The Everest Years

by Chris Bonington

  We also improved on the equipment, particularly the tentage. Hamish MacInnes, my deputy leader, designed a range of tents that would stand up to the worst weather Everest could throw at us. The MacInnes face boxes were like fortresses and undoubtedly the strongest tents ever built.

  We had a compact organisational team of Dave Clarke and Hamish coping with the equipment, Mike Thompson, one of my oldest friends who had been with me at Sandhurst before studying to become an anthropologist, working on the food, and Bob Stoodley, who ran a garage in Manchester, planning the overland transportation of all our gear. Since we were now completely funded, I had much more time than on previous expeditions to plan our tactics on the climb itself. I used a computer to calculate the logistics, or flow of supplies up the mountain. I have always enjoyed playing board war games and this was really an extension of one of these. The personal computer had not been invented then, but a climbing friend of mine, Ian McNaught-Davis, ran a computer company and he loaned me one of his bright young programmers and gave us time on his mainframe computer.

  The rest of the team regarded my graphs and printouts with a mildly amused scepticism. They did, however, prove invaluable, in that my planning was based on logic and, in the latter stages of the climb, when inevitably I had to adapt the original plan in the light of circumstances, I was able to do so because I had the overall picture in my mind and was working from a sound position. It was very different from 1972 when we were so stretched both in materials and manpower that we could only struggle through one crisis at a time, improvising as we went.

  We started earlier than we had in 1972, leaving Britain on 29 July. Most of our gear was already stored in a barn in the little village of Khumde, just below Everest. We had sent it out overland before the arrival of the monsoon so that it could be flown from Kathmandu to the airstrip at Luglha. This was Mike Cheney’s idea. Based in Kathmandu and working for Jimmy Roberts’ trekking company, Mountain Travel, he was to be our Base Camp manager. Although Mike never went beyond Base Camp and was plagued with illness throughout the trip, he contributed as much as anyone to our eventual success.

  His first contribution was the choice of Sirdar. He recommended Pertemba. He would be by far the youngest Sherpa ever to be put in charge of a major expedition, but I was confident he could handle it. Pertemba proved to be a first-class manager, supervising the entire transportation and storage of all our supplies in Khumde. We didn’t lose a single item and built up a sound relationship of trust both with Pertemba and, through him, with our Sherpa team.

  It also meant that our own walk in to Everest was all the more relaxed since we did not have to worry about a huge porter train. Looked after by the Sherpas, we were able to enjoy ourselves and relax. It was an intermission that I certainly needed. The lead-up to any expedition is hectic, though our 1975 trip was almost a rest cure compared to what it had been like three years earlier. The walk gave me plenty of time to think about my policy on the mountain. One lesson I had learnt was the mistake of being over-rigid in my planning. I certainly wasn’t going to allot fixed roles to individuals all the way up the mountain. I was already beginning to think, however, how I was going to allocate my climbing teams for the lower part of the face itself, and how this might inevitably affect roles higher up.

  My cassette diary became something of a confessional:

  I don’t think there’s any danger of us ever having leadership by committee. Of course, though, if there is a strong consensus against what I say, this is going to emerge in a troublesome sense later on and I think this is where I’ve got to be very receptive to the feelings of the team so that I can effectively sell them my ideas and make them feel and believe that these are ideas they have taken part in forming. At the same time I must draw ideas from their combined experience and not be afraid to change my own plans if other suggestions seem better. I don’t think the old military style of leadership can possibly work.

  This was how I saw myself, but not everyone shared this view. Doug Scott, in an interview with our television team, commented:

  It’s a very strong hierarchy set-up here and he is very much the leader. However much he might say he’s the co-ordinator, he is the leader. It’s just something within my nature and I suspect in Mick and one or two of the rest of us, that the shop-floor mentality develops – them, the leaders, the foremen, bosses, and us. However hard you try to suppress it, it comes through.

