Bonington at 90

Ask the man in the street to name a British mountaineer, and the response would, in all probability, be our patron, Chris Bonington, who today, 6 August 2024, celebrates his 90th birthday. As a climber and expedition leader, he was at the forefront of mountaineering for 40 years, ranging across the Alps, Patagonia, Himalaya, and China. He served as president of The Alpine Club and the British Mountaineering Council, and in recognition of his achievements, he has received a knighthood. However, his mountaineering career began inauspiciously, narrowly avoiding disaster.

In 1951, aged 16, he and a school-fellow, inadequately clothed and equipped - Bonington had a pair of Army surplus boots, his companion only his school shoes, and both wore their school mackintoshes - attempted to climb Snowdon in the depths of winter and were avalanched on the slopes of Crib Goch. Luckily, neither was injured, and they retreated safely. His friend returned to London the next day, never to visit the hills again, but for Bonington, it had been ‘the most exciting and enjoyable day I had ever had’. A few months later, he spent a day climbing on the sandstone outcrop of Harrison’s Rocks in Kent and revelled in grappling with the steep, strenuous, and fingery routes: ‘I found it stimulating. I knew that I had found a pursuit that I loved, that my body and my temperament seemed designed for it, and that I was happy... I was conscious only of feelings of confidence and intense enjoyment’. He had been hooked, but how could he satisfy this newfound passion?

Whilst still at school, weekends and holidays involved hitch-hiking, living frugally, and tying on to the rope with anyone who offered. In 1953, he was called up for National Service, first in the RAF, followed by a transfer to the Army, Sandhurst, and a regular commission in the Royal Tank Regiment. During this period, he became an accomplished rock-climber, visited the Alps, where he made a number of significant first British ascents and a hard new route on Mont Blanc, the Central Pillar of Frêney, and went to the Himalaya on a joint services expedition, reaching the summit of Annapurna II, at 7,937m, a few metres shy of the totemic 8,000m mark. He also established important climbing partnerships with Hamish MacInnes and Don Whillans. However, it was his first British ascent with Ian Clough of the North Face of the Eiger that provided the springboard for a career as a professional mountaineer, writing, lecturing, and performing for the media. His new way of life inevitably proved precarious but was boosted by his coverage for the Weekend Telegraph of the controversial winter ascent in 1968 of the new Direct Route on the Eiger, providing him with an introduction to photojournalism. Subsequent assignments involved locating erupting volcanoes in South America, visiting Eskimos on Baffin Island, trekking in Hunza, Pakistan, and rafting down the Blue Nile, but Bonington was hankering to do some serious mountaineering.

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The ascent of the South Face of Annapurna in May 1970 by Dougal Haston and Don Whillans under Bonington’s leadership proved a pivotal moment in 20th-century mountaineering. Conceived with Nick Estcourt and Martin Boysen on viewing a slide projected on to the wall of Bonington’s living room, it required climbing of considerable difficulty at altitude and was the culmination of a meticulously organised and brilliantly executed operation. Bonington had found his métier: ‘I discovered something I was good at. There was a creative pleasure in it; it was like the games of strategy I’d played as a boy, but with a vast physical dimension and a high degree of risk’. Next, he turned his attention to solving the ‘last great problem’, the South West Face of Everest, applying his skill of attracting publicity and sponsorship and talent as an organiser. For his successful 1975 expedition, he induced Barclays Bank to underwrite the costs to the tune of £100,000 and used a computer to plan the logistics on the mountain. The ascent involved more than a dozen climbers using siege tactics supported by an army of Sherpas, porters, and hangers-on and represented the high-water mark of this style of expedition. As Pete Boardman, a member of the expedition, observed: ‘For a mountaineer, surely a Bonington Everest expedition is one of the last great Imperial experiences life can offer’.

Major but much leaner expeditions followed: to The Ogre in 1977, K2 in 1978, Kongur in 1981, and the North East Ridge of Everest in 1982. In 1985, he joined a Norwegian expedition to Everest, reaching the summit via the South East Ridge in the company of Pertemba Sherpa, who had been his sirdar on the South West Face expedition and for 10 days held the record for being the oldest climber to reach the top of Everest before being displaced by a 55-year-old American. But Bonington’s Himalayan days were not over. After the Kongur expedition, he had written to his wife, Wendy: ‘The old war-horse has stamina even if the joints are creaking... I do love the mountains, love feeling part of them, walking through them, climbing them, looking at them’. In the succeeding years, he mounted more than a dozen expeditions, his last being to the Eastern Karakoram in 2001.

Bonington continued to rock-climb into his late 70s. In his final volume of autobiography, he wrote: ‘I couldn’t have anticipated I would experience the greatest pleasure and purest enjoyment of my climbing life in the Anti Atlas of Morocco. Throughout my late 60s and deep into my 70s, I made almost annual trips, exploring, prospecting for new routes, climbing for the sheer fun of it in great company and staying in a comfortable hotel – what more could one ask?'

A far cry from that wintry day on Snowdon but a passion of 60 years satiated.