After Everest

by Paul Little

  A tsunami of accolades came his way, none more prestigious than the Order of the Garter, the highest order of knighthood that the Queen can bestow. At the ceremony Ed marched in procession with his political polar opposite, Margaret Thatcher, with whom he had nothing in common except an interest in making their mark in remote locations.

  The man who bridled at being knighted without his consent 42 years before was happy enough to accept this nod, though again there were difficulties. The honour, it seems, though gratis, would involve substantial disbursements. Ed rang Tom Scott and told him he was worried about how he was going to pay for it. ‘I have to fly to London, get a coat of arms, find accommodation . . . Can you help me?’

  ‘Yes, Ed, I’ll fix it.’

  When Scott hung up, he realised he had no idea how he was going to fix it. So he rang Richard Griffin, who was media adviser to Bolger at the time. ‘Dick, Ed’s got this great honour but it’s really expensive. He’s got to pay for a gown, get a shield designed. It’s a lot of dough.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Griffin.

  About a week later, Griffin rang Scott, ‘and it had all been taken care of. He’d spoken to a merchant bank . . . Air New Zealand. Ed was very grateful. He gave me the credit, but it was really Dick [Griffin].’

  The Reserve Bank of New Zealand helped out by donating the fee for his coat of arms, which included an ice axe, a penguin and prayer wheels, plus the motto: ‘Nothing Venture, Nothing Win’.

  Ed was also a foundation member of the Order of New Zealand. Other honours that were bestowed on him in his lifetime included the Order of the Gurkha Right Arm, the Everest Medal in gold, the David Livingstone Medal of the Scottish Geographical Society, the American Geographical Society of New York Medal, the Belgium Le Soir Medal, the Geographical Society of Chicago Medal, the Hubbard Medal of the National Geographical Society, Washington, DC, the Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society, the John Lewis Gold Medal of the South Australian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, the French Geographical Society Medal, and the Distinguished Services to Geography Medal of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, the Polar Medal and the Fuchs Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, London, the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, London, the French Order of Sports Merit, the Order of the Golden Ark of the Netherlands, and the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.

  Even his death didn’t put an end to the recognition, with a posthumous Padma Vibhushan (Decoration of the Lotus), awarded by the Indian Government.

  There was a fuss about the ownership of some relics being auctioned in 1998. It turned out that on Ed’s Trans-Antarctic run in 1957, some items from Scott’s and Shackleton’s huts had been ‘souvenired’ by John Claydon and were to be auctioned at Christie’s in London. The news offended Ed on many fronts. Most of all, when it came to respecting predecessors and their property, he was fiercely protective, although a ban on such souveniring did not come into effect until the adoption of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, signed by the twelve nations then active in the area.

  ‘Various members [of the expedition] visited the huts, as I did,’ Ed told the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA), ‘but I certainly never, ever took anything from them. We regarded them as a place of enormous respect really and I didn’t believe there was any effort made to take anything from them.’ Had he known, ‘I think I could have completely stopped it. I was the expedition leader.’ Ed thought the items should have been returned to the huts, but they were donated to the Scott Polar Research Institute in England.

  Ed continued to exercise his accustomed candour well beyond middle age. Criticisms that had been muted in Nothing Venture, Nothing Win were louder in View from the Summit, published in 1999. ‘There are some things which I feel now I’m almost approaching 80 I can speak out a little bit more firmly on,’ he told the BBC. ‘I’ve always been careful not to say anything which might offend other members of my expedition. But now I’m not worrying too much about that, telling it like it was.’

