Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Acrophobic admires men who reach great heights

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I’ve been thinking about mountains and mountaineering recently – not because I’m a mountaineer myself, in fact just the opposite as I do not like heights one bit. A perfectly rational fear I reckon.
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It’s because I’ve just rewatched the excellent docudrama on Sir Edmund Hillary’s life that came out last year. It dealt with the motivations that drove him to want to climb very high mountains.

I was fortunate to meet and talk to him on two occasions. The first at a large function where he was gracious with his time and even signed a $5 note for each of our three sons.

The second time was at the launch of his memoir View from the Summit, where I took two small sons and as he chatted to them I was able to take a couple of treasured photographs.

Climbing is a challenge that has never appealed to me but we all have different aspirations, I suppose.

My only feeble efforts have including carrying skis up to the summit of Ruapehu and then, just as we were about ski down a fearsome looking slope by my standards, being caught in an instant whiteout.

Luckily, I was with Jeremy and Neil, two very good skiers and one of them at least being a level-headed fellow was able to nurse me down and somehow get us back to the ski area safe and alive.

My other crowning achievement was to get to the top of Mount Tapuae-o-Uenuku – 2885m but possibly a little higher now after the earthquake – following an unsuccessful attempt the year before. Plenty do it every year and it was more like a tough tramp than mountaineering but scary for me all the same.

However, I do have a particular interest in Ed and Everest as I was bought up with tales of Everest and the men who sought to climb it first.

My grandfather Percy had climbed to within 280 metres of the summit way back in 1933. The return trip to my dog kennels is as far. I never forgave him as a lad for not overcoming an acute shortage of oxygen, as they had no bottled oxygen because they were purists and saw it as cheating, and lack of decent gear.

They were wearing layers of wool that worked well, their axes were heavy, being made of oak and iron, they carried old-fashioned ropes not light nylon and their Tommy Cookers from the First World War wouldn’t function at high altitude so they couldn’t melt snow to get water and were severely dehydrated.

His mate Wager was very unwell, uncharted territory and a route on the Tibetan side leading to an unclimable limestone bluff also didn’t help.

Yes, there are fossils up there on the summit and those ancient marine life-forms once dwelled deep in the ocean and must be quite surprised to find themselves now on top of the world.

But he did find an ice axe just lying there on a granite slab and at that point he was as high as any man was known to have been. Despite his oxygen depletion and addled brain he had enough reasoning to pick it up and get it back down and eventually donated it to the British Alpine Museum where it remains to this day.

He believed it could have been either Mallory’s or Irvine’s axe from their ill-fated expedition in 1924 but the establishment was convinced it was Irvine’s.

However, 66 years later Mallory’s body was found by using my grandfather’s description of where he found the axe directly below on the fall line so it is most likely George Mallory’s.

So, old gramps didn’t quite make it, leaving his legacy to become a footnote in history and the chance for fame and riches passed by our family.

I’ve also just reread the account of Rob Hall's last expedition to Everest. It is written by a journalist who was one of the few in Rob's team who made the summit that day and survived.

I shared a meal with Hall a few months before he died and found him a very pleasant and likeable man. He was professional and inspiring.

He borrowed the copy of the movie my grandfather took on his expedition and his memoir. He had appeared so capable that I was shocked to hear the news of his death and finally forgave old Gramps for doing the sensible thing by turning back. I guess being unknown, poor and alive is a decent option.

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