The Everest Years

by Chris Bonington

  I was now faced with a serious problem of my own making. On the South Face of Annapurna I had learnt how important was the order in which I pushed my lead pairs out in front. The position of people on the mountain would determine who was best situated to make a summit bid and on the previous expedition the only serious row occurred when I pushed Don Whillans and Dougal Haston up through the other climbers, out of turn, because I thought they could make faster progress. To avoid this type of tension in 1972 I had nominated my lead climbing pairs before we had even reached Base Camp and gave them their roles, to include the summit bid. I had given Nick Estcourt and Dave Bathgate the job of making the route from Camp 5 to Camp 6 at the foot of the right-hand end of the Rock Band, partly because I knew they were the most easy-going members of the team and partly because I could trust them to carry out a less dramatic role conscientiously and without argument. Doug Scott and Mick Burke had the job of climbing the Rock Band and setting up our seventh camp to leave Hamish MacInnes and Dougal Haston to make the summit bid. Each pair had come to accept their role. Nick and Dave were at least in line to make a second summit bid just in case Dougal and Hamish failed. While Doug and Mick’s task, solving the problem of the Rock Band, had its own special attraction, almost certainly offering the most interesting and challenging technical climbing of the entire route.

  But we were so stretched, it wasn’t working out to plan. I had had to use Doug and Mick to set up Camp 5, so that they could then move into Camp 6 immediately Dave and Nick had completed the route, but they were now so tired they needed to return to Advance Base for a rest. I therefore decided to push Dougal and Hamish straight through to tackle the Rock Band in order to keep up the momentum; they had been resting at Base Camp and were relatively fresh. This led to a colossal row. Doug and Mick had come to regard the Rock Band as their own. I had encouraged this attitude.

  ‘Look,’ Doug said, ‘I’ve been looking forward to doing the Rock Band for two and a half months and have got it firmly fixed in my mind that I’m going to do it. I don’t see why we shouldn’t; I don’t see that anything’s changed. We could go straight up tomorrow.’

  ‘But Doug, if you needed a rest so badly why did you come down in the first place? After only one day’s rest you’re going to be even more shattered when you get back up again. It just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘You’ve been planning this all along,’ he accused. ‘In some ways you’re no better than Herrligkoffer in the way you manipulate people.’

  And so it went on. I finally lost my temper and suggested that if that was how he felt he could start heading for Kathmandu. But then we both calmed down, each of us temporising to find a solution to the argument. It wasn’t just the outcome of the expedition. We each valued our friendship. It was this more than anything that held the team together and stopped any walkouts such as had occurred on both the previous international expeditions.

  Doug and Mick agreed to support Dougal and Hamish and there the argument ended. As so often happens, circumstances changed once again to make the entire disagreement irrelevant. Dave and Nick exhausted them-selves in two long days pushing a line of fixed rope across the snowfields beneath the Rock Band. They still hadn’t quite reached the site of Camp 6 but could go no further. We were almost at the end of our resources. The Sherpas were tiring. Graham Tiso, with four Sherpas, was at Camp 4, but we needed someone to complete the route to Camp 6 and get it stocked. I therefore decided to do this myself, moving up to Camp 5 with the Sherpa Ang Phurba.

  It was the coldest, bleakest place I have ever been in. Even with two thick sleeping bags we were chilled at night. To get a gas cooker working effectively you had to heat its cylinder with a spare stove. We made one carry, reaching the end of the fixed rope and then running out a single rope-length to a tiny platform on a rocky spur at the very end of the Rock Band. It was higher than I had ever been before. At about 8,300 metres I was almost level with the summit of Lhotse and the South Col was below me. It was a perfect day but out of that pale blue cloudless sky tore that implacable wind again, biting and clawing at our clothes, beating the rope into the snow, and hammering at body and mind, at the will to think, to go on.