  He was asked less frequently who got to the top first, but the mystery surrounding George Mallory popped up from time to time, and was given new life when Mallory’s remains were discovered high on Everest’s North Face in 1999. But in the same BBC interview, Ed allowed himself a grunt of annoyance when the question of Mallory being the first man to reach the summit was put to him: ‘Climbing friends . . . in the 1930s, especially Shipton . . . did not feel he got to the top,’ Ed said. ‘Who knows? The big thing is that this discovery of the body hasn’t resolved the problem of whether Mallory got to the top or not. The only thing that will do that is if a camera is found and film is produced showing shots from the summit. One other thing I think all mountaineers will agree—Mallory was a heroic performer. You can’t take that away from him. However, it’s quite important on a big mountaineering expedition not only to get to the top but also to get safely to the bottom.’

  The English mountaineering fraternity, in particular, has never quite been able to let go of all hope that Mallory was first to the top. Fortunately, Ed was not alive to hear about Jeffrey Archer’s fictional account of Mallory making it to the top, published as Paths of Glory in 2009.

  Ed was also publicly critical of the large number of people who climbed Everest annually, mainly because of the ecological impact they had. By the end of the 2010 season, 3142 people had summited. On the day Peter reached the top for the second time, in 2002, so did 78 other people. In a glaring contrast to the rigours of organising and preparing for the early reconnaissance expeditions and the Hunt expedition itself, an Everest expedition can now be booked by anyone with a personal computer.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a very satisfactory arrangement,’ Ed told the Listener, ‘because the mountain has been covered with people. Some of them are climbers, some of them aren’t, and so there have been quite a few deaths of people who aren’t very knowledgeable. I tried to persuade the Nepalese Government to restrict the number of teams they had on the mountain, but they get a lot of money out of it—I’m afraid money came before sound advice.’

  ‘There was an interview with Rob Hall and Gary Ball,’ says Tom Scott, ‘where they criticised Ed and said he didn’t understand modern climbing. They were quite patronising and condescending. His era was over. Ed said people are going to die on these climbing trips. Everest should not be turned into a business.’

  A friend told Scott that Ed came across as a fuddy-duddy in his response to Hall and Ball: ‘I was defensive. I said, “I’ll put my money on Ed. He’ll outlive those two. Ed’s knowledge is hard won.” I had no basis for saying that. I was a bit knee-jerk. But within two or three years both had died on the mountain.’

  ‘He was very hot on people paying 60,000 to go up,’ says Mark Sainsbury. ‘Ed thought this was wrong. One of the reasons was that you’d never be able to leave the climb.’ In Ed’s view, if two climbers are on a mountain and one is injured and likely to die, the other can leave. But if the injured climber has paid the other climber to be their guide, the guide has to stay. ‘Once you start accepting money, you can no longer make the rational decision,’ says Sainsbury. ‘And that is exactly what happened to Rob Hall [who died on the mountain in 1996]. He could have got down—he stayed with his client.’

  Kevin Biggar, who had had the good fortune to work in Nepal for the Himalayan Trust while a schoolboy, reappeared in Ed’s life when Biggar and Jamie Fitzgerald were planning their first big adventure—competing in the Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race. Ed always had time for a young person with an ambitious project in hand.

  ‘Sir Ed came to the launch of our boat when it had just been completed, and spoke,’ says Biggar. He lent his name as patron to the effort. Ed’s support meant more than money: ‘Having him there meant we got on TV. Having him as a drawcard to come to our launch was fantastic—it meant our sponsors came too. He spoke so well.’

  When the pair decided they would walk unsupported to the South Pole, without suppl
ies dropped along the way and taking everything they needed with them, they naturally thought of the world expert on madcap polar exploits and went to see him.

  ‘He’d always open the front door,’ says Biggar, echoing the surprise of many people that Ed treated his home just like a home. As June brought tea and scones, they told him about their plans for the crossing. ‘He was dismayed that there were no drop-offs. He thought of his own trip, and his mission was the supplies—it was going to be 50 years since his. He thought it would be good to do it first. He had strong feelings about being first.’

  Ed again agreed to support the mission. ‘It was generous of him to associate his name with us. If someone asked me the same, I would do a lot more due diligence than he did.’

