Introduction to the 2025 edition

I can hardly believe it's fifty years since we climbed the South West Face of Everest. Fifty years since Dougal Haston and Doug Scott stood on the summit and then survived a brutally cold night out at the South Summit as they descended, the highest open bivouac in history and without oxygen too. I'll never forget hearing Doug's voice crackling across the airwaves as I waited anxiously for news at our camp below the Face. It's fifty years, also, since Pete Boardman, then the youngest person to have reached the top, passed Mick Burke, still going up as Pete went down, never to be seen again.

When I went to the summit myself ten years later, only Doug and I were left from that list. Dougal died in 1977 skiing near his home in Switzerland; Pete disappeared on the North East Ridge of Everest in 1982, on an expedi­tion I had led. At a break in the cornice, I looked across at the wild ice towers and snow flutings that ran down from its knife edge, where Charlie Clarke and I had looked in vain for signs of life. I thought also of my close friend Nick Estcourt, who, with Tut Braithwaite, had led the crux Rock Band on the South West Face, opening the way for success in 1975. Nick had died on K2 three years later, clipped to the same rope as Doug when an avalanche struck. Only Doug escaped.

All this was in my head as I neared the summit of the world, where my friends were waiting for me, including Pertemba Sherpa, who had been our Sirdar, or lead Sherpa, on the South West Face, when he reached the top with Pete Boardman. He was also Sirdar on this 1985 Norwegian expedition that achieved such success, with seventeen successful ascents, thanks in part to Pertemba's organisation. I remember him beckoning me up those last few metres, and how I crouched at the top, weeping with joy and sorrow and exhaustion, thinking of my friends and how badly I had wanted, needed even, to reach the top. I was a little over fifty years old, and for a short time held the record as the oldest person to have climbed Everest. Now, as I write this, I'm ninety, and still thinking about it.

I first saw Everest in 1961, on the approach to its near neighbour Nuptse, part of the horseshoe that surrounds the Western Cwm. Nepal was a different country then, without the bustle and pollution of today. There were no flights to the mountains in those days. This was three years before Ed Hillary's team built the airstrip at Lukla. The road out of Kathmandu ended just outside the city. After that, we were walking. On our approach we saw just one other European, Peter Aufschnaiter, who, with Heinrich Harrer, had escaped a British internment camp and then into Tibet, where he had been living until the Chinese invaded. This was long before the trekking industry got going, nurtured by Jimmy Roberts, who a year before had led my first Himalayan expedition, to Annapurna II, at 7,937 metres just shy of the magic 8,000-metre mark the year before. Despite some altitude problems, I made the first ascent with Dick Grant and Ang Nyima. It would be the highest summit I reached before Everest in 1985, twenty-­four years later.

Jimmy had proved a capable leader, not going up on the mountain himself but making sure logistics happened properly and marshalling the team. It was different on Nuptse, where Joe Walmsley was happy simply to put a team together, get us to the mountain with sufficient gear and then let us get on with it. Unlike Annapurna II, the Nuptse team was full of experience and talent, and it needed to be, because the face we were climbing was arguably the most technical route yet attempted in the Himalaya. Perhaps if we'd got on better personally, then none of that would have mattered, but as we made progress on the mountain, the team broke up into small parties, each thinking they were doing the lion's share of the work. Despite it all, I reached the top with Ang Pemba, one of our six Sherpas, a day after Tashi Sherpa and Dennis Davis made the first ascent, and just ahead of our companions Les Brown and Jim Swallow.

For weeks we'd been looking at the same limited vista, but as Pemba and I reached the crest of Nuptse's summit ridge, the narrow gorge of the Western Cwm opened beneath us and the surrounding mountains burst into view, stretching away to the far horizon. Right in front of me was the black summit pyramid of Everest, seamed and traced with ice and snow that had stuck to the Face. I had no thought of climbing it. In 1961 it seemed far too difficult. I was more absorbed by the Tibetan Plateau that rolled away into the distance, a seemingly endless panorama of brown and purple hills.

