The expedition was over and we were on our way home, climbing up to the first of the high passes we had to cross on the long drive to Lhasa. Once again, the wheels spun, flinging mud up against the banks of the road. On each side the snow was piled up high, but from the raised seats of our Landcruiser we could look out over the white land. It was 4 November 1987. Two and a half weeks had now passed since Tibet had been swept by the worst storm in living memory, but the wide spaces of the plateau, normally brown and dry, still lay deep under snow.
At the top of the pass we waited for the other vehicle to catch up. Everyone got out to look back for the last time to Shisha Pangma, the mountain which had dominated our lives for the last two months.
There it all was: the great jumble of the icefall and, above it, the ramp, curving round to Camp 2 and the headwall, which we had laboured so hard to fix before the big storm swept through the length of the Greater Himalaya, reaching Tibet on 17 October. The devastation had been appalling, but afterwards we had just managed to salvage enough food and gear from the wrecked tents to make another attempt on the mountain, breaking trail through deep drifts and laboriously re-excavating the ropes up to Camp 2. From there, Luke Hughes and I had continued for another two days up the long South Ridge. Now from a distance we could really gauge the true scale of that immense ridge, the great sweep up to the 7,486-metre summit of Pungpa Ri, the descent on the far side and then more ridge, rising in great steps to the 8,046-metre summit of Shisha Pangma itself. We could see the exact point where Luke and I had stopped to dig an emergency snow cave at 7,700 metres and huddle through the night, sheltering from the vicious jet-stream wind. The temperature had been -35°C and, with the wind unabated, in the morning we had been forced to turn back, less than 400 metres from the top.
Now winter had arrived, our time was up and we were leaving empty handed. The surly Chinese drivers told us to hurry up with our photographs and we left, driving away down the far side of the pass.
The end of an expedition is nearly always a time for ambivalent feelings. I was excited to be going home after four months in Asia, but also clinging nostalgically to many happy memories of those months. First there had been the long trek across the Karakoram in Pakistan – days spent with Duncan and Phil on Snow Lake, the wild descent down an unknown glacier to Shimshal, the journey up the Hispar with Razzetti, camping in flower-filled meadows, the return to Snow Lake and my solo first ascent of a beautiful granite tower. Then there had been the long journey south to Rawalpindi and on by train through the Punjab and the Sind desert, right down to Karachi where I joined the Shisha Pangma expedition transferring for the flight to Kathmandu. We had trekked through the monsoon-soaked forests of Nepal to Tibet. Then, under brilliant blue skies, we had worked at the new route on Shisha Pangma. It had been a huge expedition with too many people for my taste; but it had been fun, and even during the three days of the storm, digging constantly to save tents and lives from the crushing snowdrifts, the radio calls between camps had been alive with humour and friendship. There was now just this nagging regret about not reaching the summit. So many people had put so much effort into the long improbable route, and despite the storm we had come so close to success that I found it more difficult than usual to be philosophical about being forced to turn back so near the top.
Dusk was falling as we entered the wide valley of the Phung Chu. It was a magical evening with a full moon riding the darkening sky. Ruined towers and battlements, relics of Tibet’s destroyed past, were silhouetted against the luminous hills, with dark figures of Tibetan people, on foot and on horseback, making their way homeward across the plain. We rounded a corner of the low hills and suddenly we were heading back south towards the great Himalayan chain and there, unmistakable on the horizon, was Everest.
The driver insisted we drive on to the official photo spot before stopping and it was almost dark when we pulled up beside a frozen stream. We were just in time. For a few precious moments the swirling clouds were pink and orange, the green ice at our feet was suffused with warm pastel tints and in front of us the rocky pyramid of Everest glowed deep blood red. It was now several weeks since the day on Shisha Pangma when I had enjoyed the sudden thrill of recognition, seeing Everest for the very first time. For weeks it had dominated our view east from the high camps but now we were seeing it from much closer. Some of my Shisha Pangma companions would be returning in less than four months with the British Services Expedition to attempt this northern side of the mountain; and as I stared up at the North-East Ridge, the Great Couloir, Changtse, the Yellow Band, the West Ridge – all those features so redolent of mountaineering history and legend – I could not help feeling a twinge of envy.
