69: Everest 50 - 1975 Expedition with Sir Chris Bonington and Paul 'Tut' Braithwaite

The first of an extra special 5 part series, Cathy & Wayne are joined by two members of the 1975 Everest South West Face expedition which saw Doug Scott and Dougal Haston endure the highest bivvy ever survived to become the first two Britons to stand on the summit of the worlds highest mountain.

Expedition leader, Sir Chris Bonington and key member of the climbing team Paul ‘Tut’ Braithwaite describe the responsibility, sense of adventure, logistics, equipment, camaraderie and conditions they encountered climbing the worlds highest mountain via a new route. 

This is a unique and captivating insight into an audacious and record breaking ascent told by the people who were there.

Listen ,learn and if you are able, please consider donating to our chosen charity: Community Action Nepal


The Climbers Shop and Joe Brown Shops | Outdoor Clothing & Equipment UK
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Buy: Everest The Hard Way - the story of the 1975 SW Face Expedition

Buy: More books by Chris Bonington

Buy: Mountain Guru, The Life of Doug Scott by Catherine Moorehead

If you found this interesting then don't forget to download our earlier episodes:

Episode 67: Joe Brown and Kangchenjunga 1955 

Episode 66: Kit Lists - Alpine Climbing with BMG Tom Ripley

Episode 62: Community Action Nepal @KMF24

Episode 41: How To Keep Warm With Doctor Down Matt Fuller

Episode 30: Kit Lists - 8000m Peaks With Jon Gupta

Episode 26: Kit Lists - Expeditions With Andy Cave

Episode 13: Joe Browns and The Climbers Shop Big History

The video of this podcast is available on You Tube

Transcript

Outdoor Gear Chat: Episode 69 Transcript 

Wayne Singleton   0:16
 Welcome to outdoor Gear chat. This is episode 69. I can't get my words out in excitement. This is our Everest 50th Anniversary Series, part one. I'm joined as always by Cathy. Hi, Cathy. How you doing?

Cathy   0:30
 Hi, Wayne. Yeah, it's super exciting. And you may remember, or our listeners may remember way, way, back in episode 13 when we recorded the big history of the Climbers Shop and the Joe Brown shops which I Co own with my husband and I've been a director for the last 20 years. We talked about our link with our Ambleside shop in particular, with Community Action Nepal as a charity.

And that charity was set up by the Mountaineer Doug Scott, and it's 50 years this year since Doug and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to stand on the summit of Everest on the 24th of September 1975, after what was one of the biggest, hardest, shortest and the first expedition to Everest that summited via a face, the southwest face. So, it's a really pivotal expedition of the time and we thought this is a perfect opportunity to celebrate this. So, we're working with one of our suppliers Mountain Equipment, to have a history window installed in our Ambleside shop, which will run throughout August. And we thought as well, we would do this five-part special where we're going to be talking with some incredible people about the equipment and about the evolution of mountaineering as a sport and the history of that sport as well.

So too kick it off. We're starting with a very high bar, I have to say, we're absolutely honored to be joined by two members of that 1975 team, two men who have an incredible amount of climbing experience between them. In fact, I'll probably use up the whole podcast just trying to explain a portion of how much climbing experience they have between them. So Chris Bonington is known as one of UKs most famous climbers and has a climbing career spanning 70 years.

And he was the leader of the 1975 expedition, the largest expedition to leave the UK at the time. So welcome, Chris.

Christian Bonington   2:43
 Lovely to be here.

Cathy   2:45
 And we also have Paul ‘tut’ Braithwaite, who has a mere 60 year climbing career.

 Paul Braithwaite   2:51
 Thank you.

Cathy   2:52
 Tut was integral, along with Nick Escort in cracking the rock band above 8000 meters and fixing ropes for that successful ascent. So welcome Tut.

Paul Braithwaite   3:08
 Thank you very much. I look forward to it.

Wayne Singleton   3:12
 It's only 60 years as well. That's just terrible.

Paul Braithwaite   3:14
 It's probably exaggerated I'm only 29 years

 Paul Braithwaite   3:20
 I was 79 yesterday.

 Wayne Singleton   3:24
 Wow, happy birthday.

 Cathy   3:24
 Oh, happy birthday.

Christian Bonington   3:26
 Happy birthday.

Wayne Singleton   3:27

 Yeah, this is amazing. I'm so excited about this. And when we've got the mountain, he says in inverted commas in the news quite a bit at the moment. It's for all sorts of reasons. It's great to have you two on. And Chris many, many, many moons ago. Too many for both of us to mention I think, I'm fairly sure you spoke at my primary school in Milnthorpe back in, a lot of years ago, so I've got a very distant memory of me as a small child hearing you speak. So, I'm really looking forward to more tales today.

Christian Bonington   4:01
 Well, I think I've spoken in just about every small town, quite a few villages in the whole breadth of the United Kingdom in the last kind of 50 years.

Wayne Singleton   4:07
 You can imagine. And probably outside the UK as well, I imagine.