Himalayan climbing was put on hold after that. I left the army and met and married my first wife, Wendy. With her encouragement, I gave up the idea of a settled career for life as a freelance writer and photographer. During these years, in the mid 1960s, I did some of the best climbing of my life in the Alps, including the first ascent of the Frêney Pillar on Mont Blanc, and the first British ascent of the Eiger. I also met people like John Harlin, who understood the sort of big project that the media might buy into. John perished climbing a new route in winter on the Eiger's North Face, which I covered for a weekend magazine. Whilst waiting on the summit to photo­graph his partner Dougal Haston, I suffered some frostbite, as did Dougal. We recovered together in hospital back in London, and we talked about the South West Face with our doctor, Mike Ward, who had been on the first ascent in 1953. We wanted him as leader, since neither of us felt capable, but political difficulties put an end to Himalayan climbing for a few years.

When I did go back it was to lead an all-­star team on the South Face of Annapurna, the first truly steep Himalayan face to be climbed. I made mistakes, but I found I had a facility for it, loved the logistical challenge and the challenge of managing - or at least trying to manage - some hefty egos. In those analogue days you couldn't just send an email to Kathmandu and book yourself on an expedition to an 8,000-­metre peak. It took months of organisation; writing letters, making calls, begging gear, liaising with embassies, seeking advice, telexing agents in Nepal and organising the travel arrangements for a big team of climbers, akin to herding cats. Success on Annapurna, albeit at terrible cost right at the last with the death of my old friend Ian Clough, led inevitably to my renewed interest in Everest.

It felt though at the start of the 1970s that all the world's best Himalayan climbers were looking at the same objective. Twice I was invited to participate in expeditions to the South West Face. I accepted the role of climbing leader on an all-­star international attempt in 1971, but I had misgivings about its structure and finally withdrew. They wanted to try two routes at once and that didn't seem practical to me. It wasn't easy to say no. I had bouts of depression afterwards, not trusting my judgment. In those days only one team got a permit each season; even if they didn't climb it, when would I get another chance? I had another offer the following spring from the controversial German expedition leader Dr Karl Herrligkoffer, but withdrew from that as well. Luckily for me, an Italian group with permission for the post­-monsoon season of 1972 pulled out. So, I took their slot. Part of me thought to play it safe and repeat the 1953 route. At that stage no Englishman had climbed the mountain, and that Englishman could be me. I was tempted but it was yesterday's challenge. I was more interested in the future.

In retrospect, it was almost inevitable that we would fail. No one had yet climbed Everest in the post-­monsoon season, which grows progressively colder as the weeks pass. There was so much to learn. We had only made it halfway up the Face by mid­-October, when the first of the bitter winter winds hit us like an express train and destroyed our camps. By the start of November temperatures higher on the Face fell to -­40 °C. There were argu­ments and frustrations among the lead climbers about who would get to lead through the crux section of the Rock Band that separated the lower Face from the summit slopes. Even after we called it a day, we suffered the tragic loss of Tony Tighe, a young Australian who had been helping at Base Camp and who had wanted to see the Face for himself, only to die in the Ice Fall. It was a sad end to what had been a failure, but we had learned a great deal that we put into practice in our successful ascent.

When we came home in 1975 after our successful ascent there were plenty who thought our use of fixed ropes, fixed camps and a big team was outmoded. It's true that by then the alpine­-style revolution was underway, something I appreciated and welcomed. Yet how we climbed on Everest then bears no relation to how Everest is climbed fifty years on, with endless resources and helicopter support. It was much riskier in 1975. Our weather forecasts were threadbare in comparison to what's now available. Equip­ment was improving, but the risk of frostbite these days is much reduced thanks to the quality of boots and down equipment, and the reliability and lightness of oxygen equipment. We were leading on hard new ground and the style we used was the only option to allow us a meaningful chance of success. I have no regrets on that score.

Our success on Everest...