Because it's there

Murray Sayle

Tokyo (Ince upon a rainy night in Boston USA, V a former Royal Artillery officer who had managed to survive the first world war was giving a lecture about Mount Everest and the prospects, then (1923) far in the future, of climbing it. His name was George Mallory, and is purpose, like many before and since, was to raise funds for his expedi- tion the following year.

Everest is an expensive mountain, and Mallory had given his lecture many times. As regularly as snow falls on the Himalayas, someone would get up at the end and ask, 'Mr Mallroy, why are you try- ing to climb Mt Everest?' The climber had a clean-cut answer ready: 'We are doing this to show that the spirit that built the British Empire is not altogether dead, coupled with the name of the scientific committee of the Royal Alpine Society.' The reply usually brought a restrained round of applause, sometimes a few dollars.

But that night in Boston something snap- ped, 'I could see him getting ready to ask his question,' Mallory recalled afterwards. 'Sure enough, he put up his hand. "Mr Mallory, why are you trying to climb Mr Everest?" I was tired. On the spur of the moment, I replied, "Because it's there." I don't really know what I meant by this. After all, it would be rather difficult to climb it if it wasn't there.'

A young man from the Associated Press was also there, and his report, on a quiet day for news, went around the world. On 8 June 1924, Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine were last sighted through a break in the clouds, two tiny dots on the final pyramid of Everest, 'going strong for the top'. They left behind the only line everybody knows about mountain- climbing, and the other mystery: why do men give their lives to this most dangerous, least rewarded, most masochistic sport? The question is again sadly topical, with the news that my friend Naomi Uemura, described for want of a more comprehen- sive title as 'the Japanese adventure', is missing near the summit of Mt McKinley, 20,320 ft, the highest mountain in North America, in weather that leaves no hope for his survival.

Like Mallory and Irvine, Uemura died on a note of triumph, less enigmatic than 'We had to turn the machine off — he's re- jecting his hair transplant.' theirs: on 12 February he reached the toP, the first solo climb of Mt McKinley ij; winter, and was last seen four days latera` around 17,000 feet before a blizzard blotted; the mountain out. His achievements were the stuff of a boy's dreams: Everest'd the Amazon, the North Pole (alone, by sled, the first), the highest peaks of 0; continents. Uemura was that rarest al Japanese, a loner, a man eager to test himself far from home, with only the heroicf dead for company: Among the crowd crooked politicians and faceless drudges Japan currently presents to the world, his towering 5ft 4ins figure will be sorely miss. ed. This remarkable man had, as they usill do, unremarkable parentage. He was in 1941 in Hyogo prefecture, in the sch–r'ciuth western part of Japan, the sixth aP youngest child of a maker of Tatami f10. mats, who sent him to the agricultu faculty of Meiji University in T00.„°. Appalled by the capital's concrete, he 101t1.0- ed the university mountaineering club his pursue his passion, common among oa', countrymen, for nature and the wild r': doors. In 1964 he was selected for a aniveas sit y expedition to the Himalayas and JaCLe lost, for ever, a promising agriealtur bureaucrat. The following year when Japanese wevri once again allowed hard currency t° trahis abroad, Uemura set out with $10° inous pocket to climb the world's most fa://1; in mountains. First stop was fruit-picking California, where he made enough for fare to France and a job in a ski resort tithe Mt Blanc. In July 1966 he climbed by a somolounatsacienntsoolfo m, followed injinaroOctthoebehr:nYaesst cent ofAfrica, and tanAdcionncFaegburauairny 1A9r6g8enatisIal°,,ainile then, for a change of pace, a 3,7' op a joruarfnte. y down the Amazon, again al0ae, Back in Japan, Uemura was a Chose ni member of the Japanese attempt on Maftirst Everest, and on 11 May 1970 was the 101, climber to plant the rising sun on the2„tifor mit. The same autumn he was in Alas"fits the first solo ascent of Mt McKialeY;, the becoming the first person to clica'icav- ihniggheosntlymomunt iu mountains ofcontinents' at in Australia,: the 7,316 ft barely an afternoon's stroll wit'i on, family dog, and the out-of-the-way Mt red• son massif in Antarctica still unconatier an It is difficult to know what to d° fogihy encore after Everest, which tilaY.an Uemura joined the international Hon"nten- expedition of 1971, led by Norman DAY been furth, a Swiss-American who ha" dition photographer on the 1952 Swiss exPe which came close to climbing Everest for the first time and later led the successful 1963 American expedition. The international expedition, largely financed by the BBC, with my good self as reporter, flamboyantly labelled its equipment 'Everest dirittissima', by the most direct route, meaning that we intended to climb the south-west face, a stupendous cliff which ascends the last 5000 feet to the summit and gives the Mountain its unmistakable triangular pro- file.

