Ueli Steck on the Col du Plan on the Aiguille du Midi mountain in Chamonix, France. CreditJonathan Griffith
NORTH CONWAY, N.H. — The Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck was
probably the best mountain climber in the world. In a sport
where a willingness to take risks is as crucial as fitness, he
combined an Olympian’s physique and a calculated daring
few could rival.
His death this weekend at age 40 — on the Nepalese
Himalayan mountain Nuptse, which neighbors Mount
Everest — on a training foray, came when he fell around
3,000 feet while climbing alone.
The equipment and terminology of conventional
climbing are often difficult to convey to the layman. Solo climbing — which Steck excelled at — is not. It’s as dangerous as it looks. There is no trick of the light, no specialized piece of gear. A mistake is fatal. The more difficult the climb, the more practiced and disciplined the climber should be.
Soloists can look at it one of two ways. Either the
risk decreases with years of dedicated practice, or
more simply, the more one undertakes dangerous
climbs alone, the greater the chance of an accident.
The long list of great mountaineers who have been
killed climbing alone points toward the latter
argument. As Steck put it in a 2016 video, “The
risk is constantly there — and you deal with it.”
As satellite phones, helicopter access and a lack
of virgin terrain squeeze the unknown and
unexpected out of mountaineering, alpinists
have had to fight for relevancy. With new routes
and unclimbed peaks becoming scarcer, many
have transitioned into completing classic climbs
as quickly as possible. Steck, who often ran up
difficult routes in little more than tights and a
headband, could easily have been mistaken for
a distance runner or Nordic skier. But try as
mountaineering might to masquerade as a
traditional endurance sport, the risks remain,
increasing as gear is stripped away to the bare
minimum.
Speed is an easily quantifiable thing. It’sexhilarating
to be able to move so quickly.
And if mountaineers were measured by this
benchmark alone, Ueli Steck was the greatest in history. He climbed the Eiger’s infamous North Face in 2 hours 22 minutes, sprinting up the 6,000-foot -high “Wall of Death” in the time it takes to run a fast marathon. In 2015, he climbed all 82 of the peaks in the Alps 4,000 meters or higher. (That’s 13,123 feet.) It took him a mere 62 days, including the time spent biking and paragliding between mountains.
Ueli Steck New Speed Record Eiger 2015Video by samcam film His legendary endurance, bolstered by years ofscience-informed physical training, earned him
the nickname the Swiss Machine, but more
important, it showcased what a talented mountain
climber could do if given the time and funding to
prepare like a conventional endurance athlete. He
challenged the image of the bearded, beer-swilling
mountaineer; here was a honed engine who ran
on a Spartan diet and planned his ascents down to
the move. Preparation trumped danger, or so it
seemed.
The availability of Steck’s feats on YouTube and
Vimeo helped bring mountaineering out of the
doldrums. Watching alpine climbing now felt as
fast and exciting as viewing tennis or soccer.
And while the American company Clif Bar canceled its sponsorship of several climbers
because of discomfort with the risks they were
taking, Steck’s European sponsors, like Audi,
gave him free rein.
Like many of his more traditional athletic
counterparts, Steck had his share of controversial
moments. Having ascended Everest in 2012
without supplemental oxygen, he returned in
2013 with a more ambitious plan, to climb both
Everest and a neighboring peak, Lhotse, in one
push. On the way up, Steck, the Italian climber
Simone Moro and the photographer Jon Griffith passed a group of Sherpas who were fixing ropes
low on Mount Everest. In doing so, the trio
violated an understanding held by the Sherpas
and Western guides on the mountain that no
one would climb until the ropes were in place.
Steck and his team had no use for the safety
of a fixed rope; they simply wished to sprint
by. In the ensuing confrontation, Moro hurling
an insult at the Sherpas in Nepali didn’t help.
When the climbers returned to camp, they
found themselves challenged by angry Sherpas
who shouted insults and hurled rocks toward
their tent. Fearing for their lives, Steck, Moro
and Griffith hoofed it down the mountain and
gave up their attempt. It is difficult not to make
the assumption that Steck’s elite stature
encouraged the hostile exchange: a clash
of the old and new worlds of mountaineering.
The second blip in Steck’s career also occurred
in the Himalayas. In 2007, he had tried a mountain called Annapurna, whose deadly
south face had become a kind of Grail for
talented alpinists, combining sheer technical
difficulty with high altitude. The face had
claimed the lives of several pioneers of
Steck’s particular, dangerous game, “fast
and light” alpinism.
