Dead Man walking: Jillott and Amery before the fateful avalanche on Haramosh.
For those who are interested in compiling it, the list
of postwar British mountaineers who have achieved major success in the Himalaya
would be predictable: Brown, Bonington, Scott, Rouse Haston,Whillans,Boardman,
Tasker,Fowler,Saunders... The chances of Harry Reginald Antony
Streather being included would be remote. Yet in the 1950s, Tony Streather's
track record was second to none. The first ascent of Tirich Mir; a pivotal role
in the K2 tragedy of 1953; the second ascent of Kangchenjunga (only a day
after Joe Brown and George Band); a terrific epic on Haramosh; the first ascent
of Malubitang East..
I assumed, quite wrongly, that he came from a
long-standing army family, not so: "My father was a builder and before the
war we lived in various parts of North London and Hertfordshire. Towards the
end of the war I went straight to India because someone came to my school to
give a talk about the Indian Army. This set off an accidental train of events
that led to my climbing because we trained for Burma in the jungle.
Then the bomb was dropped and that was that. So the
regiment was sent to the North West Frontier which I found fascinating —
Kipling and the Great Game, that sort of thing." Streather stayed on after the Partition of India and
Pakistan and joined the Chitral Scouts. By 1950 he was the last British
Officer, serving under a Pakistani CO, when a Norwegian Expedition came to
attempt Tirich Mir, 7,700m: "I joined the expedition and was appointed
Transport Officer. I'd literally never tied on a rope before but of course I'd
spent months crossing passes, living in the mountains at reasonable altitudes
— I was very fit indeed. I had no major ambitions initially, I was there to
organize the porters. I think the Norwegians had this idea of 4e British
Colonial exploiting the porters and expected me to go round beating the locals.
They couldn't understand why when they would ask them to do something, they
would take absolutely no notice at all and I would chat to them and say 'now
come on' and it worked."
Speaking fluent Urdu, Streather managed to persuade
the porters ever higher but only by accompanying them himself. Rather to his
surprise — "it really was a pure accident" — he ended up on top. The
ascent of Tirich Mir would have made a far greater impact had not Annapurna
been climbed by the French the same year, the first 8,000m peak to fall and
under epic circumstances: "all those toes being cut off in the train"
as Streather succinctly put it.
But his ascent had not gone unnoticed and on his
return to Britain he was first invited to join the Alpine Club ("I thought
it was some sort of Social Club"), and then selected for trials in
Switzerland for the Everest team in 1953.
Despite being by far the best acclimatized and in the
view of the expedition doctor, Michael Ward: "he should really have been a
member of our Everest team." his lack of Alpine climbing and technical
experience counted against him and he was rejected. It is one of the more
delicious ironies in the annals of Himalayan climbing that at the same time as
the letter giving the bad news arrived, so did another from Dr Charles Houston
inviting him to join the 1953 American K2 Expedition. He had been turned down
for the South Col route of Everest while simultaneously being included in the team
to attempt the far harder and steeper mixed ground of the Abruzzi Spur.
The expedition still remains a highpoint of Himalayan
expeditioning despite its tragic outcome when Art Gilkey was stricken with
phlebitis in a prolonged storm high on the mountain just below the infamous
Shoulder of K2. With a unity of spirit and purpose, an heroic attempt was made to rescue Gilkey, an attempt that ended
with a multiple fall and, soon afterwards, the death of Gilkey who was swept
away in an avalanche. Streather, who had integrated well with the Americans,
has no illusions about the futility of the task they set themselves but
thinks it was out of the question not to do their utmost to save Art's life.
Though direct comparisons are unfair and the circumstances similar but not
exactly the same, Streather remains unimpressed by some of the actions during
the 1986 tragedy on the Shoulder of K2 when five out of seven climbers from
three separate expeditions died, including All Rouse and Julie Tullis, in a
similarly prolonged storm: "We were extremely close, working together as a
team, and here we are 40 years later, still alive and having done all sorts of
things since. They (referring to 1986) were a hotchpotch of individuals some
of them you might say prima donnas, thinking only of getting to the top at all
costs. We were trapped up there for 10 days and it must have been very close to
where Julie and Alan both died."