The colour faded quickly and we drove on into the darkness. The only sound in our vehicle was the drone of the engine and everyone seemed lost in his own thoughts. The poignant magic of that beautiful evening, and now the silver moonlight on the hills, seemed to intensify my own bittersweet nostalgia. Unlike my friends who were to attempt Everest, I still had no definite plans for the following year; but the last four months in the Himalaya had brought such a wealth of experience and fulfilment, happiness and regrets, success and disappointment, new mountains, new friends and new possibilities, that I would have to return, as I had been returning for the last ten years.
A week later I was back in London. I still felt tired and wasted from our exertions on Shisha Pangma and the long days of travelling across Tibet and China. For the time being mountains could wait and any future expeditions were far from my mind that Thursday evening, when I phoned my parents. My mother knew that I needed cheering up after the disappointment on Shisha Pangma and was obviously very excited when she passed on the message to telephone someone called Anderson: ‘I should ring him soon. It’s an invitation – a very nice invitation.’
I knew immediately that it must be Everest.
My mother had few details. Robert Anderson was an American who apparently wanted me to join his Everest expedition the following year. He had not said how many people were going, what route they were trying or why he wanted me; but if I was interested I should telephone him in New Zealand. I failed to get through to him that weekend and my first Everest invitation was still a mystery the following Monday when I travelled up to Manchester for a meeting of the British Mountaineering Council international committee. Unlike some committees, this one has concrete business to do – the distribution of Sports Council grants to British expeditions. We had disposed of a few hundred pounds when the chairman asked: ‘What about this one – American-New Zealand Everest?’
‘No, we don’t give them anything,’ explained Andy, the secretary, ‘but they are eligible for an MEF grant.’
‘Oh, yes. A New Zealander …’
‘Yes, Peter Hillary’s on the list.’
I didn’t have a copy of the form and tried to conceal my excitement as I asked my neighbour to pass over his. The others had moved on to the next application as I examined the Everest details: Spring 1988. Leader’s name Robert Anderson, American, thirty, reached 28,200 feet on the West Ridge in 1985 … then five more names. I only recognised the American Ed Webster – recollections of fine photographs – and of course Peter Hillary, a well-known Himalayan climber, lumbered with the additional fame of being Sir Edmund’s son. Because he was a New Zealander he enabled the expedition to qualify for a grant, or at least official recognition, from the British Mount Everest Foundation. This Anderson, whoever he was, had only filled in the barest details, but under ‘objective’ he had put enough to give me a little stab of fear: ‘Everest, East Face.’
As the meeting progressed and we discussed the relative merits of Ecuadoran volcanoes, unknown lumps in Pakistan and famous 8,000-metre giants, I kept on glancing back surreptitiously at the Everest form. My name was not on the list, but this was clearly the expedition on which I was supposed to have been invited.
My mind was racing on the late train back to London and when I eventually got to bed at about 4 a.m. I could not sleep. Soon the dawn birds were starting their racket in the street outside as I turned restlessly in bed, frightened and excited about the great East Face – the Kangshung Face of Everest.
I soon gave up the idea of sleeping, had some breakfast and started the day’s work of wading through four months’ mail. That evening I finally got through to Robert Anderson. For some reason I expected the American 12,000 miles away to be all gushing, welcoming bonhomie, so I was a little put out by his cool response.
‘Well it’s not definite. I’m just asking around to see who’s interested.’
‘And you’re really trying the East Face?’
‘Yes, it’s the only side I could get a permit for this soon. I want to try a new route, or maybe a lightweight ascent of the 1983 route.’ He went on to explain about money. ‘It’s looking pretty good. We’ve already got promises from American Express and Rolex. I’m aiming for about $300,000. We should raise most of it but everyone might have to put in about $10,000 of their own.’
This was all sounding rather grandiose and I protested, ‘I don’t have any money!’
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure we can work something out. But look, don’t go and cancel something if you have other plans, because this isn’t definite.’
He was playing it very cool, but he did ask me at least to send him a résumé of my climbing career. He also explained why he had contacted me in the first place. The expedition was being billed as the ‘35th Anniversary Assault’, to commemorate the 1953 first ascent. Peter Hillary had been invited on the climbing team and Tenzing Norgay’s son, Norbu, had been asked to join the support team. Lord Hunt, leader of the 1953 climb, had agreed to be honorary leader of the expedition and, when Robert asked him about possible British climbers, he had kindly suggested my name.