The brilliant British climber Alex MacIntyre
was struck by a single falling rock and killed
there in 1982. In 1992, the French alpinist
Pierre Béghin fell to his death, leaving his
partner Jean-Christophe Lafaille to descend
the face alone in a harrowing multiday ordeal.
During the process, Lafaille, too, was hit by
a falling stone, which broke his arm. Steck
attempted the south face in 2007, but was
also hit by rockfall and knocked unconscious.
“Only luck,” he wrote in the magazine Alpinist,
“kept me from dying.” In October 2013 he
returned alone, finishing the route Lafaille
and Béghin had begun, in 28 hours round-trip.
But doubts swirled around his Annapurna
climb. Why hadn’t Steck, for whom the camera
and altimeter watch been constant companions,
better documented his ascent? He claimed a
small avalanche wrenched the camera away,
and his altimeter watch had broken. Ultimately,
he brushed the criticisms aside, letting his
actions on successive peaks speak for him.
Repeating routes as quickly as possible or
linking up multiple summits are specific
undertakings. If you keep getting away
with it, there’s limited or no negative
feedback. You either have a success rate
of 100 percent, or zero. Those who live
into old age are usually the soloists who
quit climbing alone.
Steck was killed before attempting to
link Everest and Lhotse in one marathon
effort — his goal from the interrupted
2013 expedition. Ultimately, speed and
training weren’t enough. Steck will be
remembered as the climber who ushered
mountaineering into its latest modern age.
But his death is a reminder that those on
the cutting edge are still subject to
mountaineering’s oldest companion: tragedy.
This is a mountaineering love story like no other. A star-studded Hollywood cast are currently making a movie of the
1996 Mt. Everest tragedy where New Zealand climbers Rob Hall and Andy Harris died near the summit.This Working Title Everest
movie is still in production. It is
due for release Feb 2015.
The movie features Hollywood stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin,
and Sam Worthington
Since this tragedy, Jan Arnold, wife of Rob Hall has gone on to climb the seven highest peaks on seven continents.
The term ''conquering'' a mountain does not sit well with
mountaineer and Nelson doctor Jan Arnold.
''I like to get on top of things, but I don't think that means anything is conquered in the process,'' she says.
She should know. She completed her goal of summiting the seven
highest peaks in the seven continents last month, a trail that has taken
24 years and saw her travel to some of the world's remotest places.
''I would say, if your goal doesn't slightly take your breath away,
you need to aim a little bit higher. It should slightly take your breath
away.''
It's also a journey that has taken her past the grief of losing her
husband, world-renowned mountaineer Rob Hall , who died on Mt Everest in
1996 in a blizzard that claimed seven other lives.
Jan says a climber is at the mercy of the mountain, both its raw beauty and brutal force.
She started climbing at 22 and, five years later, reached the first
of her seven summits on Mt McKinley-Denali - on a date with Rob.
''Normally people go out for dinner, but we went to Alaska. It was absolutely magic''.
She did not know then it would take more than two decades to
complete the peaks but, being goal driven, it was something she ''really
wanted to finish off''.
''I've got the peak bagging gene. You've either have it or you haven't,'' she says.
In 1993, she and Rob became the third married couple to stand at the highest point in the world. Photo left.
''Everest was really quite special. It was satisfying because I
really didn't expect I was going to do it. I didn't go with the aim and
certainly didn't think I could, because I was such a lousy
acclimatiser,'' she says.
In January 1994, she went to Antarctica with Rob's guiding company
Adventure Consultants. She not only got to climb Mt Vinson, but also
visited the South Pole as a doctor accompanying a group of elderly
adventurers.
The same year she climbed Mt Kosciuszko in Australia and Carstensz
Pyramid-Puncak Jaya in Indonesia - there was some debate about which one
was the tallest peak in Oceania, so she climbed both.
Any further plans were put on hold in 1996. She was pregnant with
the couple's daughter, Sarah, as the shocking events unfolded half a
world away.
As he was trapped high on the mountain, Rob was able to talk to Jan
on his radio through a satellite phone. They had three conversations.
Grief was made easier because she had a chance to say goodbye, which many people don't, she says.
''When Rob died, or was going to die, there was nothing left unsaid - there wasn't stuff I wished I had said to him.
''How lucky was I to speak to him? He could have died in a car
accident and be gone and you don't get that chance to say anything, but
we could connect.''
The last time she spoke to him, after a rescue party had to turn
back, they shared their love for one another and he signed off: ''Sleep
well, my sweetheart. Please don't worry too much.''
''The strangeness you've got of sitting in your house in
Christchurch and talking - he is possibly the highest person on the
ground alive in the world, but not for long,'' she says.
''I knew he was going to die, but I just felt lucky I had that
chance to talk to him and I had his baby and for me it was like you have
a part of someone when you have a child.
