The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters Read online

  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

  alpine-style

  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.