Christian Bonington   4:17
 Oh yes, yeah.

Cathy   4:20
 So I mean, the 1975 expedition was one of the largest, as I've said, to leave the UK at the time and just to sort of kind of put some context around that for people listening that involved 24 tonnes of equipment, 18 climbers, 4 BBC crew and 1 Sunday Times reporter. 

Even before you got to Nepal and added 38 high altitude porters, 30 ice fall porters and almost 400, I don't want to say regular porters because that demeans their importance because everybody on the expedition was vital. But Chris was there a single point during the planning stage when you first began to understand the magnitude, not just of the climb but the logistics and when was the first time you saw the whole team and the equipment together?

 Christian Bonington   5:21
 Well, I think, you never actually saw everything together at any one moment. I mean, even when you got to the mountain, everything was still scattered in different places, so that they never all came together at all and you were just very aware though of the fact that, well, I was very aware of just how massive this whole thing was. And I think, in those you know nights when you start thinking of things and you start visualising it and I the thing I think that I was most frightened of actually was that I knew there was a risk of losing people, but I just dreaded the fact that I might lose people through a mistake that I made, that I could be personally responsible for somebody's death. And that was something that always frightened me. 

And it only happened once in my climbing life, when I had actually made a mistake. I was on K2 and I thought that a certain slope was perfectly safe and so I said yes, we should go over it. And I remember then even Doug was worried about it. Said I think you should go over it, brother. No, and be alright. And I was in, you know, I wanted to get the whole thing done and through and I'll never forget when I was on the drop back to a camp just below this huge avalanche came rushing down and I went to grab a camera to get a picture of it.

And I think Gareth Goodwin was with me said, for Christ's sake. Do you realise one of our guys could be under that? And that horrible reality hit me and it was Nick Escobar was being trapped. His death. He was on my closest friends. So that those, you know, one of the terrible moments in your own climbing experience.

 Cathy   7:20
  It's a huge responsibility, isn't it?

 Christian Bonington   7:24
 It is, yeah.

 Wayne Singleton   7:25
 And especially when things haven't been done before as well, I guess isn't it? You're literally breaking ground or pathfinding or those sorts of terms.

 Christian Bonington   7:35
 Well, that's the whole reason for doing it, of course. I mean, you know, it's going into the unknown and adventure is about the unknown. And if you if you know all the results, if you know everything.it is no longer an adventure, so adventure is actually going into the unknown and then facing those challenges as you come.

 Wayne Singleton   7:59
 And overcoming that adverse adversity. Whatever it. However, it presents itself, whether it's weather, kit, the matter, the mountain, or so on. It’s how you manage that, how you deal with it I guess. But you have been multiple times in very very remote areas and there's no one there to you know the hidden terms of where we all live I guess there's no mountain rescue that couldn't or that could come and help you at those times was there it was a matter of getting yourself out

 Christian Bonington   8:27
 Oh, I know. So in some ways, I think that was great. I mean, I think today. There's something I think with AI and everything else, it's taken all the uncertainty out of it. One of the problems that they have for the exam system and everything else you can actually with AI, you could anything you want to know. You just ask Alexa and you're told what it is, and I mean that I think is sad in many ways.

 Wayne Singleton   8:59
 Yeah.

 Christian Bonington   8:59
 Whereas when Tutt and I were there then none of that was there and so that you, you had to work it out for yourself. And I think that was that's what made it really worthwhile. And then what do you think about?

 Wayne Singleton   9:13
 That's an interesting, sorry…

 Christian Bonington   9:17
 Tutt, I'm just wondering what do you think about the way things have changed like this?

 Paul Braithwaite   9:18
 Oh well. I mean, you summed it up perfectly. Well, the way it's changed is I was sort of looking back this morning, about it. And it's 50 years since we were there and things have moved on in mountaineering 50 years from when we were there. But when we were there, we were only 25 years on, sorry, 50 years on from when Mallory’s team were exploring the north side. So it's probably just about right really. That's the progress in technology and climbing equipment and communication.

 Christian Bonington   9:37
 I know.
 Yeah, exactly.

 Paul Braithwaite   10:19
 So I am on Facebook, so am bombarded by the sense of Everest: speed records and youngest and I am past the point of trying to judge anything. Everybody has a story, and so from the point of view of a mountaineer, but I am always impressed by people’s achievements and the reason they do them is very personal as long as they are not spoiling it for anybody else it’s a very personal achievement. So I'm very supportive of people's achievements.

I'm really pleased that we were there in that space because.You know, it was more from my point of view for our point of view, it was much more of an adventure. You know, it was much more of an old fashioned feel to it where we had male runners and, you know, didn't expect letters and so on and so forth.

 Yes, the times have changed, I'm a 1930s boy. Really. And when things were slower, I have got keep up with technology now and I just find it totally sucks every little bit of what's left of my brain up. So obviously it's changed. It's changed for the equipment. And I sort of listen to people and watch things and the equipment's improved obviously and people are climbing they're much fitter than I was.

