by Michael Gill
Sarah had left school after four rather than the usual five years, and in 1974 was enrolled at Otago University near the bottom end of the South Island, doing an arts degree while she thought about what she really wanted to do with her life. Ed was protective of his 17-year-old daughter but she was a long way from home. Louise easily accepted her children’s decisions and was their confidante. She provided the matrix within which the family operated. Then came the crash. Peter and Sarah travelled intermittently with Ed during the rest of 1975, but he was too shattered to be easy to live with.
Thinking there might be a career in it, Peter took to flying, first for his basic pilot’s licence, then six months training for his commercial licence, but he did not take the next step into a steady job. Skiing and climbing were more exciting by a long way. In January 1976 he met an Australian, Fred From, who Peter recalled ‘had just completed an elementary climbing course and was fired with ambitious ideas that concurred admirably with my own’. They completed a couple of demanding training climbs together.
Then came our moment of truth and we nervously headed off across the Grand Plateau to the East Face of Mount Cook. We surprised ourselves. We climbed more quickly than anticipated and were soon over halfway up the 4,500 foot face. Moving off the snow and ice face we climbed a narrow rock rib which proved more difficult and slowed our progress, but by late morning we pulled ourselves over the lip of the face and onto the summit icecap … I called Dad in Auckland to tell him of my climbs. He is well known amongst his friends as one not overly disposed to spiels of superlatives, so his reaction seemed more an interested acknowledgment to me in my state of near euphoria.2
It had been a big climb, but it was always difficult for Peter to get praise from his father. Fred From and Peter would later climb to 27,000ft on Lhotse, the companion peak just south of Everest.
In 1979 Peter and three friends attempted what they considered to be one of the ultimate routes in the Himalayas: a direct line up the centre of the sheer west face of Ama Dablam that is seen by all trekkers as they walk past Tengboche Monastery on their way to Everest Base Camp. The party of four climbers was two-thirds of the way up the centre of the face when they were struck by a fall of ice from just above them. Three climbers were dislodged and went into free fall but the fourth, Merv English, had a strong belay and was able to hold Peter on the other end of his rope. Miraculously the rope of the other two climbers, who were falling through space, snagged on Peter like a hook on the end of a line. Merv was now holding two injured climbers and a third who had tragically been struck on the head by a large block of ice and was dead. On the normal route out to their right was an Austrian party, among whom was Europe’s most famous climber, Reinhold Messner, who climbed up the lower face with Bully Oelz to help the remaining three on their descent. Peter had a broken forearm, ribs and ankle. It was a tough introduction to the world of extreme mountaineering. For the Hillarys, Ama Dablam had once again been a source of trouble.
In 1976 Sarah returned to Dunedin to continue her interrupted arts degree. Ed gave her a VW Beetle which she called Vic. ‘It was my worst academic year,’ she said. ‘I was in a self-destructive space for a long time after the accident and I didn’t go back to Dunedin in 1977. My partner Peter Boyer moved into 278a Remuera Road with me though Ed wasn’t always comfortable with that.’3
Ed’s first grandson, Arthur, was born in September while Ed and Peter were in India on the Ocean to Sky expedition. Sarah and Peter were married next door on the lawn of Phyl and Jim Rose’s home, and for a while lived there rather than at 278a. ‘Phyl was the most wonderful grandmother to me, so warm and loving,’ said Sarah. Ed’s diary notes, ‘Sarah and Peter Boyer are now living here with little Arthur and I enjoy their company,’4 but he had difficulty showing his pleasure. ‘Just remember,’ he wrote to Sarah, ‘that although I am not very good at saying things, I am very fond of you and would like to help you in any way I can.’5
It was Arthur who turned the corner for Sarah. ‘He jolted me back into real life. I realized I had to get a real job and I chose Art Conservation. When I talked to Jim Rose he told me to go down to the Auckland Art Gallery, knock on their door and ask them what I should do. They gave me good advice.’ By 1980 she’d finished her degree majoring in Art History. Their daughter Anna Louise was born in September 1980. Ed was in London and wrote to say that he was ‘delighted and liked the name too’. Sarah recalls:
