The Everest Years

by Chris Bonington

‘See you in a few days.’

  ‘We’ll catch you tonight at six.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  Then they were off, plodding up the little slope beyond the camp through flurries of wind-driven snow. They were planning to move straight through to the second snow cave. Adrian and I set out shortly afterwards for the North Col, though that day we barely got started on the bottom slopes. It was all much steeper and more complex than I had anticipated. We returned the following day and by six that evening were about a hundred metres below the col, our way barred by a huge crevasse. Pete and Joe had reached the third snow cave and came up on the radio. They sounded cheerful and confident, were going for the Pinnacles the next day. We arranged our next radio call at three o’clock the following afternoon and then again at six.

  It was after dark when we got back to Advance Base. We had been on the go for twelve hours and were very tired. Adrian had never been on snow slopes that were so steep and consequently it had taken even more out of him. We were too tired to cook and just crawled into our sleeping bags.

  It was always difficult getting up before the sun warmed the tent, which happened at about nine. Even then I lay for a long time in a stupor before thirst and hunger drove me from out of the warmth of my sleeping bag. It was a perfect day without a breath of wind. I immediately went over to the telescope and started scanning the ridge. I looked at the snow shoulder, behind which hid the third snow cave. No sign of them there. I swung the telescope along the crest of the ridge leading to the First Pinnacle. Still no sign. Could they have overslept? And then I saw them, two small distinct figures at the high point they had previously reached on the First Pinnacle. They had certainly made good progress. They must have set out before dawn and were still moving quickly. But now they were on fresh ground and their pace slowed.

  We spent the rest of the day taking turns at watching them work their way gradually across the First Pinnacle, but now their progress was almost imperceptible. They were moving one at a time and the going must have been difficult. Three o’clock came and I tried to reach them on the radio, but there was no reply. Perhaps they were so engrossed in their climbing, they had no time to respond to our call. Six o’clock. Still no reply. Could there be a fault in the radio? We kept calling them every half hour.

  At nine that evening, when the sun was already hidden behind Everest, we looked up at them for the last time and called them yet again on the radio. One figure was silhouetted against the fading light on the small col immediately below the Second Pinnacle, whilst the other figure was still moving to join him. They had been on the go for fourteen hours, still had to dig out a ledge for their tent and would then have a night out at over 8,250 metres. I couldn’t help wondering what shape they would be in the following morning.

  There was no sign of them next day. They had presumably bivouacked on the other side of the ridge and, because of the steepness of the flank that we could see, it seemed likely they would be climbing for some distance out of sight. That morning, Adrian and I set out for the North Col, reaching it the following day. We spent the next three days gazing across at the ridge, waiting, hoping, willing Pete and Joe to reappear. But they never did. We were sure that they could not get beyond the point where the unclimbed section of the ridge joined the original route without us seeing them and, as the days went by, our hopes faded. Unless something had gone catastrophically wrong, they would have either retreated or have come into sight. They couldn’t possibly spend four nights above 8,200 metres without supplementary oxygen and keep going.

  Meanwhile Charlie had returned and was at Advance Base. On 21 May Adrian and I abandoned the North Col and joined him. We could come to only one conclusion, that either they had had a fall or had collapsed from exhaustion. My first impulse was to try to climb the ridge to see for myself, but I had to abandon that idea immediately. Neither Charlie nor Adrian had the experience even to reach our previous high point. And if we did get to the third snow cave, it is very unlikely we could have seen anything.

  Then Charlie suggested that we should go right round the mountain into the Kangshung valley to examine the other side of the ridge through the telescope. The chances of seeing anything seemed slight but at least we would have done everything we possibly could. But someone had to keep the north side under observation as well. It was just possible that they were still alive and could be on their way back. We decided that Adrian should stay in lonely vigil at Advance Base while Charlie and I went round to the Kangshung valley.

