:04:04
We'd met this lad called Richard Hawking
in Lima. He'd been travelling on his own.
:04:09
And I think we said, "Why don't
you just join us on our trip?"
:04:12
I think he said that he didn't
know anything about mountaineering.
:04:16
I didn't really know
what pot of brew I was in.
:04:19
or quite, what I was
letting myself in for.
:04:22
We wanted Richard because
when we were on the mountain,
:04:25
if he were at base camp he
could look after our kit.
:04:28
I got to know Simon quite well.
:04:31
I don't know whether it was
because of his personality,
:04:34
or whether it was because he
was more forgiving towards me,
:04:38
being a non-climber
in that environment.
:04:41
But I found it very
hard to get to know Joe.
:04:47
I was much more ambitious
about doing it than Simon was.
:04:54
Siula Grande meant a lot.
:04:57
We knew, a number of
expeditions had failed on it.
:05:02
If no one had tried, it
wouldn't be quite the same.
:05:04
It was the the fact that people had
tried and failed, so we knew it was hard.
:05:09
And my feeling was, "Well, we'll
just do it. We're better than them."
:05:22
Since the 1970s people
have been trying to climb
:05:25
mountains in the great ranges
in what's called "Alpine style".
:05:31
And essentially, Alpine style
means you pack a rucksack
:05:34
full of all your clothing, your
food and your climbing equipment,
:05:38
and you start off from a base camp
and you try and climb the mountain
:05:41
you're gonna climb in a single push.
:05:43
You don't fix the line of
ropes uphill beforehand,
:05:46
you don't have a set of camps
that you stock and come down from.
:05:51
That's the purest style and that's the style
that Joe and I had climbed Siula Grande.
:05:59
It's a very committing way of climbing,
because you have no line of retreat.