Wild Magazine, History Summer 2024:
EVEREST: 40 YEARS ON
Q+A WITH TIM MACARTNEY-SNAPE
Forty years ago, on October 3, 1984, two Australians were doing something that no other Aussies had done before—standing on top of Everest. It was a remarkable achievement, especially given it was one of the first alpine-style attempts on the peak, and given that none of the team—Lincoln Hall, Geof Bartram, Andy Henderson, Greg Mortimer and Tim Macartney-Snape—had climbed an 8,000m peak prior. In the end, only Tim and Greg made it to the summit, but they did so without supplemental oxygen, and on a new (and to this day, yet-to-be-repeated) route. Wild’s editor James McCormack recently spoke about this audacious climb with the magazine’s esteemed columnist, Tim Macartney-Snape.
WILD: Let’s start with this: Can you describe that feeling of when you actually reached the summit?
Tim M-S: Relief was probably the first emotion. Slight surprise, too, because it’s really an unknown outcome right until the end. You’re climbing up a steep side of a hill, and you can’t see the summit—Everest rounds off at the top so you’re not exactly sure where you are if you don’t have a tracking device, which didn’t exist back then—and you are looking at the sun sinking to the horizon thinking: Well, you’ve already made up your mind that you’ve gotta turn back before it gets dark. And you’re frantically trying to memorise a descent route, thinking, “Are we gonna make it or not?” And then finally to step onto the summit literally on sunset was an incredible relief. Not just because it’d been uncertain for that day, but it’d been uncertain for the past six weeks, mainly due to the avalanche threat but also, of course, because of the altitude—none of us had been above 8,000 metres before. And just the relief to have no more up was massive.
OK, so I’m gonna backtrack a bit now. Was climbing always in your blood? And at what stage in your life did you realise Everest was beckoning?
Like any idealistic, maybe slightly arrogant young climber, I didn’t think Everest was on my radar. In fact, I was determined against having it on my radar because it was a mountain which, up until that point, had only been climbed with large expeditions. Well, Reinhold Messner had done his remarkable solo ascent from the north, but I didn’t put myself in that sort of league at all. But my ambition was to do good routes on mountains. If I was to do anything like [Everest], I wanted to do it alpine style, with no oxygen, and none of that traditional stuff like Sherpas and fixed ropes. But that was just a daydream.
Then [in 1981], I was in Kathmandu trying to get a permit for Annapurna II. Anyway, I got talking to this Japanese guy, not long after [he’d] come back from a large Japanese expedition to the North Face of Everest. “Can you show me some photos?” I asked. And [he showed me] the first good photos I’d seen of the whole North Face. He said, “Very direct, the North Face, very direct.” I was thinking, “Yeah, it is very direct.” There’s no ice fall. It’s just one sweep of mountain from the bottom to the top.
Later that year, I was on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau climbing a mountain called Amne Machin (Ed: there’s a story on Amne Machin in this very issue of Wild, starting P112), which had been just opened up again to foreigners. Anyway, at base camp, our liaison officer slash interpreter asked us what else we’d like to climb.
And so idly, I asked, “What about the North Face of Everest? Are there any permits available?” And he said, “I’ll ask Beijing.” The reply came back that a French expedition had just cancelled their booking for the North Face for the autumn of 1984. And they said if you want, we’ll just pencil it in, and when you get back to Beijing, you can pay a deposit. And so that was that. But you know, we had very little experience at high altitude, and no money. So it [was] gonna be a big task.
How did you decide on the eventual crew?
Lincoln and I were climbing partners, and had been [since] university. Andy came with us to Ama Dablam in 1981. Geof, another guide, was someone we’d worked with at Australian Himalayan Expeditions, and he’d done a lot of climbing in South America, and we invited him to Amne Machin. And Greg was someone Lincoln had climbed with in New Zealand and he eventually came to Annapurna II with us.
How important was sponsorship to you, or were you able to do most of the fundraising on your own?
