Last Hours on Everest

by Graham Hoyland

  I can’t remember much. Now it all seems some sort of vivid dream; bright sunlight, a tearing wind, a long flag of ice particles flying downwind of us. A vast drop of two miles into Tibet. We could see across 100 miles of tightly packed peaks, and we could see the curvature of the earth. Contorted faces shouting soundlessly, lips blue with oxygen starvation. Doctors prove with blood samples that climbers are actually in the process of dying up there on the summit, but I would say that is where I started to live.

  Up there I had a weird awareness that our notions of time are all wrong, that future events become the past with no intervening present moment, which seems entirely a construct of consciousness.

  I had finally climbed the mountain in 1993, becoming the 15th Briton to stand on that supreme summit. Little larger than a dining-room table, it seemed a strange reason for so many deaths. I had passed five corpses in the snow on the way up, dead from cold, exhaustion and avalanches. And a Basque climber I passed on my descent slipped a few moments later and was killed in a 3,000ft fall. He was a nice lad and we were all shocked by this event.

  On the way down the Hillary Step, I managed to drop my abseil device, an aluminium figure-of-8, and as it bounced and rang down the slabs of the South-West Face I thought I was hearing my death-knell. My eternal gratitude goes to team leader Steve Bell, who helped me make an abseil device with a couple of karabiners, and so I got down the ropes. Brian Blessed managed to get up to the South Col, which was a superb effort, but I realised how frustrated he must have felt at not getting to the top.

  Although ascents from the north and south are somewhat different, I learned two things relevant to the Mallory mystery. One was just how long summit day is – we were out for around 16 hours. The second thing was the power of summit fever. Once I had the summit in view I distinctly remember deciding I was going to carry on until I got to the top, or died in the attempt.

  Climbing that mountain was certainly the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and for a long time afterwards it left a strange rage and emptiness that I don’t really understand. At the very least it cleared up a bit of family business. It had taken me exactly 22 years and 8 months to do it, from the meeting between a 13-year-old boy and an 81-year-old hero. I vaguely remember looking down on the great North Face from above and thinking that I might have climbed this mountain, but I still had to find that camera. That was the next job.

  After climbing Everest everything disintegrated in my life. I separated from my girlfriend of 12 years. My previous mental state had seemed to alternate between elation on expeditions and depression between them. Immediately after the expedition this wrought-up state seemed to rapidly unwind. Even though I was invited to Downing Street and met the prime minister, I still felt terrible, and just when people were saying ‘You must be feeling amazing!’ I was actually staring into the abyss. The achievement of a long-held desire had not made me happy, and in fact, for some reason, I felt ashamed.

  I am not a psychoanalyst so I won’t indulge in too much Freudian self-analysis. As British comedian Ken Dodd said, ‘The trouble with Freud is that he never played the Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night.’ Theories about human behaviour are all very well, but it is the knock-about course of your life that shows you who you really are. Suffice to say that a deep examination of what led me to that mountain pulled me through.

  Becoming the 15th Briton to summit Everest (or perhaps the 17th?) gave me the credentials to get work on a BBC film on Mount McKinley in Alaska – these days usually called by its indigenous name, Denali – about the British marine Alan Perrin, who although severely disabled got most of the way to the top. He made a good point to me – at high altitude we are all disabled.

  Denali is a very cold mountain, and I remember the cameraman refusing to work one morning until the temperature in our tent rose to –35°C. I managed to get to the icy top of the mountain, thereby achieving the second of my seven summits. Unfortunately, one of my companions took this opportunity to announce that he had just gone blind. I had to put a short sling on him and together we inched back along the icy crest, à cheval – like straddling a horse. He kept on wanting to lie down and rest, but I wouldn’t let him. That is the way of death. To our relief his loss of sight resolved on descending to thicker air.

  Also with us was one of the more colourful characters of British climbing, John Barry, and through him I met Rebecca Stephens, the first British woman to climb Mount Everest. Rebecca and I were partners for a while, splitting up after a rather fraught voyage in a yacht to Antarctica across the Southern Ocean in 1995.

