White Limbo: The Classic Story Of The First Australian Climb Of Everest

by Hall, Lincoln

  Other difficult climbs have been made on the mountain’s southern flanks. The West Ridge was climbed direct by Yugoslavs in 1979 and the South Pillar in 1980 by a Polish expedition. Although hard climbs, these were consolidations of technique rather than developments in style. The most spectacular breakthrough came in 1978 when Reinhold Messner and Peter Haebler (members of an Austrian expedition) climbed Everest without the use of artificial oxygen—a feat that many had thought impossible despite the oxygenless climbs of Norton, Wager, Wyn Harris and Smythe to within four hundred metres of the summit.

  Oxygenless ascents opened new dimensions in terms of lightweight expeditions. Messner took this to the ultimate in 1980 when he climbed Everest alone in a remarkable display of confidence and daring. His route of ascent was a variation on the North-East Ridge. Earlier that year the Chinese authorities opened their borders to foreign mountaineering expeditions. The first foreign expedition to climb Everest from Tibet was a huge Japanese team. They repeated the British/Chinese route on the North-East Ridge and climbed the North Face for the first time, but not without loss of life. The vast expanse of rock and ice that forms the North Face is a forbidding prospect. The most obvious line of weakness—a huge couloir (gully)—was the route chosen by the Japanese. At 8000 metres their line joined the route taken by the American West Ridge team in 1963. Couloirs are natural channels for avalanches and it was an avalanche that killed Akira Ube high on the mountain.

  The tactic of alpine-style expeditions (as lightweight teams are called) is to climb up and down the mountain in one committed push. For the short time the climbers are making their ascent the dangers are great. There is no row of secure camps down the climb, and there are no others to help if luck turns against them. For all that, the duration of the climb is much shorter so the chances of being involved in a big avalanche or trapped by a severe storm are much smaller.

  Since the first ascent in 1953 it has been large expeditions which have opened the frontiers. The most recent avenue of exploration is winter climbing. In 1980 a large Polish team made the first winter ascent of Everest via the South Col route. The weather in winter can be stable for long periods but above 7500 metres the fierce winter winds seldom cease blowing. The long fine spells are balanced by long storms, even more severe at this time of year.

  In terms of objectives, alpine-style climbs have tried to emulate what larger teams have shown to be possible. A small British team had recently failed in an attempt to climb the West Ridge during winter, and then in 1982 four of Britain’s most talented high-altitude climbers mounted an expedition to the long unclimbed North-East Ridge. Their attempt to climb a new route without oxygen ended in disaster. The disappearance of Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker high on the mountain was a tragic echo of Mallory and Irvine’s death almost sixty years before.

  The trend in the future will be the repeat of existing routes by small teams, at first during the normal seasons then perhaps in winter. With five routes and several variations climbed, Everest’s problems are known quantities, but there are still some new routes to be found. Hopefully the new ground will be trodden by small expeditions as it is for them that the challenge of mountaineering still exists. Small teams of superbly fit climbers can use all the knowledge gained by their predecessors to test themselves at the limits of the possible. Only at that level does mountaineering become more than a sport. For a while at least, competition between egos is swallowed by circumstances which redefine all of one’s values. It is sad that in lectures, books and interviews, this truth cannot be adequately expressed. One begins to believe that perhaps, after all, the climbs have been made for reasons which other people seem to expect and understand. It is not a thirst for fame, nor the fires of competition which drive me to climb. In the dangerous world of mountaineering such petty desires are tempered by the need to survive.

