Chris Bonington

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My castaway this week is a mountaineer. For nearly fifty years he's spent his time getting to the top of some of the most beautiful places in the world Annapurna, the Eiger, Changabang, the Ogre, and in 1985 Mount Everest. Beauty has sometimes been accompanied by tragedy. In an attempt on Everest in 1982, two of his companions lost their lives, and many others he's known have died on the slopes of the world's great peaks. Years ago, he gave up his job selling margarine for Unilever because he preferred disappearing up mountains, and he has no regrets. The drive to climb, he said, is so strong that I know I couldn't do without it. He's Britain's best-known mountaineer, Sir Chris Bonington. You're an addict then, are you, Chris? You just can't do without it.

Chris Bonington1:17

Yes, I think I am. I love it. It's I suppose the whole combination. It's it's the doing of it, first of all, and just clambering up a a rock and actually enjoying the physical sensation of it. It's uh inevitably the element of risk as well, the fact that there is a danger there and you're using your skill to try to eliminate that danger. But that gives you a real bluzz. There's the the beauty.

Chris Bonington1:42

of everything around you. There's the friendships.

Chris Bonington1:45

And all of this adds up to something that I just love doing.

Presenter1:49

So it's not really about getting to the top?

Chris Bonington1:52

Yes, it is, yes. And I suppose actually no, the one thing I have left out, and that that is, I suppose, personal achievement dash competition dash ego. And and yeah, there's a little all of that in it. So you want to get to the top, but funnily enough, some of the

Chris Bonington2:07

As good expeditions I've ever been on have been ones where we haven't got to the top, and it doesn't really matter.

Presenter2:12

It doesn't really matter.

Presenter2:14

Where is the buzz when you're climbing? I understand the the the the dicing with death, as it were, the sense of danger, but

Presenter2:20

You know, you think of bars and being hooked, you think of adrenaline pumping. And yet climbing is a very slow, calculated thing, isn't it?

Chris Bonington2:29

Take your you're on a a rock climb, which is the most simple thing. So you don't have to go to the Himalayas, you don't have to go further than, say, near my home, the Lake District.

Chris Bonington2:40

And you choose a climb that's a little bit hard, that's actually taking you out of your comfort zone.

Chris Bonington2:47

You're poised on these holes. You can protect yourself so you're not going to fall too far by slotting little bits of metal into cracks and then passing the rope through it. But you've got to accept where the cracks are. Now, yes, it is contemplative. You're poised there. You work it all out in your mind. You make one or two tentative moves. But at a certain point, you've got to commit yourself. And then you go for it. And you come out at the end of that pitch and you go, Whee! You know, you're just so excited by it. And that is the buzz. That is the excitement.

Presenter3:20

Tell me about your first record.

Chris Bonington3:22

Right, with the first record, this takes me right back to

Chris Bonington3:26

Just after we got married and I'd made that choice, abandoning Margarine, and then we had to choose where to go to live, and we decided to live in the Lake District. Our sole possessions was a minivan, which we did 150,000 miles in, and a little state-of-the-art portable record player. And we bought this Bob Dylan record. And I love Bob Dylan, and I still do, and I still listen to him a lot. And it's Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, which I was wondering about at that time.

Speaker 33:56

And it didn't o used to sit and wonder why I'd be

Speaker 34:01

It'll never do somehow.

Speaker 34:05

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

Speaker 34:10

Look out your window an' I'll be gone

Speaker 34:14

You're the reason I'm a traveling on.

Speaker 34:18

But don't think twice, it's all right.

Presenter4:26

Bob Dylan, and don't think twice it's all right. Your most recent expedition, Chris Bonington, was arguably your most dangerous, because you were up a mountain where no man had been before, up Sepukangri in northeastern Tibet. What does that mean?

Chris Bonington4:40

Well Sepu Kangri, the full Tibetan name, Sepukangri is the Chinese name, is Sepu Kungla Kunsum, and that means um the white sky god. It goes back, actually, back to in 1982 when we were going for the northeast ridge of Everest, and we flew from a place called Chengdu, which is in western China, to Lhasa.

