Alison Hargreaves

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Alison Jane Hargreaves (born February 17, 1962 in Mickleover , Derbyshire , † August 13, 1995 at K2 ) was a Scottish extreme mountaineer .

Alison Hargreaves was best known for her ascent of Mount Everest without additional oxygen in 1995 and caused a sensation with spectacular solo climbs, which she also performed while pregnant. In particular, ethical discussions, for example regarding the obligations and risks that she carried as a mountaineering mother, were triggered by her tours. Alison Hargreaves died in 1995 at the height of her mountaineering career trying to climb the three highest mountains in the world in one season. She left behind her husband, Jim Ballard, and two children.

Alpinistic achievements

year mountain route partner annotation
1983 Aiguille du Midi Frondo foothills Ian Parsons Start of intense mountaineering
1984 Mont Blanc du Tacul Supercoloir Ian Parsons Ice climbing
1984 Aiguille de Triolet and Les Courtes North face Ian Parsons
1984 Matterhorn North face Ian Parsons
1985 Grandes Jorasses North face Ian Parsons
1986 Lobuche Normal route for acclimatization for the Kangtega Jeff Lowe, Tom Frost and Mark Twight 1. Expedition to the Himalayas
1986 Kangtega Northwest Mark Twight First ascent of the route
1987 Ama Dablam Normal route Steve Aisthorpe 2. Expedition to the Himalayas, canceled due to bad weather
1988 Eiger North face Steve Aisthorpe During pregnancy (6th month)
1989 Les Droites North face Steve Aisthorpe
1990 Trango Towers Nameless Tower Jeff Lowe and Catherine Destivelle David Breashears films the rise
1992 Matterhorn Hörnligrat solo During the descent, she helps four poorly equipped climbers from the mountain and suffers frostbite
1993 Climbing all six major north faces of the Alps on your own
Grandes Jorasses Shroud First solo ascent of a woman
Matterhorn North face First solo ascent of a woman
Eiger Laup route First ascent by a British woman
Piz Badile North face
Aiguille du Dru »Bonatti pillar« North face First solo ascent of a woman
Three Peaks North side First solo ascent of a woman
November 1993 Grandes Jorasses Croz Coloir solo First winter ascent by a woman, helicopter photos of the ascent by David Sharrock
3rd expedition to the Himalayas - 2nd expedition to the Karakoram
1994 Mount Everest South side Member of a medical expedition led by Simon Currin, a general practitioner from Wales Demolition at 8,500 meters due to storm and cold
05/13/1995 Mount Everest North side Expedition with Dick Allen A woman's first ascent without help and without additional oxygen. At the summit she meets Christian Kuntner
08/13/1995 K2 Abruzzo ridge Expedition with Dick Allen Accompanied ascent without additional oxygen, fatal accident on descent

Life

She lived with her parents Joyce and John Hargreaves in Mickleover / Derbyshire, the place where she was born. They later moved to Belper in Amber Valley . Hargreave's mother worked as a math teacher, her father at British Rail . She had two siblings. From 1973 she kept a diary, which she continued until her death. Hargreaves did her first climbing at the age of eight with her father and sister.

In 1976 Hargreaves saw a lecture by mountaineer Doug Scott , who in 1975 made the first ascent of Mount Everest over the southwest face. Mountaineering became the focus of her life. The book "The White Spider" by Heinrich Harrer about climbing the north face of the Eiger became her favorite reading. On vacation with her parents in the mountains of Tyrol in 1976 she saw the Alps for the first time. In her diary she wrote: “I pushed up the blinds in the sleeping car and looked out and there were these fantastic rock walls and I just burst into tears. I felt this was my home and I just wanted to stay there. ”In 1978 she started a weekend part-time job at Bivouac, an athlete and mountaineering business that belonged to her future husband, Jim Ballard. With this activity she got in contact with well-known mountaineers within the British climbing scene. Due to the fascination of mountaineering, she neglected her academic achievements, in the end she did not have a degree. In the Bivouac , Hargreaves developed his own useful accessories for mountaineers. She called this product line "Faces". She bought an industrial sewing machine and began making magnesia bags and gaiters for mountaineers. The business quickly became another mainstay in the Bivouac , another workshop was rented and employees were hired. In the years that followed, she was repeatedly out and about in the Scottish mountains, training and refining her technique and expanding her “Faces” product line. She was invited to a climbing event in France, where she could compete with others. She got to know Catherine Destivelle and Catherine Freer. In 1987, her friend and role model Catherine Freer was killed in a crash on the Canadian Yukon Hummingbird Ridge / Mount Logan.

On April 23, 1988 she married Jim Ballard, in the same year their son Tom was born (who died in February 2019 during a winter ascent on Nanga Parbat ), in 1991 her daughter Kate. Her husband's listlessness and unfriendly demeanor led the once thriving business Bivouac into the red. Hargreaves therefore decided to go mountaineering professionally and thus ensure the maintenance of the family. At that time Hargreaves learned that Catherine Destivelle had climbed the Eiger single-handedly. In her competitive thinking, she felt this as a major defeat, as she wanted to achieve a similar level of awareness.

When the business finally went bankrupt and the house in Meerbrook Lea was auctioned off, they were destitute and homeless. Necessary items were stowed on their old Land Rover and the family set off for the Swiss Alps. At first they lived in a rented trailer. For their mail they had given their parents' address, where bailiffs soon turned up. Wandering around Europe, Hargreaves and their children were now homeless.