  I glanced up at the line of weakness that Dougal believed was the way through the Rock Band. He and Don Whillans had climbed about a hundred metres up it in 1971 to reach the high point of the International Expedition. Dougal had assured us that there was a route up there to the right, that if only they had had enough supplies reaching them, they could have climbed it. I couldn’t even see a gully. It faded into an open corner of sheer rock. It would have been difficult at sea level, near impossible at 8,300 metres. But I was too tired and stretched to think it through. We dumped a tent and a couple of bottles of oxygen on the tiny ledge, turned round and slid and stumbled down the fixed ropes back to the camp. On the way down, I couldn’t help noticing a deep-cut gully at the far left of the Rock Band. Could this be a better route? It was the one that the Japanese had investigated in 1970. I had never quite understood why Don and Dougal had chosen the right-hand route, for this left-hand gully seemed to dig deep into the band at its lowest point. Could that be the key?

  Dougal, Hamish, Doug and Mick were already installed at Camp 5. There was no room for me so, as planned, I descended the fixed ropes to Camp 4, arriving exhausted about an hour after dark. The following day the others tried to establish Camp 6. On reaching it they also gazed up at that sheer blank corner. The wind was so strong there was no question of pitching the tent. They dropped back down to Camp 5 and Dougal called me on the radio.

  ‘Hello Chris, this is Dougal. I’m afraid it’s no go. We’re coming down tomorrow.’

  I didn’t argue. I had half expected it. It wasn’t just the steepness and difficulty of the Rock Band. We had allowed the winds and cold of winter to overtake us and everyone was exhausted. We could not sustain anyone camped at the foot of the Rock Band, let alone establish a camp and mount a summit bid above it. But we had taken ourselves beyond limits I had thought possible and, in doing so, had discovered a satisfaction and a respect for each other that transcended failure.

  Even as we were packing up the expedition I was already beginning to think of ways we could improve our chances of success. A bigger team, stronger tentage, start earlier, and perhaps go for that gully on the far left of the Rock Band. The others, particularly Doug, were thinking along the same lines, but it all remained very academic, for we were now once again at the back of the queue and we knew that a strong Japanese expedition had permission for the following autumn.

  With a sickening similarity to the final stages of our expedition to the South Face of Annapurna, we were then struck by tragedy. Tony Tighe had been at Base Camp throughout our trip, sorting out loads and manning the radio. I had allowed him to go into the Icefall a couple of times at the beginning though we had not put him on our official roster and, because of this, received a terse message from the authorities in Kathmandu that we were defying their regulations.

  But I knew how much he wanted to see the South-West Face for himself and so I told him that he could go up with the Sherpas who were going to clear Advance Base. It would have been one of the last journeys through the Icefall. He was just behind the Sherpas when a huge sérac tower col-lapsed. The Sherpas escaped but Tony must have been immediately beneath it. We never found his body which was buried under hundreds of tons of unstable ice debris. In the short time we had known him, we had all become very fond of him. Hard working, cheerful, and very positive, he was of that breed of young Australian nomad who wander the world. It seemed ironic that we, who had been exposed to risk throughout the expedition, had had so many near escapes and yet survived, while Tony, on only the third occasion he had entered the Icefall, should die. Although we had heard many tales of the dangers of the Khumbu Icefall, and knew eight climbers had been killed in it over the years, clad in a heavy covering of monsoon snow, its crevasses hidden and its towering unstable sérac walls banked up, it had not appeared
too dangerous. We had even begun to take the route through it for granted and I can remember, only the day before Tony died, spending about twenty minutes below the sérac tower whose collapse killed him, taking photographs of the Sherpas as they passed.

  We returned home saddened again by the loss of a good friend, but also with many valuable lessons to put into practice, should we get another chance at the South-West Face.

  The next three years provided an enjoyable interlude, during which I made one of the most important decisions of my married life. Wendy had always hated living in Bowdon, on the south-west extremity of Manchester. It is a slightly melancholy suburb of big Edwardian houses, in walking distance of open country that still had an urban quality in its trampled paths and a river so polluted that it was barren of any form of life, never free from the background roar of traffic. Whilst I was away on Everest, Wendy, left looking after our two young sons, aged five and three, was very nearly driven to her limit.