Chris Bonington5:02

And we flew over this incredible range of mountains and

Chris Bonington5:07

And I'll never forget that vision of just mile upon mile upon mile of very jagged, quite high mountains, and in the very far distance on the northern horizon there was a mountain that seemed to dominate the other ones. And at that instant I it was just being intrigued.

Chris Bonington5:25

And then when I got home, I started researching it a bit, and I discovered that nobody had been into this mountain area before. And then a few years later.

Chris Bonington5:33

I I decided, well, let's try to get there. And I spent about seven or eight years trying to get permission to get in there.

Presenter5:39

Mm.

Chris Bonington5:39

And we were the first Europeans ever.

Chris Bonington5:42

to go into an area that's about the size of Switzerland.

Presenter5:45

What you had um was some of the most although you're in this very remote area some of the most advanced equipment ever taken by man up a mountain. In fact, you broadcast this climb on the Internet as you went. What does it take to do that? What what sort of equipment did you have?

Chris Bonington5:59

It meant taking out a a satellite dish.

Chris Bonington6:02

and then having your laptop computer that actually can go into the satellite, which is just like a telephone. And so you could actually both well, you could call up home for a start on the satellite phone, but you could also download stories and also pictures onto the Internet.

Presenter6:20

It it's fascinating though when you realize that that that forty years earlier on Everest, Hillary and Tensing, you know, it took three days, I think, to get a one line message home that they'd got to the top. It shows what a long way we've come. But of course it is possible that they weren't the first men to climb Everest. That's the fascinating thing.

Chris Bonington6:38

It's an intriguing one, of course. With the discovery of Mallory's body, the the conjectures got even stronger and I know the media rushed to the fact that, for instance, when they looked at the body, they found that his goggles were actually in a pocket, and the implication there, of course, is that he was coming down in the dark, because he'd put his goggles away.

Presenter6:59

That she'd beat up.

Chris Bonington7:00

And therefore, there's, well, he must have been up at the top. Well, that, of course, is total nonsense because you can't tell. He could have turned down at any moment. There's certainly, there's no doubt about it. He was last seen by Noel Odell in 1924, kind of dissipating two little dots, disappearing into the clouds. And Odell's never been quite sure, or wasn't quite sure, whether it was below the first step or the second step. Then the cloud rolled in, and then very shortly after that it started to snow. Now, if you've ever been up there in a snowstorm at that kind of altitude with the wind whirling around, it is ferocious. And then if you think the kind of gear that they had in those days, I mean they did have windproofs over the Norfolk jackets, but it still must have been ferocious. But you're afraid of the sound of the water. And would they have carried on?

Presenter7:50

But your hunch is

Presenter7:52

Your hunches they didn't get to the top.

Chris Bonington7:53

Mine yes, but it it it's only a hundred.

Presenter7:57

The current uh expedition, of course, set out with the express purpose of looking for these bodies, and indeed it's great success that they found at Malory's. Um but I presume there are times on the mountain when you come across bodies purely by chance.

Chris Bonington8:08

I think well there are two things. Firstly, you come across all too many bodies. The other thing that I think is absolutely disgraceful on the part of that expedition, not that they took the photographs, because I think taking a photograph of a body, if it's for the benefit of the family, is fine. But I think to have then published those photographs for commercial gain, which they seem to have done or the film company seems to have done, so that picture of Mallory lying in the snow.

Chris Bonington8:38

I mean it's been blasted across the internet and everything else. To me that is obscene and and I'm appalled by it.

Presenter8:47

Record number two.

Chris Bonington8:49

This was a record that Wendy and I bought on our way back from the only expedition that Wendy's come with me. It was just after we got married and she came with me to South Patagonia when I climbed a thing called the Central Tower of Piney. And Wendy loves both folk singing and she plays the guitar. And this is a record by Edouard Falou and he's got a mournful, sad voice and his guitar playing's wonderful.

Speaker 19:25

Nasir tasamba ilatar de la

Speaker 19:29

Servan boja lauración.

Speaker 19:33

Guando la luna yorava, hastiza de plata la muelte del zo.

