ATTAINING THE ALL-SEEING EYE

A chapter from the 2010 book, CELEBRATING 50 years of Australian Mountaineering Feats and Friendships in Nepal

“The summit zone - a different world where time slows down and everything is clear.”

TIM MACARTNEY-SNAPE

Cover of the book CELEBRATING 50 years of Australian Mountaineering Feats and Friendships in Nepal

Clarity of vision has been the focus for celebrated Australian mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape in his philanthropic work in the Himalaya. From Buddha’s penetrating eyes atop Bodhnath’s towering stupa, to iconic fish eyes adorning tourist T-shirts in Thamel, to brightly coloured tikkas decorating the foreheads of village girls, all-seeing eyes follow you along every street and every corner in Nepal.

Yet the country has some of the highest rates of preventable eye conditions in the world. Cataracts account for 72 per cent of blindness in Nepal.

In 1987, Macartney-Snape’s drive to shed light on the issue for the Nepalese was so intensely felt he co-established Nepal Eye Program Australia (NEPA), an organisation to raise money for Nepal’s Prevention of Blindness Program. His initiative, along with partners Fred and Gabi Hollows and Sanduk Ruit, was a major step in the advancement of eye health in the country.

“In 1987, Fred Hollows invited Dr Sanduk Ruit to work with him for a year at Sydney’s Prince of Wales hospital. We had a mutual friend in Kathmandu, Kunga Sherpa, who suggested I get in touch with Sanduk. We started sending superseded but still useful medical equipment over to Nepal. Then we started NEPA,” says Macartney-Snape.

The late Professor Hollows, world-renowned Australian ophthalmologist, believed no one in the world should be needlessly blind.

“We had a small committee of Nepal-philes and we would meet at Fred and Gabi’s house in Randwick. We raised millions of dollars from donations, soliciting them in all the usual ways. Most of it went to funding eye camps, buying equipment for them and training staff,” Macartney- Snape says.

“After Fred was diagnosed with cancer the Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF) was formed and absorbed NEPA’s work. But I’m still involved as a member of the Foundation.” FHF has been supporting Nepal’s Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology since 1994, two years after the Foundation was established. Headed by medical director Dr Ruit, Tilganga has set a standard around the world in eye care and strives to achieve the World Health Organisation’s global initiative Vision 2020 - “The Right to Sight”. While Tilganga and FHF have a long way to go to achieve a country free from avoidable blindness by the year 2020, their determination remains unwavering. These efforts, combined with his achievements in mountaineering, earned Macartney-Snape an Order of Australia Medal in 1988. In 1992, he became a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to mountaineering and international relations.

By rights he should feel he has reached the great pinnacle of his life. But he has a recurring dream that he is forever climbing a mountain, an endless mountain with no summit in sight, fraught with hazards and difficulty, hurdles and high points.

Metaphorically, this would suggest he has yet to reach the height of his abilities. But, philanthropic accomplishments aside, the extent of his mountaineering achievements makes this difficult to believe.

Born in Tanganyika (later to unite with Zanzibar to become Tanzania) in 1956 to an Australian father and British mother, Macartney-Snape was 11 when he emigrated to Australia.

He spent his time bushwalking and ski touring when a student in Victoria, and developed his passion for climbing when he went to the Australian National University in Canberra to study for a Bachelor of Science in biology. It was here Macartney-Snape got a real taste for adventure sports as a member of the campus’ mountaineering club alongside fellow enthusiast Lincoln Hall. He began rock climbing before heading off to test his skills in the mountains of New Zealand.

In 1978, club members planned an optimistic expedition to the Indian Himalaya’s 7,066m Dunagiri. When the expedition leader aborted the mission on account of poor weather and illness among many members, an intrepid Macartney-Snape and Hall attempted the summit on their own steam. The two suffered a painful night without sleeping-bags or a tent, but Macartney-Snape succeeded in becoming the only member of the team to reach the summit, Hall stopping just short due to exhaustion. His achievements on the mountain did not escape the public eye and he was asked to lead treks for Australian Himalayan Expeditions (now World Expeditions) for the next four years.

Mesmerised by the beauty and the challenge of the mountains in Asia, Macartney-Snape was soon eyeing India’s neighbouring Himalayan nation - Nepal.

A year after paying the country a visit he returned, first as a trekking guide, then in 1981 to organise a team to climb 6,812m Ama Dablam via its challenging North Ridge.

“But by then I was a regular visitor to Nepal leading groups of trekkers on more remote routes. The Nepalese are very endearing. I’ve made some great friends there and of course the landscape is so diverse. There is still much to explore for the climber and walker,” he explains. Moving ever onwards and upwards, he was made Australian Himalayan Expeditions’ head of operations, then in 1983 established his own company, Wilderness Expeditions, operating adventure holidays in Australia, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, Argentina and Japan.

