Sir Chris on the north wall of the Eiger in 1962 (Image: Chris Bonington )
Mountaineering legend Sir Chris Bonington certainly hasn’t lost his appetite for adventure. However, he does admit that last year’s birthday celebrations, when he turned 90, didn’t have quite the same drama as the decade before when he climbed the Old Man of Hoy in Scotland aged 80 – 48 years after he had first scaled the 450ft sea stack.
After that challenge, he admitted: “I was exhausted, but very happy. I’m definitely not as flexible as I was in the 1960s.” This time, while no mountaineering was required, it was still a memorable bash.
“My wife Loreto did a fantastic job getting the whole thing organised,” recalls Sir Chris with a smile. “It ended up with 70 friends and family on the lawn outside the house. They erected a magnificent marquee and we had a wonderful dinner with speeches. I’m now having to plan what I’m going to do for my 100th.”
This year sees the 50th anniversary of his team’s ascent of Everest, when he led the first expedition via the mountain’s tricky Southwest ridge. He remains rightly proud of the achievement.
“The thing that has always attracted me is doing new routes”, he explains as his eyes sparkle with excitement. “I was challenged by doing something that no one had ever done before. It wasn’t to say, ‘I’ve done the first ascent’, but that experience of going into the unknown.”
Everest 1975 team (Image: Chris Bonington)
Tellingly, just one team has followed the exact same route in the half-century since that remarkable achievement. And tragically, all four Slovakian climbers died during their ascent. We are talking today in Sir Chris’s cosy home in North Cumbria, surrounded by one of his other passions – books.
Shelves and shelves of them surround us, testimony to a keen intelligence and a desire for knowledge that has driven his storied career. It says much about the man, who has had the guile, modesty and people skills to lead some of mountaineering’s most historic quests.
Needless to say, he retains a deep emotional connection to his greatest adventures. Sir Chris, who served in the British Army from 1956-61, recalls his first ascent of Everest in 1985 when he was 50. He summited with the Norwegian expedition team, led by Arne Naess, who was married to Diana Ross.
“When we got to the top, I just broke down and cried, partly because of the number of close friends that had died with me on expeditions,” he says. “It was a mixture of joy and grief.”
One of those friends died during a previous expedition in 1975. And it was only when prepping for our discussion – and he revisited his book about that trip – the enormity of the achievement was brought into focus again.
“When I picked up this book again, Everest the Hard Way, I realised what a huge, complex expedition that was,” he tells me. “The amount of time and thought – a mixture of triumph and tragedy – a whole different range of emotions emerged from revisiting it.”
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Sir Chris had originally tried a post-monsoon Everest ascent via the Southwest Face in 1972. Poor weather beat them on that occasion but it gave his team confidence and the knowledge of how it could ultimately be achieved. So, following the withdrawal by another team for a slot in 1975, Sir Chris seized the opportunity to give it a second crack.
While he wasn’t one of the climbers chosen to summit the mountain, Sir Chris still maintains that Everest in 1975 was one of his greatest challenges, not only for the technical climbing task, but the tricky leadership role.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, it was one of the hardest of all,” he recalls. “The South face of Annapurna (1970), was very challenging, but it hadn’t the complexity of the Southwest Face of Everest, which was so much greater. Also, when leading an expedition like that, where you had to balance out your individual members’ aspirations, it was hugely complex and the biggest challenge I had ever faced.”
Incredibly, Sir Chris’s team was accompanied by 33 sherpas and 26 porters, who carried 24 tonnes of equipment and 12 tonnes of food from Khunde to Base Camp over three days. Sir Chris aside, the two biggest person-alities in the team were Dougal Haston and Doug Scott, who died in 1977 and 2020 respectively.
They would be the first pair to summit Everest. “Doug’s belief in leadership was that everyone should do their own thing, but it was his sheer force of personality that stood out,” recalls Sir Chris. “I was much closer to Dougal. I had climbed a lot with him, but I don’t think anyone could really get inside his mind.
“I understood how he worked and he understood how I worked, always incredibly supportive, right the way through when we were climbing. He knew I was going to steer the expedition to a reasonable chance of success, and he knew that I knew he was one of the strongest climbers. The A-class climbers, like Doug and Dougal, are the real geniuses – there are very few of them.”
Sir Chris, left, with sherpa Ang Lhakpa on summit of Everest, 1985 (Image: Chris Bonington)
The iconic photograph of Dougal on September 24, 1975, knee-deep in post-monsoon snow as the sun was setting, brilliantly attacking the Hillary Step of Everest must be one of the greatest mountain photographs ever.
Tragically, less than 18 months later after his brilliant efforts on Everest, Dougal was killed in an avalanche in January 1977 while skiing alone above Leysin in Switzerland, where he had been director of the International School of Mountaineering. Sadly, another summiteer within the team, Mick Burke died during the descent.
He was part of the second summit team and was last seen alive only a short distance from the top. The weather then began to deteriorate drastically following this final sighting, and within hours, fierce storms began which lasted for two days.
This prevented any rescue attempt by his companions who were themselves stuck at the highest camp until the storms subsided. His body was never recovered. Did such risks ever cause Sir Chris to reconsider?
“No. There are obviously times where I have had to accept the fact that members of the team have lost their lives on expeditions that I have been leading, but it was a risk that all of us had to take,” he says.
“All of us make mistakes, and you have to accept that fact. I don’t go to my grave feeling guilty, but with the dear friends that I have lost. I have lost too many – I will never forget them.” A management committee for the 1975 ascent was chaired by Lord Hunt who remains a very important figure for Sir Chris.
Sir Chris has found new love again with Loreto (Image: Chris Bonington)
“Of all of the climbers that helped me and inspired me, it would undoubtedly have to be John Hunt,” he says. “The way he went about leading the first team to climb Everest, he provided a template that I followed on how to lead an expedition.
“When I was planning the 1975 trip, he was our patron at the time. I asked his advice frequently and he gave it to me. I owe a huge amount to John Hunt. To me, he has been my model that I tried to follow.”
As Sir Chris enters his tenth decade, he remains active in the Cumbrian hills, with his wife Loreto his biggest inspiration. “We go walking practically every day,” he tells me. “I’ve been incredibly lucky. I’ve had two wonderful women in my life. Wendy, my wife of 52 years, who sadly died from Motor Neurone disease in 2014, and Loreto, as the spouse of my friend, Ian McNaught-Davis.”
The late British TV presenter’s company fittingly provided the complex mainframe computer that helped with the meticulous planning involved in the 1975 expedition, long before the advancement of modern computers and software. Ian died in 2014. Sir Chris and Loreto married in 2016.
“Friends were pushing me and Loreto together, and it was wonderful,” he says. “We fell in love. She is the most important thing in my life – Loreto’s love and the love I have for her. That’s the anchor in my life. “We’ve got a very good climbing wall in London. We still do that. Loreto is much more agile than I am!”
There will be a number of events held later this year to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of ‘Everest the Hard Way’, in aid of Community Action Nepal, a charity that Doug Scott founded. Sir Chris is a patron. They work with remote communities in the Tsum-Nubri valleys of the Nepalese Himalaya and will be supporting the restoration of Pertemba’s Sherpa Heritage House which was severely damaged in the 2015 earthquake.
It’s a fine cause and another challenge for this inspiring 90-year-old but, as he has proven time and again, very little is beyond his capabilities.
- For information visit canepal.org.uk