Speaker 19:40

Cuando la luna jura.

Speaker 19:43

Ah, these are the plants that la murta del

Presenter9:47

Edouard Fallou performing Samba de la Candelaria.

Presenter9:51

Um you said, Chris, that from the moment you put the rope onto scale, I think a lump of sandstone outside Tunbridge Wells, age sixteen, that y you knew you were hooked, that this is what you

Chris Bonington10:01

This is what you wanted to do.

Presenter10:03

But what had there been before that in your life? Had you felt the kind of pull of the mountains before that?

Chris Bonington10:08

No, I mean, no, I I was completely unaware of the mountains really. Um my parents split up when I was very, very young, about a year old, and my mum

Chris Bonington10:18

brought me up and fortunately she could earn a reasonable amount of money, which was in advertising, but worked very, very hard, and so I was at, if you like, the standard

Chris Bonington10:27

kind of, you know, product for one parent family.

Presenter10:29

Left your own devices.

Chris Bonington10:30

Left to my own devices, had to be. And I suppose that that encouraged me to be independent.

Chris Bonington10:37

Uh the other thing was that of course the holidays are always a problem, and so I was first sent off to kind of holiday farms and things. But by the time I was fourteen I was getting more independent, so I'd go off on long

Chris Bonington10:50

cycle tours, quite often by myself, using youth hostels and then I went over to Ireland. My grandfather uh had retired to Ireland and you could see the sugar loaf from the suburb that he lived and it's a a nice sugar loaf like mountain and I went and climbed it by myself. And that I think is where it all started.

Presenter11:08

So you knew you'd found something that suited you both bodily and in temperament. This was for you?

Chris Bonington11:14

Well at that time I think it was just the the hills because I hadn't discovered climbing. I didn't even know that rock climbing existed and then the next winter I persuaded this mate of mine, Anton Felton, to hitchhike to Wales to go and climb Snowdon and we chose one of the snowiest, coldest winters for the last 30 years. We were completely ill-equipped. I actually had a pair of boots. Anton only had his school shoes and we he had his school Mac. I had actually had a school Mac that I'd cut down to try to make it look like an anorak. And we kind of got in behind these people who were real mountaineers because they had ice axes and followed them up. We didn't have a clue about reading a map. And we were avalanched off. We were going up the Cribgock Ridge. And Anton actually the next day hitchhiked home. And I stayed on because I loved it.

Presenter12:04

Record number three.

Chris Bonington12:06

Record number three, this is actually we're going even further back now. It's um when I was in the army and I was um stationed in Munster Westphalia as a young second lieutenant um in the Royal Tank Regiment.

Chris Bonington12:19

Quite a lonely guy, not very happy. I think uh there were parts of the army life I liked, but there was a lot I didn't. And I bought this for the first record I ever bought, Salad Days. It was a a lovely musical, and so when I was feeling really depressed I'd play this'cause it was very, very jolly.

Presenter12:41

What's happening? I can't sit still. I stand, I walk against my will. What's happening? What can this be? My feet have got control of me. I can't control my legs and feet. They misbehave on every beat. I'm not so sure that I approve. Is this a seemly way to move? I've lost command, I'm swept away. The feelings are but rough.

Speaker 312:57

I'd lost command and swept away feeling's odd but rather gay The music

Presenter13:03

The music took me By surprise! I haven't tied

Speaker 313:05

To real life

Presenter13:07

So what's that?

Speaker 313:07

Yeah.

Presenter13:07

Simon Green and Janie Dee with Oh, Look at Me from Salad Days and memories for Chris Bonington of being in the Army. Very flat Munster, Westphalia.

Chris Bonington13:18

Flutter the pancake.

Presenter13:19

Very frustrating.

Chris Bonington13:21

Yes, except that I got my first Alpine trip. I think in.

Chris Bonington13:27

Up to when when I went here I'd never been abroad.

Chris Bonington13:30

Never driven a car?

Chris Bonington13:32

And really just rock climbing and going up to Scotland fill my horizon.

Presenter13:35

And you had been going I find this amazing going to be a a librarian?

