By Canoe Endeavour: Everest

Kathmandu - starting point for expeditions to climb Everest -

is a 7,500-mile drive from Britain.

Mick Hopkinson negotiated the narrow streets with an irreplaceable cargo.

11 handmade racing kayaks, and the only ones in Nepal.

This was a unique expedition.

Six Olympic-class canoeists with some outstanding

firsts in white-water canoeing to their credit,

including a 220-mile descent of the Blue Nile

and the first shoot of the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon.

They came to Kathmandu not to climb the highest mountain in the world,

but to descend the highest river in the world, the Dudh Kosi.

The British Everest Canoe Expedition

had taken over 18 months to organise.

It was led by Mike Jones, a 25-year-old doctor from Birmingham.

Rob Hastings, the most stylish canoeist in the team, is a teacher.

22-year-old Dave Manby, the youngest of the seven bachelors.

Roger Huyton is a Yorkshireman from Bradford.

As is Mick Hopkinson,

at 28, the oldest and strongest of the party.

John Liddle, despite being a chartered accountant,

received the most love letters.

But choosing John Gosling, a Post Office catering manager,

to cook the food was pure genius.

Climbing expeditions are commonplace in Kathmandu

and even the most modern clothes,

tents and equipment are taken for granted.

Why have these helmets got holes in them?

To let the water out of course.

Who takes boats up a mountain?

There's snow up there and these paddles won't be much use.

From Kathmandu, the trail leads due east, crossing range after

range of foothills to meet the Dudh Kosi after 80 miles.

The source of the river is on the Khumbu Glacier

above the Everest base camp, at an altitude of over 18,000 feet.

The highest river in the world.

It runs past the historic Thyangboche Monastery,

Namche Bazaar - the Sherpas' home village -

and at Jubing has fallen over 13,000 feet in its first 50 miles.

50 miles later, it meets the Sun Kosi and becomes wide

and peaceful as it flows down to the Bay of Bengal,

a thousand miles away.

So the walk began.

It's 130 miles to the source of the river but everyone was aware

as the path winds up ridges and down valleys,

that there was over 45,000 feet of uphill grind in front of them.

The porters vary in age from 14 to 40,

and carry loads weighing up to 60lbs.

For this, they're paid about a pound a day.

The Porters' Union rated the canoe the same as a crevasse ladder,

long and awkward, so an extra 25p a day was charged.

It seemed a bargain.

The day's walking started for everyone at 6.00 am.

By 9.00 it was already warming up, and by 2.00 it was raining.

One of the biggest risks for a canoeing expedition

is to find no water in the river.

Mike Jones' team weren't going to walk for 17 days

just to find a dry river bed.

So they chose to do it in September, at the height of the monsoon.

As the rain fell, even the most pessimistic member

accepted that there'd be more than enough water for all of them.

Empty, the canoes weighed 30lbs,

but full of rain water they were unmovable.

There was a limit to what the porters would carry,

even for that extra 25p a day.

Walking, camping and living with 60 porters has certain benefits.

They carry your equipment and they cook your food.

At first this seemed a luxury, but as dysentery struck down one member

after another, the advantage seemed dubious.

Good weather cheers everyone up and soon the scenery became more Alpine.

THE MEN SING

Tantalising views of mountains were seen on the fine days.

But they were still in the jungle

and the blood-sucking leaches fed well.

BIRDS SQUAWK

As the day's walk came to an end, the tired legs became more hesitant

and the load seemed more cumbersome.

Everyone looked for the campfire smoke.

For the porters, this meant delicious roast chickens, rice,

dhal and chapattis.

For the Saabs, the best British dried food,

delicately flavoured with fibreglass bonding resin

that seemed to have pervaded everything.

After a week, the expedition pleaded with the porters

and ate their food for the rest of the trip.

Eight days out from Kathmandu, they reached the Hillary Bridge

and saw the Dudh Kosi for the first time.

Sherpas have a healthy dislike of water

and a real fear of crossing the bridges, which are left

unrepaired until they fall down, usually with someone on them.

As if from the crocodile-infested lower reaches of the river,

the iridescent canoes seemed reptilian,

even to the inoffensive local lizard.

At the top of each ridge, the mountains came into view,

but these were only of minor interest to the canoeists.

While mountaineers would look up for routes,

the canoeists look down,

scrutinising every foot of the river.

Is there too much water?

Will we be able to do it?

Four days later, they reach Namche Bazaar, the Sherpas' home village.

The expedition porters were Tamangs from the lower Sun Kosi Valley.