On Wednesday I made a cheaper phone call, to John Hunt in Henley, to find out a bit more about the expedition. He was very keen that the team, which was after all commemorating a British expedition, should include at least one British climber.
‘Of course it’s entirely up to you,’ he continued, ‘but I’d be delighted if you can go.’
It was flattering to be recommended and I had always said that would find it very hard to turn down an Everest invitation, but at this stage the invitation was by no means definite and I had my doubts about the Kangshung Face, the massive eastern wall of the mountain, which had only been climbed once and which was reputed to be extremely difficult and dangerous. Our patron was also well aware of the face’s reputation and summarised Robert’s plans with a fine display of euphemistic understatement: ‘Well as far as I can gather they’re going to try a very sporting new line up to the South Col.’
The whole project might be suicidal, but it sounded exciting and it was worth at least keeping a foot in the door until I knew more about it. I sent off my résumé to Robert and a few days later a courier arrived in Islington with a huge bundle of information from New Zealand. I had to rush off to the other side of London, so I took the bundle with me, found a free seat on the underground train and settled down to read through all the papers.
Robert had done an impressive job, sending details of all the climbers, press cuttings, gear and address lists. As creative director of a successful advertising agency he had little time for fund-raising and was employing Wendy Davis, in New York, to handle public relations. She had been instructed to sell the expedition as ‘The first alpine-style ascent of Everest’s East Face without oxygen.’ Everything seemed to be competently organised and it was reassuring to see that four of the people on the team had already climbed high on Everest. I was also reassured to read Robert’s scrawled footnotes, which were much friendlier than the telephone conversation. He had even enclosed a wrist measurement form for my Rolex watch, which suggested that I would probably be going, though the actual invitation was not yet confirmed, and I still had to decide about the risks of the climb. But the lure of a new route on the world’s highest mountain was overwhelming. For a while I pushed fears and doubts aside and leapt up the left-hand lane of the escalator two steps at a time, dreaming wild exuberant dreams of Everest.
Life rushed on. While Robert was making up his mind, I had articles to write, a book to plan and lectures to give. I was rarely at home and my delightful chaotic landlords in Islington, Maggie and Victor, were pestered constantly with telephone messages, which they left on little slips of paper amidst the massed debris of the kitchen. One night at the end of November I arrived back late to find a terse message from New Zealand on one of the slips: ‘Robert Anderson wants you for Kangshung Face.’
The next morning I was abseiling down a block of flats in West Kensington. An old climbing friend, Dick Renshaw, had offered me a week’s building repair work. All the work was done from ropes; the client was saved the horrendous cost of scaffolding but was still able to pay us each £100 a day. I had no lectures that week, I was badly in debt and it was too good a chance to miss. Dick has never been noted for his loquaciousness and we talked little while we were working, but at lunch I told him about the Everest invitation – unknown team of Americans, Kangshung Face, no oxygen.
‘No oxygen. The trouble is, now you know all the things that can go wrong, don’t you!’
In 1982 Dick had suffered a stroke at 8,000 metres whilst attempting Everest’s North-East Ridge without oxygen; two weeks later his friends, Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, had died during another attempt on the ridge. In 1986, the risks of climbing high without oxygen or back-up teams had been highlighted in a ghastly series of disasters on K2. In one summer thirteen people had died on the world’s second highest mountain.
Dick also reinforced my doubts about climbing with an unknown team.
‘You’ve got to be really careful climbing with people you don’t know … and Americans … I mean they are different.’ He laughed at his own uncharacteristic intolerance but when I mentioned the name Ed Webster he reassured me. ‘Oh, Ed’s all right – a very nice bloke – he’s not a real American.’ He laughed again at his racist slip.
Cho, our foreman, chipped in: ‘Yes, I climbed with Ed too.’
A couple of days later our ebullient boss, ex-Marines mountaineer, entrepreneur and entertainer John Barry, leaned over the parapet and gossiped with me as I dangled on my rope repairing a window lintel seventy feet above the ground. ‘Everest, eh. Bloody miserable business, isn’t it, high-altitude climbing … Ed Webster? Yes, I know him. He came to Wales. He’s a good bloke. Didn’t know he did big stuff, though. I always think of him as a photographer – beautiful pictures – and a rock jock. Does all those hard things in Colorado.’
