Seven Summits

by Dick Bass; Frank Wells; Rick Ridgeway

  If Frank hadn't realized how close he had come to crossing over that fine line himself, soon he was reminded how real the danger was when more bad news arrived, this time from a different direction.

  Chris Bonington, the English climber whose small expedition had been working valiantly to establish a new route on the neighboring northeast ridge of Everest, unexpectedly showed up in camp with one of his team members. It took only a glance at his face to know something was wrong.

  “Pete and Joe,” Bonington said, referring to Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, two members of his team who were Himalayan veterans and considered among the best high altitude mountaineers anywhere. They were also two of his closest friends.

  “We last saw them through our scope at about 27,000 feet,” Bonington explained, “climbing behind a pinnacle. It was close to nightfall, and next morning there was no sign of them. We've been looking for several days now. I was hoping they somehow might have come down this way. But then that wasn't a very real hope, was it?”

  Tears then came to Bonington's eyes. Combined with Marty's death, it was for Frank and Dick a very sobering introduction to Himalayan climbing. But if they had now seen in a tragically intimate way just how dangerous this game of high altitude climbing really was, they also witnessed how tenacious its players were. Nielson's failure notwithstanding, Wickwire and two more lead climbers headed back up for another summit attempt. But this time they only got to 24,500 feet when a heavy storm turned them back. It appeared the monsoon had arrived, and everyone agreed that in the face of it there was no real hope of reaching the summit. Whittaker announced the expedition was over.

  Before leaving base camp at the foot of the Rongbuk Glacier the team erected a stone cairn in memory of Marty, and gathering around it they paid their last respects.

  Dick wanted to say a eulogy that was distilled and concise, like a poem.

  And that gave him an idea. He recalled that last stanza of Lasca, the one Marty had asked him to repeat. If he could just substitute a few words, he prayed he could find a way to convey his own emotions. When it came his turn, he spoke briefly of Marty's meaning to Snowbird, and then finished with

  “And I wonder why I do not care

  For the summits that are like the summits that were.

  Does half my climbing heart lie forever afar

  By Everest's North Face, below the Great Couloir.”

  As Dick finished, residual clouds from the latest storm cleared from the summit of Everest, while here and there shafts of sunlight through the scattering clouds spotlighted the glacier and the huge fluted snow faces.

  It was a place of incomparable beauty, but at the moment Frank and Dick had to question whether it was a place they ever wanted to return to.

  Dick had just said that the summits that are (ahead) would never quite be like the summits that were (behind). Should he and Frank, then, continue to pursue their Seven Summits dream? Or was it hopelessly, foolishly, quixotic?

  Following Marty's accident, they both had agreed not to make a decision until they had returned home. But already, despite the melancholy cast by Marty's death, both of them were toting up a positive and negative balance for the expedition's ledger.

  For Frank, he would always remember the previous day when he walked by himself from advanced base camp down to base camp, along the eastern margin of the glacier. His only company was the ice towers standing on the glacier like a legion of silent sentinels; the only sound the occasional rattle of a falling rock loosened by the otherwise imperceptible downward creep of the glacial ice. His senses were honed by the weeks of living on the razor's edge. He felt his muscles work without complaining, and he was proud of his lean body, hardened and conditioned more than at any time in his adult life.

  It was a day that was reason enough for wanting to come back.

  But what about the danger? If it could happen to Marty, it could certainly happen to either of them. They told themselves that Marty's accident had been a human error and that proper vigilance on their part would prevent such a thing happening again. Even acknowledging that mistakes do happen, even acknowledging there was always the risk it could happen to them—as it almost had to Frank only a few days before—it was a risk they still felt was sufficiently remote that it weighed lightly against both the adventure of the life they had led these last three months, and the thought that perhaps, if they tried again, they might just have a chance at reaching the top. Especially if they could get on an expedition going up the easier South Col route.

  They had told each other they would wait until they got home, but before reaching Peking they began to talk it over.