Sherpas - the aristocrats of the Himalayas -

prefer to carry for climbing expeditions, with tents,

rope and high-altitude clothing as their perks.

But the Tamangs did their job, puzzled only by what they would do

with a canoe if they were given one as a perk at the end of the trip.

By now the team were getting acclimatised

as they spent more time over 10,000 feet.

They even began to take for granted ten-year-old girls

acting as pack animals, carrying 50lbs of wood.

Thyangboche Monastery is as sacred to climbers

as to the monks themselves.

Huddled beneath the highest peaks of the Himalayas

with its Buddhist monuments,

it occupies a unique position in the long history of Everest.

Early expeditions spent days there acclimatising

as the Sherpas made the prayer wheels spin for a safe return.

SHERPAS SING PRAYER

For the first time, the expedition saw Everest -

remote and insignificant.

That night there was an air of anti-climax,

but at dawn mountains came into view that were uniquely Himalayan -

cold, dominating and dangerous.

As the expedition got under way,

higher, even more spectacular peaks crowded the skyline.

But slowly, Everest grew in scale until there was no mistaking it.

Squat, huge - sitting firmly above the expedition's objective -

the Khumbu Glacier.

Once on the glacier, the canoes were easier to handle, but a swift

gust of wind could really give the porter a nasty headache.

Now they were in real climbing country, and Eric Jones,

one of the two climbers with the expedition, took charge.

The snows from Everest avalanche into the Western Cwm

and join the giant Khumbu Glacier.

In summer, this melts and somewhere on its surface the canoeists

found a lake, the real source of the Dudh Kosi.

They had established a world's altitude record for canoeing -

17,500 feet.

The great advantage of canoeing down a mountain is that once the

head of the river has been reached, it's all downhill from there on.

They knew there was to be nothing as easy as this for the rest

of the descent, but even here there were risks.

At this altitude, a sudden violent movement provokes

uncontrollable panting, as the lungs gasp on the thin air.

And a capsize would be very dangerous.

The fibreglass canoes, just four metres long,

were specially re-enforced to resist the hammering from the rocks

in the river and the sheer hydraulic force of the water.

As it turned out, even strengthened, they just couldn't take

the battering they were to get.

Canoe design is a compromise between strength and weight.

If, for example, these canoes had been made of steel,

they would've been clumsy in a fast-moving river, and perhaps even

more important, the porters wouldn't have been able to carry them.

The ice lake gave the team some experience

of some high-altitude paddling.

Under the south face of Lhotse, the magnificent satellite

peak of Everest, the real river began.

Dave Manby led the first part with Rob Hastings,

who didn't like these shallow waters at all.

It was very frustrating for the first three days

because it was so rocky and it was so steep.

It was very difficult to actually paddle cos there were

so many rocks of all shapes and sizes littering the whole river bed.

And because there wasn't very much water in it,

it was difficult to actually get your paddle into the water.

Soon the river steepened, and the narrow gaps

between the boulders forced the water into high-pressure jets.

Break-out points were further apart

and the concentration required to avoid rocks intense.

The rapid thrust of the paddle, a gasp for breath,

a moment's loss of concentration...

and Dave Manby capsizes.

He tries to recover.

Tries again.

Tries a third time, it's his last chance, he's got to get out.

The boat came up and he'd capsized. I could see he tried to roll,

the paddle came to the surface

but there just wasn't really very much space.

His paddle was trapped between the canoe and a rock,

and the next thing I knew, he was swimming,

so I immediately jumped out of my canoe.

There's very little that you can do when somebody is swimming

because of the strength of the current.

Virtually the only thing you can do is position yourself strategically,

where he's most likely to be swept up,

and jam yourself so you don't get pulled into the river as well.

And the force of the water was incredible.

And the last thing you want to do is to complicate the problem

by swimming yourself.

And fortunately, I just positioned myself behind this rock

and Dave got swept up onto it and I just grabbed him.

He clambered out and he avoided a very unpleasant experience.

You can't survive for very long swimming down a river.

You lose your breath and the next thing you know is you just give up.

But if you exhaust yourself while you're swimming

then you just get short of breath, you start taking in water,

you go underneath, you hit rocks, you're continually hitting rocks,

continually going underwater.

Fortunately Dave's injuries were minor and now the party knew

it was possible to survive a high-altitude capsize.

But what would've happened if Rob hadn't been there to catch him

and pull him out?

The canoe was a complete write-off and Dave gave it as a souvenir

to the porters, solving by chance the problem of porter perks.

