The Bonington Tapes
Sir Chris Bonington interviewed by Simon Carter
In February 2007 Sir Chris Bonington visited Australia and got out for a bit of a climb with Bluies local Simon Carter. Although Simon was unsuccessful in sand-bagging Chris on the steep walls of Mount Boyce, he did manage to get some insight into the extraordinary life of this legendary British Mountaineer.
SC: This is one of several trips out to Australia, you seem to come out every few years, why's that?
CB: Well it’s now on an annual basis because our son Joe met an
Australian in London, fell in love, got married in London. She loved
London but … when they came back to Australia on holiday Joe
persuaded her to move over and stay here. That was about six or seven
years ago, so we’ve been coming here regularly every since — to
see them and now to see our two little grand-daughters as well.
SC: So you get out and do a bit of climbing while you’re here?
CB: I try to get out climbing wherever I go.
SC: So Chris, how old are you now if you don’t mind me asking?
CB: Seventy-two years young!
SC: Cool. So how do you find it at seventy-two? Still climbing; are you keeping up with it?
CB: Well, yeah, I mean your standards go down, there’s no shadow of a doubt about that, but I’m having a big push this year. I suppose I’ve never been a genius rock climber. I’ve been at the height of my powers in my later twenties / early thirties; I was climbing at what was the top standard at that time.
SC: When was that?
CB: So that was back in the late 1950s and '60s! In those days I was doing the odd new route, not many, but I was doing second ascents of Joe Brown routes. And I kept that standard through to about E3 6a at an absolute push.
SC: 6a English, okay wow, that’s good. [approx Australian grade 23]
CB: Ah but I’ve never gone higher than that. I kept that up actually into my fifties and I did some of my best climbing through my fifties. I remember chatting to Joe Brown, the great British climber, and Joe’s a good friend and he is about five years older than I am, and Joe telling me when I was fifty-nine and so he was sixty-four and he said, "it’s down-hill from the age of sixty", and he was right, it is. You just loose muscle power, you tend to put on weight, and I found my standard as a rock climber and also in mountaineering, particularly high altitude mountaineering, was going down.
SC: Well there’s not many sixty-year-old high-altitude mountaineers, are there?
CB: Well I don’t know, I try… I climbed Everest when I was fifty.
SC: Oh really!
CB: And ten years later we had a Norwegian expedition, to an unclimbed peak called Drangnag-Ri which was a 6800m beautiful, steep peak, relatively close to Everest. An interesting technical climb and I found there I lead the last bit of it and I was going really strongly. So I was going well at sixty, but once again, as I got into the sixties I found my high altitude climbing was going down. I still go to the Himalayas every year if I can. This year we are going to try a 6000m peak. There’s three guys who I’ve climbed with for years but they’re all between 15 and 25 years younger than I am.
SC: Just tell me a little but more about your performance in rock climbing through the sixties. So now you're feeling it’s kind of declining a bit, are you doing anything to counter that?
CB: I’ve decided I’ve got to. Joe, my son in-fact … when
he came to Australia he had a complete lifestyle change and became a
personal trainer. 
SC: So you’ve got him training you?
CB: So he’s taken me in hand. I’m on a routine while we’re in Sydney, of mountain biking one day - because I’ve got a really dodgy ankle which makes running almost impossible - so I go biking one day and have a session in the gym. We’ve got a gym in our apartment block.
SC: Working out on the campus board or pump some weights?
CB: Pumping weights.
SC: Cool. So you’re pumping weights at seventy-two and getting back into it…
CB: Yes I’m trying to, and when I get home … to England, I’m going to keep that routine up. I really want to get back, I’ve sunk to kind of about VS leading and I want to get back up to kind of English E1.
SC: Chris, I just want to ask you a little bit about what it’s like being knighted by the Queen. When did you get knighted?
CB: I got knighted in 1996.
SC: That was for services to mountaineering?
CB: Basically yeah, that was the official citation and I suppose it was because, quite apart from the climbing expedition leading, I’d also got involved a lot in kind of mountaineering politics if you like.
SC: What’s the actual process of getting knighted like?
CB: Oh the process, quite intimidating. It’s at Buckingham Palace, and in fact the Queen and Prince Charles share the job and it was Prince Charles’ day.
SC: Oh. How was the whole thing with the sword?
