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Climbers on their summit bid for Everest traditionally leave Camp 4 late in the evening, climb all night in freezing conditions as the jetstream blast them and hope to reach the 8850-metre peak around midday the following day. So it was on 12 May last year that a small group of climbers, guides and Sherpas from the 1999 Sheffield-based OTT expedition left the camp at 26,000 and struck out into the 'death zone', above 8000 metres, where survival is as often a matter of luck rather than judgement. By noon the following day, five of the client climbers, including the youngest, 22-year-old Michael Matthews, had made the summit. Michael had been last, struggling to the peak with guide Mike Smith. The weather had held up to that point, but quickly began to deteriorate. Six hours later Smith arrived back at Camp 4, but Michael, the youngest Briton ever to reach the top of the world, was nowhere to be seen. Smith says Michael was following, but he had lost sight of him as the weather closed in. He had waited, but the intense cold forced him down. Michael's body was never found. Like more than 150 climbers before him, he had been claimed by the mountain. Michael's death affected everyone on the OTT expedition. They had taken to the young man and in the intense and trying circumstances of the mountain, strong bonds of friendship had been formed. 'I summited,' says Yorkshire climber Chris Brown, 'but more than anything else I wish Michael could have come home with us.' No-one knows for sure how he died, but a year later the Sunday Times has discovered that there were many problems on the expedition. Some go right to the heart of what is happening on Everest today, where summit ascents have become almost exclusively the domain of commercial climbing companies who promise to take clients to the top. During the spring season anything up to 17 expeditions can be on the mountain at the same time, strung out between Base Camp and the summit. 'It's a world where conquering Everest has become the ultimate lifestyle tick,' says Canadian climber Dave Rodney, another of the OTT summiteers. The 1999 OTT expedition was a large operation, with more than a dozen clients, six guides and several dozen sherpas. One summit attempt had already been turned back by bad weather, but for this second attempt, the strongest group had been selected. They included Brown, Rodney, Matthews, Canadian family practitioner Denis Brown, Dutchwoman Katya Staartjes and Greek shipping heir Cos Niarchos. Michael was the youngest, although he had climbed two of the highest peaks in the Americas and had extensive Alpine experience. OTT had not baulked at taking him on as a client. He, like others on the trip, had paid $40,000 to OTT, although several of the climbers had paid a lot less, while Niarchos had paid more. But almost from the start there were problems, not unusual on an expedition where most of the participants had never met each other before. 'I was surprised about the lack of meetings, or attempts to build us into a team,' says Katya Staartjes, who became the first Dutch woman to climb Everest and wrote a book about her trip. 'We never talked about summit day in advance. There were tensions within the group, which got worse after the leader, John Tinker left the expedition when he became ill on the earlier summit attempt.' Her views are backed by other climbers the Sunday Times has spoken to. Several have told of deep concerns over the equipment that was used, in particular the oxygen bottles and regulators. Several OTT clients have strongly criticised the behaviour of Nick Kekus, who took over as expedition leader after Tinker left for England. Kekus, a world-renowned high-altitude climber, certainly behaved stranglely at times. At one point, at Camp 4 at 26,000 ft, Kekus attacked one of his client climbers, Dave Rodney, after he complained about oxygen problems. 'I had been worried about the oxygen for our summit bid and after finding that six bottles did not work, I spoke to Kekus about it,' says Rodney. 'He went into a rage and came at me brandishing an oxygen bottle. I was terrified.' According to OTT client climber John Crellin from the Isle of Man: 'The expedition was chaotically disorganised and complacent.' He says there were regular oxygen foul-ups, unreliable and inefficient radio equipment and old gear compared to other expeditions. In a letter to OTT, Crellin complained: 'I was not alone in encountering oxygen problems. In fact, most of the climbers had these problems when cylinders were connected to the regulators which cut out when climbing on summit day. Neither guide Martin Doyle nor myself had oxygen on the night of 13 May at Camp 4.' In his letter Crellin details two further incidents involving violent actions by Nick Kekus on the expedition. Dave Rodney, who had been attacked by Kekus at Camp 4, climbed with Michael Matthews and shared his tent with him. He says that on summit day he was surprised that no sherpa was allocated to his friend. 'Mike's death was definitely avoidable. He should never have been last down the mountain. He should have had people with him and behind him. OTT had 35 sherpas but they were ill-used and could have been managed better.' Rodney, who was on his way down from the summit, last saw Michael at 11am on 13 May who was on his way up at the Hillary Steps when he said he was fine, having just met up with guide Mike Smith. He had been slow ascending that day, although he had been fine up to that point. 'It could have been anything,' says Rodney, 'but certainly could have been oxygen playing up as it did with so many other people in the group.' Another member of the expedition, Canadian family physician Dr Denis Brown, while critical of the comparative lack of experience of Michael Matthews, is strongly critical of OTT's organisation. 'In summary, I would say that Mike was inexperienced, but for that very reason should have been looked after way better than he was. Having accepted him onto the expedition, OTT should have looked after him. Ultimately, they failed him.' He told the Sunday Times he thought the expedition was too big and in its final stages, badly organised. 