We got a lift back to Kathmandu in a van, but were held up overnight at the Chinese border when we missed its closing by just a few minutes. The only rooms we could get in the tiny town there were so vile I slept the night in my clothes, and twelve of our poor Sherpas were crammed into one room. On crossing the border we stopped for a beer at the Eco Lodge before making our way straight to the Hyatt Hotel, the epitome of luxury in the relative terms of Kathmandu. It felt like a strange juxtaposition. We’d been used to sleeping in tents, now we were in a five star hotel. Those of us who had successfully gained the summit shared an inner warmth, but I felt dreadfully sorry for the others who hadn’t made it to the top. Everyone copes differently with failure, and they all failed for different reasons, mostly medical. For most people though, Everest is all about either success or failure. Although I’ve now succeeded twice, Everest will always retain its magnetic hold over me. It’s still the highest mountain in the world and I’d love the chance to go back for a third time.
No one ‘owns’ Everest. Access to the mountain must be democratic and you can’t close it, although of course in terms of physical access the Chinese can and sometimes do. It would be deeply hypocritical for me to suggest you should, having climbed it twice myself, been thrilled by the experience, encouraged others to do the same and, indeed, taken them there on trips when they have paid a great deal of money to have that opportunity. For any experienced climber or thrill-seeker it will always be the one thing they want to do. Even the veteran and professional mountaineer Chris Bonington returned and did it by the ‘tourist’ route, finally to make it to the top. You have to do it by any means.
All the same, there clearly does come a point where you saturate the mountain, as we all saw with pictures in 2013 of bottlenecks on the fixed ropes with climbers waiting to go up and down, the additional time spent only adding to the existing dangers. And the numbers have changed dramatically. Before I went to Everest in 1993, only 485 had reached the summit and 115 of those had died, the number today is more than 4,000 with somewhat more than twice the number of deaths, a tenfold increase in twenty years on the number that achieved the summit in the forty years after it was first climbed. As I write, the number of successful summit attempts actually stands at 6,854, so quite a few of those will be people like me who have been there more than once, and in some cases Sherpas who have done so multiple times. But the Sherpas themselves can be most at risk, as we saw in April 2014 with the death of 16 of their number in a massive avalanche, leading to all climbing being halted for the season from the Nepalese side of the mountain, although the usual fewer climbers will be attempting to do so from the harder Tibetan side.
When we were there in 1993 there were only three teams on the mountain, ourselves, the Spanish and French teams, and not many fixed ropes at all; we only had them going up through the Khumbu and on the Lhotse face. Things are very different now, and Base Camp can seem like a sprawling village. And with a hundred people climbing the mountain you get a huge amount of human waste since people are inevitably forced to stop and defecate where they are, often suffering from bad diarrhoea, not to mention all the other rubbish, although people are now getting much better at bringing the latter down. On my 2011 expedition I paid the Sherpas to collect and bring down any of our gear that they could, part of the deal being that they would keep anything that they found.
There must ultimately be something done to limit the quantity of people on the mountain and a ballot of some sort might be the answer. If the numbers were limited to, say, a hundred on each of the two main routes, but very experienced climbers were allowed to climb other non-standard routes or outside the optimal weather window in May, that could be the way forward. You only get between two and four perfect weather days a year, which is when the real problems occur. Post-monsoon, in August and September, it is colder and there’s more snow, and there is less chance of an open weather window. I would never denigrate anyone who is prepared to face the huge challenges involved in reaching the summit, but a way must be found to protect the mountain, whilst also allowing ‘ordinary’ climbers a chance to climb it. At the same time, there will always be those that have honed their skills over many years who are prepared to face the greater risks involved in tackling more extreme routes, in harsher conditions, to test themselves in one of the world’s ultimate challenges.
