Chris Bonington

Presenter0:00

This download

Chris Bonington0:01

is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Chris, I believe as a very young child you had an adventurous disposition. You used to run away.

Chris Bonington0:13

Yeah, I think this went with the family actually. My grandfather um came from Shesik-Holstein. He ran away from home to be a cabin boy, which is very romantic, and wandered all over the world and ended up in the Andaman Islands as a harbormaster.

Presenter0:23

The world

Chris Bonington0:26

And I seem to have followed it on. I think I was a very happy child at home. I lived um in Hampstead and

Chris Bonington0:35

I I ran away from home at Hampstead at the age of four and finally ended up in the police station at Hampstead and I ran I ran away from school.

Presenter0:42

Aram

Chris Bonington0:44

And uh I suppose climbing could be described as escapist as well, so Yes. How did climbing come into it? When did you first become interested in how? Well, w I was evacuated or my school was evacuated up to Westmoreland and I

Chris Bonington0:59

Started wandering in the hills then with my unfortunate grandmother. I dragged up many Lakeland smaller hills. But I suppose I started seriously when I was sixteen.

Chris Bonington1:09

And I then my grandfather had retired to Ireland, just outside Dublin, and I wandered over the Wyclare Hills, which of course are kind of behind Dublin. I then started wandering in Wales.

Chris Bonington1:22

saw these extraordinary people on rock faces climbing with ropes, and I just instinctively knew that this was something I wanted to do more than anything else. And um I then found someone who could climb and started climbing and went on from there.

Presenter1:37

In due course you were called up for natural service. You served in the RAF and also in the Royal Tank Regiment in Germany. Did you get up any Alps?

Chris Bonington1:45

Uh

Presenter1:46

Yeah.

Chris Bonington1:46

Well, I first went climbing in the Alps uh while I was in Germany. At this stage I'd become a very good climber in this country, but I'd never been on anything bigger. And uh the first Alpine route that I ever set out for a natural fact was the north wall of the Eiger, which is absolute lunacy for someone who'd never been in the Alps before, but I was going with a

Chris Bonington2:04

a very good, though very mad, Scottish climber called Hamish MacInnis, who's a very close old friend of mine, and he said, Aqua, Chris, it's a grand introduction to the hills and um

Presenter2:08

Right.

Chris Bonington2:14

Fortunately the weather was bad and we turned back from it and then of course I went on at a later date to do the north wall of the icon.

Presenter2:21

You became an instructor in the Army Outward Bound School, and it was while you were there that you were invited to join a services expedition to the Himalayas.

Chris Bonington2:28

Yes, that's right. Um I went to um Annapurna too, which is a mountain of twenty-six thousand and forty-one feet.

Chris Bonington2:36

And um of course this is a tremendous opportunity'cause I was only twenty-five at the time. Yes. This of course was really tough mountaineering. Well it's it is tough mountaineering, but there's every kind of level of climbing. For instance in this country the climbs are very small, but because they are so short, I mean the average British rock climb I suppose is three hundred feet.

Chris Bonington2:57

Uh some of your evening climbs are only thirty feet, the highest is about eight hundred feet. But they're very, very hard because of this, so the holes are tiny and it's very, very difficult to make upward progress, whereas as you get into the higher mountains, say Annapurna too, it's little more than very high altitude fell walking.

Chris Bonington3:15

But of course every single step takes a tremendous effort. But now we're getting to the stage in the mountains where

Chris Bonington3:21

Where we're doing harder and harder climbs, higher and higher up.

Presenter3:23

Well

Chris Bonington3:24

Yeah.

Presenter3:24

Yes. After Annapurna II you were back in the Himalayas only a few months later.

Chris Bonington3:29

Yes, when I went back to uh Noptsi, this was the thing that finally got me out of the army actually, because I couldn't have gone to Noptsi and stayed in the army. And this was a civilian expedition. And Noptsi is the third peak of Everest. And that was a technically hard this was interesting climbing at altitude.

