The Everest Years Read online

  The Everest Years

  The Everest Years

  The challenge of the world’s highest mountain

  Chris Bonington

  – Contents –

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1 – Beginnings

  Chapter 2 – The Irresistible Challenge

  Chapter 3 – Success on the South-West Face

  Chapter 4 – Laissez-Faire on the Ogre

  Chapter 5 – Nearly, But Not Quite

  Chapter 6 – A Second Chance

  Chapter 7 – Getting Down the Ogre

  Chapter 8 – K2

  Chapter 9 – Avalanche

  Chapter 10 – Chinese Overtures

  Chapter 11 – Pushing the Limits

  Chapter 12 – Small is Beautiful

  Chapter 13 – A Fairy tale Summit

  Chapter 14 – One in Seven

  Chapter 15 – Alone on Top of Antarctica

  Chapter 16 – A Promise Broken

  Chapter 17 – The Build-Up

  Chapter 18 – Fulfilment

  Chapter 19 – Back to Earth

  Climbing Record

  Photographs and Maps

  To Louise and George

  – Author’s Note –

  In writing this book, my third autobiographical work, I have covered my main expedition years. The theme is expeditioning in every different shape and size. Of some, I have already written books, which were as full and honest as I could make them at the time. I have therefore used a different approach for the expeditions of which I have already written, looking at them in a broader perspective, showing how they related to each other and bringing out what I felt were the highlights. Of the others I have gone into greater detail, reliving the entire experience.

  The story is both my own and that of the people I have climbed with, of how a wide variety of teams have worked together to achieve a common end. In this respect expeditioning is a microcosm of life and work in general. This book certainly is the result of teamwork that has been built up over the years. Louise Wilson, my secretary from the 1975 Everest expedition, has taken on more and more, becoming a good friend and adviser, and has become my general editor of everything I write, from business letters to articles and books.

  I owe a great debt to George Greenfield who has been so much more than my literary agent since 1969: he has helped steer all my expeditions through the maze of fundraising and contractual obligations, helping to make so many of my ventures possible, as well as advising me on my writing and coming up with a host of good ideas.

  Over the years I have also built up a good understanding with Hodder and Stoughton, who have published all but one of my books over this period. I am particularly indebted to Margaret Body who has edited them all and become accustomed to my foibles. I also owe a great deal to Trevor Vincent who did the design work on this book, the fourth of mine on which he has worked.

  I am deeply grateful to Carolyn Estcourt and Hilary Boardman for lending me the diaries of their husbands, Nick and Pete. These gave me a valuable extra perspective on the Ogre and K2 expeditions.

  And finally I should like to acknowledge the constant love and support of my wife Wendy who has backed me to the full in all my expeditioning and given so much practical help and advice both on the text and the design of this book.

  CB.

  – CHAPTER 1 –

  Beginnings

  They’d reached the summit, barely a hundred metres away and a metre or so higher than me. I had to squeeze out my last bit of willpower to join them. Push one foot in front of the other, pant hard to capture what little air and oxygen there was flowing into my mask. But had I enough left to get there? And then another careful, deliberate step along the corniced snow ridge to the top of the world.

  A break in the cornice and, framed down to my right was the North-East Ridge, the route we had tried in 1982. Crazy ice towers, fierce snow flutings, a knife-edged ridge that went on and on. Friends of mine on the current British Everest Expedition were somewhere down there. Perhaps also were the bodies of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker.

  Another step, and the North-East Ridge was hidden by a curl of snow. This was where Pete Boardman had last seen Mick Burke in 1975. He and Pertemba were on their way down, Mick was going for the summit on his own. He never came back. My head was filled with thoughts of lost friends, of Nick Estcourt who forced the Everest Rock Band and died on K2, of Dougal Haston who went to the summit of Everest with Doug Scott, and died skiing near his home in Switzerland.

  And then suddenly I was there. Odd, Bjørn and Pertemba were beckoning to me, shouting, their voices muffled by their oxygen masks. I crouched in a foetal position and just cried and cried in great gasping sobs - tears of exhaustion, tears of sorrow for so many friends, and yet tears of fulfilment for something I had so much needed to do and had done with people who had come to mean a great deal to me. I had at last reached the summit of Everest.

  It was 21 April 1985 and in the next ten days the Norwegian Everest Expedition was to place seventeen climbers on the summit - the highest number on a single expedition. We had also completed our ascents earlier in the season than any previous expedition. Judged solely as records these would be fairly empty achievements. You’ve got to look deeper to under-stand their significance. I suspect that every climber in the world dreams of standing on the highest point on earth; certainly every climber who joins an expedition to Everest does and that includes quite a few of the Sherpa high-altitude porters as well. If you judge success, therefore, in terms of the sum of individual satisfaction and fulfilment, there is a very real point in getting as many to the summit as possible. Getting there quickly both increases the chance of success and reduces the time that the team is exposed to danger.