CB: Thank God I wasn’t the first one, there was a British general in front of me so I could actually watch what he did and we’d been rehearsed through it, but you go forward and there’s a kind of little foot stool and you kneel and Prince Charles has a grand looking sword he taps you on both shoulders.
SC: Were you worried about him slipping? <laughs>
CB: <laughs> Cuts your head off … then you stand up, you have a kind of an emblem as well that he puts around your neck, shake hands and said a few words about climbing and then off one goes…
SC: Did you ask him out for a climb afterwards?
CB: I didn’t get around to it...
SC: Oh bummer! So has being knighted, has that changed your life particularly?
CB: Not really, no. It can be an advantage and a disadvantage. I think it's an advantage, it gives you a bit more muscle when you're trying to, you know — whether it's for the British Mountaineering Council or some kind of organization or charity — to actually get yourself heard, and it means if you telephone a minister you can usually get through to them. So you can use it for that. I think it’s been probably good; I mean I’m still working, I haven’t retired and I do a lot of sort of corporate speaking and I think it … helps me getting jobs…
SC: So just a bit more about your work, you’re an executive at Berghaus…
CB: I’m a non-executive chairman of Berghaus, so I’ve got an advisory roll and I sit in on their meetings. I mean it’s a smashing company, I’ve been involved for, well for 24 years now.
SC: And you're still involved in the British Mountaineering Council where you used to be President?
CB: I’m involved there. I was chairman of the Mountain Heritage
Trust but now I’m just a trustee… 
SC: And you’re a chancellor of a university…
CB: Chancellor of University of Lancaster, which is once again purely ceremonial. It’s a lovely roll, I really enjoy it.
SC: What does that mean? Going to lots of lovely dinners and…
CB: No not really, not too many. The hardest bit of thework is handing out several hundred degrees.
SC: Uh, okay.
CB: But you know, when you think of it, that is one of the most important days in that young woman or young man's life, when they come up and receive … You know it's really rewarding to do that. It’s in the height of summer and I have this incredibly ornate robe and it weighs a tonne, and the air-conditioning in the big hall doesn’t work so you’re just sweating like a pig when you stand up and shake everyone by the hand. But you know, also I get involved in the things I’m interested in, I go out for a day with the university climbing club, and a day's walking with the university's hiking club, got involved with the debating society…
SC: And you’ve got other jobs you're involved in?
CB: There’s Berghaus, and there’s corporate speaking, those two things really.
SC: Yeah but you do more than that.
CB: Well, but some of them don’t pay; the university doesn’t pay, that’s an honourary job, and obviously the mountaineering council, then I’m the president of LEPRA, the Leprosy charity. I’m just turning down, I have been chairman of Outward Bound's risk management committee…
SC: You sound unbelievably busy to me. Not only is your work incredibly hectic, but you’re still getting away. Any good trips this year?
CB: I’ve done pretty well this year. In January I had a quick ski holiday with my son Rupert, who’s in the ski business. February of course is Australia. A week back home then a week climbing in Morocco Tafraout which is in the Altar Atlas and is wonderful quartzite climbing. We’re just doing new routes. It’s a little band of old codgers: Joe Brown, Les Brown, Derek Walker and a whole group of people. Some of them have been going for twelve years. I’m a comparative newcomer, I’ve been going for about six years now.
SC: It’s a crag?
CB: It’s a huge mountain massif. If you think there’s a lot of rock in the Blue Mountains, there’s even more around Tafraout, and they go from single-pitch climbs to thousand-footers. So I’ll be there for a week, then off to northern Spain - northern Costa Brava near Montserrat. My wife is a fanatical golfer … and I’ve gotten to know local climbers so I go climbing while she plays golf; so that’s April. May I’ve got a quick trip with the university to Malaysia. June going off climbing in Lahoul - we’re trying to climb a 6000m peak, which is unclimbed, unnamed, in the back of beyond. Then August I’m trying to finish abook on leadership into September, when I’ve probably got a business trip with Berghaus.ThenOctober I’ve got two weeks kind of lecturing in the United States but I’ve only got four lectures…
SC: Your year is fully booked out already!
CB: It’s fully booked out, yeah.
SC: Has it always been like that?
CB: Yeah, yeah it's always been like that and I like it, I think it keeps you kind of going, basically.
SC: So how did that all come about — being incredibly busy for so long? Is that just because of your involvement in Everest in the early days?
