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30 OCT 2000 - 05 NOV 2000

Archived Chat with Chris Bonington


Sir Christian Bonington
Banff Mountain Filmfest
Photo: Banff Centre

Welcome to our chat session with climber and explorer Sir Christian Bonington, done live Nov. 2 from the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Bonington has had an extensive career climbing throughout the world. In the Himalaya and Karakoram, he was the first to climb Changabang, the West Summit of Shivling and the Ogre — also named Baintha Brakk — which still awaits a second ascent, 23 years later. He was also the leader of the expeditions which conquered the South Face of Annapurna (1970) and the Southwest Face of Everest (1975). He continues to climb and explore, most recently in Greenland and the remote areas of Tibet.

Question

Unlike many notable climbers, you are an active user of computers and the Internet. How do you feel about expedition webcasts and what do you think is the future role of the Internet in climbing?

Sir Chris Bonington

There are pros and cons to that. The advantages are that you can tell your own story without it being filtered through the media. The disadvantages are when you come back down for a rest, instead of lying around and reading books, you get glued to the computer, reading the latest story. Another disadvantage is one of the charms, being cut off from the rest of the world, with your focus being the mountain you have come to climb. Communicating with the world can damage that focus.

Question

Why do you think the Ogre hasn't been climbed in the 23 years since your success?

Sir Chris Bonington

For starters, it is a very complex and potentially dangerous mountain. We were very lucky with the weather and had nearly four weeks of perfect weather whilst we were making the ascent. And the weather, of course, broke the day after our successful ascent. Doug Scott having two broken legs and us having run out of food still on top of the mountain.

Question

Do you have any concerns about the increasing commercialization of climbing and the marketing of it to a mass audience?

Sir Chris Bonington

I have some concerns, the media obsessed with Everest, guided expeditions, and record breaking, whilst real mountaineering is about initiative mountaineering and exploring new routes. The general public can lose sight of this because the media only covers the other kind of climbing which, to me, is almost irrelevant to real mountaineering.

Question

What or who has been the greatest influence on your life?

Sir Chris Bonington
Get the Book
Banff Mountain Filmfest Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage
by
Hermann Buhl

Well certainly the biggest is my wife, Wendy. In climbing terms, my first great influence as a young lad, just starting to climb in the early '50s was a Scottish mountaineer called W.H. Murray, who wrote a book called Mountaineering in Scotland. And as a young climber, this is within reach of where I could go and therefore was much more relevant than stories of climbing in the Himalayas and other great ranges. Later on, Hermann Buhl, with his book, Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage, was a great influence. Because now I have started climbing in the Alps, and was beginning to look further afield to the Himalayas. In more recent years, John Hunt and the late Lord Hunt of the 1953 Everest Expedition became both mentor and friend.

Question

You are lucky to have a link to an age when climbers seemed to have more substance and other interests. Today, most sponsored athletes seem to be one dimensional. Is sponsorship at the heart of this Darwinian process, i.e., if we encourage people to play only with no need to actually earn a living, should we be surprised if we're rewarded with blank-eyed extreme dudes and dudettes who seem utterly shallow and uninteresting?

Sir Chris Bonington

It all depends on how you use sponsorship. The key thing is to decide what you want to do from your own personal ambitions and heart. And then, to use sponsorship to attain that objective. If you do it the other way, in other words, looking for sponsorship as a means of making money and then try to find an objective, that person has lost their way.

Question

What is the next frontier in climbing for you? For the climbing world as a whole?

Sir Chris Bonington

There are still huge areas of unexplored unclimbed peaks, the Indian Himalaya, in Pakistan, Tibet, Siberia, Greenland, and Antarctica. This is where true mountaineering can develop and expand. As far as I am concerned, I am off to a group of mountains called the The Aglas Group in the Karakoram, which has never been visited before by climbers, but which has been mapped and therefore we know it has around 15 peaks between 6,000 meters and 6,700 meters, big glaciers and tight contours.

Question

In your book, Everest the Hard Way, you go into great detail about new technology that was designed before but modified on the mountain. With the number of companies around today, does that still happen? Will it continue?

Sir Chris Bonington

Development of climbing equipment and techniques is a constant, ongoing process. Both ways of climbing, and ethics of climbing, are in a constant state of change. And the manufacturers are responding to the demands of the climber. And therefore they should always be that continuum of development. I still stand by what I said.

Question

The 1999 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition stirred great controversy in the climbing community. (You) came out strongly critical of the Mallory team and were quoted in media saying "they didn't deserve to call themselves climbers." On what basis did you make this comment and do you still feel this way about the 1999 Mallory expedition team? Do you agree with Joe Simpson's assessment of the 1999 Mallory Research Expedition team as a bunch of "grave robbers?"

Sir Chris Bonington

The thing that distressed me and many other climbers was the publication of the photographs of Mallory lying in the snow. To me, this was almost a form of pornography. The interest and desire to find out more about the mystery of Mallory and Irvine is fine and a perfectly legitimate and historical objective, but this can be done through research into the existing writings and artifacts that are available. There is no need to go hunting for the bodies, because the discovery of Mallory's body sheds no real of light on the whether they reached the summit or not. Seeking out the body of Irvine, even if they discovered the camera which he is believed to have been carrying, is still most unlikely to prove, one way or another, to prove they reached the top. And I personally would rather enjoy the mystery of wondering whether they got there or not. And have it as a faint, and I believe it is a faint, possibility that they were successful. It is a great pity to strip a rich legend into the star of ugly pictures that were splashed over the world's media, for the financial gain, of that expedition.

Question

What is your opinion on extreme alpinism? Mark Twight, Scott Backes and others are climbing in record times without the use of Sherpas and a lot of gear. Do you like the idea of fast and light?

Sir Chris Bonington

I think climbing fast with a minimum amount of resources is an exciting concept that is very much in line with the healthy development of mountaineering. To do it just to make a record — to be the fastest to the top of Everest, seems like a pointless activity.

Question

Is it difficult to dedicate your life to climbing? I mean, it's not a normal job with secure money at the end of the month.

Sir Chris Bonington

It certainly is not a difficult job, it is a lovely job. I believe the most enjoyable thing that any of us can do is to find a way of making a living and a career around the thing we love doing.

Question

Would you rather climb a new route that is extremely difficult on a peak that has already been climbed by other routes, or climb a moderate route on a new peak that has never been climbed before? What gives you more pleasure, the challenge of getting to a place or the pure climbing once there? Do you dream of remoteness or difficulty?

Sir Chris Bonington

I enjoy most going into an area which is almost completely unknown, and finding a route up a mountain that has never been climbed; makes it a complete experience. In some ways, the moment of standing on the top of that unclimbed peak is ephemeral. And any one small part of the whole experience, that whole experience, is not just the climb, it is finding your way to the foot of the mountain, perhaps meeting and learning about the lives of the people who lived in that mountain range region and trying to understand in greater depth the geology and the flora of that region so that the climb becomes just one part of a much fuller experience. And then perhaps most important of all is your relationship with, and interaction with, your fellow climbers and perhaps the others that go with you, or whoever goes with you, as being part of your team. I believe the climbing should be a joyous thing with a lot of fun even when there are moments when it does get very tough, even perhaps when someone has to pay the price for that challenge, if they die, the climbing should essentially be something to be joyous about.

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