This full-length documentary, called Bonington Mountaineer, looks back on the groundbreaking career of Chris Bonington. Filmed in 2014 when he was 80 years old, the film follows Bonington as he returns to the site of an early climbing triumph, reflecting on all that has come after.
In 1966, Bonington made the first ascent of the Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. We open as the octogenarian Bonington arrives at the cliffs.
The Old Man of Hoy in 1966. Photo: Screenshot
A lifetime of climbs
First, Bonington takes us back to his beginnings. As a young man, his search for climbing partners found him under the mentorship of Hamish McKinnis. McKinnis was a mountaineer, climber, and author, now best known for his pioneering contributions to mountain rescue. It was McKinnis who pushed Bonington to climb more seriously.
Bonington revisits the Scottish climbing hut where he first met McKinnis. Photo: Screenshot
Bonington sits down with McKinnis (who has since died), and they discuss his expeditions to Mont Blanc, Annapurna, and Nuptse. Even after those, Bonington hadn’t decided to dedicate his life to mountaineering.
Finally, given an ultimatum by his employer, he chose mountaineering. That very summer, his choice was tested. Bonington and his companions, alerted to two other climbers in distress, abandoned an attempt on the Eiger to assist in the rescue. When one of the men died, Bonington reflects, they were disgusted by the “jackal quality” of the media.
Bonington shows us a stash of newspaper clippings from 1962. Photo: Screenshot
Many famous mountaineers don’t reach Bonington’s age. “If you’re a climber,” he says, “you have got to accept the fact that people die.”
So he went back to the Eiger. There, he and Ian Clough made the first British ascent of the North Wall. The resulting fame allowed him to continue pursuing mountaineering professionally.
Modern interview footage and archival photographs show a series of ambitious climbs all around the world. But it was after the accidental death of his son, in 1966, that his climbing friend Tom Patey suggested the Old Man of Hoy.
Photo: Screenshot
The Old Man
Their first ascent was subject to a media frenzy. A year later, Patey and Bonington repeated their success on live television, to over seven million viewers. That was a lot in 1967.
One expedition followed another. Soon, Bonington was leading a massive undertaking up the south face of Annapurna. While successful, their effort was overshadowed by the death of Ian Clough. Clough was not the last friend Bonington lost on expeditions. As he recounts past adventures, he acknowledges the risks mountaineers take to pursue the sport. Losing people on expeditions, he says, never gets easier. But he also never considered stopping.
‘He and I and all of us had been taking calculated risks, been pushing the odds…all our climbing careers,’ Bonington says, reflecting on the 1975 death of climber Mick Burke. Photo: Screenshot
As the film approaches its conclusion, we return to the present. Bonington, with fellow climber Leo Houlding, surveys the Old Man. Just as he did in 1966, he’s come here seeking catharsis after a loss. Wendy, his longtime wife who was always by his side, is now gone. But he admits to worrying whether, at his age, he can take on a climb like this.
He starts anyway. As his narration explores what it feels like to keep climbing into his old age, he makes his way, pained and careful, up the stone. And then, yet again, he is pulling himself up onto the top of the Old Man of Hoy.