In fact Ed, as well as being a very talented rock climber, was a very competent all-round mountaineer and had already been twice to Everest. In 1985 he had reached 7,300 metres on the West Ridge Direct. That was when he had met Robert, who had spearheaded the attempt, surviving over a week above 8,000 metres and nearly reaching the summit on a notoriously long and difficult route. Jay Smith, who had led some of the hardest pitches in 1985, was also to be on the 1988 attempt. Peter Hillary had now said that he probably couldn’t come; but Jay’s friend Paul Teare was definitely booked. Paul was a Canadian living in California. He had never been as high as the others but the previous autumn, with Jay, he had put up an extremely difficult new route on a famous Nepali peak, Kantega (6,779 metres).
The group certainly looked good on paper. Admittedly, they were not international stars, but nor was I. Ed, by all accounts, was a nice person and a brilliant technician, as well as being competent on big mountains. Robert was obviously very strong at altitude and was sounding increasingly friendly. I could probably afford to take a gamble on the others.
In mid-December I accepted Robert’s invitation. This time when I spoke to him on the phone all the reserve had vanished. He was effusive about my ‘huge amount of Himalayan experience’, brushed aside financial problems, assured me that someone would pay to fly me over to New York for a January meeting and said how glad he was that I was coming to Everest.
Suddenly my life had changed. Half-formulated plans for the next summer had to be dropped and I had to warn Maggie Body, my editor, that the projected book would be late. I had only been back for a month and in another two months I would be leaving again for Tibet. As usual, the fortnight leading up to Christmas was a frenzy of jobs to finish, deadlines to meet and rushed attempts to fit in some sort of social life. I began to wonder if I could really cope, and for the first time in my life I experienced insomnia.
Everest was going to be a bigger challenge than anything I had attempted before. I was used to danger and I had learned to live with the possibility of a lonely unnatural death; but now the threat seemed more real and during those dark lonely hours before dawn I lay awake worrying. I had performed well on Shisha Pangma and although we did not make the summit I had reached a new personal altitude record of 7,700 metres. At the end of a full day’s climbing I had managed to share the strenuous task of digging an emergency snowcave, and twelve hours later, after the cold night without a sleeping bag, I had still felt capable of continuing; but I knew that climbing to the 8,848-metre summit of Everest without oxygen would be far more committing, stretching myself to the very limit of human survival, forcing the body to do things for which it was not designed. As Dick had said, I knew all the things that could go wrong, and I imagined all too clearly the consequences of thrombosis, third-degree frostbite, cerebral oedema or hypothermia. I also feared the loose rock, the massed tiers of tottering ice cliffs and the huge open snow slopes – the battery of defences which would send avalanches roaring incessantly down the Kangshung Face.
George Mallory and Guy Bullock were the first Westerners to see the Kangshung Face of Everest. It was 1921 and the British Reconnaissance Expedition was exploring all the available approaches to the mountain. The southern side lay behind the closed borders of Nepal, but the other two sides of the pyramid lay in Tibet, a country which had in 1904 been bullied into a form of alliance with the British Empire. Now for the first time the Dalai Lama had permitted a foreign expedition to attempt Everest. For several weeks Mallory and Bullock, the youngest, fittest members of the party, had been exploring the Central and West Rongbuk Glaciers, examining the West Ridge and coming quite close to the North Ridge; but they had failed so far to find a feasible route up the mountain. Mallory was determined to make a thorough reconnaissance, so now they had travelled round to the village of Kharta and hired local yak herders to escort them to the eastern side of the mountain.
