Vladimir Balyberdin. Incorrect ascent. Climbing from a daisy field You were well paid for your Nepalese expedition
Vladimir Sergeevich Balyberdin(1948-1994) - the first Soviet climber to climb the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest (8848 m). Honored Master of Sports of the USSR (1982), Master of Sports of International Class (1982).
Biography
Born in the village of Shpagino, Zarinsky district, Altai Territory, on October 1, 1948, although, according to official documents, July 2, 1949 was considered the date of birth. Lived and studied in Leningrad, in 1973 he graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute of Communications. M. A. Bonch-Bruevich. He worked as a senior engineer at the Central Research Institute of the Marine Fleet. Since 1980 - mountaineering instructor at the Leningrad City Council of the Spartak Sports Society.
He started mountaineering in 1969. In 1977 he took 1st place in the mountaineering combined event (cross-country skiing and slalom). In 1978, he was awarded the title of Candidate Master of Sports in mountaineering and Candidate Master of Sports in rock climbing. In 1981, at the peak of Communism, he won the USSR championship in the high-altitude technical class.
In 1982, he became one of the most active participants in the first Soviet Himalayan expedition, the goal of which was to climb Mount Everest. Vladimir Balyberdin made the direct ascent to the summit of Everest on May 4, 1982, together with his partner, Moscow climber Eduard Myslovsky. For this ascent, V. Balyberdin was awarded the Order of Lenin (July 5, 1982), and according to a survey of sports journalists, he was named among the ten best athletes of the USSR in 1982 (a climber for the first time in the history of Soviet sports). The only candidate for Master of Sports of the USSR who, bypassing the title of Master of Sports, was awarded the titles of Honored Master of Sports (June 8, 1982) and Master of Sports of the USSR of International Class (December 31, 1982).
1986 - made the first winter ascent to Communism Peak.
1988 - made the first winter ascent to Lenin Peak.
In April - May 1989, he participated in the 2nd Soviet Himalayan expedition, climbing successively to the four peaks of the Kanchenjunga mountain range (8586 m). For these ascents he was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples (January 9, 1990).
In January-February 1990, he led one of 4 groups of Soviet climbers during the winter ascent to Pobeda Peak, but only Valery Khrishchaty’s group managed to climb in bad weather.
On October 7, 1991, he re-climbed Everest as the leader of the expedition of the St. Petersburg cooperative “Alpinist”.
In 1992, Vladimir Balyberdin was the leader of the Russian-American expedition to K2 (Chogori) (altitude 8611 m). He made the ascent as part of a group that included, in addition to him, Alexey Nikiforov and Gennady Kopeika. After this expedition, V. Balyberdin became the first climber in the country to climb the three highest peaks in the world.
On the night of July 22, 1994, Vladimir Balyberdin died in St. Petersburg when his car was hit by the wheels of a cargo trailer that ran a red light at the intersection of Sofiyskaya Street and Slavy Avenue. He was buried in front of the main entrance to the Southern Cemetery of St. Petersburg.
Memory
At house 47 on Basseynaya Street, where V. Balyberdin lived since 1991, a memorial plaque was installed.
On the eve of 2001, the Committee on Physical Culture and Sports of St. Petersburg identified the twenty best St. Petersburg athletes of the 20th century. Their names are the pride of world, Soviet and Russian sports, and Vladimir Balyberdin was named one of them.
The police don't want to pay for their mistakes
The Central Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg filed a cassation appeal with the civil court panel of the city court against the decision in the claim of Elena Balyberdina, the widow of climber Vladimir Balyberdin. She demanded to pay her 70 million rubles as compensation for the moral suffering that the police officers inflicted on her. Two years ago, Vladimir Balyberdin died in a car accident. The police did not inform the relatives about what happened and were going to bury the body in a mass grave as unidentified. The court upheld Elena Balyberdina’s claim, ordering the Central Internal Affairs Directorate to pay her 35 million rubles. The police don't want to pay the widow.
