Edmund Hillary--A Biography

by Michael Gill

  The accident happened when Harry, Ed, Mick Sullivan and Ruth Adams were close to the snow summit of La Perouse. Mick was protecting Ruth with a shoulder belay when she slipped on steep snow. Holding such a slip was routine for a guide, but this time the rope snapped and Ruth was gathering speed down a steepening slope. Just short of a fatal plunge over some cliffs, she was brought up short by a rock. Ed and Harry found her bloodied and unconscious and perhaps with spinal injuries. Helicopter rescues were unavailable in those times; instead they divided between them the work of calling in a rescue team: Ed to stay with Ruth; Mick to descend to the hut for bivouac equipment, warm clothes and food; Harry to run to The Hermitage to summon a rescue team of top climbers from Christchurch. Over the next week, they dragged, lowered and carried Ruth’s stretcher down icefall, snow, rock, tussock, alpine scrub, thick forest and finally the bluffs of a river gorge to the West Coast. Ruth’s father, who ran a cake-making business, air-dropped in 10 kilograms of his best fruit cake. She made a complete recovery. Ed had climbed another memorable mountain, participated in a vital rescue, and met some top climbers, among them Earle Riddiford who was to play such an important role in the next chapter of his life.

  Harry’s personal life had its ups and downs. His first marriage, to Cath Guise, a cook at Fox Hotel, was interrupted by war service in New Caledonia and the Solomons. Graham Langton comments, ‘He was always attracted to women’,7 a weakness, or a strength, that he shared with Eric Shipton. Harry and Cath’s divorce in 1948 was followed a year later by a lasting marriage to Jeanne Cammock with whom he had three children.

  Harry Ayres’s clients found him great company in a mountain hut or on a climb, but down in civilisation he was at times uncommunicative and moody. His addiction to smoking was shared by many in a generation unaware of lung cancer. An idiosyncratic belief, surprising in our times when even the most sessile person drinks more than two litres of water a day, was his opposition to drinking water on a climb. Heavily sweetened tea or coffee was acceptable, but Harry said he had known only one or two people who could steadily drink water on a climb without being adversely affected. ‘There are many people who founder, like horses, with drinking …’ In later years he trained himself to do without water altogether until a climb was over.8

  In the lead-up to the 1953 attempt on Everest, Ed pushed hard for Harry to be an expedition member, but guides were frowned on by the British Everest Committee and they already had two New Zealanders. How successful might Harry have been on Everest? Performance at high altitude is always an individual variable, but if he’d proved to be a good acclimatiser he would have been invaluable in the icefall, on the Lhotse Face and perhaps above the South Col. On one thing he would have had to compromise – he would have had to drink as much water as he could manage.

  In 1956–58 Harry took a break from guiding to join Ed’s New Zealand Antarctic party but as a dog-handler rather than with the South Pole tractor party. On his return he was appointed Chief Ranger of the newly formed Mount Cook National Park. Administration was not something he enjoyed, and in 1961 he resigned to run a motor camp at Hanmer. In 1981 he was awarded an OBE for Services to Mountaineering. But in 1987, at the age of 75, caught by a fit of moroseness and advancing years, he took his own life. Melancholia is a common thread in the make-up of mountaineers.

  – CHAPTER 7 –

  The New Zealand Garhwal expedition and the Shipton cable

  If pressed to select someone for the title of Ed’s best friend it would have to be George Lowe. Ed said, ‘We just seemed to click and became friends almost immediately. George was tall and strong and very fit, and I admired his very effective mountaineering ability. But most of all I enjoyed his sense of humour – I don’t think I ever laughed harder or longer than when I was with George in a mountain hut.’1 George described their first meeting in the mountain bus that travels from The Hermitage up to the Tasman Glacier:

  One day I noticed a long-limbed, keen-faced young man sitting alone on the rear seat. Dressed in old tweed trousers with puttees around the ankles, a tartan shirt and a sweat rag circling his neck, all topped by a battered brown ski cap, he carried an ice-axe and a small rucksack, and his green eyes roved with a curious excitement over the scenery. I joined him at the back of the bus, and we talked easily about the mountains. He had been a wartime navigator, was four years my senior, and was now working for his father who kept a bee farm in Auckland.

