Brian Pinder Kellett

Brian Pinder Kellett, born on 15 May 1914, was a British rock climber who made an outstanding series of new routes on Ben Nevis during the Second World War. Born in Weymouth, Dorset, the son of a naval officer killed in 1916, he was a good all round sportsman at school and later worked in forestry; as a conscientious objector he was interned for two years and then posted to forestry work at Torlundy, near Ben Nevis. In 1942 he led the first summer ascent of Number Two Gully, and in the summers of 1943 and 1944 he left what the Scottish Mountaineering Club guide calls an unprecedented legacy of new routes and variations. He survived three significant falls, including one of about 300 metres down Glover's Chimney in January 1943, but died with Nancy Forsyth in Castle Corrie on Ben Nevis in early September 1944 and is buried in Glen Nevis.