When I returned home in late October 1993 it was back into the daily grind of the office, not the easiest of changes after what I’d just experienced. My brother and fellow directors might have been happy to see me disappear for three months, but now it was my turn to pick up some of that load and give them a bit of a breather. I hadn’t any real idea what I wanted to do next, and having reached the summit of Everest it’s easy to feel that there’s not much left to do in mountaineering. I’d missed my normal climbing sorties away with my friends, due to Everest and then my commitments at work, but it was them who dragged me back to the mountains with my success only having whetted their own appetites. For August the following year they suggested another trip, and my ears pricked up.
We’d picked Mount Elbrus in southern Russia, in the Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian seas, the very south-eastern corner of Europe, if only because at 18,510 feet it is the highest mountain in Europe. It is nearly 3,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc, the European peak most climbers had to consider the highest challenge in practical terms so long as Elbrus remained inaccessible before the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Russia was changing fast after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the private hotel we stayed in at the foot of Elbrus’s twin extinct volcanic peaks had once been Leonid Brezhnev’s dacha. Elbrus is not tall in absolute terms but you still need acclimatization, and I couldn’t suppress a surge of pride when our Russian guide asked us how high we’d actually been before. 14,000 feet, 18,000, 16,000, 10,000 came the answers, before it was my turn and I was able to claim 29,029 feet. Our guide, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Sylvester Stallone, just looked me in the eye for a few moments then shook my hand vigorously, but his attitude towards us as a party noticeably changed from then on. If I’d done what I claimed—and I think most climbers acquire an uncanny sixth sense of knowing immediately if people are fibbing—and I was happy to be climbing with these guys, then he knew we’d be all right.
Six days after leaving Heathrow we were up in the Pruitt Refuge on the side of the mountain, a large aluminium hut that stank of vomit and petrol fumes. The former could have been down to people suffering from nausea due to altitude sickness, but we’d seen so much vodka drunk in the previous few days that there was perhaps a different explanation. It wasn’t easy sleeping there overnight, so we were more than happy to get outside the next day for a further acclimatization climb and then early the next morning set off for the summit. It was a truly beautiful night, and the stars that brightly lit the sky seemed close enough to touch. There was no need for us to be roped together as it was a fairly straight climb with crampons, but reaching any snowcapped peak is always special and I knew just how it felt for my friends, who I’d brought higher than they’d ever been in their lives without being buckled into a seat on an aeroplane.
By this time I was already planning a trip to the Antarctic on which Roger Mear had asked me to join him, so just a few months later in December 1994 we decided to head down there and test out our gear, taking in the highest peak on the continent, Mount Vinson, in the process. Towards the South American side of Antarctica in the Ellesworth Mountains and rising to 16,050 feet, Vinson is probably the coldest mountain on earth with many crevasses, and due to the extreme conditions and cost of mounting an expedition there it had been climbed by fewer than a hundred people at the time. A Twin Otter plane landed us on a glacier at base camp, and at 10,000 feet the temperature was already –20°C.
We had a horrible time initially heading up the mountain. Wearing skis and roped up ahead of Roger, I kept finding myself sinking three inches into the ice as the whole area around me seemed to
be imploding. These were new conditions for me and I was continuously convinced I was about to fall into a crevasse, until I eventually became a bit more used to the going. We then had to sit out a storm for forty-eight hours, the total white-out leaving us imprisoned in our tent, an experimental one designed by Reinhold Messner. The black lining in theory made the inside warmer and helped with sleeping in the twenty-four hour sunshine of the polar summer, but conversely the total darkness over several days was claustrophobic. At that altitude and temperature you also lose liquid simply by breathing, and I was becoming terribly dehydrated.