A degree in Art History doesn’t get you a job and my next move was to Canberra in 1981–1982 doing a Masters in Art Conservation and working at the War Memorial Museum. Ed helped us with money but they were tough years. Both children were in nappies and I was breast-feeding Anna. We couldn’t afford a car so it was all public transport. Peter had to go to Sydney to get a job. In 1983 I was back in Auckland doing an internship at the Art Gallery until finally getting a proper, paying job as Conservator in 1984.6
Everest without oxygen
On 8 May 1978 a new chapter was written into the history of Everest when Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler reached the summit without oxygen. Both were climbers in their mid-thirties with records of extraordinary mountaineering accomplishments in the Alps, Andes and Himalayas over many years. Both believed in the simplicity of lightweight climbing without oxygen or cumbersome lines of camps. Because of the booking system on Everest – only one expedition each spring and autumn, and these booked years in advance – they joined an Austrian group in 1978. On their summit day, they left their tent in the Austrian camp on the South Col at 5.30 a.m. By noon they were on the South Summit. With the Hillary Step made easier this season by snow from top to bottom, they were on top by 1 p.m. Had it not been for their photographs and their reputations for endurance at extreme altitudes, such an achievement would have been deemed impossible. It was part of the new alpine-style approach to Himalayan mountaineering.
Three days later, Ed wrote to friend and archivist Liz Hawley in Kathmandu:
So Messner and Habeler did the job without oxygen. What is there to say? Although I have always thought that Everest could be climbed without oxygen I have also thought it would take someone remarkable to do it. Clearly Messner and Habeler are such men and they must have been operating at the limits of human endurance.7
Messner, however, was unhappy that he had taken the easy way by climbing with a companion and using the camps of another expedition. In 1980, having obtained permission from the Chinese for a monsoon attempt from Tibet, he trekked to the foot of the mountain with his girlfriend, who remained at Base Camp. Over three days he followed the old pre-war English route to the North Col, then up the north-east ridge to his first camp at 25,700ft. The second day saw him traverse the face and ascend the Norton Couloir which had turned back Norton and Smythe. Here at 27,000ft he made his second camp. At 3 p.m. on the third day he was on the summit, taking a photo of himself beside the tripod placed there by the Chinese expedition of 1975. It was an extraordinary feat, possible only to someone so accomplished that he could climb almost subconsciously in the twilight world of exhaustion at extreme altitude.
A new relationship begins a new life
Ed’s gloom began to lift in 1979 after four long years of depression, and this was due not to a new adventure or project but to the warmth of a developing friendship with June Mulgrew. Ed wrote,
I was living alone, so was she. So we started seeing rather more of each other. On occasions we pleasantly dined together and we did a few vigorous walks together along the wild Piha beach in company with her huge Afghan hound. We were developing a very comfortable companionship.8
Friends noted with relief that Ed looked less bleak and that his sense of humour was returning. Letters to June show ease in their relationship.
June was born in 1931 and grew up in Wellington where she was educated at St Mary’s College. On leaving school she became a stenographer, and in 1952 she married 24-year-old Peter Mulgrew. There were no privileges in Peter’s background. After surviving the First World War, his fat
her Will had worked as a boiler-maker in Glasgow before emigrating to New Zealand in 1922. His mother, Edith Matthews, came to New Zealand that same year at the age of 20. She liked it so well that she persuaded her five sisters to follow her from Huddersfield. She met and married Will Mulgrew while she was working in the woollen industry, and with him had two sons, Peter in 1927 and Ken in 1940. Peter did well at primary school but was ‘unsettled at Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College and was asked to leave at the end of 1942’.9 In 1945 he joined the Royal New Zealand Navy and trained as a radio mechanic. His intelligence and application led to promotion to chief petty officer in 1952 and later sub-lieutenant – a move from lower to upper deck that is not easy.
Peter was Ed’s radio operator in the Antarctic and on Makalu, but by the 1970s they were seeing less of each other, and in 1976 there was a falling out. It followed the participation of Peter and his yacht Tonnent in the film The Sea Pillars of Great Barrier. Peter felt he had been excluded – a reflection, others felt, of his combative temperament rather than of the way he had been treated. June and Peter also had drifted apart in the 1970s, and by 1979 they were leading separate lives.