  Ed had acquired a sort of secular semi-divine status at home by now, as Murray Jones couldn’t help noticing. ‘When they had the Hillary exhibition [the Alexa Johnston-curated Everest and Beyond] in Auckland Museum,’ says Jones, ‘when we came out, June was driving him and people would see Ed in the car. They would stop and start clapping at him. That was amazing. I’d never seen that before—genuine New Zealanders in Auckland.’

  In public, his harshest words were reserved for those who failed to show the sort of old-fashioned chivalry and grace that was at the core of his character, especially up a mountain or down a crevasse. He had had this attitude from the start—in his description of the Ruth Adams rescue in 1948 there was never a hint of resentment at the situation in which he found himself. He summed up that affair by expressing his pleasure at having the opportunity to see some of the country’s best climbers in action.

  ‘He thought there was a lack of chivalry on the mountain,’ says Scott. ‘He was from an age where, if you came across someone dying, you would abandon your attempt and get this person down. [His contemporaries] were honourable men. They had a courtliness about them. Hunt was the most gracious man. None of those guys would step over a body.’

  So when Mark Inglis, who in 2006 became the first double amputee to summit Everest, reported seeing the dying English mountaineer David Sharp on the climb but not stopping, Ed was incensed. There were some 40 climbers on Everest that day. Accounts of exactly what happened and what, if any, chance Sharp had of surviving differ widely. But everyone agrees Sharp was left to it.

  ‘In our expedition there was never any likelihood whatsoever, if one member of the party was incapacitated, that we would just leave him to die,’ said Ed. ‘It simply would not have happened . . . If you have someone who is in great need and you are still strong and energetic, then you have a duty, really, to give all you can to get the man down and getting to the summit becomes very secondary. You can try, can’t you?’

  ‘The last person in the world who could have rescued anyone was Inglis on his two artificial legs,’ says Tom Scott. ‘He could barely get up there himself. To expect him to do it . . . When I heard Ed, I thought, you don’t need to say that.’

  Ed’s last great journey was in the year before he died—an odyssey to Antarctica to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the New Zealand presence that he had helped establish on that continent. Ed was very frail and very determined to make the most of what he certainly knew would be his last visit to one of the places he loved best of all. Attendant media were in awe; in each of them, their desperate desire to make the most of Ed’s presence was waging a fierce war with their respectful acknowledgement that he might deserve to be left in peace.

  But Ed didn’t want to be left in peace. He appeared energised once he hit the ice. A promised 20-minute interview with accompanying media turned into 40 spellbinding minutes of anecdotes about his adventures there over the years. It got a standing ovation from the assembled journalists and others who had drifted in during the performance.

  Finally, before returning to New Zealand, according to John Henzell in the Christchurch Press, he was granted his wish to spend a night in ‘an old A-frame hut discarded by the Americans and instantly appropriated by the Kiwis to serve as the equivalent of a bach on the ice shelf. He wanted to spend his final night in Antarctica cooking dinner on the same type of Primus stove Scott used and just telling some yarns over a few tumblers of whisky.’ Which he did.

  Back home visitors were still welcome. Ken Richardson’s last visit was just a few months before Ed died. He arrived late in the morning to find Ed still in bed. He was received by June, who explained that Ed wasn’t feeling the best. Richardson expected to leave without paying his respects, but Ed made the effort to get up and greet him.

  ‘He was in shorts and his dressing gown fell off because he was sitting down and I noticed he had these enormous legs. I had never seen legs like that. I am sure Colin Meads has legs like that but Ed’s legs . . . I thought, “God they took him to the top of Everest” and I am not surprised he was picked, because those legs would have carried you anywhere. These were the legs of an 80-year-old-plus man, but they were noticeable.’

  When Richardson’s visit came to an end, Ed got up to farewell him. ‘From their lounge you had to go up about three steps to reach the front door. It was very steep and Ed couldn’t make it up those steps. He faltered at the bottom, so June came and said goodbye to me and that was it.’