Mallory and Bullock were led over the high Langma La and down into the rhododendron forests of the Kama Chu. This lovely valley was a welcome contrast to the bleak, stony wastes of the Rongbuk, and at this time of year, August, the meadows beside the Kangshung Glacier were brimming with flowers; but any hopes of finding a route up Everest from this side were quickly squashed when the clouds lifted one morning to reveal at the head of the valley an immense wall over 3,000 metres high. Unlike the windswept rocks to the north side, this wall was encrusted with the snow and ice of a giant hanging glacier. With the right snow conditions the upper slopes might just be climbable, but to approach them from the two-mile-wide base of the wall would involve either climbing up the deep gashes of avalanche swept gullies or negotiating vertical and overhanging rock buttresses, menaced by a great fringe of tottering ice towers. Mallory later summed up his impressions in the expedition book, concluding with the immortal words: ‘other men, less wise, might attempt this way if they would, but, emphatically, it was not for us.’
The team crossed a pass eastward to the upper Kharta valley, discovered another pass back over to the northern side of the mountain and found themselves on the flat snowfields of the elusive East Rongbuk Glacier; and there, right in front of them, was a possible route to the saddle on the North Ridge which they called the North Col.
That year Mallory confirmed that the North Col route was the most feasible option from Tibet, and from 1922–1938 no fewer than six British expeditions attempted it, approaching from the Rongbuk valley. The story of those attempts has been told many times and the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine close to the summit, during their brave attempt in 1924, has become as much a part of the British consciousness as the poignant story of Scott’s death in Antarctica. Cynics might be tempted to accuse the British of incompetence: why did they persist in trying to climb Everest dressed in woollen jumpers and tweed jackets? Why was every expedition hampered by the political bungling of the Everest Committee in London? And why did they never work out a rational policy on supplementary oxygen?
There were mistakes and disasters, but far more impressive than the mistakes were the successes. Given the primitive nature of their heavy, cumbersome equipment, those pre-war climbers achieved astonishing feats. None of the giant 8,000-metre peaks was climbed before the Second World War and while the British were failing on Everest, the Germans were failing on Kangchenjunga and Nanga Parbat, the French on Gasherbrum I (Hidden Peak) and the Americans on K2. The British just failed a bit higher.
Mallory and Irvine used oxygen on their final attempt in 1924 and it is conceivable that one or both of them actually reached the summit. We are unlikely ever to know. A few days before their attempt, Colonel Norton had traversed right across the North Face into the Great Couloir and had climbed out the far side to a new altitude record of about 8,600 metres – only about 250 metres below the summit. He was not using the awkward, heavy oxygen equipment and was surviving only on the tiny amount of oxygen available in the thin air. It was a desperate struggle, but he was still just managing to breathe and afterwards insisted that oxygen was not the limiting factor when he turned back. It was the steeply shelving, snow-smothered rocks on the far side of the couloir which deterred him. He probably could have just climbed them and reached the summit; but, trying to descend late in the day, utterly spent, he would have been unlikely to get back down alive.
Nine years after Norton’s brave attempt, Percy Wyn-Harris, Lawrence Wager and Frank Smythe all reached the same point without using oxygen. Subsequent expeditions in 1935, 1936 and 1938 were plagued by bad weather and failed to get so high – 8,600 metres remained man’s known altitude record. During those attempts of the ’20s and ’30s, battle lines were drawn up over the use of oxygen. Despite the brilliant achievements of Norton and others, many felt that only artificial oxygen could give the speed and strength to surmount those last gasping 250 metres with any margin of safety. George Finch, in 1922, and Peter Lloyd, in 1938, demonstrated that artificial oxygen could enable a much faster rate of progress at altitude. However, the anti-oxygen camp was quick to point out the appalling weight of the sets, their tendency to leak, the icing up of supply tubes and the infuriating misting up of goggles caused by the masks, problems which have still not been solved entirely, even with the technology available in the 1980s.
By the time post-war climbers began to consider new attempts on Everest, Tibet had been invaded by China and closed to all other foreigners. However, Nepal now opened the southern approach to Everest for the first time and in 1951 Eric Shipton’s reconnaissance expedition found a way up to the enclosed bowl of the Western Cwm, leading to the South Col. When John Hunt was called in to lead a concerted British attempt on this route in 1953, there was very strong pressure for the expedition to succeed on what would probably be the last chance for Britain to achieve the coveted first ascent. So Hunt, whose previous experience had been of small, intimate, low-budget expeditions, found himself directing a massive quasi-military operation. Oxygen equipment, for all its faults, had now improved significantly and Hunt and his team were convinced that it was crucial to success. When Hillary and Tenzing made their historic summit climb on 29 May they were breathing bottled oxygen at the rate of three litres a minute.