CB: I think it’s built up in actual fact … I’d started off in the army. Went to Sandhurst, four years' commissioned service, then I got out. I didn’t imagine I could make a living around climbing, so I got into Unilever (big toiletries and consumer goods company) as a management trainee and I lasted about six months with them. I asked to go on an expedition and they wouldn’t let me so I left. And at that stage I’d just got married and I thought I’d go on the expedition and when I got back I thought I’ll try to get into university, get a degree, become a teacher so I would at least get long holidays.
SC: What year are we talking now?
CB: This is 1962. So I left at the beginning of the summer so that I
could spend the whole summer climbing before going on the expedition,
and I made the first British ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger and
there was a lot of excitement around it because Don Whillans and I had
tried it first, we’d rescued a couple of guys off this mountain
and pulled back but that got into the news. Then when I climbed it, sadly
there’d been a real race by British climbers to be the first Brit
up it, and so there was a lot of media interest. So I was asked to write
a book and I was asked to lecture, so I never got round to going to University… I
never wanted to be a mountain guide; I just haven’t the patience
and I’m too selfish, I like climbing for my own fun. So I realised
I had to make a living as a writer and a lecturer and that’s what
I’ve done ever since; writer, lecturer, broadcaster, getting involved
in the entire communication business around climbing and I think popularising
climbing. Back in the sixties when I started doing this I got quite a
lot of stick from purist climbers… 
SC: They didn’t want it publicised or…?
CB: Well yeah, they don’t want it publicised and “you’re being too commercial etc”. In fact there were a lot of shards shot at me from America, from people like Yvon Chouinard and Galen and everyone…
SC: <whoop> Galen Rowell?
CB: Well exactly. The big laugh is of course a few years later they are all doing it, making a hell of a site more money than I had ever done.
SC: Climbing has changed so much, you must have seen some phenomenal changes.
CB: Oh it has, I’ve seen the changes, from when I started climbing in 1951 in England there were no climbing schools, there was one climbing magazine of the mountaineering association, there were about four climbing shops in total and that was it. And today in Keswick -- the small town in the middle of the Lake District where I live -- there must be at least twenty climbing shops!
SC: The great changes in climbing over the years, do you think it’s a good thing?
CB: I think it’s just a natural development. If you think of it, when I started climbing in 1951, I had a hemp rope, clinker-nailed boots… and you had two or three slings around your neck, and your runners were basically either spike belays or you could find a stone jammed in a crack. It was a long time before I … learnt it from Joe Brown, you know, you carry a pocket full of pebbles and jam the pebbles in… And it was only in 1963 was when nuts started arriving and they were literally nuts; Whitworth nuts.
SC: You’ve seen it all.
CB: So I’ve seen it all. So you started in that very pure trad climbing tradition — and I’m very glad that in England trad climbing is still very very strong. Then of course, you saw aid climbing coming in, in the 1950s. Then the jump forward in climbing first by Joe Brown and Don Whillans and the second jump through was really Pete Livesey in the 1970s. I think Pete Livesey was one of the first climbers to have an athletic approach to climbing, training for climbing and everything else. I think he is one of the major figures, certainly in English climbing and I would say almost in world climbing, to help that part of the development.
SC: We are talking technical rock climbing here.
CB: Yeah. And then now you’ve got the lot, you’ve got bouldering you’ve got…
SC: All these different sub-sports.
CB: They’re all sub-sports and they’re all completely worthwhile in their own right. The interesting thing, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, in Britain trad pitched-climbing is losing in popularity, you really see it, the crags are getting overgrown…. The young climbers are bouldering and then there’s a load of people who come through it from the climbing walls but they are going straight onto sport climbing, and from England it’s so easy and cheap now to fly down to Spain and France…
SC: Yeah yeah, go sport climbing.
CB: And that’s what they’re doing. So there’s all these different things going on and the important thing is for the various sub-groups to really come to agreements amongst themselves. So you get areas which are traditional trad climbing areas, so you don’t put any bolts there, and there are other areas which are suited to sport climbing and they’re good sport climbing areas.
SC: Of course in England that’s much more of an issue. You’ve got so many different users at the crag, these sort of things really need to be worked out.
CB: You’ve got more people and less crag space.
SC: And hence things like the British Mountaineering Council and that begin evolving. We don’t have anything like that in Australia.