It's now a chicken hutch at the Thyangboche Monastery.

Everest was still visible on the clear days

but as they descended, the river steepened again

and became more serious.

All the time the canoeists are looking ahead for eddies,

where they can break out from the high-speed,

lung-bursting dodging between boulders.

The water was just above freezing

and survival time in it could be measured in minutes.

Rob Hastings was in good form, taking a bold line down the river.

By now, his confidence was high,

but there were problems ahead even he couldn't anticipate.

The force of the water was quite extraordinary.

I mean, I suddenly realised... the rigidity in my boat just went,

sort of snapped like a bow string or something.

The canoe just folded up, just behind the cockpit,

just behind me, and I could feel it.

The boat was sort of V-shaped and immediately I realised that it was

quite a potentially dangerous situation.

I was in mid-stream so I had five or ten seconds to get to the bank

or I realised the boat would sink and I would be swimming.

And to swim down a river like that is the last thing you want to do.

Fortunately, Rob managed to repair his canoe

while the team explored the river below.

They were looking for suitable break-out points above impossible

waterfalls and narrows, where the bank team could snatch

a passing canoe before it swept over the fall.

Ahead was the worst sluice they'd encountered so far.

And there were only two possible eddies

where Rob and Roger could stop.

Rob misses the first one...

shoots the fall and makes the second.

Roger Huyton wasn't so lucky.

This was the nightmare that continuously haunted them -

to be swept out of control for just one second too long,

and then jammed irretrievably under a boulder.

After 20 miles, the river fell into a steep-sided gorge.

Geoff Tabner, one of the climbers, made a route down so the team

could get a closer look to confirm that it was navigable.

Already they had broken three canoes and at that rate the remaining

eight canoes wouldn't see them through the next 79 miles

to where the Dudh Kosi meets the placid waters of the Sun Kosi.

Access to the gorge was almost impossible and the waters rushed

along with undiminished force.

An accident here would be unthinkable.

It was a remote, savage place, where chockstones the size

of several houses hung poised,

ready to crash into the turbulent waters.

Rob Hastings climbed back up,

memorising the route they were to take down the river.

Left of that boulder, right to that eddy, avoid that log.

Unconcerned by all this, Leo Dickinson,

one of the cameramen, was determined to get into the perfect position

where the jungle wouldn't screen his view.

Mike Jones had suffered from the three most common

Himalayan ailments - piles, dysentery and snow blindness.

They all made boating an unpleasant experience.

And in fast, exciting water, they could easily be forgotten.

The gorge ends where the Dudh Kosi is joined by the Bhote-Kosi

and suddenly the expedition began to feel the full force of the river.

This was white-water canoeing at its most difficult.

In the Alps and Britain, the team had practised on the steepest water,

but the Dudh Kosi, falling at 270 feet per mile,

was over four times as steep as anything they'd met before.

One essential qualification for every member of the team

was to be able to recover from a capsize by rolling his canoe

on the first try, every time, and in the fastest water.

There may be no time for a second attempt, and to lose the boat

and try swimming in these conditions would be fatal.

Apart from rocks, boils and whirlpools, the most formidable

obstacle is a stopper wave - where the water turns over on itself

and can seize a canoe or swimmer and churn him until smashed or drowned.

The only way to break out is ploughing through it.

This is impossible in a full-size life jacket,

which makes them lethal.

The team's jackets were just to give them some sort of buoyancy,

but not enough to trap them if they were caught in a stopper.

Rob Hastings was the first to take a bath in this sort of water.

I capsized on the first fall and I realised

I would be swept into the second fall before I had time to roll up,

just cos I hadn't got my paddle into position,

so I hung on upside down.

And the next thing I knew was scraping rocks on my helmet.

It was here that training and practice counted.

Disorientated,

Rob recovered beautifully to negotiate the next fall.

The Sherpa kids really enjoyed the whole show.

Dave Manby, now fully recovered from his earlier swim,

may lack elegance but he makes it up with bags of nerve.

This was real grade-six water - the most difficult there is -

where a capsize was a problem but to lose the canoe would be a disaster.

By now they were confident that they were masters of the river

and looking at the bottom was just a prelude to flipping up again.

Canoeing in this sort of water calls for strength, a finely developed

sense of balance, and judgement to know when to pause for a rest.

Above all, it requires a cool head when situations get out of control.

Rob capsized right above a waterfall

with no time to recover before he's over it.

He rose up, completely lost,

and heading rapidly for another impossible situation.

Capsizes...

Rolls up again.