Search for the missing climber
Vladimir Balyberdin was called a legend of Russian mountaineering. Fame came to him in the early 80s, when he became the first Soviet climber to reach the top of Everest. In 1989, as part of a team of five athletes, Balyberdin was the first in the world to traverse the four peaks of Kanchenjunga, in 1991 - a high-speed ascent along the southeastern ridge of Everest, and in 1992 he conquered Chogori and the eight-thousander K-2. He was the first Russian athlete to conquer three peaks over 8 thousand meters high. In the fall of 1994, Balyberdin, together with the famous Italian climber Reinhold Messner, planned to climb Everest for the third time.
On the night of July 22, 1994, Vladimir Balyberdin crashed in a car accident. His Volga was hit by a trailer belonging to the Finnish company Jaakko Pohjela. There were four other people in the car with Balyberdin. The trailer dragged the Volga 70 meters. Only one of her passengers miraculously survived.
The police arrived. The on-duty investigator of the Investigation Department of the Municipal Internal Affairs Directorate, Vasilyeva, registered the accident. She confiscated the documents of the victims, but for some reason they were registered at the morgue as nameless.
Balyberdin's relatives and friends began searching for him the next day. We looked for friends in St. Petersburg, went to the dacha, called Moscow. But all to no avail. Only two weeks later the body was accidentally found in the morgue. The next day, the famous climber was to be buried in a mass grave, along with other unidentified corpses. Since the refrigerator in the morgue did not work, Vladimir had to be buried in a closed coffin. In response to a statement about her husband’s disappearance around August 17, Balyberdin’s wife Elena received an official response from the police department, in which the district police officer Timonin reported that the missing man could not be found and the materials were sent to the criminal investigation department. By that time, Balyberdin had already been buried a week ago.
The Finnish company is in no hurry to compensate for the damage
Alexander Dolgushevsky, senior investigator of the 4th department of the Department for Investigation of Organized Crime, investigated the criminal case on the fact of a traffic accident. He released the driver of the Finnish company, Timothy Ahola, pending trial on bail of $10 thousand. The company “Jaakko Pohjela” literally flooded the court with his positive characteristics, and also provided medical certificates that reported the defendant’s diseases with hypertension, diabetes, otitis media and also atherosclerosis.
Nevertheless, on March 10, 1995, the Frunze People's Court of St. Petersburg sentenced Akhol to five years in prison for manslaughter. In May, Ahol came under amnesty in Russia, and on July 7 was handed over by the Russian side to the Finnish authorities.
Initially, the management of the Jaakko Pohjela company was ready for anything, even sending a letter of guarantee with a promise to pay compensation to the families of all the victims. But she didn’t keep her promises. Elena Balyberdina filed a claim for compensation for moral damages in a Finnish court. A hearing on this claim has not yet been scheduled. At the same time, the climber’s widow began to sue the St. Petersburg police department, demanding compensation for the moral damage caused to her.
No one pleads guilty
Balyberdina demanded 70 million rubles from the police. On June 3, 1996, the Dzerzhinsky Court of the Central District of St. Petersburg made an unprecedented decision to collect monetary compensation from the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg for moral damage caused by police officers, ordering that the widow be paid 35 million rubles. In reducing the amount of compensation, the court took into account the difficult financial situation of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate.
The attitude of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate towards the incident changed over time. After the first reports in the press about the death of the climber, an internal investigation was carried out, during which the facts of a callous and negligent attitude towards the performance of their official and civic duty on the part of a number of employees involved in the case were confirmed. The head of the Main Department of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg, Lieutenant General Yuri Loskutov, reprimanded the offending employees: senior investigator Vasilyeva - “for a gross violation of departmental regulations, expressed in incorrect execution of accompanying documents when sending corpses to the morgue”, district inspector Timonin - “for a superficial check of the material about search for Balyberdin and failure to take comprehensive measures to establish his whereabouts,” investigator Dolgushevsky - “for failure to fully comply with Article 127 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, mistakes made in organizing the interaction of various services at the initial stage of the investigation.”
But after Balyberdina filed a lawsuit, the position of the leadership of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate changed. Their representative in court, Sokolova, stated that there were no violations in the actions of the police. Sokolova explained simply that the police officers were punished: “It was necessary to reassure the public.” But the court did not take her words into account.