Not all our climbers were, however, with as for the pure love of adventure. A French lady, Yvette Vaucher, wanted to be the first woman on the summit, Pierre Mazeaud, a Gaullist depute to hoped to be the first F notrenchman, and Carlo Mauri planned, be the first Italian to climb Everest, but hale be Photographed on the summit with a bottle of after-shave lotion, of which he had brought a case for the purpose. These People preferred the classica, or 'easy (all things are relative) route byl the South' Col ltici the West Ridge, the one climbed by round

lJernur Flillarya the year before, and by Sir Ed- in 1953.

A six-day blizzard blotted out our hopes, and killed one of our members, Major ,s1-1arsh Bahaguna of the Indian army. ilahaguna was attempting to cross a rope traverse along the south-west face at dusk, n the weather suddenly closed in — rather like flying in a clear sky one minue, at d cloud and turbulence the next, except hat a Climber pinned to a cliff has no way i" avoiding an oncoming storm. Bahaguna rope off a mitten to unclip himself from the within a minute his hand was frozen. so fell he could no longer hole the rope. He 'ell the length of eci, ups his safety-line and dangl- _,aYs before upside down, until he died. It was six

u we

We tunnelled could recover his body.

out of our tents through four feet of snow, and assembled for a con- iference. With the time lost, we could no

bet the two routes. Which was it to the, the 'easy' (by the ridge) or the 'hard' (by 42e,,fnraeerPase)? The question went to a vote, our

`' voting along with the sahibs and '"e memsahib. The face won, and the Latin

0a13 Mutinied. 'They expect me, Pierre A azeaud, 42, member of the National s'sseblY, to be a Sherpa for the Anglo- f,ax, Saxon and Japanese,' fumed their unof- zu"'la] leader (and future Everest con- Lfil,e_ro,r). Nevair. It is not 1 but France. .co has been insulted.' With that, the bn't.,tirls hastily packed and left, leaving little after-shave lotion and fragrant "teenor' leS. ne parting row, with terms like sc000ward', 'drunkard' (someone tried to aridth.e things down with a bottle of whisky) lot'ineornpetent' freely exchanged in four iages, is still remembered in Hima- -Thu get-togethers. goneafter most of the expedition had elinlb"°me, a serious attempt was made to Pair the e Mountain. The celebrated British U Whillans and Dougal Haston (the Everrestsubinsequently died, in S after climbing

an avalanche witzerland), got within 1,700 feet of the top before the oncoming monsoon, early that year, com- pelled retreat. Their attempt was made possible by Uemura and his Japanese part- ner Reizo Ito (a university hearty along the lines of Andrew Irvine) who hauled oxygen, ropes and tents to the final camp, perched high in the Y-gully on the face. The Japanese showed, in this risky support operation, great generosity of spirit, throw- ing away their own chances in the process. Uemura later said that he thought the British, of all the nationalities involved, came closest to his own view of the sport. The last two off the mountain were, for the record, Don Whillans and your weary cor- respondent.

Up to Everest Uemura's were, as we might say, fairly conventional adven- tures. He then embarked on a new and highly original line, moving to the Canadian Arc- tic to live for a year with an Eskimo tribe, learning dog-handling and a smattering of the Inuit language (he never managed much more of anything but Japanese). This led, first, to a 2,000-mile solo journey by dog- sled along the coast of Greenland, and then a 7,500-mile journey, also alone, from Greenland through the Canadian Artic to Kotzebue in Alaska. In these journeyings he lost altogether 50 dogs, either by overwork, drowning, or through dog fights.