It's exactly this sort of sequence that can lead to disaster

but Rob regains control.

Mike Jones, stopped by the hydraulic back pressure of the stopper,

had to use all his strength to break through it.

This was the biggest fall they'd encountered -

over 15-feet high with a giant stopper at the bottom.

Once caught in that, there was little chance of getting out.

Mick Hopkinson psyched himself up to do it,

and, like a true expert, made it look easy.

For the success and safety of the party,

it was essential to operate as a team.

They would follow each other through a section,

then pull aside to make sure everyone was in good shape

before tackling the next bit.

Individual brilliance was important, but if things went wrong,

good teamwork could avoid a disaster.

After his virtuoso performance on the waterfall,

and seven years without falling out of his canoe,

Mick Hopkinson was full of confidence.

It was the end of a long day, we'd been on the go since six o'clock,

canoed for... Probably for four hours on some really difficult water

and at the end of the day, I made a mistake.

A lapse of concentration.

Capsized and was swept sideways onto a large rock.

Water pinned the canoe against the rock

and I was upside down in the water.

And the water was going so fast, such was the force of it anyway,

I couldn't get out of the canoe. I was being held against the rock

by the water, perhaps for 40, 50 seconds.

I had to sit up, I had to get out of the boat,

I had to do something, and I kept trying and trying.

Eventually, I realised I wasn't going to do it.

And at that point, the boat actually bent,

came off the rock and I managed to get a breath.

Mike Jones had seen what had happened and reacted instantly.

He shot downstream to get ahead of Mick,

who made a frantic attempt to grab the end of his canoe.

But these were desperate waters

and Mike had to look after his own survival.

As the canoes slid over fall after fall, Mick,

bowled over and over by the water,

was swept out of sight, down another channel.

Mike Jones, still hindered by his snow-blindness,

managed to hold his canoe across the current.

And Mick, completely exhausted, grabbed the stern.

Shocked, battered and confused, Mick Hopkinson was pulled onto the bank.

Mike Jones had just performed a classical and extremely

skilful canoe rescue on technically difficult waters.

Mick was very lucky to be alive.

And I ended up swimming.

I think swimming's the expression of it. Actually you just float.

I was so exhausted I couldn't even try to swim for the bank.

And at that point,

Mike managed to get back in his canoe and chase after me.

But...I thought that was it, I though that was the end.

I should imagine drowning's very much like going to sleep.

I was so physically exhausted from trying to get out of the canoe,

from floating down the river,

that I stopped caring.

It's as simple as that.

There's no panic. Panic involves a certain amount of adrenalin,

a certain amount of energy, and I just didn't have any energy left at all.

I was just passing out altogether. That was it.

Helplessness is probably the worst thing.

I popped out again and could take a breath

and then back under the water.

All this time, you're being rolled along the bottom

and getting your head cracked against rocks and things.

And you think, "This is it."

Well, the water was flowing very fast,

and all you can hear is a crashing noise.

I think probably when you get swept underneath for a long period

of time and you get really frightened, there's very little you can do.

It's the man in the water's job to try and get hold of the canoe.

The actual canoeist can't do that much.

Mike couldn't have done a great deal to, say, physically lift me

onto the canoe at all. Because the water was so difficult,

he had to paddle down it himself.

And once I actually, even though I'd got hold of the canoe,

I had to let go of it cos we dropped into a fairly big stopper,

the two of us, and if I'd held onto his canoe

then he'd have ended up swimming as well.

So I actually let go once.

But...perhaps Mike's...

As I say, Mike's big problem was he didn't know exactly where

to go down the rapid himself cos he couldn't see.

I actually opened my eyes and all I could see was some brown/blue colour

and I was longing for the surface, to see the sky, if you like,

and I couldn't.

I was just completely, absolutely exhausted.

So much so that just getting hold of the end of his boat

was a major effort and willpower.

And eventually, even when he pulled me near the bank,

I just stared at the bank, you can appreciate that.

I don't think a drowning man does clutch at straws.

I just stared at the river bank

and I didn't have the energy to lift my arm to get hold of it.

I was eventually pulled out by some of the porters.

The way I looked at it anyway was that, having made

a mistake like that, I'd never make another mistake.

I'd never do the same stupid thing again.

I'd never have the same lapse of concentration.

I was that much more experienced than I was the day before.

By now, most of the canoes had been damaged

by smashing against rocks in the river.

Every night, they were patched and reinforced

but three had already been written off.

It seemed worth taking a risk to recover Mick's canoe,

hoping it might be possible to repair it.

