Holes are appearing in the story of the ‘professional climber’ chosen to lead a South African Everest expedition, write Mike Loewe and Mungo Soggot
A curious picture began to emerge this week of Ian Woodall, the mountaineer who was to have led a South African expedition to glory on the summit of Mount Everest.
The Sunday Times this week withdrew its sponsorship of the expedition after clashes at the Everest base camp during which Woodall reportedly threatened to kill the newspaper’s editor, Ken Owen, and his wife, Kate.
But Woodall said he was forging ahead with the assault on the Everest summit. Speaking by satellite telephone the expedition leader said he was preparing for the final ascent. His team is now made up of British photographer Bruce Herod and the daughter of a director of the Anglo American Corporation, Cathy O’Dowd.
Woodall’s 69-year-old father, who was bidding to become the oldest man to climb Everest, appears to have dropped out. Woodall said he was negotiating with the Nepalese authorities to get a second woman, Deshun Deysel, onto the climbing permit. Critics of the expedition have described Deysel as an affirmative-action choice for the team. Her previous mountaineering experience is limited to a hike up Mount Kilimanjaro and there are fears for her safety.
In Johannesburg the Sunday Times editor-designate, Brian Pottinger, said that before agreeing to back the expedition they had checked Woodall’s background, confirming that he graduated from Bishop’s school in Cape Town and had served in the South African Defence Force.
Further investigations by the Mail & Guardian suggest if they had dug deeper the newspaper would have been less enthusiastic about the project — led, as it was, by a man with an unimpressive managerial reputation as well dubious qualifications as a climber.
Veteran Cape climber Geoff Ward said Woodall had worked for him as a sales assistant at Camp and Climb in Cape Town in 1976. In the early 1990s Woodall had applied for a job with the top British outdoors firm, Cotswold Camping, claiming he had been the general manager of Camp and Climb. “He never got the Cotswold job,” said Ward.
According to Ward, Woodall left Camp and Climb in the Seventies to open his own outdoors shops, in Stellenbosch and Cape Town. Both closed after Woodall had apparently failed to keep regular hours.
Woodall has also been described as an “officer commanding an elite British mountain reconnaissance unit”. Ward said: “I have discussed this with British mountaineers and they say there is no such thing.”
Ward said he had climbed the middle-grade, big-wall Cape route, Lucifer, with Woodall in the Seventies and found him to be a climber of only “moderate” abilities.
“I led all the hard pitches on Lucifer, and now I understand he has been talking about being a leading ice climber. This is highly unlikely, as nobody seems to have climbed with him.”
Ward’s description of Woodall’s abilities ties in with accounts by two veteran climbers who withdrew from the expedition at the foot of Everest — Andrew Hackland and South Africa’s top black mountaineer, Ed February.
Hackland said the problems started when they gathered in Johannesburg, before flying out to the Himalayas.
“We were told that everything was being organised and would be there in Johannesburg. But when we got there — nothing,” he said.
When the equipment did arrive “everything promised turned out to be something different. The Goretex gear from Berghaus later turned out to be coming from Cape Union Mart. They don’t make Goretex so the stuff had to be ordered from somewhere else at great expense.”
The South African climbers were also startled when they touched down at Katmandu Airport and saw Woodall produce a British passport at immigration. Another member of the expedition, Andrew de Klerk — who enjoys dual US-South African citizenship — had previously been warned by Woodall that he would only be allowed on the team if he travelled on his South African passport.
Ken Owen reported at the weekend how Woodall flew into a rage when he challenged him about his nationality. Woodall said he had fought on the Angolan border for the South African Defence Force to save the skins of “arseholes” like Owen.
February and Hackland recalled how the team then got to within two hours of the base of Everest only to be withdrawn to a position two days away from the peak. “There was no point being at base camp,” said February. “There was no gear there for us.”
February described how he was making a preliminary climb, hiking up the 5 500m-high Kalar Patar peak, when he saw Woodall — who had only been at altitude for four days — striding out up the path towards him.
“I thought ‘He hasn’t acclimatised, he must be mad.’ Then I saw the guy had nothing with him. No rucksack, no water, no food. This is completely basic — I wouldn’t even walk up Table Mountain without these things. I felt that he was trying to compete with me.”
Soon afterwards Woodall “stopped, sat down and started puking” and appears never to have made it to the top of Kalar Patar peak.
“It was Woodall’s expedition which we put our name to,” said Pottinger this week, shortly before his announcement that the Sunday Times was pulling out. “But things have happened since which have made it impossible to lend our name to it.”
Management at Times Media Limited, which owns the Sunday Times, this week refused to disclose how much money it had pumped into the expedition.