Attempt on Everest almost fatal

Press, 4 June 1988, Page 1

Attempt on Everest almost fatal

Special correspondent Auckland A blinding storm which caught an Auckland man, Robert Anderson, 500 feet from the peak of Mount Everest has cheated him of his second attempt to conquer the Himalayan giant One team member has been admitted to hospital after the expedition.

The other three, including Mr Anderson, are nursing frostbitten fingers and toes as they recover from the effects of a harrowing retreat to base. Speaking from his Peking hotel last evening, Mr Anderson said he was “bloody lucky to be alive.”

The decision to turn back was made after 38 hours of

climbing and as night was closing in, he said.

“There were winds of 70 miles an hour, it was 20 degrees below zero, and we could not see 20 feet in front of us.”

It was “pretty self-evident we were not going to make it We could not even see the top.” Still, the decision to turn back was difficult; the next few days treacherously so. It took the team four days to return to base camp, and by the time they reached it they were starved and dehydrated. “It was four days of being right on the line as to whether we would make it or not,” Mr Anderson said.

Trudging through waist-deep snow, with no food or water for three days, the temptation to

give up was strong. “The snow was waist-deep; it was pretty easy to sit down in it. And when you are sitting in the snow, you get cold and bored. You decide it is easier to stop than to keep on.”

Mr Anderson was the leader of an expedition that included Norbu Tenzing Norgay, son of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, in the support team.

The ascent, on a previously untrodden route, had been made with no bottled oxygen. It was to commemorate the conquest of the mountain by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 35 years ago. One team member, a Briton, Stephen Venables, reached the summit. He was an hour ahead of Mr Anderson and the lat-

ter’s climbing companions, Ed Webster and Paul TeareMr Webster is now in an American hospital being treated for dehydration and forstbite. It is believed he will lose fingers as a result of his ordeal. It was Mr Anderson’s second attempt to reach the top of the world. His first, in 1985, failed after weather, oxygen and daylight failed him.

Mr Anderson, who is Ameri-can-born, has lived in New Zealand for the last five years, and says he considers himself a Kiwi. He said he was not disheartened by his latest mountaineering experience. “I still feel very confident. It was an immensely successful

expedition, although the climb itself was very, very difficult.” During the descent, there had been times when he had hallucinated, he said.

“For a while there were a whole lot of other people up there; other climbers — some who made it, some who didn’t. I even thought I could hear a boys’ choir singing in the background.”

Mr Anderson expects to return to New Zealand in a fortnight, after stopping in Colorado and New York where he will make a national television appearance.

He said he would “definitely not” give up climbing. Meanwhile, he was eating a lot to regain his 15 kilograms weight lost on the mountain.