On the night of 21 December we noticed that the barometer was finally changing for the better, so we packed up our gear and burst out of our tent, walking straight into the mouth of a still raging storm. Visibility was no more than 20 metres and the wind-chill factor must have reduced the temperature to –70°C, but we were there specifically to test ourselves in such conditions, so whereas most climbers would probably have stayed put it seemed appropriate to sample some of it now. I was suffering from terrible stomach cramps and in my dehydrated condition found the going very tough, but I was determined I would crawl to the top if necessary as there was no way I was ever coming back down to Vinson to attempt it again. It was now or never. Climbing over a cornice I suddenly saw a ski pole sticking out of the ice, and realised this marked the summit. We both felt this seemed to desecrate a totally unspoilt and secluded part of the world, but when we tried to pull it from the ice, Excalibur-like, neither of us had the strength to do so. It is probably still there.
Before then I’d really had no thought of attempting to climb all seven continental summits, but on our way down Roger and I had stopped off in Argentina and decided we’d have a crack at Aconcagua in the Andes (as you do!), the highest mountain in South America. That part of our trip was a bit of a disaster, a dreadful failure of preparation, since even a few days before we left for Santiago in Chile I found that some of my clothes (which had just turned up) were so small I couldn’t even pull up the zip. When we got to the mountain the weather was ghastly, but we were pushing on about 4,000 feet below the 22,837 foot summit because we felt we had little choice. Our food supplies were all but gone, it was bitterly cold and our equipment was inadequate, yet I still felt we had a good chance of reaching the top and was willing to give it a good go. All of a sudden Roger announced, ‘well, I don’t know about you, but I think we should go down.’
It was on this trip before Aconcagua however, on the border between Chile and Argentina, that I first met Rebecca Stephens, there on a top-secret climb as part of her seven-summits race with Ginette Harrison. She asked me if I was setting out to do the same, and when I replied that the idea had really never crossed my mind her response was, ‘well, you’ve done the hardest, Everest, so you might as well finish them off.’ She was right of course, and her words started the old heart thumping again.
With five summits now notched on my bedpost Aconcagua still had to be next and I turned to my old friend Neill Williams, with whom I’d previously been to the Arctic and Elbrus. I took him out for dinner on a Tuesday night in February 1995, and four beers later he’d agreed to leave with me that same Friday, our plan being to complete the whole trip in a fortnight before the southern hemisphere summer came to an end and it began getting a little cold. With our job commitments and the season we intended to be up and down the mountain as quickly as possible, and back behind our desks within twelve days.
Arriving in Santiago on the Saturday morning we stocked up with decent food and fuel then made the three-hour bus journey to Punta de l’Inca on the Argentinian border. Four months earlier this area had been covered with snow, but now it was green, lush and beautifully warm. Over the next two days we trekked the 40 miles to Aconcagua base camp at 10,000 feet, the walk serving as our acclimatization process, local gauchos carrying our kit on their mules. Here we found ourselves mingling with climbers from all over the world, and met a couple of young Americans who reminded me vividly of Steve and myself back on McKinley. Like us then they were raring to go and blissfully unaware of the dangers in haste and altitude, leaving Neill and me feeling like old men as we explained how we’d be plodding up the mountain and taking it easy. Or not so easy, if we would be doing the hard load carry the next morning, taking most of our gear up to the Condor’s Nest at 16,000 feet, then a couple of days later up to the 18,500 foot Berlin Hut. By now the Americans had joined us, although the initial hares were now moving at a snail’s speed and us two old tortoises were out-pacing them. More experienced mountaineers having given me their time and help when I was younger, I felt I couldn’t fail to do the same in return for others now.
We left for the summit at 2.00 a.m., when the ice was nice and crisp, intending to have enough time to reach the top and descend again by late afternoon. Aconcagua may not be the most dangerous of mountains, but two Koreans had still died of exposure there the previous week and the Argentinian military were out in force trying to locate the bodies. By mid-morning we had left the youngsters well behind, and compared to the conditions on Vinson this seemed an easy ascent, even if the strain and sweat of the hard climb left me breathless and Neill, who had gone off like a rocket, reached the top fifteen minutes before me. This time we found a simple wooden cross, which seemed far more fitting as we gazed away across the Andes and down towards the planes of Argentina.