  In 1996 I moved to BBC Manchester for a new job and met Sarah Champion, the young woman who would eventually become my ex-wife and would even later become the Labour MP for Rotherham. I submitted the Mallory’s Camera idea once again. This time, being an Everest summiteer gave me a little more persuasive power with my proposal.

  Just before then I had got to know a photographer, Bruce Herrod, and we became friends. He asked me a lot about climbing Mount Everest, which was one of his ambitions. He wasn’t, however, a hugely experienced climber. One day he called and asked if I would be interested in working with a South African expedition on the mountain, and I said I would. He telephoned again and again, checking to see what cameras I might use and which batteries survive in the cold. The next thing I knew was that he was booked on the expedition as cameraman. In view of what was to happen in 1996 I wish he had never called. When I heard the news of his death later that season a cold hand grasped my heart.

  In the spring of 1996, David Breashears was in Kathmandu to make an IMAX film about Mount Everest. With him was Audrey Salkeld, and he rang me to see whether I was available to work with them on what became a hugely successful film. I was committed to a new job, and I am glad I missed the deadly season that has been immortalised in Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air.

  My quest for answers to the Mallory mystery started to turn up respondents, and in April 1998 a 28-year-old German geology student, Jochen Hemmleb, contacted me with a list of questions about Everest. I replied, saying that we could meet up as by chance I happened to have a trip to Germany coming up. I met Jochen in the pleasant city of Stuttgart. He struck me as a nice lad, very serious about his subject, which was the attempt to locate the position of Mallory or Irvine’s body, using photographs of the Chinese camp at which Wang Hong Bao had been staying when he made his find.

  During the interview I began to feel slightly uncomfortable about the intensity of Jochen’s interest. He quizzed me hard about what I knew, but I didn’t mention the sighting of the body at the bottom of the scree slope. He said he would keep in touch. Then he sent me a document outlining his intentions. He had certainly done his homework on the Chinese photographs, and I found that some of what he wrote struck a chord:

  dreams can become like avalanches. First you marvel at the force slowly building up, almost enjoying it, until there is the frightful realisation that it might carry you away and you have to give in – which is often the point at which you learn to play the game anew, riding the tide rather than swimming against it.

  I am afraid of getting carried away by this game, that this time my obsession might drive me over the edge.

  People have always used Mount Everest – and what it signifies – as a means to further their own agendas. One Englishman who mixed up religion and Everest in a deadly brew came to a sad end. In July 1935 Charles Warren of Eric Shipton’s expedition found the body of Maurice Wilson lying near the site of Camp III. He had attempted to climb the mountain alone to prove the power of his religion founded on faith and fasting.

  Wilson was another of those lost souls who had been through the First World War and couldn’t settle down. He had been injured in the chest and arm by machine-gun fire at Ypres, and on his return home found life in Bradford too dull. The pain in his arm plagued him all his life. He emigrated first to the US and then to New Zealand, becoming successful as a businessman but never quite satisfied. Returning to Englan
d he was clearly approaching a nervous breakdown, but healed himself by a mystery cure that seemed to involve 35 days of fasting, and then praying to be well again. This regime seems to be one of his own invention, based on an encounter with Eastern yoga mystics on the boat home. He emerged from the cure a new man with a purpose in life: to spread the word of his new faith. Knowing that he would gain huge public attention for his ideas if he pulled off the stunt, he settled on the idea of climbing Mount Everest solo, despite never having approached a mountain in his life.

  He resolved to crash-land an airplane on the East Rongbuk glacier, so bought a Gipsy Moth biplane that he named Ever Wrest, and learned to fly. Defying the British authorities, he gained a great deal of press coverage. On the day of departure from England, and distracted by the watching journalists and photographers, he took off down-wind instead of facing into the wind, but somehow made it into the air (I have noticed that the presence of a camera often distracts contributors trying to concentrate). He flew out to Lalbalu, near Purneah in India, which was the same airfield used by the Duke of Hamilton on his flights the previous year. Here the British Raj caught up with Wilson and his plane was impounded.