 Generally, the top end of the Mountaineers these days and much fitter and the equipment's lighter and most are specifically trained for an event, you know I should rather suspect a lot more training goes into people attempting altitude peaks than I did, though I did a lot of running, a lot of climbing. So from my generation we trained on the Cragg on the weekends, or you know, we just climbed. I didn't do it apart from running. I didn't do any particular training for, for expeditions, you know, these days, I would think you would.

 Wayne Singleton   11:46
 I was gonna say you weren't sat in a tent for three months acclimatising. In in a warehouse somewhere outside London, which is.

Paul Braithwaite   11:57
 No. I just took acclimatization in my stride. I was always fit, and I was, you know, quite able to technically to get around, to enjoy climbing. But I just took it in my stride and I was listening to Chris, and I've often said this because I was, just a climber in those days, I was just into climbing. 

Fortunately, I was invited on this trip.
 But I sort of you know, if I hadn’t been invited on, it kicked the whole thing off did Chris, He invited me on Everest, a change of life for me. And as I've got older and.
 So back to that. Then I when I went to Everest with Chris’s team and I was, I was just a climber. And afterwards, I began to appreciate Chris's depth of his commitment to this trip. As I started to manage small businesses in London and they were relatively small compared to what Chris was doing on Everest in 75. But the commitments there and the dread of accidents happening with that. And he coped with it very well, I must say, he did cope with that pressure incredibly, he didn't seem to over spill outside his own sort of tent, if you like. So we didn't get much or we didn't, I didn’t feel any pressure from Chris at all. He got a little bit ratty I up on the, outed on the rock band at one time when I was a bit slow in coiling our rope.

 Christian Bonington   13:20
 Patients was never a virtue with me, I'm afraid.

 Paul Braithwaite   13:24
 It didn't make any difference whatsoever. I couldn't have coiled it any quicker anyway, so but yes, I sort of. I admire people who are doing things in different ways and keeping up with the modern trends. I'm not sure where it's all going to go.

 It's not any of my business anymore. But you cannot ignore it. It's good. And everybody must have joy at some point for different reasons. You know, there are times when I would have liked to have a line of steps to a summit. It would have been wonderful as it is now. You know, quietly, we used to look for them to be got honest with it. We always oh, God, there's some steps in, you know, but.

 Wayne Singleton   13:51
 Yeah, ladders and everything.

 
Paul Braithwaite   14:05
 We pretended to be disappointed, but really, we were quite delighted, you know.

 Christian Bonington   14:08
 Yeah.

 Wayne Singleton   14:09
 Delighted. Yeah, I can. I can well imagine. And a couple of times within what you've just said you meant. You've mentioned about equipment and but it's almost back to the groundbreaking comment, I suppose is there was a bunch of stuff which was worked upon for, for, for the attempt, which was which was brand new, you know, prototype in mountain equipment. We're doing a load of made to measure stuff. And what did all those sort of equipment firsts mean to your experience?
 How did that help do you think or not? How was it?

 Christian Bonington   14:45
 Well, they're all vital to the equipment. You use a basic of tools that you use to actually get up the mountain and achieve success. And therefore, I've always believed in using the best equipment I can get and I'm taking away. I'm a bit of a gear freak in the sense if anything comes up I want to be there and I want to get it and I want to try it and I think that's important and I think that therefore you're using those bits of equipment. But those bits of equipment are enabling you to actually do what you want.

At that time. I think going, flipping back a tiny bit, I think when you look at or compare the early climbers and what they've done and then what we do now, I think there's the basic principles that remain exactly the same. And if you look around you look at. Kind of news lessons, the Alpine Club, etcetera, are young climbers are doing some absolutely incredible things now. And so though there's a general trend, if you like the young climbers.

 Christian Bonington   16:15
 And they. And so I think the.
 I've lost my train of thought, where was I?

 Cathy   16:25
 How equipment has evolved and helping younger climbers in particular, to really achieve fast and light and incredible, I suppose technical roots in perhaps lower mountains, but in a way, you know, that's where a huge amount of today's innovation is moving to, isn't it for mountaineering as a sport.

 Christian Bonington   16:46
 Which is what it's partly cause all the big things have been done basically.
 And the Big rumble there as you like is that all the 8000 metre peaks have been climbed? But I think that's a good thing because there's in the lower peaks, the peaks, you know, 6000 metres, there are literally hundreds of unclimbed peaks of that altitude. And the beauty there is that you're not going to try to climb that mountain. To achieve a record because you know. Nobody's gonna be particularly interested and that's a good thing. And so you, you know, the young climbers of today, and they're doing it, they can go off and they can climb A 6000 metre peak. They can have a superb adventure. They can go into the unknown and absolutely everything else. And that I think is a great thing.

