Hargreaves, Alison: Brave woman who lived life as a tiger

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Hers was a tragically short but incredibly successful and awe-inspiring life. Nicola Rippon tells the fascinating story of the Mickleover-born mountaineer, Alison Hargreaves.

THE death of Derby-born Alison Hargeaves, on her return from a successful ascent of K2 in August 1995, was a dreadful tragedy. But much of the media coverage that followed concentrated on a debate about the rights and wrongs of a mother embarking on high-risk pursuits.

The 33-year-old mother-of-two young children was criticised in a way no father would have been, and it was left to those who had known Hargreaves to defend her.

Rather than a reckless, foolhardy, young woman who left her husband and young family behind while she pursued her own objectives, her supporters spoke of a loving mother and a careful mountaineer, more cautious than most, who had often turned back in the face of extreme conditions.

Alison Hargreaves’ life of adventure had begun in the unlikely setting of Brisbane Road, Mickleover, where she was born in February 1962.

When she was eight, her father, a railway scientific officer, took her up Snowdon. In 1971, he moved the family to Belper, on the edge of the Peak District.

By the time she left Belper High School, Hargreaves had decided to make mountaineering part of her life. At 18, she moved in with her boyfriend, Jim Ballard, an experienced rock-climber and owner of a climbing shop in Matlock where Hargreaves worked at weekends.

They married in 1988, two years after her first visit to the Himalayas and her decision to pursue climbing professionally.

When she decided to climb the north face of the Eiger while five-and-a-half months pregnant, Hargreaves was heavily criticised, although she undertook the ascent only under the advice of her doctor.

She did little climbing for the next four years, as she took care of her children, Tom and Kate.

In 1993, the family moved to the Alps, where Hargreaves became the first person to climb solo, and in one season, the classic six north faces of the Alps – the Eiger, Matterhorn, Dru, Badile, Grandes Jorasses and Cima Grande mountains – before returning to the UK.

But it was her decision to conquer the peaks of the Himalayas that were to bring international acclaim.

After two abortive attempts, Alison Hargreaves became the first woman, and only the second person, to conquer Everest, the world’s tallest peak, solo and without additional oxygen – an extraordinary feat.

When she reached the summit, her first thoughts were for her children and, in a radio message to base camp, she said: “To Tom and Kate, my two children, I am on top of the world and I love you dearly.”

Hargreaves’ next target, K2, again without fixing ropes or additional oxygen, was a more threatening prospect.

The mountain itself, at 28,250ft, is the world’s second highest and, less then 800ft shorter than Everest, is widely considered to be the most dangerous on the planet, having claimed the lives of more than 30 climbers.

One of the names by which it is known locally, Chogori, means “the great mountain”. It is treacherous in even the best weather conditions.

When it was suggested she might have a “death wish” prior to the ascent, she countered: “Most climbers enjoy living more than normal people, because they have so much to live for.”

In another interview, given just before she left for K2, Hargreaves told a reporter: “If I thought it was desperately dangerous, I wouldn’t do it.”

She was confident with good reason; she was widely regarded as one of the greatest mountaineers of her time and was already planning her next climb – the world’s third highest peak, Kanchenjunga – before she set off.

On the morning of August 1995, Hargreaves and her fellow climber, Rob Slater, joined four climbers from a New Zealand-Canadian team that included Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund, the first Westerner to reach the peak of Everest.

They set out for their final assault on the mountain, meeting up with five Spanish climbers by mid-morning.

Although the weather was fine and clear, Hillary was becoming concerned at the build-up of cloud in the distance, but others were not so worried.

He would later write: “Someone called down to us. It was a woman’s voice. Alison Hargreaves encouraged us to follow. ‘Come on up. Use the red rope’.”

Eventually, Hillary and several other climbers decided to turn back. At 5pm, the feared storm reached Hillary, making his descent.

“The wind threw me off my feet and swung me on the rope against the ice-wall at the top of the [Black] Pyramid. ‘This is how it happens,’ I thought, thinking of mortality.”

Less than two hours later, Hargreaves, who was now climbing with Javiar Olivar, one of the Spaniards with Slater, New Zealander Bruce Grant and two of Olivar’s party – Lorenzo Ortiz Monson and Javier Escartin – just a little behind them, radioed camp to announce that, after half a day’s climbing, they had reached the summit of K2.

The mood was ecstatic. While much of the mountain was shrouded in cloud and with blizzards blasting those climbers who had chosen to return, in contrast, Hargreaves’ party reported exceptional conditions on the summit with no sign of snow.

Lorenzo Ortas, who had stayed behind with Pepe Garces, later reported that, within the hour, winds of at least 140mph whipped up and destroyed their tents, leaving the pair huddled in a single sleeping bag.

It was all so different to conditions of a few hours earlier when Hargreaves, the sun setting in the clear skies, had passed Garces.

As he told Outside Magazine that November, her only words to him were, “I’m going up”.

With conditions further down the mountain so extreme, those waiting there could only fear for the lives of their comrades still on the mountain.

Jeff Lakes, who had turned back at the last stage of the ascent, arrived at Camp Two where a New Zealand team-mate dragged him to the relative safety of a tent. Lakes died during the night.

The storm had been so violent that there was little hope for those stranded on the mountain. The joyous message from the summit was the last anyone heard from Hargreaves and her colleagues.

Rescue was quite out of the question. There would have been no time to, or little point in, making an SOS call.

Before they embark on their quests, all mountaineers know that, in the event of disaster, they will have no support crew within easy reach, no rescue craft on standby.

They will be entirely in the hands of fate. It is the choice to go on, with the odds seemingly stacked against them, that so bewilders those who would never attempt such a feat, but it is also the spirit that binds the brother and sister-hood of mountaineers together; and it is this courage that is universally admired.

Peter Hillary later attempted to describe the conditions Hargreaves and her colleagues must have faced on the mountainside: “Imagine yourself in a large commercial freezer; it’s minus 40 degrees, there’s a 747 engine at one end of the freezer, blasting freezing air at you at 300, perhaps 400 kilometres per hour.

“Tilt the entire freezer on to a 50-degree angle, so that you are clawing with your ice-axes and the crampons on your boots to secure purchase.

“Bear in mind that, at over 8,000 metres, there is less than one third the amount of oxygen in the air as at sea level and your lungs are heaving with a wild rate of hyperventilation that is only sufficient to enable you to move at a snail’s pace; your circulation is impaired by the acclimatisation process and the cold is eating into your toes and fingertips. Now turn off the light.”

Rather than commend her bravery, or reflect on her extraordinary achievements, the international press chose to pillory the Derbyshire mountaineer for leaving her children motherless.

That two fathers had died in the same range that week drew no such criticism. There were claims that she had only undertaken the climb to gain financial security, that her ambitions had been only those of her much older husband, or that the mountains themselves were an escape from her home life.

The veracity of those accusations died with Hargreaves on K2. What is certain is her devotion to her family.

In diaries, recovered from her base camp by Pakistani soldiers, Hargreaves wrote: “I wish Jim and the kids were with me... It eats away at me! Wanting the children and wanting K2!”

Jim Ballard often quotes a favourite saying of his wife’s: “It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand as a sheep.”

It is a mantra she lived, and died, by.

Amid the furore that surrounded the tragedy of Alison Hargreaves’ death, her immense courage and magnificent achievements have been overlooked.

That is an injustice, for Alison Hargreaves was one of the greatest mountaineers of her generation.

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