by Michael Gill
Well Louise dear, it’s getting jolly cold here so I think I’ll crawl into my bag. It doesn’t matter where I am, I always think of you before I go to sleep. You’re sometimes mixed up in a confused jumble of seracs, crevasses and primuses but you’re always there. I find it rather comforting … This Everest climbing is a strange sort of business – half the time you’re excited and half the time scared. Perhaps it’s a little like being in love – but then I always have been a bit of a coward in a way. But I do seem to get over it with you.
All my love, Ed.19
Louise wrote again on 26 April:
My dear Ed, I got a letter from you two days ago, it was a beauty, with lots in it, so now I know a little more about what you are doing … By the time you get this you should be starting on the main objective … I’ve been staying with Aunt Enid who lives in a cottage in the bush 30 miles outside Melbourne and it was heavenly. She is a marvellous woman, very like Ma, and also terribly kind. It’s so different from NZ with lovely gum smells and all the birds making a terrific noise. It was such a change being out in the open and out in the fresh air. We picked blackberries, gardened and I went each day across the paddocks to get the milk where there was a boisterous young bull calf that would dance all round me. One of the local ladies showed me a dead tiger snake and I had a bath with a Tarantula spider …
Tons of love and lots of luck, Louise.20
A week after the climb Ed wrote a subdued letter from Tengboche which has a clear view of the last 2000 feet of Everest:
My dear Louise … From where I’m writing this letter we can see Everest … the position of our high camp, the long steep ridge running to the South Summit and all the details of the summit ridge … it looks a long way up and at the moment I have no desire to go back again.
… The public interest has been colossal. We’ve had telegrams from The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Winston Churchill.
I’m still far from back to my old vigour and strength. I’m exceedingly thin and rather lethargic. Actually I was going like a bomb the whole time I was high up and didn’t think I was deteriorating. But on my return to Advanced Base I found myself a bit weak and the trip down the icefall was plain hell for all of us …
Well Whizz, goodness knows what will be happening now – there is talk of royal receptions and lecture tours. I don’t expect it will take long for things to get back to normal and I’ll be seeing you then. I’m certainly looking forward to that …21
A proposal of marriage in Sydney
Celebrations and lectures in England took up all of July, but in August Ed returned to New Zealand for a month before setting off on a sixmonth lecture tour of the UK, Europe and America. He had unfinished business in Sydney before crossing the Tasman to Auckland.
Ed is reticent about Louise in his autobiographies. In High Adventure, written two years after Everest, she receives no mention, not even in the Acknowledgments. In the 1975 autobiography, his first mention of Louise is when he spends three days with her in Sydney on his way home to Auckland.
I made one stop … to see a young musician … I had been enamoured of Louise for some time, even though I was eleven years older. I asked her to marry me and go to England for the lecture tour I had agreed to undertake. Somewhat in a daze she consented and I was overjoyed – it certainly proved the most sensible action I have ever taken.22
In the 1999 autobiography, he describes briefly her acceptance of his proposal but reveals how worried he was about how this would fit in with his lecture tour and her music studies:
We had sufficient time together to confirm to each other that we’d like to get married some time. But what about her music? And what about my forthcoming lecture trip around the world? We were a little too dazed to come to any sensible decisions on that.23
A day after her acceptance, he admits to Louise in a letter that he is nervous about telling her parents that she has agreed to marry him:
My dear, darling Louise, You’ve no idea how much I regretted leaving Sydney on Saturday morning. Really I do feel frightfully lonely here in Auckland despite all the plaudits of the locals. It was great to see your parents again. Tonight I’m going to screw up my courage and tell them about you and me! Whew! It’s going to be tough. I’ll let you know their reaction but I’m terrified, I can tell you. Well darling, I must stop now. I wish we could get away quietly somewhere for we really haven’t had much chance to be alone have we?
