Wild Magazine, Profile:
Tim Macartney-Snape
Now in his 60s, Tim Macartney-Snape — first Australian Everest summitter, and Wild Magazine columnist — shows little sign of slowing down.
Words Dan Slater
“Get ready, Tim,” I caution, “I’m going to touch your face.” The face in question splits into a wide grin, like a man attempting to eat a boomerang sideways, followed by an orchestra of movements designed to wrest it back under control. Beneath an unkempt shock of brown hair wrangled into a Buff, Tim’s features, as craggy and weathered as the Blue Mountains walls he scales every weekend, oscillate between uncontrollable mirth and deadpan interview mode for several seconds, his self-discipline undermined by the background giggles of the rest of the group. The struggle is real. When his mouth has rearranged itself into some semblance of seriousness, I lightly tap his visage on my phone screen to lock the focus. He takes a fortifying swig of Nile Special, carried up by porters and chilled in a nearby stream for our victory celebrations, and the stage is set.
*****
IT’S DAY SEVEN OF WORLD EXPEDITIONS’ Triple Peaks of the Rwenzori expedition in Uganda, led by mountaineering legend and twice recipient of Order of Australia honours—Tim Macartney-Snape. The evening after summiting Mt Stanley—at 5,109m Africa’s third-highest peak—the team is all smiles. In Tim’s case, this is a transformation. A week ago it was difficult to get so much as a smirk out of him. His mood in Kampala was decidedly formal, but once on the trail he relaxed, and a wry humour began to peek through. Now that our goal has been achieved, his cheerfulness and propensity to joke reveal almost a different person to the one with whom we set off.
Having climbed Mt Everest twice, Margherita Peak has been a stroll in the park for Tim. His resume of climbing accomplishments reads like a Google result page for ‘first ascent’. From Annapurna II’s south spur to Gasherbrum IV’s north-west ridge, to the 6,500m Yangma as recently as 2010, Tim has continually sought to pioneer new routes. “Whether skiing, walking or climbing, I prefer to get off the beaten path,” he explains.” I find the process of reading the landscape and working out the way ahead very absorbing and satisfying.”
His first Everest summit, shared with Greg Mortimer on the first Australian expedition to the mountain in 1984, was via an unclimbed couloir on the north face. The route, called White Limbo, was audacious. Repeated storms pummelled the team, and they spent a month on the mountain. When they succeeded, without oxygen, it was hailed by contemporary climbers as an historic achievement; even to this day, the route has never been repeated. Even more remarkably, Tim completed the climb in leather, cross-country ski boots after losing his mountaineering boots down a crevasse. Although hailing from the world’s flattest continent, Macartney-Snape, now 64, still has the classic physique of a climber—tall, wiry, and with a six-pack that would shame most people forty years his junior. I know this because he often charges along the Rwenzori trails with his North Face shirt flapping open (Tim is an ambassador for the brand). You’d never know that 18 months ago he had a hip replaced after it developed arthritis due to a bad fall about 30 years ago. As a result, he dialled down the running and took up mountain biking, building his own trails around his Mittagong, NSW home. “It’s a good excuse to take my dog for a run,” he says. When I ask if he could still run a marathon, he’s dismissive: “I could, but I’ve never liked races.”
This mindset is reflected by the fact that, despite his obvious ability, Tim doesn’t see the point in pushing his body to the limit for the sake of it. For instance, he doesn’t understand the attraction of winter ascents of big peaks. “That just seems like an exercise in masochism,” he states, “as does a polar traverse. It’s not as though there’s a challenge in finding your way up a technical route, or enjoying the view, because it’s the same every day. I get the isolation, I get the challenge, but there are more interesting things to do in life than go to the most barren place on earth and whip your body to extremes.”
This is not to say age slowed him down. In the first half of 2020 alone he was due to join the New Zealand Alpine Team on a climb of Changabang (6,864m) in India, undertake an exploratory trek in the Karakorum for World Expeditions, and return to Uganda to scout a long-distance trail from the Virunga volcanoes in the south, up through Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and ending in the Rwenzoris. Sadly, all these trips were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, Tim’s just as happy climbing rock routes in his beloved Blue Mountains backyard. “I try to go to the climbing gym a couple of times a week, then to the crag every weekend, if I can find someone to climb with.”
