These Mountaineers Don’t Take Climbs for Granite

Even the uninitiated knows high-altitude mountain climbing is difficult and dangerous; some climbers succeed, most fail, some die.

Statistics show that for every 10 attempts to ascend a Himalayan peak there is one success and three deaths. For the other six, failure is a compromise.

Several of the world’s best climbers--from mountaineers to sport rock climbers--gathered at Snowbird, Utah recently to share their thoughts at the 1989 Mountain Summit. Here are some of their thoughts:

LOU WHITTAKER

The veteran mountaineer from Seattle recently returned from leading a successful spring expedition to Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain (28,208 feet). Although he didn’t attempt the summit himself, six from his party made it, the most Americans ever to ascend a Himalayan peak in an expedition. Because the oxygen supply was low, four had to summit without the supplements.

“We were never shipped our oxygen, but on the other side of the mountain there was a Russian team,” Whittaker said. “I sent a Sherpa runner around with $2,000 and (a note), ‘Could you sell us any bottles?’

“Sixteen days later he comes back with a note in English: ‘Dear Mr. Whittaker. We are happy with our success. The air in Moscow is the same as the air in Seattle. We don’t feel we should charge you for it.’

“And their bottles were lighter than ours . . . titanium. And they came just in time to shoot two bottles up.”

Actually, the gift was a pay back. When the Nepalese government issued climbing permits, Whittaker was given the south side of the mountain instead of the north side he requested. When the Soviets, who had the north side, asked if he would swap, he gladly agreed. Both sides were successful.

REINHOLD MESSNER

The German-speaking Italian is the world’s most celebrated mountaineer for his achievement of climbing all 14 of the world’s peaks higher than 8,000 meters (26,240 feet), usually alone and without oxygen.

“Nanga Parbat (26,660) in ’78 was the first high peak I soloed, and I did it without any technical help. After half of the climb, a huge ice serac (a pointed mass of ice) below me where I crossed the day before collapsed, so I could not go down the same way. Half the mountain fell down. I had a very good feeling with this closed door on my back. I had to go to the top to find another way down.

“I’ve had a few bad moments when I did not see any way out. On Manaslu (26,760) in ‘72, in a snowstorm I went round and round without anyone knowing where I am. I was very lucky. I went out on the wind direction, against the wind, knowing that the wind was coming from the south. I knew I would reach a ridge, and near the ridge was our base. I reached it at the last moment, before it became night.

“Two of the expedition members died in this night.”

LYNN HILL

Pressures have you climbing the walls? Try what Hill does: climbs walls. The former Fullerton resident, now living in New Paltz, N.Y., is the world’s best woman rock climber. Especially on the artificial walls used in sport climbing, it’s relatively safe because the competitors are tethered to the vertical walls by ropes--or at least they’re supposed to be. Hill, 28, survived a 70-foot fall in France last May with only a dislocated elbow, a broken bone in one foot and “a sore butt.” She had forgotten to knot her rope so it wouldn’t slip through the ring in her harness.

“Once I got to the top I grabbed the other end of the rope and started to let myself down, and at the same time I leaned back. Because my knot wasn’t tied, the rope came straight out of my harness through the top piece, and I went flying down. I went about 60 feet before I hit a branch of a small tree, (which) broke my fall. I hit the ground and bounced over onto my face.”

She landed literally at the feet of her husband, Russ.

“I thought, ‘That’s it, she’s dead,’ ” he said.

Hill: “I don’t remember it. There are only two images I have: the tree and seeing him on the ground looking up at me. I remember just before I fell, and I remember about 45 minutes after, talking to my husband. He was saying, ‘You’re in Buoux, France,’ and I snapped back to reality and realized what had happened.”

Hill, after watching the film, “K2: Triumph and Tragedy,” about a series of catastrophes on the second-highest mountain in ‘85, said: “I can see the attraction but, for me, I think it’s a little too dangerous and uncomfortable. My hands get really cold.

“You have to keep in perspective that a lot of things are not in your control, (such as) avalanches and the weather. One of the things I like about rock climbing is there is very little chance of anything like that happening. You’re just responding to a fixed environment.”

JOHN ROSKELLEY

The 40-year-old Spokane, Wash. resident has climbed more Himalayan peaks than any other American and was first in the world to climb Makalu, the fifth highest mountain (27,824), alone and without oxygen. He is the author of Nanda Devi, the account of a ’76 climb that went bad. This year, with Jeff Lowe, he achieved what he calls “my best climb,” of the lesser-known 21,500-foot Tawache in Nepal.