All my love darling, Ed24
He needn’t have worried. The interview was managed by Louise’s mother Phyl, a woman of great warmth and blunt good sense. She not only approved of the marriage but launched into plans for the wedding: ‘Why don’t you get Louise across from Sydney, marry her, then both of you go off on this world lecture tour together … Would you like me to ring her?’25 Ed continues in the same paragraph with the puzzling statement, ‘So my future mother-in-law proposed over the phone on my behalf,’ though the evidence is clear that Ed had proposed and been accepted in Sydney.26
Three weeks later, on 3 September, Louise’s twenty-third birthday, they were married in Diocesan school chapel. Alpine Club members held ice-axes to form an arch for the bridal couple. The Best Man was – who else? – George Lowe. A week after that, still accompanied by George, they were flying off for their lecture tour of Britain, Europe and the USA.
Louise writes long, unstructured letters to the Rose and Hillary parents about this extraordinary new life she’s been plunged into. She loves being the wife of Sir Ed, the amazing mixture of people she meets, the red carpets that are laid out, the adventures, the travel, the good food, the variety. She’s positive about the people she meets: they’re clever, brilliant, heavenly, and gorgeous. She’s seldom critical, showing only the occasional patch of irony. She’s matter-of-fact about herself, neither humble nor vain. Ed, for his part, loves and admires his new wife whom he describes variously as radiant, bubbly, warm, cheerful, friendly, charming, calm and full of common-sense.
Every day is hectic, every evening a social occasion, every meal a banquet. Louise notes after meeting Queen Ingrid of Denmark, ‘My fourth Crowned Head’; she was followed shortly afterwards by King Haaken of Norway:
We were rather scared as he is such a terrific man but after a nerve-wracking 10 minutes wait we went into his amazingly untidy, cluttered-up, old study & sat down with him. He is very long & thin & grins & laughs heartily & enjoys life immensely. He was amazingly interested & we stayed 40 minutes. His false teeth click all the time & he is so energetic that we were wrecks at the end of it.’27
Louise warmed to Norway whose population, at 3 million, was not much bigger than New Zealand’s. ‘When we left about 20 of our new friends were at the airport … the country and the people are after our own hearts.’
They met the most important Crowned Head of all, Queen Elizabeth II, at the premiere of the Everest film at the Warner Theatre in London. Crowds lining the street outside ‘cheered and yelled’ when they saw Ed and Louise arrive. In the theatre they sat in the same row, only two seats away, from the royal couple. ‘She is just so beautiful you feel that no one in the whole world could look so lovely.’
The party continued to the United States, enjoying their new affluence. Lecturing, they discovered, paid better than beekeeping. It was, said George Lowe, the ‘only time in my life I had ever earned fairly big money’.28 When John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest was released only three months after the end of the expedition, Ed’s chapter was well reviewed, leading to a contract and advance for the book which would be his personal story. He called it High Adventure. When published in 1955, it would pay for the house he and Louise built on a piece of land gifted by Phyl and Jim alongside their residence at 278 Remuera Road.
– CHAPTER 17 –
‘A somewhat disastrous journey’ into the Barun Valley
When Ed and Louise returned to Auckland from their American lecture tour in early 1954 they were alone together for the first time. Ed writes:
&nbs
p; I quickly learned how lucky I was to have such a wife. Louise was warm and loving, yet very independent, with a great love of the outdoors and a multitude of good friends. She made it clear to me that she accepted me as a climber and was happy for me to go to the end of the world … but for the first time in my life I had a strong reluctance to leave home.1
It was also the first time he’d been reluctant to go climbing, particularly in the Himalayas. But the previous year he had agreed to lead a New Zealand Alpine Club expedition to the Barun Valley east of Everest in April–May 1954. That meant he had only six weeks at home before his departure: ‘six marvellous weeks’, he described them, before an unwelcome separation.
The idea for such an expedition had been around since 1951, with an attempt on Everest as one of the less likely of its objectives, but by mid-1953 the focus had changed to Makalu, 27,826ft, fifth-highest peak in the world and still unclimbed. When it was found that an American Californian expedition had booked it for 1954, the New Zealand objective became simply ‘unclimbed peaks in the Barun’, with the 25,200ft Makalu II – a subsidiary of the higher Makalu I – and Baruntse, 23,390ft, as attractive options.