  “I know that Marty would have wanted us to have a go at it,” Dick pointed out. “After all, that's part of the mountaineer's credo, to carry on even in the wake of a tragedy. Look at how her fellow guides kept going on this trip, even after the accident. And I know that part of the reason was they knew Marty would've wanted it that way.”

  “I’m all for following through,” Frank said. “My only concern is Luanne. In view of the accident, she's going to have a hard time accepting the idea.”

  “I guess that's one of the advantages of remarrying when you're fifty,” Dick said. “My wife Marian knew what she was getting into —at least I think she did.”

  Actually Marian was no more excited or accepting about mountain climbing than Luanne was. Both women were terrified by the danger and risk, and Marian had decided the best way to cope with it was to distance herself from it. She preferred, then, to stay home and receive news as it came; the less she knew about the expeditions, the less she had to worry about.

  Luanne, however, had decided to meet the group in Peking, and Frank knew she would be there when they arrived. So he decided the best strategy was probably to be up-front about his intentions and tell her right off the bat he wanted to go back.

  “Darling,” he said when he met her, “it was the saddest thing to lose Marty, more than I can tell you. But it was also the greatest adventure you could imagine, and I know you're not going to like this, and it's hard for you to understand, but we've got to go back, Dick and I, next year.”

  Luanne was cool to the idea. But she sensed the depth of Frank's commitment to his dream, and knew that she couldn't say no.

  As Frank and Dick returned home, then, they still hadn't made a final pact between them to carry on with their plan, but they both knew in their hearts they were going to do it.

  It took only a week after returning from Everest before they had decided to follow through with the Seven Summits. They would divide duties. Frank would organize Kilimanjaro, Antarctica, and Russia; Dick would tackle McKinley, Everest, and Aconcagua. Kosciusko would only require buying airline tickets to Australia.

  A few weeks later, though, in July 1982, Dick, in one of his almost daily phone calls to Frank, told him he was having problems.

  “Frank, my business manager's telling me if I take off in ‘eighty-three to do all these climbs, Snowbird will fold. Can't we put it off until ‘eighty-four?”

  “I quit my job to do this,” Frank said. “I can't wait around another year.”

  “Well, I’ll try. But no promises, and I doubt I’ll have a lot of time to help organize things.”

  “Dick, don't worry about it. I’ve expected for some time this would come up.”

  Even while they were dividing the duties, Frank knew in the back of his mind this would happen, and he had prepared himself to take on the whole job, or at least the lion's share of it. He had long since realized that to know Dick Bass was either to love him or to be frustrated as hell with him. Dick was perpetually overcommitted, “Just heading down life's highway pell-mell,” as he cheerfully admitted, “juggling like crazy and winging things right and left.”

  It wasn't going to be easy for Frank to take on that much work, as he still had some responsibilities with Warner Bros. as a part-time consultant on special assignments. But he felt he could do it, and he felt as long as he was going to do
it, it wasn't unfair asking Dick to bend a little and do all the climbs in ‘83. Besides, he knew Dick still liked the idea of doing them all within a calendar year. As Dick had said, “It'll make a neat, packaged chapter in our lives.” And as Frank had added, “Plus prevent it from dragging on, so I can get on to other things, like trying to find a job.”

  With that question settled, then, Frank laid out the itinerary: “We'll start January 1, 1983, with Vinson Massif in Antarctica. Then as part of the same trip we'll knock off Aconcagua on the way home. Then six weeks later, on to Everest from the Nepal side, with the German group. Then home for two or three weeks, and off to McKinley, followed by a quick flight to Africa a month later to get up Kilimanjaro, and from there a shuttle to Russia to knock off Elbrus. Back home again for a few weeks, then we'll wrap the year with the banquet on top of Kosciusko.”

  “Aah-eah-eaahhh,” Dick yelled over the phone. Whatever hesitation he had felt a moment before about doing the climbs in ‘83 was lost to the excitement following Frank's itinerary.

