published by Hollis and Carter, London; also published in Colombo, Ceylon and Spain.

1958    North of Sixty; published by Hodder and Stoughton, London.

Articles and photographs
S''ources were given and then an editor is understood to have said remove them because the sources are articles written by the subject. However, the writer has asked for clarification as author Robert Macfarlane's accepted entry has a similar paragraph that does not give sources, and climber Chris Bonington's accepted entry cites his own articles. A reply is awaited.''

''It is confusing simply to be told not to look at other accepted entries, although I am now studying "good" and"featured" articles. Is the writer to understand that entries pre an unspecified date were accepted because criteria then were lower than they are now?''

He published articles, illustrated by his photographs, in English and in other languages, in magazines and journals in different countries. Country Life, in particular, published many of his travel articles. He also sold photographs to similar publications worldwide.

His articles on ski-ing, ski-mountaineering and climbing include:

1937 "Ski-Mountaineering in New Zealand". The Alpine Journal. XLIX (254): 87-101

1942 "The Western Face of the Main Range". Australian and New Zealand Ski Year Book: 16-19; also 27-30

1951 "The First Crossing of the m'Goun Massif (13,434ft) in the Moroccan High Atlas". The British Ski Year Book. XIV (32): 308-317

Films, lectures and broadcasts
''Citations have now been given. The section on reliable sources has been read and followed to the best of understanding.''

Wyatt made documentary films including Nepal: Hidden Kingdom of the Himalayas (1958) and Hindustan Holiday/India Holiday (1959), which were shown on TV in the USA and other countries. He lectured with these films throughout the USA and was a guest lecturer on specialist travel trips such as Swan Hellenic. He also made radio broadcasts relating to his travels, including BBC radio (UK).

Clubs and societies
''Citations have now been given. The section on reliable sources has been read and followed to the best of understanding.''

Elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in October 1950 ; member of the Alpine Ski Club and Swiss Alpine Club ; member of The Buddhist Society ; former member of Ski Club of Great Britain ; member of the British Langlauf Club ; former member of N.S.W. Ski Council Ski Club of Victoria, Ski Council of Tasmania and Ski Council of the Federated N.Z. Mountain Clubs .