Page 11 - 2019 AMA Summer

Tony was now recognized as a first class mountaineer, with serious Himalayan experience, so in 1955 he was an obvious selection for Charles Evans’ expedition to Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain and still unclimbed. The first ascent by George Band and Joe Brown on 25 May was followed the next day by a second ascent by Tony Streather and Norman Hardie, Tony finding an easier alternative to Joe’s difficult final rock pitch just below the summit. This success made Tony the first man in history to summit two mountains over 7700m.
Two years after Kanchenjunga, Tony was approached by some Oxford students to lead their expedition to reconnoiter/ climb Haramosh, a 7500m peak near Gilgit in the Karakoram. This expedition was to prove one of the great epic tragedies of Himalayan climbing. The party encountered dreadful conditions, with persistent and massive snowfall, which resulted in weeks of delay and the complete disappearance of a key supply dump high on the mountain, as well as an enormous build up of snow. Despite this they found a viable route and fought their way up, and on their last available day they reached a high point of 6400m from which all the objectives of the reconnaissance were satisfied. However, keen to secure some minor summit, two members of the team, Jillott and Emery, continued upwards for a couple of hundred metres towards a feature they’d called the Cardinal’s Hat, and seconds later they were swept away by a huge slab avalanche.
This carried them 300m down the face on the right, over a 100m ice cliff, into a snow basin. The superhuman efforts to try to recover the whole team that followed over the next three days are chronicled in Ralph Barker’s book, The Last Blue Mountain. Tony had always seen his role in the party in some sense as the guardian of the younger, enthusiastic but inexperi-
Jillott and Emery seconds before the fatal avalanche
enced students. Suffice to say that he now set about mounting a rescue, at the absolute limit of their capability. He and a fourth member of the team, Ray Culbert, climbed, and then fell, down into the snow basin. Culbert’s loss of a crampon on the way down, the loss of two ice axes, and the concussion suffered by Jillott in their fall, combined to thwart a series of desperate efforts to escape from the snow basin, ending in repeated falls back into it. Eventually the first two got out, but in the darkness of the second night, Jillott walked over the edge of a 1500m
‘Tony had always seen his role in the party in some sense as the guardian of the younger, enthusiastic but inexperienced students’
face and disappeared down into the Stak valley. After three days in the snow basin without food, water or shelter, Tony eventually managed to climb out, but was forced to leave Culbert, who was unable to do so without his crampon.
When he finally reached their top camp, completely exhausted, Tony found Jillott gone and Emery severely frost bitten and utterly prostrated. Given the awful choice of trying to go back for Culbert, which by now was probably beyond him, and getting Emery off the mountain alive, Tony selected the latter, which he succeeded in doing over the next few days.
Such a ghastly experience would have ended most people’s desire to climb, but in 1959 Tony agreed to lead the AMA Karakoram Expedition, in which a party of
16, including 3 members of the Pakistan Army, deployed the Chogo Lungma/ Hispar Wall area, not far from Haramosh. to train less experienced climbers, including Sgt Mike Quinn, the first NCO to take part in such an expedition. This successful exped climbed six new peaks of between 5000m and 7000m, including the east peak of Malubiting, 7400m.
Nearly twenty years later, in 1976, Tony was again called upon to lead the Army expedition to Mt Everest. Warned by his doctor not to go above 6,000m, he directed the climb from Camp II in the Western Cwm. It was a large expedition, and keeping track of the movement of people, food, oxygen and equipment to ensure resources were available at all camps when needed was a complex business. Tony’s light touch in command was inspirational. He evaluated his team and issued quiet instructions on what he wanted done. Individuals were trusted implicitly to carry out those duties, but equally no one was under any illusions as to who was in charge. That he fulfilled the role perfectly is evidenced by the expedi- tion’s success in being the 12th expedition ever to climb the mountain, which was summited on Sunday 16th May by Bronco Lane and Brummie Stokes.
In addition to his impressive climbing exploits, Tony had a distinguished military career, ranging from a commission in the Indian Army in 1944, and transfer to the Chitral Scouts in 1947, to commanding the Gloucester Regiment, during which he served in many theatres including active service in Borneo.
Tony was a truly outstanding man: a man of huge ability and determination; a brilliant climber; an entirely modest, quiet and understated person; a man of great charm, sensitivity and kindness, and a complete gentleman. He will be sadly missed.
Tony sharing a platform with Joe Brown to discuss the Kanchenjunga climb
On Haramosh
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