The Central Internal Affairs Directorate appealed the court's decision. The cassation appeal noted that “the court cannot take as a basis for satisfying the claim the imperfection of the system for exchanging operational information between services and units,” because of which, in fact, Balyberdin’s widow was not informed that her husband had died. It turned out that there were no violations in the actions of Dolgushevsky, Timonin and Vasilyeva. Moreover, investigator Dolgushevsky “called the plaintiff’s home many times, dropped off and left a summons at her place of residence,” but was unable to “conduct an identification because he could not find the wife of the deceased.” District inspector Timonin could not find her husband at Balyberdina’s request, “since Balyberdin was listed as unknown at the City Ambulance Station, the Accident Bureau and the general office of the morgue.” Why he was listed as unknown is unclear, because from the text of the cassation appeal it follows that Vasilyeva “drawed up a protocol for examining the scene of the incident, which recorded the full identification data of the driver - V. S. Balyberdina. A copy of the protocol against signature was handed over to the medical service worker along with the corpses for delivery to morgue".
The case materials are now in the city court. It is expected that the second hearing of the case will be scheduled for the fall: the judges are on vacation.
ANASTASIA GALKOVSKAYA
15 Dec. 2013 08:00 Vitaly DVORYANKIN "Altai sport"
This year marks the 65th anniversary of the birth of the first domestic conqueror of Everest, our fellow countryman Vladimir Balyberdin.
In November, the regional mountaineering federation organized competitions in his memory in the Altai mountains, and “Altai Sport” meanwhile went in the opposite direction - to the Shpagino station in the Zarinsky district, where Vladimir Sergeevich spent his childhood years.
Native Uvaly
Together with his mother, he lived for several years in Shpagino in the house of his grandfather Iona Kalinovich Moiseenko, the head of the local medical and obstetric center. This house has survived, but now stands in a different place. At one time, it was purchased and moved three hundred meters by the father of the now living Altai poet and writer Nikolai Bogormistov. In his poetry collection “Long Summer,” Bogormistov dedicated one of his poems to the climber. There are these lines: “I fell in love with the chamomile field, he loved the mountains with all my soul.” But this contrast is just a literary device to emphasize the difference in fate. Vladimir Sergeevich, even with all his passion for the mountains, never forgot the chamomile field of his childhood.
The first to tell about the fact that Balyberdin comes from our area, in the Altaiskaya Pravda newspaper, was the director of the local history museum of the Zarinsky district, Evgeniy Nazarov. After our fellow countryman climbed Everest, a correspondence began between him and the climber. In one of the letters, now carefully preserved in the museum, Balyberdin wrote: “My last visit to Shpagino was in 1976. Then we drove through the surrounding villages by car, wandered through the forests and banks of streams and rivulets. Here, as boys, we picked berries and mushrooms, caught minnows, stocked calves, harvested collective farm potatoes and beets, and skied from the ridges. My uncle, the husband of my mother’s eldest sister Lyubov Ionovna, Nikolai Vasilievich Anokhin, took me. They live in Barnaul and regularly come to visit us in Leningrad.”
Along the waves of memory
I managed to find several people who knew Vladimir Sergeevich when he was little. True, over the years their memory has retained little. Disangali Umarovich Zhumadilov, now a resident of Zarinsk, recalls:
We lived next door to Balyberdin’s grandfather. Volodya was so strong and fair-haired when he was a child. In the summer we played the usual games for children - with a ball, Cossack robbers... When the lake was covered with ice, we ran there to look at the beetles through the ice.
A tragedy almost broke out on this lake with the participation of a future Everest climber.
He was saved by Gena Tagiltsev, “my student,” says Zinaida Ivanovna Sidorova, at that time a teacher at the Shpagin school, and now a resident of Barnaul (her husband Savely Stepanovich was the school director for many years - Note "AS") . In the spring, the boys were skating on ice floes, and Volodya fell and began to drown.
