It was a feat that had never been done before. To cement her reputation as Britain’s top female climber, she embarked on a quest to climb the world’s three highest mountains – Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga – in a single year. Unable to pay his mortgage, their house had been repossessed by the bank.Īlison had recently embarked upon a career as a professional mountaineer, and now she became the sole family breadwinner. Jim had been forced to close the climbing shop that he owned in Derbyshire, which had helped to finance Alison’s previous expeditions. She and her husband, Jim Ballard, were heavily in debt. The background to her climb may provide some clues. The answers are never simple, especially to those of us who choose to live more sheltered lives. Why did they continue? There are many reasons why people take such extreme risks.
She perished alongside five male climbers, all of whom decided to keep climbing when others on the mountain had turned around. The story of Alison Hargreaves on K2 has many familiar echoes. K2 from the Godwin Austen Glacier (Photo: Maria Ly / Wikimedia Commons) It probably won’t get levelled at Tom Ballard, whose family now has a double tragedy to come to terms with. The media focused on the fact that she was a mother, who selfishly pursued her dream of climbing high mountains instead of looking after her family – a criticism that rarely gets levelled at male climbers, all of whom leave friends and family behind. Her story hit the headlines for the wrong reasons. Twenty-four years ago his mother Alison Hargreaves also lost her life on another mountain in Pakistan, the infamous K2. The story of British climber Tom Ballard, who has been missing on Nanga Parbat in Pakistan for ten days now, is a particularly poignant one.
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