By Claude Adams
Even among extreme skiers, Greg Hill is
a phenomenon. The BC man has spent most of his adult life climbing and skiing
at high altitude, up where the air is thin and risk is ever-present. It’s been
a life of high adventure, and a lot of fun . . . But then, on a recent morning,
Greg Hill came upon a scene he can never forget—a snowfield of death in the
mountains of Nepal.
Greg talked with 16x9’s Jill Krop in
his first extended interview at his home in Revelstoke. (October, 2012)
Watch the full 16x9 video story HERE
VO
THESE
ARE THE MOMENTS GREG HILL LIVES FOR.
CLIMBING TO THE TOP OF THE
WORLD.
AND THEN COMING DOWN SLOPES NO ONE
HAS EVER SKIED BEFORE.
IT’S A PASSION THAT DROVE HIM TO EXTREME
LENGTHS.
LIKE SETTING A RECORD FOR
VERTICAL ASCENTS.
In 1999 I was hiking up a mountain and I did a big
day and I was 5000 foot day and I started doing math and I was..Wow if you did
just over 5000 feet everyday you’d do 2 million feet.
VO (various climbing and skiing
shots)
IT TOOK A LONG TIME AND A LOT OF
TRAINING.
BUT FINALLY, IN 2010, HE MADE IT.
TWO MILLION VERTICAL FEET
IN THE SPACE OF ONE YEAR.
THAT’S NEARLY 400 MILES OF
MOUNTAIN . .CLIMBED.
SU from 2million.movie 5:59 “ (CLIP—HIS JOY OF MAKING IT)
“There it is (shows altimeter at 2 million feet)
CHEERS. I guess I am going to get emotional. Holy shit. “ You’re a nutbag.
You’re crazy! (Greg tearfully) Holy shit. One year!”
BUT AT THESE ALTITUDES, IT’S NOT ALL
CELEBRATION
THERE ARE RISKS AT EVERY TURN.
YOU NEED A CLEAR MIND, A FIT BODY AND
ABSOLUTE FOCUS
there’s all sorts of different levels of things you have to
consider out there. Most of the time obviously avalanches are your biggest
hazard
JILL: DESCRIBE AN AVALANCHE TO SOMEONE WHO’S NEVER SEEN ONE
OR HEARD ONE OR BEEN IN ONE
An avalanche is very similar to a wave on a beach, except it
starts at the top of the mountain and it’s this big vertical wall of snow which
kinda sweeps down the mountain.
WITH A LOT OF FORCE
With a lot of force something you never wanna be below or
above.
HIS ABILITY TO ASSESS RISK PROBABLY
SAVED GREG’S LIFE ON A RECENT VISIT TO NEPAL.
(PHOTO OF GERMAN TEAM)
HE WAS WITH A TEAM OF GERMAN CLIMBERS
ON MANASLU, THE WORLD’S EIGHTH HIGHEST PEAK.
AND WHAT HE SAW DISTURBED WHAT HE
CALLS HIS “MOUNTAIN SENSE”
(PHOTO OF LINEUP ON MOUNTAIN)
This was the most busy mountain that I’ve ever been on I
mean you can see from one of my pictures it’s there’s a line up of humans going
up the fixed ropes and yeah we’re very busy.
VO
300 CLIMBERS . . . 200 SHERPA GUIDES
(photo of mt, with camp 3 marked)
SOME OF THEM SETTING UP CAMP
IN A BOWL-LIKE DEPRESSION THAT SEEMED, TO GREG,
DANGEROUSLY EXPOSED.
No I would never camp at camp 3.
Especially at that spot
JILL: EVEN A ROOKIE COULD SEE THAT
COULD BE IN THE DIRECT LINE OF AN AVALANCHE
Yeah definitely some questions
with that camp spot I was surprised when I got up that day and saw about 14
camps up there.
VO
GREG AND THE GERMAN TEAM FOUND A SAFER
SPOT TO PUT UP TENTS
We were just trying to get to our
Camp 2 which was positioned on this kind of a rise and a bit of an ice bulge
and as safely as I could find on the mountain.
SO YOU PICKED THE SITE WHERE YOU
AND YOUR GERMAN CREW SLEPT
Definitely as a group we picked
it, there wasn’t many other places I would have slept on that mountain.
One of the rules is definitely to
sleep in the safest spot you can find.
VO
BUT GREG SAYS THERE’S ANOTHER CODE IN
MOUNTAINEERING.
WHEN IT COMES TO RISK, YOU MIND YOUR
OWN BUSINESS.
Everyone has their own kind of
risk tolerances in the mountains and they’ve got their objectives, and they’re
willing to take that risk and..we’re not gonna go over there and force our
views on them.
