The Everest Years

by Chris Bonington

  I met Wendy, my wife to be, in 1962 and she fully backed my decision to abandon Unilever to go on an expedition to Patagonia. I vaguely thought of taking up teaching, for the long holidays, once I got back but at the end of the summer made the first British ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger with Ian Clough. I was commissioned to write my first book, I Chose to Climb, telling the story of those early years, and was able to make a living lecturing. But at that stage I felt very vulnerable. I had become a freelance with no real skills other than my ability as a climber. I concentrated on trying to improve my writing and photography. My first professional assignment was back on the North Wall of the Eiger in the winter of 1966.

  I had met the American John Harlin in the summer of 1965. He had swept through the European climbing scene in the early sixties and had considerable influence on Alpine climbing. Amongst other projects he wanted to make a direct route up the North Face of the Eiger. I joined him, not as a climber, but as photographer for the Daily Telegraph Magazine. The next objective of his far-flung ambition was going to be the South-West Face of Everest. He was killed in the latter stages on the Eiger route named after him, but he had given birth to an idea.

  It was on the Eiger Direct that I came to know Dougal Haston; we had met in passing on previous occasions but both of us had been reserved, no doubt regarding each other as potential competition. In climbing together those barriers had broken down. We both suffered from frostbite in the final stages of the climb, Dougal, when fighting his way out off the face in a violent storm and I, whilst waiting for him on the summit. During our stay in hospital we talked of trying the South-West Face of Everest, but neither of us felt sufficiently confident to lead an expedition. The doctor looking after us was Michael Ward, who had been a doctor on the 1953 Everest Expedition, and had remained actively interested in climbing. We invited him to lead the expedition and he expressed an interest but it never really got any further. The Nepalese Government had just placed a ban on climbing in their country because of various external political pressures and I now found myself increasingly involved in working as a photo- journalist on various adventure assignments.

  I moved from the Lake District down to Manchester in 1968, to be more in the hub of things. I had wanted to move to London, Wendy wanted to stay in the Lakes, and Bowdon, on the outskirts of Manchester, was the compromise. I became more directly involved in the climbing scene and a small group of us started talking about going off on a trip. This was how the 1970 expedition to the South Face of Annapurna was born and how I became its leader, more by default than anything else. No one else seemed prepared to get it off the ground.

  I had never thought of myself as a leader. My absent-mindedness had become a stock joke amongst my friends, yet the journalistic assignments I had been undertaking in the preceding years had given me a level of discipline and a need to get myself organised that was to prove invaluable on the South Face of Annapurna.

  The expedition represented a huge challenge. The face was bigger and steeper than anything that had so far been attempted. Of our team of eleven, only three of us, Don Whillans, Ian Clough and I had been to the Himalaya. Inevitably I made a lot of mistakes both in planning and the way I handled my fellow team members, yet we came through and Don Whillans and Dougal Haston reached the summit. However, in the last moments of the expedition we were faced with tragedy. Ian Clough was swept away by an avalanche. It was a terrible pattern that was to be repeated on all too many expeditions in the future.

  After my return from Annapurna the South-West Face of Everest began to loom much larger on the horizon as I had been invited to go there with an international expedition in the spring of 1971.

  – CHAPTER 2 –

  The Irresistible Challenge

  The South-West Face was to dominate my life for the next five years and stretch the woman I love very close to her breaking point. The scale of the problem can be seen from the number of attempts that were made before the face was finally climbed. A strong Japanese expedition had made a reconnaissance in the autumn of 1969 and attempted it in the spring of 1970. They reached the foot of the Rock Band, a wall of sheer rock 300 metres high, stretching across the face at around 8,300 metres. Confronted with steep and difficult climbing at an altitude higher than all but four of the world’s highest summits, no expedition seemed able to find the formula for success. This was what made it such a challenge, one in which the logistics, maintaining a flow of supplies to the foot of the Rock Band, were as important as the ability and endurance of the climbers who were going to attempt it.