''When she popped out, she just looked like him and she has his eyes
and his big generous mouth and his long legs and his gentle nature - so
daily I am reminded of him.
''It was a good death.''
She was proud of Rob, but there were other feelings, too.
''I was also quite weighed down with the feeling that one of his
guides had died, two of his clients had died and I felt a responsibility
to those families so, actually, my own grieving for Rob was on the back
burner plus I had a baby, a new first baby so there was so much to do.
''My mind was quite occupied.''
It was only in recent years that she decided it was time to reconsider the remaining three mountains.
''I thought I need to do this before I am 50 because how long am I going to have this fitness?''
Jan went to Africa in September 2011, climbing Mt Kilimanjaro with
Sarah.
In 2011, Jan climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with her 14 year old daughter Sarah.
She made her first attempt at Aconcagua in Argentina in January
2013. After reaching 6300m, about 600m below the summit, she had to turn
back as altitude sickness set in.
Russia's Mt Elbrus was next in July 2013. She reached the peak, but getting off the mountain proved more dangerous.
A power cut had knocked out the ski lifts, and she had to get a lift
in the back of a former army truck on a rough, steep track.
''I was just sitting on the tray of the truck and it bounced around
and felt like it was going to go off the road and I thought 'Goodness, I
have just been to the top of this peak not feeling really at risk and I
am going to lose my life on this truck. If this truck rolls you know we
are finished'.''
But she made it down, and set her sights on the remaining peak, a second attempt at Aconcagua.
Rob Hall right, with Gary Ball centre and Peter Hillary left, shortly after their ascent of Everest in 1990. Photo: Bob McKerrow
To overcome her acclimatisation problems, she headed to South
America early and climbed the 5434m Cerro El Plomo in Chile, a place of
Inca human sacrifice.
On February 12, she made it to the top of Aconcagua, but not without it taking a toll.
''When I look at photos of myself I was absolutely blue on the lips
and I took this video and I am slurring my words,'' she says.
''I thought I cannot do this to my brain again - this is it. Luckily, I've done it now.''
She has experienced the full risk mountaineering carries with it. But, she wouldn't change a thing.
''I didn't ever rail against the fact that Rob had died,'' she says.
''I accepted it quite quickly because I had wondered if sometime that might be in the future.
''You marry an 8000m mountaineer, what do you expect? I think that
protected me. But, heck, it was rich and it was alive and vibrant and it
was so worth not avoiding.
''You want to make the most of it while you have got it because you
don't know how long it will be and it makes it all the more precious.
''It sharpens, it clarifies, and it brightens.''
Despite achieving what most would consider a mammoth challenge, Jan
says she is not in the league of technical climbers like New Zealanders
Pat Deavoll , Lydia Bradey and Paul and Shelley Hersey who are pushing
the boundaries of never-before-climbed peaks.
The more technical climbing ''scares the hell'' out of her.
''These peaks are hard because they require stamina and physical
fitness, but they are not groundbreaking in any sense and these last
three peaks, if they had involved great risk to my life, I wouldn't do
them because of my children.''
With two daughters, Sarah, 17 - who she was pregnant with when Rob
died on Everest - and Helena, 11, it was a balance between motherhood
and chasing her goals.
''Someone once said to me, 'Is Everest the hardest thing you have
ever done?' and I actually said parenting a two-year-old is much
harder,'' she says laughing.
She loves the opportunities that climbing brings - ''travelling the
globe with a focus in mind and learning about the area and this planet
of ridges and hollows '' - but also the challenges.
''It's cold, tent living for days and days and days. Your tent mat
goes down and you wake up cold in the night. There's a storm outside,
the wind is blowing, the tent is rattling around. It requires a focus.
It requires confidence in the people around you and the logistics of the
organisation you are with.''
Letting yourself off on the bad days and knowing when to dig in is crucial, she says.
Mountaineering is something anyone can do with commitment and careful planning ''bit by bit'', she says.
''The really big things are breathtaking. You stand at the base of
Everest and you go, 'It was so much work getting to this altitude, how I
am going to get three and half kilometres above me vertically?' and the
truth is, day by day, step by step, camp by camp.''
Jan Arnold completed the seven summits with support from Adventure
Consultants and Mapua-based adventure company High Places.
I salute you Jan Arnold for your achievements, strength and sensitivity. You are a brilliant role model on International Women's day, and throughout the year.
Thanks to KATE DAVIDSON of Fairfax media for permission to runs extracts from her article.