  ‘My father runs a fruit farm,’ I told him, ‘with beekeeping as a sideline. As a matter of fact we get our queen bees from a chap in Auckland – someone called Hillary.’

  ‘That’s us,’ said the young man. ‘My name’s Ed Hillary.’

  The bus jolted to a stop. We exchanged addresses and shook hands.

  ‘Let’s do a climb together, maybe next year,’ he said.2

  Like Ed, George came from the North Island, but from agricultural Hastings where his father owned an orchard. His future was directed away from manual work when at the age of nine he was knocked down the steps of the front veranda and fractured his left elbow, an awkward break which, despite seven attempts by the local GP to re-set it (on the kitchen table), left him with an arm which lacked its last 45 degrees of extension. George’s father sought to strengthen the arm by having him milk the house cow each morning, but when he became eligible for war service nine years later he was declared unfit despite his elbow making him a crack shot. Instead he was manpowered into teacher training in Wellington.3 On returning to Hastings he joined the Heretaunga Tramping Club as an outlet for his exuberant energy. He became club captain and through his breezy, well-written trip accounts was able to develop his writing and photographic skills. In 1945 he had his first encounter with mountains when he found a job as ‘general hand’ and later ‘junior guide’ for the busy months of January and February at The Hermitage. Guiding duties began with cleaning hotel windows, shelling peas on Christmas Eve, taking parties of tourists on to the Tasman Glacier, and carrying loads of blankets, kerosene and food to the mountain huts. But better things were to come when his employers realised that George had more to offer than as kitchen-hand and load-carrier. He was athletic, and unimpaired by his bent elbow. Easy climbs on Sebastopol and the Sealy Range led on to longer and more exacting climbs on the central ice peaks as a second guide, sometimes with Harry Ayres himself.

  Ed and George met again in January 1950 when storm-bound for five days in Haast Hut which, at 7000ft, is the take-off point for many routes on Cook and the other central peaks. They played draughts using pieces carved from parsnips and carrots but they also talked about the Himalayas whose attractions had entered the alpine consciousness even in faraway New Zealand. For a start, Nepal had in 1949 opened its borders, making a host of big mountains available for the first time. Not one of the 26,000ft peaks had been climbed, though five months later on 3 June 1950 a strong French expedition created a sensation with their ascent of Annapurna. Maurice Herzog’s account of the climb lost nothing in the telling and at around 15 million copies is still the all-time bestselling mountain book. Awaiting their first ascents, with fame of the mountaineering variety for their climbers, were Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu – the list went on. It was something to dream about.

  An invitation while climbing in the European Alps

  The Hillary family was not in the habit of international travel, but in 1949 Gertrude and Percy splashed out on a boat ticket to England for the wedding of their daughter June to Norwich doctor Jimmy Carlile. They bought a car and travelled around England, but by 1950, when Gertrude had plans for the Continent, Percy had lost interest. Gertrude sent an SOS to Rex and Ed – if Rex would look after the bees, Ed could travel by boat to England and be their driver around Europe in May and June.

  London made an indelible impression. Ed wrote:

  I made the usual pilgrimage to Westminster Abbey … The royal tombs made history come alive for me and so did a hundred other relics of a mighty past. As a citizen of a new countr
y with little history I felt I was being accepted back into the ancestral fold – it gave me an astonishingly warm feeling. In those days, like most of my fellow citizens, I was British first and a New Zealander second …4

  In Europe, he could hardly visit the Alps, the birthplace of mountaineering, without attempting some peaks, and he joined up with two fellow New Zealand climbers. The weather was fine. In Austria and Switzerland they luxuriated in comfortable huts and felt a swashbuckling superiority to the soft, guided clientele they met. They climbed a lot of peaks which they found ‘pretty easy’ while admitting these were routes described by the guide book as ‘la plus facile’…5

  But the most exciting event of the European trip was still to come. They had taken the train which climbs in a tunnel inside the bowels of the Eiger and Jungfrau to reach the highest railway station in Switzerland. Here at the Jungfraujoch post office, at 11,350ft, Ed received a letter from George Lowe. It outlined an expedition to the Himalayas being organised by Christchurch climber Earle Riddiford. George had been invited, but there was still a vacancy in the four-man party; George had suggested that Ed Hillary should be asked to join them. Percy encouraged him to accept. Rex would look after the bees. Ed had a ticket to the Himalayas.

