IT SEEMS LIKE JUST YESTERDAY I WAS INTRODUCING HIM FOR A MOUNTAINFEST SLIDESHOW AT THE KEENE VALLEY SCHOOL ...
Doug Scott, Leading Alpinist and Survivor of Highest Open Bivy on Everest, Dies at 79 [Read the full obit by Ed Douglas at link in bio]
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Even in his final illness, Doug Scott was his irrepressible self, hauling himself up the short flight of stairs at his home in Cumbria to raise money for Community Action Nepal (CAN), the non-profit he started in 1989 to help the people of Nepal who had helped him. The stair climbing was part of CAN's Everest Challenge 2020, a way to raise money during lockdown as the regular supply of funds, most often Doug giving public lectures, was no longer possible.
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Doug had dressed for the occasion in the old wind-suit he wore on the summit of Everest in 1975 during the first ascent of the southwest face. Dougal Haston's picture shows him standing gloveless in the dusk next to the old Chinese tripod, ready for anything. He needed to be. That morning he had left the tent without wearing his down suit because it constricted his movement too much. Under the wind-suit was silk underwear, cashmere and nylon pile. It would soon be dark and their headlamps failed as they abseiled down the Hillary Step. A bivouac was inevitable.
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Back at the south summit the pair hunkered in a snow cave, the highest anyone had ever spent the night, ill equipped, their oxygen exhausted. As night wore on they began hallucinating. Doug found himself talking to his feet, "which had become two separate, conscious entities sharing our cave." His left foot was complaining that it felt ignored, so he took his boot off and discovered it wooden with cold. He pummeled it back to life and Haston unzipped his down suit to put it against his belly. When dawn allowed them to start down, not only were they still alive, neither man had frostbite. Doug didn't feel lucky: he felt empowered. His horizons had been broadened. "I knew from then on," he wrote in his memoir Up and About, "I would never again burden myself with oxygen bottles."
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Scott died on the morning of December 7, at 79 years old, following a battle with brain cancer.
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Read the full obit at the link below.
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Even in his final illness, Doug Scott was his irrepressible self, hauling himself up the short flight of stairs at his home in Cumbria to raise money for Community Action Nepal (CAN), the non-profit he started in 1989 to help the people of Nepal who had helped him. The stair climbing was part of CAN's Everest Challenge 2020, a way to raise money during lockdown as the regular supply of funds, most often Doug giving public lectures, was no longer possible.
.
Doug had dressed for the occasion in the old wind-suit he wore on the summit of Everest in 1975 during the first ascent of the southwest face. Dougal Haston's picture shows him standing gloveless in the dusk next to the old Chinese tripod, ready for anything. He needed to be. That morning he had left the tent without wearing his down suit because it constricted his movement too much. Under the wind-suit was silk underwear, cashmere and nylon pile. It would soon be dark and their headlamps failed as they abseiled down the Hillary Step. A bivouac was inevitable.
.
Back at the south summit the pair hunkered in a snow cave, the highest anyone had ever spent the night, ill equipped, their oxygen exhausted. As night wore on they began hallucinating. Doug found himself talking to his feet, "which had become two separate, conscious entities sharing our cave." His left foot was complaining that it felt ignored, so he took his boot off and discovered it wooden with cold. He pummeled it back to life and Haston unzipped his down suit to put it against his belly. When dawn allowed them to start down, not only were they still alive, neither man had frostbite. Doug didn't feel lucky: he felt empowered. His horizons had been broadened. "I knew from then on," he wrote in his memoir Up and About, "I would never again burden myself with oxygen bottles."
.
Scott died on the morning of December 7, at 79 years old, following a battle with brain cancer.
.
Read the full obit at the link below.
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