  It was something that fascinated me. I had acquired a taste for planning and organisation on the South Face of Annapurna. The dormant interest had always been there, reflected in my study of military history and my initial choice of a military career. Everest was a natural progression from Annapurna. When I was invited to join the 1971 International Expedition as climbing leader, I accepted, but then, in the light of my experience on Annapurna, withdrew, as I was worried about the structure of the expedition. It had been hard enough holding together a small group of close friends with a strong vested interest in remaining united, but the Inter-national Expedition posed an even greater problem. The idea of trying to persuade climbing stars from ten different countries, almost all of whom desperately wanted to reach the top themselves, to work unselfishly together to put someone of a different nationality on the summit, seemed an impossible task.

  To withdraw was a hard decision. I was not an easy person to live with in the year leading up to the International Expedition. Part of me so wanted to be on that climb. I really felt I could solve the problem of the South-West Face, and that this would lead on to so many other things. We each have a career. Mine was a complex one of climbing, writing, lecturing, organising, planning, and the South-West Face seemed to represent such a logical step in my own life’s path. I had periods of black depression, questioning my withdrawal from an enterprise that could take me to the top of the world, ignoring the very good reasons for that decision.

  I could not help being unashamedly relieved when my fears were proved to be well founded. The International Expedition was split by dissension and was stopped by the Rock Band. A contributory factor to the failure of this expedition, and the 1970 Japanese attempt, was undoubtedly their choice of two objectives. The Japanese had hedged their bets with a team on the South Col route as well as one on the South-West Face, while the International Expedition initially tried the West Ridge and the South-West Face simultaneously, when they barely had sufficient Sherpas to sustain a single attempt on one route.

  The face remained unclimbed, but I was no nearer to reaching it. I had already put out feelers in Kathmandu for permission to go there, but the mountain was fully booked until the mid-seventies. The next team in the lists was Dr Karl Herrligkoffer’s German expedition scheduled for the spring of 1972. He had invited Don Whillans and Dougal Haston, who had reached the high point on the International Expedition. I also had an invitation, could not at first resist, but then pulled out again with the same doubts. This time it was easier; Dougal joined me. In the end Don Whillans, Doug Scott and Hamish MacInnes joined Herrligkoffer’s attempt but it fared no better than any of the others.

  Then at last I had my chance. An Italian expedition cancelled their booking for the autumn of 1972. We had permission but there were many imponderables. There was little more than three months in which to raise the money and organise the expedition. No one had succeeded in climbing Everest or any of the other highest Himalayan peaks in the post-monsoon season. The Swiss had tried in the autumn of 1952 and had been defeated by the cold and high winds. The same had happened to an Argentinian expedition in 1971.

  I was determined to go to Everest but now, faced with the choice of route, had doubts about the South-West Face, contemplating instead a small expedition to climb Everest again by the South Col route. But the lure of the South-West Face was strong and in mid-June 1972 I committed myself to it. Once the decision was ma
de there was no room for second thoughts and I plunged into the most taxing three months of my life. We had to organise the expedition and obtain all the equipment and food at the same time as we tried to find the funds to pay for it.

  One of the most valuable things I had learnt from our Annapurna trip was the importance of delegating responsibility. Divide up the jobs, choose the right people to do them, and then, having provided a clear set of guidelines, leave them to get on with it. I followed this principle and it worked well. We arrived at Base Camp with the gear and food we were going to need and a sense of cohesion within the team that smooth if unobtrusive organisation undoubtedly promotes.

  My two attempts on the South-West Face were really complementary to each other. The problems presented were so huge, so complex, that I suspect now an initial failure was almost inevitable. It was a question of learning from one’s mistakes.

  Our 1972 expedition was definitely on the small side with eleven climbers and twenty-four high-altitude porters. Of the eleven, I considered six of them to be lead climbers, who would go out in front to make the route, and all of whom I hoped were capable of reaching the summit. I have been accused of restricting my teams to a little group of cronies but, in many ways, this is inevitable, for the best basis of selection is shared climbing experience cemented by friendship.