'I don't recall any briefings on the summit day. Nick Kekus never came round to talk to us. Everyone was left to do their own thing. There was a lot of confusion about which sherpa was looking after who. I never felt we knew who was doing what.' Dr Brown didn't personally have problems with oxygen, because he chose to climb without it. Even so, he says, he spent 13 hours on the ascent on his own, before being forced down without summiting. 'Oxygen creates its own problems, particularly when descending,' he says. You get used to it and then, just when you are at your most tired, it may run out and you suddenly have to do without it. That's when many people get into trouble. I'm fairly sure that it was happened to Michael.' Later, at a post-climb meeting at Base Camp, several of the climbers present say that OTT staff tried to minimise the oxygen problems. When they spoke out about their experiences, they were told not to mention this as it might upset the Matthews family. Later, back in the UK, when Michael Matthews' father David had a meeting with OTT, once again the issue was denied. There were no problems, Kekus is reported to have said. In fact the problems were extensive. All the climbers spoken to by the Sunday Times experienced failures on at least one occasion. And the Sunday Times has discovered that the oxygen used on the expedition was purchased from Henry Todd, who supplies most of the oxygen at Everest Base Camp and runs a guiding company called Himalayan Guides. Todd, 55, is an unusual character. Had the climbers on the expedition known more about his past, they may well have been reluctant to trust his gas. In 1979 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison at Bristol Crown Court for his part in Britain's largest ever drug conspiracy trial. Known as Operation Julie, Todd - one of the ringleaders - was thought to have helped to make 15 million doses of the hallucinatory drug LSD and banked hundreds of thousands of pounds in Swiss bank accounts. Todd served six years before being released. He later made friends with John Tinker of OTT and was best man at his wedding. According to Tom Sjogren, a Swedish climber who was on Everest at the same time as the OTT expedition, Todd has been supplying expeditions with 'counterfeit' gas. Tom and his wife Tina are Everest veterans, having been on the mountain four times. Last year he bought 130 gas bottles from Todd, one third of which were American, so-called 'Life Support' bottles. We found that one in three of the LS bottles were faulty,' he told the Sunday Times from New York. 'Valves broke when you connected them to the regulators.' And Sjogren was so concerned about rumours he heard that the better quality, Russian-made Poisk bottles, used by only two clients on the trip, had been illicitly filled in India, rather than being imported directly from the factory. 'We decided to visit the factory in Russia and to our horror, found that Todd had stopped dealing with them two years ago. 'They showed us their quality control procedures, which are excellent and were very concerned to hear that their bottles were being sold as if they were genuine. Todd also told us he was the sole authorised supplier, which is untrue. The bottles are very expensive - around $350 each for six hours of oxygen - and if you can refill them yourself, the profits are enormous.' Sjogren, who runs an Everest website, now warns people who read it to check that their bottles have come direct from the suppliers. According to Katya Staartges, the problems stemmed from using Poisk bottles with the LS regulators. While the valves of this hybrid system worked at Base Camp, in the thinner atmosphere above it led to leakage. 'So many people had oxygen problems,' she says, 'especially at the Balcony where bottles were changed. It was a poor system that had not been tested properly.' At the end of May this year, Todd was involved in yet more controversy when he attacked American climber Finn-Olaf Jones at Everest Base Camp. 'It wasn't your typical mountaineering injury that ended my Everest dream - it was a fist,' Jones said. He had to hire a helicopter to airlift him from the camp back to Kathmandu, so fearful was he of what Todd might do to him. The mountaineering world has tried to bring some order to climbing on Everest and in 1997 the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation sponsored IGO 8000, a set of guidelines for high altitude guided commercial expeditions. Both OTT and Todd's company are founder members of IGO 8000 which is supposed to be at the cutting edge of client safety. While stressing that there is no qualification appropriate for high altitude climbing, the guidelines stress that guiding and portering staff should be adequate for the aims of the expedition. However, nothing can remove the danger. 'Above 8000 metres you are on your own,' says Ian McNaught-Davis, president of the International Mountaineering the Climbing Federation. 'No-one can really help you if things go wrong. No-one can offer any guarantees.' In the world of professional guides the death of Michael Matthews is seen as 'misadventure' - the kind of thing that can happen on Everest and a risk you take when attempting such an imposing adversary. But his father, David, a successful businessman, is convinced that more straightforward reasons lie behind his son's death. 'It was not the mountain, but the ineptitude of the guiding company, OTT, that killed our son,' he says. 'I believe what happened and how it happened needs to be brought out in public and that lessons about commercial climbing on Everest need to be learned.' Last night OTT accepted that there was a compatibility problem on the oxygen system, but said it had been solved before the summit push. 'No clients (apart from Chris Brown) reported any problems with their oxygen on summit day, other than the usual mask-freezing problems,' says OTT's Andy Brown. OTT admitted that Nick Kekus had 'lost his temper' with Dave Rodney on the mountain, but blamed it on Rodney himself. The company claims that MIchael Matthews was asked to descend the mountain by sherpas before the summit, but ignored the advice. They cannot explain how it was that he made the summit with official guide Mike Smith. And Andy Broom says that weather conditions prevented any kind of rescue attempt being made. Back to MountEverest.net.... |
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