Chris Bonington13:41

Well, that's what I was thinking of. I mean, in a way, I mean, that one of the major traumatic

Chris Bonington13:47

kind of moments of my life.

Chris Bonington13:49

was when I actually failed English A level. Because I was, you know, I was a SWAT at school and, you know, I'd won the History Six kind of history prize and everything else. And I just took it absolutely for granted I was going to university. I had a place at London University. And then I was in Scotland at the time, I was climbing in Skye, and I got this letter from my mother.

Chris Bonington14:10

saying that I'd failed English A level, and I just couldn't understand it.

Chris Bonington14:15

And I then discovered I got naught per cent on one paper. And I think I must have panicked or si I must have done something catastrophically wrong.

Presenter14:22

So your whole life.

Chris Bonington14:23

And so my whole life and at that time, yes, I was planning to go to university and I wanted to become a librarian. Now whether I would have done or not, I don't know. But actually being a librarian and being an amateur climber might have worked. My life could have been very different.

Presenter14:35

So instead, you applied to the Air Force and then failed to become a pilot?

Chris Bonington14:38

Oh yes, Mike, a path of disasters, yes.

Presenter14:42

Yeah.

Chris Bonington14:42

I'd passed the aptitude tests, but I think it was partly I'd never driven a car in my life.

Chris Bonington14:49

And I had no sense of spatial mechanical distance. And so I could never really work out when to actually start putting down the flaps and all this kind of stuff as the plane came into the airfield. It's kind of fairly fundamental. It is a bit. Well, that's what they decided. But then I decided that I liked the service life and I couldn't think of anything else to do, but I certainly didn't want to be a kind of a desk-bound RAF person, so I transferred to the Army.

Presenter15:18

But you were essentially a weekend climber. That's what you thought. And indeed, as time went on and you became more responsible and you were about to become married and so on, you took a job with Unilever selling margarine, as we've said.

Chris Bonington15:21

Yeah.

Presenter15:31

How did that fit in with the climbing?

Chris Bonington15:34

Well, part of the the the various training roles you had was you had six months on a territory. And I mean, I was a I was a Hampstead boy and and they they gave me Hampstead, which was great. And uh and you had a little Ford popular car.

Chris Bonington15:51

And then he went around selling this margarine. But they were working on a principle that they wanted to close down all the little shops and open up big accounts. So I worked on a principle of closing down all the accounts on Fridays and Mondays. And I'd got it to the point where on a Monday or a Friday I could get round in about an hour and a half flat. And then I'd disconnect the Speedo on the Ford Popular and we'd drive up to Wales and have a long weekend in Wales. So I think it was actually a race between me actually resigning from Unilever and them sacking me.

Presenter16:23

Looks very cool.

Chris Bonington16:24

This is really going into my early days with Wendy. Wendy was um free en freelance illustrator. She also played the guitar. And when we settled in the Lake District as the the nicest place to live,

Chris Bonington16:39

She then got really interested in folk singing and did an awful lot of it, and she had a a very germ biasy kind of voice.

Presenter16:48

Uh

Speaker 116:48

Once I had a sweetheart, and now I have none.

Speaker 116:55

Once I had a sweetheart, And now I have none.

Speaker 117:03

Uh

Speaker 317:03

He's gone and leave me, he's gone and leave me.

Speaker 317:11

He's gone.

Presenter17:13

Uh

Speaker 117:13

Uh

Presenter17:13

Beneath

Speaker 117:14

Do so.

Presenter17:17

Joan Byers, and Once I Had a Sweetheart. So it was nineteen sixty two, and you were coming up for twenty eight, and it seems to me that the climb you did then, and you'd done quite a few notable ones before that, but you suddenly climbed the north face of the Eiger and became the first Briton to do so. How did that come about?

Chris Bonington17:37

Well, I had spent some years trying to get up the north wall of the ike, and various things had stopped us. And it was that summer of'sixty two' that Don Willands and I had been climbing together right through the summer.

Chris Bonington17:51

and uh is right at the end of the season.

Chris Bonington17:54

and the weather was absolutely perfect.

