And yes, he's got a wife and two young children, just the same way as I had a wife and two young children when I was doing my hard stuff. I’ve put an embargo on the diaries because they were very personal and inevitably on expedition you’d be really pissed off with someone and you said so. He was also a prodigious pioneer with huge numbers of new routes to his credit. Sir Chris Bonington:It's immensely strong. PRO. So there's a certain amount of camaraderie. But the way you climb that mountain, the way you survive on that mountain, is actually to understand it - to actually work with it, to actually become part of it and in doing that there's no point in being angry with the mountain.

So I think the people who get very wrought up about the rubbish on Everest - the only people who see it are the climbers who actually go there. Create your own unique website with customizable templates.

Sir Chris Bonington:A whole combination really. In fact, we were climbing in Tibet about three years ago and we were trying to find this unclimbed peak and we had a satellite phone with us and we were getting weather forecasts from Bracknell. One of world’s most respected mountain expedition leaders, Sir Chris Bonington CVO, CBE has been climbing since he was a teenager. Sir Chris Bonington:Well it's a really nice summit actually. Now that is a pretty frightening statistic. So everything seems to take a lot longer and it's not helped by the fact that it's also freezing cold some of the time and that slows you down as well. We had 52 wonderful years of marriage. Sir Chris Bonington:I would say at the end of the day, you'd probably want to listen to your own experience. Robin Lustig: Peter are you concerned about litter? I'm not quite sure what the current pay rates are so I can't pontificate about that. By continuing to use the website, you consent to our Back then a Cambridge lecture would always begin at least an hour late, and you’d have been very well dined and slightly pissed before you even started. Well, I tell you, you forget the bad things! Immense advances were made in the Second World War on the use of oxygen for the bombing aircraft etc. I suppose what preparations can they take? By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use Privacy Policy.

Participants in these activities should be aware of and accept these risks and be I think it was a demon but I wasn't aware of it in the sense that after 1982, when we'd attempted the north east ridge, and two friends were killed on the climb - I didn't think I'd go back to Everest. Whatever happened to Streets Of London singer Ralph McTell?
Born in London, Chris, 80, and his late wife Wendy have three sons – one of whom, Conrad, died in 1966. responsible for their own actions.

When you are leading a big expedition you are constantly juggling the desires, the plans and everything else that your fellow team members might have, so your diary becomes a confessional.

Well, Leo gathered that I’d not been back since the live broadcast in 1967, so with my 80th birthday coming up he asked, “Shouldn’t we try it?” The complication was that Wendy was desperately ill with motor neurone disease and I couldn’t get away. Right on the far horizon there was a mountain that was obviously higher than any of the others, so in ‘96 we went to try and find it. They're going off and climbing unclimbed peaks and there are still hundreds of exciting, steep, unclimbed peaks in the Himalayas. I know that there's been this recent tragedy with the helicopter but are there a lot of people there? Tom Jarvis:Basically its quite a topical question and I think we've covered most of this already.

We got married five months later.

It was really annoying to watch these whippersnappers nipping up things that you were finding rather hard! But I think all the fixed ropes should really be removed from the mountain and it should be returned to the climbers rather than the trekkers and the tourists. What do you think about your success, does it have broader meaning rather than just for your personal satisfaction? Browse and buy exceptional, royalty-free stock clips, handpicked by the best.

Sir Chris Bonington, the mountaineer, writer, photographer and lecturer, started climbing at the age of 16 in 1951. Jump to: navigation, search.

I’d thought I’d go into teaching and have long holidays, probably not the right reason to go into the profession! To the north, you're looking across the Tibetan plateau and I reckon you can see 250 - 300 miles at least to the north. I’ve done a bit of solo climbing but I like company, though for someone who’s organised big expeditions, I actually prefer small teams. Now it needs your donations to ensure it can preserve Britain’s mountain heritage for years to come. Nick Mason:I agree with Chris, I think at that time things were different and nowadays they would have probably given an equal award. So I would say yes, technically and as a challenge both Naga Parbat and K-2 are harder than Everest. Sir Chris Bonington presents My Climbing Life at The Royal Geographical Society in London on February 11, see www.rgs.org. But of course you can't always do that.

