Mountain highs
Sir Chris Bonington is Britain’s greatest mountaineer, with a career that has spanned six decades of climbing peaks across all continents. As his memoir, Ascent ,is published, he answers a few of our questions
Sir Chris Bonington talks about his life of climbing
You began climbing at the beginning of the 1950s. How has climbing changed since then, in terms of equipment, but also attitude? When I started climbing in 1951, my first rope was a second-hand hemp rope, I bought a pair of clinker nailed boots and on difficult climbs used a pair of rubber soled tennis shoes – the cheapest Woolworths ones were the best. You tied the rope round your waist with a bowline knot, had some slings round your neck for running belays and looped them over natural rock spikes or round stones jammed in cracks. You really didn’t want to fall off when leading. Today I have sticky rubber climbing shoes, a special sit harness, alloy wedges and camming devices for running belays and stretch sheathed nylon ropes. Yet in Britain we still are trad climbers; we only use the cracks naturally found in the rock – we don’t hammer in pitons or drill holes for expansion bolts, which on the Continent is widely practiced and there are endless arguments about climbing ethics.
What’s your favourite place to climb in Scotland? How does climbing in the Scottish Highlands prepare you for taking on the Himalayas and other peaks?
I first hitch hiked up into the Scottish Highlands in 1951, stayed in youth hostels and found people to climb with. I was a naturally talented climber so found myself doing much of the leading. Climbing in Scotland in those early years was a wonderful journey of discovery, reaching through Glen Coe, Ben Nevis, on up onto the Cuillins of Skye and the Northern Highlands, which I have come to love most of all because of their remote wild beauty and combination of sea lochs, sky and wild mountains. I had never been abroad and there was no immediate prospect of doing so. The Highlands gave me a superb foundation for reaching out to the Alps and then the Himalayas.
You write about climbing with many legendary mountaineers but with whom did you form the most successful partnership? And who did you most admire? Is there anyone from the present climbing fraternity who impresses you?
I owe a lot to the mentors I met on this journey. The most important was Hamish Macinnes whom I met just after I had left school in early 1953 in a climbing hut in Glen Coe. He was already one of the best all round ice climbers in Scotland but there was no one else around so he took me up some really hard first winter ascents. We went on to climb together in the Alps when I was stationed in the army in North Germany and through that I met and climbed with Don Whillans, who with Joe Brown, revolutionised British climbing and had the best mountain judgement of anyone I have climbed with.
Another brilliant Scottish climber I shared a rope with was Tom Patey, a doctor with a practice based in Ullapool, who almost certainly put up more new routes in Scotland than any one else has ever done. He was an incredible and wonderful character. He thought nothing of driving down to The Clachaig Inn in Glencoe at the end of a day’s work in his practice. There he would be drinking and singing irreverent and very funny songs about his climbing
Reaching the top of the highest mountain on earth meant a lot to me,evenifitwasbythe ordinary route
mates, accompanying himself on his accordion into the early hours of the morning. He’d get up late and rush off to snatch a new route, often climbing it solo with me carrying the rope, trying to catch up to persuade him to start using it. There was never a dull moment with Patey. It was his idea to make the first ascent of the Old Man of Hoy, the finest sea stack in the British Isles, a hundred metre high slender sandstone tower in 1966, on which I joined him.
I admire them all for their different abilities, characteristics and the experiences we’ve shared. Of the younger generation, I admire many of them because they have pushed the boundaries of the possible in our sport further and further, but one particular friend who is following a very similar career to myself is Leo Houlding. He has pushed climbing limits to an extraordinary degree, has extended his exploration of his limits to extreme base jumping and wing suit flying and has made a living communicating about it, lecturing and filming. He has also become a great ambassador for modern mountaineering, becoming an Outward Bound Trustee and a voice for the British Mountaineering Council.
He was the youngest person ever to climb The Old Man and came up with the idea of us doing it together in 2014 to celebrate me reaching the age of 80.
Your many achievements include first British ascents of the North Wall of the Eiger and the South Face of Annapurna. Is there any one particular expedition that stands out for you?
Big is not necessarily best. The most enjoyable and memorable climb I have ever done was the first ascent of the West Peak of Shivling, in the Indian Gangotri Himalaya in 1983. It’s a mere 6,500 metres but had never been climbed and there were just two of us, my long time climbing friend Jim Fotheringham and myself. We climbed it Alpine style, packing our rucksacks with a week’s food and all our gear, just keeping going with five bivouacs and some fantastic climbing to the top with a scary descent down the other side of the mountain of which we knew nothing. It was a matter of total commitment to the climb itself and trust in each other’s ability and the sheer joy of the climbing.
You reached the summit of Everest in 1985 at the age of 50. Was that a long time to wait as you began climbing when you were 16? And what are your thoughts on the allure of that mountain?
There were so many other peaks to climb and mountains to explore. I was not interested in just reaching the summit of Everest, but was fascinated by the challenge that its huge South West Face presented. We made our first attempt in 1972, which failed but I learned a huge amount for when I led my next expedition in 1975 which succeeded but I didn’t go to the top myself. It wasn’t my priority as leader of a large complex expedition. In 1982 I returned to attempt the unclimbed NE Ridge with just four of us venturing on the route. It ended in tragedy when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker lost their lives. I promised my wife I would not return but the Norwegian, Arne Naess invited me join his expedition repeating the south col route and to help with its planning. It was an invitation I couldn’t resist and for a few days I was the oldest person to have climbed the mountain.
Reaching the top of the highest mountain on earth meant a lot to me, even if it was by the ordinary route, the only peak I have climbed in the Himalaya that wasn’t a virgin peak. Just being the highest gives it that special allure. n