 Cathy   17:41
 Yeah, very definitely. And actually, we're really excited further along in this series to be talking with some people that are really climbing at the top of their game at the moment and pushing boundaries. So, we're going to sort of talk about the whole kind of evolution of Mountaineer, which is, which is super exciting. I know one of the the 75 expedition came on the back of the 1972 expedition, of course.

 Christian Bonington   17:59
 Yeah.

 Cathy   18:08
 And I think there was a 73 Japanese expedition as well. And in your book Everest the hard way, Chris you describe sort of digging down to establish camp three and finding remnants of those expeditions and salvaging in particular the food and I can't, I can imagine just everyone is like yeah something different to eat but I know there was a huge amount of work put into food before you left the UK.

 And I'm looking at menus, and menus not just for different nationalities, but also for different sections and levels of the mountain. So different diets for base camp, different diets for camp three, different diets for summit days as well, and a lot of that is outlined in the appendices at the back of your book, which I kind of rediscovered while I was researching for this. And it's just fascinating on the kit side of things and the food side of things.

So basically you know feeding 100 people on the mountain for 12 weeks, that's a lot of food and a lot of working out. Do you think at that point on the 75 expedition in particular, was nutrition sort of really starting to be seen as an important part of planning and protecting not just people for maintaining their energy, but also for protecting from frostbite and hypothermia?

 Christian Bonington   19:41
 I think so. I think I mean all the information was out there and once again I think in planning an expedition like that, I looked at as much information as I possibly could. So I'd actually I think I'd digested most of that. And so in my planning I was thinking of that as like as I put the entire expedition together and particularly planned the food and so on. So you did your best to plan everything you possibly could and then, of course, crises occur, and that is it. However carefully you've planned anything.
 Something's going to go wrong. And then the challenge is to action, I suppose good leadership is actually to be able to adjust to a major crisis and then take a set of logical kind of steps to actually reduce that prices or save more lives. Even if some lives have been lost.

 Cathy   20:50
 Yeah, that's incredibly important, and I know Paul, Everest is described as a non-technical mountain, yet some of those climate descriptions in the rock band in particular where you were climbing so high, they just sound desperate and at one point you describe using your body weight to release some frozen ropes and it as they sort of released, it felt like you're kind of sort of falling for a lifetime and then be laying off a spent oxygen bottle. But how did you maintain dexterity for sort of your hands and your extremities during that time?

 Paul Braithwaite   21:39
 Can you ask that question again? Sorry.

 Cathy   21:41
  Yeah, no problem. So you describe actually sort of having to free frozen ropes during that technical climbing section above 8000 metres and belaying off a spent oxygen bottle and obviously at that kind of altitude, life's pretty tough. And in these kind of extreme conditions, how did you maintain dexterity for dealing with oxygen cylinders for dealing with climate equipment? While sort of keeping them protected in that kind of temperature and environment.

 Paul Braithwaite   22:17
 I think I can speak on behalf of Nick as well 'cause. We were working very closely as a team and spoke about it lots afterwards.

 Cathy   22:22
 Yeah.

 Paul Braithwaite   22:25
 But I don't recall that being an issue really. You just as a climber as a Mountaineer, you just get on with that, you know, and deal with it as a, you know, as an event when it happens, there's no, there was no backup. We just had gloves and mittens and went on with it. But the climbing I think he did, Nick and I the rock when we stepped on to the first part of the rock.

 I just happen to be in front on the personal lead in the first few pitches and it didn't really occur to us that we step when I've seen pictures of this zone of rock stripped down. Doug took some pictures in 72 I could fully understand if I'd have seen those pictures before we went on to it, I probably would have probably been a lot more careful of what I was attempting, but the rock was very, very compact initially and we struggled to get any form of good protection into it. I later found out it was a seabed, millions of years ago. And so it's limestone. It's like climbing on a limestone Cliff.

 Cathy   23:30
 Right.

 Wayne Singleton   23:30
 Right.

 Paul Braithwaite   23:31
 At 28,000 feet. And so the cracks that appeared to be there in fact weren't they were just seams that just ran into blankness, so getting protection in was incredibly difficult and time consuming. And also when you sort of looked up, what you thought would be a ledge or a foothold, in fact, it was a sloping shelf because it had millions of years of spin drift and frost and what have you winds. So everything sloped down with wear and tear of millions of years of weather. So it was particularly frustrating and leading a section whether it you know whatever section you were leading was the hardest pitch on the climb. So you know it was it was making the way through and making judgments so that you didn't put yourselves in too much jeopardy, really.

 But we were climbing all the time and you know, we were into the zone. And for us very much so, Nick and I, and probably the rest of the guys as well. Apart from altitude, the altitude factor that you have to deal with, we were totally in our zone with the technical side, you know? And so we, Nick and I often say it for us, it just felt like a long day in Scotland doing a Grade 4, you know it was just a very good climbing day.

