THE ill-fated South African Everest expedition has come under fire again – this time from an American mountaineering journalist who claims that expedition team leader Ian Woodall refused to allow stricken climbers use of his radio in the midst of a catastrophe near the Everest summit on May 10 and 11.
The allegation is made in a lead report in the September edition of American magazine Outdoor, by contributing editor Jon Krakauer. South African expedition photographer, Briton Bruce Herrod (37), died on May 24 after arriving on the summit at 5pm, about seven hours after Woodall, Rhodes master’s graduate Cathy O’Dowd and three Sherpa guides summited.
Since his return Woodall has faced criticism from climbers and the media for failing to order Herrod down when they met him on their way back to Camp Four.
The South African climbing community is also still debating the decision of O’Dowd and Deshun Deysel to continue with Woodall after three strong South African climbers and the team doctor pulled out in protest at Woodall’s “disempowering and dictatorial” leadership style.
Krakauer, who was a member of Everest veteran Rob Hall’s disastrous commercial expedition, tells how he staggered down from the summit into Camp Four on the South Col in the middle of a hurricane that hit 30 climbers on summit day, May 10, and would kill eight of them, including two expedition leaders, within hours.
The next morning the full extent of the disaster struck: he discovered the tracks of expedition mate Andy Harris leading over the western edge of the mountain.
He writes: “I returned to my tent just in time to overhear a radio call between Base Camp and Hall – who, I learned to my horror, was up on the summit ridge and calling for help …
“Then our radio batteries died, cutting us off from the rest of the mountain. Alarmed that they had lost contact with us, climbers at Camp Two called the South African team, which had arrived on the South Col the previous day. When Ian Woodall was asked if he would loan his radio to us, he refused.”
Hall had been trapped on the summit with the last of his clients and was trying to short- rope him down. He is believed to have died that evening.
In further critical references to the SA team, Krakauer writes that “a brilliant climber named Andy de Klerk” and two other “very strong” climbers left after discovering that Woodall was “a control freak”, “had lied about his climbing record … allegedly lied about expedition finances and even lied about who was named on the official climbing permit”.
Krakauer writes: “By this point none of the four climbers left on the team had more than minimal alpine experience. At least two of them, claims De Klerk, `didn’t even know how to put their crampons on’.”
Krakauer says that among the three weakest expeditions, the South Africans were an “especially” frequent topic of discussion around their dinner table in their mess tent at Base Camp.
Hall had complained: “With so many incompetent people on the mountain I think it is pretty unlikely that we will get through this without something bad happening.”
Hall, who was the most experienced Everest leader in the camp and was on the mountain for his eighth time, had called the meeting to prevent a dangerous gridlock of climbers on the summit.
He writes that “the council” had struck up agreements on the order of days on which they would climb, with the exception of Woodall who “declared that the South Africans would go to the top whenever they pleased, probably on the tenth, and anyone who didn’t like it could `bugger off’.
“Hall, ordinarily extremely slow to rile, flew into a rage at Woodall’s refusal to co- operate. `I don’t want to be anywhere near the upper mountain when those punters are up there,’ he seethed.” – Ecna
l Ian Woodall has threatened to sue the East Cape News Agencies (Ecna) for a published report quoting East Cape rock climber Keith James for saying Woodall’s expedition had been “racist, sexist and undemocratic”.
Woodall told Ecna that he and O’Dowd had stood by while bigger news agencies and newspapers had criticised the expedition, but that he would not let a “jumped-up little agency like yours call me a racist in South Africa”.