JILL: EVEN IF YOU THOUGHT THEY
WERE IN DIRECT LINE OF AN AVALANCHE YOU WOULDN’T TELL THEM THAT
There’s very experienced people
there and they’re all making their own decisions and like I said they’re
deciding on their risk tolerance and it’s not for me to tell them what to do.
VO
ON SEPTEMBER 23, AT 4:45 AM, GREG WOKE
UP . . . AND HE KNEW THERE WAS TROUBLE.
Just right off the bat, the winds
and just kind of started flapping our tent really flapping our tent, . . .
we were just oh that’s really odd and I think that was an avalanche that
just went by.
we could hear voices up the slope
and peeking out and we could see head lamps and desperation desperate voices
shouting for each other and we knew that something had just happened
once it got clear and we started
hiking up we could see that it was a huge event. Many people caught in it and
it was the entire tents 14 tents that we had seen the night before were gone
somewhere in the debris*****
(RESCUE VIDEO)
WHAT’S YOUR VERY FIRST THOUGHT
Our very first thought was well we
should go save them.
JILL: FIRST THING YOU SAW WHEN YOU
GOT THERE?
we saw a discarded down boot which
meant somebody’s tent had been bashed and then we knew there was no tents left
up at base camp 3 that everything had been swept down so all of a sudden
there’s another discarded boot there’s jackets there’s sleeping bags and then
there’s saw a bit of the first group of French people that were sitting there
and you could see they were obviously all shell shocked
it’s freezing cold at 5 am so we
basically just gave them some hot drinks and stuff and so started focusing on
those that were actually in need of our direct assistance.
YOU’RE NOT A DOCTOR
No I’m a First Aid attendant. I’ve
been a First Aid attendant for 16 years. But I’ve only dealt with sprained
wrists and splinters I’ve never really dealt with anything actually real this
was the first time it was real.
WHAT WAS THE RANGE OF INJURIES
the one guy Ralph that we started
digging out right away he was kinda buried up to here with his tent all wrapped
around him and he had some broken ribs and kind of a dislocated arm out there
in the snow,
VO
GREG’S MOST VIVID MEMORY, THOUGH, IS A
FRENCH WOMAN, NAMED CATHERINE.
I remember she actually had a ton
of internal injuries and was really not with us but we wrapped her and got her
on a sleeping mat and then all sorts of sleeping bags and got oxygen on her and
kinda seemed like she’d be able to stay with us but as the length of the rescue
happened she definitely she just faded away and there was nothing we could
really do for her***
Jill: SHE WASN’T THE ONLY ONE TO DIE
THOUGH
No there was many others that were
completely buried and suffocated in their tents under feet of snow
VO
(viz of hill sobbing and talking)
IT’S THEN THAT GREG WAS OVERCOME BY
EMOTION.
HE TURNED THE CAMERA ON HIMSELF
SU HILL TALKING/SOBBING
I didn’t know any of them, but
it’s so fuckin’ sad . . they all come out here trusting their Sherpas and
everything and camp in this huge avalanche bath (?) and I don’t know, how many
died, ten? Oh God!
VO
GREG THEN DID SOMETHING HE’D NEVER DONE BEFORE
HE LEFT A MOUNTAIN . . .UNCONQUERED
My time there was done and I wouldn’t have any desire to
climb it at this period of my life and I was just gonna grab everything and
exit stage left and get back to what’s important to me
WHICH IS..
Family, friends.
(Revelstoke scenics—then home with his family)
VO
BACK HOME TO REVELSTOKE, BC
HOME,
AND HIS TWO KIDS AND WIFE TRACEY
THE EVERYDAY THINGS THAT HELP BLUNT THE BAD MEMORIES.
TRACEY SAYS SHE’S NOT UNCOMFORTABLE WITH GREG’S LIFESTYLE
I
find that Greg’s a very passionate person about what he loves and that’s who he
is that’s how he’s always been . . and
he’s happy.
VO
HAPPY . . . BUT IN HIS CLUTTERED WORKSPACE, GREG CAN’T SEEM
TO GET HIS MIND OFF THE HUMAN DRAMA HE WITNESSED.
HIS HASTILY-UNPACKED CLIMBING GEAR STREWN ACROSS THE FLOOR.
. . AS HE REVIEWS THE IMAGES FROM MANASLU WITH HIS SON AIDAN
JILL: WILL YOU STILL KEEP TRYING TO SCALE THESE HIGH
MOUNTAINS
I’m sure at some point I will try those peaks again it’s
something that I get to fully experience and say I had to deal with this
tragedy I think it’ll take a while.
VO (shot
of him on back porch looking at mountains)
SO FOR THE TIME BEING, HE’LL REST, AND PROCESS THOSE
EXPERIENCES IN NEPAL.
BUT THE MOUNTAINS, AND THE MEMORIES THEY HOLD, ARE ON GREG
HILL’S HORIZON, EVERY DAY.
END
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