  A fanatical ambition to climb Mt Everest was not the common need which brought our team together. None of us viewed mountaineering with quite that single-mindedness. We climbed mountains which rewarded us with their uncomplicated demands and their beauty. Such climbs sustained our faith in the supremacy of nature over the intrigue and obsession-ridden world of humans. Yet sometimes we needed to reinforce our faith in ourselves by attempting a mountain that drew out the last of our reserves. To climb Mt Everest with a small, lightly equipped team, unencumbered and unassisted by oxygen apparatus, had always seemed a project beyond our league. Until, riding high on two successful climbs in 1981, Tim Macartney-Snape and I, encouraged by Geof Bartram, felt that Everest was within our grasp—perhaps. Without the “perhaps” the attraction of the summit lost its gleam. It was the challenge that mattered; the uncertainty which is the essence of adventure. For us Everest would offer both, as well as the journey to our limits which we craved. When the Chinese Mountaineering Association casually agreed to our idea of an Australian expedition to the mountain through Tibet, we were jolted from hesitancy and conjecture into accepting Everest’s perpetual, uncompromising invitation.

  Only in the late seventies did Australian climbers venture beyond the friendly cliffs of home and the accessible alps of New Zealand and Europe to the ultimate mountains of the Himalaya. Those mountains treat novices rudely. Nothing but experience can give an understanding of the debilitating effects of high altitude. Mt Everest in particular requires an apprenticeship on lesser Himalayan peaks. In 1981 few Australians had served that apprenticeship. Tim Macartney-Snape and I headed the list with three successful Himalayan climbing trips behind us. We did not consider it presumptuous that we should organise Australia’s first attempt to climb Mt Everest. Geof Bartram’s toughness and mountain sense was demonstrated to us in China in 1981 and confirmed in India in 1982. His position as the third inaugural member was logical. At that time Geof’s only Himalayan climbing venture had ended in tragedy when Stafford Morse, Nick Reeves and Richard Schmidt were killed on Annapurna III in 1980. His high-altitude experience came from the many 6000-metre peaks he had climbed in South America, where he worked as a mountain guide.

  Good teamwork is essential for a successful Himalayan climb, especially when only a few climbers are involved. Unlike football or other sports where the teamwork must operate for an hour or two, a mountaineering expedition demands that everyone work together happily for two or three months without respite. Every day is spent living in each other’s footsteps. There is no room for the brilliant technician whose personality happens to be intolerable. Since we wished to climb Everest with a small team we needed only two or three others to complete our group. The sensible approach was to ask people we had climbed with before and found reliable and compatible. Andy Henderson met these credentials. He had climbed to the summit of Ama Dablam in Nepal with Tim and me in 1981, and joined with Tim, Geof and me in making the first ascent of the East Face of Anyemaqen in China the same year.

  A characteristic of successful alpine climbers is their drive to achieve. Often that is a destructive energy on expeditions where much time is spent on the approach, in the technically boring task of ferrying loads between camps, and in sitting in tents waiting for bad weather to clear. The achievements of Greg Mortimer in mountain ranges around the world were impossible to ignore in the selection of an Australian team. Luckily, Greg’s determination to succeed on the mountain blended with an exceptionally easy-going nature. Greg completed our team of five.

  The bond between us was the compulsion to climb mountains. Our compatibility did not necessarily mean any likeness in character. Our differences in attitude and opinion had given us much to talk about during the long mountain nights and lazy days at base camps.

  Geof in particular was open about his views. He had packed a great deal into his thirty-three years but his focus had always been on life in the outdoors. He had an unsuppressible urge to explore the world, and probably more than any of us his interest was to see what was at the top or over the other side, rather than to discover where his personal limits lay. He had a quiet but unassailable confidence
in himself. That did not prevent him from continually questioning what he should be doing with his life and how best to respect the privilege of being born into a wealthy culture. While he asked those questions he travelled, mostly in the poor countries of South America, India and Nepal. The poverty and injustice he encountered only fuelled the guilt he felt at being free to choose how to spend his life. The paradox came when he found examples of people living full, rewarding lives within inescapable social confines and with little more than the necessities of existence.