  Frank knew the hard nut to crack would be Antarctica. Everest would be a lot of work, certainly, but their chances looked good of hooking up with the German group that held the permit for the spring ‘83 climbing season. And with the permit, the rest would be a perfunctory organization of the team, food, equipment, oxygen, transport, and porters. Certainly the difficulty of climbing on Everest above 26,000 feet would still be the same, but so many groups had now gone up the South Col route season after season that the organization of the expedition would be almost a kind of climb-by-the-numbers procedure.

  Antarctica, however, was another matter. The climb itself shouldn't be difficult—the mountain had been scaled twice, and both teams had reported no unusual technical difficulties—but getting there would be a real challenge. There had never been a privately organized and financed expedition to the interior of Antarctica. Since he had a contact at the National Science Foundation, the agency that oversees U.S. operations in the Antarctic, Frank had his fingers crossed that they would provide transport. And although Frank wasn't certain they would need it, Chris Bonington was at the moment approaching the British Antarctic Survey for possible support, namely refueling at their Rothera Base on Adelaide Island.

  Bonington had traveled out from Everest the same time as the North Wall team, and Frank and Dick asked him if he would be interested in joining their Antarctica expedition. Bonington had not given an immediate answer, so Frank and Dick had been pleased, even surprised, to receive a short time after they got home a letter from Bonington saying he would be thrilled to be counted in. Frank and Dick had thought that after Bonington's own grim experiences on his Everest attempt his enthusiasm to pursue another climbing expedition might have waned, at least for a while. But they learned that was not Bonington's style. He stayed at it even though, probably more than any climber, he had suffered tragedy after tragedy as his closest climbing companions died. It was a long list: in 1972, on his climb of Annapurna, a close friend killed under a collapsing ice block; in 1975, on his first ascent of Everest's enormous southwest face, a close companion lost on a summit bid; in 1978, on an attempt on K2, another dear friend killed in an avalanche; and now again on Everest, two more close friends.

  But Bonington seemed eager for Antarctica, and his inclusion on the team was an important step toward Frank and Dick's strategy to get on each climb the most capable mountaineers they could find. It was a plan they felt would increase not only their chances of getting to the summits but also their chances of getting back down alive. So in addition to Bonington they started calling other climbers to fill spots on all the expeditions.

  Gerhard Lenser, leader of the German Everest expedition, indicated he would be willing to allow Frank and Dick to bring two or three other Americans, so they asked Wickwire and Ershler if they would like to go. Like Bonington, Wickwire had also experienced firsthand a number of deaths in the mountains—Marty had been the fourth—but like most who are drawn to high altitude mountaineering, he had long before made his personal pact with the odds. Frank and Dick knew he was hungry for Everest's summit, and they were pleased he accepted, although he voiced some apprehension about going with a group of Germans who none of them knew. Ershler too yearned for the summit, and he accepted as well.

  About this time I got a call from Frank inviting me to join any of the Seven Summits expeditions, and I accepted both Aconcagua and Antarctica. My friend Yvon Chouinard also expressed interest in Aconcagua, and Frank was thrilled to have him along.

  Finding people to join the expeditions, then, was easy (at least at first); harder, much harder, was figuring how to get to Vinson Massif. Frank contacted his connection at the National Science Foundation only to learn the agency had a blanket policy of refusing to assist or support in any way private expeditions to the Antarctic; Frank's contact said their reason was that if anything went wrong with a private group, the NSF would have to disrupt their scientific programs, at great cost of time and money, as well as risk to life, to rescue them. The contact further told Frank it would be useless to plead for an exception; the policy was unbending.

  Frank found this curious since he knew that the climbers, all private individuals, who had made the first ascent of Vinson and several other peaks in the area in 1966 had been fully supported by the NSF and the U.S. navy. They had been flown to the mountain in Navy C-130s, provided with skidoos, fuel, radios, and other gear, then picked up and flown back to McMurdo when they were finished climbing. Wanting to know more about it, Frank called Nick Clinch, the San Francisco Bay Area lawyer who had led that expedition.