Chris Bonington17:57

And so I decided, well, I'll just grab one more climb. Well, Don had to get back. I think he had a lecture or something. So he'd gone. So he'd gone and I met up with Iain Clough, who was a mate of mine. We'd climbed the previous year together. And we decided we'd go and climb a thing called the North Wall of the Grand Juras.

Chris Bonington18:17

We were just going so well we we didn't want to come down.

Chris Bonington18:21

And I just said to Ian, you know, kind of on top of a pinnacle,

Chris Bonington18:24

Let's go for the north wall of the Eiger. And then two days later we hitchhiked across to um Grindelwald and we were actually on the foot of the Eiger and that time just everything went right.

Presenter18:35

So it was just a window of opportunity. The weather was right.

Chris Bonington18:38

The weather was right, we were right. And I suppose

Chris Bonington18:43

It's kind of I I think people say you're lucky. I I'm not sure you are. I think everyone has about the same amount of luck and bad luck.

Chris Bonington18:51

And I think it's rather like playing poker. I think the the people are successful.

Chris Bonington18:56

are the people who grab those windows of opportunity and actually

Chris Bonington19:03

Damp down the bad luck periods who become known as lucky.

Presenter19:07

And of course it it made your name, didn't it, that suddenly all eyes were on you, Chris Bonington, who'd conquered the North Face of the Eiger.

Chris Bonington19:15

Well, I mean all we wanted to do was make the first British to send to the North Wall of the Aiger and in this respect there was quite a race amongst British climbers and the actual impact that it had was once again I'm afraid sadly because of disasters. That year in 1962 already on our first attempt we'd almost turned back anyway because conditions were wrong and then we were involved in a rescue of a guy called Brown Nally when his partner Barry Brewster was swept away by a stonefall and we'd had to go across the second ice field to pull him off. And so there was a lot of interest then and then tragically when Ian and I went to the face just as we'd settled down for our bivouac at the foot of the face another pair turned up one of whom was a Briton and Tom Carruthers and he was climbing with an Austrian so he also was trying to be the first Briton to get up. We were going much faster than they were and because they were too slow they got into the danger area in the middle of the face.

Chris Bonington20:20

Late in the afternoon when you get a lot of stonefall. And so completely unbeknown to us.

Chris Bonington20:27

They'd been swept away by stonefall. And so as we came down from the summit, and as far as we were concerned, we'd just had a wonderful three days climbing on the north wall of the Eiger. There was all the media hysteria, if you like. And that, I mean, once again, it's a mixed tragic and I suppose good thing for me that that acted as a launch pad so that I didn't have to kind of think of going to university to become a teacher. I could actually get stuck into doing what I've done ever since.

Presenter20:56

And what about Don Willans, who'd gone home on his motorbike?

Chris Bonington21:00

There was

Presenter21:01

Did he ever forgive you for climbing it without him?

Chris Bonington21:02

Uh

Chris Bonington21:03

Not really, no.

Presenter21:05

Tell me about your next record.

Chris Bonington21:06

I I'm I'm not an intensely musical person, but

Chris Bonington21:11

I find some classical music it does it's just very, very soothing, and Mozart is particularly soothing when, you know, everything's on to you and and it just kind of gets you into a nice tranquil mood.

Presenter22:22

Alfred Brendel playing part of the second movement of Mozart's piano concerto in E flat, K V four four nine.

Presenter22:28

Everest is the big one. Everest is the mountain conquered half way through the twentieth century, but but then after that, of course, began the attempts to conquer it again by ever more tortuous routes, and so it was in nineteen eighty two that you set out, with three other climbers, up the long and unexplored north eastern ridge.

Presenter22:46

It was and you look at pictures of it still today it was a terrible task to undertake, wasn't it?

Chris Bonington22:53

Well, i I wouldn't say ter no, it's a it was a wonderful, challenging, exciting task to undertake, but

Chris Bonington23:00

One which with hindsight was unrealistic. And in a way, I mean it was possible.

Presenter23:06

Was it unrealistic?

