Return to Everest

The world's highest mountain towers behind Lhotse on the right and the staggering Nuptse wall. www.project-himalaya.com

Fifty years ago, a Swiss expedition almost succeeded in becoming the first team ever to conquer Mount Everest. Now, one of the original climbers, aged 76, is to retrace his footsteps.

Jean-Jacques Asper was only 26 when he became the first man to enter the daunting Western Cwm. The huge basin, which is only accessible via Everest’s heavily crevassed Khumbu icefall, was considered impassable at the time.

However, the harsh conditions on the climb left the Swiss Alpine Club team too exhausted to actually continue to the summit.

“After having climbed 1,000 metres in one single day, we were in a horrible physical state,” Asper told swissinfo.

“Then, we spent three nights at 8,000 metres, which absolutely destroyed us. We didn’t have the strength to go on.”

Swiss expedition

Now Asper is joining a Swiss expedition to Nepal, organised by Swiss climber and cameraman Stéphane Schaffter, to mark the 50th anniversary of this amazing achievement when Swiss climbers came within 250 metres of the 8,848m-high summit.

However, Asper, who is still extremely fit and regularly goes skiing and climbing in the Swiss Alps, says he will not be able to go further than Namche Bazaar, the Sherpa capital, which lies at 3,440 metres.

“With my health I don’t think it would be possible to go any higher as my heart has its limits. The doctor told me not to do too much,” he told swissinfo before his departure.

The beginning

The idea for the climb was born two years ago when expedition leader Stéphane Schaffter asked Asper whether he had any plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his climb, which actually paved the way for the British to finally conquer the top of the world in 1953.

“I asked him whether he had any idea what to do in 2002 and whether he would like to join my expedition. He was immediately taken by it and promised me he would come,” said Schaffter.

Schaffter also invited Yves Lambert, the son of the 1952 lead climber Raymond Lambert; Tashi Tenzing, the grandson of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese who also joined the 1952 expedition; and Jean Troillet, an extreme Swiss climber, who attempted the first snowboard descent of Everest in 1997.

Apart from “just” climbing Everest, Schaffter’s mission is to shoot a film to commemorate not only the amazing achievement by the Swiss in 1952 but also the special friendship between the Sherpas and the climbers from Switzerland.

A special friendship

“In my film I’d like to emphasise the special friendship between the Geneva people and the Sherpas and I hope we’ll have the same relationship again this year,” said Schaffter.

In 1952, after the British had already tried to scale Everest nine times, the Nepalese authorities unexpectedly granted the Swiss Alpine Club permission to climb the mountain, which the local Sherpa people call Chomolungma – Mother Goddess of the Earth.

On 28th May, Raymond Lambert from Geneva and Tenzing Norgay climbed as high as 8,600 metres without oxygen. A year later, Tenzing Norgay was to be the first human to set foot on the top of the world together with New Zealand’s Edmund Hillary,

Although the two climbers had to give up 250 metres below the summit due to exhaustion and bad weather, they became great friends for many years to come.

In his book “Man of Everest”, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay spoke a great deal about his friendship with Lambert. He said he felt a lot closer to the Swiss than to Hillary, with whom he was associated for most of his later life.

“Lambert had shared a tent with me all the time during the expeditions and we became very good friends. In the English expedition I had to live alone in my tent,” Tenzing Norgay wrote in his book.

In my father’s footsteps

Schaffter’s film, “In My Father’s Footstep”, which has attracted interest from television stations across the world, will compare the two Everest expeditions. Schaffter’s plan is to mix footage of Asper’s remarkable crossing of the Western Cwm 50 years ago with a crossing by today’s climbers.

The film will also follow Yves Lambert, focusing on his father’s memories and comparing them to the expedition of 2002. However, Lambert insists his quest is not to finish his father’s mission but to climb the mountain solely for himself.

“I don’t have this pressure of reaching the summit for my father at all. Otherwise I would have felt this pressure for the last 20 years,” said Lambert. “My father climbed very difficult routes but I never had this pressure of having to climb similar or better than him.”

The trip

Schaffter’s expedition will cost a total of SFr700,000 ($420,000) and will be mainly sponsored by the Swiss luxury watch company, Rolex. The team will be one of at least five expeditions on the Nepalese side of Everest, while at least another ten teams will be trying their luck from the northern side in Tibet.

They will be following the same route Raymond Lambert and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay pioneered 50 years before. The climbers are expected to arrive at base camp at the beginning of April and will make their first summit attempt in early May.

However, Lambert said it would not matter if he failed to reach the summit since his main focus is to enable Schaffter to produce a good film.

“The movie itself will be a success whether we reach the summit or not. The movie is about the anniversary, about the Sherpas, about friendship between the Swiss and the Sherpas, but it’s not a movie of how to climb Everest from the south side,” he said.

The Swiss finally became the first Europeans to reach the summit of Everest, when Ernst Schmied and Jürg Marmet reached the top on May 23, 1956.

by Billi Bierling