Rob recovered it, and only now was it possible to see how Mick had

managed to escape from under the boulder.

His struggling under the water and the sheer force of the current

had split the boat apart.

As a special treat, Mick was given the last brand-new boat

being carried by the support party,

with instructions to look after it this time.

Each night they camped alongside the river

and the Sherpa cook boys did their best to make

the fibreglass-flavoured food taste interesting.

There were no fresh eggs or chickens to be had.

At dawn, the air was frigid and the icy water,

crashing past the tent door seemed very uninviting.

It required a real effort of will to leave a warm sleeping bag,

put on sodden wet suit trousers, damp sweaters to sit in a canoe

with only 4mm of fibreglass between your backside and the cold river.

There was no warm-up period. One minute they were on the bank,

the next, hurtling down the river again.

Just to show who was boss, the whole expedition

and Mick, breaking in his new canoe, shot the same rapids again.

As Mick put it, "After 18 months of planning, and ten weeks

"of getting there, you don't give up because you've fallen in."

By now they'd been canoeing for ten days, and had descended

over 10,000 feet from the start on the Khumbu Glacier lake.

Each section of the river was inspected before a descent was attempted.

Here, all the water was swept under a jammed log.

A mistake upstream

and the canoeist would be wedged in his canoe under the tree trunk.

The team discussed its feasibility,

not wanting a repetition of Mick's near-fatal swim.

Finally they took the chicken run,

the easier, quiet water near the bank.

With only a few canoes left serviceable

and some of those held together with sticky tape,

they were taking no chances of failure with success so near.

The river was utterly relentless.

Falls, haystack waves, rocks

and the ever present thunder of rushing water.

Mick and Mike take the next section of the river.

Mick sees a huge stopper wave, but it's too late.

He's swept into it, spun into a loop and contemptuously spat out.

Mike cunningly avoids it.

At last, the end of the steep section was in sight.

They'd travelled 50 miles and descended over 13,000 feet

in the steepest and most continuously difficult water

anyone on the expedition had experienced.

There was an air of relief after conquering

the most difficult section.

And Dave Manby ducks into a victory roll.

But they were still only halfway down.

They needed a holt to repair what canoes they could

and to take stock of the food, which was rapidly running out.

No-one would let go of his special handmade paddle,

particularly as they cost £25 each.

Writing off a canoe was one thing, but to a canoeist, his paddle

represented the driving force behind the canoe, the steering

mechanism, the brake and the recovery device on a capsize.

Losing a paddle in the Dudh Kosi is as serious to a canoeist

as losing an ice axe is to a climber on the summit of Everest.

The tea quickly warmed them up

and they began to recall the incidents of the trip.

Mike Jones' rescue of Mick,

Rob's first roll, hammering his head along the bottom,

John Liddle still enjoying his stock of love letters,

Dave Manby the first one to take a big swim,

luckily well caught by Rob Hastings.

John Gosling, still explaining the taste of fibreglass in the food

and the missing stock of Dundee cakes.

Roger Huyton, who made such a contribution high up,

and, with his smile, keeping everybody's spirits high.

With only two serviceable canoes left, the expedition still

had 50 miles of the Dudh Kosi to complete.

The two Mikes volunteered to try an Alpine decent

through the more placid lower reaches.

They set out as the rest of the party started the long trek

to Kathmandu.

There would be no comforting support party on the bank

to help the canoeists if they got into trouble.

They carried the minimum of equipment and food -

a sleeping bag each, a few bars of chocolate

and the expedition's last Dundee cake.

Two thoughts filled their minds

as they paddled past mile after mile of paddy fields -

where would they be able to get some cooked food,

even if it was only a few chapattis?

And if the river really was infested with crocodiles,

as the Sherpas said, where were they all hiding?

They paddled for 50 miles round bend after bend,

until each curve merged into the next as a solid green wall.

It seemed endless.

They had arranged to be met where the Dudh Kosi meets the Sun Kosi.

It seemed a vague arrangement,

but right on schedule, the helicopter appeared

and the fear of the five-day walk out to Kathmandu was eliminated.

Their journey's end was really in sight.

Elated with success, they paddled for the last time on the Dudh Kosi.

They'd no food left and they'd seen no crocodiles.

But the expedition had successfully completed

the longest canoe descent in the world.

For each of the team, it was a triumph.

A burnt face and swollen lips were the last mementos

of the high-altitude sun.

The weight they had lost would be regained

once they were eating normal food.

But for them all, this had been the ultimate in canoeing adventures.