So we are constantly learning about how you can perform better at altitude. No, we couldn’t quite disappear, although back in ‘96 at least there wasn’t Facebook. If you don't know much about climbing and you want to be a climber, there's loads of courses you can go on. Follow her on Twitter There's the famous Fantasy Ridge which is on the east side of Everest and there's the direct route straight up the south west of Everest that we climbed in 1975. They charge, in effect, it's about $10,000 per person in the peak fee. Sir Chris Bonington: No - firstly if you put it off limits for five years certainly the sherpa economy would suffer grievously. They've probably made quite big sacrifices to actually get there.

But there are though other ways of seeing Everest which are less crowded and without going to base camp. Sir Chris Bonington:I think that's a very dangerous attitude and one that I certainly haven't got. It was mid-summer and still twilight that far north. Robin Lustig: A lot of people want to ask you a lot of questions both about Everest and indeed about mountaineering in general. "Leave only tracks" is the way responsible people hike, are Everest climbers above all this? Things in 1953 were very different to what they are today. We didn’t do any climbing at all, purely exploring.

The actual top is about the size of I'd say a pool table.

You can find that fulfilment at whatever level you want to take it to. But I also enjoy working, for Berghaus, my charities and Lancaster University. Well that was very, very nice and it meant that in fact 18 of us - nine Europeans and nine sherpas actually got to the top that year. He started climbing in 1951, while still at school, hitch hiking to Snowdonia and Scotland in his holidays, climbing with anyone he could find. times, Since March 2000, the Mountain Heritage Trust has worked as an independent charity to protect and promote the extraordinary history of British mountaineering and climbing. You can do what I've done, which is to get into the communications side of it which is honing up your skills as a writer and as a photographer. 'Keith Partridge and Brian Hall have created a moving visual memoir on one of Britain’s most celebrated mountaineers, Sir Chris Bonington. Graham Moores: My question is: Do you feel that somehow your accomplishments at Everest are being diminished over time as these days we see unskilled adventure tourists who are being successfully guided up to the top? One of the best trips I ever had was with Charlie Clarke, my doctor on most of my big expeditions. As far as the gear they had it was surprisingly good actually. Nick Mason:Good evening. We spent the night there in a bothy and then climbed Stac Pollaidh the next day. Chris lives in Cumbria. But I'd love to continue doing some and hopefully in the future climb a higher mountain. Robin Lustig: What people come down and say I did it?

Flying in to attempt the North East Ridge of Everest in ‘82, we saw the huge unclimbed Nyangla-Qen-Tangla Shan range. KidzSearch Safe Wikipedia for Kids. I've made a living as a writer and as a photographer and a broadcaster and I hope that I've been able to pass on my love of the mountains and my enthusiasm to other people for their enjoyment, hopefully, as inspiration. Sir Chris Bonington:People are getting more and more aware of this and there's greater efforts being made to both ensure and persuade people to take their rubbish down with them and as in fact our correspondent at base camp said, you get fined quite heavily if you leave any rubbish at base camp at all. Robin Lustig: An e-mail now from Rabindra Osti in Kusatsu, Japan and asks: Have you ever compared yourself with your successors? Sir Chris Bonington: Can you put yourself into the mindset and into the body of one of these so-called tourists, who maybe isn't an experienced climber, has scratched up the money - say $25,000 to go on a guided expedition and then goes up Everest. so that's where Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing had a huge advantage. What's your question. It's rather like reading about Pen Hadow, this wonderful Arctic adventurer who has managed to get to the geographical North Pole - by the sound of it, miles too late - but he did it. These days it is a lot easier than it was say back in 1962 when I broke away from a regular job. Maybe Andrew Irvine's body will be found - I personally hope it isn't.

Sir Chris Bonington:I still love climbing.

You don't need necessarily to be the world's best climber - you need to be a good communicator, a good journalist, a good photo journalist, a good film maker and so on - that's another way of doing it. Everest but technically much, much more demanding.
I've had a lot of very, very narrow escapes. I have to say that people are beginning to describe base camp as bit of a ghost town now because so many people have been up the mountain and have come back down again and have wanted to leave very quickly - that they've packed up, put away their tents and gone. The film gets stronger as it progresses, probably because of the succession of big stories, which make it effectively a history of British mountaineering.

It's really been driven home to us how very dangerous it can be up there and how tough it is and I just think I'm tough enough and I don't think I'm brave enough.

Sir Chris Bonington:Everest down at base camp is not too bad at all.