An hour into our descent we met one of the lads, finding the going tough yet clearly still strong enough to reach the top, but it wasn’t until two hours later and well on our way back to the Berlin Hut that we met the other. He didn’t look good to me and by then time was running out for him, so I advised him to turn around and try again another day. He was having none of it however, if only that in his debilitated state he felt this must be his sole attempt, so I reluctantly saw him on his way having lent him my sunglasses, as he’d lost his when he slipped and they tumbled off down the mountainside. I didn’t regret my gesture, knowing the young man needed all the help he could get, but was quickly confirmed in my suspicion that a baseball cap pulled down over my eyes would prove inadequate protection from the sun when I rapidly experienced snow blindness. Neill literally had to lead me down the mountain with his ski pole and it was getting dark by the time we returned to the Berlin Hut. Had I been so benevolent on Everest I’d be dead by now, and I should have made more effort to convince the young American to turn back.
I wasn’t too scared about my snow blindness, since I know the condition is always temporary, and after a hard day’s climbing both Neill and I needed a good night’s sleep, but we were worried sick about the boys. It was now pitch black outside, and in the state we knew at least one of them was in we were sure they would struggle to descend and find the hut again. Every ten minutes we’d go outside and flash our head torches up the mountain, and make a noise banging some cooking pans. They’d been climbing for so long that surely their own head torches would have given out by now. We were desperately trying to stay awake and it was only after midnight, by which time my blindness was beginning to ease, when we were starting to give up on the lads that we heard a joyful shout. Shining our lights up the mountain we saw the two of them, waving their arms about a quarter of a mile or so away. They were both in tears when they finally reached the hut, hugging us and thanking us incessantly. Had they come to harm it would certainly have marred our whole trip and in some ways it was more satisfying to have helped them and seen them back safely than to have reached the summit of Aconcagua itself.
We completed the descent the next morning and walked back to Punta de l’Inca in not much more than a day, then at Santiago we said goodbye to the Americans. I’ve never seen or heard of them again, but it is in the nature of mountaineering that you can help or even save the lives of people you did not know before. The laws of the mountains are unwritten, but it is a code that is normally and should be strictly adhered to. We are all brothers in such an environment. I also don’t think I’ve ever been on a happier trip than that
one with Neill, a quick tactical assault where absolutely everything (bar my snow blindness!) went according to plan.
So now I had six summits; McKinley (North America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Everest (Asia and the world), Elbrus (Europe), Vinson (Antarctica) and Aconcagua (South America). I was now pumped up to finish the job with the 16,024 foot Carstensz Pyramid, a tough rock climb in Papua New Guinea’s Irian Jaya and the highest peak in Australasia. Steve Bell at Himalayan Kingdoms again arranged the trip for me. This proved a bureaucratic nightmare, needing various permits from numerous government departments who frequently won’t grant them, wanting to keep prying eyes away from a local mine that is an environmental disaster, as well as the police and even local tribal heads. All the same I was off again within six weeks. I was aware I needed to concentrate on planning for my trip to the Antarctic at the end of that year, but Claire was also pregnant and expecting our third child on 20 May. I knew with certainty I must be back before then, with something to spare. Oh what I have put my family through!
It wasn’t easy to find a climbing partner. Steve Vincent said no yet again, his days of serious expeditions seemingly over, Neill had used up all his holiday time on Aconcagua and said forget it. Graham Hoyland was working and couldn’t get away and Steve Bell was busy elsewhere. I couldn’t really think of anyone and in desperation called an electrician friend of mine called Paul Harman. I was a bit concerned that I hadn’t done any proper rock climbing for many years, and this would be a long such climb, but although he was a very competent climber the fact that Paul had limited experience at high altitude and had never in his life been to a third world country worried me immensely. All the same, Paul and I arrived in Jakarta on 22 April 1995.
No Such Thing as Failure Page 7