No, sponsorship was a critical factor because the Chinese were charging top dollar. For instance, to get from base camp to advanced base, [we] were encouraged to use yaks from down the valley. The Chinese were charging fifty US dollars per yak, but giving the local yak owners two dollars. And each town we went through held a huge banquet at our expense, inviting all the local dignitaries. It was absurd, a rort. They quoted us in the end $150,000 just for the permit; that’s not including food or gear. So we needed sponsorship, and we struggled. We got small amounts from the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, the Australia-China Council… But nothing big until I realised that probably the best way of funding it was to make a documentary. We were introduced to Sam Chisholm, the MD of Channel Nine, and somehow we convinced him that we could make a good story out of it. So eventually, at the last minute, Channel Nine came on board and paid for the whole thing.
Wow! I know Wild was one of the sponsors, too. But I don’t imagine we were throwing the big bucks at you. What did Wild’s sponsorship involve?
It was a thousand bucks. It was token, but we appreciated it.
Had any other teams from Australia even attempted Everest before yours?
No.
Was there ever any consideration given to a route that had been climbed before?
No, not at all. We’d never been interested in that. It takes an enormous amount of effort and money to climb a mountain, so if you’re going to climb, then my philosophy was always “Well, you may as well do something worthwhile.” And a new route is always more exciting than a known route. So it wasn’t even on our radar.
Was the decision to not use supplemental oxygen made in a similar vein? I know that, prior to your summitting, only ten climbers, and that includes Sherpas, had successfully summitted Everest without it.
Supplemental oxygen wasn’t an option. The issue with it is that it becomes a logistical problem because of the extra weight. It’s really nigh on impossible to do an alpine-style ascent using oxygen; it’s too much stuff. So even though [Everest] had been climbed, it had been on known routes or using fixed ropes. What we were doing—not just a new route, but alpine style with no oxygen—was a considerable extra step. That’s what made it exciting.
Looking back now, does the team’s audacity seem surprising?
No. I think one of the factors was that we were Australian, and we didn’t know any better. But no, I don’t think it was surprising. I think it was definitely audacious, but that’s what it takes to do something big.
Can you talk a little about the nuts and bolts of the actual climbing and the route?
So the big issue was safety, really. Post monsoon (Ed: The monsoon season around Everest typically runs from June to September) the mountains are loaded with snow. Now, we were never given any choice as to what season we could climb the mountain in. And it turned out it was a lucky thing that we got autumn, because the climbing was probably a bit easier. But on the flip side, it was a lot more dangerous, because of the avalanche danger. For instance, our climbing base on the glacier was three kilometres from the foot of the face; that was the closest we dared camp to the mountain because of the avalanche danger. So going up to the face for the first time, it was done with a lot of trepidation.
Looking up at the face, trying to work out a safe route, it became obvious that really there was only one option that would give us a reasonable chance. We could have gone directly up the North Face from the middle, but there’s a lot of rock on that route, and we figured it would probably be beyond our capabilities if we were to do it alpine style. But there seemed to be a bit of a spur jutting out from the lower part of the face that, if we could get to it, would give us access to the Great Couloir above the large serac. I’d also realised that [because of our experience on Annapurna II] that you’ve got to sleep up high for quite a few nights to get well acclimatised so you can go up higher. And the top of the spur seemed the only place we found that was a safe spot to put a camp. Subsequent experience proved that to be correct.
The storms ended up being relentless from what I understand, and there were quite a few avalanches. Are you able to talk about the avalanche that took your gear away?
You get snowfalls every afternoon towards the end of the monsoon. But we didn’t get big snowfalls… until there was one. We’d only started on the face, and had done 1 1/2 days of rope fixing when the weather came in. So we left a stash of gear at the top of the fixed rope, and a stash of gear at the foot of the face in a bergschrund, and then retreated to advanced base camp. It was quite a big storm that lasted a couple of days, and probably dumped over a metre of snow. When we [returned] to the bergschrund and started digging for our gear—which was basically all our climbing gear: boots, harnesses, ice axes, hardware, helmets, all the necessities for climbing, basically—we dug and we dug and we dug, for two days with no result.
