The Southwest Face

From 1966 to 1969 the government of Nepal banned mountaineers from climbing in the Nepalese Himalayas. When the ranges were reopened in 1969, the world’s top mountaineers—following the American example of 1963—set their eyes on new routes to Everest’s summit. With Tibet still closed and only the southern approach available, the obvious challenge was the huge Southwest Face rising from the Western Cwm. The crux of the problem was the Rock Band—a vertical cliff 2,000 feet (600 meters) high starting at about 26,250 feet (8,000 meters). A Japanese reconnaissance expedition reached the foot of the Rock Band in the autumn of 1969 and returned in spring 1970 for a full-scale attempt led by Matsukata Saburō. Failing to make further progress on the Southwest Face, the expedition switched to the easier South Col route, getting the first Japanese climbers, including the renowned Japanese explorer Uemura Naomi, to the summit.

Expeditions continued to lay “siege” to the Southwest Face. The most publicized of these climbs was the 1971 International Expedition led by Norman Dyhrenfurth; however, internationalist ideals were savaged by the stresses of high altitude, and the expedition degenerated into rancour between the British and non-British climbers. In the spring of 1972 a European expedition led by the German Karl Herrligkoffer was equally inharmonious.

The battle for the Southwest Face continued in a predictable pattern: large teams, supported by Sherpas acting as high-altitude porters, established a succession of camps in the broad, snow-covered couloir leading to the foot of the intractable Rock Band. Success finally came in the autumn of 1975 to a British expedition led by Chris (later Sir Chris) Bonington, who got the full team and its meticulously prepared equipment to Base Camp by the end of August and made the most of the mainly calm weather during the September time window.

Climbing equipment had changed significantly since 1953. In the mid-1970s rigid box-shaped tents were bolted to aluminum alloy platforms dug into the 45° slope. Smooth-sheathed nylon ropes were affixed to the rock face to make a continuous safety line, which climbers could ascend and descend very efficiently. The 1975 expedition was a smooth operation that utilized a team of 33 Sherpas and was directed by some of the world’s best mountaineers. Unlike previous expeditions, this team explored a deep gully cutting through the left side of the Rock Band, with Paul Braithwaite and Nick Estcourt breaking through to establish Camp VI at about 27,000 feet (8,230 meters). From there Doug Scott and Dougal Haston made a long, bold traverse rightward, eventually gaining the South Summit and continuing over the Hillary Step to the Everest summit, which they reached at 6:00 pm. Rather than risk descending in the dark, they bivouacked in a snow cave close to the South Summit—at 28,750 feet (8,750 meters), this was the highest bivouac in climbing history until Babu Chiri Sherpa bivouacked on the summit itself in 1999. Their oxygen tanks were empty, and they had neither tent nor sleeping bags, but both men survived the ordeal unharmed and returned safely to Camp VI in the morning. Two days later Peter Boardman and Pertemba Sherpa reached the summit, followed by Mick Burke heading for the top in deteriorating weather. Burke never returned; he is presumed to have fallen to his death in the whiteout conditions.

The first ascent by a woman

When Scott and Haston reached the summit of Everest in September 1975, they found a metal surveying tripod left the previous spring by a Chinese team—definitive proof of the first uncontested ascent from the north. The Chinese team included a Tibetan woman, Phantog, who reached the summit on May 27. The honors for the first woman to summit Everest, however, belong to the Japanese climber Tabei Junko, who reached the top from the South Col on May 16. She was climbing with the first all-women expedition to Everest (although male Sherpas supported the climb.)