Presenter3:42

And that was

Presenter3:46

And then the the North faiths of of the Eiger successfully.

Chris Bonington3:50

Well, this was um we actually drove back overland from Noptse and I'd arranged to meet Don Willems uh below the Eiger and we had twenty quid and the two of us managed to make that twenty quid last for three months, sitting below the north wall of the Eiger. We lived on potatoes most of the time.

Presenter4:06

Yes, now a financial note here, these expeditions and climbs took a lot of time, a lot of money.

Presenter4:11

Obviously, you weren't independent enough to say, This is my life, this is what I want to do only. How do you manage? How did you manage?

Chris Bonington4:19

Well, up to when I climbed the Igra I'd I'd always been working and I'd never really envisaged anything else was possible. I'd first, you know, worked in the army and then I'd left the army and worked for Unilever as a management trainee, but

Chris Bonington4:32

After we'd climbed the Aiger, this wasn't with Don, in fact he'd gone home, I climbed with um a climber called Ian Clough.

Chris Bonington4:39

And uh a publisher came and said, Well, will you write a book for us? And I also had a lot of lectures, and I found that I could make a living

Chris Bonington4:47

I suppose as a communicator by writing and talking about it and doing the thing I really like doing and having a much greater level of freedom and this is what I've been doing for the last um ten years now. Splendid.

Chris Bonington4:58

You went off to Patagonia, didn't you, Chris? Yep, well, immediately after climbing the north wall of the Aigra, I'd been invited already to go on an expedition to Patagonia, and we went and climbed a mountain called the Central Tower of Piney. It's a magnificent granite obelisk in the middle of Patagonia, one of the windiest, coldest spots in the world. Mm-hmm. Uh

Presenter5:18

Uh

Chris Bonington5:19

Uh

Presenter5:19

Uh

Chris Bonington5:19

Is it given?

Presenter5:19

Yeah.

Chris Bonington5:20

Getting rather d Yeah.

Presenter5:21

Difficult to find mountains that haven't been climbed.

Chris Bonington5:24

Yeah, it's getting more difficult to find unclimbed mountains. Most of the really great mountains in the world have been climbed. For instance, all the mountains of over twenty six thousand feet have been climbed. Most, but not all, of the attractive mountains in the Himalayas have been climbed.

Chris Bonington5:39

But this doesn't really matter because the climber is interested really in

Chris Bonington5:45

the climb itself and not standing on top of a virgin summit. And in the Himalayas, very, very few mountains have had more than one route made up them. So that if you think in the Alps every single mountain has every face and every ridge it's got climbed at least one route. Well in the Himalayas this has barely started. So in the Himalayas we're in the same stage.

Chris Bonington6:09

as the Victorian alpinist was in eighteen fifty. So I reckon there's a hundred years or more of very good climbing left to mountaineer, so I'm all right.

Presenter6:17

Oh, fine, yes. In fact, you went up the Eiger again by a different route, didn't you?

Chris Bonington6:21

Yes, well this is the way the Alps has been filled out. Um the Eiger Direct was straightening out the original Eiger route, partially because all practically everything has been done in the Alps, so we're now in the Alps in the situation of having to fill in the gaps.

Presenter6:23

Um

Chris Bonington6:37

Then you did the south face of Annapurna I.

Chris Bonington6:41

Yes, well, that was the next real climb I did. I'd been doing a series of these photojournalistic assignments and I'd got discontented actually. I wanted to do my own thing again. And this what the south face of Annapurna was. It's a huge, it's probably the biggest mountain face.

Presenter6:55

Hmm.

Chris Bonington6:56

It had been climbed at that stage.

Chris Bonington6:58

Yeah.

