Base Camp CONFIDENTIAL (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2001

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True EVEREST
Base Camp CONFIDENTIAL (Cont.)


	Ed Webster/Mt. Imagery

With the traditional Southeast Ridge route already conquered, climbers, especially British climbers, began looking for new, difficult, and more aesthetically pleasing routes to the top. By the 1970s many expeditions had done away with huge, militaristic assaults in favor of smaller, lighter expeditions. Base Camp became a tad more homey in the process, but after 20 years of human traffic, the surrounding glacier was beginning to show signs of environmental decay.

SIR CHRISTIAN BONINGTON, British climber and author, ne plus ultra of Himalayan expedition leaders, who has climbed on Everest four times and summited once: I think what people don't understand about expeditions is how comfortable you can make yourself. And how much leisure there actually is. All you really need is a tent to call home, a good thermos, a good down sleeping bag, and a good down jacket. And a deck of cards. Indeed, we played a lot of very good poker there, high-low straight, brilliant game. And of course we had scotch. I think a bit of alcohol is absolutely essential at Base Camp. You spend a good deal of time sitting around doing nothing.

DOUG SCOTT, free-spirited British climber who in 1975 with Dougal Haston became the first to climb the brutal Southwest Face: At the time, Base Camp wasn't the rubbish heap that it later became. But there definitely was a disturbing trend going on. In those days there wasn't a great deal of thought given to environmental matters, such as deforestation. Almost every other day you'd see a long line of yaks bringing stacks of juniper wood up from the valley for our cooking fires. You know how long juniper takes to grow? Over the years, climbers contributed significantly to the stripping of juniper from the surrounding valleys and crags, till there was almost none left.

PETER HACKETT, Base Camp physician emeritus, who became a leading authority on high-altitude health and medicine over the course of three decades of Everest expeditions: Back in the seventies there were doctors who really didn't know what the heck they were doing. Probably the most dramatic case was a Swiss physician who signed up to be an expedition doctor because he had just broken up with his girlfriend and he wanted to take an interesting trip. But he didn't know anything about altitude. I briefed him in Kathmandu all about altitude illness so he'd know what to look for. The next time I saw him, he was in a deep coma. His last words were, "I think I have cerebral edema."

DOUG SCOTT: It was like camping in the bottom of a quarry, really. I mean, it had its moments. When we climbed the Southwest Face, Dougal Haston and I returned from the summit very late, only to realize as the days went by that [our fellow climber] Mick Burke wasn't going to come back, that he somehow disappeared around the summit area. That was bad business.

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