Gennady Petrovich Tagiltsev and I are going down the slope to that very lake. A fine, tedious rain is drizzling. “The path has still been preserved since then,” my companion, who has lived at the station all his life, nods at the trampled grass.
“This is where we swam on the ice floes,” says Gennady Petrovich. “They broke away from the shore in the spring, and the boys, pushing off with poles, rode on them. Two ice floes collided, and the smaller boy went under the water. The ice floes closed over him. I was in the fourth grade, and he was very young. It was May, it was warm, I was sitting on the shore. I see the guy doesn’t surface. As if I had my clothes on, I followed him. I drank while I pulled it out. Well, the shore was nearby. And then his mother came running and took him home.There is a memorial plaque on the wall of the school where the future climber studied. When asked who Balyberdin is, the students answer without hesitation: “The first Russian conqueror of Everest!”
“You write in the newspaper for them to bring us new rackets,” the schoolchildren quickly learned who was asking them about their famous fellow countryman. Lessons ended and they played table tennis in the school corridor. Physical education teacher Vladimir Nikulin told me that Nadezhda Alekseevna Bochkareva, a classmate of Vladimir Balyberdin, lives in the village of Shpagino, which is a few kilometers from the station of the same name.
Oh, yes, Volodka and I sat at the same desk in the 5th grade! - an elderly woman, who worked for many years as a foreman on a dairy farm, throws up her hands. “We had four classes in our village, and then we started going to the station. The class teacher asks: “Where should I put you?” And I say: “I’ll sit down with Vovka. He is small and I am small." We sat on the first desk. Very good boy! I studied with straight A's, but I was a little behind. He kept instructing me: come on, pull yourself up. But in the eighth grade we no longer studied together; he and his mother went somewhere. I have a photo - Volodka on Everest. I sometimes (laughs) I'm talking to him.
The less traveled route
Vladimir Balyberdin, together with Eduard Myslovsky, climbed Everest on May 4, 1982. This was the first Soviet expedition to the highest peak in the world. For its assault, a very difficult untrodden route was chosen - along the southwestern wall. From May 4 to May 9, eleven Soviet athletes reached the summit. The climbers talked about how it happened in the book “Everest 1982”. The newspaper area does not allow us to convey the drama of those May days thirty years ago and the events that preceded them. To do this you need to read the book itself. Just look at the detailed description of the ascent and descent of the Balyberdin-Myslovsky team from the mountain, when our fellow countryman showed himself to be a leader with a capital L, a person for whom it is not his own ambition that is more important, but responsibility for the team result and those around him. For the newspaper publication, we selected from the book only those excerpts that give a general idea of the ascent and characterize its first issue.
Vladimir Balyberdin:
“I must admit, some kind of ambitious feeling from the fact that it was I who was standing here still stirred in the depths of my soul. It was not sharp, sudden, just as the victory itself was not sudden. A faint hope for it, apparently, unaccountably arose even when the decision was made to leave the base camp for our two. By the morning of May 4, hope grew into confidence, and desire into obligation. Therefore, looking at Tibet, I did not feel a surge of intense joy. I thought: “Well, finally. There is no need to go up anymore. You can rest. And no matter what happens now with the weather, with the route and even with us, the Russians still visited Everest.”
Yuri Rost, journalist:
“Everyone dreamed of a small sloping snowy platform over the whole Earth - of climbing to the top. Even if, according to his mountaineering role, he had to establish a pre-summit camp from where others would go up... But the task of the trainers was to select people who, if they lost the opportunity to ascend, would not lose their presence of mind and would remain professionals of the highest standard. To do this, in addition to moral health, one had to be very physically healthy. The expedition leadership decided to carefully check the physical capabilities of each candidate. Brutal examinations began - and I would say tests - of people at the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and at the medical and physical education clinic. Lord, how could scientists not “mock” the climbers! They were “raised” in pressure chambers up to ten kilometers, forced to breathe pure nitrogen, frozen, given exorbitant loads, and all to extreme, almost critical limits...”
Vladimir Balyberdin:
“It was only here, while walking monotonously in the snow, when I didn’t have to look for holds, choose the simplest climbing options, or organize belaying, that I felt how tired I was.
