A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (31 page)

Standing outside the cream-coloured wooden door that bore the word ‘Headmaster’ on a metal plate, I gathered my nerves and gave a single knock.

‘Come in,’ said a stern voice.

Before me, behind his large leather-topped desk, sat Sidney Woods, otherwise known to the pupils as ‘Sidney’, or more cruelly ‘Blotch’ because of the large birthmark that covered the entire left side of his face. With wavy grey hair and wearing his black gown, he looked far from happy. He was a kindly man who had taught me chemistry in my younger days; on this occasion, I was not expecting the same friendly treatment.

I stood a respectful three feet away from his desk. I was subjected to a piercing glare. The large rectangular and somewhat austere wood-panelled office with its south-facing windows and their stone mullions was the centre of absolute authority within the school. Many a pupil who had stepped over the line had been expelled while standing in the very space I now occupied.

‘I have been told you intend to jump off Abbey Bridge,’ were the headmaster’s opening words.

For a schoolboy with considerable experience of his teachers’ wrath, this was rather easier than I had expected to face. The crime had not yet been committed. I did what any self-respecting pupil would have done: I lied.

‘Me, sir? No, sir.’

To my amazement, Sidney was prepared for such an answer. Sliding open the right-hand drawer of his desk, he pulled out a piece of foolscap paper that bore the two shields and motto that made up the school’s crest.

The Latin motto of
parvis imbutus tentabis grandia tutus
when translated reads, ‘When you are steeped in little things, you shall safely attempt great things’.

‘I want you to sign this,’ he said, as he slid the paper across to the edge of the desk, along with a pen.

Already typed on the pristine white surface were two sentences. They read: ‘I am not going to jump off Abbey Bridge. If I do, Barnard Castle School is not responsible.’

‘Sign here,’ said the headmaster, pointing firmly to the bottom of the document.

I leant forward nervously and added my signature, hoping that might be the end of my ordeal. Thankfully, it was. I was told I could leave.

At boarding school, the teaching staff, which included the headmaster, were
in loco parentis
; they had a legal responsibility. In asking me to sign this officially prepared letter, the headmaster was attempting to absolve, or at least distance, the school from legal repercussions should I proceed with this ludicrous act. Looking back, I doubt it would have been that simple. By asking me to sign the letter, they had admitted to prior knowledge but had not moved to curtail the possibility of it taking place. I had placed the school, and especially Sidney Woods, in a terrible position. Up to this juncture, he was dealing with boyish bravado, of boastful talk – that a few hours later might have had a dreadful outcome. What good it would have done him to produce such a letter had something gone wrong, I cannot imagine. But I was a teenager. Thoughtless acts without regard as to how they might affect others came all too easily.

The word spread like wildfire that I had been rumbled. Had I ignored the headmaster’s warning and proceeded to jump that afternoon, I would have been expelled from the school the same day. This I would have deserved. Had Sidney not intervened, would I have jumped? With the whole school watching, I don’t think I would have had a choice.

My unexpected saviour had been the headmaster. I could walk away with my head held high and reputation intact. I had been forced not to jump. Was I disappointed? No – I was relieved. A salutary lesson in life had been learnt, one that I would never forget.

My mind snapped back from these distant memories as Gay Blanchard and I stepped out from the top of the spiralling staircase and onto the second-floor landing that encircled the upper octagonal balcony of Central Hall. I stared over the hefty banister with its tightly arranged balustrades to the matching eight-sided oak table some 30 feet below.

What had once been a battleground of childhood survival I now looked back upon with fond memories. At the recent summer gathering, I had met some of my former schoolmasters who were now retired. In the time since my eventual departure from the school 26 years earlier, they had grown old. I had grown up.

At the south side of this upper floor, a simple wooden staircase led up to a small set of attics, which in my schooldays had been the music rooms. The large open space of Central Hall that rose up through the building had often echoed to the discordant sound of piano and violin lessons.