  Though it was not a conscious decision, Geof escaped the insoluble problems of the world by climbing. Survival in a mountain environment is such a full-time occupation that other concerns are forgotten or overwhelmed by nature. He removed any hint of self-indulgence from mountaineering by making it his profession. His responsibility was to the people he was leading to the top of mountains. At the same time he created employment for local guides, cooks and porters. Working as a mountain guide did not obscure the rewards of being amongst the mountains but simply made those pleasures a lesser priority.

  In the five years that I had known Geof he had not spent more than two weeks a year in his homeland. Before that he had lived in many different places in Australia doing all sorts of work. He was undeniably fond of his country but he could not accept its insularity and self-absorption. Geof’s appearance, while in no way outlandish, said much about his separation from our culture. Free from the indoctrination of advertising his dress depended on comfort and practicality. He could not identify with those whose pleasure came from the image or impact they created. Geof’s blond hair was worn long in the style of the early seventies, not in defiance of fashion but because of total unconcern with it.

  Andy was a radically different character. Earrings, dyed hair and a hot pink bicycle with matching socks were his acknowledgements of current fashion. He lived the inner city life rather than simply tolerating it as I did. His tastes and interests were cosmopolitan, restoring a reasonable balance to the wilderness-and nature-oriented view of the rest of us. Somehow he was able to absorb and assign worth to everything that happened around him. His mind continually needed to feed on ideas, opinions and fantasies, both his own and other people’s. As a consequence he was a compulsive reader, devouring everything from newspapers to Clauswitz on war to science-fiction westerns.

  Andy often joked disparagingly about himself, a habit which invited us to make him the butt of our jokes as well. His sharp, well-disciplined mind coped easily with our jibes. When in Sydney he relaxed by the traditional methods of drinking and smoking. Hardly suitable training for climbing I would tell him, yet in the mountains he was never more than a few minutes behind. He could be stimulated by a classical concert as well as by a smoke-and punk-filled dance hall. On weekends he would often leave the pace of the city behind and delight in the peace of the bush below the steep sandstone cliffs upon which he climbed. Andy was able to enjoy almost any situation if he shared it with a companion. Close friendships were important to him. The dangers and worries of climbing a big mountain bind the participants together with a cement of shared experience incommunicable to others. It was that which made Andy addicted to climbing. His determination to push on in the face of exhaustion demonstrated the strength of his will to survive. Some of that strength came from knowing that his companions were struggling equally.

  My sister, a good friend of Andy’s, summed up accurately: “It’s not that he likes going on these expeditions with you. It’s more that he doesn’t like being left out.’ His sense of humour and good nature had become an indispensable part of our recent Himalayan climbs. There was no question of climbing Mt Everest without him.

  During my first visit to New Zealand in 1974 I had spent time climbing with Greg. Following him up mountains had left me impressed and scared, and determined to restrict myself to the safe warm granite of my home cliffs. That resolve was made too late, for mountaineering had already claimed my soul. The challenges were fiercer and more sustained in the mountains than on small cliffs and the rewards were correspondingly greater. Seven years later I felt more at home in the mountains than anywhere else. Now, perhaps, I would be able to keep up with Greg.

  One’s first impressions of Greg were of a man who was content with his lot. His attitude seemed to say that everything would work out well in the end. It was a misleading impression since Greg’s life had been full and rewarding, not by chance, but because he had made it so. He applied himself wholeheartedly to every scheme he considered worthy, whether it was his climbing, his marriage or building a house on the land he and his wife had bought near Christchurch in New Zealand. Greg was a geologist by profession. He was apologetic about his delight in the patterns and formations of rocks as if he realised we thought his enthusiasm childish. After all, cliffs are for climbing not for looking at. When it came to climbing rock he was efficient. The gentleness of his everyday manner was balanced by the aggressive determination of his climbing. This aggression was directed at himself, allowing no space for fear or hesitation to interfere with his judgment. That approach made him a very strong mountaineer indeed.

