By late 1998, a further two members of the 1996 Everest disaster had died. On 25 December 1997, while attempting the south face of Annapurna (8,091 metres) in winter, Anatoli Boukreev was swept to his death in an avalanche, having some three weeks earlier been presented with the American Alpine Club’s highest award for bravery for his role during the rescue on Everest in 1996.
In 1996, the French mountaineer Chantal Mauduit successfully climbed Lhotse. Notable amongst her previous successful climbs on 8,000-metre mountains was her ascent of K2 in 1992, when she became the fourth women to reach the summit of the second highest mountain in the world. But on 11 May 1998 tragedy struck when Chantal and her Sherpa were killed in their tent when an avalanche wiped out their camp while they were climbing Dhaulagiri (8,167 metres). Tragically, of the first five women to reach the summit of K2, three died on the descent and two were later to die on other mountains.
The best combination in mountain climbing is to reach a summit and to come back safely and, of these, to come back safely is the most important. Mountaineers climb mountains to experience what life has to offer; they have a life wish, not a death wish.
On my previous two climbs on Everest I hadn’t reached the top, but I wasn’t perturbed. I have had the privilege to know several of the great mountaineers in recent history, including Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker and Pertemba Sherpa, but they were exceptional mountaineers who were far more capable than me and able to climb the hardest routes on Everest. I simply saw Everest and other mountains as a personal challenge rather than as a stepping-stone to fame and fortune.
In 1999, after spending the previous year exploring other mountains, I returned to Everest simply to achieve my personal ambition to reach the top. I didn’t feel as fit as I had in previous years, having suffered from a herniated disc in my back caused by too much running. I had been going through a long period of treatment including being stretched on a rack once a week by a physiotherapist, but I still suffered from sciatica, the awful permanent pain which I felt down through the back of my leg. But life is short and I simply had to ignore my physical condition and I got on with getting up the mountain.
I decided to go on a trek round the Helambu valley accompanied by Karma Sherpa, the brother of Kipa, who had been our head Sherpa on my two previous expeditions to Everest, partly as a means of gaining fitness, but also to relax and to refocus on climbing big mountains in Nepal.
My aim in 1999 was to climb without any responsibility. To some extent this had also been my aim in 1996 and 1997, but events largely outside of my control had had an impact. In 1999, it was possible to buy a slot on a larger expedition’s permit and I had arranged to do this through Henry Todd, who I had got to know well over the years. Henry had a very chequered past, which included being jailed in 1978 for thirteen years for drug offences. After his release from prison Henry had become an expedition organiser who specialised in organising oxygen for high altitude expeditions.
Henry had fallen foul of the Nepalese authorities and he asked me if I would become the named expedition leader, which also meant that I had to attend the pre-expedition meeting at the Nepal Ministry of Tourism, after which I would be issued with the expedition permit. As far as everyone else on the permit was concerned, particularly Henry’s clients, Henry would then run the logistics of the expedition, including the organising of oxygen and the Sherpas. As far as I was concerned, I could get on with climbing Everest and, given what had happened during my previous two Everest expeditions, I was adamant that although my name was on the permit it was Henry who would be responsible for leading.
Our 1999 trek into the mountain coincided with the holding of the Everest Marathon, which starts not far from Base Camp before winding its way back to Namche Bazaar, and which at the time was held every two years. When we reached Namche Bazaar I bumped into John Bull, who had been a fellow climbing instructor with me in the army in 1975. It was a very enjoyable interlude as we caught up on what he and I had been up to over the last twenty-four years.
John was a colourful character who was taking part in the high-altitude marathon. We spent a very relaxing time en route to Base Camp reminiscing about the great times we had when we were both young instructors in Wales – including a time when John modified a canoe trailer by sawing it almost in half, which resulted in a senior army officer threatening John with a court martial.
Unusually, I chose that year to visit a local monastery on the route to seek the blessings of a lama. I am not an overly religious person, but I do believe in keeping my options open and, at $8 for the blessing and $1 for a white scarf, the ceremony seemed good value. The head lama also presented me with a small bag of rice with the instructions to throw the rice if I got caught in an avalanche – I left with great respect for his religious knowledge, but I was very sceptical about his knowledge of avalanches or how climbers should escape from them. The thought of standing firm in front of an oncoming avalanche while I searched for my bag of rice – as the avalanche moved alarmingly close – whilst still remaining calm enough to take a handful of rice from the bag and throw it in the direction of what must be by this time a wall of snow and ice, left me very unsure of the lama’s wisdom.