Mountaineering is still a passion but his ambitions have tempered. “High altitude climbing is in a class of its own, but overindulgence is definitely not good for you. I think future studies will show that going above 7,000m does long term damage to your brain: it’s the first thing that shuts down; you notice it becomes difficult to hold a logical line of thought. I came to realise that the high altitude game is like a train line, and I didn’t want to get stuck on it like so many others did. Every time you did something big, people would ask “What’s next?”, and so you’d think of something harder and more out there.”
“I’ve also realised that at altitude you spend a lot of time not climbing,” he continues. “It’s more productive to go to lower peaks—you don’t spend as much time acclimatising, and you get more climbing done. It’s more enjoyable and just as spectacular. A 6,000m peak can often be as spectacular as an 8,000m peak.”
Tim grew up in the 1950s on a farm in Tanzania; it aligned him with the natural world from the beginning. The window of his school classroom in Arusha looked out over nearby Mt Meru, and he’d spend hours dreaming of standing atop its summit. Moving to Victoria at the age of 11 was difficult, and he was bullied because of his strange accent and foreign naivety. At age 15, however, he spent an entire year at Geelong Grammar School’s Timbertop bush campus near Mt Buller. It was a tremendous gift. “I immediately felt at home. I quickly learned how to look after myself in the mountains and it set the path I would follow from then on.” His mother put it rather more bluntly: “He always had a lust for climbing and even as a child would do incredibly dangerous and stupid things.” On attending the Australian National University in Canberra, he joined the Mountaineering Club; the die was cast.
But it hasn’t only been via alpinism that Tim has maintained his outdoor fix. For decades now, he’s been leading exploratory treks such as this one. Essentially, he’ll make up an itinerary to a place he’s fascinated to visit, usually remote mountainous areas with small, unclimbed peaks, and pitch it to World Expeditions, who can always find a small group of clients willing to accompany him. “I love taking people off the beaten track,” he says. He’s been leading trips of some sort for World Ex for 40 years, ever since meeting the founders at a slideshow on his return from his first Himalayan expedition in 1978. “The current owners are always open to suggestions and constructive criticism,” he says of working with the company, “and are genuinely invested in trying to improve the condition and the culture of the people in the places they visit. They’ve got good, solid moral principles. I think that’s what I like most about them.”
Principles are important to Tim. It’s not in his nature to crow about his philanthropic activities, but when asked about them his passion is obvious, particularly his support of the seven principles of Leave No Trace (LNT). Tim is the Australian chairman of this organisation, founded in the States in 1987. “They came up with a good, simple system of minimising the impact of people in the wilderness and every child should be taught it. No-one likes doing an outdoor activity and seeing it’s been impacted negatively by people, but you’re not going to stop people enjoying the outdoors. In fact, I think it’d be a disaster if you did. It’s a question of managing the numbers and educating everyone in the principles of LNT. I believe people generally litter and light fires in ignorance, and if they realised the consequences the majority would stop doing it.” Tim gently pushes LNT on social media and mentions it in his public engagements, but mostly he’s trying to get government land management agencies to use it on their interpretation signs. “It’s a slow process though,” he sighs.
*****
ANOTHER STRING TO TIM’S BOW is that of inspirational speaker, a skill which he brought to bear at an impromptu public meeting at the trailhead before our trek. The guest of honour was welcomed to the Rwenzoris by the CEO of Uganda Tourism, village elders and the good people of Kilembe, who enthusiastically performed a traditional song and dance. Seated front and centre, Tim bore the brunt of protracted speechifying by local politicians, an overly long performance which he absorbed stoically with an unreadable expression. When his turn came to stand, rather than take the acceptable but bland route of modest thanks and well-wishing, he eloquently and pertinently addressed the major points preceding speakers made, endorsing them while subtly adding suggestions of his own. It was an expertly-balanced performance.
Another example of his tact came when dividing our group into those ready to accompany him attempting Margherita Peak, and those advised to tackle a lesser objective. He was gentle, naming names but not dwelling on it, making his decision sound more like a suggestion than an order. Denying someone’s summit ambition is hard, but he dealt with it humanely.
Tim’s unflappable demeanour can be seen to good effect in the Australian Geographic-sponsored film about his 1990 Sea to Summit expedition, during which he famously journeyed on foot all the way from the Bay of Bengal to the summit of Everest. Whether it’s navigating crowds of curious Indian children, having to run 300km in five days on discovering the Nepalese border is closed to non-nationals, reaching the summit, and even greeting his then-wife on his return to base camp, Macartney-Snape shows little emotion. Nothing seems to phase him. “I think I’ve always had an innate ability to set myself a task and pursue it doggedly,” he says. “It’s one I’ve refined over the course of my life, and though it may seem rigid and emotionless, it’s actually driven by emotion and empathy for what’s going on around me.”