 With the added altitude didn't help but, but it was just what we did. It was what we what we expected to be doing, I expect. You know? And so it was just a case of get on with it and do it and at one point, I ran out of oxygen somewhere and so did Nick. And we didn't even discuss it, we just simply carried on. There was no, you know, panic because we were fit acclimatized and we were slower obviously when we ran out of oxygen, we were very much slower, but we just plodded on and did what we felt was right for the time, but we didn't. I don't think neither of us, actually took ourselves away from where we were and analyse what we were doing. We just went like a bullet in a China shop really. And that's what we're expected to do. 

And so I was with Nick. It was a fantastic solid guy. He was just great guy to be climbing with and temperament wise we got on together. He was a really wonderful partner really. Sadly, he died three years later. So he hasn't been around for the last47 years to share this you know programme like this with us. It would have been interesting to share some time with him and get his views, you know.
 But and the climate was technically it was about, I thought about it a lot, quite a lot, you know, without trying to overplay it, take all the factors in on board. And it was like climbing an average good Scottish grade four at 20, whatever thousand feet.

 Cathy   25:59
 Yeah. OK.

 Paul Braithwaite   26:15
 With very poor scant protection. Am I Told?

 Cathy   26:17
 Yeah.

 Wayne Singleton   26:19
 I'm just reflecting on what you just said there and wondering. It's not the same league, some of the stuff I've done, but sometimes you're just there to do something with your mates and all you want to focus on is doing it isn't it and bearing in mind what you said about Chris I guess Chris had done all the logistics stuff behind it and you could just rock up and climb is that it ?

 Paul Braithwaite   26:32.
 Exactly. And from that point of view, I mean it was, it was just do what we do and Chris. I had no clue what was going on with the food. I just know it was alright and Mike Thompson was organising it and one of the one of the things about this expedition more than you know more than most I would think right from the start there was a lot of energy in in the packing the organising and Chris's side of it transport and equipment Dave Clark, who was our equipment officer, 

 was fantastically, you know, on it when it came to equipment, getting suppliers involved and getting perfect measures. I mean, Pete Hutchinson at mountain equipment used to do personal leg measurements for us. So we didn't get knee bends and we weren't suffering from pressure on the knees when wearing the down suit or the windsuit service was, you know, there's a lot of input from a lot of people with a lot of knowledge and a great deal of energy running up to the climb. So we were, we felt like we were just the front end of a of a very good team, really. At the time we were there.

 Cathy   27:48
 I think I'll just take this moment to give a shout out to all the little scouts who helped pack the initial expedition, clothing and equipment into what ended up being 216 tonne Ford trucks, which were driven out by three professional drivers. I think there was 5 drivers in total who drove night and day with three scheduled stops.
 Which were Ankara, Tehran and New Delhi. So that was 7000 miles in 24 days and through 22 customs posts in what was quite a different world at the time. And you can imagine some customs post you could have rocked out and been there for 22 days basically, couldn't you?
 So I think yeah, that energy and literally starting months and months and months before I mean.

 Wayne Singleton   28:44
 Yeah.

 Cathy   28:45
 I mean, it's a bit of a large question to ask, but do you have any idea of from sort of concepts to I suppose you well you're still talking about it now, so the actual input time input for the expedition has never ended, has it? It's still going on?

 Paul Braithwaite   29:00
 Are you to asking me or Chris on this one?

 Cathy   29:03
 Either actually, yeah, that kind of time from sort of concept to I suppose landing back in the UK what was that kind of time frame that would was it months, was it years?.

 Christian Bonington   29:15
 It was months rather than year. I think that if you think that from when I got permission. Well, even there I was. When I got there. We made our first attempt and then we got our second permission and at that point, I initially thought that I didn't want to get involved in the organising another huge expedition.

You know it takes 24 hours a day just about several months before and after, and so I didn't want to do it. And so I wanted to go and try to make. Basically, without oxygen ascent of the ordinary route of Everest and I think it was Doug that finally both Doug and Dougal kind of came to me and said look, you know if we did that. Because to do that you actually go up the Western Cove and you've got the great South face here and you pass it and you go up to the South Pole and they say, wouldn't we just when we looked up at that, wouldn't we think we should be there? We should. And they persuaded me to change. And so I changed back to having another go at the Southwest phase. Of course. It's all very well for them. They didn't have to go spend sleepless nights that I was going to have to spend trying to get the support and everything else, but they were absolutely right and that was how we came to do the South west face first.

 Cathy   30:57
 Amazing, yeah.

 Wayne Singleton   30:59
 It's bonkers, isn't it? Yeah.

 Cathy   31:00
 Yeah, Just a little conversation, you know? Take takes everything on such a huge, hugely different trajectory. So it's fascinating.

 Christian Bonington   31:06
 Yeah.

 Wayne Singleton   31:11
 Goodness yeah.

 Cathy   31:13
 But I suppose, Everest is termed as a non-technical mountain by Mountaineers.
 But I think. There's still. I don't get it. Belittled. You know, there's obviously it's in the news a lot of people are paying to go to the summit who don't have any
 climbing experience per se but it's colossal. It's huge.