  A week later we were at the head of the Kangshung Glacier gazing up at the huge face, the biggest and highest in the world, a gigantic hanging glacier clad in snow, contained on its right-hand side by the North-East Ridge. The ridge looked even longer, even more inhospitable than it had from the East Rongbuk Glacier, with steep fluted snow dropping down from bulging cornices, and the only glimpses of rock high up near the crest. We gazed at each tiny black patch but came to the conclusion that these were rocks, sticking out of the snow. There was no sign of life, no tracks, nothing that could be a human body. It was silent in the early morning sun at the head of the Kangshung Glacier but cloud was beginning to form below the summit of Everest and was slowly drawn like a gossamer veil across the face, hiding features but leaving the shape of the mountain just discernible.

  We turned away, still no wiser as to what had happened to Pete and Joe, and started back down the long valley. I still couldn’t believe that they were dead and, as the truck took us on the final stage of our journey back round to Base Camp, fantasised that Pete and Joe would be waiting for us, laughing at all the fuss we had made, keen to go back up and finish off the climb.

  But I knew that that couldn’t be. Adrian, as arranged, had now evacuated Advance Base with the help of some Tibetans with their yaks, and was waiting for us at Base. We had to accept that Pete and Joe were dead, lost somewhere high on that North-East Ridge of Everest. Charlie, perhaps more realistic than me, had each evening been quietly chipping out a memorial plaque. We placed it on a plinth of stone just above our camp, alongside several memorials to others who had died on the north side of Everest.

  Once again I set off by myself to bring out the ill tidings to those who loved Pete and Joe. Back at home, Wendy, Pete’s Hilary, Joe’s Maria, Charlie’s Ruth and Adrian’s Frenda, all of them experienced in interpreting implications in those final dangerous days of an expedition, were becoming anxious. There had been a long inexplicable delay in receiving any letters or news while Charlie and I had made our journey around the eastern side of the mountain. They knew all too well that this could mean some kind of crisis, but just what and to whom they could not know. They waited, phoning each other, trying to read what little clues there were, whilst I rattled and bumped in a jeep the 200-mile journey to Lhasa, and then flew into Chengdu, the first place from which I could telephone England.

  Once again it was Wendy and Louise who had the dreadful task of organising the breaking of the news to their families, of giving what support and help they could. I was shattered with grief by the deaths of Pete and Joe, both as friends and climbing partners, as people who had so much to offer in their creative ability as writers, and in Joe’s case as a filmmaker but, most of all, for the cruelty of bereavement to their loved ones. It also showed me what it would do to Wendy if I lost my life, and yet, even in that initial shock of grief I knew that I could never give up climbing. It was too much part of my life, the fun, the challenge, the thrill of risk, of exploration and beauty of the hills – all the many facets that make it so addictive.

  But immediately after getting home, I did make one promise – that I would never go back to Everest.

  – CHAPTER 12 –

  Small is Beautiful

  It was spring of 1980 and I was wandering along the bottom of Shepherd’s Crag in Borrowdale. It was a Carlisle Mountaineering Club evening meet, which are very informal affairs. A different wayside crag is advertised for each Tuesday night and it simply acts as a focus for people to m
eet and climb and then drink together at a neighbouring pub. It was the first such meet that I had attended. I hadn’t yet seen anyone I knew, so had just soloed up Ardus, a fairly straightforward Severe which follows a clean-cut groove. I was trying to summon up the courage to try Adam, a steeper and harder route just round the corner, when another climber came along. He also seemed to be looking for someone to climb with.

  It saved me from having to solo Adam and we tossed over who should have the lead. That was how I met Jim Fotheringham. He didn’t really look like a hard climber. Slightly taller than me, he has a gangling build that makes him appear almost awkward, yet once on the rock, he is both sound and forceful. We did two climbs that evening and in the pub afterwards I learnt more of his background. He was in his late twenties, had recently qualified as a dentist and was working as a schools’ dental officer. He was certainly a widely experienced mountaineer, having climbed in Scotland, the Alps and, further afield, in Kenya and Baffin Island.

  We arranged to climb together again and in the next three years rock climbed regularly around the Lakes. Whilst I was on Kongur and then on the north side of Everest, Jim had his first Himalayan expedition when he and a friend, Ian Tattersall, climbed a 6,000-metre peak in the Karakoram. Then in the spring of 1982 he made a very fast ascent of the Cassin route on Mount McKinley. On British rock we climbed at around the same standard, though he definitely had a little bit more push than I had, and would make long bold leads with poor protection. However, on the whole we led through, taking the lead on pitches as they came.

  In January 1983 I was working on my book Everest the Unclimbed Ridge and escaping up to Scotland at weekends. We had a booking for the CIC hut in the Allt a Mhuilinn, just below the North Face of Ben Nevis. It is a single-roomed bothy, built like a fortress with heavy iron shutters on the windows, a steel-plated door and instructions prominently displayed inside that under no circumstances are any unauthorised passers-by to be allowed in. There are tales of climbers, almost dying from hypothermia, being turned away from its doors for fear it will become engulfed by the growing hordes who flock to the Ben in winter. The Scottish Mountaineering Club guards it fiercely.

  But we were going up with a member, Alan Petit, Jim’s regular Scottish winter climbing partner and a fellow dentist. With us were two young climbers at Stirling University. The forecast was bad. It predicted rain, high winds and a freezing level at 1,500 metres, but a hut booking is not something to throw away, and so we decided to go in the hope that the forecast could be wrong.

  Jim had initially decided to stay at home for a family weekend, so I had driven up by myself to Alan’s house just outside Stirling, reaching it at about eight on the Friday evening. We had just finished a large spaghetti bolognese when there was a ring at the door – it was Jim. He hadn’t been able to resist the lure of the Ben, weather forecast and all.

  It was midnight before we reached Fort William and, rather than leave the cars low down by the golf course, we decided to find our way through the forest roads to the foot of the Allt a Mhuilinn. This gives a height advantage of around 450 metres but the gate to the forest is not always left open. This time we were lucky. I followed Jim’s car. He and Alan were the experts. The forest is huge, stretching around the northern flanks of the massif with a maze of tracks through the dark conifers. Jim and Alan missed the turning and we spent two hours exploring the Leanachan Forest before we finally hit on the right track leading up to the dam.

  It was snowing wetly and the ground had thawed. We plodded through the dark up to the hut, boots sinking into the peaty morass, weighed down by sacks heavy with food, sleeping bags and spare gear. It was 3 a.m. when at last we arrived. The following morning I was relieved when Jim, ever enthusiastic, looked outside the hut and reported that it was raining. Nonetheless it was difficult to halt the upward momentum. Over a breakfast of bacon and eggs, cooked on the grease-encrusted Calor gas stove, we discussed what to do, expanding the conversation to delay making a decision.

  It was in the course of this conversation that we conceived my next expedition. Pete Boardman and I had obtained permission to attempt a mountain called Karun Koh in the Northern Karakoram near the Chinese border. We had been intrigued by an impressive pyramid-shaped peak we had seen from the summit of Kongur. At first we had thought it was K2, but Pete, the geographer, had taken a bearing on it and looking through his maps, had calculated that it must be this interesting unclimbed peak of 7,350 metres. We had applied for permission to climb it as a joint Pakistan/British expedition and had received the go-ahead whilst on Everest.

  In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy on Everest, I hadn’t the heart to go to Karun Koh in 1983 and had therefore asked for our expedition to be postponed until 1984. I also invited Jim Fotheringham to take Pete’s place. But now, nearly a year later, the old restlessness was reasserting itself. I had been invited to attend a mountaineering and tourism conference organised by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation in Delhi that coming September. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss – free flights to Delhi, a quick trip to the nearest mountains, grab a peak and home. Not so much an expedition as a super alpine holiday in the same kind of timescale. Neither of us could spare any more time anyway. Everest the Unclimbed Ridge was being published at the end of September, while Jim had recently changed jobs and was planning to buy a new house. We both wanted a short, exciting climbing holiday.

  Having decided on this, we set off for Observatory Ridge, a route which should be climbable in any condition. We were soaked before we got anywhere near the base. The snow was wet and glutinous and the ice was running with water but no one wanted to be the first to cry chicken. Eventually it was Alan, the resident Scot, who called for retreat and the rest of us turned back, relieved. Over morning coffee in a Fort William hotel, Jim and I considered our summer holidays a little further. The Gangotri region could be a good objective. It was a two-day bus ride from Delhi, and had an array of steep and exciting mountains in the 6,000-metre range. It should be ideal for our purpose.

  In the following weeks Jim and I began to collect photographs of the area. Doug Scott had been there two years earlier when he had made a fine new route up the North-East Ridge of Shivling, and the previous year Allen Fyffe had done a route on the West Ridge of Bhagirathi III – a ten-day climb with an epic descent down the other side and a long walk back to their Base Camp. There was a prominent rock buttress to the left of Allen’s route which reminded me of the Bonatti Pillar on the Aiguille du Dru. It was very steep, looked as if it was on good granite for the first two thirds, but was capped by a different type of rock that was obviously very shaly. This, however, laid back in a big ice field above our pillar. We decided that this would be our primary objective.

  I did more climbs on Ben Nevis that winter than I had done in the past thirty years. Most of them were accomplished in lightning forays, driving up from home one evening, sleeping in the car at the car park, doing the climb the following day and returning that night for another day’s work on the book. In this way I climbed Zero Gully, Point Five, Orion Face and Minus Two Gully, all of them classic routes which, when they were first climbed, had been extremely difficult but, with the development of modern ice tools, were now within the reach of the average competent winter climber.

  The change has been dramatic. It is all in the shape of the pick on the axe. Until the late sixties the pick was straight, set at ninety degrees to the shaft. It was purely a cutting tool for making steps and, on steep ice, handholds as well. The art was to chop the holds in just the right sequence, clinging with one hand to the slippery ice slot you had cut, while smashing away with the other to cut out the next step. It made ice climbing a very committing, strenuous and frightening affair. It also took a long time. The modern climber can have little concept of just how serious routes like Zero Gully and Point Five were when they were first climbed. A whole series of English parties, one of which included Joe Brown, came to grief on the steep ice near the foot of the gullies,
experiencing spectacular falls down the snow slopes below, before it finally yielded to the formidable all-Scottish team of Tom Patey, Hamish MacInnes and Graeme Nicol.

  It was Yvon Chouinard, the brilliant American rock climber, who had been a leading light in the development of big wall climbing in Yosemite in the early sixties and designed some of the best technical rock-climbing gear of that time, who then became interested in ice climbing and brought a completely fresh approach to it. He improved crampon design, introducing a rigid crampon which gave greater stability. The basic design of twelve-point crampons had not really changed for some fifty years until, once again in the States, Geoff Lowe designed the Foot Fang. This clamps on to the boot like a ski binding and looks almost like a super-short ski, bristling with points that go forward and down.

  Chouinard’s most famous and revolutionary concept was in ice axe design. He produced a gently curved axe pick that hooks into ice and remains in place, enabling the climber to pull his full weight on it and use it as a handhold. Using two picks, one on the axe and the other on the hammer, the climber can ascend vertical ice without cutting any laborious steps.

  A significant development was made by Hamish MacInnes. Working independently in the same field, he came up with the concept of the dropped pick. This was a straight pick set at an angle of forty-five degrees, with an adze that was very broad and set at a similar angle. He called it the Terrordactyl. It wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing in design as the Chouinard axe, but it was more effective, hooking in steep ice to give a much greater sense of security.

  The most important development of all was the banana, or reverse-curve, pick by Simond in France. The straight-drop pick is awkward to use and you end up bruising your knuckles. The reverse-curve can be flicked in with a neat wrist action, and is also much more secure, for the pick slices into the ice and then one’s weight on the shaft causes the serrations to bite without breaking the ice away.