Chris Bonington23:07

Oh yes, yeah. I mean it was born I think from in 1975 when we planned the Southwest Face of Everest and we had a huge team, you know, there was sixty Sherpas, um eighteen members of the team, loads of oxygen, a film crew and everything else. And this almost was a conscious rejection of that.

Chris Bonington23:28

What happens on the north side of Everest, you can join you join the North East Ridge about halfway up it and the North Column, North Buttress, gives you relatively easy access to the upper reaches of the North East Ridge, which is also relatively, very relatively easy. But if you did the whole of the North East Ridge, all the way from the bottom to the top, it's one heck of a long way. And we wanted to do it as a four-person expedition.

Presenter23:56

But persuade me that it wasn't a a terrible task, because, as I understand it, there are perilous drops of thousands of feet, just a few inches to one side of you as you go. It's a ridge, literally, so you can't pitch a tent you've got to dig snow holes, or indeed rock holes, in the end when you got further up, in which to shelter from hundred mile an hour winds.

Presenter24:15

Error.

Chris Bonington24:16

But no but no, but the drop I mean the drops are all part of the game. I mean that's fun. But being a ridge like that with drops is actually a good thing because it means you haven't got any anything to avalanche on you. So it was a comparatively safe route. And you were taking no oxygen?

Presenter24:16

No f-

Presenter24:31

Yeah.

Chris Bonington24:32

You couldn't, because with only four of you you just couldn't have carried it up there.

Presenter24:36

So the air gets very thin and of course one team member in the end had a had a stroke or a dick.

Chris Bonington24:41

Dick Rinshaw, he had a mild stroke, but it was, you know, tingling all down one side, slight paralysis. And then it passed off, but it was very, very disturbing. So we got him back down to base camp. And at that point, I mean, I realized I was ten years older than the others, actually more than that about fifteen years older than the others.

Presenter25:00

You're exhausted.

Chris Bonington25:01

And I was exhausted. And there was no question of me going up. But Pete and Joe wanted to go back up.

Presenter25:03

Those bare questions.

Presenter25:08

Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker.

Chris Bonington25:10

Yeah.

Presenter25:11

R rather like Mallory and Irving, really, one almost feels, forty-eight years before them.

Presenter25:17

Off they went.

Chris Bonington25:17

Except, except and it's a big exception.

Chris Bonington25:21

They were infinitely, infinitely stronger. Mallory and Irvine were an uneven team. Irvine was comparatively inexperienced. And Mallory was going into the total unknown. Pete and Joe, as a team, were probably one of the best pairs that Britons ever produced in the mountains.

Presenter25:38

What was the last you saw of them?

Chris Bonington25:41

Just two tiny dots disappearing behind the second pinnacle. And at that point I was not remotely worried. The weather was absolutely perfect. There was no wind. There were superb mountaineers. Very, very balanced. There was nothing to go wrong. So what do you think did go wrong?

Chris Bonington25:59

The only thing I can think of is that one of them collapsed, and there is a bit of evidence now. About in 1984, two years later, an American climber on the conventional route looked across at the upper part of the North East Ridge and he spied what seemed to be a rucksack peering out of the snow. He took a photograph of it, and I've examined it, and it does look like a rucksack. You can't see what's underneath it, so it could be a person lying under there, but you can't tell. Now, that was right close to the final pinnacle. And then, some years later,

Chris Bonington26:35

The body of Peter Bourdmann was found just

Chris Bonington26:38

round the second pinnacle, just beyond where we last saw them.

Chris Bonington26:44

Now I think that they both got to that high point.

Chris Bonington26:47

And I think maybe this is pure supposition.

Chris Bonington26:51

That Joe collapsed and died.

Chris Bonington26:53

Pete is the kind of person I think.

Chris Bonington26:56

who would have waited.

Chris Bonington26:58

until he died.

Chris Bonington26:59

And then he had the choice of either trying to get back

Chris Bonington27:03

of the ground he knew or going over the ground he didn't. And I think he was trying to get back and he finally he actually I've seen the photograph once again.

Chris Bonington27:13

And he's just lying in the snow as if he's almost just laid down and gone to sleep.

Chris Bonington27:18

Record number six.