And it's it takes you to a part of the world where humans shouldn't exist. And I think one of the real key things for me that stays with the expedition was Dougal and Doug.
 They had to bivvy and they did survive the highest bivvy ever survived at that point. And there's a fantastic black and white image of both you Paul and you, Chris watching Doug and Dougal on the way to the summit in the book the Everest years, and you can almost feel sort of the tension coming out of the page, and they then disappeared. They survived their highest bivouac at the time. I can't imagine what that night must have been like for you, Chris, as a leader. But what were your feelings seeing them in the morning after? And then speaking with them about their summit and their survival, Chris.

 Christian Bonington   32:28
 Is just a huge sense of relief that the fact 'cause I really wonder. I think we all wondered, you know, have they survived and could they be alive. And so to actually see, you know, two dear friends come down and who are alive and the sense of joy of thank God, you know that they're there. And I remember I just hugged them.
 And interestingly enough, I can remember the picture of John Hunt went after the 53 accent, was exactly the same thing when the Summiteers came he rushed forward and hugged them. And that that is how you feel when you're leading a big expedition because you know, especially our expeditions, every single one of that team they're all friends.

 Cathy   33:06
 Yes.

 Christian Bonington   33:24
 They're all people I knew, and I'd invited both because of their ability, but because I knew them.
 'Cause I knew them. I knew their strengths, their weaknesses and how they could work within the expedition, and so that you know, it made it a very personal thing. And I think so many of these more recent expeditions and certainly you're kind of commercial expeditions where nobody knows each other, and I think they're the problem comes that as they troop up the mountain and there's this awful, great, long queue of people going up there are times, you know they're walking or actually.
 Stepping over dead people and so on. And I think it must be appalling, and I think we were just so incredibly lucky to actually do that when we did it.

 Cathy   34:18
 Yeah.

 Wayne Singleton   34:25
 And yeah, there's a lot to think about within that I guess because like I guess as Paul you described or maybe you didn't say it in these terms, but I was understanding that you know you each other's strengths and weaknesses and how to help each other or support each other or when. I don't know if somebody's grumpy they need feeding is a you know is a great example that I've always had is you know I know when my mate starts grumbling he needs some he needs some calories down his neck and that so. that was, definitely a positive benefit to your to your attempt, wasn't it? I guess because you did have that, you knew each other so well.

 Paul Braithwaite   35:04
 Oh yeah, I'm sort of. You're right there. You get to know each other well before you go on this sort of track climb, trip, expedition. And Nick, I didn't have a problem with Nick because he's always grumpy. So in case of, I'll get worried when he's not grumpy. That's the thing that used to worry me. But he was a great guy to be with and he was a very practical, very good climber, great Mountaineer and safe.

 Wayne Singleton   35:17
 Right.
 Yeah, yeah.

 Paul Braithwaite   35:30
 So, you know, I felt like and also I'll add at this point that.
 When Chris had decisions to make and about teams and a lot of the guys who were on the trip didn't necessarily acclimatize well, they were very good climbers. And on this particular time, they didn't acclimatize. So he's got step behind a little bit. And so when it narrowed down to Nick and I being asked to take the rock band on for first attempt, we were, I was absolutely delighted with it. But at the back of my mind, I thought, well the summit is the place I wanted to be like all of us.

 Wayne Singleton   36:06
 Right, yeah.

 Paul Braithwaite   36:07
 And I will say this and to confirm what I've always said, if I was managing that trip in hindsight, the two people I would have chosen to go to the top of the first attempt because of their ability and the strength and the knowledge would have been Doug and Dougal definitely. And so from that point of view, there's never been an issue with the choice of teams or decisions made. It's always been, it was always.
 The way it is and the way it was, so people often ask me, is there anything you know, sinister? There's nothing, you know, it's sort of in the book. It says it. And that’s how it happened.

 So there was no the feeling of disappointment from Nick and I. We didn't climb to the top. 'cause. We went back up to the rock back up to 8000 metre and felt very good. But the weather turned severely bad it resulting in Mcburg being swept off the mountain or avalanched off or went to a corner. So we don't know. So it wasn't a choice thing. It was a case of getting off the mountain from almost 8000 metres again. So you know it was it all worked out quite, very well from that point of view. And there was never any. I didn't feel. I've not felt any feelings other than that, you know, the leadership was fantastic. The climbing team was good, the support was good, the energy levels were high. You know, people were. There was a lot of feeling of, of success around the place. And so, you know, it was a magic place to be. In my life. It was very important. And I've been on Everest in that time. It did change my life a little bit in my lifestyle.

 Wayne Singleton   37:28
 Brilliant.

 Paul Braithwaite   37:38
 Which was good for me. And so you know it's part of my life which I took part in prior to Everest because I was just a regular guy climbing in the Alps a lot. To a high standard I would say, and rock climbing and ice climbing winter climbing. So I'd been on a couple of expeditions prior to Everest at altitude on peak Lenin and felt fairly strong. To be honest, I didn't have any issues with it, but that's what I did all the time and I was regular 10 Stone 7 forever, you know. And so it was a damn good time in my life. And I think for all of us it was a moment of change, you know, in our attitude towards things.