There was an eclectic mix of climbers on the Everest permit, ranging from relatively novice climbers to professionals with a variety of reasons for being on Everest, but I had made it very clear that although I was named on the permit as the leader, it was Henry they needed to turn to for support during the next few weeks. I had simply agreed to collect the permit from the ministry in Kathmandu to avoid Henry having to continue with his problems with the government. In effect, I was an independent expedition within a larger team. I had paid for one Sherpa to climb with and I was excited about getting on again with the process of climbing the ‘big hill’.
There were in effect several teams on the single climbing permit, which included Henry Todd, his clients and guide Andy Lapkass, who formed the Himalayan Guides team, and three independent expeditions formed by the Mexican mountaineer Elsa Carsolio, fellow Briton Graham Ratcliffe, and me. Henry’s team also included Ray Brown from New Zealand, the immensely strong American climber Dr Lauri Medina, who I had climbed with in Tibet the year before, and the British climber Dave Mellor, who was an immediately likeable character, having been part of the strong generation of British rock climbers of the 1960s.
The scene was almost set for what was going to become a highly controversial season, but there was also one other team who would play a prominent part as the season progressed. This was the Out There Trekking (OTT) team led by Jon Tinker, who in 1993 had become the first British climber to reach the summit of Everest from Tibet, and guided by Nick Kekus, an intelligent and immensely strong professional guide who had reached the summit of Everest in 1997.
The season started like any other season on Everest. Climbers took their first steps into the Icefall and the acclimatisation process began. On our first climb through the Icefall I was largely on my own, although at the top I met the legendary Babu Sherpa, who had previously been the sirdar for OTT and was planning to sleep overnight on top of Everest later that season without oxygen. Babu was very strong, like all of the Sherpas, but unlike the others he was actually a bit podgy. Climbers on Everest burn about twice as many calories per day as they would during an average day at sea level. In addition, altitude often depresses a climber’s appetite, and the result is that calories are difficult to replace and during weeks on the mountain climbers lose a large amount of weight. The theory is for climbers to arrive at the mountain ‘fat and fit’, however, I don’t think Babu ever subscribed to this theory – he was simply always ‘amazingly fit, while being a bit fat’.
During my initial stay at Camp 1 I yet again came down with a bad stomach, but I managed to sort this out and continued to climb up to Camp 2. Although this was on 17 April, the conversations about summit attempts were already beginning. To some extent I believe the discussions reflected the fact that there were four climbers on the mountain that year who could become the first British mountaineer to twice reach the summit of Everest: Jon Tinker, Nick Kekus, and Mike Smith, who were all climbing with OTT, and Graham Ratcliffe, who was climbing independently, but supported by Himalayan Guides.
I got the impression over the next couple of days at Camp 2 that there were competing forces at play which meant that a two-speed strategy for climbing the mountain was emerging. A number of climbers were seeking an early summit. Graham Ratcliffe, for example, had already slept at Camp 3, which is normally the signal that a climber is ready for the summit, but there were also other climbers from other nations who were vying to be the first from their various countries to reach the summit of Everest.
In 1999, climbers on commercial expeditions seemed to be paying upwards of $40,000 to be part of a team. More often than not, the first time a commercial expedition would meet with clients was when they arrived in Kathmandu en route to the mountain. This was not a problem for climbers who had the necessary experience to be on Everest, but for a few this meant that their first climb through the Icefall would be a test to determine whether or not they should continue to climb higher on the mountain. It was an annual test that not everyone passed, and already a Guatemalan had left Base Camp having failed to climb through the Icefall; in effect he had wasted over $40,000 by simply not being up to the challenge. This was yet another example of a moral issue which was becoming a problem on the mountain. Some commercial expedition companies were accepting clients with totally inadequate climbing experience, knowing full well that the client was unlikely to make it through the Icefall, and in the process these companies were happy to make thousands of dollars in profit.
My good friend Pertemba Sherpa was managing a Japanese team, and during my time at Base Camp we often chatted. I also spent time relaxing when not on the mountain by dining with my friends Jon Tinker and Nick Kekus at the OTT camp.