Of the 10 expedition members chosen, two others apart from Ed had been on Everest ’53. An obvious choice was George Lowe, who noted that the lean and restless Ed Hillary of 1954 was heavier and less fit following their lecture tour. The other Everester was Charles Evans, deputy leader in 1953 and now deputy leader to the Barun expedition. Ed had taken such a liking to Charles in 1953 that he had asked Jim Rose to find a job for him in Auckland so that they could go climbing together. Neurosurgery is not a field in which vacancies are easily found at short notice, and no more was heard of it. But the warmth of the friendship between Charles Evans and Ed is evident in a letter Evans wrote to Louise in the early part of the expedition:
Dear Louise, Thank you very much for making me a hat – It is a very superior sort … When we are both wearing our hats Ed & I are practically indistinguishable.
The party has settled down together very well … I like the boys a lot – I must admit it was rather daunting, the prospect of eight people all saying how good NZ is – but they’ve been very considerate …
Ed is gradually (he thinks) working off the effects of the American tour – I’m not so sure that he is. Every time he toils up a steep slope he says – ‘There goes another old-fashioned’ – or ‘Let’s get rid of the so-&-so luncheon’… I enjoyed the US tour a lot (in retrospect) & and it was nice to have a chance to get to know you … Charles2
Of the remaining Barun members, six were New Zealanders: Bill Beaven, Geoff Harrow, Norman Hardie, Jim McFarlane, Colin Todd and Brian Wilkins. The medical officer, who would be hard-worked on the expedition, was Englishman Michael Ball, invited, along with Evans, as acknowledgement of and thanks for the English invitation to ‘any two New Zealanders’ to join Shipton’s Everest reconnaissance in 1951.
During the latter part of April following the walk-in through lowland Nepal, the party split into three, with two groups surveying the unmapped Choyang and Iswa valleys, while Ed, with Jim McFarlane, Brian Wilkins and five Sherpas continued north to establish a base camp in the Barun Valley. Their next move was to carry a light camp to a higher altitude for a first look at the peaks they might attempt. On the morning of 27 April, Ed set out with McFarlane and Wilkins on what he would later describe as ‘a somewhat disastrous journey’.3 They climbed a 20,145ft peak up a broad ridge of broken rubble to a summit which gave a grandstand view of Makalu, on which they could see a good route. Ed noted that they had been ‘going high very rapidly for a first acclimatisation trip’, but the climbing had been easy and they had reached the top of their peak without too much trouble.
Ed had not been well, so decided to return to camp at 18,800ft where the Sherpas were enjoying a rest day. McFarlane and Wilkins continued higher to the divide between Nepal and Tibet from where they could see three of the world’s five highest peaks: Everest and its Kangshung Face, Lhotse and Makalu. The direct route back to camp was easy, a smooth névé dropping gently, the sort of terrain where gravity does the work as you swing easily downhill. Where the névé dipped down at a steeper angle, lines of crescentic crevasses appeared to right and left but with a smooth path down the centre. Wilkins was in front, McFarlane 10 metres behind with a few loops of rope in his hand. Without warning, Wilkins was suddenly through the soft snow of a bridged crevasse, and falling. McFarlane had time neither to get an ice-axe into the hard snow nor to brace himself strongly enough to hold the falling Wilkins. Slithering down the slope, he was able to slow Wilkins’ descent with his ice-axe, but then that was out of his grip and he was falling free. Impact with the floor of the crevasse caused both climbers briefly to lose consciousness.
When Wilkins came to, he found himself in a sitting position in a mound of soft snow that had cushioned their fall. McFarlane was a metre away, groaning from pain. Though without any obvious fractures, he was unable to move. Wilkins, however, was able to climb along the floor of the crevasse to look for an escape route. Where they had landed, the crevasse was two metres wide and the blue ice of its walls unclimbable. Then he saw a point of light overhead to his right. The crevasse here narrowed enough for him to start climbing upwards, chimney fashion, his back against one wall and his cramponed feet on the other. It was a desperate climb, but by 4 p.m., two hours after the fall, he was out and moving as fast as he could to summon help from their camp a few hundred metres lower down.