Chris Bonington27:19

Um where record number six is going is really it's part of that seventies kind of climbing period and climbing with people like Nick Escort, Mo Antoine, Doug Scott and so on on the Ogre and other mountains. And one of the the really popular cassettes that we had out with us was Doctor Hook, which I I think is a fabulous cheering up kind of um band.

Chris Bonington27:49

Sylvie girl's mother says

Speaker 327:52

Philippi is busy.

Speaker 327:54

Too busy to come to the phone.

Speaker 328:01

Sylvia's mother says Sylvia's trying to start a new life

Presenter28:12

Dr. Hook and Sylvia's Mother. So, april twenty first, fourteen years ago, you approached the top of Everest. You got to the foot of the steep snow wall they by then were calling Hilary Step. How much further had you to go after that?

Chris Bonington28:27

It's not very far. It's about

Chris Bonington28:29

I suppose is it three or four hundred feet? I should know, but they don't.

Presenter28:32

But very steep.

Speaker 128:33

Uh

Chris Bonington28:34

Yeah, but the hill is steps quite short. It's only about forty foot high.

Chris Bonington28:39

But it was there actually that I'd had one kind of crisis much, much earlier on, lower down on the mountain. I remember there.

Chris Bonington28:47

I'd got way behind the others and we were going up in the dark. And you don't rope up, you see, for most of it. So you just go at your own pace. And I'd caught up with them, they'd waited for me. And I remember being really discouraged at that point. And it was Odelias and he just said, Look, Chris, I'll go behind you. And that little bit of care just made all the difference to me, and that gave me a kind of good burst. And I kept going really well up to the Hillary step. And then they'd actually, you know, they got ahead of me again. I was going slow, and I was by myself. And it was then that I just struck a kind of a barrier, and I began to have self-doubt. I was wondering whether I could do it.

Chris Bonington29:31

And I had this kind of Doug Scott, this mate of mine, and he was.

Chris Bonington29:36

There, next door to me, kind of floating.

Chris Bonington29:40

And he was telling me what to do. And it was incredibly realistic. I mean, he was, you know, flesh and blood.

Chris Bonington29:45

but floating up by my shoulder, and he talked me up it.

Chris Bonington29:49

And then as I got to the top and it just quietly vanished. And I mean, you know, I know it was my mind did it for me.

Chris Bonington29:57

But it got me there and then I could see the others and then I just had to plod all the way up to the top and

Chris Bonington30:03

Reach the summit.

Presenter30:04

And do you remember that moment of reaching the summit?

Chris Bonington30:07

It's very mixed up.

Chris Bonington30:08

And um

Chris Bonington30:12

Trangits.

Chris Bonington30:16

Uh

Chris Bonington30:19

Strange had something.

Chris Bonington30:22

Yeah.

Presenter30:24

It's just the memories, I suppose, of

Presenter30:26

Yeah, people you

Chris Bonington30:27

Yeah, I cried.

Presenter30:27

Got it.

Chris Bonington30:28

And it was the

Chris Bonington30:31

I think the thoughts of so many friends.

Chris Bonington30:36

It was yep, I mean I did cry then.

Chris Bonington30:39

And I just all the way up that that last bit, which is easy, and you're just putting one foot in front of the other.

Chris Bonington30:47

And so many of them, I mean.

Chris Bonington30:49

Nick escort on the a force the rock band in seventy five is m probably my closest friend is killed on K two Mick Burke was killed on the second summit bid

Chris Bonington31:00

Pete and Joe, Dougal, who'd been killed near his home in Switzerland. And it was just the thoughts that that's the price you pay.

Presenter31:06

Hmm.

Chris Bonington31:06

And um so it was grief, it was um

Chris Bonington31:12

It was being totally, utterly exhausted, and yet it was joy. And it was, you know, and it was a sense of joy, a sense of achievement, and that this was all mixed up in a very as you can see now, all these years later, in a very strong mix.

Presenter31:25

Hmm.

Presenter31:27

Record number seven.

Chris Bonington31:30

Well, there's a

Chris Bonington31:32

I suppose actually I'm quite a sentimental soul in some ways, and I and because of that I I actually I I like country and western. And this is Whelan Jennings and Jesse Coulter in rainy seasons.

