Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I climbed to ease the pain when my wife of 50 years died.. but I’ve found love again with a pal’s widow
Legend on agony over his son dying at age of two, the loss of his beloved Wendy and how he still has passion for high adventure
He is the icon of British climbing, has enjoyed the elation of reaching the peaks of the world’s most formidable mountains and seeing its rarest, wildest beauty.
Yet the greatest highs and lows of Sir Chris Bonington’s 83 years have concerned his family, from the joy he felt at the births of his three sons to the pain of losing his wife Wendy.
He has endured avalanches, fallen 150 metres, camped at -30C on ice-covered precipices and dodged lava bombs near a volcano.
But one of the cruellest challenges he has faced was when Wendy was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2012.
“It was like being hit very hard in the stomach,” he says. “We burst into tears, fell into one another’s arms and clung to each other.”
Chris was bereft when she died in 2014, aged 75. As ever he found consolation in climbing. Aged 80, and 48 years after his first ascent of the Old Man of Hoy in Orkney, off the north-eastern coast of Scotland, he climbed the 137m stack with climber Leo Houlding to raise money for the MND charity.
“I was very emotional at the top,” Chris says. “Climbing was a release – almost an escape.”
If conquering an almost vertical sea stack in his 80s was surprising, so was finding love again. In April 2016, he married Loreto Herman, the Chilean widow of a friend who had died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.
Chris says: “I think it was hard for my children at first, because they were very close to their mum. It must have been difficult to see me so full of love for someone else nine or 10 months after their mum’s death.
“Loreto has such warmth she very quickly captured their affections and love.”
Wendy’s death wasn’t the only tragedy he has had to face. He admits the loss of his first-born son Conrad is the worst, most enduring pain he has suffered.
The hurt is still evident more than 50 years later. He falls silent when asked to share memories of Conrad. “It’s deep in my subconscious,” he says, his voice cracking.
“A photograph will trigger memories. I think about him. I wonder what he would be doing. Anyone who has lost a child knows the agony of that loss.”
In 1966, aged two-and-ahalf, adventurous Conrad fell into a stream outside a family friend’s house in Scotland and drowned. Wendy found him. It was a week until a messenger reached Chris in Ecuador, where he was set to climb the 5,300m Sangay volcano. He collapsed when he read the letter.
Back in Coniston, Cumbria, where Conrad’s scribbles were still on the wall, he struggled to accept the loss.
He says: “We were utterly devastated. The truth is you never get over it. You just learn to go on. Every time I saw a young boy in a car or hand-in-hand with his parents, I could see Conrad and the longing for him brought on tears.”
Chris and Wendy’s love helped them through their grief. Their son Daniel was born in April the next
year, followed by Rupert, known as Joe, in 1969. “You can’t replace a lost child, they are a part of yourself. But when you have children you love every bit as much, they fill your lives. “I felt pure exhilaration the moment I reached the top of mountains but I have never felt such incredibly powerful emotion as when my three sons were born.” Feelings from the past rekindled when Chris pored over letters and diaries to research his biography, Ascent. It’s his 17th book and by far the most personal. Details of his early life growing up in Hampstead, North West London, emerged from his mother Helen’s diary. She won three schold English at Oxford then married his former SAS founding member father, Charles, in 1933. Chris was born a year later.
During the Depression, Charles’s unemployment caused rows. After one argument, Helen hit Charles on the head with a poker, leaving him unconscious. She ran to get help and on her return, he had gone.
Helen later had a loving relationship with Margo, an Australian journalist, who shared their home. Chris says: “My mum wasn’t demonstrative. But reading over her letters and diaries, I realised just how much she loved me. She had an intense relationship with Margo but never showed it in front of me.
“As a single mother she was terrified about protecting me in the war but when I was unhappy at boarding school she brought me to London fully aware it was terribly risky. I thought the Anderson shelter in our garden was brilliant but it was very scary for her.”
Chris’s love for Wendy, who he married five months after meeting her at a party in 1962, warms the pages. She kept all the letters sent from his expeditions to climb the north face of the Eiger in 1965 and complete the first ascent of the Old Man of Hoy the following year.
When he climbed the stack again in 1967 the feat was televised for an audience of 15 million. His writing brings to life the horrendous conditions of the first expedition he led up the south-west face of Everest in 1972 and the moment he stood on its summit in 1985 aged 50.
During climbs, many friends fell to their deaths or succumbed to the cold. The task of breaking the news to families was often left to Wendy. Each loss was painfully felt. Chris himself fell 150m in the summer of 1992 on a rescue mission to help an injured climber on a 2,000m Himalayan peak. Miraculously he was able to move and, after 30 minutes of sitting with his bloodied head in his hands, he carried on with his rescue mission.
Like every other close shave, it could not stop him climbing. Ever since he found a book on Scottish mountains in a friend’s house as a teenager, he has chased the thrill.
“I see now that I was selfish to leave my wife and sons to go off climbing,” he says. “Perhaps I took Wendy’s love for granted. There’s no justification for leaving my family to take such risks. I promised I wouldn’t many times. My thirst for adventure took hold when I first climbed in Snowdonia in hobnail boots and a school mac.
“Even coming close to death, which happened many times, didn’t put me off. I never thought I’d die. Whenever I had a lucky escape it just focused my mind.”
Looking back, Britain’s greatest living climber has no big regrets. Looking forward, he has no plans to retire.
“I’ve had sadness at losing friends, even greater sadness at losing my son. I’ve made mistakes and known tragedy. But there have been so many tremendous highs.
“Marrying Wendy in a small register office then driving off for our honeymoon in Wales with a tent was one.
“Marrying Loreto with all our family and eight grandkids in the church was, once again, a moment of intense, wonderful joy.
“I still climb but because I’ve slipped discs and trapped nerves I’ve been sticking to walls. Loreto climbs with me, we love it. I want to make every day of my 80s count.”
Ascent, by Sir Chris Bonington, is published by Simon & Schuster and priced £20.
I have never felt such incredibly powerful emotion as when my three sons were born SIR CHRIS BONINGTON ON HOW BEING A FATHER BEATS THRILL OF A SUMMIT