Macartney-Snape is best known as a member of the first Australian team to summit Everest in 1984. However, it was the year before during his ascent of 7,937m Annapurna II’s South Spur which stands out in his memory. “The climb was technically and logistically hard. The change in conditions from the temperate rainforest at its base to the frozen heights in just a few kilometres was astonishing. The danger from avalanche after massive snowfall was extreme but the setting was extraordinarily beautiful and spectacular. I particularly enjoyed working with the Gurung people from Siklis, a few of who helped us get to base camp through the forests and gorges above their village.”

On 3 October the following year, Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer made history as the first two Australians to reach Everest’s peak. The pair reached the summit “lightweight-style”, without the use of oxygen, via a new route up the North Couloir on the Tibetan side. The route was dangerous and the goal particularly ambitious as none of the team members had been to that altitude without oxygen before.

“Every time I go back to altitude I’m surprised at how hard it is. You just forget, so it’s really hard to describe just how difficult it is. Everything becomes a gargantuan task,” Macartney-Snape says.

“Just lying on your back is hard enough work. Doing something like lighting the stove, putting your boots on or getting in and out of your sleeping-bag require superhuman effort, so to actually climb you need incredible drive to make yourself do it.”

But Macartney-Snape doesn’t hold back when it comes to admitting fear.

“Yes, you’re afraid!” he says quickly, and laughs. “I think you’d be pretty dumb not to be afraid. You need to be afraid.”

Despite relinquishing all their lightweight climbing gear to an avalanche and themselves also nearly falling victim to subsequent snowfall, Macartney-Snape and Mortimer reached the summit just as the sun was setting over the Himalaya, a rare experience as most climbers don’t risk nighttime descent.

“It was the most incredible sunset I had ever seen and I reckon I will ever see. The snow all around me glowed rosy pink contrasting with my electric blue shadow. There was virtually every colour of the rainbow in the sky; from purple to green to blue to red to pink and yellow... It was just astonishing,” he recollects.

“Then of course there was that tremendous relief because finally we were there and this had been such an uncertain thing until the last day. To have that uncertainty evaporate because we were on top brought enormous relief, which was all the sweeter because it was such a beautiful sunset.”

After a long and treacherous descent “into the gloom” with only one torch, a veritable avalanche of mountaineering achievements followed. Six years later, 11 May, 1990 marked the first successful Sea to Summit expedition. Australian Geographic magazine sponsored the marathon trek which saw Macartney-Snape become the first mountaineer to make the arduous ascent from sea level (on the Bay of Bengal) to Everest’s peak without supplementary oxygen. He relives the amazing experience in his book Everest: From Sea to Summit (1992).

Macartney-Snape is actively involved in many projects with the philosophy of protecting the environment and building a sustainable future for the Earth and its inhabitants. He is a patron and founding supporter of the World Transformation Movement and founding chairman of Leave No Trace Australia, an organisation devoted to minimising the impact travellers have on the environment.

“It’s a system of educating the public that tourism authorities and land managers everywhere are beginning to embrace, and my hope is that one day it will be ubiquitous - even in the Himalaya,” he says.

Macartney-Snape has lost many friends on the mountains. While some deaths are unavoidable and a risk climbers take when they embark on any expedition, many are still preventable. He stresses the need for better regulation by mountaineering bodies to ensure prospective climbers are in the right frame of mind and physical fitness when they make their climb.

“I would also like to see the regulatory system made less cumbersome and free of red tape. Money raised from mountaineering should go back to mountain communities and into developing appropriate infrastructure there.” For Macartney-Snape, mountaineering and philanthropy go hand-in-hand. Although he lives in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, his relationship with Nepal remains strong.

“I return to Nepal every other year on average, usually to lead an exploratory trek to seldom-visited parts of the country. I work through World Expeditions, who I have a long association with. Sometimes I return to conduct private climbing trips. I’m organising one for late 2010 and we will sponsor an eye camp at the same time,” he says.

Tilganga holds sponsored eye camps throughout the year in remote districts in Nepal. The new camp will be established near Dr Ruit’s home village in the upper foothills of Kanchenjunga, eastern Nepal. These camps provide free cataract removal for locals who cannot afford the cost of the procedure or make the long trip to a larger town. Since 1994, the Institute’s ophthalmologists have performed over 52,000 cataract removals at more than 200 camps.

For Macartney-Snape, Tilganga stands for more than just eye care for a war-worn Nepal.

“Dr Ruit is a very inspiring person so he’s able to have a team of people following him. He has such enthusiasm it’s not hard to share his vision,” he says.

“I think what he and his team at Tilganga have achieved proves that Nepal can have a future that is worth striving for. They have established a centre of excellence in health care. It should provide a beacon of hope to anyone interested in the development of the country and prove beyond doubt that the innate native talent of Nepalese can be harnessed by good leadership to take the country to the forefront of the developing world.”

CELEBRATING 50 years of Australian Mountaineering Feats and Friendships in Nepal