Constant technical work distracts from observing one’s own body, so a person becomes exhausted to the limit without noticing it.
On the snow, after a few steps, a person exhausts his oxygen supply and stops to rest; resting your hands on your knee, you can lower your head, close your eyes and think about anything. Instead of analyzing technical difficulties, it’s time to analyze your physical condition. Here you start counting your steps, trying to walk as far as possible before the next stop. Here you notice how cold your hands and feet are, and you try to move your fingers more intensely. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to lose sensitivity. Your heart is beating wildly, your lungs are feverishly pumping huge masses of air, trying to suck out rare molecules of oxygen from it, and in this purest, rarefied atmosphere you are moving slowly, as if through a thick, viscous mass, entangled in invisible nets and hung with weights. In this exceptionally dry air, the body loses a huge amount of moisture, but you don’t really want to drink because it’s cold. The body becomes imperceptibly dehydrated to dangerous levels. I don’t feel like eating either: there’s still no oxygen to oxidize food. When exhaling, water vapor (without an oxygen mask) turns into ice crystals in the larynx and settles on its walls.
The throat becomes so inflamed that when you swallow your saliva, you experience terrible pain, as if you were swallowing broken glass. Just the thought of this causes panic, but also reflexive salivation. And the torture continues."
Anatoly Ovchinnikov: senior coach of the Soviet mountaineering team:
“We had confidence that the pair Myslovsky - Balyberdin would complete the task assigned to them, although it would be very, very difficult for them.
Myslovsky was far from in the best athletic shape. And age is age, but will, determination, confidence, and the desire to achieve a cherished goal are good allies in any difficult undertaking. And V. Balyberdin had not only great determination, strong-willed spirit, and the desire to reach the top of Everest, but also extraordinary performance, both below and at high altitudes. He demonstrated this at the pre-Himalayan training camp, and in the Himalayas from the first day he performed any work - the hardest, most labor-intensive, but necessary for the success of the expedition.
We understood that the expedition owed its rapid passage of the Khumbu Icefall in difficult conditions this year to Balyberdin and Shopin. They were the first to arrive at Camp I and carried loads to Camp II and higher. Processing of the route on the rocks in front of camp IV during acclimatization was also carried out by V. Balyberdin. He did not use oxygen during acclimatization and ascent. Only extremely difficult conditions, aggravated by the loss of E. Myslovsky's backpack, forced him to use oxygen while sleeping. Without belittling the merits of other members of the expedition, we can responsibly say that he was the best member of the expedition. And he deservedly reached the top of Everest as the first Soviet climber.
The Leningrad trainers who took part in the training of V. Balyberdin can be proud of his successes, and the expedition trainers are satisfied that they were able to discern a talented climber who was not previously widely known among a large number of candidates, evaluate him and include him in the expedition.”
Country hardening
There is confusion in the biography of Vladimir Balyberdin. It concerns the place and time of his birth. It is known that he is from a teaching family. Mother - Taisiya Ionovna, father - Sergey Dementievich. Vladimir Sergeevich’s birthday was celebrated in the family on October 1. But in the record of his birth there is a different date - July 2. There is a nine month difference between October 1, 1948 and July 2, 1949. There is the same uncertainty about the place of birth. Taisiya Ionovna herself said that her son was born at Shpagino station. However, in the birth certificate, a copy of which is kept in the regional museum, the village of Novo-Manoshkino is indicated as the place of birth of Vladimir Balyberdin. However, this does not contradict the mother’s version - the village council was located there. But how then can we explain the fact that Vladimir Balyberdin himself, in a letter to the director of the local history museum of the Zarinsky district, Evgeniy Nazarov, reports that he was born in Barnaul in a maternity hospital not far from the railway station?
According to Olga Aleksandrovna Okladnikova, an employee of the Museum of the History of Tourism and Local History of the city of Zarinsk, in fact, the discrepancy in the dates of birth of Vladimir Balyberdin is just a little maternal trick. Taisiya Ionovna wrote about her in one of her letters addressed to Zarinsky local historians. She wanted her son to join the army not in the fall, but in the spring - six months later. Probably, Taisiya Ionovna also had her son’s admission to university in mind. The date of birth of Vladimir Balyberdin was set to the day when the father announced the newborn in the village council. They say that this was a common practice in the village: when a person showed up, then he was born. However, what does it matter now?