  “First,” Nick explained, “it was the NSF who contacted us. Apparently they had been hounded by so many climbers wanting to get to Vinson that they decided it would be easiest just to sponsor someone to do the first ascent so everyone would get off their back. They contacted the American Alpine Club, who contacted me, and I contacted several of my friends, and we had the time of our lives.”

  Frank then queried other people who, since Nick's expedition, had sought NSF assistance for private ventures; he learned that not only in each case had they been refused support, but the NSF had actively tried to sabotage the plans of at least one expedition. Frank therefore decided to avoid the NSF at all costs. But how, then, to get to Vinson? Frank still had another card: that privately owned DC-3 retrofitted with new turboprop engines, including a third one in the nose, and ski-equipped, that flew support each summer for U.S. bases in the high Arctic. Frank knew the plane was, theoretically, capable of making it to Vinson if it could be refueled somewhere along the route. The other consideration, however, was that the plane had been built in 1942. Still, if there was no alternative …

  But an alternative did develop, beginning with a tip to Frank that another party led by Japanese adventure-skier Yuichiro Miura, known best from his movie The Man Who Skied Down Everest, was trying to get to Vinson. Apparently Miura had a long-term project to ski down the flanks of the highest peak on each continent, and he had worked a deal with the Chileans to charter one of their C-130s to Vinson. Frank called Dick to ask if he knew anything about Miura.

  “Heck, yes. He's a longtime skier at the Bird. Let's call him right now.”

  Over the phone Miura told them the only hitch in his plan was that the Chileans’ C-130 didn't have skis, and he didn't have any way to obtain them. But Miura had an idea. If Frank and Dick could find the skis, perhaps they could join expeditions and together travel to Vinson.

  “I’m telling you, Frank,” Dick said, “That's how things work. Right when you can't figure how to solve a problem, a solution will come out of the blue.” Frank was relieved. The Everest trip looked on track, too, for the German leader seemed receptive to the idea of a joint expedition.

  Fifty-five-year old German mountaineer Gerhard Lenser had received from the Nepal government the permit to attempt Everest in the premonsoon spring season of 1983. Making the application was easy: he had paid the $1,500 “peak fee,” and had th
e German Alpine Club verify he was of sound mind and body. More difficult had been finding the money to fund the climb, as a normal Everest expedition costs between $150,000 and $250,000.

  So Lenser was warm to Frank and Dick's proposal to pick up a share of the costs in exchange for making it a joint expedition. He seemed pleased when Frank and Dick added Wickwire and Ershler, and when Wickwire added two of his friends. This then had been the core of the 1983 German-American Everest expedition when, in August, Lenser arrived at Snowbird to meet the team, and also to travel with Dick to Wyoming for an ascent of the Grand Teton.

  Lenser was about five foot seven and lean, almost skinny in his torso, but with superstout legs. His light, gray-streaked hair was carefully trimmed. He wore metal-rimmed glasses that, with his habit of buttoning his shirt collar and wearing over that a plain but neat V-neck sweater, gave him a studious appearance. He spoke slow but carefully enunciated English and his manner was generally serious and cautious, but when he smiled or laughed, he showed great warmth and sense of humor.

  Frank and Dick had assumed—correctly, as it turned out—that Lenser was uneasy having added to his expedition several foreigners about whom he knew little or nothing, and so they were careful to show him, as Dick called it, “some good old American hospitality.” They preceded the climb of the Grand with a western barbecue at an outdoor chuckwagon on the edge of the National Park, and made the two-day climb up the regular Exum route with the company of a guide. Although hard to read through his sober countenance, Dick thought Lenser was enjoying himself, and when they reached the summit Dick was pleased when Lenser gave him a hug. Things looked good for Everest, too.