November 1979 brought a bizarre new tragedy to the saga of the Hillary and Mulgrew couples. Since 1977, Air New Zealand had been taking tourists south to Antarctica for an aerial view of McMurdo Sound, including Mt Erebus and Scott Base. During an 11-hour flight passengers were treated to wine and good food and a commentary from such Antarctic luminaries as Peter Mulgrew or Ed Hillary. The 28 November flight was Ed’s turn, but because of another engagement he swapped with Peter.
The early flights had kept above the height of Mt Erebus, 12,440ft, but to give passengers a closer view they had more recently followed a flight path to the west of the mountain and 6000 feet lower than its summit – a height which, on a clear day, was low enough for passengers to see clearly the sea, the ice, the buildings of Scott Base and the mountains on either side, the closest being Erebus on their left. The day of the 28th was spoiled by whiteout conditions, a mistiness in the air which reduced the sky, the horizon and snow-covered Erebus to a featureless white void. In these conditions the flight path used is that which has been entered into the aircraft’s computer. The cockpit recorder tells the story of the plane’s last three minutes. The GPWS is the Ground Proximity Warning System.
Commentator Mulgrew: This is Peter Mulgrew speaking again folks. I still can’t see very much at the moment. Keep you informed soon as I see something that gives me a clue as to where we are. We’re going down in altitude now and it won’t be long before we get quite a good view.
Flight Engineer: Where’s Erebus in relation to us at the moment?
Mulgrew: Left, about 4 or 5 miles.
Unidentified Crew: Left do you reckon?
Unidentified Crew: Well I … no … I think.
First Officer: I think it’ll be …
Flight Engineer: I’m just thinking about any high ground in the area, that’s all.
Mulgrew: I think it’ll be left.
Unidentified Crew: Yes, I reckon about here.
Mulgrew: Yes … no, no, I don’t really know.
Captain: Actually these conditions don’t look very good at all do they?
Mulgrew: No, they don’t. That looks like the edge of Ross Island there
Flight Engineer: I don’t like this.
Captain: Have you got anything from him? [McMurdo Station radio]
First Officer: No.
Captain: We’re 26 miles north. We’ll have to climb out of this.
First Officer: It’s clear on the right and ahead.
Captain: Is it?
First Officer: Yes.
Mulgrew: You can see Ross Island? Fine.
First Officer: Yes, you’re clear to turn right …
Captain: No … negative.
First Officer: There’s no high ground if you do a one-eighty.
GPWS: Whoop. Whoop. Pull up. Whoop. Whoop.
Flight Engineer: Five hundred feet.
GPWS: Pull up.
Flight Engineer: Four hundred feet.
GPWS: Whoop. Whoop. Pull up. Whoop. Whoop. Pull up.
Captain: Go-around power please.
GPWS: Whoop. Whoop. Pull-----10
All 257 people on board were killed as the plane ploughed into the slopes of Erebus. A royal commission inquiry headed by Justice Peter Mahon found that the accident was due to an alteration of the flight plan in the aircraft’s navigation computer during the night before take-off. The flight crew had not been informed. They believed their computer was taking them on the usual flight path over the open water of McMurdo Sound to the right of Erebus, when in reality it had put them on a collision course with the mountain.
For Ed it was another loss: ‘I felt great sadness at Peter’s death. We had shared so much together in the Antarctic and the Himalayas … For many years he had been a good and loyal friend. I knew he could never be replaced.’11
The Himalayan Trust works on
Only five months later, yet another freakish accident diminished the group of stalwarts underpinning the work of the Himalayan Trust. Max Pearl had been Ed’s adviser on medical matters since his first visit to Nepal in 1964. He had been chair of the committee that planned Khunde and Phaplu hospitals, and found and supported their staff. On 27 April 1980 came the shattering news that he had been drowned in an extraordinary accident on the Waikato River. Max was only an occasional fly-fisherman. There wasn’t much time in his crowded life for something as contemplative as flicking rod and line over a quiet stretch of water. As it turned out, his chosen fishing spot was anything but quiet, situated as it was on a rock that could be reached only by wading through a broad flow of swift water above the Huka Falls, an awesome 12-metre drop where the river thunders through a narrow gap. Standing in his waders on the rock, Max saw the river was rising around him. The control gates upstream had been opened to allow more water to reach the hydro-electric stations downriver, and the current through the gap separating him from safety was now too strong to wade through. On the bank, family, friends and onlookers frantically hunted, unsuccessfully, for a rope to throw to him, but the water level rose inexorably and he was carried away down a raging millrace and into the maelstrom of the falls. It seemed such an improbable way to die. Max was a truly good man, unfailingly generous with everything he had to offer: his time, his skills, his warmth.