Hillary and Tenzing’s wonderful achievement was only made possible by the dedicated work of a large team building up a chain of camps and supplies and finally getting the summit climbers’ heavy oxygen equipment to the top camp on the South-East Ridge. This style of climbing, dependent on selfless teamwork by the majority and highly competent directing of logistics by the leader, was to remain the norm on the very highest peaks for over twenty years. On Everest everyone used oxygen and the extraordinary achievements of those pre-war pioneers seemed almost to have been forgotten, until 1978, when the Italian mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, announced that he was going to challenge the received wisdom of the Himalayan establishment, risk permanent damage to his brain cells and climb Everest without oxygen.
Three years earlier, with Peter Habeler, Messner had made an astonishing three-day ascent of the world’s eleventh highest mountain, Gasherbrum I (Hidden Peak), the first ascent of an 8,000-metre peak by a two-man team, climbing alpine-style, with no fixed ropes or cached supplies on the route. However, Everest, 800 metres higher, was a far greater physiological challenge. It was also booked up for years ahead, so the pair attached themselves to a large conventional German expedition which had the 1978 spring booking for what was now the ‘normal’ South Col route. Messner and Habeler had the support of a large, oxygen-assisted expedition as far as the South Col, but they used no oxygen themselves and on the final 850-metre climb to the summit they had to break their own trail.
They reached the summit, descended safely with brains intact, and finally vindicated Norton’s belief that the world’s highest mountain could be climbed without artificial oxygen. It was a crucial event in Everest’s history, but there was also exciting news from the other side of the mountain. China was about to open Tibet to foreign expeditions. In 1975 a Chinese expedition had reached the summit by the historic ‘Mallory Route’. Now the Tibetan side of the mountain was open to outsiders for the first time in over forty years.
From 1979 onwards, undeterred by the colossal charges demanded by the Chinese, foreign climbers flocked in increasing numbers to the northern side of the mountain, but hardly anyone thought about the other Tibetan side of the pyramid, the Kangshung Face. Mallory had dismissed it as lethal, but the only photograph in Howard-Bury’s 1921 Everest Reconnaissance book showed little detail to corroborate this judgement. An adventurous American lawyer, Andrew Harvard, was inspired at least to have a look at the great unclimbed face of Everest. In 1980 he received permission to mount a small reconnaissance. The face did indeed look formidable but climbing techniques had come a long way since 1921. If he could climb the massive rock buttress at the centre of the face he could avoid the biggest, most lethal avalanches which crashed every day down the great gullies either side.
The following year a large American team succeeded in climbing the 1,300-metre high buttress; but they failed to continue up the huge snow spur above, deterred by dangerous avalanche conditions. They returned in the autumn of 1983. Like the South-West Face in 1975, the East Face was to be beaten into submission by a no-holds-barred, no-expense-spared expedition. Thirteen climbers spent four weeks re-fixing ropes up the spectacular buttress and used a rocket launcher to rig an aerial ropeway for load hauling. This time the upper spur was in safer condition. Camps were established and stocked with food, fuel and oxygen and six climbers, assisted by artificial oxygen, reached the summit.
The mighty Kangshung Face had finally been climbed by what was probably the most difficult route on Everest. However, success had been achieved by a traditional heavy siege and it was on the popular northern side of the mountain that the most revolutionary climbs were being staged. In 1980 Messner set up camp on the East Rongbuk Glacier. His 1978 ascent from Nepal had benefited from the support of a large team, but this time when he left his advance base at 6,500 metres, below the North Col, he was completely alone and carried everything he needed to survive in one rucksack. Three days later, again without oxygen, he completed the route which had eluded Norton fifty-six years earlier and reached the summit.