The West Ridge direct ascent

With the Southwest Face climbed, the next obvious—and harder—challenge was the complete West Ridge direct ascent from Lho Pass (Lho La). Just getting to Lho Pass from Base Camp is a major climb. The West Ridge itself then rises 9,200 feet (2,800 meters) over a distance of 3.5 miles (5.5 km), much of it over difficult rock. In 1979 a Yugoslav team, led by Tone Skarja, made the first ascent, fixing ropes to Camp V at an elevation of about 26,750 feet (8,120 meters), with one rope fixed farther up a steep rock chimney (a crack or gorge large enough to permit a climber to enter). On May 13 Andrej Stremfelj and Jernej Zaplotnik set out from Camp V for the summit. Above the chimney there were two more hard pitches of rock climbing. With no spare rope to fix in place, the climbers realized that they would not be able to descend via these difficult sections. After reaching the summit in midafternoon, they descended by the Hornbein Couloir, bypassing the hardest part of the West Ridge to regain the safety of Camp IV late that evening.

Climbing without supplemental oxygen

Beginning in the 1920s and ’30s, the received wisdom had been that an Everest climb needed a team of at least 10 climbers supported by Sherpas and equipped with supplemental oxygen for the final stages. In 1978 that belief was shattered by the Italian (Tyrolean) climber Reinhold Messner and his Austrian climbing partner Peter Habeler. They had already demonstrated on other high Himalayan peaks the art of Alpine-style climbing—moving rapidly, carrying only the barest essentials, and sometimes not even roping together for safety—as opposed to the standard siege style. Another innovation was their use of plastic boots, which were much lighter than the leather equivalent. In 1978 Messner and Habeler attached themselves as a semiautonomous unit to a large German-Austrian expedition led by Oswald Ölz. At 5:30 am on May 8, the two men left their tent at the South Col and started up the summit ridge carrying nothing but ice axes, cameras, and a short rope. The only external assistance was from the Austrians at their top camp, above the South Col, where the two stopped briefly to melt snow for drinking water. (In those days it was still common practice to place a top camp higher than the South Col; nowadays virtually all parties start their final push from the col, some 3,100 feet [950 meters] below the summit). Maintaining a steady ascent rate of about 325 feet (100 meters) per hour, they reached the summit at 1:15 pm. Habeler was terrified of possibly suffering brain damage from the lack of oxygen and made a remarkable descent to the South Col in just one hour. Messner returned later that afternoon. Exhausted—and in Messner’s case snow-blind from having removed his goggles—the two were escorted back down to the Western Cwm the next morning by the Welsh climber Eric Jones.

Messner and Habeler had proved that human beings could climb to the top of the world without supplemental oxygen; the German Hans Engl and the Sherpas Ang Dorje and Ang Kami were among several climbers who duplicated this feat in the autumn of 1978. However, for Messner, climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen was not enough: he now wanted to reach the summit completely alone. To do that unroped over the treacherous crevasses of the Western Cwm was considered unthinkable, but it was possible on the less-crevassed northern approach through Tibet; by the late 1970s Tibet was again becoming an option.

The north approach

After China occupied Tibet in 1950, permission was denied to any expeditions from noncommunist countries wishing to climb Everest. In 1960 the Chinese army built a road to the Rongbuk Base Camp, then claimed to have made the first ascent of Everest from the north, following the North Col–North Ridge–Northeast Ridge route earlier explored by prewar British expeditions. Many in the West doubted the Chinese assertion, mainly because the official account—which included the claim that Qu Yinhua had scaled the notorious vertical cliff of the Second Step barefoot and which also made constant references to party solidarity and the inspiration of Chairman Mao—was deemed so improbable. Not for the last time, Everest was used as a vehicle for propaganda.

Since that time, however, people in the West have seen Qu’s feet, mutilated by frostbite, and experts have reexamined the 1960 photos and film—many now believe that Qu, Wang Fuzhou, Liu Lianman, and the Tibetan, Konbu, did indeed reach the summit on May 25, 1960. What none can doubt is the Chinese repeat ascent of 1975 by eight Tibetans (including Phantog) and one Chinese. On that climb the group bolted an aluminium ladder to the Second Step, which has remained there and greatly aided all subsequent ascents on what has become the standard route from the north.