  If only he had left it there he might have gathered some followers and built a cult following. But being the stubborn Yorkshireman that he was, he had to go the whole hog by recruiting Sherpas, disguising himself as a lama and trekking to the Rongbuk valley. Clearly a tough and resourceful man, he did it in ten days fewer than the previous British expedition. However, his total lack of mountaineering ability meant that he could not find a route up the East Rongbuk glacier to Camp III and had to return to the monastery. On his second attempt he appears to have got stuck under an ice chimney below the North Col. His last diary entry records his third attempt: ‘Off again, gorgeous day.’ His body was found the following year. In the end faith alone was not enough.

  Maurice Wilson and plenty of other people subsequently have focused inappropriate amounts of attention on Mount Everest. I have, too. It might be a way of redeeming your perceived failures in life, or it might be seen as a ticket to success. I knew one thing from my own family’s experience: an obsessive interest in mountaineering is dangerous. So although I was interested in Jochen’s theories that the Chinese camp’s position could be located, I didn’t particularly want to go climbing with him. I suggested to Jochen that if I got a commission from the BBC to make the film he would be welcome to come along to Base Camp and help out.

  Before I tried the BBC again with my Mallory’s Camera proposal I thought I had better find out more about the object we were trying to find. In the account of the 1924 expedition Bentley Beetham wrote a section on photography. Because John Noel was busy with his cinema work the stills photography fell to the other members of the trip, using their own raggle-taggle collection of personal cameras.

  Our photographic outfit was most essentially of the tourist description – a battery of nine hand-cameras among ten men! These ranged in size from a spacious post-card down to the vanishing point in the V.P.K.’s. These latter are probably ideal for photography high up on the mountains, where every ounce of weight and every mechanical detail, bother, or intricacy, are of importance, and it may be mentioned that it was with such an instrument that Somervell, on two successive Expeditions, took his wonderful pictures above 25,000 feet.1

  The Vest Pocket Kodak was a folding camera made by Eastman Kodak from 1912 to 1926. They were very high-tech for their day, being the first to use the tiny 127 film reels. I have my own next to me and it is even smaller than a modern digital bridge camera, sliding into an inside pocket with ease. The ‘Autographic’ version even had a slide-out door so that the photographer could write notes on the paper backing of the film. This version was known as the ‘Soldier’s Camera’ as a result of its popularity during the First World War, and I think this is the actual model Somervell owned.

  In 1998 I wrote to Martin Wood at Kodak Professional for some more information on the camera and film that Somervell lent to Mallory. He pointed out that film recovered from Salomon August Andrée’s balloon attempt on the North Pole was successfully developed years after the photographs were taken. Reconnaissance films from aircraft that had crashed into lakes or sea during the Second World War showed that film could survive remarkably well under adverse conditions. Martin thought that we might be in with a chance, as the film would have almost certainly remained frozen through the years. He advised placing the camera very carefully inside black bags such as those used for unexposed film, then developing the film at Base Camp.

  This sounded a terrifying proposition, but on re-reading the Beetham account it was clear that they had a successful developing regime in place in 1924. Noel had brought a portable darkroom and they experimented with developing solution. It was heated by a yak-dung stove. Somervell found that he had to double its strength and double the time to get acceptable results.

  I far preferred to get any recovered camera back to England and the experts at the BBC and Kodak. Avoiding the X-ray machines in airports would be fraught with difficulty, but I felt that the next approach might be to Her Majesty’s Government for permission to place it in the diplomatic bag.

  Who owns the camera and any image found? The camera belonged to Somervell, as did the roll of film, but who would own any image retrieved? This was important to me in 1998 as I wanted to make the film about Mallory’s last climb, so I asked the BBC’s lawyers for an opinion. They replied that copyright law in Tibet of the 1920s was somewhat obscure. However, as the participants were British – and the Royal Geographical Society and Alpine Club were also British – then British copyright law would probably obtain, even though the images were made in Tibet (please don’t even think about the summit being half in Nepal). The act that was in force was the Copyright Act of 1911.