  This feeling wasn’t helped by an action I had taken. The team was so large I had decided that it would be much pleasanter if we split into two groups for the approach march. Apart from anything else, it was difficult for all of us to squeeze into a single tent and eat together. But a split team in itself can foster the ‘them and us’ feeling, as Mike Thompson later described, in an article he wrote for Mountain Magazine:

  Perhaps unwisely, he labelled these the A team and the B team, and immediately there was much speculation as to the underlying basis for his selection. At first there were fears among the B team that the choice of summiters had already taken place and that they were travelling with the leader in order that they could plot the fine details of the assault in secrecy. But even the most paranoid could not sustain this belief for long and a more popular theory was that the ‘chaps’ were in the A team and the ‘lads’ in the B team. This perhaps was nearer the truth since what had happened was that Chris had, quite understandably, taken with him all the executives: Sirdar Pertemba, Base Camp manager Mike Cheney, equipment officer Dave Clarke, senior doctor Charles Clarke, and the media in the shape of the Sunday Times reporter and the television team. These middle managers were, during their fortnight’s walk, to have the interesting experience of, in the words of our leader, ‘being let in on his thinking’.

  The B team, gloriously free of logistics, planning scenarios, computer print-outs, communication set-ups and the like, immediately sank into that form of communal warmth generated by squaddies in a barrack room, that impenetrable bloody-mindedness born of the I-only-work- here mentality of the shop floor.

  A series of perfectly sensible decisions led to the emphasis of a division that is always incipiently present in any large expedition. The A team represented the overground leadership and the B team the underground leadership.

  I was barely aware of this split, even when our two teams reunited at Khumde. Things as a whole were working well and, in a way, the grumbling underground provided a useful escape valve for the inevitable frustrations of the early stages before everyone became fully involved. This was certainly the case with Doug. Once we reached Base Camp and started making the route through the Icefall, he felt very much happier:

  Before I got some definite role to play, and I think it must go for a lot of the other lads, I felt there was the leadership, then there was the rest of us that were being ordered about and I wasn’t always in complete sympathy with the leadership, but as soon as we had a role to play it was fine; I felt much closer to things. There was something to go for. The underground leadership united with the actual leadership. We worked as one and were fully behind all of Chris’s decisions.

  We established Base Camp on 22 August, nearly a month earlier than in 1972. Because of our size and sound planning based on previous experience, we were able to push the route out very much faster. As a result we established our Advance Base at the foot of the face on 2 September and on 13 September, two days earlier than we had even arrived at Base Camp in 1972, Dougal Haston reached the site of Camp 5, our jumping-off point for the Rock Band. In running the expedition I consulted very closely with Pertemba, discussing with him how many Sherpas we needed at different camps, but leaving him to select individuals and keep track of who was due for a rest. The smooth functioning of our Sherpa team largely depended on him.

  One of the most important decisions affecting our eventual success was to change the route from the right-hand side of the Rock Band to the gully splitting its left-hand end. We were now venturing on to new ground and I used this fact as a justificat
ion for me to go out in front. I felt I needed to get at first-hand the feel of what the route was like up into the Rock Band. I could also see that Camp 5 was going to be the crucial point in the forcing of the Rock Band and then stocking the top camp. I could therefore use this as my command post.

  I moved up with Ronnie Richards on 17 September. Ronnie was a late addition to the team. Living in Keswick, just a few miles from my home, he had been recommended by Graham Tiso as a good all-rounder. Quiet, and not over-ambitious, he was happy to act in support and yet was a thoroughly competent mountaineer. It was immensely satisfying to get out in front and to escape from the day-to-day organisation. The site that Dougal had chosen for Camp 5 was tucked into a little chute that abutted the Great Central Gully just below the point where we would have to cross it to get to the left-hand gully.