One one occasion, his sledge and dog- team disappeared through thin ice, leaving the adventurer on the brink with nothing but a whip in his hand. He dragged some of his dogs out, and bought more at the next Eskimo village. Another time a polar bear attacked his camp as he slept, ignored Uemura wrapped in a sleeping-bag and made off with his supply of dog food. When the beast returned for more the next morning Uemura shot him, and dogs and master feasted on bear meat for a week.

Uemura often spoke of a fascination with Eskimos who are, of course, related by race to the Japanese. In his time among them he developed great respect for their technology of survival, and gradually adopted Eskimo gear himself, wearing such things as bearskin trousers, sealskin mittens and boots, driv- ing an Eskimo-built sledge and living on raw seal liver and whale blubber. This schooled Uemura for his most notable achievement, his single-handed journey (the first, and so far the only) to the North Pole by dog-sled from Ellesmere Island in the north of Canada, followed by a 1,700-mile solo traverse, from north to south, of the mountains of Greenland. With these journeys, among the most difficult ever made by one man, Uemura appeared to be developing the lifestyle of the Eskimos for sporting ends, just as his predecessors had adapted the techniques of Alpine smugglers and Sherpa herdsmen into the game of mountaineering — a notable contribution to human mastery of our planet.

Some of his equipment was, however, modern, and therefore expensive. The North Pole expedition cost $700,000, including airdrops of food and a new sled, and a kindly airlift out for a husky bitch named Shiro ('Whitey') who unexpectedly produced six pups in the wilds of Greenland. I saw a lot of him in those years, as he did the rounds of Tokyo raising money from a dog food company, a Japanese whisky firm, magazines and TV

programmes. His book Beyond Everest, helped, and so did the international award for valour in sport and a prize of $110,000 presented to Uemura in the Guidhall in London in 1979.

But, like his predecessor Mallory (also a man of few and simple words), Uemura had difficulty in explaining what his purpose was. 'I suspect my sensibilities have been numbed by money', he told a friend. 'I have a feeling that I am being swept on by something I do not understand.' With nothing much left to do in the Arctic, Uemura tried Everest again in the winter of 1980, but failed, after a close call in which another member of his expedition was kill- ed. He had hoped to be the first to climb Everest solo, but the phenomenal Reinhold Messner beat him to it (without oxygen, too).

So, once more Uemura was seen around' Tokyo, cadging and lecturing to raise money for yet another expedition. This time he planned to join both his skills, for a feat not likely to be easily duplicated — a solo trip across the Antarctic, by dog-sled, to be followed by a single-handed ascent of the chilly continent's highest peak, Mt Vin- son massif, 16,863 feet. He had his dogs, flown in from Greenland, in Ushuaia near Cape Horn ready for the trip south when the Argentinians cancelled his permit because of the Falklands war (in which Japan was, as a matter of fact, scolded by Mrs Thatcher for remaining stubbornly neutral).

This left Uemura owing $100,000 and un- characteristically at something of a loose end. Last year he turned 43, an age when the calendar begins to nag the toughest adventure. He was, of course, a hero among Japanese, but not to Japanese bureaucrats. After his journey to the North Pole Uemura was proposed by no less an admirer than the then Prime Minister, Masayoshi Ohira, for a new Japanese civil decoration called The People's Honour Award, founded with the idea of weaning the Japanese away from their ancient obses- sion with swords and warriors. A desk- bound Tokyo committee, however, ruled that he had not done enough to earn it.

Strangely enough, the award had already been given to a baseball player named Sadaharu Oh, descended from a Chinese family in Taiwan with the more familiar name of Wong. Oh/Wong's feat had con- sisted of scoring home runs in sub-sized parks against less than world-class op- ponents, but he was a good team player, never left Japan, did not consort with foreigners, made a lot of money for himself and a lot more for the politically powerful bosses of the Japanese baseball industry, and is altogether a safer hero than the un- predictable and cosmopolitan Uemura in the blinkered eyes of the Japanese establish- ment. Oh is, of course, unknown outside Japan.

