“Awareness that more than a fair share of Australians had stepped into this realm never to return alive, tempered my usual enthusiasm.”
Tim Macartney-Snape may be Australia’s best known mountaineer. In 1984, he and Greg Mortimer were the first Australians to summit Everest—which they did via a new route, without supplementary oxygen and in ski boots (after their mountaineering boots were lost in an avalanche). Tim is also the only person to have ever climbed Everest from sea to summit. Beginning with a dip in the Bay of Bengal, three months of hiking and climbing later he stood atop Everest for the second time. While the Everest ascents secured his fame, Tim has countless more notable climbs to his name.
But we all need to start somewhere. And Tim started in New Zealand, more than 45 years ago. This is his story of meeting the mountains.
Relativity of size when it comes to steep bits of the planet is starkly thrust home