  We had dug out a ledge, no easy matter at nearly 8,000 metres, and had erected one of the super-Boxes. It was time for the evening radio call. Everyone came on the air, Camp 2 talking to Camp 4, Base calling Camp 2.1 tried to butt in, to take control, but nobody took any notice. The awful realisation crept upon me that our set was receiving but not sending. I had lost control of the expedition. I was like a frustrated general in charge of a battle, whose communications have collapsed. Ronnie watched with quiet amusement as I shook the recalcitrant set, yelling into the mouthpiece as if sheer volume of sound would get through to the others.

  Once the radio call was over he offered to try to fix it, spending the rest of the evening taking it apart and putting it back together after repairing the sender switch. I was back in command once again.

  I stayed at Camp 5 for eight days, helping to make the route up to the foot of the Rock Band, bringing up other climbers and Sherpas until it had become a tiny hanging village of four box tents perched one above the other. Doug and I, working in complete accord, pushed the route through to the foot of the Rock Band. I had already decided on the final order of play, with Doug and Dougal, as I and, I suspect, the rest of the team had assumed all along, making the first summit bid, and Nick and Paul Braithwaite forcing the route through the Rock Band. Paul – Tut to the climbing world – was a friend of Doug’s and had been with Hamish to the Caucasus. A decorator by trade, he was a brilliant climber on both rock and ice. He had a whimsical sense of humour and had settled comfortably into the team, getting on with everyone.

  Mick Burke and I followed behind Nick and Tut, carrying loads of rope for them to fix through the gully. This was one of the crucial days of the climb. We were the first expedition with the capacity to lay effective siege to the Rock Band. We had both the climbers and the carrying power to sustain successive attempts on the wall.

  The previous day I had stopped on the edge of a steep snow-plastered arête that barred our way into the gully. Tut took the first lead, floundering cautiously over near-vertical snow-covered rock, to reach the other side. Nick led through, up the easy snow tongue penetrating into the gully, but his pace got progressively slower, until he finally sank into the snow to anchor the rope, so that we could follow up. When we reached him, we learnt that he had run out of oxygen. Either his regulator was faulty, or perhaps by mistake he had picked up a bottle that had already been part- used. It never occurred to him to turn back. I suspect that he had already made the Rock Band his own personal summit and was determined to attain it.

  It was like a Scottish gully in winter, snow-based, curving up between sheer walls of black rock. A spume of spindrift cascaded down the walls, a grim portent of our fate if the gully was swept by a major avalanche. It was Tut’s turn to lead; the first obstacle was a huge chock-stone encased in snow that blocked the bed of the gully. It would have been easy at sea level, but at 8,300 metres, encumbered with the paraphernalia of high-altitude climbing, it was a laborious struggle. Beyond this the gully opened out for a short section but then steepened. Tut was poised on a precarious rocky gangway when his oxygen ran out.

  I don’t think I shall ever forget the feeling of suffocation as I ripped the mask away from my face. I was on the brink of falling, beginning to panic, felt a warm trickle run down my leg. God, what’s happening? Scrabbled up the rock arête until at last I reached some firm snow. I collapsed exhausted. I had no runners out and was over a hundred feet above Nick; I’d have had it if I’d fallen.

  Tut had reached a spot where the gully widened into a small amphitheatre. The main arm of the gully continued up to the left, but a ramp forked out to the right, beneath an impending wall of yellow rock. It was Nick’s turn to lead. Now neither of them had any oxygen. Mick and I had been following up the ropes they had fixed and still had oxygen in our bottles, but neither of us thought to offer the other pair our supply or to take over the lead. Exhausted, with oxygen-starved minds, it was as if each one of us was in a narrow tunnel, his role predetermined, unchangeable.

  Nick started up the ramp, moving slowly, awkwardly, his body thrust out of balance by the overhanging wall above.

  I was getting desperate; goggles all misted up, panting helplessly. I somehow managed to clear some of the snow behind the boss, using my fingers while my arm, hooked round it, held my weight. I was losing strength fast. I think the others thought I was about to fall off, but whatever happened I wasn’t going to give up. If I had and let Tut do it, I’d have kicked myself for years.

