THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF
Mountain Disasters
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THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF
Mountain Disasters
True Accounts of Rescue from the Brink of Death
Edited by Hamish MacInnes
ROBINSON
London
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2003
Collection and editorial material
copyright © Hamish MacInnes 2003
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1-84119-675-4
eISBN 978-1-780-33269-7
Printed and bound in the EU
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Come hither, you that walk along the way;
See how the pilgrims fare that go astray:
They catched are in an entangled net,
’Cause they good counsel lightly did forget:
’Tis true they rescued were; but yet, you see,
They’re scourged to boot. Let this your caution be.
John Bunyan
Contents
Introduction
Glossary
Rescue on the Droites
Blaise Agresti and Jamie Andrew
The Venomous One
Hamish MacInnes, Reup Brooks, Noel Williams, Steve Hayward
We Recover the Bodies of our Comrades
Ludwig Gramminger
The Eigerwand, 1957–62
Hamish MacInnes and Brian Nally
Two on the Dru
Hamish MacInnes
Shibboleth
Andrew Fraser
Sixty Years on Beinn Achaladair
Hamish MacInnes
The Matterhorn and the Bergschrund
Ludwig Gramminger
Plucked from the Pillar
Emmanuel Schmutz
An Airborne Avalanche: Detective Work in the Tatras
Milo Vrba
A Cauldron of Wind
Markus Burkard
Avalanche on Beinn a’Bhuird
Hamish MacInnes
The Wellington and the Storm
Hamish MacInnes, Dick Brown, Stan Stewart
Death in the Giant Mountains
Milo Vrba
Duel with An Teallach
Hamish MacInnes and Iain Ogilvie
Not a Place for People
Pete Sinclair and Al Read
Long Haul on La Perouse
Norman Hardie
A Long Way to Kinabalu
Dan Carroll
Accident – Empress Hut
Hamish MacInnes
Buried on Mount Cook
Karen Gazley
Storm on Peak Lenin
Paul Nunn
Death in the Everest Icefall
Hamish MacInnes
The Three-Hundred-Metre Fall
Marek Brniak
Self-help on the Ogre
Doug Scott
The Rock Wizards of Oz
Alan Sheehan
Lucky Joe
Hamish MacInnes, Joe Simpson, Simon Yates
The Bogus Commander and the Y-fronts Rescue
Hamish MacInnes
Windy Mountain Epic
Alison Osius
Snow on the Equator
Oswald Oelz, Robert Chambers, Raimund Margreiter
High Winds in the Andes
Hamish MacInnes
Middle Peak Hotel
Bob Munro
Rescues in the Grand Canyon
Hamish MacInnes, Tammie Keller, Tom Clausing
Winter Rescue on Mount Ararat
Tunç Findik
Peak of the White Stone
Hugh Morris, Richard Wigzel, Dafydd Morris, Gareth Roberts, Duncan Tripp, Steve Hayward and Bill Amos
Acknowledgments and Sources
Introduction
This selection of mountain rescue epics is probably the most comprehensive ever produced under one cover. It spans the years when serious attempts were being made on unclimbed peaks and walls, when equipment design wasn’t keeping pace with climbers’ aspirations for ever harder and more dangerous routes. I have drawn on two of my earlier books, High Drama and The Price of Adventure, as an historical framework for they contain irreplaceable stories and many of the writers are no longer with us. Also I have added new chapters to plug gaps and to give a wider coverage; some illustrate the quantum leap in the evacuation of the injured.
These true rescue tales come from all corners of the globe. They substantiate the axiom that there’s nothing stranger than truth. It is on the great expanses of the sea, polar regions and the mountains that you find this truth, especially when the odds are stacked up against you. It is also true that accidents often originate from poor organisation and lack of experience. However, nature can muscle in with its arsenal of bad weather and hazards which can shatter the b
est laid plans of even the best prepared. The most safety-conscious mountaineer can find himself caught in a rogue avalanche, a rockfall which seems to have descended from heaven or a sudden blizzard which shifts one into slow motion mode – the premed to a lingering death.
Some say those hitching a ride on this adrenalin roller-coaster get what they deserve; that’s the price! However dicing with death isn’t necessarily the goal of the addicts of verticality. The quest for adventure and the experience only found in high places and wide spaces lurks in our genes and it has been so since man first ventured from the security of his cave.
I have spent most of my life mountaineering and rescuing. This has had a spin-off in providing contacts with fellow rescuers internationally; from them has come this understated collection of events which otherwise may have been lost to posterity; rescuers are not vociferous about their exploits.
There’s inherent danger in many outdoor sports, but if you have a combination of space beneath your boots, high altitude and bad weather, in conjunction with even a simple stumble, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Even a minor injury in severe conditions can be compounded by such factors; multiply this by the trauma of evacuation, then the consequences can be catastrophic. As shown in the following pages some rescues can be measured in days, not hours.
Let’s take an example which occurred, not on a Himalayan summit but on a hill walk, on a low heather-clad mountain on the fringe of Loch Etive.
A Dutchman, Antinias Peters, known as Ton, had been a dozen times to Scotland. On this visit he chose Beinn nan Aighenan for his summer hike, an innocent hill walk in an idyllic West Highland setting. He was fit, a veteran of twenty marathons. As he was looking down a gully he inadvertently stood on a clump of overhanging heather to get a better view and crash . . . he plunged into the rocky defile, still with his rucksack on, landing with a thud on the bouldery bed of the steep mountain torrent. It was obvious to him that his leg was either broken or badly injured, but he crawled to the edge of the channel and realised that in his present condition it would be impossible to climb out.