  In 1971 we had bought a small cottage at the foot of High Pike, a gentle 657-metre hill that forms the north-eastern bastion of the Lake District’s Northern Fells. We had been looking for a cottage for some time and had been told of Badger Hill by a friend. We drove through Caldbeck, a sprawl of attractive stone-built cottages and farm houses, and on up towards the open fell, following a winding, single-track lane between hedgerows alternating with dry stone wall that gave way onto an open green. Two farmhouses crouched to one side and, on the far edge, part hidden by a line of young ash and an overgrown hawthorn hedge, stood a low slate- roofed cottage. The secluded little garden, engulfed in knee-high grass, was still a welcoming haven. We peered through the downstairs windows and could make out hand-painted furniture in the low-ceilinged rooms. There was an air of warmth and peace with which both Wendy and I fell in love. I had often said before that one should never become over-attached to a house and that where one lived was not really important. How wrong I was. We bought Badger Hill and used it as a weekend cottage, finding solace in the gentle beauty of those Northern Fells.

  During the Easter weekend in 1973, we were both working in the garden, Wendy weeding the roses, whilst I dug over another bed. We were due to motor back to Bowdon that evening and I dreaded the hassle of packing and the drive south, but most of all I hated the anticlimax of returning to the ugly yellow brick semi. Before I had time really to consider it, an idea just crept into my mind.

  ‘You know, love, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t live up here, is there?’

  Wendy had not dared even dream that I would want to return permanently to the Lakes and had never applied any kind of pressure on me, even though she detested Bowdon so much. We never had any doubts or second thoughts, though we did look half-heartedly for a larger house that we could move straight into. But we had come to love the atmosphere of Badger Hill and the gentle rolling fell immediately behind. So we decided to extend it to give us the room we needed. Even though it was still going to be much smaller than our house in Bowdon, it was a price worth paying.

  There were expeditions during these next three years, but they were to relatively small peaks and assumed the guise of extended holidays. In Manchester Nick Estcourt’s family and mine had come to know each other well. In 1973 I went with Nick to the Kishtwar Himalaya in Kashmir with an Indian expedition, and we ended up climbing a beautiful unclimbed 6,416-metre peak called Brammah. I had relied on Nick’s loyalty on so many occasions on Annapurna and Everest that it was good to share the joy of reaching a high summit with him. We made a good climbing team. After sitting out a week’s bad weather, we climbed Brammah from a camp at 5,000 metres, going for the top as we would on an Alpine peak in a single day’s dash, up a pinnacled ridge that reached to its summit cone of snow. We bivouacked on the way down on a narrow ledge where we were entertained and alarmed through the night by a light show of distant thunderstorms. The piled cumulonimbus glowed and pulsed, relics of the dying monsoon.

  The following year I had fixed another joint Indian/British expedition to a peak called Changabang. There were to be four Britons and four Indians. Nick had not dared to ask his company for yet another extended holiday, so he stayed behind. Doug Scott, Dougal Haston and Martin Boysen, one of my oldest climbing friends, came with me. This expedition also marked our move up to the Lake District. The alterations on the house had not been completed, but Wendy was determined to escape Manchester and moved into a tiny caravan parked on the green just after I left for the mountains.

  Overlooking the western extremity of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary in the Garhwal Himalaya, Changabang is a shark’s tooth of granite thrusting into the skies. Amongst the most beautiful mountains in the world, it is also in one of the loveliest settings. Alpine pastures and tall fir forest are guarded by precipitous gorges and high mountain passes that resisted so many of the pre-war attempts before those greatest of all mountain explorers, Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman, finally found a way in.

  The expedition was a particularly happy one. My co-leader, Balwant Sandhu, was the commanding officer of a regiment of Paras. Like so many Indian officers, on first acquaintance he was almost a caricature of a pre-war British army officer. But this was only a first impression. Well read and informed, extremely liberal in his views, Balwant had a free-ranging spirit and was a delight to climb with.

  Originally we had planned to tackle the West Face, the route eventually climbed by Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker, but it had seemed too steep and technically difficult for our mixed party, and anyway the mountain was still virgin. It was only logical to climb it first by its easiest route. So we outflanked the difficulties, climbing a steep col to escape the Rhamani Glacier and reach the inner sanctum of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary and the great hanging glacier that led across the face of Kalanka, Changabang’s sister peak, to the col between the two mountains.

