Brian Wilkins - Among Secret Beauties: A Memoir of Mountaineering in New Zealand and Himalayas

Hillarys comment was so prophetic that I find the events of 1954 push all other memories out of the way and insist on being told first. I begin among the high reaches of the Barun Glacier and peaks, an area between Everest and the fifth-highest peak, Mount Makalu.

Ed Hillary, Jim McFarlane and I set off from base camp on 24 April, to explore, climb, acclimatise, and to gather information about future climbing opportunities. Some of our Sherpas having gone back to the pass into the Barun to bring up more supplies, we had five to accompany us, all of us carrying reasonably heavy loads. My moderate 18-kilogram pack at 17,000 ft (5200 m) had me gulping for air for the first time.

A few hours picking our way among the sharp-split granite moraine might have been tedious in other circumstances, but when we came around a corner, what we saw pure white, directly ahead of us was Mount Everest. Though only 19 kilometres away, it looked remote, not only because the two peaks of Lhotse dominated the foreground, but for me, because the real Everest was slow to yield to the mystical Everest I had carried with me ever since I first read the climbing books in the Dunedin Athenaeum library as a boy.

Lhotse (centre) and Everest (behind) from the upper Barun. Photo: Brian Wilkins

Sentimental language was usually avoided among a group of climbers at work, but if it had been appropriate, I would have asked Hillary what his feelings were almost a year since 29 May 1953, when for the first time since that day he was back looking upon the scene of his climb.

We camped on the moraine. More delights came our way when our first mail runner caught up with us. My family and friends did me proud. Hillary opened a letter from his wife, telling him she was pregnant. Another mountaineer? No idle quip.

As we carried on up the Barun I wondered, would I be one of those who never acclimatise properly? Hillary, Lowe and Evans had been through it all before; proven acclimatisers. Many others who come to these mountains never acclimatise, or acclimatise so slowly during weeks or months as to be unable to do much climbing at all. One can do nothing about it except wait for the throw of the biochemical dice. How were the others doing? Id been going better than McFarlane on the first day, but on the next, when we went to 17,800 ft (5400 m), alongside the glacier, the roles reversed and I was sitting down for a spell at every third boulder, it seemed. My diary says:

Comparing oneself with Hillary is no help at all. In spite of the fact that he is far from well, he has been in the lead all the time without any apparent distress. Now he is sitting by himself high up on a terrace above the glacier. With the memories that are there for him on the skyline, and the news from home, I dont think he is taking much notice of our stumblings as he sits in a clear line of sight to the beacon which had set for him his lifes course.

Farther up the Barun next day, we camped above the glacier. In two days we had moved around Makalu from the south to the west. By climbing the peak immediately above us we could look into the huge glaciated area, almost five kilometres wide, making up the western slopes of Makalu.