When the pair had left Ed earlier in the day, they had agreed to reunite in time to shift camp down-valley before evening. By 3 p.m. Ed was irritated that they had not returned; by 5 p.m. annoyance had changed to apprehension.
Half an hour later, a distressed Wilkins, his face covered in blood from a cut over his right eye where his snow-goggles had been crushed into his face during the fall, returned alone. He related what had happened. McFarlane was conscious but immobilised 20 metres down in the icy depths of a crevasse.
With Wilkins too spent to return with the rescue party, Ed gathered his five Sherpas, ropes, a couple of sleeping bags and a torch, and set off. By the time they arrived at the site of the accident, it was almost dark. Communication between the Sherpas who had almost no English and Ed who had very little Nepali/Hindi was going to add unknown complexities to an already difficult rescue. In the last of the light, Ed crawled out on his belly to peer down the hole in the roof of the crevasse. He was relieved to hear a quick response from McFarlane when he shouted down into the crevasse, but it was clear that its overhanging roof might break off at any time.
Something had to be done quickly, either by hauling McFarlane to the surface or helping him into the two sleeping bags if the hauling operation failed. From experience, Ed knew that five Sherpas pulling together were strong enough to pull a climber out very quickly. He tied two ropes around his waist, one for himself, the other for McFarlane, crawled over to the hole and dropped over the edge. Immediately he knew that he had made a mistake. His weight should be in a foot loop, not a waist loop which was already riding up his chest, constricting his ribs and breathing. This might not have mattered if the lowering was completed quickly, but it went with agonising slowness. The Sherpas were unsure of what they were doing or how they should do it. After 15 metres they stopped lowering.
Ed was beside himself with pain, breathlessness and frustration. Finally he began to shout, Upar! Upar! – the easily remembered Hindi word for Up! Nothing happened. This was the stuff of recurring nightmares: spinning slowly around in the frozen dark, ribs cracking, while McFarlane, desperately in need of help, was unreachable below. Then McFarlane joined in, shouting with increasing urgency, Upar! Upar! Slowly the message got through and in uneven jerks the rope commenced its upward movement.
Worse was to come. The rope had now bitten deep into the soft lip of the crevasse and Ed was being dragged into a ceiling of soft snow rather than over the edge. He scraped, reached up and eventually, with a huge convulsive e
ffort, got a hand on the rope above and hauled himself to the safety of the flat snow, where he lay recovering from the desperation of that final exertion.
What next? Ed shouted down the hole to ask McFarlane whether he could tie his waist loop on to a rope if they lowered it. ‘Yes!’ came the reply, and eventually he shouted back that he was tied on. With Ed directing operations from above, the rope came up quickly, but McFarlane too jammed against the snow roof and he was in no condition to make the effort that had just got Ed over the lip. There was no option but to lower McFarlane back to spend the night at the bottom of the crevasse. Ed lowered the two sleeping bags.
Have you got them, Jim?
Yes!
Well, get inside them.
In the darkness, Ed retreated to camp. This had been a day when his luck had run out. Breaking through the snow bridge into the crevasse had been the start of it, then the slow-motion agony of the rescue attempt assisted only by five frightened and uncomprehending Sherpas. Ed knew that he had made mistakes. The prescribed safety method of the times was to be lowered with one’s feet in two Prusik slings, metre-long loops of rope attached to the main rope by a slip knot. The climber’s weight is on his feet in the loops, not suspended through a constricting waist loop. When ascending, the slip knots allow the slings to be pushed up the rope, one at a time, until the climber has reached the top. That’s the theory but the reality can be different at night, in the Himalayas, unacclimatised, with a cold wind blowing and no one to share the problems.
In the morning, in daylight, they returned accompanied by the recovered Wilkins, who was lowered through the hole he had escaped from the previous day. Down at the bottom of the crevasse he found McFarlane still alive, but he had not been inside the sleeping bags and his hands were bare. His feet were cold and hard up to the ankles, and his fingers had turned to ice. This time they cut away the overhanging lip of the crevasse so that when McFarlane was hauled to the surface they could drag him to safety.