  Earle Riddiford

  Earle was a member of an extended family which had played a distinguished role in the history of Wellington. Daniel Riddiford had arrived in the new colony in 1840 and for over a century family members were lawyers, politicians, and landholders in the fertile Wairarapa Valley. They were a large clan, however, and Earle’s father was not wealthy when he died in a farm accident four months before Earle was born in 1921. His widow Helen was left with little money, and bringing up three children was a struggle, though Dan, a wealthy member of the extended family, helped from time to time and paid for Earle’s private education at Wanganui Collegiate between 1935 and 1938. As had happened to Ed Hillary a few years earlier, it was on a school trip to Mt Ruapehu that Earle Riddiford fell in love with mountains.6 In 1937, when Helen re-married, they moved to Christchurch.

  Earle worked in army intelligence in the Pacific during the war, but by 1945 he was back in Christchurch studying law and climbing mountains. It was mountaineering of a particular sort. Beyond the gold-bearing beaches and river beds of the West Coast, a complex network of icefalls and broken mountain ridges reaches up to the Main Divide. For a post-war generation of Christchurch mountaineers nothing could be more exciting than seeking out virgin peaks and ridges, and exploring these inaccessible gorges, névés and glaciers. They gave them names like The Garden of Eden, though a non-believer arriving during a nor’west storm would have understood why Adam and Eve were happy to take the apple and get out. Earle loved searching out these places and planning the expeditions.

  It was an easy leap of the imagination from Westland to the Himalayas. Why not a New Zealand expedition? Kangchenjunga, perhaps? Even Everest? By 1950, Earle was planning a Himalayan expedition for 1951 with three engineering friends as founding members: Norm Hardie, Bill Beaven and Jim McFarlane. Who else could they invite? Harry Ayres was an early choice. Hardie proposed George Lowe after talking to him at a Federated Mountain Clubs meeting, and George suggested a strong, lean beekeeper from Auckland by the name of Ed Hillary. He hadn’t actually climbed with Ed, but assured Riddiford that Ed ‘is as good as you will get in ability and temperament’.7

  Then Hardie remembered he’d met Ed twice in 1948, on the La Perouse rescue and later that winter when the bees were asleep and Ed was doing casual work on the Lake Pūkaki hydro-electric project. Norm Hardie was Ed’s supervisor and described him as ‘the easiest of blokes to get along with and possessed plenty of general ruggedness’.8 A last addition was Ed Cotter, who had been asked by Earle to give a talk to the NZ Alpine Club in Christchurch and immediately afterwards was invited to join the expedition.

  At its peak the party had eight members hoping to attempt Kangchenjunga, but then attrition set in. The engineers Hardie, Beaven and McFarlane were the first to leave, reluctantly giving preference to their professional careers. Harry Ayres lacked cash, and soon there were only four left – Riddiford, Lowe, Hillary and Cotter – and their objectives had shrunk to two much smaller peaks in Garhwal, an area of the Indian Himalayas just west of Nepal. They could hardly know it at the time, but these four had bought tickets in a lottery whose winner would become the most famous climber on Earth. Ed Cotter seemed to care least but the other three were fiercely ambitious. Hillary had dreamt since childhood of some famous achievement. George Lowe seemed to be the most modest of men but beneath his witty, easy-going exterior and studied understatement was a steely desire for recognition. Riddiford was perhaps the most ambitious of them all, though physically the least robust. He was the person who was driving the enterprise, gathering equipment, raising funds, obtaining permits, engaging Sherpas through the Himalayan Club in India, researching which peak in which area was most suited to their abilities and ambitions. Mountaineering was the way all four of them expressed their sense of being different, their sense of importance.