He gulped down some Panadol tablets he had in his first aid kit and resolved to stay where he was until his leg was sufficiently healed for him to move. As a mathematician he logically allocated his miniscule supply of food into various day lots and commenced to write up his soggy diary.
But next day monsoon-like rain triggered a flash flood which carried him down over several rocky pitches. At the bottom of these he managed to crawl about five metres in four hours to try and get out of the defile, but he was still in danger.
Twenty-four hours later he was again swept down the gully, this time getting his injured leg jammed behind a submerged tree. His only hope was to extricate himself and attempt to climb a short rock wall which was both vertical and smooth.
Since his initial fall he had been swept down over 300 metres. His remaining food was now lost, leaving him with only some cold tea in a flask and an abundance of fresh water. Somehow he managed to scale that rock wall and gasped like a landed fish on top. From here he could see the floor of Glen Kinglass. Down this isolated glen runs a dirt track leading to an away-from-it-all hunting lodge. For six hours he called for help. Amazingly his calls were heard not by two men from a deer stalking party far below, but by the wife of one of them beyond, some distance down the slope. She assumed that it was her husband shouting. It was only when the three stalkers returned to Glen Kinglass Lodge, which they had hired for hunting, that she asked her husband why he had been making that frightful din. When he denied this, they put it down to the bleating of a sheep.
Next morning by the grace of God, Tim Healy, a gamekeeper employed to take the guests stalking, heard calls high on the hillside, from the very lip of the final impressive waterfall which free falls from Beinn nan Aighenan. He mentioned this to his companion, Alasdair Loder. They took out their telescopes – an essential appendage of all stalkers – and spotted Ton waving his anorak from the edge of the waterfall. The ordeal was over, a search and rescue helicopter was scrambled from HMS Gannet in Ayrshire and within an hour Ton was winched to safety.
Mountain rescue facilities vary. In some countries a slick instant pick-you-off-the-mountain service is in operation. In more out of the way mountain ranges it’s often the old back-breaking trudge it’s always been. Generally, the facility is free, with no cost to the victim, but insurance schemes are available offering more comprehensive cover for that disastrous mountain holiday.
The type of helicopter varies to the specific rescue requirement, some dictated perhaps by a joint military obligation, where the aircraft is primarily deployed for marine or ambulance work. For lofty mountain regions, helicopters with a high operational ceiling are a must.
Rescue teams are usually volunteers, but some are made up of professional mountain guides, instructors, military or park rangers. Usually the police are involved in varying degrees, for there’s inevitable form-filling for both the living and the dead. All these rescue disciplines are synchronised to the common cause; locating, stabilising and evacuating the injured, or the dead. With this in mind they work closely as a unit, from the helicopter crew to team members and the search and rescue dog.
You may ask why they risk their lives for someone who, perhaps through an act of folly, gets injured or even killed. Well, the rescuers are usually climbers and may themselves have been rescued in the past – they are all aware that a twist of fate can trip even the most wary.
Glossary
abseil
descending a rock face by sliding down a rope
climbing at high altitude in one continuous push in the mountain without making intermediate camps
arête
a rock or snow ridge
belay
a method of safeguarding a climbing partner by tying oneself to a firm anchor from which one can pay out or take in the rope
bergschrund
the gap between a glacier and the upper face of a mountain
brèche
a gap in a ridge
cornice
a mass of snow overhanging the edge of a ridge
crampons
steel spiked frames fitted to boots for better grip on ice
crevasse
a crack in the glacier ice
dièdre
a corner feature in a rock wall
étrier
portable loop ladder used as a climbing aid
gendarme
a rock pinnacle protruding from a ridge
grades
systems of stating the degree of difficulty of a climb; the earliest UK examples included V Diff (Very Difficult) and VS (Very Severe).
jumar clamp
a friction device to aid climbers ascending fixed ropes
karabiners
metal snaplinks used to attach a rope to an anchor
layback
a strenuous crack-climbing technique
litter
stretcher (USA)
névé
snow ice
piton
a metal peg hammered into a rock crack to support a belay
prusiking
ascending a rope with the aid of prusic knots and foot loops
rappel
another name for abseil
rimaye
the gap between snow ice and a rock face
sérac
unstable ice pinnacle
sling
a loop of rope or tape used for belays or in abseiling
strop
nylon loop used for lifting a casualty in helicopter winching
voie normale
the most regularly climbed, usually easiest, route on a mountain
Rescue on the Droites
Blaise Agresti and Jamie Andrew
This is a sad tale, a story of two climbers at the height of their abilities, brought to a halt by the fickleness of fate. They had done nothing wrong, the d
ifficult climb was well within their climbing experience; they were well equipped; the weather was fine. But nature always has the last say, it has that final card which can represent thumbs up in the elation of achievement or thumbs down with a terrible finality.
It is also a tale of the PGHM, a dedicated rescue group, the high mountain police of Chamonix. They went far beyond the boundaries of duty and risked their own lives in what is possibly the most remarkable helicopter rescue ever conducted in the Alps.