  Invitations to events around the world regularly turned up in the mail. June was always relieved when Ed showed no desire to accept them. He said he didn’t spend much time thinking about the past. The contrast between the gangly powerhouse on Everest and the tired and frail man he had become when he was nearly 90 was depressing. Boredom lurked always in the background. June and Ed filled their days with the routine activities with which most old couples occupy themselves—he had a huge appetite for TV sport, and they went for walks together.

  Weighed down with honours, with illness and with years, Ed’s thoughts naturally turned to his inevitable end. ‘I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying,’ he told the Listener, ‘but I like to think that, if it did occur, I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.’

  CHAPTER 17

  DEATH AND LEGACY

  I have no formal religious beliefs yet feel that this astonishingly complicated Universe did not happen purely by chance but that some Universal Intelligence played a dominant role. I request that on my death there should not be an elaborate ceremony but that it be a simple and cheerful occasion which includes the singing of one of my favourite hymns ‘How Great Thou Art’.

  —From Ed’s will

  Ed knew he was dying. He was 88 years old. The health problems of the past few years had gained a momentum that could not be stopped. ‘He worked out what was happening and was gradually pulling back,’ says Mark Sainsbury.

  To a few special friends he made a point of saying goodbye—without, of course, acknowledging that that was what he was doing. ‘We all knew he was getting sick,’ says Sainsbury, who was a regular visitor in Ed’s last years. ‘I was going back to Wellington for Christmas and called to see him and he was in bed. It was lovely because he started talking about the times we had been together. And the fun we had. You knew.’

  Sainsbury decided to ring Tom Scott. He put Ed on the phone.

  ‘We’ve had a lot of fun, Tom,’ said Ed. ‘We’ve had a lot of laughs together.’

  ‘Yes we have, Ed.’

  Sainsbury concludes, ‘We both knew what the conversation was.’ Ed did his stoical octogenarian best not to acknowledge ill health or pain. The last time he saw Scott and his partner Averil Mawhinney, Averil took champagne to share. Ed surprised the couple by making a rare acknowledgement of his condition, saying, ‘I’m not too good, Averil.’

  ‘I visited him when he was bedridden,’ says John Hillary. ‘I still have bees, so I had made up some stickers and printed them off and I made him a pot of honey. I don’t know if he ever ate it or not. I just told him about the memories and how much he meant to me. That’s all.’

  In some ways, Ed’s death was the biggest media event of his life—certainly the biggest since Everest. Broadc
aster Paul Holmes had approached June about the possibility of what they both knew—but neither admitted to the other—would be an exit interview. June was polite but firm in declining.

  Sainsbury also considered the possibility but decided against it. ‘Do you sit him down for the last interview?’ says Sainsbury. ‘I didn’t have—not just the heart . . . One side of you wanted to do it; but you’re doing it more for yourself than him, and especially for TV because he is starting to get slower.’ And, as Sainsbury had noted earlier, people had been conducting legacy interviews for decades by the time he died, not knowing that he would live for nearly 90 years.

  After a fall at home, Ed was admitted to Auckland Hospital under the cover name Vincent Stardust, which amused him greatly. He died there alone on 11 January 2008. His quiet end set off a tidal wave of activity and reaction that would last for weeks. Other fallout from Ed’s death would continue for years.

  That day, Sainsbury was driving from Wellington to Auckland, where he planned to have dinner with Ed that night. For much of the time his cellphone was out of range. ‘Once it got back in range,’ says Sainsbury, ‘there were all these missed calls—Helen Clark, June Hillary, the office—I knew straight away. I rang June, and she said, “I’m not doing anything till you and Tom get here.” We knew [Ed’s death] would become a circus so we said we would give them a hand managing it. Then we did a [Close-Up TV] special that night. All this stuff was going on. It was almost an Ed response—you had stuff to do and you did it.’