He loved his life... but he died living his mum’s dream

HE was just six years old when he begged his father to take him on the 4,500mile journey from Scotland to see the Himalayan peak which had claimed the life of his mother, Alison Hargreaves. Gazing forlornly up to the distant spot on the remote Karakoram Range, where she still lies nearly a quarter of a century on, there is no doubt the majestic panorama before Tom Ballard’s young eyes would ignite a spark that would lead him to follow in her footsteps.

Just three months before her death, Hargreaves, 33, had jubilantly made history when she became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest – the world’s highest peak – unsupported by bottled oxygen and Sherpas.

From the top, she’d sent Tom and his four-year-old sister Kate, who were back home in Spean Bridge near Fort William with their father Jim Ballard, a radio message telling them: ‘I am on the highest point of the world, and I love you dearly.’

But it was on a second expedition – during which she conquered the world’s second-highest peak, K2 – that she was suddenly swept to her death in August 1995 by 200mph winds while descending.

The untimely death of Tom’s mother on the peak dubbed ‘Savage Mountain’ had a profound effect on the boy, and as he grew older and began to understand something more of the incredible feats she had achieved it would spark a yearning to match or even surpass her endeavours.

Friends say that by the time he entered his early teens he never had any other wish or thought than to be a climber and, like his mother, he never saw mountains as his enemy.

After all, he joked, it was ‘in his blood’. Famously, not even pregnancy had been a hindrance to Hargreaves, who had scaled the dangerous north face of the Eiger in the Alps in July 1988 when she was six months pregnant with Tom.

Described as ‘a climber from the cot upwards’, Tom would soon go on to become an adept mountaineer. At first his father tried to deter him, recalling: ‘We’ve always lived a very outdoors and activity-based life, but I almost unconsciously kept Tom away from climbing for a long time after Alison’s death.’

But when a new climbing wall was established in Fort William and became a favourite for children’s birthday parties, Tom finally asked his father one day why they never went climbing.

Mr Ballard said: ‘I couldn’t think of a good enough reason. So I took them out one day. And that was it for Tom. When he did develop a passion for it, I didn’t want to stand in his way any more than I did when he tried skiing or mountain-biking, but I did worry about it.’

His son soon began to scale difficult routes with apparent ease, and after leaving school he became a full-time climber, with the aim of bettering his mother’s achievements.

In recent years, his professional climbing career had taken him to some of the world’s most challenging peaks, including the Cima Grande di Lavaredo, Pizzo Badile, Matterhorn, Grandes Jorasses, Petit Dru and the Eiger.

But having grown up in the shadow of Britain’s highest mountain Ben Nevis (4,413ft) he never lost his love of the Highlands.

His ‘huge passion’ for climbing was just like that of his mother, who inspired many with her acts of bravery, said Mr Ballard, adding: ‘I’m still amazed by the amount of women who wrote to me after her death, saying how much they admired her for pursuing her dreams. These were women who felt they’d put their own lives on hold for their children, and I really don’t believe any woman should be put in that position.’

Ultimately, Tom’s quest to climb Nanga Parbat in Pakistan two weeks ago was meant to lead him full circle to his mother’s last fateful challenge.

Once he’d raised £150,000 for a serious expedition, he’d planned to scale K2, whose ‘awesome beauty’ had left such an indelible mark on him years earlier when he’d first laid eyes upon it.

He never blamed Hargreaves for leaving him motherless. On the contrary, he once said: ‘I would have been disappointed with her if she hadn’t gone out to live her dreams.’

Before leaving on his latest expedition, he’d tried to explain his need for shared experiences with the mother he barely remembered. He said: ‘I remember we had quite a similar personality. We both didn’t really say very much and liked to be alone in the mountains and experience it ourselves. I wouldn’t say we were both stubborn – it’s rather more of a silent determination.

‘When I was young, I always said I would climb these mountains for her. But then I realised that was a bit silly, because she had already climbed them. I was only doing it for myself – every day I got out there is for me.’

Occasionally Tom would climb with his Italian girlfriend Stefania Pederiva, daughter of a local mountain guide in the Dolomites, where he and his father had made their home in recent years.

Yesterday, warnings that rescuers were ‘chasing ghosts’ were sadly confirmed with the discovery of the bodies of Tom and his climbing partner Daniele Nardi.

Just 100 miles from the icy peak where his mother has lain for 24 years, it is likely that Tom, too, will remain snowbound for eternity.

Hargreaves once told him it was better ‘to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand days as a sheep’. If the loved ones left behind by mother and son can take any comfort from the circumstances of his death, it would be that he followed his adored mother’s motto to the end.

Better live one day as a tiger than 1,000 as a sheep