Chief Scout’s Commissioner Andre Bredenkamp summits Mount Everest on June 14 2004

Chief Scout’s Commissioner Andre Bredenkamp summits Mount Everest Andre Bredenkamp holding the South African and World Scouting flags on Mount Everest.

You get to the top, you feel particularly lonely. There is snow everywhere. It’s a blizzard. You have this mask on your nose and your face, and a big hood over your ears. You can’t hear anything. It is completely silent, you can just hear yourself breathing. You have such sensory deprivation. You see people gesticulating to each other. You shake hands, pat each other on the back. "You take off your mask, you have no oxygen, you want to fall asleep. You don’t have the capacity to feel much, you aren’t thinking straight. "Then you realise you have a job to do. You think about putting up the flags. There is a country you are standing up for, this flag of democracy. You really have to concentrate. You have a strong bond with the nation whose flag you are putting up there. You feel solidarity, patriotism. I have done this for my country. You drink some water, put your mask back on and turn around to go down." This was how Maritzburg-raised Andre Bredenkamp described how it feels to be at the top of the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest. Bredenkamp, who cut his mountaineering teeth in the Drakensberg, recently became the first South African to summit Everest from the Tibetan side. He and 15 other climbers made it to the top during a heavy blizzard, on the same day that three other climbers died in their attempts. Interviewed over coffee on his return, Bredenkamp described how, having made it to the top, he turned around and walked another seven hours back to his base, feeling "more physically drained than I had ever felt in my life". But, said Bredenkamp, it is at times like this that you see God "loudly and clearly" and it is at times like this that the soul leaps with rejuvenation. The softly-spoken 46-year-old Cape Town property developer – who is the son of retired Maritzburg Varsity Professor of Religion, Vic Bredenkamp and his wife Marie – spoke with emotion about the 15 minutes he spent at the summit. "I didn’t cry at the top because my eyelashes were stuck together. I took off my glasses and my eyelashes froze together. I was trying to get them apart," he said. During the interview, Bredenkamp described the close bond he formed with his sherpa, Lakpa Chir, the wretchedness he felt at having to leave an injured Korean climber to die on the way down and the emotion he felt when he found that his friend and fellow climber, Chris Drummond, who turned back just before the summit because of frost-bite, had waited for him at the 8 300 metre high camp from which they made their bid for the summit, despite the fact that the camp had been abandoned due to an avalanche warning. Bredenkamp also described his pride at being a South African on this trip, his commitment to a "life of service" in the country and his passion to make the most of each day and to fill his life with adventure. A boy scout from an early age and now South Africa’s Chief Scouts Commissioner, Bredenkamp left two flags, one incorporating the South African Scouts logo and the emblem of the International Scouts movement, in addition to the South African flag at the top of Everest. He is passionate about the scouts and ascribes many of his personal qualities and strengths to what he learned as a young scout in Pietermaritzburg. Bredenkamp was largely responsible for changing the rules a few years ago to open its membership to girls. As the chief scouts commissioner, he voluntarily spends about two hours a day of his busy life working for the movement and can be found regularly walking with a group of scouts on Table Mountain. Bredenkamp’s dream to summit Everest was born about four years ago while he was trekking with two friends in Nepal. They were Chris Drummond and Mike Nixon, both fellow property developers in Cape Town. "That was when we first saw Everest. It is such a beautiful mountain and it was a moving experience. The three of us had walked ahead of our group. As we stood looking at the mountain, we told each other we would all be back to have a crack at the peak." Having articulated their dream, the three then "read all the books". They later joined up to climb the Acconcagua summit on the border of Argentina and Chile – the highest mountain on the South American continent and then, about nine months ago, to climb Mount Elbrus in Russia. They had all previously climbed Kilimanjaro. Now, with Everest under his belt, it is a case of "four down, three to go"’, for Bredenkamp, who wishes to climb the highest summits on each of the seven continents, a feat that only one South African, Sean Wisedale, has accomplished to date. Explaining why he decided to go up from the Tibetan side, Bredenkamp said: "About 70% of ascents are done from the south, from Nepal. People tend to choose the easiest route when climbing the hardest mountain. The north side generally gets the worst weather. We chose to ascend from the north because we had seen it from the south on our trip to Nepal and enjoy travelling to new places. Secondly, we wanted to get away from the hundreds of climbers who ascend from the south. Thirdly, the cost of a permit for the north is considerably cheaper. Nepal charges $10 000 a person from the south and it is about half the price from Tibet. As it was, this trip cost us R250 000 each, including the costs of flights, hiring sherpas, yaks for transport, food and oxygen bottles.’’ The trio left at the beginning of April this year on their two month journey. After weeks of acclimatisation, Nixon had to turn back after developing a lung infection. It was only Bredenkamp and Drummond who made it to the 8 300 metre top camp from which they made their summit attempt. "We reached the camp at about 5 pm together with about 70 other climbers all hoping to take advantage of the good weather forecast for the next day. After melting snow for some tea, we went to sleep, only to be woken by our sherpa at 11 pm to prepare to depart. It took at least an hour to do the most mundane things, like putting on boots, because of the cold and the shortage of oxygen. Every time you do something, you have to stop and breathe for a minute or two. Just tying your shoelaces is exhausting.’’ They started their ascent just after midnight on May 19. "We put on our crampons and started walking with torches on our heads. We climbed for about seven hours in the dark. Chris was still with us at this stage. Then we got to a section at the top of a ridge, when a big gust of wind flung Chris about 20 metres down the side. He was stopped by a wedge in between two boulders and, in the process, he lost his ice axe. "When he recovered and got back on the path, he was very shaken and had lost his nerve. We realised that, with another seven hours to go without an ice axe, he would not be able to climb the final slopes of ice – and then turn around and walk for another seven hours back to the camp." So Drummond turned back and left Bredenkamp to continue. He reached the summit at about 2.30 pm – becoming one of 15 out of 70 to make it to the top. After experiencing the exhilaration at the top, an exhausted Bredenkamp turned around – only to be confronted by the most traumatic event yet. "A Korean man had made it to the top and was walking down just in front of me. I noticed at a particularly difficult climbing section that there was a big delay – and discovered that he had fallen and broken his leg. "He was lying in the snow with people around him and he was begging them not to leave him. We looked at him and we had to leave him and walk on. We simply did not have the capacity to carry him or drag him. We could hardly keep upright ourselves. Some people took out their spare jackets and covered him and we told him to relax. He stayed there, nobody tried to carry him down. Nobody was capable. It was ice cold, there was little oxygen. They were really urging him to go to sleep and die peacefully. "You try to distance yourself. You tell yourself I must just walk on, but you know that someone has just called out for help and you have been incapable. I could do nothing, I could barely stand up myself. You realise this is a vicious mountain." After a gruelling climb down, Bredenkamp returned to the camp at about 10 pm in the dark. "If I had been any more tired, I would have died. When I arrived at the camp, I realised that the entire camp was deserted. There had been a big build-up of snow that day on the cliff above the campsite and it had been evacuated because of an avalanche warning." The only person who had remained behind was the frostbitten Chris Drummond. "He had stayed to be with me," Bredenkamp said. "I called out to him, ‘I am back, but you are going to have to put me to bed.’ He undressed me, took off my boots, hat and wet jacket and laid down a sleeping bag. He put me into bed, made me tea, and fed me while I was shaking and freezing in my sleeping bag. He acted as my nurse. Then he lay next to me to keep me warm." Clearly touched by his friend’s brave act of loyalty, Bredenkamp continued: "There is not much morality on Everest. You come back thinking you should maybe stick to gentle hikes in Newlands Forest." Now that he is back home with his girlfriend, Bredenkamp is still in recovery mode and is nursing a cracked rib. "My recovery has been a lot slower than usual, both physically and mentally. I am finding it difficult to concentrate, and sleep. When we departed we were as strong as lions, but we returned as weak as the Zimbabwe currency." Asked who it was that helped instill a love of the mountains in him, Bredenkamp did not hesitate to name Colin Inglis, his former scout leader, who lives in Pietermaritzburg. "He