Seven Summits (13 page)

“I quit my job to do this,” Frank said. “I can't wait around another year.”

“Well, I’ll try. But no promises, and I doubt I’ll have a lot of time to help organize things.”

“Dick, don't worry about it. I’ve expected for some time this would come up.”

Even while they were dividing the duties, Frank knew in the back of his mind this would happen, and he had prepared himself to take on the whole job, or at least the lion's share of it. He had long since realized that to know Dick Bass was either to love him or to be frustrated as hell with him. Dick was perpetually overcommitted, “Just heading down life's highway pell-mell,” as he cheerfully admitted, “juggling like crazy and winging things right and left.”

It wasn't going to be easy for Frank to take on that much work, as he still had some responsibilities with Warner Bros. as a part-time consultant on special assignments. But he felt he could do it, and he felt as long as he was going to do it, it wasn't unfair asking Dick to bend a little and do all the climbs in ‘83. Besides, he knew Dick still liked the idea of doing them all within a calendar year. As Dick had said, “It'll make a neat, packaged chapter in our lives.” And as Frank had added, “Plus prevent it from dragging on, so I can get on to other things, like trying to find a job.”

With that question settled, then, Frank laid out the itinerary: “We'll start January 1, 1983, with Vinson Massif in Antarctica. Then as part of the same trip we'll knock off Aconcagua on the way home. Then six weeks later, on to Everest from the Nepal side, with the German group. Then home for two or three weeks, and off to McKinley, followed by a quick flight to Africa a month later to get up Kilimanjaro, and from there a shuttle to Russia to knock off Elbrus. Back home again for a few weeks, then we'll wrap the year with the banquet on top of Kosciusko.”

“Aah-eah-eaahhh,” Dick yelled over the phone. Whatever hesitation he had felt a moment before about doing the climbs in ‘83 was lost to the excitement following Frank's itinerary.

Frank knew the hard nut to crack would be Antarctica. Everest would be a lot of work, certainly, but their chances looked good of hooking up with the German group that held the permit for the spring ‘83 climbing season. And with the permit, the rest would be a perfunctory organization of the team, food, equipment, oxygen, transport, and porters. Certainly the difficulty of climbing on Everest above 26,000 feet would still be the same, but so many groups had now gone up the South Col route season after season that the organization of the expedition would be almost a kind of climb-by-the-numbers procedure.

Antarctica, however, was another matter. The climb itself shouldn't be difficult—the mountain had been scaled twice, and both teams had reported no unusual technical difficulties—but getting there would be a real challenge. There had never been a privately organized and financed expedition to the interior of Antarctica. Since he had a contact at the National Science Foundation, the agency that oversees U.S. operations in the Antarctic, Frank had his fingers crossed that they would provide transport. And although Frank wasn't certain they would need it, Chris Bonington was at the moment approaching the British Antarctic Survey for possible support, namely refueling at their Rothera Base on Adelaide Island.

Bonington had traveled out from Everest the same time as the North Wall team, and Frank and Dick asked him if he would be interested in joining their Antarctica expedition. Bonington had not given an immediate answer, so Frank and Dick had been pleased, even surprised, to receive a short time after they got home a letter from Bonington saying he would be thrilled to be counted in. Frank and Dick had thought that after Bonington's own grim experiences on his Everest attempt his enthusiasm to pursue another climbing expedition might have waned, at least for a while. But they learned that was not Bonington's style. He stayed at it even though, probably more than any climber, he had suffered tragedy after tragedy as his closest climbing companions died. It was a long list: in 1972, on his climb of Annapurna, a close friend killed under a collapsing ice block; in 1975, on his first ascent of Everest's enormous southwest face, a close companion lost on a summit bid; in 1978, on an attempt on K2, another dear friend killed in an avalanche; and now again on Everest, two more close friends.

But Bonington seemed eager for Antarctica, and his inclusion on the team was an important step toward Frank and Dick's strategy to get on each climb the most capable mountaineers they could find. It was a plan they felt would increase not only their chances of getting to the summits but also their chances of getting back down alive. So in addition to Bonington they started calling other climbers to fill spots on all the expeditions.