CB: Well yes, the British Mountaineering Council came into existence I think it was about 1947, when some people from the Alpine Club and the Climbers' Club saw the need of having some kind of representative body who could actually talk to government, could actually talk to land owners, and could actually represent the needs of climbers, and that’s built up steadily. It’s democratic … so you have got a genuinely representative body as opposed to a governing body, which of course sports have all too often.
SC: Cool. I just wanna ask you about today! How did you enjoy the climbing? We did two routes at Mount Boyce [Blue Mountains], one was a rap-in climb-out thing called Baby Carrots; what did you think of that?
CB: Ohh it was brilliant, Baby Carrots is just lovely! It’s technically kind of easy climbing, by English standards I would have thought it was about Severe and it was a beauty! And then the second route we did which was 14 and I would say that was Very Severe — probably not Hard VS, just good VS.
SC: I was a bit worried about you there when you pulled through the crux and sort of went for it on Set, Piece, Battle.
SC/CB: <laughs>
CB: I was pumping a bit! The last time I climbed properly was
in Spain in November. The weather in England’s been so
bloody awful and I don’t like climbing walls, so I haven’t
been to the climbing wall.
SC: <snickers> Why don’t you like climbing gyms?
CB: Ohh, I’ve developed a bit of a thing against them. I think I’ve got to start climbing on them and I think the one thing you’ve got to be really careful of in climbing walls is, as you get older, its too easy to pull tendons and stress tendons.
SC: Overdo it?
CB: But you know that’s just a matter of being sensible and doing easier routes with big holds. Anyway so I … think I climbed it reasonably well.
SC: Oh yeah, for sure.
CB: But I thoroughly enjoyed it.
SC: I don’t think you’ve lost any of your boldness from the 1950s or the '60s.
CB: Well yeah, I even missed out on the odd bolt.
SC: Yeah, you skipped the odd bolt on Baby Carrots which was pretty impressive!
SC: So Chris, now that you’re in your early seventies, and you were saying earlier you have to train a bit to get your rock climbing standards back up. It seems great to me to see someone going out and enjoying climbing still in their seventies How does that feel as a lifetime challenge — to be climbing in your seventies at a reasonable standard? Has that always been an ambition of yours?
CB: Well, no, I suppose. My ambitions have changed. I mean, say 20 years ago, 25 years ago, my ambition would be the next big trip, whether it was to get up Everest, or go and do an unclimbed peak somewhere in Tibet or wherever it happened to be. I’ve never had a lifelong ambition to climb Everest; I think I needed to climb it, and I definitely needed to get that out of my system …
SC: Because you wanted to do it, or because you felt you had to do it?
CB: Both. Both, definitely. I think I put so much time in and around it and so it was that … and a bit of ego in it as well…
SC: Because you were involved in several expedition before you actually got a crack at it?
CB: It was four expeditions, but the first three were all … I mean what I’ve always loved doing is first ascents and new routes, exploratory climbing. But in fact when I finally climbed Everest with the Norwegian expedition by the South Col in 1985, it was the only climb I’ve done in the greater ranges of the world that wasn’t a new route.
SC: Wow, okay.
CB: And everything else has always been new. And what I do now, when I’ve been out to the Himalayas in the last seven or eight years, they’ve been actually an extended trek but with a small unclimbed peak at the end of it. I definitely need that unclimbed peak; I wouldn’t be content with just a trek. People often ask me “what is your big ambition now?”; well I haven’t got any big ambitions, what I have got is the ambition to be able to go on climbing and go on enjoying climbing in ten years time. And I’ve come to the realisation that to actually do that I’m going to have to look after my body better and basically I’m going to need to do more training, certainly get my weight down, be more careful about what I eat, cut down the amount I drink <laughs>, and really it’s worth looking after yourself to make sure you don’t just want to live a long time — you actually want to have quality of life.
SC: So there’s no reason you can’t be doing that in your
eighties? 
CB: No, I don’t see any reason whatsoever.
SC: I reckon that’s great, that’s an awesome thing to do. I was pretty happy with how I was doing at forty, now I’m going to have to adjust my own ambitions a little bit … So back to those earlier Everest trips, were you on the actual climbing team or were you more in a leadership role?
CB: Well no, it was a combination of the two. On the south west face of Everest back in 1972, when we failed, and then 1975 when we succeeded, I was leader of the expedition, but I was also an active climber within the expedition. But if you are leading a large complex expedition and it’s a siege-style expedition, I think you’ve almost got to put out of your mind going to the top. Your aim is to make them … I originally put myself into the third summit bid…
SC: Which attempt was this?
