The High Life: Legendary mountaineer Conrad Anker on living on the edge

These places care nothing for the fragility of life. As this section was preparing to go to press, three of the best climbers in the world were reported missing and presumed dead following an avalanche on Howse Peak, Canada. The tragic fate of Austrians David Lama, 28, and Hansjorg Auer, 35, along with American Jess Roskelley, 36, serves as a cruel reminder.

Anker was a team-mate of all three missing climbers. He knows only too well the risks involved in their shared profession. He has climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen and on a separate expedition free-climbed the Hillary Step to test the theory that British explorer George Mallory could have made the summit on his doomed 1924 attempt. Footage of the climb shows him stretching for a foothold and slipping, clutching on to a flimsy rope at the top of the world before composing himself and completing the route as though climbing the boughs of an apple tree.

In another film, he scales a frozen waterfall, the Nutcracker in Montana. Cleaving his way up the ice cathedral, Anker nudges his crampons into the jagged tendrils. One swing of the axe dislodges an ice-spear, sending it scything downwards like a thunderbolt from Zeus. It bursts into a million crystals on the rock below. Anker watches it fall and then pushes on. It is a nerve-shredding dance near the heavens, and he makes it look effortless.

After news of the tragedy broke, Anker posted a statement paying tribute to his friends.

‘‘We choose to play by the rules of the mountains because they are our calling,’’ he said. ‘‘We accept the loss that strikes unaware in return for the bonds of friendship created by experiencing life in the majesty of nature. The intensity of the high alpine, guarded by wind and snow and ruled by gravity, is where we find these moments that define us as people.

‘‘It is never easy to lose loved ones, particularly those with so much life left to live.’’ Speaking to the Sunday National earlier on a video link from his home in Montana, he sports a beanie on his head and a buff around his neck, giving him the look of a man half of his 56 years.

He is cheerful and smiles easily. It is a characteristic which anyone who has climbed with him remarks upon. Anker has said it himself – the secret to Alpinism is the ability to stay upbeat when things get tough.

‘‘There is no question that climbing is a way to escape,” he says softly. “The world is so busy today. We are lucky. The opportunity that came to me – I am forever grateful. Here in the states and in Scotland, you can get up and go to the hills, go to the cliffs. The majority of the world can’t go and pursue something as fun-based as climbing and adventure.”

Conrad Anker (left) with his friend and colleague David Lama, who was reported missing on Friday and is presumed dead

Concern creases his eyes as he checks in on another recent fatality in an avalanche on Ben Nevis. He recalls a trip to Scotland, where the weather foiled his attempt to climb the mountain. “I went to Scotland in 95 or 96. It ended up being too warm. You need a really cold February or January over there,’’ he says. ‘‘I remember seeing flowers poking up on roundabouts and thinking ‘oh no’, then we got the rain and drizzle. I went down to the Alps instead,” he laughed.

And while he is not quite ready to hang up his ice axe and allow his crampons to dull in the dark of the basement, he has embarked on a retrospective phase of his career. He arrived in Scotland last week with his Hold Fast: Yosemite To Everest To Meru tour, part of the Speakers From The Edge series which has captured the experiences of mankind’s pioneers.

“I have to get 30 years of storytelling out there. I had no other idea on what to do. It is a culmination of everything that I’ve done. At 56, I’m not a strong as I was when I was 36. You get to understand those things,” he said.

The great, callous landscapes in which he has spent his life have taken away almost as much as they have given him. They have claimed the lives of dear friends and nearly his own. As author and fellow climber John Krakauer puts it: “The way to Everest is not a Yellow Brick Road.”

Anker’s name became globally known when he found the matte-white wind-blasted body of George Mallory on the face of Everest in 1999. In climbing circles, however, he had already chiselled his initials into the annals of Alpinism by way of several gruelling first ascents around the world in Alaska, Canada, Patagonia and Yosemite, to name a few.

In 2015, Anker featured prominently in Meru, the critically acclaimed account of the attempt on the Shark’s Fin of Meru Peak in the Uttarakhand region of India, a sacred five-peaked mountain of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology known as the true centre of the universe.

ALONGSIDE long-time friend, protege and film director Jimmy Chin (who recently scooped an Oscar for Free Solo, the story of climber Alex Honnold’s no-ropes climb of El Capitan in Yosemite) and artist-climber Renan Ozturk, their mission was a compelling story of brotherhood, dreams, determination and peril.

In Meru, the men edge up a granite behemoth as smooth as a watchmaker’s workbench. Screwing in ice bolts and driving pitons into rock in the pitch dark, their climbing gear jangles around their waists like steel kilts. They sleep huddled together on a porta-ledge – a basic platform tent which, in a terrifying moment, had to be repaired after the frame broke several thousand metres up, almost pitching them into the void.

Freezing and alone in a sea of gravity, their laughing mingles with the Himalayan wind as they make light of the hardship – and the food. Anker insists on couscous for every meal. “It’s important to make the situation lighter but it’s also a check on how you’re doing. If you can still have humour, you’re processing these situations in a different way. When it gets bad there’s no humour involved. On Meru we should have had a more diverse menu, but we made it through.”

Six thousand metres up, they gingerly tap the rockface with hammers, feeling the gigantic pillars shift below their chilblained fingers.

The ascent is surgical and the icy grasp of disaster never far away. The Shark’s Fin proves a cruel and uncaring beast and they are completely exposed to the mercy of the cold hard facts of gravity and exposure. Nobody has any business being there.