Gerhard Lenser, leader of the German Everest expedition, indicated he would be willing to allow Frank and Dick to bring two or three other Americans, so they asked Wickwire and Ershler if they would like to go. Like Bonington, Wickwire had also experienced firsthand a number of deaths in the mountains—Marty had been the fourth—but like most who are drawn to high altitude mountaineering, he had long before made his personal pact with the odds. Frank and Dick knew he was hungry for Everest's summit, and they were pleased he accepted, although he voiced some apprehension about going with a group of Germans who none of them knew. Ershler too yearned for the summit, and he accepted as well.

About this time I got a call from Frank inviting me to join any of the Seven Summits expeditions, and I accepted both Aconcagua and Antarctica. My friend Yvon Chouinard also expressed interest in Aconcagua, and Frank was thrilled to have him along.

Finding people to join the expeditions, then, was easy (at least at first); harder, much harder, was figuring how to get to Vinson Massif. Frank contacted his connection at the National Science Foundation only to learn the agency had a blanket policy of refusing to assist or support in any way private expeditions to the Antarctic; Frank's contact said their reason was that if anything went wrong with a private group, the NSF would have to disrupt their scientific programs, at great cost of time and money, as well as risk to life, to rescue them. The contact further told Frank it would be useless to plead for an exception; the policy was unbending.

Frank found this curious since he knew that the climbers, all private individuals, who had made the first ascent of Vinson and several other peaks in the area in 1966 had been fully supported by the NSF and the U.S. navy. They had been flown to the mountain in Navy C-130s, provided with skidoos, fuel, radios, and other gear, then picked up and flown back to McMurdo when they were finished climbing. Wanting to know more about it, Frank called Nick Clinch, the San Francisco Bay Area lawyer who had led that expedition.

“First,” Nick explained, “it was the NSF who contacted us. Apparently they had been hounded by so many climbers wanting to get to Vinson that they decided it would be easiest just to sponsor someone to do the first ascent so everyone would get off their back. They contacted the American Alpine Club, who contacted me, and I contacted several of my friends, and we had the time of our lives.”

Frank then queried other people who, since Nick's expedition, had sought NSF assistance for private ventures; he learned that not only in each case had they been refused support, but the NSF had actively tried to sabotage the plans of at least one expedition. Frank therefore decided to avoid the NSF at all costs. But how, then, to get to Vinson? Frank still had another card: that privately owned DC-3 retrofitted with new turboprop engines, including a third one in the nose, and ski-equipped, that flew support each summer for U.S. bases in the high Arctic. Frank knew the plane was, theoretically, capable of making it to Vinson if it could be refueled somewhere along the route. The other consideration, however, was that the plane had been built in 1942. Still, if there was no alternative …

But an alternative did develop, beginning with a tip to Frank that another party led by Japanese adventure-skier Yuichiro Miura, known best from his movie
The Man Who Skied Down Everest,
was trying to get to Vinson. Apparently Miura had a long-term project to ski down the flanks of the highest peak on each continent, and he had worked a deal with the Chileans to charter one of their C-130s to Vinson. Frank called Dick to ask if he knew anything about Miura.

“Heck, yes. He's a longtime skier at the Bird. Let's call him right now.”

Over the phone Miura told them the only hitch in his plan was that the Chileans’ C-130 didn't have skis, and he didn't have any way to obtain them. But Miura had an idea. If Frank and Dick could find the skis, perhaps they could join expeditions and together travel to Vinson.

“I’m telling you, Frank,” Dick said, “That's how things work. Right when you can't figure how to solve a problem, a solution will come out of the blue.” Frank was relieved. The Everest trip looked on track, too, for the German leader seemed receptive to the idea of a joint expedition.

Fifty-five-year old German mountaineer Gerhard Lenser had received from the Nepal government the permit to attempt Everest in the premonsoon spring season of 1983. Making the application was easy: he had paid the $1,500 “peak fee,” and had the German Alpine Club verify he was of sound mind and body. More difficult had been finding the money to fund the climb, as a normal Everest expedition costs between $150,000 and $250,000.