CB: This was in 1975. That was the south west face. We attempted in 1972, attempted again and then climbed it in 1975.
SC: That was “Everest the Hard Way”?
CB: Yes, and then in 1982 with Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker and Dick Renshaw we attempted, a tiny expedition, to climb the North-East ridge of Everest.
SC: And that was when they…
CB: That was when tragically Pete and Joe lost their lives. Then finally I climbed it just as a member of the Norwegian Everest expedition in 1985.
SC: You must get this question a lot about Everest: what do you feel about the mountain these days – with what’s going on?
CB: I think it’s a natural progression. If you look at the history of practically most mountains, I mean take something say, like Mont Blanc, it starts off being a huge challenge. When Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1787 or whatever, it seemed almost impossible, and there was a question whether people could even live that high, and then fairly quickly after it had been climbed people were guiding people up Mont Blanc and now you get a hundred people being taken up every day. It’s almost inevitable that the same thing is going to happen on the easier Himalayan peaks.
SC: Yep.
CB: And that’s what’s happening. I’m really glad … when we climbed Everest in 1985, I think that was the last year the Nepalese only allowed one expedition on the mountain at a time.
SC: That would have been cool.
CB: So we had it to ourselves. But of course once they flung it open — and basically they thought it was a good revenue earner — then of course the commercial expedition came in, in the 1990s. There are various, I think, ethical and organisational problems having twenty or thirty expeditions, most of them commercial, on the same route at the same time — and there’s this problem of responsibility for people who are actually in trouble. I believe the overall rule is one of humanity and life, which is actually if you see someone in trouble, anywhere, you go and help them.
SC: Are you referring specifically to the controversial David Sharpe incident (where reportedly at least 30 climbers on summit bids walked past the troubled dying climber, without providing much practical assistance).
CB: Well yeah, but there’s been several cases where in fact climbers have gone past. I can understand how it happens, but I don’t think it’s justified. The reason how it happens is that your actual punters, your clients, firstly most of them are out of their depth, secondly they think, “well it’s the responsibility of that other expedition to look after these people”, and also they’re inexperienced and they don’t know what to do, and as far as the guides go or the Sherpas, they feel responsible for their own clients and to keep them safe and get them up the mountain and everything else.
SC: Yeah.
CB: And so this represents a huge problem. I personally think that the overall moral responsibility is still, if you see someone in trouble, well, it doesn’t matter if he’s not in your team, you’ve got to go and help him — and to walk past that person because you’re hell bent on getting to the summit, I just don’t think it’s justifiable.
SC: So did you hear what Sir Edmund Hillary had to say about that?
CB: I did indeed, and I think he was absolutely plum right. And Doug Scott who is probably one of our finest adventure mountaineers said exactly the same thing as Sir Edmund Hillary. The one level is, should you go to someone’s help if they are in trouble, and I think the answer is yes, definitely you must. The second difficult decision though, is if that person is in a stage of complete collapse, if you can’t shift him, you can’t carry him, you’ve done your best to get him down, if by staying on with him you’re almost certainly going to die as well, I think at that point it is a choice that the individual makes, and if the individual says “no, I’ve got a wife, I’ve got a family, I’ve got a life, I’ve done everything I can, there is nothing I can do here, I’m sorry mate, we’ll have to leave you”, that’s fair enough.
SC: The amazing thing about that of course is Lincoln Hall, who lives
up here in the Blue Mountains and is well-known in the Australian climbing
scene. A few days after the Sharp incident Lincoln also got into trouble
on Everest. They tried and tried to help him down and they eventually
got to a stage were they had to leave him, thinking he was dead, and
he spent a night out at unbelievably high altitude… 
CB: And survived it!
SC: Incredibly survived.
CB: And there was another group who came and picked him up, wasn’t it, and got him down.
SC: Just shows what can happen when you do what you can.
CB: Oh yeah, yeah. I think if people have done their absolute level best to get someone down and then find they can’t do it, I think you can’t criticise. You know they did their best and you hope they did, which I think is totally different from the person who just walks past because they want to get to the top of the mountain.
SC: Do you think it’s that cold and callous, that they just walk past?
CB: Well I think it’s a complete wrong set of values.
SC: Hmmm. Not cool. And on that interesting note, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for your time!
For more info on Chris’ adventures visit: www.bonington.com
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