My climbing partner in 1999 was Pasang Dawa, a fit young Sherpa with a wry sense of humour. I particularly enjoyed spending time with Pasang Dawa because it gave me an opportunity to speak the language which I had first learnt almost twenty-five years before when I joined the Gurkhas. Nepali is a honorific language, with speakers using different verb forms depending on the status of other people in the conversation. On long expeditions over the years I had spent too much time conversing with Sherpas, and the polished form of the language which I had learned on the British Army Gurkhali language course had been replaced by a more coarse form of speech – in effect I had now learned to speak the language like a peasant.
It is virtually impossible to isolate oneself from the politics and team squabbles which are a fixture of the Everest season, not the least because I was relying on Himalayan Guides to provide me with food and tents, which meant I regularly camped and ate with them while on the mountain. As always, there was plenty of time spent at camps 1 and 2 during the acclimatisation phase, and inevitably climbers visited other team’s camps to pass the time.
The sheer financial cost of climbing Everest means that many climbers increasingly expose their selfish nature as the season develops and the opportunities to go for the summit start to appear. Climbers have paid vast sums of money to be on the mountain and they all expect a shot at the summit. Add to this the fact that high altitude climbers have to be strong willed, and you get all the ingredients for the mountain equivalent of a bar room brawl. Fights are fortunately rare but they do happen. However, daily shouting matches are more common, and nothing in a tented camp can be kept private.
Henry Todd had for a number of years been responsible for supplying oxygen to a number of the teams climbing Everest and, historically, Henry had provided oxygen cylinders constructed and filled by the Russian Poisk company. However, by 1999 he decided that it would be easier to supply oxygen cylinders which had been made in the UK and filled in India. A large number of teams on Everest had contracts with Henry that year for him to supply them with oxygen, but it was not widely known that these would be from the UK rather than from the Poisk factory – I had certainly never been made aware of this.
I personally would have had a problem had I known where the oxygen was being filled. In the early 1980s, while I was staying at the Gurkha camp in Dharan in eastern Nepal, which had its own British military hospital, I had been asked by a friend who was an army surgeon to take photographs of an operation he was particularly keen to record. The patient, who was about ten years old, had been born with the middle fingers of both hands joined together, and the unique, but apparently straightforward, operation would separate the fingers.
The patient was anaesthetised and all seemed to be going well until my friend the surgeon tried to take skin from the young boy’s buttocks to be grafted onto the fingers. As the skin was shaved off, blood should have appeared – but there was none, and despite a frantic effort to revive the boy, he was declared dead. A tragic end to what should have been a simple operation.
A few months later I learned that around this time there had been other deaths during operations at Dharan and the British military police had been called in to investigate. They soon discovered that the gas bottles supplied from India for use by the anaesthetist during the operations had not been filled with oxygen, but had instead been filled with a lethal gas in order to allow the supplier in India to make a greater profit.
In addition to supplying climbing expeditions, Henry had previously discussed with me a plan to approach the Indian government to try and sell them oxygen systems to be used by their soldiers who were based high in the Himalaya, facing the Pakistan army. Henry felt that his time spent in prison would be discovered by the Indians, but my time as an officer in the Gurkhas would allow me to make a credible approach to the Indian government. I did not see myself as a salesman of oxygen, or anything else, and I declined to be involved.
Whilst I had been at Base Camp I had noticed that Andy Lapkass and Henry had spent a lot of time in the tent where the oxygen systems were stored. There had also been some rumours circulating for some days about oxygen issues, but it wasn’t until 30 April that I became fully aware of the problem. On that day as I lay in my tent at Camp 2, I heard Andy Lapkass, the guide for Henry’s Himalayan Guides, having a heated discussion with someone whose voice I didn’t recognise. I got up and confronted Andy and at last he admitted there was a problem. When the cylinders arrived at Base Camp it had been found that the thread on the neck of the British bottles was too long – when the connector was screwed on to the bottle, the pin in the connector could not reach the valve seated in the neck, which opened the valve which controlled the flow of the oxygen.
I was astonished. Clearly this issue had been known for some time, but instead of letting the climbers who were going to be using the oxygen system know about the problem, both Henry and Andy had decided to keep this information to themselves. It later transpired that they had gradually told some of the leaders of the large expeditions to whom they were supplying with oxygen, but there had been a tacit agreement not to spread the news.
The situation was ludicrous. Of course, some people climb Everest without the use of supplementary oxygen, but the vast majority use it, not just to enable them to reach the summit, but more importantly to ensure that they reach the summit and descend safely.
