A Day of Climbing with Sir Chris Bonington

I was just down at Taos, New Mexico for the Taos Mountain Film Festival, where I presented the film Luxury Liner: The First Ascent of Supercrack on Sunday afternoon.

On Saturday I went climbing with Dennis Jackson, a long-time climbing buddy, Taos local, and author of Rock Climbing New Mexico, and Sir Chris Bonington, Britain's greatest mountaineer. Sir Chris has gone on 19 Himalayan expeditions, including four to Mount Everest and one that made the first ascent of the South Face of Annapurna. In 1962 he made the first British ascent of the famed North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland. He was knighted for his contributions to British mountaineering and alpine literature by Prince Charles in 1996.

Sir Chris is, as he said in the Monte Sagrado bar later, "Just a regular climber. Just a chap who loves to go climbing." He said that "all the money you really need is just enough to go on climbing trips and have a bit extra for going to the pub afterwards." And Sir Chris does love to climb. When he visited two years ago, Dennis and I took him climbing for three straight days during the film festival. Chris's philosophy was that he could watch movies at home any time but he could only go climbing in New Mexico when he was there. Good philosophy.

On Saturday, I was a bit late driving down from Colorado so Dennis and Sir Chris were already climbing at Tres Piedras, a superb granite area 35 miles west of Taos. Dennis had led a short first pitch to a ledge belay, and Sir Chris was leading the excellent second pitch of Chickenheads (5.7), grabbing big flake edges and jamming cams in a diagonalling crack. I photographed him from across the canyon as he edged up the high route crux, finding the critical layback hold and then pasting his feet up smears on the granite wall to a lofty belay aerie. Pretty darn good lead for a 75-year-old climber.

Afterwards we collected our packs at the cliff base and walked back to the trucks parked under swaying ponderosa pines. Dennis said to Sir Chris, "Hey Chris, you wanna beer now?" Sir Chris smiled and replied, "I like how you always think of that!" He offered up his new belt buckle, bought a few days before at Neptune Mountaineering in Boulder, to pop the beer caps. "I didn't know it did that until the fellow at the checkout pointed it out to me," Sir Chris said as he settled back into a folding chair, bottle of IPA snugly in hand, as the late afternoon sunlight slowly faded.

Photographs: Top: Dennis Jackson opens a beer bottle on Sir Chris Bonington's belt buckle at Tres Piedras, New Mexico. Bottom: Sir Chris cruises the crux moves on "Chickenheads" on Mosaic Wall at Tres Piedras. Photographs © Stewart M. Green