From November 1949 to March 1954, the Balyberdin family lived in Tyagun, and then moved again to Shpagino - to live with their maternal grandparents. Already without a father. As Vladimir Balyberdin recalled in a letter to his homeland, he hardly remembers his dad; Sergei Dementievich left the family when his son was about four years old, and died in 1955 in the city of Akmolinsk (now the capital of Kazakhstan is Astana. - Note "AS") . In the book “Everest-82”, Yuri Rost described the character of Vladimir Balyberdin as follows: “According to the internal structure, Volodya seems to me not to be the leader of any team (even of two people), but to the team itself. All his life he made his way on his own, without an excess of affection and sentimentality, and he relied mainly on himself.”
Vladimir was the second child in the family, the first was his sister Galina. It happens that a boy growing up among women has difficulty acquiring traditional masculine qualities. But it happens the other way around: from childhood she gets used to responsibility, trying to replace the man in the house. Balyberdin, it seems to me, is just the second case.
From a letter from Taisiya Ionovna, the climber’s mother: “Volodya grew up healthy, calm, and hardworking. Even in the nursery, he didn’t allow himself to be dressed: “I do it myself!” At the age of 13, he performed quite complex work: he made a cellar, a toilet, surrounded the estate with a fence, covered the roof of the house with roofing felt and tar.” From the same letter you can find out that from the eighth grade he did morning exercises every day, and from May to October he slept on the street - he hardened himself. When the guy was in the fifth grade, Taisiya Ionovna recalls, she several times started a conversation that after the 7th grade she should go to a technical school. “He remained silent, and then blurted out: “Gale is an institute, and I am the head of the family - and I need a technical school!” Everyone laughed, then came to their senses: “But Volodya is looking forward, he’s already thinking about his place in the family.”
After seventh grade, Taisiya Ionovna and her son went to Karasuk, Novosibirsk region, where her sister Raisa lived. By that time, the eldest daughter Galina was already studying at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute named after Herzen. After graduating from 11 classes and receiving a certificate in which there were only two fours, the rest were fives, Vladimir Balyberdin went to St. Petersburg to enter the Electrical Engineering Institute. I didn’t enroll right away, I studied at a vocational school for a year to become a television technician. But he achieved his goal - he became a student in the evening department of the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute of Communications named after M.A. Bonch-Bruevich, and at the same time completed his studies at a vocational school. He became interested in mountaineering in 1968 when he was already a student - the institute had a mountaineering section. After graduating from university, he worked as a senior engineer at the Central Research Institute of the Marine Fleet, and since 1980, as a mountaineering instructor at the Leningrad City Council of the Spartak Sports Society.
In 1982, the first Soviet conquerors of Everest were greeted in their homeland like cosmonauts: everyone rejoiced and were proud of their success. In the fall, Vladimir Balyberdin got married, and in 1984 the young couple had their first child, daughter Nadezhda.He didn't leave the mountain. After Everest in 1989, Bel (that was his name in the mountaineering community), traversed the four peaks of the eight-thousander Kanchenjunga, in 1991 he climbed Everest again, in 1992 he conquered the eight-thousander Chogori, after which he became the first climber in the country to climb the three highest tops of the world. He was already close to his dream - a massive ascent of Everest under his leadership, but disaster struck. On the night of July 22, 1994, Vladimir Balyberdin died in St. Petersburg in a car accident. The car he used to earn his living as a private driver in the 1990s was hit by a truck that ran a red light. Three daughters were left orphans.
The memory is carefully preserved
While working on this material, I visited local history museums in Zarinsk and the village of Sorokino, Zarinsky district. In both one and the other I got acquainted with exhibitions dedicated to the legendary climber. “Nimble as a fly, strong as a lion” - this is how one of the leaders of the famous Himalayan expedition characterized him.