So Lenser was warm to Frank and Dick's proposal to pick up a share of the costs in exchange for making it a joint expedition. He seemed pleased when Frank and Dick added Wickwire and Ershler, and when Wickwire added two of his friends. This then had been the core of the 1983 German-American Everest expedition when, in August, Lenser arrived at Snowbird to meet the team, and also to travel with Dick to Wyoming for an ascent of the Grand Teton.

Lenser was about five foot seven and lean, almost skinny in his torso, but with superstout legs. His light, gray-streaked hair was carefully trimmed. He wore metal-rimmed glasses that, with his habit of buttoning his shirt collar and wearing over that a plain but neat V-neck sweater, gave him a studious appearance. He spoke slow but carefully enunciated English and his manner was generally serious and cautious, but when he smiled or laughed, he showed great warmth and sense of humor.

Frank and Dick had assumed—correctly, as it turned out—that Lenser was uneasy having added to his expedition several foreigners about whom he knew little or nothing, and so they were careful to show him, as Dick called it, “some good old American hospitality.” They preceded the climb of the Grand with a western barbecue at an outdoor chuckwagon on the edge of the National Park, and made the two-day climb up the regular Exum route with the company of a guide. Although hard to read through his sober countenance, Dick thought Lenser was enjoying himself, and when they reached the summit Dick was pleased when Lenser gave him a hug. Things looked good for Everest, too.

“Murphy's Law,” Frank said to Dick over the phone. “Can you believe it? Those C-130 skis are classified strategic weapons by our government. God knows why, but it would take a presidential decree to get a pair for the Chileans. And it took me fifty calls just to find that out.”

“What now?” Dick asked.

“I’m checking into the DC-3.”

“You mean that jalopy built in 1942?”

“At least it's proven. The owner says he'd be willing to lease it, but only if we get insurance and this pilot named Clay Lacy, an entrepreneurial soldier-of-fortune-of-the-air with a Lear Jet charter service here in Burbank. He showed up a few years back at one of those air shows where they race planes barely off the ground, only he came in his DC-7 and just about beat everyone. Anyway, he likes the idea of going to Antarctica.”

“How much does the plane owner want for a charter?”

“It ain't gonna be cheap. Up to a hundred grand.”

“Holy Jehoshaphat.”

“But I got a couple of ideas. First, there's always the chance, although it's an outside one, we can make a profit if we follow through on your idea to make a film. A better shot is to try to line up some kind of corporate sponsorship, and on that front I may have a deal going with Budweiser.”

Frank had contacted Budweiser to see if they might be interested in sponsoring the Seven Summits; Frank offered to take a six pack to the top of each peak, with the idea Bud could work an ad campaign around it. The Bud people were interested.

“But here's an even better idea,” Frank continued, “that at least would reduce costs. I think Miura has some money from Japanese TV, so let's invite him to join our expedition—especially since he was kind enough to ask us to join his—and split the charter fifty-fifty.”

“And let's also sell seats to some of those climbers who've been contacting us to take them to Antarctica.” Word was just getting out in climbing circles that Frank and Dick were trying to get to Vinson, and a few climbers, including Reinhold Messner—considered the best in the world—had asked if they could join.

“I thought of that,” Frank said, “but there's only limited space on the plane because of all the fuel it has to carry, which is the main problem. Somehow we've got to arrange a refueling along the Antarctic Peninsula. But I just had a brainstorm. If the Chileans were willing to charter us their C-130, maybe we could still charter it to parachute a few dozen fuel drums at some prearranged point on the Peninsula.

“Don't worry,” Frank concluded, “I’m all-out on this one. As we say in the movie business, it's time to start working the phones.”

It was now September, four months before departure to Antarctica, and although it was a great relief to breathe new life into the plans for that expedition, at almost the same time plans for Everest began to gasp. Call it Murphy's Law, bad karma, or plain bad luck, that universal tendency that turns order to chaos now let loose its furies on the Everest plans. Given Lenser's apparent amiability during his visit, Frank and Dick were now surprised to find him vehemently refusing their every suggestion about organizing the climb, and worse, threatening to pull out of his agreement. It sounded as though Lenser was convinced Frank and Dick were trying to take over the expedition (which in part was true, as they would have most of the members and be supplying most of the equipment, gear, and food).