Hanging on: A Life Inside British Climbing's Golden Age

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a b Fanshawe, Andy; Venables, Stephen (1995). Himalaya Alpine-Style. Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-64931-3. Tasker, Joe (1977). "Changabang, West Wall". American Alpine Journal. New York, New York, US: American Alpine Club. 21 (51): 248–249.

Two years later Scott was proposing a lightweight expedition to The Ogre in the Karakoram that was to include Bonington (as a team member) and Haston. While it was being planned, news came through that Haston had been killed in an avalanche while skiing in the Alps. The expedition went ahead and in fact Scott and Bonington became the first people to reach the summit. [81] Estcourt was killed on the 1978 Bonington-led K2 West Ridge expedition. [82] Boardman died together with Joe Tasker on Bonington's 1982 Everest Northeast Ridge expedition. [83] Oh no, finding a partner at that time was constant worry and a lot of my climbing ambitions were quite frustrated by it. But not many people had strong climbing relationships, people talk about Brown and Whillans when in fact they disliked each other rather, and the same with Pete Crew and Baz Ingle. They did a lot of new routes together but didn’t get on very well; it was just a relationship of convenience. Now I climb with Rab (Carrington) and it’s a climbing relationship of love really! Curious how hard it can sometimes be to separate the influence of two climbers – Bancroft/Allen, Brown/Whillans, Moon/Moffatt. In 1976 they were members of a joint British-Nepalese army expedition led by Lt Col Tony Streather (who had reached the summit of Kangchenjunga in 1955 the day after Joe Brown and George Band made the first ascent). As was the practice at the time, it was another siege-style expedition. Like Scott and Haston the previous year, Stokes and Lane proved to be the expedition’s strongest climbers and were nominated to form the first summit party. A lesson learned from the 1973 Japanese expedition (and the 1952 Swiss expedition) was that any attempt should be as early as possible after the monsoon was over and this meant the trek from Kathmandu to Base Camp had to be during the monsoon. Another attempt using the "Whillans Chimney" above Camp 6 would have meant establishing a seventh camp and so a route to the left of the Great Central Gully would be taken on the same line that the earliest Japanese climbers had tried. Camp 6 would be established on the upper snowfield and a long traverse would be taken to the Southeast Ridge. To complete the traverse, climb the ridge, and return would be a very long day – a bivouac on the return might well be necessary. To get into a position to do this a large support team would need to make a rapid ascent up the central gully so very careful logistical planning would be necessary. [18] Supplementary oxygen would be used above Camp 4 for climbers and Camp 5 for sherpas and 4,000 metres (13,000ft) of fixed rope would be used up the face (fixed rope in the Icefall and climbing rope would be additional). [19]They stayed a while at the summit and by the time they started descending darkness and stormy weather soon arrived. Descending the gully seemed too dangerous and so they enlarged the snow cave and settled in for a frigid night at 8,760 metres. Warmer clothes had been left behind to save weight and their oxygen was spent. Their fuel ran out at about midnight. It is hard to imagine what a long and hellish night that was. Granowski, Damian (11 April 2014). "Climbing & Mountaineering Dictionary". winterclimb.com. Archived from the original on 31 July 2016 . Retrieved 3 March 2023. As I said previously, we never planned ahead, so I couldn't be disappointed. In recent years, I have done a lot more sport climbing in the UK, a genre that Martin is not so keen on. I've tended to pursue that midweek when I am not with Martin. Burke was also the main expedition cameraman, and he was lucid enough to ask the two descending climbers to walk past him a couple of times while he filmed them. He asked them to return to the summit with him so that he could film them there. But when Boardman accepted, he changed his mind and asked them to wait for him at the South Summit. Then they parted ways.

Ray Jardine (for inventing the Friend and thus making a whole swathe of routes, especially on grit, safe for the masses)They left the summit at 1.40. It had been a straightforward ascent, and although it was windy and grey, they had plenty of time. There seemed no reason why they shouldn’t be able to return to camp without incident.

Bonington's climbing career began when he was still in his teens and he was soon achieving technically difficult ascents in the Alps with several first ascents and, in 1962, the first ascent by a Briton of the Eiger's Nordwand. He made first ascents of Annapurna II (1960) and Nuptse (1962). His role as climbing photo-journalist on the "Eiger direttissima" in 1966 brought attracted attention and he was encouraged to mount his own expedition. [5] Wilson, Ken (26 September 1975). "Everest beaten – the hard way". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 September 2014. I think we are getting a bit old for having plans for the future. Over the years, we have learned not to make plans for the next day. Invariably, the weather is bad the next day and you have wasted all that time making plans. On September 24th 1975, after 5 previous attempts by other teams, a British team successfully ascended the Southwest Face of Mount Everest. It is hard to think that this incredible ascent happened 45 years ago. An ascent that opened up a new chapter in Himalayan mountaineering. John Porter: Bandaka and Changabang. American Alpine Journal 1979, pp.29–35 (pdf file, see especially p.32, and Plate 16, K. Żurek in headwall). Html version available: americanalpineclub.org. Both retrieved 20 October 2017.

Boardman and Pertemba waited on the South Summit for an hour and a half as ‘all the winds of Asia’ (in the poetic words of Boardman) threatened to blow them off the ridge. When Pertemba said he could no longer feel his fingers and toes, they decided it was time to descend for their own safety. Seizing an opportunity for an Everest expedition post-monsoon in 1972, Bonington originally planned a lightweight expedition by the normal route but the failure of a European pre-monsoon Southwest Face expedition earlier in that year encouraged him to attempt the Southwest Face instead. In very poor weather Bonington's expedition failed to reach the summit but the team gained a great deal of experience, in particular discovering that the line they had chosen above Camp 6 was not as favourable as they had anticipated. [7]

Bonington, Chris (1986). The Everest Years: a climber's life. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0340366907. The name Footless Crow was a brilliant piece of imagination from Livesey who claimed that as there was almost nowhere on the route where he could rest he had to hop about like a footless crow.

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CLIMB: The glorious first of August at Gogarth has passed: all bird restrictions have now been lifted