  Dougal Haston had been in on the climb from our Eiger Direct days with John Harlin. We had decided to pull out of Herrligkoffer’s expedition whilst ensconced in a tiny ice cave halfway up the North Wall of the Grandes Jorasses the previous winter. Self-contained yet charismatic, with a single-minded drive in the mountains, on one level Dougal was the ultimate prima donna, taking it for granted that he would be the one to go to the top, and yet he managed to do this without offending the people around him. On a mountain I felt completely attuned to him, though at ground level we saw comparatively little of each other. Living at Leysin in Switzerland, where he ran a climbing school, he was comfortably removed from the day-to-day chores of organising an expedition.

  Nick Estcourt, one of my closest friends, was also an obvious choice. We had known each other since his university days and climbed together regularly He was a computer programmer with, as one would expect, a quick analytical mind. Our attitudes and background were similar and he was an invaluable sounding board for many of my schemes. He had been very supportive of me on the South Face of Annapurna.

  Mick Burke had also been with me on Annapurna. We always had quite a stormy relationship. Born in working-class Wigan, Mick had a sharp wit and, like so many climbers, automatically questioned any kind of authority. We had had plenty of arguments but had always resolved them and maintained a good friendship. After years of making a scanty living on the fringes of climbing, he had just got married and was starting a career in filming. His wife, Beth, was coming with the expedition as Base Camp nurse.

  I was also building on an old friendship in asking Hamish MacInnes, with whom I had first climbed in 1953, when he took me up the first winter ascent of Raven Gully. Since then we had had many climbing adventures together in the Alps. Known affectionately as the Old Fox of Glencoe, he had made his life there, running the local mountain-rescue team, designing climbing and rescue equipment and sallying forth on a variety of adventures, ranging from yeti and treasure hunting to serious climbing. He had been on Everest that spring with Doug Scott, whom I also invited.

  With shoulder-length hair and granny glasses, Doug looked like a latter-day John Lennon. Living in Nottingham, he had organised a series of adventurous expeditions to little-known places like the Tibesti mountains in the Sahara, the Hindu Kush, Turkey and Baffin Island. He had promoted lectures for me in Nottingham but at this stage I hardly knew him. Dave Bathgate, the sixth member of the lead climbing team was a newcomer to our circle. A joiner from Edinburgh, he was a good all-round climber, with an easy temperament.

  But I had left out Don Whillans, the one person both the media and the climbing world expected me to take. We had done some of our best Alpine climbing together and he had reached the summit of Annapurna with Dougal Haston in 1970. He had then been my deputy leader and had contributed a great deal to our success. His forthright, abrasive style had complemented my own approach, but it had also created stress. One of the problems had been that when we had climbed together in the Alps, Don had indisputably held the initiative. He had been that bit more experienced and was also stronger than I. It would be very difficult for him to accept a reversal of those roles. He was a strong leader in his own right, had now been to Everest twice, and knew the mountain much better than I. It would not have been easy to run the expedition in the way that I wanted with Don taking part and so I decided to leave him behind.

  There were also going to be four members with a support role. Jimmy Roberts who had led my first expedition to the Himalaya and now ran Mountain Travel in Kathmandu, was my deputy leader; Kelvin Kent, who had been Base Camp manager on Annapurna, was going to run Advance Base; Graham Tiso, who owned a successful climbing shop in Edinburgh and had organised our equipment, was to act in general back-up position, and Barney Rosedale was expedition doctor.

  As leader I felt that I should probably stay in support, ideally running the camp just behind whoever was out in front. Base Camp leadership may have worked for Jimmy Roberts but it certainly doesn’t suit my temperament. I decided to adopt the Montgomery touch. Monty always operated from a tactical headquarters in reasonably close contact with his forward commanders. I had discovered on Annapurna that it was a mistake to lead from the front, actually pushing the route out, since there one thought too exclusively of the few metres of snow or rock immediately in front of one’s nose, rather than the climb as a whole.