So, the Argentinians still refusing permis- sion for their part of the Antarctic, Uemura last year began to get another expedition together, one which reflected both hasty arrangements and modest finances. His idea was to try some of his Eskimo-based techniques on a long-standing mountaineer- ing problem, the winter on Mt McKinley in Alaska just south of the Arctic Circle. McKinley has been climbed many times by soloists, the first having been Uemura himself in 1970, but a solo climb in winter is another matter.

The difficulty lies in the configuration of the mountain, which somewhat resembles that of Everest. The approach, like Everest's, is up a glacier, which leads to a headwall, or cliff, some 1,000 ft high. Above the headwall is the west buttress, a slope broken by crevasses and ice caves which lead to the summit at 20,320 feet.

A group of climbers have the manpower to put ropes and pitons up the headwall which is, in fact, draped with those of previous expeditions. Above the cliff they can proceed roped together, so that if the leader falls into a crevasse his partners can haul him out. They can carry, between them, tents and sleeping bags and enough food and fuel to wait out a blizzard, which regularly strikes the Alaskan mountains during the winter. Even so, only two winter ascents of Mt McKinley have so far been made.

Uemura's plan was to use Arctic techni- ques to overcome the limited carrying capacity of a soloist. He proposed to approach the cliff on snowshoes, pulling a small sledge with 30 pounds of reindeer meat and seal oil for food, and only enough fuel to melt snow for drinking water. Food, fuel and a sleeping bag would thus be his entire load above the roped section of the climb. Without a tent, he planned to sleep in the ice caves, and he counted on a long bamboo pole strapped to his back to stop him falling into crevasses. the point of this obviously hazardous exer

cise, or, who needs to climb Mt McKinley (or Everest, or any other mountain) alonhe' in the worst season of the year? TI.e low-altitude litteratetirs Christopher Isher,,' wood and W. H. Auden, neither Wen

known in mountaineering circles, advance

the view in their play, The Ascent of F°' that people who attempt such feats are acai tually cowards seeking to win the apPrn% of their mothers. The truly brat' le' e, ti like, e, gfeotr oinn with cethwe rsietriniogups lbauyssinesas onof which just might appeal to the awards Co mittee in Tokyo.

A view that I, for One, find more sympa-

thetic, is that the adventurer confronts, not snow or ice, blizzards or crevasses,,u4 vit death itself, in circumstances wrii favour our opponent. 'Whosoever ., save his life shall lose it and whoseover lose his life shall find it,' the proverbilYs. The meaning seems to be that wrestling with death, even if death wins, is in fact affirmation of life. While lesser people seed maximum results for minimum effort, 01,5 wind up doing commercials for effort, toiletries, the adventurer welcomes danger and difficulty and even his own fears, as gt only opponents worthy of his strife. le, honolnyoruerwarle fe reward disevicatto.ry or, just as accePtab honourable Mountaineering, then, is a formd1319,Y' e and its appeal lies in its futility, in the si of the obstacles that nature (actuallYnihtb `e er players themselves) has set up for no fit purpose than to challenge us to surrntni d them. Here we touch something ancient arithe irreplaceable in the human spirit the source of our creativity, hidden in .`iik games of children. Most of us, alas' into the cosy bondage of committee-wriio but a few free spirits, the serious plaYers' always be attracted to the high mount ad. and the wild places. Admiring them, we.ans, mire the best part of all of us. This exPlal.;, ,IBtehcianuks,e the power of the gnostic Pb Uemura seems to have kept his reneli6 vous with the old enemy some time afterflod February, when he was spotted at areh,, 17,000 feet descending towards the as he had planned. Shortly afterwards the entire North American continent was hit „,d freezing weather, with high winds a; heavy snowfalls, which lasted almost a fnere night and must have been especially sev,ive at its highest point. This was the `objec`ter danger', as climbers say, which any wijin climber has to face, on such a mounts' e Naomi may have fallen into a crevP–ed wider than his pole, or been overwhelulh, especially eac isnowfallal ly wi t without heavy snowshoes ewalk t (they cave found where he had left them, in a -our below the headwall). He may, like,: the team-mate on Everest, have slipped oil the brolipzersa,rdw.hich would be cased in ice by ;ngfol There are, no doubt, more Mean—n(1 deaths, and greater achievements. But Mean—not deaths,