SCALING EVER EST
September–October 2014 29T
HIRTY YEARS AGO, in
September 1984, a group of
young men from the flattest
continent on Earth gathered at the
base of our planet’s highest peak. It
wasn’t merely that they were attempt-
ing to be the first Australians to reach
the summit of Everest – it w as the
method by which they intended to do
so. Climbing from Tibet, they planned
an audacious ascent directly up the
North Face’s most striking feature: the
Great Couloir. The route had been
attempted just once, two years earlier,
by a team of the USA’s best climbers.
They’d failed halfway up.
The Americans returned in 1984,
only to find one of the smallest expe-
ditions ever to attempt 8848m Everest
already on the way up. The Aussie
team had five members: Greg Mor-
timer, Tim Macartney-Snape, Andy
Henderson, the late Lincoln Hall and
Geoff Bartram. None of the team had
previously ventured above 8000m.
Moreover, they were eschew-
ing supplementary oxygen. Just 10
climbers, including Sherpas, had at
that stage summitted Everest without
oxygen and survived. It all added to
the mission’s outlandishness. Mem-
bers of the USA team said that if the
Aussies could pull this off, it would be
the climb of the century.
“[The expedition] was unconven-
tional,” says Greg Mortimer, now
in his 60s and living in NSW’s Blue
Mountains. “It was very small. It was
lightweight. We were on a vegetarian
diet. We didn’t have porters. We did
all our own carrying. And we didn’t
have much money.” In fact, not using
oxygen wasn’t merely alpine ethics. It
was partly, Greg has said, “Australian
pragmatism”, as oxygen was “very
bloody expensive”.
Yet being Australian had its advan-
tages. “I’ve come to think with the
passage of time it was something on
our side,” he says. “Unlike the Europe-
ans, or perhaps British, [we weren’t]
burdened with the achievements of
our forebears.” Even the lack of funds
had its positives. The expedition wasin serious financial difficulties until
Channel Nine agreed to sponsor it
in exchange for filming rights. When
an avalanche buried supplies, the film
crew’s spare equipment was a godsend.
Howard Whelan was one of the
cameramen. Long-time AUSTRALIAN
GEOGRAPHIC readers will recognise
the name; he was the journal’s found-
ing editor. “Up the mountain, we got a
newspaper clipping saying Dick Smith
wanted to start a geographic maga-
zine. I wrote to Dick saying I’d like to
be involved somehow. And I gave that
letter to one of the yak herders who
bought the mail up. He took it to base
camp, handed it to our Chinese liaison
officer, who then handed it to a Ger-
man trekking group. They then took
it to Lhasa and actually posted it.”Returning to Sydney, Howard found a
message saying Dick wanted to meet
him; he stayed with the journal for the
next 17 years.
Relentless storms pummelled
the expedition. When the loaded
snow inevitably shifted, avalanches
ripped down the Great Couloir. The
climbers hunkered down, retreating to
Advanced Base Camp when neces-
sary. Days turned into weeks. Weeks
into a month. It required inordi-
nate patience, especially, says Greg,
“because of all the big unknowns.
Time ticks by differently.” They
dubbed the route “White Limbo”.
Meanwhile, the altitude took its
toll. Suffering a likely cerebral oedema,
Geoff Bartram abandoned his bid.
On summit day, 3 October, soon after
leaving high camp at 8150m, so too did
Lincoln Hall, fearing frostbite. It was
brutally cold, yet sunny and windless- a perfect day for climbing. Right on
dusk, first Tim then Greg reached the
summit. “It was more than I expected,”
says Greg. “You can see the curvature
of the Earth and the darkness of the
upper atmosphere.”
Andy Henderson, unfortunately,
wasn’t with them. Delayed by a
broken crampon, he turned back
agonisingly close to the top, just 50
vertical metres shy. “As far as I’m
concerned, he climbed it,” says Greg.
But Andy had more pressing con-
cerns than summiting: his hands were
frostbitten. Greg, too, was in a poor
state on the descent, semi-conscious
at times. “I was a basket case,” he
admits. He fell at one point, tumbling
300m, and was lucky to survive.
Yet with assistance all made it down
safely, although Andy’s fingers required
amputation. Today, he’s sanguine
about that. “If there’s any significant
emotion it’s that we were extremely
lucky and extremely privileged,” says
Andy, now living in New Zealand. “And
it’s shown me the power of friendship.”
Greg agrees: “What’s happened with
the passage of years is that the climb-
ing has become less important, and the
people more important.”
Tim returned to Everest in 1990,
walking 1200km to become the first
to climb it from sea level. When he
established an outdoor goods
company – now one of Australia’s
largest – the name, fittingly, was
Sea to Summit. Greg, also in 1990,
became the first Aussie to scale K2.
He went on to focus on Antarctica,
where he now leads expeditions.
“There’s a commonality,” he says,
“between the Polar regions and high
mountains: an otherworldliness, and
a sense you shouldn’t stay.”
Nonetheless, with its violent
extremes of altitude, avalanches and
exposure, few places are more inimical
to existence than White Limbo. In
fitting testimony to the route’s
audacity, it has never been repeated.
“It seems to have scared people off,”
says Greg. “With good reason.”
JAMES McCORMACK
“You can see the
curvature of
the Earth...”
IMAGES COURTESY BARBARA HALLag0914_everestP29 - 28 2014-08-06T13:13:43+10:00