  There were five expeditions attempting Everest by different routes in the spring of 1985 and the speed with which we were able to run out the route undoubtedly contributed to the fact that we were the only successful expedition. The others were overtaken by the bad weather that occurred later in the season. We were fast because we had a superb and very strong Sherpa force and because the climbers and Sherpas became welded into a closely knit team who worked happily, and therefore effectively, together.

  It was this that made the expedition such a success, not just in terms of making records, but also in terms of personal satisfaction for every member of the team. I have been on expeditions that have reached their summit and yet there has been little sense of success because the group had failed to work together and there was acrimony rather than friendship at the end of the experience.

  Unless you always go alone, the essence of climbing is teamwork. You are entrusting your life to others, on a rock climb to your partner holding the other end of the rope, but on a higher mountain it becomes more complex. There you need to trust the judgement of others in choosing a route, or perhaps their ability to give support from a lower camp. There is a constant interplay of decision-making, be it between two climbers on a crag in the Lake District or amongst thirty distributed between a series of camps on Everest.

  Two or possibly four people climbing together, even on a major Himalayan peak, can reach a decision through discussion. There is no need of a hierarchy or official leader, though almost always a leader does emerge – one person who has a stronger personality or who is particularly equipped to deal with a specific problem encountered. In this last respect the lead can pass around the group during the course of a climb. Mountaineering, like every other activity, is a development and learning process – about the mountains, one’s personal ability and, perhaps most important of all, one’s relationship with others.

  This book covers the last fifteen years, which for me, have been dominated by expedition climbing. Everest has be
en a recurrent theme, a magnet that has drawn me again and again, not just because I wanted to reach its summit personally, but because of the scale of its challenge, the strength of its aura.

  I had my first glimpse of Everest in 1961, on my way to climb Nuptse. In those days you had to walk all the way from Kathmandu; there was no airstrip at Luglha and the road ended just outside the city. On the way in we saw just one other European, Peter Aufschnaiter, who had been with Heinrich Harrer in Tibet after they had escaped from a British internment camp in northern India. These were the days before trekkers and tourists. There were a few little teashops on the path side for the porters carrying loads and trade goods, but all you could buy were cups of tea and perhaps a few dry biscuits.

  The first glimpse of the world’s highest mountain comes as you climb the winding track that leads up to Namche Bazaar from the bottom of the Dudh Kosi valley. You come to a bend in the path on a small spur and suddenly, through the shrubs and small birch trees, you can see Everest framed by the precipitous sides of the Dudh Kosi’s gorge, part hidden by the great wall of Nuptse that acts as its outer rampart.

  The summit of Nuptse is like one of the turrets on a castle wall and to climb it we were going to have to scale that wall; up flying buttresses of sculpted ice, across steep snow fields, over sheer rock walls. It was bigger and more complex than any mountain any of us had ever climbed, though at the time we hardly realised the scale or significance of what we were attempting.

  Back in 1961 we were in that first bloom of Himalayan climbing when there were still a huge number of unclimbed peaks of over 7,000 metres, though all but one of the 8,000-metre peaks had been climbed. Practically no mountain in the Himalaya had been climbed by more than one route and very few had had a second ascent.

  With hindsight it seems almost a miracle that we got up Nuptse. The team was a small one, just eight climbers and six Sherpas, and our equipment was rudimentary by modern standards. We had no jumar clamps but pulled up the fixed ropes hand over hand. We were even reduced to buying second-hand hemp rope from the Tengpoche monastery as our own supply ran out when the climb proved so much harder and longer than we had anticipated. It was not a happy team. We never really coalesced as a group and the expedition was rent by argument. Although we reached the summit, this failure in personal relations tainted the feeling of satisfaction that we should have had.

  It was very different from my first Himalayan expedition which had been to Annapurna II the previous year. This was a British/Indian/Nepalese combined services venture with a very disparate group of people, both in terms of ability and experience, as well as race and background, and yet it had been a contented expedition which had also been a successful one. The common factor of our military background had undoubtedly helped. The leader, Jimmy Roberts, was both an experienced Himalayan climber and a colonel in the army. We therefore accepted his authority without question. In his turn, he exercised that authority well, planning in advance, communicating those plans to the team, and clearly delegating authority or responsibility to individual members.

  For me, a young subaltern of twenty-five, it was all a fresh and exciting adventure. I was probably the most accomplished technical climber in the group, with a reasonable Alpine record behind me, though I lacked experience of big mountains. Dick Grant, a captain in the Royal Marines, was the most knowledgeable in this area, having been to Rakaposhi (7,788 metres) in the Karakoram, although his actual technical climbing had been limited to work with the cliff assault wing of the Royal Marines. I was teamed with Dick throughout and it made a good combination. I respected his greater Himalayan experience, his age and, for that matter, his military seniority. He, on the other hand, recognised my greater climbing ability and was happy to push me out in front on steep ground. Good humoured, practical and with a no-nonsense approach to life, Dick had the perfect expedition temperament.