At the top of the stairs, worn smooth from a century of energetic feet, we entered the office of the Old Barnardians’ Club secretary. It was a modest-sized room with a solitary glass window made up of several small panes that looked across the school’s slated roof. Bookshelves and cardboard boxes filled most of the available space. Correspondence sat neatly on top of a single pedestal desk that had seen better days.

Positioned nearby, on the floor, were Bentley Beetham’s glass slides. The mahogany boxes, approximately twelve inches by nine, were separated into two halves by a central wooden divider. Each side contained a hundred or so squares of glass standing tightly, one against the other. As Gay picked up the first box and placed it onto the desk, it sent a fine film of fibrous dust billowing into the warm dry air. The smell of objects that had been hidden away for decades tantalised my senses. Leaning forward, I nervously lifted one of the four-and-a-quarter-inch glass slides from the box and held it up to the sunlight that beamed through the small grubby window. The definition of the photograph that had been secured between two thin pieces of glass left me speechless. ‘Wow,’ was all I managed to say.

I lifted one after another to satisfy my growing curiosity. The images portrayed in Bentley Beetham’s photographs were of superb quality, far better and more varied in their subject matter than I had expected. Then I randomly selected one particular slide that blew me away. I had never seen this image before, and it would transpire that it was unique to the Beetham Collection. It was of a single A-frame tent clinging precariously to the side of Everest with what looked like a few pieces of thin cord, as though it was going to slide off down the mountainside at any moment. Having climbed this northern route on Everest, I knew from the steepness of the ground and lack of places to put the tent that this had to be over 26,000 feet. It could only be the last camp from which Mallory and Irvine departed for the summit that fateful day, 8 June 1924. I sat back in amazement. I had never seen another image that summed up the audacity and bravery of these early pioneers so well. The thought that these original images, which I now held with the utmost care, had been taken on that historic pioneering expedition all those years ago was mesmerising. History was at my fingertips.

Apparently, Beetham had developed the films at Base Camp in the depths of his sleeping bag. A sudden tingle shot down my spine. George Mallory and Sandy Irvine might have held some of these very same images up to a Tibetan sky before their ill-fated attempt. They too might have admired Beetham’s work just as I was now doing. By viewing his work, I was entering into their time, their moment in history.

At the time I had been moving up for my final summit attempt, less than three months earlier – in fact, on the very day that Henry had radioed me with the terrible news about Michael Jörgensen – George Mallory’s body had been located high on the Tibetan side of Everest. He had been found where he had come to rest 75 years earlier following a fall. The discovery had brought with it renewed public interest in this historic expedition. Photographs of Mallory’s frozen white flesh, with his athletic muscles exposed where the clothes had been weathered from his back, appeared in the press. I felt this publication was tasteless, but the public appetite was for more. Researchers and historians tracked down the Beetham Collection held by the Old Barnardians’ Club, hoping to find more images and stories to feed this appetite. Visits to inspect the images were arranged and contact prints had been supplied of certain significant pictures taken high on Everest in 1924, some of which were thought to be unique. They had not appeared in any of the other collections and were unpublished. Permission was being sought from the club to allow use in a forthcoming book due to be printed later that year. This was happening at the time I was beginning my acquaintance with the collection.

I left the attic room that day with my hands still trembling from the excitement of handling those precious images. To see such photographs printed in a periodical was interesting enough, but to hold an original glass slide up to the sunlight was a privilege I had never expected to have.

My advice to the Old Barnardians’ Club was that the collection they held was of international importance and that the long-term care and protection of Beetham’s work should be a priority. There were those who would be overly keen to make use of this rich archive.

The club was aware that not all the photographs contained within the collection had been taken by Bentley Beetham; his friend Howard Somervell, for example, had given some to him. With these concerns about where the copyright of the slides might lie, the club wrote to the publishers specifically denying permission for the use of these images. The book was published using the contact prints with which they had been supplied. No explicit permission had been given or release form signed by the Old Barnardians’ Club.