  He didn’t give up, and slowly, precariously, picked his way over the bulging snow-encrusted rock, from out of the shadows of the gully on to the sun- blessed snows of the upper reaches of the mountain. Nick and Tut between them had solved the problem of the Rock Band and discovered the key to the South-West Face. The climbing, even to this day, was probably the hardest that had ever been done at that altitude, and they did it without supplementary oxygen. They had shown they were capable of getting to the summit of Everest, and yet were paving the way for Doug and Dougal. It was teamwork at its best.

  The following day was a rest day. Doug and Dougal were now at Camp 5 ready to establish our top camp. We had all the gear they were going to need for their bid for the summit and the people to carry it – Mike Thompson, Mick Burke and myself, with three of our best Sherpas, Pertemba, young Tenzing and Ang Phurba, who had shared a vigil with me at Camp 5 in 1972.

  I had already asked Doug and Dougal to spend a day running a line of fixed rope out across the summit ice field. This would ensure they had a sound line of retreat on their return, and make it easier for a second attempt. I used that rest day to plan the subsequent summit bids.

  The strength of our supply line could enable us to sustain four-man teams for these. However, as I juggled logistics and summit aspirations I knew one of my problems was that there were too many lead climbers who wanted to get to the top. So far I had been dividing them into teams of two, three or four and giving each group turns out in front with a defined objective. But they still had a lot of time on their hands, especially in the latter stages of the expedition. This inevitably led to tension, particularly when it came to allocating climbers to the summit bids. I would have made life easier for myself if I had had more support climbers whose main task was to supervise the Sherpas and check out the supplies being carried up the mountain. This role called for competent mountaineers who accepted the fact that they hadn’t the skill of the potential summiters. In some ways they had a more relaxed time, as Mike Thompson described:

  As a ‘support climber’ I was aware that I was fortunate to have got as far as becoming Camp 4 commandant, responsible, in theory, for five face boxes, an equipment dump, nine Sherpas and a variable number of ‘lead climbers’ in transit. I became obsessed with becoming a Sherpa and increasingly resented the lead climbers who passed through on oxygen, carrying just their personal equipment. I was quite ridiculously touched when, having managed to drag myself and my load up to Camp 5 without oxygen, Pertemba said, with what I now suspect was heavy sarcasm, ‘You are a real Sherpa now.’

  It was much easier for the support climbers to fulfill, or even exceed their ambitions. Mike ended
up making the vital carry to Camp 6, reaching an altitude higher than he had ever thought possible. A lead climber, on the other hand, would almost inevitably have a sense of disappointment if he failed to reach the summit. Those that were not acclimatising quickly found it very difficult, indeed impossible, to adapt to a support role, even though they could have been very useful to the expedition in that capacity.

  Bearing all this in mind, I decided that we could put in two subsequent bids – eight tickets to the summit of Everest. I had promised Pertemba at the beginning of the expedition that at least one Sherpa should have a chance of going to the top and now gave him the choice. He had no hesitation in choosing himself and he was probably the most suitable. I decided that I should have a Sherpa on each bid and so Pertemba nominated Ang Phurba for the third team. That left six places.

  Nick and Tut surely deserved a chance of going for the summit, but I also had to think of the others who in the last exciting days had been waiting in frustrated inaction back at Advance Base. Of the lead climbers, there were Hamish MacInnes, Peter Boardman, Martin Boysen and Allen Fyffe. Hamish had been caught in an avalanche whilst we had been forcing the route to Camp 4 and his lungs had been filled with powder snow. I knew that he had been badly affected, so I ruled him out, along with Allen who had been acclimatising too slowly and had only been on the lower part of the face. I decided, therefore, that it would be best to bring Pete and Martin up to Camp 5 to join Mick Burke for the second summit bid and they could be followed by Nick and Tut, after they had had a brief rest back at Advance Base, for the third push.