One solution being tried was to file the thread down to a size where it allowed the pin to open the valve. But this had to be an accurate procedure, because if the thread was filed down too much, the pin would then overly press against the valve and bend when the adaptor was screwed on to the bottle. It would have been difficult enough to adapt the large number of problem cylinders in a workshop, and on the mountain the best place to carry out this work would have been at Base Camp. It was grossly irresponsible to distribute cylinders to different camps on the mountain where the work to file down the thread was going to be far more problematic – and this is exactly what happened with many of the cylinders.
Even more bizarre was the second solution being proposed to solve the problem. This was to balance a small polystyrene ball on the valve head in the neck of the bottle to bridge the gap between the valve head and the pin when the connector was screwed on to the bottle. This was a preposterous solution because the adaptor couldn’t be removed once the polystyrene ball had been locked in place and it would have meant that there needed to be an equal number of adaptors and cylinders, which there wasn’t. It also didn’t take account of the fundamental need to change cylinders on the way to the summit. The thought of climbers wearing large protective mittens attempting to balance a small polystyrene ball on a valve, possibly in the dark, but also very possibly in high wind, was ludicrous.
Larger teams in particular were starting to panic. OTT for example had clients paying at least $40,000, but they also had a team within a team who were paying far more. The Greek multimillionaire Constantine ‘Cos’ Niarchos was aiming to become the first climber from his country to reach the summit of Everest and he was employing his own guide and Sherpas to do this.
I was very fond of Cos, having climbed with him the previous year. He had had some problems with drugs as he grew up, which he had overcome, and he had become a competent mountaineer. I certainly didn’t have a problem that he had paid for extra support on Everest; he had the money to do this and it seemed perfectly sensible and it shouldn’t have impacted on other climbers, many of whom would have done the same had they been able to afford it.
The problem now, for everyone who had a contract to use the oxygen, was that there was no Plan B. For them, and this included me, the only available options were to use the modified British bottles or to abandon the climb and leave the mountain.
Everest climbers are often accused of being selfish in their attempts to climb the mountain and there have been examples, particularly on the Tibetan side of the mountain, when climbers have refused to stop to help others who are having problems because this would have meant them giving up their own summit attempts. This selfish attitude now started to become apparent once again because, whilst there were a large number of problem cylinders, there were also some perfectly serviceable Poisk cylinders available in the stockpiles at different camps, and climbers were starting to squabble about who was going to get the Poisk bottles.
It was easier for me to deal with this crisis than it was for others. I didn’t have any clients to worry about and, although I made my thoughts known about the incompetent way the provision of oxygen was being managed, I simply got on with the process of preparing myself for a summit attempt.
1 May 1999 was my forty-seventh birthday and again I was celebrating the occasion on a mountain. I was still considering leaving that day for Camp 3, and then the summit, and I would take my chances with the oxygen systems which I found when I arrived at Camp 4. However, the weather forecast appeared to indicate that it would be better to go for 4 May and I delayed my departure from Camp 2. I subsequently reconsidered this plan when I saw how many climbers were arriving at Camp 2 en route to the summit. My plan was simply to climb with Pasang Dawa, and although this would in all likelihood be with other climbers on the route, I saw no point in climbing in the midst of the large numbers who were now heading for the summit.
It wasn’t just the large number of climbers which was giving me concern. There were also several incompetent climbers amongst the group who shouldn’t have been on the mountain that year, and two of them in particular had given me some concern whenever I watched them on the mountain. When they arrived at camp on 2 May, having taken twice the average time to climb from Base Camp, I decided that it would be prudent to wait for a second favourable forecast before going for the summit.
That day we also received the news that a good friend, Michael Jorgensen, had been killed while climbing on Makalu. This was very sad for all of us who knew him, but it had a particular impact on one of Henry’s Sherpas because Michael was supporting his son through school.
I stayed at Camp 2 on 3 May while I watched over sixty climbers ascend the Lhotse Face. The weather deteriorated later that day and I heard on the radio that the leader of the OTT team, Jon Tinker, had a problem.
Jon was a straight-talking, experienced mountaineer who I had grown to like. He stood no nonsense during conversations if he felt he was in the right, and he could appear unfriendly on occasions, but once you got to know him as a friend, one found a kind and generous personality. Although Jon had been many times to altitude, including the summit of Everest in 1993, which he climbed with Babu Sherpa, he had suffered a minor stroke.