Despite the emotional trauma of K2, Tony Streather had
no qualms two years later when he was invited out of the blue by Charles Evans
to go to Kangchenjunga: "Charles was a terrific leader in a very quiet
sort of way and, like K2, we all became great chums and a close team.) was
going better higher than almost anybody, though of course I lacked the technical
skill of Joe. I often tried not to use oxygen because I found the extra weight
of carrying the stuff offset any good it was doing me. I was selected for the
second summit bid with Norman Hardie after Joe Brown and George Band. We went
to the top camp and as it was getting dark they returned very tired. They
explained that at the very last there was this bit of climbing up a chimney.
Up until then Joe had found the whole thing a bore, plodding about in the snow,
but now he used a sling and hand jams. Joe said 'have a go but you probably
won't get up the final bit' because he knew that neither of us were great
rock-climbers.
Tony at K2 base camp in 1953
Well, off we went, and we had a drama on the way up.
Norman who was leading had the misfortune of seeing one of his oxygen cylinders
slip out of the carrying frame. I gave him one of mine and followed using the
remaining one very sparingly, about a litre a minute. Anyway we got to the
famous place that Joe talked about, still had crampons on, didn't like the look
of it so just went round a bit and there was a nice little snow gully going
straight to the top. It was a lovely, very clear day and we hung around just
below the summit for some time. (The team had undertaken not to tread the
summit snows out of respect for local beliefs who believed that the summit of
Kangchenjunga was the home of the mountain gods.) On the way down the little
oxygen I had ran out. Coming down was a very tedious business."
The first ascent of Kangchenjunga by a long and
complex route that had only been briefly recced was a major achievement though,
perhaps naturally, unlike the first ascent of Everest two years previously it
remained a low key affair. None of the expedition members became public
figures except Joe Brown, for very different reasons.It was whilst lecturing about K2 at Oxford University
that Tony Streather became involved in what would prove to be one of the most
harrowing epics of all time. Had it happened today in a far more media
conscious world it would have rivalled both the K2 dramas in 1986 and the
self-rescue epic of Joe Simpson on Siula Grande.
In 1957 Streather was persuaded to lead a small team
from Oxford to reconnoitre the unclimbed Haramosh, a complex 7,400m peak
overlooking Gilgit. The University Club desperately needed someone of Tony
Streather's standing to give the expedition the clout to justify a Mount
Everest Foundation Grant, then, as now,- seen as a considerable boost to
expedition finances. At the time Streather was an instructor at Sandhurst and
working for a Staff College exam. He was also newly married with a young child.
It was, he said: "absolute nonsense from my military career point of view
to go" but Bernard Jillott, the organizer and driving force behind the
expedition, persuaded him.
What happened on Haramosh is the subject of one of the
great climbing books The Lost Blue Mountain which though written by Ralph
Barker, a non-climber, gives a vivid, accurate and perceptive picture of the
complete series of 'knock-on' events leading to the final tragedy. What follows
here is, of necessity, largely simplified. After several weeks on the mountain, making slow
progress in indifferent weather, the small team reached a vantage point where
the whole of the final pyramid with still 100m of height to be gained, was laid out before them. There was no
realistic chance of reaching the top but the prime aim of the expedition, to
reconnoitre a feasible route, had been achieved. Just along the ridge stood a
minor summit which they named `The Cardinal's Hat'. Jillott wanted to climb it
as a consolation prize. Streather, one suspects not wholeheartedly, agreed that
Jillott and John Emery should go for it Streather was worried about cornice
danger and warned them to keep well back from the break line. But it was the slopes
that Jillott and Emery were climbing that suddenly avalanched. Streather and
Rae Culbert watched in horror and incomprehension as the two figures jerked
about like puppets before being swept past them, apparently to oblivion.
As the cloud of snow settled, Streather peered down
into a snow basin over 300m below. To his relief and amazement he saw a figure
moving, apparently uninjured. Then the other appeared. Both climbers had
survived the avalanche but both had lost their ice-axes and worse still Emery
had dislocated his hip and lost both his pairs of gloves. The fall had taken
them clean over some ice cliffs and, without axes, it looked impossible to
climb back up to the ridge. By a stroke of good fortune Emery involuntarily managed
to get his hip relocated and the two tried to traverse across to a point where
they could avoid the ice cliffs. But without axes they both slipped and
narrowly avoided falling into a crevasse. Late in the day they faced up to a
cold bivouac. In the middle of the night they saw a bright light above them and
decided to try again to climb up but almost immediately Emery fell over a small
ice cliff and the two resigned themselves to spending the rest of the night in
the basin.
