The Last Mountain

Well done, you're doing really well. Keep it up.

We can see your every move now. Fantastic.

Don't rush. There's no rush. Over.

It's amazing. Over.

Go on, Alison.

- She's done it, she's there. - Whoo! I feel like...

This is the most fantastic day of my life. Over.

A 33-year-old mother has become

the first British woman to conquer Mount Everest alone

and without an oxygen supply.

Alison Hargreaves from Torlundy near Fort William is

the only British professional female mountaineer.

Alison Hargreaves had nurtured her ambition

to conquer Everest without oxygen since her schooldays.

After a failed attempt last year,

driven back by appalling weather,

the 33-year-old finally sent word back to her husband by fax

that she was on top of the world.

Alison, mother of two,

reached the summit of Everest, 8848 meters,

13th of May 1995 at 12:08pm Nepalese time.

Base to Tom and Kate, my two children.

I'm on the highest point in the world

and I love them dearly. Over.

Keep your heads up. Heads up, heads up.

- Heads up. Heads up. - Kate. Heads up. Kate.

Careful. Go that way, Tom.

Just like as if we're going skiing. Very straight, Tom.

You're a mother of two young children.

What did they think when mum come home a world record holder?

Well, they don't really understand, I mean,

they know mum's done something special 'cause people

keep asking them about what mummy's just done.

Um, but mummy's always gone off and climbed mountains,

so to a certain extent, it's fairly normal.

Do you think mum is very clever?

- Yes. - Why is your mum very clever?

Because she climbed Mount Everest.

And she climbed Mount Everest, all on...

- Her own. - Without any...

Oxygen.

And why is that clever?

Because it, because it's clever.

Because it's very clever!

Shall we pump it out for your mum because she's a-

Let's give three cheers for your mum

'cause she's a record breaker!

What's next?

Um, in a couple of weeks' time I'm off to Pakistan to try and climb K2,

which is the second-highest in the world.

So it's not so high, but maybe a little bit more difficult.

- So that'll be fun. - What drives you on?

Ah. I don't know, something inside.

I mean, I love climbing mountains and,

and I love standing on top.

And to have stood on top of the highest in the world,

for me, is just unbelievable.

Conquering Everest and K2 in the one season

without oxygen is unprecedented.

But as she prepares to set off,

Alison Hargreaves is well aware of the dangers.

When we go climbing, we obviously minimize the risks,

and if we thought it was that risky, we wouldn't go climbing.

I mean, anybody who, who went off thinking that, you know,

there was a, you know, very high chance they wouldn't come back,

I think is, is a very, it's a unfair thing to do,

especially with their own family.

Basically, you know, climbers climb.

We know our strengths and our weaknesses, and hopefully

we can normally make the right decisions at the right time.

Tom, what do you think of your mummy?

She's very nice and she's, and she is very clever,

so she, she'll do it.

I'm a mole I'm a mole and I live in a hole.

I'm a mole.

I had the worst job

that any parent's ever gonna have in their life.

I sat the children down in a quiet room and, um,

and told them that their mother was more than likely dead

and they wouldn't see her again.

And she was lost on a storm in K2.

And Kate cried and shouted, as small children will,

and, uh, Tom asked if he and Kate

could see their mum's last mountain.

And I didn't think for very long.

I gave them my promise

that they would see where their mum died

and, more importantly, their mum's last mountain.

Well, that's it, chaps, that's the last of the bags.

Everything's packed, now all we need is the station.

- Thank you. - Take care.

Look after the kids.

I will do, don't worry.

See you all when I come back.

The passengers sitting out on the left-hand

side can have a view of K2

and the tall treat on to the left to it

is finally visible.

Where is K2?

K2's the pointy one, straight on the skies here.

- Over there? - Yeah, the big pointy one.

Your mum stood on top of that, and Everest.

- That one big pointy. - Yeah, let's look it up.

Nobody knows how life is gonna unfold.

Nobody knew we were going to have two smashing children.

But we did.

And the one promise we made to each other

that was totally binding was that we would always

bring our children up in the wide-open spaces, in freedom,

learning what spirit's about,

learning what adventure's about,

enjoying, understanding and accepting

the wild and beautiful place of this Earth.

I wouldn't like to see Tom and Kate do anything

that-that people wanted them to do.

I'd only like to see Tom and Kate have

the opportunity to do what they want to do,

be it bricklayer or brain surgeon.

But it would be an awfully hard act for Kate

to have to follow the greatest woman climber.

And even more impossible to follow as a boy.

But who knows?

The mountains, I think, are magnetic.

There is some sort of force that pulls you in.

It's the aura. It's the, the purity.

The open, vast sky.

You can see forever.

And the mountains have this awesome power.

Oh, my God!

You can't conquer them.

They were there before us, and after we've gone,

they'll still be there.

And so i-instead of fighting against them,

you have to find a way to work with them.

You have to be in harmony,

and sometimes they let you and other times they won't.

But we're always sort of pushing ourselves a little bit

to see how far we can go, you know,

how far at the edge can we go before we topple off.

Danger is very personal to everybody.

Yes!

Pushing your own personal limits is more or less

going for longer or higher or faster or harder.

But never fighting against the mountain because you can't,

because they'll always win in the end.

My relationship with the mountains is, I would say,

not completely different to Tom's.

You know, our love and our drive is exactly the same,

but he's got goals in mind.

He's got, "I wanna do this peak and this peak

and this peak and I want to do this route on this peak

and this one and this one," and he just

strives to, to climb.

It's all he's ever wanted to do, you know?

That's fine, and that is and has always been Tom.

Nobody knows why Tom is the way he is,

he's just a climber and always will be.

Anyone that's ever seen Tom on a mountain

would say how much like an ibex he is.

Just so sure-footed. It's hard to explain.

I've never seen anyone like that.

I don't know what Tom's plans are, I've got no idea.

But if he does take his climbing to a higher level,

I definitely want to be a part of it.

And while he's climbing,

I'm sure I'll be doing other things.

I adore to climb mountains, don't get me wrong,

but I don't just necessarily want to get to the top and down again.

But if I'm climbing with Tom, it's, like,

200 million times easier

than if I was doing it with anybody else.

Anybody else in the entire world.

Having Tom by my side is like having protection,

a helping hand, or just...

He's a nice person to have next to you

when you're on the mountain.

It's so...

That's a nice thing for a sister to say, isn't it, Tom?

- It's very nice, yeah. - See? I can be nice.

Ah, okay. I didn't know.

Sorry, Joe.

The time is 17 minutes to 9:00,

the climber, Tom Ballard,

has just completed a remarkable feat.

The six great north faces of the Alps,

all climbed alone, in winter, in one season.

He's the son of Alison Hargreaves,

who did the same thing in the summer season.

In 1995, Alison Hargreaves was killed

after reaching the summit of K2,

the world's second-highest mountain.

The six great peaks of Europe,

climb the north faces, all in one winter

sounds an absolutely miserable business to me.

How-how difficult was it?

Uh, the main difficulty is

getting the right conditions at the right time.

And then, you know, I think that, uh, maybe

sort of 80% is probably sort of down,

more down to luck wi-with the weather, and...