Most of the OTT team decided to descend the mountain with Jon, and all of them except for the young British climber Mike Matthews and the Canadian climber Dave Rodney returned to Base Camp.
Mike Matthews was an extremely likeable twenty-three-year-old who was intelligent and great company to be with. He was the same age as my son Dan and I had always enjoyed Mike’s company whenever we met on the mountain. Conversely, Dave Rodney seemed to have a very high opinion of himself and I never found his company enjoyable. I had first seen him on the flight into Kathmandu from Bangkok when I could not get over how long he spent combing his hair as he moved around the cabin – a slightly bizarre observation, but it was significant enough for me to make a comment in my diary before I later found out that he was on an Everest team.
Rodney in particular was not happy that the OTT team had descended with Jon Tinker, and eventually he had to be ‘ordered’ back down to Base Camp.
Whilst no one went to the summit on the morning of 4 May, Andy Lapkass was now at the South Col with most of the Himalayan Guides team ready for a summit attempt on 5 May. In the meantime, I had decided after ten nights at Camp 2 to descend to Base Camp to rest before my own attempt on the summit.
It is always exciting when teams start to attempt to summit Everest, and I was awake early on the morning of 5 May to see how the Himalayan Guides team were progressing up the mountain. At 10.30 a.m. we heard that Pete Athans had reached the summit of Everest for the sixth time and, later, Andy Lapkass, Ray Brown, Elsa Carsolio and Graham Ratcliffe (becoming the first British climber to summit Everest twice) had joined him there.
What was alarming, however, was that Lauri Medina had fallen when a cornice had collapsed while on the section between the South Summit and the Hillary Step. Fortunately she had been attached to a fixed rope, but she had still been dangling in space before being rescued, after which she returned to the South Col. Andy and the other summiteers took an abnormally long time to descend to the South Col, but by 7 p.m. we knew that they were all safely back at camp.
The following day Lauri was suffering with snow blindness and decided to stay with Andy Lapkass at the South Col for another day, while Graham, Ray and Elsa descended to Camp 2.
The weather forecast for the coming days didn’t look brilliant, but I was ready to go for the summit and I forced myself to relax and to be patient – which was not easy because I found myself getting very irritated by a very noisy trekker who had decided to pitch a tent next to mine at Base Camp.
Elsa arrived back in Base Camp on Friday 7 May and looked in great shape. Over a cup of coffee she told me about Lauri’s fall from the ridge above the South Summit. After the cornice had given way, Lauri had fallen about seven metres and was dangling in space above a sheer drop of thousands of feet. Elsa was above her on the ridge and she was relieved to see what she thought was another climber coming towards them with a rope to rescue Lauri. But when the climber reached Elsa he continued to pass by saying that he was taking the rope to Pete Athans who was further up the ridge fixing the Hillary Step, without any thought for Lauri, who was in danger and urgently needed a rope to be rescued. Fortunately other climbers then arrived to recover Lauri.
Elsa then went on to say that when they had all descended to the South Col they found that the only two sleeping bags which were available were being used by other team members and Lauri and Elsa were forced to spend the night wearing only their down clothing.
Graham Ratcliffe had succeeded in becoming the first British climber to twice reach the summit of Everest, for which I congratulated him when he returned to Base, but I did feel a comment he made that, ‘Jon Tinker would have killed himself trying to beat me’ was inappropriate and I told him so. I knew Jon well enough to know that he wasn’t interested in meaningless records and was instead more concerned about the welfare of his team.
I had decided to spend one more day at Base Camp before my summit attempt, which now looked like it would be on 12 May 1999 – what would have been my grandmother’s one-hundredth birthday, which I hoped was going to be a good omen. After breakfast I walked over to the bottom of the Icefall to welcome back Lauri and Andy. Lauri seemed to have got over her bout of snow blindness but, most importantly, it was good to see her safely back at Base Camp. Babu Sherpa also returned that day after spending twenty hours on the summit of Everest without oxygen – a tremendous feat of survival by a Sherpa legend, even if it did seem rather pointless.
I had dinner with Pete Athans that night, a great person and climber, and a very competent Nepali speaker. I had developed the greatest respect for Pete over the years and his wish for a safe and successful climb was gratefully received.