Among the exhibits of Zarinsky museums are stones from Everest, personal photos of Vladimir Balyberdin, letters. In Sorokino, the book “Everest, the southwestern wall” is kept under glass with a dedicatory inscription from our famous fellow countryman to the director of the museum, Evgeniy Nazarov, who has now passed away.
If the pioneer of the topic, Evgeny Semenovich Nazarov, corresponded with Vladimir Balyberdin and the climber’s mother, then his urban followers from the “Tourist Guides” association under the leadership of Tamara Valentinovna Sannikova, after the death of the climber, even went to his family in St. Petersburg. It was they who found out that Balyberdin took part in the filming of the film “Sannikov’s Land,” popular in Soviet times. It is not the actor Oleg Dal who climbs the tall clock tower blindfolded, but his stunt double, Vladimir Myasnikov. During the filming, Balyberdin was responsible for preparing the wall along which the stuntman climbed.
Vladimir Sergeevich’s wife Elena Vasilievna and his youngest daughter Svetlana were very happy when they received photographs from Shpagino station and documents from museums from me electronically. It is important to them that the memory of Vladimir Sergeevich is alive in his homeland. In September 2011, Elena Vasilievna and Svetlana traveled to our neighboring Novosibirsk region, to Karasuk, where Vladimir Balyberdin graduated from high school. They were invited to the unveiling of a memorial plaque and exhibition at the local history museum dedicated to a person dear to them. And five years ago, Svetlana came to Shpagino station to see her father’s homeland.
She, the only one of the sisters, lives in St. Petersburg. Nadezhda and Tatyana settled in Moscow, as did Elena Vasilievna, who married a good man who raised children with her. As Svetlana told me, she graduated from the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, but is currently working as an industrial climber. “For me, this is a convenient way to earn extra money, since I was involved in rock climbing and know how to handle ropes, and it’s not so easy to get a job in my specialty,” she wrote in a letter. By the way, Sveta has the rank of candidate for master of sports in rock climbing, and does not give up hope of returning to active sports.
Vladimir Balyberdin's eldest daughter, Nadezhda, is a designer. Tatyana is a design engineer. Both have children. Nadezhda has a son, Ivan Balyberdin, and Tatyana has a daughter, Alexandra Makagonova.
Unfortunately, Vladimir Sergeevich’s mother, Taisiya Ionovna, passed away. Just like his sister Galina two years ago. Lyubov Ionovna and Nikolai Vasilyevich Anokhin - Barnaul relatives of Vladimir Balyberdin - are also no longer alive. I tried to find the children, but then I found out that they were not there.When Evgeny Nazarov asked Vladimir Balyberdin to send personal items for the museum, he expressed doubt. In his response message he wrote: “As for the exhibits, the question is complex. I never understood: who is interested in looking at someone's old belongings? And I will certainly send stones from Everest.” He loved the mountains, his family, did his job honestly and conscientiously and, although he knew his own worth, he never stuck out his own self.
Eduard Myslovsky and his partner Vladimir Balyberdin were the first Soviet climbers to climb Everest on May 4, 1982. Books have been written and films have been made about the expedition to the highest peak in the world (8848 meters). But the Honored Master of Sports of the USSR and Honored Coach of the USSR, a full member of the Russian Geographical Society, and until recently a professor at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, almost thirty-five years later, recalls details that previously, as they say, remained behind the scenes...
FATHER
Who do you think, Eduard Vikentievich, came up with the phrase “A smart person won’t go up a mountain, a smart person will go around a mountain”? Coward or pragmatist?
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that the authorship belongs to some witty climber. Although the expression is, of course, stupid. As well as the question “Why are you going to the mountains?” It cannot be answered honestly. You can compose a beautiful, aphoristic formulation, but how much truth will there be in it? We sometimes jokingly referred to our job as carrying heavy loads at high altitudes, and this is not too far from the truth. There is no need to look for a rational grain; everyone has their own explanation for their attachment to the mountains.
-Have you been sick with them for a long time?
In 1954, when he first came to the North Caucasus. I was seventeen years old.
- Did you live in Moscow before?