  The lawyers concluded that John Noel, who had made the expedition possible by his payment of £8,000, signed a contract giving him all photographic rights. He died in 1989, so the material is in copyright for 70 years from then, until 2059. The camera and film, as Somervell’s chattels, belong to his heirs and assigns. It is odd that Hinks’s influence extends beyond even today. Even if the film were developed in the US – as was encouraged by one researcher with questionable motives – British law would probably prevail.

  However, as greed for a big-dollar pay-out is high in some minds, expect a big legal battle. And who will win? Only the lawyers.

  13

  The Finding of Mallory’s Body

  On 26 September 1998 the Independent published an article announcing my expedition to go in search of Mallory’s camera. After years of trying, the BBC had finally accepted my proposal – but in a complicated way. The proposal had gone in under the aegis of BBC Manchester, but they had passed it on to BBC Bristol, where executive producer Dick Colthurst had become interested in it. Eventually, a producer named Peter Firstbrook called me to discuss the proposal. It would form part of a series of six, and he would be the executive producer.

  I met Firstbrook and explained that the best way to mount the expedition would be to go as part of Russell Brice’s annual commercial expedition to the north side of Mount Everest. That way we would buy into the best operator and the strongest Sherpas. Most importantly, though, I knew I could trust Brice to handle the subject carefully. We might have to deal with a corpse, and I knew that the families’ sensitivities should be respected. My own family had been badly affected by John Hoyland’s death, and I knew we could cause a great deal of pain by insensitive handling of the subject. On the other hand, we would be celebrating Mallory and Irvine’s lives, and possibly proving that they had succeeded in their attempt.

  I contacted both the Irvine and the Mallory families, and was able to go and see the Irvines in England. I asked if we found Sandy Irvine whether they would like a cairn built over the body and what committal service would be appropriate. They were most helpful, providing copies of Sandy Irvine’s letters that sketched in his character for me. I k
new that members of the Mallory family were going to be harder to track down as John, George Mallory’s son, was living in South Africa. I wrote to him, asked permission to search for his father’s body, and enquired what he would like done with the body, should we find it. He answered:

  Frankly, I query whether the recovery of the camera and possible solving of the ‘mystery’ is worth the risks always inherent to any venture on Everest. But that is, of course, for you to decide. If you do find a body, my father’s or Irvine’s, I really doubt you will either find suitable material even for a cairn over it, nor at that altitude are you likely to have much spare energy; but I think that would be best, if practical.1

  I also tracked down Mallory’s grandson, also named George, as I knew he had climbed the mountain in 1995 to ‘complete family business’, as he put it. We corresponded for a while and I asked for his permission to undertake a search. He answered:

  I’m really not sure you need my permission to look for the body of George Mallory or Sandy Irvine … My main concern is that the character of my grandfather (and the others too) is not tarnished. I hope that, whether you find the camera or not, you will make use of the opportunity to point out, to those who want to know, the differences between those brave mountaineers and today’s typical Everest ‘wannabees’. Everest in the 1920s was on the cutting edge, these days it’s a trade route.2

  George’s reply was in line with my feelings about the subject, which is why I was mortified at what eventually happened.

  I had also contacted Peter Firth, an ex-BBC colleague who was at that time the Bishop of Malmesbury, and I asked him to write an appropriate committal service to read over the body of Mallory or Irvine. As for the British climbing establishment, I wrote to Lord Hunt, leader of the first successful Everest expedition of 1953. I knew him through the Alpine Club, and explained that I was trying to find Mallory’s camera, and that there would be an outside chance of changing mountaineering history, and thereby denying his status as leader of the first ascent. He was typically generous, and made it clear that success in 1924 was a possibility in his mind: