I returned to Hong Kong after Everest 1996, combining my job in corporate affairs in the container terminal with my twice-yearly expeditions to the Himalaya. It was a strange but exciting time to live in the territory; the military connection which I had been part of – or associated with – for twenty years was coming to an end and there was a mixture of excitement caused by the change from British to Chinese rule, as well as concern, primarily amongst the Chinese part of the population, many of whom were emigrating to Canada and Australia, because they thought that after the handover they would be ruled by a repressive regime.
Most visitors only see the frenetically busy city areas of Hong Kong, which are amongst the most densely populated parts of the world. However, beyond the concrete jungles which lie along the harbour side of Hong Kong Island and across the harbour on the Kowloon Peninsula is a range of hills, which although not dramatically high, offer stunning walks. I was lucky enough to live close to the hills, through which I would go for long daily runs. Most weekends found me trekking through the hills, often visiting small Chinese seafood restaurants in remote villages which could only be reached by foot or by boat. It was a wonderful way to spend down-time while maintaining fitness, despite everything that had happened the previous year.
In 1997 I returned to Everest. The tragic events of the year before seemed a lifetime ago – life goes on – but how quickly the memory of climbers, who had died on the same mountain I was climbing, fades.
My son Dan flew with me to Kathmandu. He had been unable to join his brother Tom and sister Nicole when they trekked with me into Base Camp in 1996 because of his final school exams. The plan was for Dan to join me at Base Camp after trekking around Annapurna.
The 1997 season was always going to be pot luck for me because I had commitments which meant I could only remain at Base Camp until 20 May. If I hadn’t reached the top by then, my 1997 Everest attempt would be over.
On arriving in Kathmandu I was interested to find that I was being considered for the position of managing director of arguably the most established mountaineering agency in Kathmandu. This was something I had not previously considered and it was a pleasant boost to my ego, but running a busy agency would have meant fewer opportunities to take part in expeditions, given that I would be busy organising them for others. Also, as much as I liked Kathmandu, every time I arrived in Nepal I spent as little time in the city as I could, wanting to get into the mountains as quickly as possible. The thought of spending most of my time in Kathmandu was not overly attractive and I politely declined the job offer.
I was climbing again with Mal Duff and the two of us met up in Namche Bazaar en route to Everest. Mal was in good form but I recorded in my diary that he seemed to have something on his mind, which was not surprising, given everything that goes into running an expedition.
I felt fitter in 1997 than I had the year before, but I purposely took my time walking up to Base Camp and spent two days in the Khumjung valley, which is reached after a steep half day’s walk from Namche Bazaar. Often missed by trekkers who take the main path to the east, the Khumjung valley is full of Sherpa houses, each with its own area for cultivation – a sight which has probably changed little over the centuries. What has changed is the Khumjung Secondary School, which has benefitted Sherpa children since it was founded by Edmund Hillary in 1961, and further across the valley is the Khunde Hospital, which was built by Hillary and completed in 1966, bringing much needed medical support within reach of this Sherpa community. The valley’s monastery also has a skull purported to be from a yeti. It is arguably more likely to have been the skull of a large monkey, but why let the truth get in the way when donations made by visitors to see this artefact more than pay for the upkeep of the monastery?
For visitors who really want to step back in time there is the Sherpa Heritage House, the former home of my good friend and mountaineering legend Pertemba Sherpa. In 1975, Pertemba was the lead Sherpa on Chris Bonington’s south-west face expedition, on which British climbers finally reached the summit of Everest. It was on 24 September 1975 that Doug Scott and Dougal Haston reached the summit, followed two days later by Peter Boardman, Pertemba and Mick Burke (Burke disappeared in worsening weather, presumably later on the descent). Pertemba went on to climb Everest on two further occasions, including in 1985 when he reached the summit with Chris Bonington, and he was also chosen to trek with Prince Charles on the route north of Pokhara which was subsequently named the Royal Trek.
Not everyone visits the Khumjung to experience its cultural heritage and for many climbers it is the German bakery which is the main attraction. At sea level I personally avoid pastries, but at almost 4,000 metres, fresh bread and wonderful pizzas become very tasty, particularly when the diet for the next six weeks is going to consist of bland mountaineering rations.
As I walked up to the monastery at Tengboche I met an old Japanese climbing friend who I had last climbed with in Japan some fifteen years before. He had lost all of his toes as a result of frostbite on a winter ascent of the Matterhorn, and I remember when we had climbed together in the Japanese Alps in 1982 that he claimed the lack of toes in his boots made it easier to make a firmer contact on rock ledges – something I preferred to take his word for.
Mal was leading two teams that year, one climbing Everest by the south-east ridge, and a second, larger team, climbing Lhotse – a climb which shares the route up Everest until a point midway between Camp 3 and the Geneva Spur, from where those climbing Lhotse climb directly upwards to their summit. Our Everest team that year, besides Mal and me, included three Mexicans and Brigitte Muir, who was aiming to be the first Australian woman to reach the highest point on earth.
It was great to be back and to greet many old friends at Base Camp who had been there in 1996. On 16 April I started up through the Icefall for the first time that year. Either I was fitter or the Icefall was more welcoming, but I found it a lot easier than I had the year before, although I did have a moment of frightening excitement when a ledge I was standing on collapsed. Fortunately I was jumaring up a fixed rope at the time and I just had to haul my way up the rope to safety.
The theory of acclimatisation on Everest is to climb high and then descend back to a lower camp to sleep and to then gradually move up to higher camps. Everest has been climbed in April, but over the years, particularly as commercial expeditions gained momentum in the 1990s, the majority of ascents have occurred from the second week of May onwards. The limiting factors are that the monsoon can start to hit the mountain during this period if it arrives early, and the permit to climb Everest in the spring runs out on 1 June.
After spending a night at Camp 1, which was in a similar location to the previous year, I walked up to Camp 2 and back the next day, and then spent a very stormy night back at Camp 1. It felt like a very good introduction to that year’s expedition. The following day it took me only two hours to get back down to Base Camp, passing Mal in the Icefall, as well as Gary Guller, an American climber on the Lhotse team who had had an arm amputated following a climbing accident some years before. I always found Gary to be very cheerful and ever confident, despite how difficult he must have found it to climb through the labyrinth of the Icefall with only one arm, and I wished him well as I romped downhill.
Long gone are the days when the only way to communicate from Everest, or from any other mountain in Nepal, was to use a Sherpa runner. Depending on where in Nepal you were, the Sherpa would run (actually walk fast rather than run, but the Sherpas walk at a pace through the hills at which most mortals would have to run to keep up with them) back to Kathmandu where the message would be phoned, or in later times faxed, through to the overseas recipient. Once a reply was received the Sherpa would then run back to Base Camp and, depending on where in Nepal you were located, it took some ten days or so from the initial writing of the message until the reply was received. In 1992, I dealt with most of the paperwork to buy my house in France by this method. Modern communications have developed swiftly since the early 1990s and the use of satellites has meant that phones and internet connections are now fundamental pieces of expedition equipment.
It was a balance to decide when to phone or send an email, but often the news of an accident on Everest, which we knew the outside world would quickly hear about, was a catalyst to send a quick message of some sort back to family or friends to make sure they knew I was still alive.
My plan was to climb back up on 21 April and to then spend six days on the mountain, mostly at Camp 2 with an excursion up the Lhotse Face to Camp 3. I couldn’t get over how fit I felt and I climbed from Base Camp to Camp 1 in three hours, which was good for that stage of the acclimatisation process, particularly as I had another minor epic en route. While I was crossing a crevasse on a bridge made up of three ladders tied together, one of my crampons became jammed between two of the ladders where they were tied together by rope, and I became stuck halfway across, looking down below my feet through the rungs of the ladder into a dark abyss.
In front of some American climbers who were waiting at the side of the crevasse to cross, I tried to look as cool as possible as I stooped down and unclipped from the offending crampon. I then bent down again to pick up the crampon and continued the crossing. Whilst feeling somewhat un-nerved inside, my performance gave rise to one of the watching Americans declaring, ‘Gee, that was impressive.’ It may well have been, but it was something I had no wish to repeat.
But Everest can be fickle. On 22 April I moved from Camp 1 up to Camp 2 with a very heavy load, and despite previously feeling strong and fit, I found the last 200 metres up to the camp exhausting. The uninitiated often talk about mountaineers ‘conquering mountains’, which, in my view, is rubbish. Mountains have to be respected and can’t be conquered. It is more accurate to say that climbers sneak up when the mountain has its back turned – we had seen the year before what can happen when the mountain is not looking the other way.
On 23 April I tried to radio Base Camp on schedule at 8 a.m. and at 9 a.m., but there was no reply, which was very unusual. At 10 a.m. I at last got through and I heard the news that Mal had been found dead in his tent in Base Camp that morning. I was in shock; I had chatted to Mal when we passed each other as I was climbing up through the Icefall, and I was waiting for him to join me at Camp 2, having just cleared a space in the tent for him. He had seemed tired during the early part of the expedition, but that is not unusual on Everest, and it certainly hadn’t given rise to any concerns. As far as I was aware he was fit and healthy. When Mick Burns radioed from Base Camp to give me the news, he obviously heard the shock and disbelief in my voice because he got another member of the team to speak to me to confirm that it was true – Mal was dead.
I walked over and talked to David Breashears and Pete Athans, also back on the mountain that year, both of whom knew Mal well and who were very understanding when I told them the news. I continued to feel numb throughout the remainder of the day – but there was nothing I could do. The expedition would continue and part of my task while at Camp 2 was to support two of our team who were at Camp 3 and this is what I now focused on doing.
It transpired that down at Base Camp that morning the cook boy had gone to give Mal his early morning cup of tea but when he found he couldn’t wake Mal, he had called Mick Burns, our Base Camp manager, who found Mal dead in his sleeping bag. Doctors who were at Base Camp were then called to confirm the death. Sadly rumours quickly spread that Mal had died after choking on his vomit after drinking alcohol and, although I wasn’t there at the time, those who found Mal later confirmed that this was nonsense. It was later suggested that he had banged his head in Kathmandu before coming to the mountain and in all likelihood this, and the subsequent effort of climbing at altitude, had caused a brain haemorrhage.
The time in Kathmandu at the start of any expedition gave the opportunity for a last drinking session before the period of abstinence on expedition. At the end of the evening it was not unusual to hire bicycle rickshaws and to get the Nepalese driver to sit in the back while inebriated expedition members sat on the driver’s saddle and raced each other through the streets of Kathmandu, which fortunately were often relatively traffic-free at that time of night. Apparently prior to travelling to Base Camp, and whilst taking part in a bicycle rickshaw race, Mal had crashed his cycle and banged his head in the process.
Mal ran an expedition company because it enabled him to climb and to make a living out of mountaineering at the same time. More so than many other climbers that I have known, Mal simply loved to climb and he certainly didn’t have the ambition to make large sums of money, which was starting to be reflected by the sums being charged by other companies. To me he was a Scottish climber of the same ilk as Tom Patey, Robin Smith and Dougal Haston, and British climbing had lost one of its great characters. Mal was intelligent, erudite and a great companion to be with in the mountains, and I was one of many who would miss him.
Mal’s body was due to be flown out to Kathmandu the following day. The Sherpas put a flask of tea next to the body and a lamp on in the tent, to burn through the night. They then sewed up the flap of the tent, to be opened just before Mal was carried to the helicopter early the following morning.
The following day, British Mountaineer Alan Hinkes, who was climbing Lhotse as part of his quest to become Britain’s first mountaineer to summit all fourteen 8,000 metre peaks, joined me in the tent at Camp 2. Al was a fresh air freak, which I was not, and that night he opened his end of the tent, which then felt to me like we were sleeping in a high-altitude wind tunnel. Eventually I got to sleep only to be wakened by Al who told me that I was snoring, to which I abruptly replied, ‘It was because I was asleep!’
On 25 April I returned to Base Camp to formally take over leadership of the expedition from Mal. It was not something I wanted to do, but Mal was a friend and someone had to take responsibility for the expedition. I also felt strongly that it was important to finish what Mal had started. We had a very strong team of Sherpas to support the expedition, most of whom I had worked with the year before, and I felt that it would not be too onerous a task to fulfil, and I didn’t feel, at that stage, that it would have any impact on my own climb to the summit. I also heard from Liz, Mal’s wife, who had arrived in Nepal to escort his body back to Scotland.
Liz now ran Mal’s climbing company and she also asked me to take on the leadership role. Liz had herself climbed high on the Tibetan side of Everest, as well as becoming the first British woman to summit Pumori, a climb she had made with Mal in 1991. However, Mal was being paid to lead the team and although I was happy to take over the role without receiving any payment, I wanted it to be made clear that I would not be responsible for any issues which might arise from contracts which Mal had made with other climbers on both the Everest and Lhotse expeditions. I also needed to make it clear that I needed to depart by 20 May, but until then I would do what I could to make the expedition a success. Mal had become the third veteran from the 1996 disaster to die. A tally which would keep going up over the next few years.
The following day we heard that the Indonesian team had made the first ascent of Everest that year from the Nepalese side. It later transpired that two Indonesians had climbed with their guide, the legendary Russian climber Anatoli Boukreev, and two other Russian climbers and a Sherpa, and had not reached the summit until after 3 p.m. These were the first Indonesians to reach the summit of Everest, and later reports by their Sherpas indicated that they wouldn’t have got to the top if they hadn’t been dragged there by their Russian guides. Their descent back to the South Col had been made in waist-deep snow and reducing visibility, and they were very lucky to survive. Almost four weeks would pass before another successful summit was achieved on the Nepal side of the mountain.
The deaths of fellow climbers on Everest is sadly not that unusual. Of course, it has an immediate impact on climbers on the mountain, but the initial grieving process normally only lasts a short period of a few days before life on the mountain is back to normal.
I decided to rest for a few days at Base Camp, to some extent in the hope that my son Dan would arrive after his trek around Annapurna. As well as you might think you know other climbers on an expedition, there is nothing better than chatting with a family member who knows all about the nuances of your life outside of the mountains.
It was only a week after Mal’s death, but the team were in good form and discussions to summit both Lhotse and Everest were taking shape. Guy Cotter was back on Everest that year, having taken over Adventure Consultants after Rob Hall’s death the previous year, and we discussed the weather and the possibility that we would probably aim to go to the summit a day after Guy’s team.
1 May 1997 was my forty-fifth birthday. Given that my birthday is in the middle of the pre-monsoon climbing season, I have spent a number of memorable birthdays celebrating al fresco against a wonderful mountain background, and 1997 was no exception. The Sherpa cook baked a cake and then set up a table, complete with tablecloth and serviettes, on the flat helipad which was not far from our area of Base Camp. I had brought a gourmet hamper with me from Hong Kong, which I had successfully hidden away from other climbers who may have been seeking an alternative to Base Camp rations. Although the immediate weather forecast was not encouraging, I was in good spirits and positively looking forward to the climb to the summit, which was given an extra boost when Dan arrived the next day.
It was almost exactly one year before that the teams had run into tragic difficulty by going for the summit on a pre-determined day, and all of the teams in Base Camp in early May 1997 seemed content to wait for the weather to improve before making a bid for the top of the mountain.
Mal would have been forty-four on 3 May, and I spent the day in awful weather at Base Camp.
Provisionally I planned to summit on 10 May, which would have given me just over another week on the mountain before I had to leave to fulfil other commitments. I had previously made my schedule clear to everyone when I took over the leadership, and this was not seen to be a problem given that by the stage when I needed to depart, everything would be in place for any further summit attempts. As I started up the mountain I was continuing to feel exceptionally fit, without any hint of the chest condition which had dogged me the year before, and I passed through Camp 1 after three hours and I reached Camp 2 after another two and a half hours.
I was joined later that day by another member of our team who confirmed some suspicions which I had been harbouring for a week or so. Two of our team members were husband and wife, but I had detected over the course of the expedition that a relationship had been forming between the wife and another team member, which was confirmed during the conversation at Camp 2. Such goings on are not unusual on mountaineering expeditions, but someone is always likely to get very hurt, and this would be the case later when the wife and the climber with whom she had formed a relationship told the husband in the dining tent, and in front of all the other expedition members, that they would both be leaving Base Camp to start a new life together.
On 6 May, instead of climbing up to Camp 3, I decided to take a rest day at Camp 2. It was particularly hot in my tent that afternoon and I decided to laze outside. While I lay there relaxing, at about three in the afternoon, a Sherpa was seen to fall down the Lhotse Face. His Sherpa teammates at Camp 2 immediately started to form a rescue party. Given how far he was seen to fall, there was very little chance that he had survived, but I had to remind the rescue party to take an oxygen cylinder and a mask with them before they set off towards the Lhotse Face. Sadly the Sherpa, Nima Rinzi, was already dead by the time they reached him, and his body was brought back to camp before being taken down to Base Camp.
On 7 May the weather forecast for the summit was again bad and Pete Athans, David Breashears and Guy Cotter, with whom I had been passing the time at Camp 2, decided to descend to Base Camp. I was very tempted to join them, but I had yet to climb up to Camp 3. I decided that I would try and do this the following day and, if the weather had still not cleared by then, I too would head down.
At 6 a.m. the following day I climbed alone up to Camp 3. Although the weather forecast was not good, the Malaysian team were also heading for Camp 3 with the aim of pushing on to the summit. I just hoped this would not end in disaster like the year before, but fortunately they eventually saw sense and turned back.
It was for me a very enjoyable ascent up the steep Lhotse Face to Camp 3, and I was rewarded with the Yellow Band shining out above me, and below, the Western Cwm stretching for some two kilometres from the lip of the Icefall, just beyond Camp 1. Looking down to my right were the tiny tents of Camp 2, overshadowed by the magnificence of the south-west face of Everest, first ascended almost twenty-two years before by climbers who included my good friends Peter Boardman and Pertemba Sherpa.
The weather forecast continued to look bad and I decided that there was little point remaining up on the mountain. The body of the dead Sherpa had been left at Camp 2 since his fall on 6 May, which did seem a bit odd given that had his Malaysian team members gone for the summit the day before, the body would have lain beside the tents for five days or more. Some may suggest that because he was dead it did not matter how long his body remained at Camp 2, while others would respond that the body deserved to be treated with due dignity and the priority was to get the body back to his loved ones. On the initial part of my descent on 8 May, I helped his fellow Sherpas move him across the bridges lower down in the Western Cwm before leaving them to their grim task.
I like to climb on my own wherever possible on a big mountain, as it allows me to move at my own pace whilst being responsible only to, and for, myself. Up until Mal’s death I had felt very content wherever I was on the mountain and this feeling had largely continued, except for the time at Camp 2 when I found I had to sort out the quality of food, given my new position as expedition leader. It reminded me of the expedition I had led to Annapurna II and IV in 1992. That expedition included some very good climbers, with some very different egos, but everyone wanted to get to the summit. This was rather like later commercial expeditions where climbers have paid for and expect to reach the summit, and often become a group of competing individuals and pairs, rather than a cohesive team with a common goal. I was now going to discover that nothing had changed and, if anything, given the costs of climbing Everest, egos were very much going to come to the fore.
When I reached Base Camp, Brigitte Muir was the first to raise issues. This was her fourth time on Everest and she was desperate to reach the summit and claim – although she is a Belgian by birth – to become the first Australian woman to reach the top of the world. Brigitte wanted to be in the first group to next summit the mountain and wanted to use four of our Sherpas to support her, but I knew this was very contrary to what Mal had planned (and which I agreed with), which, given that we were a relatively small team, was to go for the summit after one of the larger teams on the mountain that year had opened up the route. Brigitte wasn’t easily dissuaded. During the storm in 1996 she had stayed inside her tent on the South Col while the rescue took place and I very much sensed in 1997 that she was not going to let wider team considerations get in the way of her getting to the top of Everest.
It was also the day of Mal’s funeral thousands of miles away in Scotland, and that evening members from all of the expeditions on the south side of Everest met at the site where we had held our team Puja ceremony only a few weeks before. It was a gathering that included most of the well-known names in 1990s Everest climbing, and Mal would have appreciated the gesture, but it also brought home again the loss of this remarkable character.
My previous sense of well-being from the time I accepted the leadership role was eroded further the following day when I had to discuss with the Mexicans their summit bid. To be fair, I had found them very good company on the mountain, but one of them, who had decided from the outset not to climb with supplementary oxygen, now wanted O2 cylinders, which he had not paid Mal for, to be placed high on the mountain just in case he needed them. Fortunately Brigitte was not around that day, having gone off with a member of another expedition, and my discussions with the Mexicans at least reached a happy conclusion. Without a leader, the expedition would have turned into chaos with everyone wanting to climb the mountain according to their own agenda and with the Sherpas stuck in the middle. I certainly wasn’t being selfless when I accepted to take over from Mal, I was simply being loyal to Mal as a friend, and, having agreed to be the leader, I was not going to go back on my word. But it was becoming a pain to manage and massage the egos of a disparate group of climbers, none of whom I would have selected if I was putting together a team to climb a mountain.
We also got the news from the north side of Everest that on 7 May three Russians and a Sherpa had disappeared, and the following day, 8 May, a German climber had fallen to his death, bringing the death toll already that season to seven.
The weather forecast continued to be bad, but there was nothing to be done other than sit it out at Base Camp to wait for an improvement. The days passed and frustrated climbers aired their grievances, although there was very little that could be done to solve most issues; it was simply a case of waiting for the weather to improve.
At last there were signs that the weather was going to get better and climbers prepared themselves for the climb back up the mountain. But for me the chance of reaching the summit that year had been lost because I had to honour other commitments and I would not have the opportunity to get to the summit and back by the time I had to leave. I was of course disappointed, but certainly not distraught. The mountain would still be there next year and I knew I would be back. Like Mal, I very much enjoyed mountaineering, whether I reached summits or not. I would also be coming back to Everest while Mal would not – this was a salutary reminder that life is about lots of experiences and climbing Everest was just one of them.
Dan was still at Base Camp and he understood and supported my decision to move on, but before I did this it was essential that I made sure all was in place for the summit attempts which could still take place. Together with Kipa, our lead Sherpa, we planned what logistical support was needed to ensure that, given good weather, the other team members should be able to get safely to the summit and back. I then waited until the last possible moment before returning to Kathmandu and then on to a very different life. One of the Mexicans summitted on 23 May and Brigitte Muir reached the summit on 27 May, along with Kipa Sherpa, the last climbers to summit that season.