The solo ascent of Everest was probably the single most outstanding event in the career of a man who revolutionised Himalayan climbing. His methods were quickly emulated and by 1988 another eighteen people had climbed Everest without oxygen; the Nepali Sherpa Ang Rita had done it four times. However, Ang Rita’s climbs have always been achieved on the back of traditional heavyweight expeditions. Far more remarkable was the achievement in 1986 of two Swiss climbers, Jean Troillet and Erhard Loretan, who surpassed Messner’s cunning and flair with an extraordinarily rapid ascent of the North Face. They left their Advance Base at 10 a.m. on 28 August, dispensing with the weight of tents and sleeping bags, climbing fast through the night and resting during the comparative warmth of the next day. They continued on the second night and reached the summit on 30 August. After a leisurely rest on top, they made an astonishing four-and-a-half-hour descent, sliding most of the way in perfect snow conditions, and were safely back down, 3,000 metres below at Advance Base, less than two days after setting out. It was a brilliant performance by acknowledged international stars.
But more encouraging to ordinary mortals was the Australian ascent of 1984. Tim McCartney-Snape’s small team was obviously very competent and experienced, but few people had heard of these Australians who had never before tackled an 8,000-metre peak. The five-man team put a new route up the Great Couloir on the North Face, without oxygen. Three climbers made the final bid for the summit. One of them had to stop fifty metres short, but his two companions reached the summit. It was clear from their accounts that they were not physiological freaks – just moderately fit mountaineers – and I was particularly encouraged to discover that McCartney-Snape had almost as skinny and flimsy a body as mine. It was his tremendous drive and determination, not an Olympian physique, that had got him to the top: that and the support of a small highly motivated team of friends, working hard together.
Lying awake during those troubled nights at the end of 1987, I tried to remind myself that I too had the motivation and determination to succeed. I also hoped that I would have the wisdom and experience and luck to survive, for on Everest few had yet applied the new methods to anything as difficult and potentially dangerous as the Kangshung Face, the secret side of Everest that had not been touched for nearly five years. I was still not sure about the team, but I had an instinctive feeling that we were going to work well together. By Christmas I was worrying less and my growing confidence was boosted on Christmas Day when Robert phoned from America, full of cheerful optimism. In ten days’ time I would meet him in New York and learn more about my companions and our climb.
Robert met me at John F. Kennedy Airport. He was tall with dark hair and blue eyes, and as we went out to find a taxi he bounced along with the long, springy strides of someone who seems not to spend much time in an office. In the taxi I commented that his casual clothes didn’t look quite right for the co-director of a successful advertising agency. He corrected me.
‘In New Zealand this is my suit. I just put on a new pair of jeans when I go to pitch for an account. And the client loves it – go in there, tell them what’s wrong with their advertising, explain our brilliant campaign, get the account … and we all make hyooge amounts of money.’
He laughed at the boisterous self-caricature and continued to tell me about the expedition in the same cheerful vein, discussing money, down clothing, a new kind of sleeping pill, high-altitude tents and so on. Jay Smith had dropped out and it now looked as though we were down to a skeletal team of four. Robert had spent a boozy New Year in Colorado with Ed Webster and Paul Teare. They were unable to come to New York, but I would meet some of the non-climbing support team.
By now we were in Manhattan and as it grew dark we drove through Central Park. It was incredibly beautiful, with snow draped on the trees and the lights coming on in the surreal towers and spires around the park. I loved my four days in New York. Exactly a year earlier I had been guiding on Mount Kenya and now again I was lucky enough to escape the dank murk of an English January. It was all new and exciting – the fantastic glass towers, shining brilliantly, far above one’s head in the cold blue sky, supersonic elevators, restaurants with menus thirty pages long, the Museum of Modern Art with whole rooms stuffed full of Matisses, making the Tate seem so provincial, and the bar where we drank cocktails the first evening, looking out from some immense height over a fairyland of glittering lights.
‘See that one like a castle on the other side of the park? Diana Ross lives there. She owns the whole of that top bit!’