SIXTY years ago this week, as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay approached the summit of the world’s highest mountain, they were stopped by a 40-foot wall of rock and ice. It was, Hillary later wrote, “a formidable looking problem ...We realized that at this altitude it might well spell the difference between success and failure.”
Employing the skills he had learned in the New Zealand Alps, Hillary jammed his feet, hands and shoulders into a thin crack between a ridge of ice and the rock and, as he put it, “levered myself” up the wall. Then he brought Tenzing up on a tight rope, and together they climbed the final 300 feet to become the first humans to stand on the summit of Mount Everest.
Today, that 40-foot wall is called the Hillary Step. Each May, large numbers of climbers line up to attempt it, causing a lengthy — and dangerous — backup. But this past week, it was reported that the Expedition Operators Association, a Nepali organization that manages teams climbing Everest, has proposed a solution to this final obstacle on the standard route to the top: putting a permanent ladder on the Hillary Step.
Between 1987 and 2009, I went on 11 expeditions to Mount Everest, reaching the top seven times. I’ve climbed both up and down the Hillary Step six times. I think the ladder is a bad idea. It won’t solve the real problem, which is overcrowding on the most famous route in mountaineering. At its best, installing a permanent ladder to surmount the Hillary Step would be like slapping a Band-Aid on an artery that’s hemorrhaging.
Because guided commercial expeditions on Everest have become so popular, scores or even hundreds of clients go for the top on the same day. Each May, the weather forecast pinpoints the optimal dates for a summit thrust. Most of the teams seize that precious window, as a kind of “group think” takes hold. That is what causes the overcrowding. And now that fixed ropes are strung by Sherpas up every foot of the South Col route, from base camp at 17,000 feet to the summit at 29,035 feet, a perilous traffic jam inevitably forms on the final ridge. Because of their dependence on the fixed ropes, clients can move no faster than the slowest person in the queue. It’s become routine to have to wait two or three hours to tackle the Hillary Step.
Even if a ladder is bolted to the rock on the Hillary Step, it won’t alleviate the bottleneck that inevitably develops there on summit day. Climbers will still clip their ascenders (mechanical devices that grip ropes) to the fixed lines that parallel and safeguard the ladder, and because there’s no alternative to that narrow passage, the two-to-three hour wait will still impose its treacherous delay. For that matter, wearing goggles, down suits and oxygen masks, mountaineers can hardly see their own feet, so climbing down the ladder promises to be every bit as difficult as rappelling the Step on a fixed line.
It’s the traffic jam that causes all the trouble. Climbers run out of bottled oxygen and collapse, or they push upward long after a sensible turnaround deadline and end up descending in the dark, or they succumb to hypothermia and frostbite simply because they’re forced to stand in place for hours, waiting their turn. My fear is that if the ladder is installed, even more climbers will throng to Everest, convinced that a metal contraption has solved all the problems of the South Col route.
A ladder isn’t the answer. Nor can the government of Nepal be expected to regulate how many climbers are on Everest, let alone how many go for the summit on a given day. It will be up to the climbers themselves to coordinate their schedules to avoid overcrowding. This is going to be very hard to do. Personal ambition, a herd mentality and summit fever all too easily overwhelm good judgment.
Aside from these practical concerns, there’s an aesthetic issue at stake. The Hillary Step is a crucial part of the majestic challenge Everest still poses. Just when you think you’ve got the summit in the bag, the mountain throws one last roadblock across your path. It’s the final test you pass to earn the summit.
When I first climbed the Hillary Step in 1991, there was only a short section of tattered rope in place. Unwilling to trust it, I climbed the 40-foot wall without using the rope. Thus I surmounted the Step the same way Hillary had, and it was deeply gratifying to solve its technical difficulties with no aids other than the ice ax in my hand and the crampons on my boots.
The glory of mountain climbing lies in the fact that success is never guaranteed. In recent years, Everest has been degraded by its sheer popularity. Let’s not degrade it further. Let’s leave the Hillary Step as close as we can to what Hillary and Tenzing confronted at 11 a.m. on May 29, 1953.
Thanks to Ed Viesturs for permission to post his brilliant article here.
Ed Viestursis the only American to have climbed the 14 highest peaks in the world, all without supplemental oxygen. He is co-author, with David Roberts, of the forthcoming book “The Mountain: My Time on Everest.”
Paddy Freaney right with Rochelle to his right, Bob McKerrow and Robin Judkins. Photo: Bob McKerrow
Paddy Freaney was one of the best guys I have ever known for playing practical jokes. His Moa photograph that puzzled ornithologists for months must be one of the best. ever. But imagine the headlines in today's Christchurch Press
'Death has not stopped adventurer Paddy Freaney reaching the summit of Mt Everest,' 14 months after he died
At 10.58am (NZ time) 23 May (NZ time), Freaney and wife Rochelle Rafferty stood atop the world's highest peak.