As a consequence of this event, it was realised there was a pressing responsibility to protect the collection for future generations to enjoy. Within months of my viewing the collection at Barnard Castle School, the club approached me to ask if I would form a trust that was governed by law. I agreed to their request.

Claims over the Beetham Collection appeared to be coming out of the woodwork. Sandra Noel, daughter of the late Captain Noel, claimed ownership, saying they had been lent by her father to Bentley Beetham and never returned. Letters from barristers and solicitors flew back and forth. The commercial value and the potential to exploit this important collection brought other attention as well.

All this to-ing and fro-ing with letters, counter-claims and negotiating the location for the long-term care of this part of our national heritage took up much of my time. Countless hours were spent in my apartment at Tynemouth comparing the photographs from my ascent with Anatoli and Nikolai in 1995 with those of the historic 1924 expedition. I was astounded at how little the landscape had changed. Our Base Camp in 1995 had been placed, unbeknown to us, in exactly the same spot as the 1924 expedition. Large boulders, three feet across, which stood outside their tents in Bentley Beetham’s photographs had been in the same position over 70 years later. His images were in black and white; mine were in colour.

Beetham’s collection certainly took all my attention and perhaps made up for the lack of it when I had been at school. I spent the next few years refuting claims over the collection and registering The Bentley Beetham 1924 Everest Trust with the Charities Commission of England and Wales. Working alongside me in these voluntary tasks were Michael Lowes and the other two trustees, barrister Alastair Barclay Brown and Justice of the Peace Brenda Joan Gildea. All four of us were determined to bring this historical archive into the public domain, to make it accessible. The entire collection can now be viewed freely online, at www.bentleybeetham.org, as the trustees believe the members of the 1924 Everest expedition would have wanted. The collection itself now resides in Durham University’s archives at Palace Green Library.

Although I didn’t realise at the time, my immersion in this work came as a welcome distraction from my recent haunting experience on the South Col of Everest. It took me back to a time before the 1996 tragedy, to a northern route on the mountain that brought happy memories and a sense of personal accomplishment. I felt connected to the pioneers by virtue of the fact I had been fortunate enough to tread in their footsteps. The north side of Everest was sheltering me from memories of the southern route.

George Mallory and Sandy Irvine had been amongst the very first to attempt Everest’s summit. Their knowledge as to the debilitating effect of altitude had been negligible when compared to modern day; their equipment did not compare to what we had enjoyed. The loss of these two climbers, although tragic, had been at the cutting edge. They had been pushing the boundaries. On the other hand, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, their clients, guides, and the three Indian climbers who had been lost on the north side, had modern equipment and a better understanding of altitude. They knew of the importance of deadlines over reaching the summit too late in the day. Yet eight of them had perished. The questions for which I had no answers simmered just below the surface.

By the beginning of 2004, the furore over the Beetham Collection had begun to die down. It was long overdue, but at last Catherine and I had time for ourselves. Or so I thought.

It had been five years since I’d last been on Everest, seeking the summit of a major Himalayan peak. My climbing on lengthy expeditions had, in the intervening time, taken a back seat as I pursued my work in commercial properties. I spent most of my time on refurbishments or dealing with the bureaucracy of planning departments. Paperwork now seemed to fill a life that had not so long ago been consumed by canvas and crampons.

So it was in the spring of 2004 that Catherine and I decided to take three months off, to set out on a journey through Nepal, Tibet and northern India: a real adventure that we’d make up as we went along. For us, such an epic could only have started in Nepal. Here we landed in March of that year.

It was from Kathmandu that we set out on an overland journey across southern Tibet to Lhasa via north-side Everest Base Camp. For this leg of our travels we enjoyed the company of three younger globetrotters: Alberto and Eva, an agreeable young Spanish couple, and Natalie, a rather off-the-wall but very likeable Belgian lady.