When you were digging, did you think, “Well, this is over if we can’t find the gear”? Or was it always, “OK, we’re going to come up with a way of making this work”?
The mood was depressed, but no, I definitely didn’t think I was gonna give up. And I was in the worst situation. Everyone’s boots were gone, but most people had spare boots or could get some from the film crew. But I couldn’t. I had the biggest feet on the expedition, so I couldn’t fit into anyone else’s. I [ended up] using my cross-country ski boots. But the film crew had been equipped well, and we used some of their gear, or had spares of our own. I ended up sewing my own harness out of webbing, though.
So how long did you end up spending on the mountain?
Two months.
And what was the hardest aspect to being there that long?
Well, we weren’t on the route all that time. Base camp is twenty kays from the mountain, so you spend time getting all your stuff up to the climbing base seventeen kays up the valley. And then we were ferrying climbing gear, food, fuel and tents up to the base of the route. And we ended up fixing ropes up the first eight—or nine—hundred metres. And then we were waiting for the weather. You can’t go there when it’s snowing, or immediately after it’s snowed, because you get clobbered by an avalanche. So it was probably four or five climbing days getting up to and establishing Camp Two, and then we’d spend a few nights there, and then come back down, and wait for the weather. We had a couple of false starts.
What was the most frustrating thing with those delays?
Knowing that the clock was ticking. Winter’s coming, and it’s gonna get windier and colder. And also, the expedition had a timeline. People had to get back home. That was the hardest thing: waiting for the conditions, because we didn’t have any weather forecasts really of any use.
The route ended up being called White Limbo. Has it ever been repeated?
It’s been attempted a few times. But no, not repeated.
If you had to sum up the climbing—as opposed to being on the summit—in three adjectives, what would they be?
That’s a tough one. Tedious. Hot. And cold. Lower down, it was fucking hot. Unbelievably hot. Then, usually around midday, the clouds would come in. Boom—the temperature plummeted below freezing. But it was exciting. It was incredible. That was the surprising thing, just how the world opened up as you went up high, and you looked down on everything. Incredible!
If you were able to swap out a piece of equipment that you had back then for something that’s available today, what would it be? In other words, what technological gear innovation since 1984 do you think would have made the biggest difference?
Footwear, without a doubt. Although plastic boots were in use by then—they weren’t when I started climbing—they were still pretty heavy. These days, [boots] are so much lighter. And the weight on your feet is critical. You know the old saying of “A pound on your foot is worth four on your back”? It’s really true, especially at altitude. So footwear is the main thing. But everything else really has gotten lighter. Fabrics have gotten lighter. The shells are lighter. And while the main insulation is still the same—down—it’s just a better quality now and is high loft, so you don’t need as much of it.
Himalayan climbing has changed greatly since then. Are you able to share some views on the current state of alpinism there?
People are doing some incredible ascents now, things you never dreamt possible forty years ago. [Some of that is the result] of the improvement in technique. There are a lot of professional climbers around now who spend all their time climbing. There weren’t back then. The gear is much lighter, and much better, too. It’s good to see alpinism in good health.
On the other hand, climbing above 7,000m without supplemental oxygen has recently been banned on the Tibetan side, which smacks of a typical totalitarian imposition. Also, commercial climbing has sullied the high peaks. There is this fanaticism about peak bagging, which is not mountaineering at all. I don’t know what you call it; alpine tourism, I guess. That’s what Messner called it. And it has despoiled the bases of all the 8,000m peaks, and it’s starting to despoil some of the others.
There needs to be better control. The Grand Canyon in the US is a great example of something which is really popular, but is well managed. The numbers are [controlled], and the environment is taken care of. That’s not the case in the Himalaya. And you have to put the blame squarely at the feet of the governments who issue permits. (This conversation was edited for length and clarity.)