“It was a two-man winter ascent of an unclimbed face, one of the most difficult faces to be seen in the Himalayas. (Because snow and ice stabilize the rocks), it had to be done in winter, with extreme cold. The big problem is you’re unable to camp. I slept in a sleeping bag for 10 nights, just hung onto a wall.

“We went the Alpine style, went to the summit, made our way down. We didn’t go up and down, fixing ropes and setting camps. That’s kind of the purist end of Himalayan climbing.”

Roskelley says the highest mountains are not necessarily the most difficult.

“That’s typical hype. There are some little peaks out there that make K2 look like a molehill. Some of the more difficult peaks are right down the road--the (Khumbu) Glacier--from K2. Just knock your socks off when you look at ‘em. Much more technically difficult. You’re hung out a lot more.

“I’m surprised some of these younger guys didn’t knock Tawache off. It’s been there a long time and everybody sees it walking to Everest. But, technically, it looks so bad that it’ll scare off 90 percent of the climbers.

“You’re sticking it out on a little peak like Tawache because there’s nobody (nearby) to come up and rescue you. If someone gets hurt, your partner gets you down or you’re out.”

JEFF LOWE

Because of his skill on ice faces, his peers call him the “Ice Man.” He hates it. What does set him apart, though, is “my absolute commitment to minimum impact climbing.

“I’ve been mistagged. I like ice climbing, but I do a lot more rock climbing. Ice is just more mysterious and changeable than rock. I still value the adventurous side, confronting the mountain on its terms, more than I value actual success in terms of getting to the top. That has very little meaning to me.”

To Lowe, 39, a major expedition, with dozens of porters hauling gear up and down to advance camps, is “like joining the army or working on a construction project. The kind of climbing I like is fast and as free as possible of gadgetry.

“That’s what the Himalaya has to offer, and it hasn’t yet yielded those secrets to Alpine-style climbers. You’ve gotta go in winter, with two guys who are ready to move together. You have to have a lot of experience and confidence and a willingness to go down when things aren’t right and try again.

“That’s when people in the Himalayas get hurt, when they don’t have the knowledge or willingness to retreat when necessary. There’s no place for a macho attitude in the Himalayas. It’s what gets people killed.”

DICK BASS

Bass is a former Texan who, his friends say, still talks like one--long and loud. But in 1985, at 55, he became the oldest person to climb Everest, completing a grand slam of the highest peak on each of the seven continents. Now he says it was a lot more difficult developing the $150 million Snowbird ski resort he started in ’69.

“I never intended to be a mountain climber,” he said.

But a woman, Marty Hoy, who worked at Snowbird in the winter and guided on Mt. McKinley (20,320) in Alaska in the summer, told him: “Bass, your hot air won’t get you up that mountain.”

(Hoy was killed on McKinley in 1980.)

Bass: “I wasn’t planning on climbing McKinley, but it made me mad. Coming off the summit I said, ‘Well, by God, if I can climb that I’ll climb the other six continental highest.’ ”

Everest was the last. He finally did it on his fourth expedition after 38 months of trying.

“I had no business being up there. The real mountaineer has to be able to get up there and be a lead climber, put in rope sections and, like on Everest, put ladders up through the ice fall. I could no more do that than fly to the moon. But I just got it in my mind I could do it.”

Bass said that, between gasps, he recited Kipling to keep himself going.

“ ‘If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to hold on when there’s nothing in you . . . ‘ The poems were like mantras. They kept my mind off the negative thoughts, the fear.

“The pressures I had building this place helped me on the mountain. I found that man can take physical discomforts and momentary fears a lot better than the constant human-induced pressure cooker down here. It was just me and that mountain.”

JEAN-CLAUDE DROYER

The Frenchman is called “the father of European free (unaided) climbing” and is a leading proponent of sport-climbing on artificial walls. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t had his own lofty goals and disappointments.

“One of my dreams was to climb a really big overhang (on) my ‘home’ cliff, closest to my home--the Chimpanzee Dome. It was only 40-feet high but it had a 20-foot overhang. I dreamed about it for four years before I thought I could climb it. First I try to climb it in ’81 but couldn’t. In the meantime another climber climbed it. I was not the first.”

