Hanging on: A Life Inside British Climbing's Golden Age

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Forty years after the ascent ten of the expedition's members took part in a reunion meeting at the Royal Geographical Society in London, raising funds for Community Action Nepal. [89] [90] See also [ edit ] At the time the Guardian described it as being like "spending the night in a sheet sleeping-bag in a deep freeze, with the oxygen cut by two-thirds". [64] As well as being the first people to summit Everest by the Southwest Face, they were also the first Britons to reach the summit by any route. [note 12] [66] For the time, it had been the fastest ever ascent of Everest, 33 days. [note 13] [67] The second summit team arrived at Camp 6 to find them safe and well and by afternoon Haston and Scott had jumared down to Camp 2. [56] Boardman, Boysen, Burke and Pertemba [ edit ]

Bonington, Chris (1986). The Everest Years: a climber's life. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0340366907. Alan James (for putting the boot into the turgid guidebook establishment, and sending a whole generation of climbers to Spain for their winter hols) Two years later Scott was proposing a lightweight expedition to The Ogre in the Karakoram that was to include Bonington (as a team member) and Haston. While it was being planned, news came through that Haston had been killed in an avalanche while skiing in the Alps. The expedition went ahead and in fact Scott and Bonington became the first people to reach the summit. [81] Estcourt was killed on the 1978 Bonington-led K2 West Ridge expedition. [82] Boardman died together with Joe Tasker on Bonington's 1982 Everest Northeast Ridge expedition. [83] This road is now the Araniko Highway and it carries on further north to cross into China at the Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge at Kodari. Southwest Ridge, Naoki Toda, Akira Kobayashi, Masahide Aida, Harumi Ohno, Yukio Asano and Teruyoshi Karino (Japanese Alpine Club) all reached the summit after 33 days of effort. [5]For more than two decades, Boysen was also one of Britain’s leading mountaineers. A crucial member of Sir Chris Bonington’s team that climbed the South Face of Annapurna in 1970, Boysen was also part of Bonington’s second summit team on the South West face of Everest. In 1976 he made the first ascent of Trango Tower with Joe Brown. To celebrate this achievement, Community Action Nepal have planned a very special screening of the truly raw documentary, ‘Everest the Hard Way’, followed by an exclusive Q&A with some of the original members of the team – Sir Chris Bonington, Pertemba Sherpa, Paul ‘Tut’ Braithwaite, Martin Boysen, Charlie Clarke and Mike Thompson. Rab and Martin started climbing together regularly in the early eighties when they both had young families, demanding careers and limited time off. After an abortive trip to Latok, they both gave up alpinism and have been climbing around the world together ever since. Much has been written about the Whillans, including Jim Perrin’s recent detailed biography. But now Don, as always, is having the last word, being the subject of my posthumous film. The film, supported by the BMC, and to be premiered at the Kendal Film Festival, features some of the many epics in Don’s climbing career - spanning the Alps to Patagonia, Annapurna to Everest. It also brings out some of Don’s tremendous humour and devastating wit. How to jam. I've progressed from City and Guilds and now hold a very lowly Ordinary Degree in jamming. Martin on Rab

A fter a gruelling but mercifully short training climb on the appropriately named Aiguille du Peigne, we set off to climb our first ‘proper route’– the East Ridge of the Crocodile – involving a hut walk, glaciers and mixed climbing. I had a score to settle with the Crocodile, having failed on it during my first unhappy season. Then bad weather had forced us to stay at the Envers des Aiguilles Hut. This time we intended to camp, determined to eke out our limited supply of money. Tasker, Joe (1977). "Changabang, West Wall". American Alpine Journal. New York, New York, US: American Alpine Club. 21 (51): 248–249.Seizing an opportunity for an Everest expedition post-monsoon in 1972, Bonington originally planned a lightweight expedition by the normal route but the failure of a European pre-monsoon Southwest Face expedition earlier in that year encouraged him to attempt the Southwest Face instead. In very poor weather Bonington's expedition failed to reach the summit but the team gained a great deal of experience, in particular discovering that the line they had chosen above Camp 6 was not as favourable as they had anticipated. [7] CLIMB: The glorious first of August at Gogarth has passed: all bird restrictions have now been lifted It would prove to be ideal practice for their most famous rescue. When four years later on the Eigerwand, Barry Brewster was mortally wounded and Brian Nally was helped down to safety from the top of the Second Ice Field in a violent storm. The new DVD features an extended interview with Don about this rescue, with Whillans in his very best story-telling mood. Brewster had been swept away in a volley of stones and more went thundering down as Don and Chris climbed up to Nally: “It was like driving down a one way street the wrong way. You’re getting further into the sh*t when you know you should be going the other way – but what was the option? Leave him? We weren’t going to do that.”