Rochelle Rafferty is now the fifth New Zealand woman to stand on the summit of Mt Everest.
Freaney died last year, but that has done nothing to quell his exploits.
Rafferty has carried her partner of 20 years all the way from the Upper Waimakariri Basin to the Himalayas in a small canister.
Reaching the summit has fulfilled a lifelong desire for the couple.
They had planned to travel to the Everest base camp in 2011, but just before they were due to leave, Freaney was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Rafferty was considering trying for the summit on that trip.
Freaney, who rose to national fame in 1993 when he snapped a blurry photograph of a moa-like creature near Arthur's Pass, had attempted Everest three times.
The first two attempts were thwarted by bad weather. On the third, he injured his ankle while training in Nepal.
Freaney's ashes were not scattered at the summit, which is held sacred by Buddhists and many Nepalese.
Paddy Freaney made headlines reporting a moa sighting in the Craigieburn Range in 1993.
He was a notable climber and a former sergeant-instructor in the British Army's elite Special Air Service.
Born into an impoverished Irish family in 1939, he fought in Borneo and Muscat-Oman with the SAS.
He specialised in mountain survival and, on visiting New Zealand in 1969, fell in love with the Southern Alps.
He set up an outdoor education centre at Arthur's Pass and mentored many climbers. He made many expeditions in New Zealand and overseas, including the Himalayas.
Freaney built and ran the Bealey Hotel.
I never climbed with Paddy but once got close to it when I organised an expedition to get two publicans to the top of Red Lion Peak. It had never been climbed in winter before. But why Red Lion Peak ? Over 100 years ago, a young West Coast surveyor, who knew the hotel well, named the two prominent peaks at the head of the County Glacier Red Lion Peak and Mt. Evans, after the hotel and its publican. The idea was to try and get the overweight publican of the Red Lion hotel up Red Lion Peak. Paddy loved the idea. So we finalised the group for Red Lion: Kevin Williams, 44, a carpet layer from Greymouth; Rod Buchanan, 52, bee keeper from Paroa; and David Norton, 34, a university lecturer from Christchurch. Peter and I made up the complement of five. The sixth member was to have been Paddy Freaney, but he was snowbound and unable to get over Arthur's Pass to join us. When I phoned Paddy shortly before we left, he said: “The only way I can come over is to flog a jigger and come through the tunnel to the West Coast.” Unable to commandeer a jigger, Freaney missed the trip. See full article here.
Rochelle Rafferty with Ama Dablam in the background.
In early 2009 I called into see Paddy and Rochelle at the Bealey Pub with Robin Judkins who had known Paddy longer than I. Paddy was in great form and he and Rochelle told us of their dreams to climb Everest and other peaks.
When Paddy Freaney died of cancer, and several hundred mourners made their way to his mountain home for a service with, not surprisingly, some unusual twists.
Mt. Everest, the final resting place for Paddy Freaney. Photo: Bob McKerrow
There was nothing ordinary about Paddy Freaney's life and his funeral was no different, a horse-drawn cart carrying the casket from his home across the road to his old pub, with the mountains he loved as a backdrop.
The Irish-born Mr Freaney, a former SAS soldier, had climbed most of the peaks in the area, and one summer he and a companion climbed all 31 New Zealand peaks over 3000 metres high.
“Who dares wins – three words that epitomise Paddy,” says friend, Jeremy Watson.
Many mourners were outdoors enthusiasts he had encouraged or climbed with.To the public, he was known for a spectacular claim of a moa sighting near Arthurs Pass in 1993 - at the time he ran the Bealey Hotel, located nearby.
The news that the extinct bird might still exist went round the world and Mr Freaney stood his ground in spite of scepticism from scientists.
“I think it’s as likely to be an image of a four-footed animal like a deer, as is it is to be a bird,” said scientist Dr Richard Holdaway at the time.
But the determined Mr Freaney was far more than just a moa man, after marrying fellow adventurer Rochelle Rafferty the pair embarked on some of the most challenging climbing expeditions here and around the world.
“He lived his life to the full,” said his wife Rochelle Rafferty.
“He didn’t count the years in his life but his life in his years, [he was] a truly inspirational character,” she says.
“What can you say, he was a legend - moas and all,” says Mr Watson.
In true Irish style Mr Freaney was taken back to the pub he had resurrected where mourners celebrated his life in exactly the way he wanted.
R.I.P on Everest - Sargamatha - Chomolungma Paddy.
Thanks to stuff.co.nz for permission to use excerpts from their articles.