 Wayne Singleton   38:15
 Oh, goodness, yeah. Well, yeah, it has changed your life, I guess as you say, hasn't it? It's for all sorts of reasons.

 Paul Braithwaite   38:16
 Yes, you know it did. Yes, it was all good.

 Cathy   38:22
 Yeah, I suppose that that kind of, the team coming together, the camaraderie.
 That was obviously very important. I know, Chris, you chose Sherpas that you'd worked with previously. But you still had a huge kind of number of people from very different backgrounds. I think there was over 100 porters to get 24 tonnes of equipment just to base camp and then you got the high altitude porters, the.
 ice fall porters on top of that.
 Yours was the first expedition to work with the newly formed Sherpa Cooperative, and Potemba was the youngest Sherpa at the time managing them and the local people were obviously key to your success.
 But how much were they also part of the enjoyment of the expedition as well?

 Christian Bonington   39:19
 Well, it's a matter of. Well, very much part of the enjoyment of the expedition and the enjoyment of the experience that you like was actually getting the best out of all these different people, but for instance, at going back to choosing who should actually go to the Summit 1st and there, I spent an awful lot of time thinking about it, you know, at night and I'd  be wondering now, who should you know, so a critical choice. Who? How, how do you select your summit pair?
 And the strongest pair were obviously Doug and Dougal but do you actually put them together or do you give yourself if you like a better chance by splitting them up and so having one on the 1st Summit bid the other on the second summit bid and I was spending an awful time thinking about that. And I finally thought, well, I'll ask one of them. And I was probably closest to Dougal than I was to Doug.
 And so I asked Dougal and I said, well, you know, just if you were in the summit team, who would you want to go to the top with? And he without any hesitation whatsoever, said Doug. And that decided me. So it was using his judgement and that's OK, right? I'll put them together, which was absolutely the right decision to take.

 Cathy   40:59
 Yeah. Fantastic. So you had, was it, 5 summiteers in total?
 I've managed to put my notes down and I put a piece of paper on top of them. I did have them all named but from that point of view it was a very successful just from the sheer point of having so many members of the team summit. 

But I think and I'm going to go back again to the logistics that you mentioned, Paul, that you were buried in, Chris, because I love the descriptions in your book, where basically you were camped out at camp two, and this is before computers, I think it's really important for everybody to remember this. So no spreadsheets, they weren't a thing and it was just you and your typewriter at Camp 2.

Making lists upon lists upon lists upon list, and that just blows my mind. Actually, I think one of the words used to describe your typing was typing was hypomania. You're just like, absolutely laser focus there.
 But there was kind of it was early days for computers, wasn't it? And I think computing, a model was used to help sort of visualise the logistics, but it proved that it wasn't advanced enough to deal with moving: men and food and non-sort of perishable equipment and everything else like that to get it up and down to the camps.
 Did you? You worked. You worked with that modelling before you left the UK, did you?

 Christian Bonington   42:42
 Yeah, I'm slightly amazed actually. But I think what I was doing because I think I was well ahead of my time in actual fact, but I remember. But on that one, yeah, I didn’t actually I'd worked out this set of kind of algorithms I suppose for working it out which were quite complicated and quite complex, and in fact as you say, I hadn't so bloody complicated.
 We'd actually we'd set out before I'd finished them and.
 And then as it happened. It actually worked out roughly as I planned.

 Cathy   43:25
 Excellent. Yeah. I think actually in the back of in the appendices you put in the plan and also the actual and there's not a lot of difference.

 Christian Bonington   43:33
 No, no, but I know, I mean, I think well the book, the 75 Everest book, I think it became a kind of reference book for all expedition leaders, because I think in that book there is practically every single kind of in the appendices. You know, don't bother to read the text. The appendices have almost all, you know, every calculation you need to make or not make to actually try to get a mountain climbed.

 Cathy   44:05
 Thet were fascinating. They, had me well and truly engrossed when I was rediscovering those definitely and so I guess finally a question to both of you because you were very close friends with Doug and you've both been extremely important and instrumental into the growth and continuation of his charity Community Action, Nepal.

 And I think sort of that charity has helped manifest education and health posts within areas of very remote areas in Nepal. And can you describe really how you've seen the charity impact the people on your trips back there since? In 36 years I suppose, since Doug founded it, how? How, have you sort of seen that grow, Paul?

 Paul Braithwaite   45:03
 The growth has been tremendous, but steady growth. It's not been a leap forward and then stop, it's been a long, steady growth, all energised by Doug really. He was the charger behind it all and the battery that kept it all going and you know quite remarkable really. And So what Community action's done in Nepal for local people is immense really.