By now, however, there was a group of ex-Khunde doctors, including John McKinnon and Lindsay Strang, providing medical support, and the work continued. Ed was finding new disciples overseas too. One of them was Zeke O’Connor who worked for Sears. On one of their backwoods camping trips in 1972, Ed had invited him to come to Nepal to meet the Sherpas, their mountains, their schools and their hospital. Zeke became a close friend and formed the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Canada which from 1977 through to the present has funded Khunde Hospital. Another partner from Sears was Larry Witherbee who formed the American Hillary Foundation, raising funds in Chicago. The biggest American donor was Richard Blum of the American Himalayan Foundation who in 1981 began many years of generous donations. Later, in Germany in 1991, Ed invited Ingrid Versen from Bavaria to form a Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Germany. For his part, Ed spent increasing amounts of his time in North America as guest speaker at fundraising banquets and lectures.
In Toronto at least, and perhaps the rest of Canada, Zeke O’Connor was a big name, famous for his career in professional football. Ed used to tell the story of being introduced to a fan who repeated the name Hillary thoughtfully, then lit up as he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of you. You’re the guy who climbed Everest with Zeke O’Connor.’
The climax of Zeke’s football career was a legendary touchdown in the final minutes of a close-fought contest for the Grey Cup of 1952 between the Toronto Argonauts and the Edmonton Eskimos. The key play was a spectacular ‘long bomb’, thrown with deadly accuracy by ‘rifle-armed’ quarterback Nobby Wirkowski to receiver Zeke O’Conno
r for the clinching touchdown. It was the last offensive touchdown by the Argonauts in a Grey Cup for 30 years. The fans never forgot it.
The annual visits to Nepal in the 1980s now were centred on Ed and June, Zeke and Larry, Ed’s builder brother Rex, and of course the indispensable Mingma Tsering who advised on which schools should be extended, which bridge rebuilt, which monastery repaired.
The Kangshung Face of Everest, 1981
There was, however, one last mountain adventure for Ed, and it was initiated by Richard Blum of San Francisco. A philanthropist and merchant banker, Blum was also a mountaineer, and in 1979 while part of a trade delegation to China he requested permission for an expedition to attempt the untouched Kangshung Face, the great eastern flank of Everest in Tibet. After Blum’s application was accepted, he began organising an expedition that would include not just top American climbers but also Ed Hillary who, as ‘Chairman Emeritus’, would help with fundraising and write press dispatches from a comfortable Base Camp with a grandstand view of climbers on the great face rearing 12,000ft above them. Ed would say later that he should have known 17,000ft was well above the limit he had defined for himself five years earlier – but maybe this time it would be different.
The journey began in Lhasa on 18 August 1981, followed by four days in vehicles to the road end at the village of Kharta. Ed kept his usual diary, and at lower altitudes he revelled in the Tibetan landscapes of brown hills and crops of green barley in the river valleys. The six-day walk to the Kangshung Base Camp was higher, wetter and wilder. There was mist and sometimes heavy monsoon rain. The trail ran west across the grain of the land, crossing passes of up to 16,000ft. Thirty years earlier Ed would have been racing along, first into camp, but at the age of 62 every hill was exhausting: ‘Fairly tired and glad to crawl into sleeping bag … up long hill feeling dead beat … glad to stagger down to camp at 14,400 feet … reached terminal face of glacier, then climb to camp at 15,000 feet … 7 hours to reach Base Camp at 17,000 feet … took plenty of aspirin … didn’t bother having dinner …’12