  When he wrote about the Garhwal expedition, Ed noted Ed Cotter’s whimsical humour, George’s boisterous competence and Earle’s cool intellect.9 He acknowledged Earle’s tenacity and other abilities too, but at a personal level he had more in common with George Lowe. In Garhwal Ed and George grew into a climbing team but their friendship was more than that. They were both good storytellers, with George a natural comedian. They fed each other lines and laughed together. Both were competitive but somehow they never seemed to threaten each other. And in the end it was always George who deferred to Ed. Earle was quieter and more cerebral. He had the confidence arising from a large family of some distinction. Having a university degree, he was more at home with his Christchurch group of climbing engineers than he was with the pair that was Ed and George.

  The Maximilian Ridge

  Before leaving for Garhwal, Earle organised a dress rehearsal on the Maximilian Ridge of Elie de Beaumont. Although the summit of Elie is easily accessible by a standard route from the Tasman Glacier, the unclimbed Maximilian Ridge rose out of deep, inaccessible valleys to the north. George Lowe wrote in the journal of the Heretaunga Tramping Club, ‘An invitation from Earle Riddiford (an illustrious name in the alpine world as an explorer of virgin valleys and new routes on high hills) was accepted … On a fine Christmas morning, we set off with cruel loads …’10

  It was a classic Riddiford plan, a topographical puzzle put together with pieces he had found in obscure accounts and by personally exploring Elie’s gorges and icefalls from the west. He wrote of the first day:

  In the descent from the saddle … the two ropes, Lowe-Hillary and Cotter-Riddiford, took varying routes adding a spice of competition. On this trip it was as well to get a running start in the morning if you wanted your share of the lead. When with George Lowe I would recommend hitching him to a ball and chain as well. It was at the camp on the floor of the Whymper that Ed Cotter first inflated his large collection of novelty balloons which completely unnerved the keas, the resident alpine parrots.11

  Heavy rain set in for two days. They camped under a huge bivvy rock surrounded by a mass of celmisia daisies and thick grass. Ed made a bow and arrow and shot two kea which tasted like strong duck. On the ninth day they climbed the Maximilian Ridge rising in a series of six big steps with various smaller towers. Much of the climb was led by George. On the summit they parted, a separation that could be seen as symbolic of their time to come in Garhwal. Lowe and Hillary descended the Tasman to The Hermitage, while Riddiford and Cotter returned to their Westland camp.

  Four Kiwis in Garhwal

  On 3 May 1951 they flew across the Tasman to Sydney where they were to embark for Colombo on the Orion. Ed wrote in his diary: ‘Very smooth pleasant trip with good food. Pleasant stewardess, Miss McCormack. On arrival Rose Bay accosted by half-a-dozen reporters. Gave story, had photos taken. All very important! Wandered around town, had grill for five shill
ings and then went to Kings Cross to meet stewardess – who did not arrive.’12

  Miss McCormack was probably more used to handling encounters with the opposite sex than were our climbers, of whom Ed Cotter said, ‘We were all virgins.’13 As the boat set sail, a group photo shows the party leaning on the ship’s rail. Good companion Ed Cotter is smiling approvingly as step-cutter Ed Hillary tests the sharpness of his ice-axe; entertainer George has an engaging smile as he looks into the camera; planner Earle is looking in another direction as if he’s a passer-by who got included in the photo by mistake.

  From Colombo they travelled by train through Calcutta, Varanasi and Lucknow until finally settling into a forest bungalow at Ranikhet, where Ed shook a large scorpion out of one of his shirts. Here they met their four Sherpas whose sardar, Pasang Dawa, spoke some English and was familiar with the use of rope, ice-axe and crampons.14

  For nine days they marched up-valley along the trail to their base at Badrinath, which was one of the most holy sites of Hindu pilgrimage in all India, mentioned in the Mahabharata in 500BC. In 1951 it appeared as a cluster of rusty corrugated-iron roofs surrounding the main temple dedicated to the god Vishnu. Steam rose into the air from the hot baths where pilgrims immersed themselves. The turbulent Alakananda flowed through the town on its way to the Ganges.