Presenter31:42

It's a rainy season.

Presenter31:45

Broken heart.

Presenter31:47

Everybody gets a turn.

Presenter31:51

Children are fur and waiting line

Presenter31:55

Here come Julie.

Speaker 331:58

Bow

Presenter32:00

Round the go.

Speaker 332:02

Uh

Speaker 332:03

Locking now

Speaker 332:05

You can play with fire and you won't get back.

Speaker 332:10

Oh wow.

Presenter32:13

Wayland Jennings and Jessie Coulter with rainy seasons from their album Leather and Lace. So um sixty five this summer at Chris Bonington. How limiting is that? I mean, can you still go as high as you like?

Chris Bonington32:23

No, you've got to be realistic. I mean, age has its its effects, but you just have to accept

Chris Bonington32:30

that your body does get slightly less good than it was. But I think you can go on you want to press yourself the whole time. Still. And and still, yes. I mean, I love climbing still passionately.

Presenter32:38

And

Presenter32:42

How many climbing years do you think you've got left in you?

Chris Bonington32:45

Well, I thought I probably had about another ten years, but someone gave me a press cutting and there's a guy 82 years of age who's going to climb the Noseval Capitan, which is a 2,500-foot wall. And admittedly, I think he'd be doing it second, going up on a pair of Jumars. But I mean, so that gives me another 10 years. So let's say 20 more years.

Presenter33:05

What about a desert island? You know, um would you survive? Are you a survivor, generally speaking? You must be.

Chris Bonington33:11

I think I'm I'm a good survivor, uh but I'm I'm not terribly good at the the practical bits. You know, I'm I'm not terribly good at building my little house and all that kind of stuff. So um but mentally you but mentally I think I am, yes. I think I could I could I could cope with it.

Presenter33:29

What about death on a desert island?

Presenter33:32

Could you face it?

Chris Bonington33:33

I I think as far the thing that frightens me is not death. The thing that frightens me is actually getting totally old and totally crotchety. And I think I'd much rather go out on a desert island or on a high mountain or something than kind of, you know

Chris Bonington33:52

Totally gun of going to helpless old age.

Presenter33:55

Record number eight.

Chris Bonington33:56

I've only actually I've only just discovered Van Morrison and someone gave me um the C D and it's lovely and I listen to it an awful lot as I drive around the country.

Presenter34:05

But surely it lives forever.

Speaker 334:13

Uh

Presenter34:15

Let's go

Presenter34:16

Yeah.

Presenter34:19

Uh

Speaker 334:20

It's love with Charlotte

Speaker 134:27

Good to know what surely last falling.

Presenter34:32

Van Morrison, and Here Comes the Night. So, which of those eight, Chris, if you could only take one of them, which one would you take?

Presenter34:38

See Jamba.

Chris Bonington34:39

Uh

Presenter34:40

And uh your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Chris Bonington34:43

Well, I thought I'd been actually listening to The Sceptred Isle recently. It was this wonderful programme on radio for I don't know how many people have listened to it. And they use excerpts from the history of the English speaking people, which is Winston Churchill's wonderful kind of historical bit. So can I have that? I I think it's in more than one volume.

Presenter35:04

It is, I'm afraid. You haven't got a period you'd like. You have one of four volumes.

Chris Bonington35:08

I have the first volume, then?

Presenter35:09

And your luxury.

Chris Bonington35:11

And my luxury actually will be it'll be a PowerBook G3, which is a little incredibly powerful laptop, but I'll take all the work off it. I won't have any satellite communications at all, and I'll put a game on it called Civilization 2, where you start as a settler kind of back in 5000 BC and then you build up your empire until you kind of control the world today and into the kind of atomic age. And I'm so addicted to this game that I've actually had to take it off all my computers and I've given the C D to my secretary and she's got orders that under no circumstances can she give it to me until I finish my next book. So I can play that.

Chris Bonington35:51

without anyone to say you're not allowed to.

Presenter35:54

Sir Chris Bonington, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Presenter36:06

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.