Presenter6:58

Getting off at a bit of a tangent, Chris, with all your experience of the Himalayas, what's your view of the Yeti, the abominable snowman? Are are you

Chris Bonington7:06

Are you for or against? Well, I don't know. Don Willands, he made the reconnaissance to find our base camp just below the south face of Annapurna, and he's convinced he saw the Yeti, and he poked his head out one night out of the tent. It was a bright moonlit night.

Chris Bonington7:19

and he saw this dark

Chris Bonington7:22

You could you see the sort of silhouette of the creature against the snow in the moonlight, and it had a kind of ananthropoid.

Chris Bonington7:28

look about it. You know, it it definitely wasn't a bear or a deer or anything like that. Size? And he thought it was about man's size, but of course it's incredibly difficult to tell anything at distance in moonlight, you know. You've got no kind of um

Presenter7:30

Wait.

Presenter7:39

You know,

Chris Bonington7:42

Nothing to to to judge distance by. But he went out and he took a photograph of the tracks the next day and they were they were really good Yeti-like tracks and personally I think the Yetis are downsight more likely than the Loch Ness Monster.

Presenter7:53

Yeah.

Presenter7:54

And last year you went for the jackpot, the highest one of all, Everest.

Presenter7:58

Now this gallant expedition failed.

Chris Bonington8:01

Well, shall we say ye yeah, it failed. It didn't get to the top of the mountain, but it but so what? It was a superb experience.

Chris Bonington8:07

It was the weather that beat you.

Chris Bonington8:09

It wasn't so much the the weather as the time of year in that the weather on the surface was very good. Uh we had very few days of snow.

Chris Bonington8:19

But in the autumn, and we knew we were going to get this, but it was even worse than we'd anticipated. Uh you get very, very high winds and you get intense cold. I mean the winds are a hundred miles an hour.

Chris Bonington8:30

On the upper slopes of Everest, and the temperature's about minus thirty. Now, this was the only time of year that we could get it, because Everest's booked up for the next eight years. And there was a gap. Someone had cancelled their booking, so we, quick as a flash, got in and decided where it was a hell of a sight better to go at a time of year when we thought which wasn't the ideal time but where we had a chance rather than go, wait for eight years and then have our go. So that's why we went. And it was a terrific challenge. If it had come off, it would have been terrific, but as it was, I mean, I think.

Chris Bonington9:02

We felt that we'd tried ourselves to the limit and okay we'd failed, but not through want of trying.

Presenter9:08

This is the Nepalese Government, they only allow one expedition at a time.

Chris Bonington9:12

Yes, well they must take this course because, you see, an Everest expedition is a big expedition. You we had forty Sherpas and there were ten clowns, fifty people, and that's small by Everest standards, and you've all got to go through this ice fall.

Chris Bonington9:26

Now if you had two separate big expeditions like that, it'd be merry shambles. So they they've got to to have some kind of quota system. You know, it's I mean it's a it's an inevitable supply and demand law really.

Presenter9:32

You know, it's a main

Presenter9:38

You've done some special climbs for television, haven't you?

Chris Bonington9:41

Yes, there are quite a few now.

Presenter9:42

Uh

Chris Bonington9:42

What are the problems of this?

Chris Bonington9:44

Well, um they're terrific fun. I I suppose the most obvious problem is that you've got to climb with a pair of headphones on.

Chris Bonington9:53

uh so that uh you've got a continuous buzzing in your ears uh and you're aware of the fact that millions are watching you, so you've no desire to fall off in public. Uh and I I I think that's the the biggest pressure. Uh you've got to talk as well while you climb. But I I do this anyway. If I get

Chris Bonington10:11

Gently tensed up, I start talking to myself and I mutter about that I've got to put my hand here and then I've got my left foot there and so on.

Presenter10:13

But

Presenter10:17

You've got to be careful what you say, of course.

Chris Bonington10:19

Well, y you're you're meant to, yes. I I think the occasional four letter word has crept out, in fact, in these telebroadcasts, but I don't think we've had um

Chris Bonington10:29

Any kind of phone calls from, um, what's the lady's name?