The great north faces of the Alps

In 1993 she wanted to climb the six most difficult north faces in the Alps on her own. She had found a sponsor who supported her with 600 pounds a month for three years. Hargreaves was completely upset because of the extreme family situation, and she also had concerns about being with her husband, on whom she still felt dependent. He determined their destinies and their plans and acted outwardly as their manager. Concerned that a judge could transfer custody of the children to Ballard because of her passion for mountain climbing, she did not separate from her husband.

Little by little she climbed the Grandes Jorasses over the Shroud, the Matterhorn and the Eiger over the Lauper Route. The Piz Badile , the Aiguille du Dru and the Drei Zinnen followed . For all of these north faces she had resolved not to take more than 24 hours, which she succeeded in doing. During this expedition, she wrote her book A hard day's summer , which was published in 1995.

Meanwhile, she learned that TV reporter Rebecca Stevens was the first British woman to climb Everest. Rebecca Stevens was the front page of many Chamonix newspapers and was now England's most famous mountaineer. Disappointed that she could no longer achieve this goal, Hargreaves traveled to Chamonix to become the first woman to climb the Grandes Jorasses over the Croz Coloir in winter . She succeeded by hiring David Sharrock as a photographer , who took photos from the helicopter. When she reached the summit, she hung herself on the helicopter's rope and was flown into the valley.

Mount Everest

In 1994 she was given the opportunity to take part in a medical expedition to Mount Everest led by Simon Currin. The attempt to climb Everest alone and without additional oxygen failed due to strong winds and extreme cold.

As soon as she got home, she received an invitation to Banff , where she was able to report to an audience on her solo ascents in the Alps. She met Chris Bonington and Joe Simpson at a panel discussion with organizer Bernadette McDonald . Then her book A Hard Day's Summer was published .

At the suggestion of George Band , the chairman of the British Mountaineering Association, she traveled to Everest again in 1995. The idea was that within a year the three highest mountains in the world would be climbed by a British female climber. Richard Allen was there as the leader of the expedition. On May 13, 1995, Hargreaves climbed the summit via the north route, without additional oxygen and outside help.

After this success she traveled home for 2 weeks, Richard Allen had her equipment transported to the K2 .

K2

At the end of June, Hargreaves traveled to Pakistan and went to K2 . The leader of the expedition was Rob Slater , a businessman from the USA. The team also included the British mountaineer Alan Hinkes , whom she met on the trek to K2. After setting up the high camps and acclimatizing, Alan Hinkes climbed the summit, Hargreaves feared misunderstandings in the press due to the simultaneous ascent with Hinkes and decided not to climb. Her goal was a solo ascent. Shortly afterwards the weather changed and the expeditions waited weeks in the base camp for improvement.

When the weather improved, Hargreaves attempted another climb. On August 13, 1995, she stood at the summit in the evening hours - after an ascent with the Spanish team and without additional oxygen. On the descent the weather changed, a storm swept over the mountain, in which she and six other mountaineers got. It is believed that Hargreaves was swept off the mountain at the height of the bottle neck and crashed over the south flank. Lorenzo Ortas reported wind speeds of around 140 km / h. Five other climbers died in this storm.

Reports of her death the day after

The Spaniard Lorenzo Ortas reported after the disaster: When they continued their retreat at 4 a.m. on August 14, they found some items of clothing at around 7,300 meters far away from their descent route, in the middle of the huge south face of K2. Ortas moved towards it to get a better view and came across a boot in the process. It had a battery-powered heater - Hargreaves was the only one on the mountain who used such a heater. She had shown Ortas how the boots worked a few days earlier at base camp. He found an anorak and crampon three meters below the boot, both items belonging to Hargreaves' possession and smeared with blood. When he looked from this point at the wide gully above him, he could see three noticeably separate tracks in the snow, which in turn had blood stains.

He looked up again at the summit ridge and assumed that the three were swept off the mountain from a height of around 8,400 meters - that is, still well above the neck of the bottle. He took the crampon to hand over to the Hargreaves family, but his descent became more difficult and he left the crampon behind. Ortas followed the gully a short distance down and discovered a body on the edge of some massive chunks of ice. The body was on the same level as the Spanish camp 3, but from above it had no chance of getting to the body. From the moment Ortas saw the clothing on the body, he was pretty sure it was Hargreaves. Ortas climbed back to Pepe Garces , both of them descended to camp 3 in order to advance to Hargreaves from there. But they soon had to give up this plan, as neither the equipment nor the supplies were available in camp 3. Hargreaves stayed where it was. The perceptions of the Spaniard Lorenzo Ortas can be read in the book "Die Gipfelstürmerin" by David Rose and Edward Douglas .

Peter Hillary also reports that he went to nearby Broad Peak , where Scott Fischer was on site, who has just completed a successful ascent of the mountain with customers. Peter Hillary borrowed binoculars from Scott to search the K2 for survivors, but found no one.

Literature and Sources

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hargreaves, Alison
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hargreaves, Alison Jane (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British extreme mountaineer
DATE OF BIRTH 17th February 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Mickleover , Derby , Derbyshire
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1995
Place of death on K2