  The other team members had very limited climbing experience but were happy to work in support roles. As a result I had the very agreeable task throughout the expedition of making the route out in front with Dick, though I think I would have accepted a more modest role with one of the support parties with reasonable grace. I was undoubtedly lucky that there were so few experienced climbers since, being my first foray to altitude, I was to have problems. The first time I went to 6,700 metres was like hitting a tangible barrier. We were on the crest of the great rounded whaleback ridge that led over the intermediate summit of Annapurna IV. It was a wild gusty day and we were in cloud with the snow swirling around us. Dick was ahead setting the pace and suddenly it was as if all my strength had just oozed out of my feet, leaving me barely able to put one foot in front of the other. The rest of the day was a nightmare, with Dick out in front tugging at the rope, exhorting and encouraging me to keep going.

  We went back down for a rest. Next time up was to be the summit push and, had there been anyone to take my place, Jimmy Roberts would almost certainly have given it to him. Because there was no one, I had my chance for the summit. Aided by the fact that we were using oxygen I was able to claim my first and, until 1985, highest Himalayan top.

  The composition of the Nuptse expedition was very different. In terms of technical experience, the line-up was very much more impressive than our Annapurna expedition, though we were still short on Himalayan expertise. Joe Walmsley, the leader, had led an expedition to Masherbrum in the Karakoram some years before. The most experienced member of the team was undoubtedly Dennis Davis, a seasoned alpinist who also had been on Disteghil Sar, another 7,000-metre peak in the Karakoram. Of the rest of the team, Les Brown, Trevor Jones, Jim Swallow and John Streetley were talented rock climbers, while Simon Clark had led a university expedition to the Peruvian Andes to climb Alpamayo.

  Climbers tend to be an individualistic lot, with powerful egos and anti- authoritarian attitudes. Our Nuptse expedition never gelled into a team but remained a group of individuals whose differences were accentuated by this failure to work together. It really came down to leadership.

  We were planning to attempt Nuptse using the siege tactics that had become standard on most Himalayan climbs. This entailed establishing a series of camps up the mountain, linking them with fixed rope if the going was steep, ferrying loads up in the wake of the climbers at the front and eventually making a bid for the summit from the highest camp. This approach requires co-ordination between the different groups scattered between the camps on the mountain. The flow of supplies from Base Camp to the higher camps needs controlling, as does the manning of the camps themselves. There needs to be an overall plan in which individuals know and accept their roles. There has to be some kind of roster so that climbers take turns at the rewarding task of making the route out in front, working in the exacting support role of ferrying loads behind the leaders, or resting at Base Camp.

  On Annapurna II, Jimmy Roberts had never gone above Base Camp, yet had maintained a firm grip of the expedition and, because we had been working within a plan that we all understood and accepted, the expedition had gone smoothly.

  Joe Walmsley had a different approach. He had gained permission to climb on the mountain, had selected the team and had co-ordinated the preparations that got us to Base Camp. He chose a good line up the huge complex face of Nuptse, but then seemed to feel that he had fulfilled his role as leader, implying, ‘I’ve got you here with all the gear you need, now get on with it.’ And we did; the climbers out in front selecting the route and slowly pushing a line of fixed rope up a steep rock arête, to which clung a cock’s comb of ice and snow. We did make progress and the supplies trickled up behind the lead climbers but in a climate of growing acrimony as each little party on the mountain made its own conflicting plans and became increasingly convinced that they were doing the lion’s share of the work whilst everyone else was taking it easy.

  And yet we maintained a momentum, making the route up the face until four of us were poised at the penultimate camp 750 metres below the summit. Les Brown and I carried the loads t
hat Dennis Davis and the Sherpa Tachei were going to need for the top camp. They climbed Nuptse on 16 May and the following day Les and I, with Jim Swallow and the Sherpa Ang Pema reached the top. Our push to the top somehow summed up the expedition. It was a question of each man for himself. A long snow gully stretched towards the summit ridge. Dennis and Tachei had left a staircase of boot-holes in the hard snow, so we didn’t bother to rope up and each went at his own measured pace. Ang Pema and I were going at about the same speed. He kept just behind me all the way. The others were slower and we were soon far ahead. We crossed a small snow col and, after weeks of effort with the same view of peaks stretching ever further into the distance as we gained height, now, like a great explosion, were new summit vistas. The brown and purple hills of Tibet stretched far into the distance, the deep gorge of the Western Cwm dropped away below and, on the other side of it, the summit pyramid of Everest, black rock veined with white snow and ice. It was my first view of the South-West Face but that day in 1961 there was no thought of climbing it. It had been all I could do to reach the summit of Nuptse and anything as steep and rocky as the South-West Face was beyond comprehension; we were not ready for it. I didn’t even dream of reaching the top of Everest by the South Col route.

  At that stage I was more interested in climbing in the Alps, was travelling back to Europe overland, and had arranged to meet up with Don Whillans in Chamonix with plans to attempt the North Wall of the Eiger. We failed on the Eiger but made the first ascent of the Central Pillar of Frêney on the south side of Mont Blanc, one of the most satisfying climbs I have ever completed. I had also changed my career, having left the army to go to Nuptse, and was due to join Unilever that September as a management trainee. I had even convinced them and myself that I was giving up expeditioning to become a weekend climber. This new resolve didn’t, however, last very long.