Against insurmountable odds and after two attempts – they had to abandon the mission metres from the summit and watch helplessly as Ozturk suffered symptoms of a stroke on the latter – they make it.

“Meru was the magnum opus,’’ says Anker. ‘‘I skied Denali, climbed Everest without oxygen and climbed Meru all in 12 months. It’s good to know it’s done.”

On the summit, Anker drops to his knees and pays tribute to his friend and mentor Mugs Stump, for whom Meru had been a great ambition. Stump had died from falling into a crevasse while descending the South Buttress of Denali in May, 1992.

“I had someone in Mugs who helped me out,” says Anker. “Mentorship in climbing is key. We haven’t learned to climb in a vacuum. It is quite literally about showing people the ropes. At this stage of my life, I find that aspect of it really fulfilling.

“Climbing does so much for human interaction. When you think about football or rugby – you have a ball, you have a team, you have time and space, one team beats the other team. If you and I go climbing, it’s Ben Nevis and not getting frozen into a coffin in a sleeping bag.”

Meru also tells Anker’s own gripping story. He and his best friend and partner Alex Lowe were caught in an avalanche while climbing Shishapangma in 1999. As a mass of ice blocks rained upon them, Anker traversed the slope to escape. Lowe and fellow climber David Bridges were swept away and disappeared. The finality of the scene and the speed with which the mountain turns on them is chilling.

Racked with “survivor’s guilt”, Anker pledged to care for Lowe’s family. From grief came love, and he subsequently married Lowe’s widow, Jenni, and adopted their three boys.

In 2016, Lowe’s body was found in Tibet. Anker trekked up, finding remnants of their old camp. As he told National Geographic at the time, he secured the body of his friend, who “weighed 100 pounds”, rappelled down the icefall and trekked eight miles back to basecamp. Lowe was laid to rest, cremated as per local custom.

“You keep your friends that you have lost in mind. You hope that what they did was meaningful to them when they were doing it,” he offers.

“Your friends are best remembered over a wee dram of Scotch. When you’re out there with your partner, you’re in the moment.”

Also in 2016, Anker was dealt a reminder of his own mortality, climbing with David Lama – one of the three presumed dead this week – in a second attempt on Lunag Ri in Nepal. Anker suffered a heart attack at 19,000ft. His condition worsening, he abseiled off the cliff and hiked back to camp. Hitching a lift on a cargo helicopter, he made it to Kathmandu for treatment.

It marked the end of his ambition to take on the walls where the odds against summiting are almost as imperious as the mountains themselves.

“It was unexpected. It was immediate,” he said of the ordeal. “Before that, the worst that had happened to me was a dislocated thumb and a sprained ankle. I’d been bitten by a tick. I’d get a cold once every two years and always had a sturdy immune system overseas. Then this happened. When you’re on top of a mountain, your head’s up. It’s a dangerous place. You don’t want to run the chance of getting hurt. The enjoyment comes when you’re with your friends afterwards and you’re catching up. That’s the most meaningful part of it,” he grins.

“Climbing is all about flexibility, bone density muscle strength and mental acuity. If you look at a mountain or a cliff, you have to look at safety and aesthetic value – these are key.

‘‘If you’re going to climb a Ben in the middle of winter, you need to have your stuff together. If you want to climb granite, you go train in Yosemite and Chamonix and then go on to the Himalayas. It’s about finding those mountain ranges and finding a climb.

One of Anker’s last big expeditions was Antarctica in 2017 as part of the North Face team, of which he was captain for almost three decades. With Chin, he tackled the Wolf’s Jaw massif. Pictures on the top show them in a familiar state. Faces raw and bronzed by the snow glare. Laden with gear. Weary but elated.

“Antarctica is remote and desolate. It does have a wild feel to it. If you are in the Congo or the Amazon or Indonesia or anywhere near the equator there is a lot of life in the wilderness. Being in Antarctica is about as close as one can imagine to being on another planet. Getting to the summit was unique.’’ THESE days, Anker, along with his wife, strives to be an advocate for the environment and ensure that others can be as safe as possible in his domain. In 2003, they founded the Khumbu Climbing Centre as part of the Alex Lowe Foundation charity, a project which aims to increase the safety of Nepali climbers and high-altitude workers – such as the Sherpas, who make a living hauling gear and guiding expeditions. Their top-of-the-range training centre is set to open in Nepal in June.

Anker has said previously that he tackles things with “dog energy” – unquestioning and unwavering enthusiasm.

“From a global standpoint, the big mission is addressing climate change. We need to tax carbon and put it into renewable energy. It’s a real challenge for future generations,” he says.

‘‘Right now, I am getting to be the old dog that lies on the sofa. I don’t have goals with big climbs in mind. I want to share my experiences.

‘‘I’m looking forward to it. You need to let it go. When I was young, the thought of not being able to climb was a thing. You learn not to live in the past and look to the future and what it offers – it’s about being respectful. There is no rush to find the rush again.’’ Anker, however, isn’t quite ready to hang up his climbing gear for good. While in Scotland, he visited Stirling Castle. Exploring one of our greatest monuments, his mind began to wander and climbing routes materialised on the crag.

“I saw this section of the wall and it’s clear that it was built to be climbed. It’s like something from an indoor gym, it’s so perfect,” he laughed.

“You must make the most of any given day and any given moment. ‘Be good, be kind, be happy’ are six simple words you can go through to get a good understanding of what’s what.”