was a Cambridge graduate and a World War 2 pilot in the SA Air Force. He was chairman of the Mountain Club of SA and a great climber who did many first ascents of mountains. He also became Chief Scout of South Africa. Every year, he would arrange for our troop to camp in the Cape. I had the opportunity at an early and impressionable age to climb in the Cape mountains with him. He was a hero and I aspired to do what he did." Another person he admires is Ed February, "the first black climber of international stature in South Africa", who was part of the disastrous 1996 Sunday Times expedition up Everest. "Ed is one of the most accomplished climbers in the country and I have great admiration for him." Bredenkamp’s interest in mountains was further nurtured when he was a boy scout. "I was a scout throughout high school and ended up as a Springbok scout. "Scouting teaches people skills they generally do not learn at school, like leadership, the environment and good citizenship. "I am passionate about the movement. Formal education lacks a great deal. I suppose that if family structures were better, kids would learn more from their parents. But we are a nation of many single parents and grandparents raising children. "70% of our scouts are in black rural areas, so we are somewhat faceless. In the past, we were very visible in urban areas, but that is not the case any more. The growth is in black rural areas. In KwaZulu-Natal, Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been very supportive of the growth of the movement. "The life skills I learned through my scouting days have been more valuable to me than my formal education. In my business, I am able to lead my staff because of the skills I learned. They also taught us imagination and problem solving." One of his favourite memories is a hike he did with two scouts in the Drakensberg when he was 18 from the Mont aux Sources amphitheatre along the escarpment to Giants Castle. "It took 13 days and we carried our food from top to bottom without any help." Although he plans to get the seven summits under his belt and would still like to summit Everest without oxygen, Bredenkamp insisted that mountaineering is not an obsession. "It is not all-consuming. I have a passion for life, with many interests. Climbing mountains is just one of them. I do a lot of sports. I cycle and have done a few Argus Cycle tours in under three hours; I run a bit and have a silver medal for the Comrades Marathon and I have done three-and-a-half Duzi canoe marathons. In the fourth, we broke the boat in the middle of the event.’’ He is also a keen photographer and enjoys reading, particularly biographies. Although he spends time with young scouts, he does not have any children of his own. "That opportunity passed me by," he said. While at base camp, Bredenkamp and the other South Africans took part quite a few political discussions. "We were fascinated by the American contingent that was with us. None of them seems to have understood that their country has invaded a sovereign nation. "One of the climbers on our team was a man from upstate New York who was on the mountain the fatal day in 1996 when Ian Woodall and the South African Sunday Times expedition climbed. He had been in the base camp when the South Africans were there. When he first met us, he said to us, ‘I hope you are not like the other South Africans we met.’ "But we were so proud to be South African to sit around the dinner table in the tent and talk about how we have grown together as a country in the past last 10 years. It gave us pride to relay to people the spirit of forgiveness that exists and the desire to break down racial barriers. "I know the people we met were impressed by our performance of working as a team. I believe we left the mountain leaving behind a trail of goodwill. The British climbers we met, the French, the Canadian, the Irish; they will all be coming to South Africa to visit." Bredenkamp places a deep value in being a servant of his community – something he learned from, among other people, his father and from the scout movement. "My father, being a Methodist minister, was always working for no pay and is the happiest person I know. I believe that doing volunteer work is much more fulfilling than working for a salary. The level of community involvement by citizens is a measure of the level of civilisation of that community. "For as long as I am in SA, I must contribute to the growth and betterment of society and the environment." Although as a child Bredenkamp was to be found sitting in the pews of the Methodist Church, he is not an avid churchgoer. "But I have a deep sense of religion. I find getting out into nature and into mountains tremendously inspiring and rewarding. God is not very visible in the city. But you certainly see Him in the mountains. Being out there rejuvenates my soul and it reorders my priorities." (source:scouringorg.za)