David Beresford responds to some of the rumours circulating about what happened on Everest
THE power of women’s tears is legendary and the force is compounded when the woman in question is tough enough to have conquered Mt Everest. Cathy O’Dowd was battling to hold back her tears when I gave her a copy of Ken Owen’s article on the Everest expedition last week – denouncing her account of how she had climbed to the summit of the earth (M&G November 1 to 7).
The attack on O’Dowd comes from a man long regarded as South Africa’s finest polemicist. But polemic is no friend of logic, as Owen demonstrates. At one point, for example, he describes the failure of the South African media to uncover the true story about the expedition as “disgraceful” – seemingly over-looking the fact that, as the story was unfolding, he was both on the scene and the editor of South Africa’s most powerful newspaper.
At another point he refers to O’Dowd’s account as “unverified rubbish about events at which she was not present”. But perhaps the most serious allegation contained in Owen’s article deals with the death of team photographer Bruce Herrod near the summit, an event from which Owen – who did not reach Base Camp – was even further removed.
Owen might protest that he made no allegation about Herrod’s death, only pointing to the absence of explanation. But his statement that “Herrod disappeared in strange and so far inadequately explained circumstances” clearly suggests there may have been something sinister about his disappearance.
And – to depart from Owen’s polemic – it is there that the danger lies where the Everest expedition is concerned; that in the miasma of insinuations surrounding the saga, the mountaineers are being placed in the Kafkaesque position of an accused who is in ignorant of charges on which she (or he) is being tried.
It is, therefore, worthwhile trying to frame and examine the charges, not only from Owen’s letter, but as contained in the numerous articles as well as the gossip which surround the subject. They can perhaps be summarised as follows:
O’Dowd and team leader Ian Woodall failed to reach the summit and that their photographs were a fabrication.
This, seemingly, can be dismissed. The chairman of the Mountain Club of South Africa, Andre Schoon, has reportedly pronounced himself satisfied that they made it. And even their fiercest critics concede the point; for example Jon Krakauer – the US climber who’s letter accusing the South Africans of refusing to lend their radio for a rescue mission was published in the M&G (“What’s the real Everest story?” November 8 to 14) – said “I do not doubt O’Dowd, Woodall and Herrod reached the summit.” In addition the sherpas who made the climb appear to have logged O’Dowd’s and Woodall’s ascent with the Nepalese authorities.
There was unfair or foul play at the crossroads where Herrod was concerned.
This charge is difficult to pin down and could encapsulate anything from O’Dowd and Woodall taking an unfair share of oxygen to their pushing Herrod over a precipice. Although there may be dispute as to where precisely O’Dowd and Woodall and Herrod last met, time factors make it certain that it happened while Herrod was still ascending and the others descending.
Herrod reached the top and made radio contact with his girlfriend in England, among others, offering no apparent complaint about his treatment, or his predicament (if he faced one). In the absence of any evidence to the contrary there are no grounds whatsoever to suspect foul play. If Herrod was labouring under some disadvantage – if, for example, he had insufficient oxygen – the judgment to press on was primarily his own. There was no motivation for the others to drive him on. At most, it appears, Woodall can be accused of an abandonment of authority (of which more later).
The South Africans shamefully failed to play their part in rescue efforts during the storm which claimed five lives on the ridge above Camp Four on May 10.
The circumstances of the worst single disaster on Everest for decades are still hotly disputed; even the hero of the saga, the Russian “superman” Anatoly Boukreev, has been accused of abandoning climbers and acting irresponsibly. As Krakauer said (in a different context) in his letter, Woodall and Herrod had not taken part in that assault on the summit, because “they had almost died simply climbing to Camp Four during the high winds of the previous afternoon”. He added that they were “hypothermic, delirious and barely able to walk” – and so presumably unfit to take part in the rescue.
Unlike the Russian, they had not even been above Camp Four, so their contribution to a rescue would anyway have been limited. O’Dowd has said they did offer to join rescue operations at a later point, but were refused on grounds they would be a hindrance. The charge that they refused instructions from Camp Two to surrender their radio for a rescue bid has been answered by O’Dowd, who says it was made without the authority of the rescue co- ordinator and rejected at the time as ridiculous. As yet there is no contradiction of this.
Woodall was unfit to lead the expedition.
This is perhaps the most obviously justified criticism of the expedition … and, arguably, of its sponsors.
Owen has described Woodall as “deranged”, recounting in a despatch at the time how the experience of the expedition leader’s rage gave him an insight into the “heart of darkness”. Reflection on what is known about Woodall suggests his derangement – if such it is – is of the Walter Mitty variety. A plethora of evidence, which has not been contradicted by Woodall, indicates that he fabricated his own credentials in an almost pitiful way – from his business background (he said he had been the general manager of a camping business, but seems to have been a sales assistant) to the claim that he was an instructor at Sandhurst and commanded a non- existent British Army Long-Range Mountain Reconnaissance Unit which trained in the Himalayas.
Such affectations on Woodall’s part could explain much about the turbulent expedition – poisoning it from the outset. Nursing the image of himself as a ruthless commando, it could have accounted for his intolerance of criticism, the breach with the other South African climbers and even the conflicts with other expeditions: his perhaps over-abrupt rejection of the Camp Two request that the South Africans surrender their radio and the appalling arrogance he displayed – by Krakauer’s account – towards the legendary New Zealand climber, Rob Hall (killed in the May 10 storm). Taking part in a Camp Four meeting of expedition leaders to try to thrash out an agreement on staggering summit bids, to avoid gridlock on the approach, Woodall declared that the South Africans would go when they liked and anyone who didn’t like it could “bugger off”, according to Krakauer.
But what of 27-year-old O’Dowd ? She has stayed loyal to Woodall. Perhaps that was a misjudgment. But the judgment to rely on his leadership was one of which 32 sponsors – including the Sunday Times at the outset – were equally guilty. And after the fall-out she faced a choice not only between Woodall and the three dissident climbers, but between success and failure – between a humiliating climb-down by South Africa in its first attempt to conquer Everest, or a gamble on Woodall.
She chose Woodall. In a very real sense she gambled her life on him. Perhaps it was no credit to him she won. But the lack of appreciation of what she did achieve at least explains why tough girls do cry.