Droyer also criticizes himself for missing a first on LaGran Capucin in the Mont Blanc area, “to have not really free-climbed first the face, to believe it could be climbed free. I tried first in 1977 with just (a little) support, but not completely free. And two years after I left, some guys on a team climbed it completely free. I could have climbed it, also.

“I have done it on another route last year with the same difficulty, but it’s not the same.”

YUICHIRO MIURA

He’s known as “The Man Who Skied Down Everest,” as well as the highest peaks on six other continents.

“My home mountain in Japan--Mount Okuda--is a very gentle slope for hiking and ski. So naturally I (combine) mountain climbing and ski.”

Messner, among others, is not terribly impressed.

“Muira skied down from the South Col of Everest,” he said. “He fell down. He climbed up the South Col to 26,000 feet where, really, the climb of Everest is beginning. He was so fast his parachute went up and he fell down the whole mountain. He was very lucky to survive. From the climbing point of view, it was a foolish thing.”

Messner also regards speed climbing--popular on Everest in recent years--as a spurious stunt.

“It’s not so difficult to do Everest in one day--24 hours--with a month to get everything prepared--the food, the tent with tea, the oxygen in place. They don’t count those number of days. They count only the one day when they run up and down. This is an unfair play.”

As for wall climbing, Messner says it’s good for training for real mountain climbing and that “we aren’t interfering with the wilderness . . . (but) human beings are making the rules. It’s an art, a very hard thing, with a judge looking and taking measurements. I have nothing against it. I am very happy we have competition on artificial walls and climbing on natural mountains.

“But on a real mountain, nature is the only one who makes the rules. The avalanches are coming down, and if you don’t know it you will die. I am judging myself and saying I did wrong, I did right. It’s more an adventure than a sport.”

MORE ON WHITTAKER

He says he was always skeptical about the mysticism of the Himalayas until an expedition a few years ago.

“I wanted to burn the trash along the way, but the Sherpas said no, it would bring a storm. Finally, we did burn it, and the next day a storm came and lasted five days.”

While waiting out the storm in his tent, Whittaker was awakened early one morning to a rooster crowing.

“We were at Base Camp at 16,500 feet and I wondered, ‘What’s a rooster doing here?’ We’d been living on rice and dal (a native sauce) for several days because one-third of our equipment hadn’t arrived, and I thought, ‘Boy, that sure would taste good.’ ”

Then Whittaker learned that a Sherpa had brought the bird along to rub on his sore hip, supposedly transferring the pain to the rooster.

“After he was through I tried to find the rooster,” Whittaker said. “He got away, but the Sherpa’s hip was fine.”

AND FROM THOSE WHO HAVE SURVIVED

Messner said one thing he has noticed over the years is that younger climbers tend to get into more trouble on a mountain than the older ones.

Whittaker, whose twin brother Jim was the first American to climb Everest, said, “I can’t think of a climber under 30 that’s made Everest.”

Roskelley: “I know a lot of people have died on Everest, but what you’re finding is a lot of inexperienced people are taking high chances. There are so many people on the mountain that they get into a competitive attitude, even if they’re really good climbers.”

The trouble with younger climbers, Roskelley said, is that “they don’t have patience. Patience is a real key in the Himalayas. You have to be able to sit in a tent for 5 or 10 days and let the slopes slough off, the storms go away, and if you get a storm two or three days later, you’ve gotta sit there again.”

Lowe: “When things are wrong, you go down without carrying this baggage of failure. It’s a real subtle thing. Every aspect of climbing has its own subtleties. When you combine it all together--you have to be a rock climber, an ice climber, have years of experience at altitude, know how to camp--you basically know how to take care of yourself.”

Leadership also is important.

Messner said: “You can’t run an expedition like a democracy. You have to lead it like a fascist. That’s why I don’t lead expeditions anymore.”

Whittaker said that under tension, when critical decisions must be made, “The veneer of civilization falls off. The Europeans think the Americans are too democratic, that they (seek) too much of a consensus from everybody else when they lead a climb.

“But since we had some problems on K2 in ’75 with a team that we’d never climbed with, I’ve never had a problem, and I’ve solved it by knowing the people I’ve gone in with beforehand. If you know the people, everybody comes back as friends--if they come back. It’s dangerous, and I’ve had deaths on expeditions, as well.”

Roskelley: “(But) if you live through those first few years, especially in the Himalayas, you have a really good chance.”