Bonington: Everest Expeditions

With Sherpas speed climbing Everest in around 12 hours from base camp, commercial expeditions placing clients on the summit for £40,000 apiece and the whole bizarre circus that goes with the highest mountain on earth, it's not surprising that Edmund Hillary has been quoted as saying that the climb has become 'a guided tour'.

So it's quite refreshing to see the publication of Chris Bonington's 'Everest Expeditions' which harks back to the day when some of the last great challenges of mountaineering were on the world's highest mountain.

The meaty hardback book - priced at £25.00 and published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson - is actually a single-volume reprint of Bonington's three great Everest Expedition books. Books that recall a time when you had to be a 'proper mountaineer' to get on the mountain.

Three Books In One

The first of the three is 'Everest South West Face' the story of Bonington's first crack at the imposing, erm, SW face of Everest in 1972. Filled with characters like Hamis MacInnes, the enigmatic Dougal Haston and Doug Scott, the expedition ended in failure when the winds and cold of the Himalayan autumn became too much for the team.

In 'Everest The Hard Way', the second book, Bonington tells the story of his successful return to the face in 1975, when a team composed of many of the originals augmented by additional climbers and the legendary MacInnes Box mountain tent. With the experience gained in 1972, Bonington's team cracked the barrier of the rock band that stood between them and the summit and put four men on top of the mountain.

Although Bonington himself didn't summit, he uses the diaries and recollections of other climbers, particularly Haston and Scott - who bivvied high on the mountain after summiting and survived to tell the tale - to great effect.

Finally, in 'Everest: The Unclimbed Ridge', along with Charles Clarke, he recounts the events of the 1982 expedition from the Tibetan side which aimed to tackle the North East Ridge, another 'last great mountaineering problem'. It's a book trimmed with grey clouds of sadness because most readers will know from the outset that the climb culminated in the disappearance of two of Britain's most brilliant young climbers, Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman, high on the ridge.

Should You Buy It?

We've said before that Bonington's writing is workmanlike rather than brilliant, but it's still immensely readable and the events he describes are a huge part part of the history of British Himalayan mountaineering. Sometimes, and we're not sure why, you can almost taste the snow in your nostrils and feel the Himalayan sun pounding down on the glaciers. And the events themselves have an inherent drama.

Last but not least, Bonington's photos are always worth looking at. A triple-decked slice of Everest history from the days when the sandwiches were freshly made rather than pre-packed by guides...