Wendy Davis, our press officer, bubbled with enthusiasm, talking and laughing continually, undaunted by the endless search for money and insisting that ‘Everest 88’ was the best thing that had ever happened to her. So far, she had enlisted the financial support of American Express, Rolex, Kodak and Lindblad Travel, and she was working flat out to attract more sponsors. She kept us busy, with a ceremony for receiving our Rolex watches, sessions at the studio of our photographer, Joseph Blackburn, more photo sessions at the Explorers’ Club and the Rockefeller Center, visits to Associated Press to see our pictures being fed into satellite computers, an appearance for Robert and Norbu Tenzing on breakfast television …
Norbu handled the interview with great poise and, at only twenty-four, seemed very mature. He had been educated in America, now worked for Lindblad Travel and lived a life utterly different from that of his father, who as a young man had earned a meagre income as a high-altitude porter for the sahibs on Himalayan expeditions. Norbu was looking forward to our journey to Tibet, the land his family originally came from. Joe also was excited about the trip and its enormous photographic possibilities. He was forty-two, but the oldest person on the support team was Miklos Pinther, a delightful Hungarian emigre who is chief cartographer at the United Nations. I also met our doctor, Mimi Zieman, looking slightly incongruous amongst the sartorial Rolex dignitaries in her earthy-crunchy shaggy jersey and wild long hair, but her beautiful big eyes and irresistible smile charmed them all.
I was glad to find myself with such a likeable group of people. I was also reassured, when I finally got Robert to sit down for two hours and discuss things in detail, to see that he had everything well organised and that we were agreed on all the essential food and equipment. The following week he and Ed would pack it all in Colorado, ready for freighting to China. Robert and the support team would fly to China and on to Tibet at the end of February. Meanwhile I would meet Paul and Ed in Nepal and we would travel up by road to meet the others in Tibet, aiming to reach Base Camp in the second week of March.
Robert and I also seemed to agree on tactics. With only four people, everything would have to be kept as simple as possible. Nevertheless we needed a secure, comfortable Base Camp with plenty of good, varied food. On our summit bid we would have to travel very light and oxygen would be out of the question. But the lower part of the Kangshung Face was going to test us with some very steep technical climbing, where we would have to ferry heavy equipment. Ed had selected enough gear to enable us, if necessary, to fix over 2,000 metres of rope on this lower part. As for Robert’s route, he showed me the photo.
‘You see there’s a definite buttress there, to the left of the 1983 route. I’m not sure about this approach up here – the Witches’ Cauldron, Paul calls it.’
‘I don’t like the look of this lot above it, up here.’
‘No.’
‘But I suppose once we actually get on the buttress we should be protected. Some steep climbing though!’
‘Yes, that’s for Ed, the big wall specialist. That’s why I think we’ve got such a good team. Ed’s a really good technical climber; you’ve got a lot of Himalayan experience; Paul’s also strong on mixed and he’s an excellent ice climber; and me – well, I’ve got really long legs for all that wading higher up.’
It sounded promising. Robert was shrewd and had chosen a route which really might be feasible for our small team: hardest climbing low down, safeguarded with fixed ropes, easier climbing above, travelling light to the South Col, then the original 1953 route from there to the summit. Of course I still had my doubts, particularly about the monstrous ice cliffs on the flanking wall of Lhotse – would our buttress be engulfed in the inevitable avalanches or would their force be contained in that depression on the left? The only way to find out was to go and have a look. The whole trip could be a total fiasco, but I had an instinctive feeling, reinforced by my four days in New York, that somehow, we were going to find a safe route and climb it successfully.
I arrived back in London on 9 January. On 12 February I was due to leave for Bombay to give four lectures at the Himalayan Club Diamond Jubilee and I would be going straight on to Everest. So now I had just one month to get ready. There was little time for sleep during that month. I had to prepare personal equipment, have injections, get visas, book flights, do a lecture tour in Ireland, do more lectures in England, organise a London press conference for Everest, write my monthly magazine column, write stalling letters to despairing bank managers, accountants and tax inspectors, and visit doctors to be reassured that the nagging pain in my chest was quite insignificant and largely a figment of my hypersensitive imagination.
Somehow, I had to make time to go and say goodbye to my parents in Bath, meet my newly born nephew in Oxford, say goodbye to other brothers and sisters and enjoy a little precious time with my friend Rosie, whom I had seen so rarely during my brief three months back in England.
The day of departure came. It was a morning flight and we had to get up horribly early. Rosie drove me through the dark empty streets of London and out to the airport. I was fully committed to the expedition and looking forward to a great adventure; but at this stage I also felt tired, unfit and aware that this climb was potentially more dangerous than any I had attempted before.
We checked in the baggage and all too soon it was time for me to go through passport control. I left with a hurried kiss and a lump in my throat. Before disappearing through the barrier I turned around to smile bravely and wave cheerfully, wondering if I would be coming back.