The Boys of Everest by Clint Willis

Author:Clint Willis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910232194
Publisher: Pavilion Books Company Limited
Published: 2014-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Legends

He goes because he must, as Galahad went toward the Grail, knowing that for those who can live it, this alone is life.

—EVELYN UNDERHILL,

MYSTICISM (1911)

K2, Abruzzi Ridge.

CHRIS BONINGTON, CHRIS BONINGTON PICTURE LIBRARY

14

A YOUNG CLIMBER named Joe Tasker stopped by the Manchester offices of the British Mountaineering Council one day in the winter of 1976. He was looking for Peter Boardman.

The two young men knew each other, though not well. They’d met in 1971 when they were both in school. The recent ascent of Annapurna’s South Face had delivered thrilling evidence that the British were once again at the forefront of international mountaineering. Thus inspired, Peter had gone out to the Alps that summer with Martin Wragg, his best mate and regular climbing partner. They had knocked off the North Face of the Matterhorn and gone on to Chamonix to tackle another test piece, the Northeast Spur of Les Droites.

Peter and Martin had camped on a little rock in the middle of the glacier that led up to the base of the spur, and from that vantage point they’d watched another pair cross the glacier late in the day. Those other two had started up the route itself to bivouac on the climb. Peter and Martin had risen early the next morning and passed them around dawn, hearing voices through the flimsy walls of the bivouac tent.

The route was heavily iced. The conditions had forced Peter and Martin out onto the mountain’s North Face. They had made a miserable hanging bivouac that night, and had turned back the next day, a thousand feet below the top. It was a terrifying descent, chopping holes in the ice for rappel anchors, the exposure tremendous.

They had come upon the other two climbers—Joe Tasker with his regular partner Dick Renshaw—on a ledge. Those two also were descending and the two parties agreed to join forces. The encounter cheered the four young men. They stood chatting idly, relieved at having company, until a huge block detached from the face and swept past them—it actually brushed Joe’s pack—frightening them and bringing their attention back to the job at hand.

They’d finished the retreat. Joe and Peter hadn’t seen much of each other since then. The two young men were from very different worlds, and climbing had led them down different paths—but those paths were about to converge once more.

PETER WAS A middle-class boy, the younger of two sons. His father was an engineer, and his mother taught school. His mother also was a writer of sorts; she kept a detailed journal of her life, including Peter’s childhood. He’d grown up near Stockport, a small town near Manchester, attending the local grammar school. He had done his first climbs on a school trip to Corsica when he was fourteen years old. That was 1964. He joined a Stockport climbing club two years later, a few months after Dougal Haston and the Germans climbed the Eiger Direct.

Peter was a natural rock climber. By the time he enrolled at the

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