 And it's all very personal. It always has been very personal. The charity is.
 A very personal thing to a lot of us, so it doesn't feel like we're doing anything other than what we're expected to be involved with. Especially when the earthquake, ran  through crashed through the region about 5-6 years ago, which destroyed virtually all the infrastructure of CANs, buildings really, and they were replaced and rebuilt.
 Mainly by Doug being so brutal with himself and getting out there and talking to people. He was a typical old fashioned sort of foreman Doug when he was out there on site. I used to see him in these captions.
 Oh, right at the front end, ordering people around, showing people what to do, always pointing at something and there's immense strength of character and strength of values is the reason why CAN has been so good. And when he passed away five years ago, we were really in a bit of a quandary as to what we're going to, what direction we're going to go in. And we all sat tight, you know, Chris and I and a few others sat tight with the fact that we're involved, we'll stay involved and work through it. And we did, you know, so we've got a new team now working very hard and doing very well, slightly different approach for fundraising because Doug was a massive fundraiser.

 Cathy   46:48
 Yes.

 Paul Braithwaite   46:49
 I helped with a lot of lecture tourism and his work involved with those was just astronomical. He wasn't the best of health; his ankles and knees were poor. You know, he got through it all, trudged through it all, an amazing stoic style that Doug. Doug was as a person, you know, so and the work, the relationships between.
 The staff based here and the staff in Kathmandu, Nepal, it's so close, you know, and it all works very well together because we're very open about what we do try to be and  we all work, you know, work hard to for the 'cause really. And the cause is Community Action Nepal, and we're having our 50th anniversary in September and really pleased to see that Hank, Ferpa and Potemba.
 The two sherpas were Serdar and Sherpa were on the trip. There's a still around and coming over to see us again. So there is that friendship which has been extended through 50 years, you know, so it's also CAN, I suppose that kept that together. So it's immense, really. What Doug did amazing.

 Cathy   48:00
 Oh, that's fantastic.

 Wayne Singleton   48:01
 Yeah, wow.

 Cathy   48:05
 And what does being involved with the charity still mean for you, Chris?

 Christian Bonington   48:10
 Well, I think it's done so much and I think I think if you look there are a lot of a huge number of very, very good NGOs operating in Nepal. But I got all the NGOs I think CAN is the best of them. I mean the others are excellent, but CAN is it's particularly focused, it's focused in exactly the right direction.
 And you know, and what Doug did to get CAN going is quite extraordinary. I mean, it really is.

 Cathy   48:47
 Yeah, it's, fantastic. And I think we actually do touch on that in episode 62 when we caught up with some of the CAN team at Kendall Mountain Festival and way back in episode 36. Actually, we talked with some of the team from CAN and also from Community Action Treks as well and sort of talked about kit list of trekking in Nepal and things like that. So there's loads to go back and listen to.

 Christian Bonington   48:57
 Yeah.

Cathy   49:17
 But. I mean, it's been absolutely fantastic to chat with you both today and thanks so much for being so generous with your time. We really, really, do appreciate it.
 It's been an absolute honour just to, well, I think I said at the start. It was the biggest expedition by the hardest route in the shortest time, you know, to the summit of Everest. It still stands tall there for, well, every pun intended. There's a huge achievement. So thank you so much for joining us today and for your time. It's been great.

 Wayne Singleton   49:45
 Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

 Christian Bonington   49:52
 Well, it's been great talking to you as well.

 Wayne Singleton   49:52
 Thank you both.

 Paul Braithwaite   49:53
 Thank you very much for your time as well.

 Cathy   49:57
 Oh well, I'm gonna leave us with a quote. Actually, from Dave Clark the Duracell battery that was the equipment officer of the expedition and who sort of signed off his appendix by saying. So my lasting memory will not be of data under control and successfully coordinated, but it will be of golden sunset seen from camp four and the warm sound of Sherpa laughter from the tent next door.

 Paul Braithwaite   49:57
 That's it.

 Cathy   50:23
 I thought that was lovely. Yeah, absolutely. What a beautiful, beautiful quote. It takes you right there.

 Wayne Singleton   50:25
 Awesome.

 Cathy   50:30
 You have been listening to outdoor gear chat and there are many links in the show notes to the books written about the 75 expedition. There's also a link to a film on YouTube that was filmed in 1975 as well, which is really well worth the watch. I thoroughly enjoyed that.
 There is also a number of exhibitions coming up, as Paul said, to celebrate the anniversary.
 With Community Action Nepal, so one of those will be at the Heaton Cooper Studio in Grassmere across the summer. We'll be having our mountain equipment history window, in our Ambleside shop at the climbers shop and we also have a selection of old equipment on display as well.

 So we have a whole load of links available there. So go across and have a look if you're planning your own trip to Nepal then we have everything for you for trekking in right through to climbing 8000 metres and that all of that range is available at our website. https://www.climbers-shop.com/ 
and we also have a huge array of free to access knowledge and information.
On our sister website, which is the Joe Brown Outdoor Academy and that is available at https://www.joebrownoutdooracademy.com/