  On reaching Base Camp we supplemented our numbers with two unofficial members of the team. Tony Tighe, an Australian friend of Dou- gal’s, was trekking in Nepal. He tagged along with the expedition and filled an invaluable role helping Jimmy Roberts to run Base Camp, while Ken Wilson, who edited a very successful British climbing magazine, called in to see us and was promptly recruited to organise Camp 1. In the event we were short of both lead climbers and people in support, for the climb developed into a long drawn out struggle of attrition against the winter cold and winds, until at last, on 14 November, we were forced to admit defeat at the foot of the Rock Band.

  But it wasn’t only lack of numbers that caused our defeat. There were so many unknown quantities in 1972. I was frightened of starting too early, whilst the monsoon was still at its height, because of the risk of heavy snowfall with the accompanying danger of avalanche. We set up Base Camp on 15 September after walking through the rain-soaked, leech-ridden foothills of Nepal. This was too late and meant that we had only got about halfway up the South-West Face by mid-October. It was then that the first of the post-monsoon winds hit us. They are part of the jet streams that rush round the earth’s upper atmosphere and, with the autumnal cold, they drop to blast the higher peaks of the Himalaya.

  When the wind arrived I was occupying our highest camp, Camp 4, three box tents, clinging precariously to a little rocky bluff in the middle of the great couloir leading to the Rock Band. The weather up to this point had been quite reasonable and our progress steady. The lead climbers had made the route first through the Icefall, laddering crevasses and ice walls, then up the Western Cwm to the site of Camp 2 which was the Advance Base. They had then moved on to the face itself, and had run up a line of fixed rope to link the camps and enable supplies to be relayed to what, eventually, would be our top camp, somewhere above the Rock Band. The Sherpas, supervised by the support climbers, were distributed between the lower camps ferrying supplies. I had moved up with four Sherpas, hoping to stock Camp 5, the site of which Dougal Haston and Hamish MacInnes had established a couple of days earlier.

  But that night the wind struck out of a clear, star-studded sky. It came in gusts, first with a tremendous crash as of a solid force hitting the upper part of the face far above, followed by a roar, like a train
in a tunnel, funnelling straight down the gully in which we were camped, to smash and tear into the tents, bulging in the walls and bending the thick alloy poles. There was no question of sleep and the next day there was little chance of movement. I was pinned at Camp 4 for a week, unable to make any real progress but loth to abandon our toehold on the face.

  I commented in my diary on the night of 22 October:

  The wind is the appalling enemy, it is mind-destroying, physically destroying, soul destroying and even existing in the tents, which I think are now pretty weather tight, is still very, very hard. This will certainly be the most exacting test I have ever had to face …

  Oh, the absolute lethargy of 24,600 feet. You want to pee and you lie there for a quarter of an hour making up your mind to look for your pee bottle. I’ve no appetite at all and it’s an effort to cook anything for yourself. I suspect it is high time I did go down for a short rest –I think if you try to stay up high for the whole time, to conduct operations, you end up being ineffective in that you are just getting weaker and weaker, more and more lethargic. Part of me wants to stay up here, because this is the focus of events, but I think I really should go down.

  At this first attempt we were forced to abandon all our camps on the face and were nearly wiped out in the Western Cwm. A massive storm destroyed most of our tents, burying some of them under three metres of snow. And yet we held on, though the five-day storm had taken a heavy toll, not only of gear, but of nerves and stamina as well. We returned to the face in the lull after the storm. Camp 4 had been very nearly demolished, saved only by the way the boxes had filled with spindrift that had then hardened like concrete, giving them solid cores to resist the deluge of snow and rocks that must have roared down around them. Doug Scott and Mick Burke had to work long into the dusk to make two of them habitable for themselves and their Sherpas. The next day they occupied Camp 5, tucked under an overhang of rock, safer than 4, but in the shade until late in the morning. It was a bitterly cold place for it was now early November and even in the Western Cwm the temperature at night was –30°C. At Camp 5 it was down to –40°C.