Like White Limbo, no-one has repeated Tim’s Sea to Summit expedition (although New Zealander Dave Williams was scheduled to make the attempt in May 2020 as part of his Sea2Summit7 project). At the top, an out-of-breath Tim recorded some thought-provoking words: “All the way from the sea and I’ve finally made it. We’ve all come from the sea. As a species, we’ve reached a kind of peak. It’s time to climb the mountains of our minds. Surely by understanding ourselves better, we can end the suffering we impose on each other, and on this beautiful planet.”
It’s an analogy, he says, of overcoming ‘the human condition’, the underlying problem in all human affairs and the crux of his biologist friend Jeremy Griffith’s magnum opus Freedom: The End of the Human Condition, which Tim considers to be “the most important book ever written”. Tim is patron of the World Transformation Movement, which was established to promote this analysis and to understand humanity. “Mountains are an apt metaphor for the urge to explore and ultimately get to the bottom of the greatest riddle of all, why humans are the way we are—the only animal capable of great works of art and acts of selflessness, yet at the same time capable of wilfully committing the greatest atrocities. The answer does lie in us ‘climbing the mountains of our mind’—in healing our psychosis through compassionate understanding of how we ended up in this predicament.’
*****
IN 1991, TIM CO-FOUNDED an outdoors gear company with business partner Roland Tyson: Sea to Summit. Named after Tim’s expedition the year before, the company has grown to become arguably Australia’s most successful outdoors brand. Tim was one of the company directors, although he admits his basic function was marketing, putting his fame to good use as the face of the company. He also had a role in product development, with one of his proudest designs being the Pegless Clothesline, which used a unique beaded cord arrangement to secure garments from the wind. His desire was never to be full time though. “I’m allergic to being in offices,” he says with a straight face. “Although I liked having a role in company direction and making management decisions, the implementation of them was not my forte. My philosophy has always been that it's better to employ people who are better at stuff than I am.”
Tim sold his share of Sea to Summit in 2017. “There was a change of direction in the business ... so I felt it was time to move on.” His measured wording gives a hint of something left unsaid, but he won’t be drawn on what that may be. He is, however, more vocal about the company’s success. “I think we did pretty well,” he admits, at my prompting. “It was a great thing that we started. We saw a gap in the market for accessories, which no-one took seriously. Companies made accessories to use up their off-cuts and things like that, but it’s the accessories that actually make your life more efficient, things like dry sacks, the compact towel, the pocket shower. They’re all little things but cumulatively they make the outdoors a lot more comfortable without burdening you with weight. Our design philosophy was to never make a ‘me too’ product, but to start from scratch, even with dry sacks. You’ve got to have something that’s actually innovative, not just copying others.”
Since leaving Sea to Summit, Tim has not been idle on the business front either. He is invested in another, very different project—a yet-to-be-launched start up app called Wejugo. Envisioned as a platform for outdoor users to organise their trips, the app will combine planning tools (maps, gear lists, climate charts, etc), tools for logging and sharing trips, safety features, as well as—importantly for Tim with his passion for LNT principles—include tips on how to behave appropriately in the wilderness. The app is still in development, but it could be a great boon to the Australian outdoor community when released.
With all this constant activity, you could be forgiven for wondering whether retirement will ever beckon Tim. He will hear nothing of the sort. “I can understand retirement from the perspective of someone with a desk job, or a farm, or whatever, but... what am I retiring from? I don’t want to retire from what I do because I’ll just do it anyway, as long as my body keeps functioning. And if it stops functioning, I’ll just tone it down a bit. Well, I’ll have no option, will I?”
Ultimately, Tim’s enthusiasm for the natural world is encapsulated in a line from the 1990 Sea to Summit film: “It’s funny, we pity animals caged in zoos, but forget we’re animals too, forget we need to run wild and free. The human race was born in the wild, grew up in it. Away from it we’ve become exhausted, run down. We need the natural world. It’s crucial to our wellbeing.”
He’s right, of course. “I know it’s hard up there,” he said of Everest, “desperately hard, but to me that’s life, not death. It’s full-blooded living. Climbing is a life wish, not a death wish.”
CONTRIBUTOR: Dan Slater, a lifelong bushwalker, is a ten year veteran in the retail sector. He keeps forgetting, losing, breaking or drowning headlamps, and is thinking instead of mounting a candle on his head.