  Six of us, the four Britons, Balwant Sandu and the Sherpa Tashi, reached the summit of Changabang (6,864 metres) from a camp high on the Kalanka Face. It had been a good expedition in which the two groups had merged into a single team, forging some strong friendships that have lasted over the years. It was in Delhi, on our way to Changabang, that I learnt I had another chance at the South-West Face of Everest. A Canadian expedition had cancelled for autumn 1975.1 didn’t commit myself immediately. Memories of the worry of trying to raise the money and organise our 1972 trip remained very fresh. I was still attracted to the concept of a small expedition going for the South Col route. But Doug and Dougal dissuaded me.

  ‘You couldn’t just walk past the South-West Face,’ Dougal pointed out. ‘Anything else’d seem second best.’

  I had to admit his logic, but made the proviso that this time we had to have a single sponsor who would finance the whole venture.

  It was exciting getting back to England and especially to our new home at Nether Row. Wendy was more relaxed and happier than I had ever known her to be after a prolonged absence, in spite of spending seven weeks in the tiny blue caravan, and Rupert and Daniel were settled into a local primary school. The house was still not finished, but somehow it didn’t really matter. We both felt that we could now gently let ourselves take root in this corner of the Lakes.

  Pertemba, who had been one of our most outstanding Sherpas in 1972, was our first house guest. A Belgian trekking client had brought him over to Europe. He went climbing in the Pyrenees, visited Dougal in Leysin and then came to stay with us for a fortnight. It was a delight to have him to stay and to get to know him better than one ever could in the course of a large expedition. In his late twenties, he had the benefit of education at the school in Khumde founded by Ed Hillary. Highly intelligent, good looking, charismatic, he seemed at home in any situation in the West, and yet he hadn’t lost the traditional values of Sherpa society. He had that combination of twinkling humour, dignity and warmth that is one of the enduring qualities of so many Sherpas. In the fortnight with us he joined me rock climbing on our neighbouring crags, helped me lay a lawn in front of our part-finished cottage and
showed endless patience playing with Daniel and Rupert. When he came to leave, I felt that I had built the foundations for an enduring friendship.

  I was becoming even more relaxed about the daunting prospect of funding and organising another expedition to Everest.

  – CHAPTER 3 –

  Success on the South-West Face

  Getting sponsorship was ridiculously easy. It took just a single letter to an acquaintance, Alan Tritton, who was on the board of Barclays Bank. They agreed to underwrite the expedition and this meant that I could concentrate solely on the organisation. Five expeditions had now tried and failed on the South-West Face. It didn’t seem to matter how large the team was or how good the equipment, the chances of success were still fairly slim. This is what made it such an intriguing challenge. In 1972, when we reached the foot of the Rock Band, we were barely capable of mounting a single summit bid and this could only have had a chance of success if the ground had been comparatively easy. The team had been exhausted and the supply line to the top camp was little better than a trickle. The same was the case with all the other expeditions. It was obvious that we were going to need a team capable of sustaining a concerted push, both to climb the Rock Band and then make a summit bid from a camp above it.

  Our team of six lead climbers, five support climbers and twenty-four Sherpas had not been sufficient in 1972. This time I decided on having nine lead climbers, with seven in a support role, and sixty high-altitude porters. I used the 1972 team as a base, inviting them all. Hamish MacInnes, Dougal Haston, Doug Scott, Nick Estcourt and Mick Burke were able to come. I then asked Martin Boysen who had been on both Annapurna South Face and Changabang. Newcomers were Allen Fyffe, a very talented Aberdeen climber, Paul Braithwaite from Oldham and Peter Boardman, youngest member of the team, who was our token representative of the new generation of climbers. In support were Mike Thompson, two doctors, Charlie Clarke and Jim Duff, Dave Clarke, Ronnie Richards and Mike Cheney, our contact in Kathmandu. If the route through the Rock Band proved to be very difficult or if we were overtaken by wind and cold, we should need every single climber we had.