On the ridge above, Streather and Culbert had already
tried to alleviate their plight. They had deliberately dropped a rucksack
containing spare gloves, a bottle of water and some sweets and chocolate, but
to their horror the 'sack veered off and disappeared down a crevasse. They
decided to descend to their camp (Camp IV) and organize a proper rescue.
Before midnight they returned to the avalanche site
and helping each other carefully they started down. By dawn they were above the
ice cliffs that they hadn't been aware of in the dark and had to start cutting
steps along the top slopes to try and circumvent them. It took hours. Below,
the tired and apathetic Jillott and Emery watched as their rescuers inched
their way towards them. It took the whole day before all four were reunited.
One of two Thermos flasks of soup had broken, the other barely started to
revive the two. Darkness and the second night out approached. Streather roped
everyone together and hoped that even without axes Jillott and Emery would be
able to climb the line of steps.
Somehow Culbert had lost a crampon on the descent and
after a good start he slipped and pulled the other three off. All four slid in
a tangled mass back into the basin. Streather losing his axe in the process.
He borrowed Culbert's and they started again. This time they madesteady
progress and had nearly reached a ledge that he and Culbert had stamped out
earlier in the day. Then far below, Jillott, exhausted fell asleep and pulled
off the other three and down 80m back into the snow basin again. During the
fall Streather lost the remaining ice-axe.
The four spent a miserable night in a crevasse,
Culbert already troubled by a frostbitten foot, Emery's hands giving trouble
and Jillott beginning to ramble incoherently. Streather seemed to be the only
one relatively unaffected. He knew all too clearly that the next attempt to
escape had to succeed.
But now they had no ice-axes and in the circumstances he
decided that the rope was more of a hindrance than a help. Just short of the
stamped out platform they had a major stroke of luck and found an ice-axe sticking
out of the snow. Slowly, painfully slowly, Streather cleared and enlarged the
step and the others followed. But Rae Culbert was desperately handicapped by
the loss of his crampon and called for a rope to help him over a particularly
awkward section. Streather dropped him one and made an ice-axe belay. But when
Culbert slipped the strain was too great and Streather was catapulted down the
slope. Yet again they both ended up in the snow basin.
With dreadful irony their desperate situation was now
reversed. High above, Jillott and Emerson were on their way to escape while
their rescuers faced yet another grim night in the open. Above them, Jillott
and Emery finally managed to extricate themselves and emerged on to the ridge
where Emery promptly fell through the cornice on the other side. Mercifully he
only fell 10m and though his hip jarred out again once more he managed to get
it back. Jillott went ahead now obsessed with the need to get back to Camp IV
and strengthen themselves with food and drink so that they could return and
help Streather and Culbert.
Emery followed him slowly down into the darkness.
Surely now their troubles would ease. But suddenly he found himself falling
again, this time into a crevasse, and knocked himself out. When he awoke it was
night and dragging himself back to consciousness he managed to find a way out.
Then he fell asleep again. When he'awoke it was about midday. Emery followed
Jillott's track, more dead than alive, until just above Camp IV they
disappeared over the edge of a colossal drop. Uncomprehending, Emery peered
over. There was no doubt about it. Bernard Jillott had walked over the edge to
his death. Shocked and exhausted Emery regained Camp IV at last after three
days, lit a Primus stove and made himself a drink. He was terribly frostbitten
and later lost all his fingers.
Meanwhile back in the snow basin Culbert and Streather
had survived the night. Culbert though was nearing total collapse. In the end
he fell off twice more, but by now he was unroped and Streather knew his only
hope was to get out on his own and alert the others. With his strength ebbing
Streather managed at last to regain the Ridge and by now frostbitten and exhausted
he descended to Camp IV where he found Emery who broke the news of Jillott's
death to him. They knew in their hearts that by now there was no way they could
possibly rescue Culbert, who would be most unlikely to survive the night, and
next day with heavy hearts and appalling injuries they managed to get off the
mountain.
Joe Brown-with his head in the clouds- and Tony Streather at a Community Action Nepal Kangchenjunga anniversary gathering. Photo CAN
Based on an interview conducted by the author in the
mid nineties and published in High-July 96.
Jim Curran