  Greg had climbed throughout the world and had made difficult ascents in many countries. At the time we invited him to join the Everest team his experience of high altitude was limited to several difficult peaks in the Peruvian Andes. In every other sphere of mountaineering he was more experienced than any of us. Despite that, in discussions of tactics away from the mountain, he offered his opinions only when invited, as if he were storing his ability to make instant decisions during the climb. His anger flared infrequently. Instead he would resolve problems by himself in the hope of avoiding confrontation—not that he was afraid of facing it, just that anger left a dark smear on his day.

  When a joke was played on him he reacted with almost mock annoyance because he could always see the joker’s side of the prank. That attitude of unselfish appreciation flowed into everything in his life as he determinedly did what he thought should be done.

  It was Tim whom I knew best. We had met at university where, rather than studying, our time was spent ski-touring and rockclimbing. Tim’s determination and his ability to survive comfortably in the mountains combined well with my fairly narrow field of expertise in technical climbing. During our first season in New Zealand we managed to climb some difficult mountains.

  Our youthful zeal almost caused our doom during our first Himalayan climb. After a night in the open without sleeping bags at almost 7000 metres a blizzard made our return from the summit into a fight for our lives. Utter exhaustion was compounded in my case by severe frostbite. Having come so close to death together Tim and I shared a fresh appreciation of life, and that appreciation has evolved through our subsequent climbs with their incidental ordeals. Between us developed a real but unspoken intimacy, unencumbered by the analyses, jealousies and obligations common to relationships with a sexual basis.

  Tim’s lanky build and quiet manner belied his physical and mental stamina. Projects of his were never half-hearted affairs, though sometimes rushed as he tried to achieve more than time allowed. Things were done today instead of tomorrow to leave room for whatever tomorrow would present. If a stove needed maintenance or a candle-holder improvised it would be Tim who fiddled away by torchlight. He had definite ideas on everything and a stubbornness for what he felt to be right. Decision making on our expeditions was always a process of talking until we agreed upon the best alternative. Often it was Tim’s plans we carried out because his practical mind was quick to solve the problems we faced.

  For Tim part of the attraction of high mountains was their continual ability to demand more energy than one’s body and mind could supply. No other sphere of activity offered that to him. Accordingly, it was when the mountains drew the utmost from us that he felt satisfied. The pleasure was not one of masochism or displaying bravery but of feeling his body and mind working efficiently when his life depended upon it. Tim always seemed to know where he was in terms of both
self-confidence and geography. His skill in finding the best route in a storm or at night was little less than magical.

  Away from the mountains the fierceness of his determination remained hidden behind his politeness and modesty. Self-control and self-reliance were the foundations of his self-respect. As a consequence he kept his ambitions, needs and emotions to himself. Though he had many friends it was difficult for anyone to know him well because the different facets of his life existed independently of each other. Only within himself did they come together.

  Rockclimbing had been part of my life since I was fifteen. Its major impact at that impressionable age was that it gave my life a purpose beyond school. Climbing asked much more of me than anything I had done before. Tackling and overcoming situations where fear was a big component boosted my self-confidence. Climbing became a prop for my ego, an escape from everyday worries, and gave me glimpses of a world where the adventure lasted more than an afternoon or a weekend. The exploration of that world grew to be my aim in life.

  Gradually, climbing became essential to my existence. Everything else seemed facile or shallow by comparison. Other satisfactions were short-lived and hollow. I had become a fanatic. I realise now that there is nothing in climbing that is inherent to it alone. What is important is the arena of constant challenge. Others find that challenge in their work or in becoming rich. The returns are the same but in climbing the triumphs are more obviously spectacular, and there is the added spice of danger.

  It was not until I visited India in 1978 for my first Himalayan climb that the self-indulgence of my activity occurred to me. The challenge for so many people in the world is simply to survive. There is no need for Indians to invent frightening games in order to prove themselves to themselves. India made me realise the narrowness of my outlook. I began to share my life with other interests. Climbing has remained my avenue of experience, but these days I spend more time looking around me. No longer is my head down in a beeline for the summit.