He was born here and spent his childhood in Ukraine. My father is a tank officer, served in Kyiv, then he was sent to a tank school, located next to the current Sportivnaya metro station. There was Khamovnichesky parade ground. My father ended up in a laboratory that was developing gearboxes for tanks. In 1938 he was arrested. Together with colleagues. They were declared German spies and traitors to the Motherland. The colonel-head of the lab was shot, and my father was given five years in the camps. Like an ordinary gang member. Mom continued to carry packages for a long time, although my father was already in Magadan at that moment. And in 1942 he was shot by a security guard. Just. Allegedly for disobeying an order. I found out this much later...
I was born in '37. When my father was imprisoned, my mother took me to my relatives in Bratslav, Vinnytsia region. Out of harm's way. But my grandfather, a collective farm blacksmith with four classes at a parochial school, was still repressed. For raising the son of an enemy of the people...
My grandmother Antonina Semyonovna took care of me. Together we survived the occupation.
In April '44 the Germans were expelled, and on September 1 I went to school. Three years later, in the summer of 1947, a tortured aunt came to Bratslav with two medals on her chest - “For the defense of Moscow” and “Valiant labor during the war,” hugged me and said: “Hello, son. I am your mother.” .
No wonder I didn't recognize her. Almost ten years have passed; we broke up in 1938. When the war began, my mother tried to follow me to Ukraine, but she was not allowed further than Kozatin. Of course: the wife of a German spy makes her way towards the front. Very suspicious! Even after the Victory, my mother could not come for a long time. The Vinnytsia region was in the occupation zone, SMERSH worked there, looking for enemies of the people.
And so it happened that I returned to Moscow only in 1948. First, I was enrolled in school No. 529 in the Kirov district. But I didn’t know Russian, I thought and spoke Ukrainian, which caused problems. The teachers thought that Myslovsky was being a fool on purpose, and gave him bad grades. Even in the subjects that I loved - history, geography... I suffered and suffered and after the seventh grade I went to the railway technical school. In the documents he indicated that his father died at Stalingrad in 1942. If I had written the truth, they definitely wouldn’t have taken me... And my father was rehabilitated only in the late fifties.
The technical school had a tourist section, it was led by a wonderful person - Alexey Nikolaevich Krylov. At first I went skiing, took part in winter hikes, then switched to mountaineering. Physically, by that time, he had become stronger and no longer looked dystrophic, as he did after moving from Ukraine.
ADIL-SU
- Where was the first climb, which peak was stormed?
In the summer of ’54, I received a ticket to the Adyl-Su mountaineering camp. This is in the Elbrus region. Since I studied at a railway technical school, I was given a free ticket, and I went three days ahead of schedule. I got to the Lermontovsky crossing, got off the train and... saw Mashuk from Beshtau. I thought: these are real mountains! Well, off I went. Alone, without equipment, without a map... I climbed the rocks until I got to the top. I look: there is a country road below. I decided to go down. I walked along it to the entrance. Sentinels with shepherd dogs run out to meet them. "Wait! Who is this?" They grab you under your white hands and go to the commandant's office. It turns out that I came across carefully guarded uranium mines. There is two rows of barbed wire around, along which dogs run. And I went down the cliff! They don’t believe me, they say: show me where you got through. Well, I started to climb. They shout: enough, come down! They called the camp site where I left my things with documents and checked whether such a hero was on the list. They let me go, saying one last thing: be a climber, boy!
I honestly followed the advice and three weeks later I climbed... Elbrus. 5632 meters above sea level. In July, Railway Worker's Day was celebrated, and on this occasion, a mass ascent to the highest mountain in Europe was organized. A crowd of about a hundred people. There were no ski lifts then; we drove to Terskol by car, and then by foot. We walked to the 105th picket and spent the night. The next stop was at the “Shelter of the Eleven” at an altitude of 4310 meters, where everyone brought two or three logs for the winterers. The last point for acclimatization is “Pastukhov’s Shelter”, named after the conqueror of both peaks of Elbrus. And at two o'clock in the morning - an assault to return for dinner. Not everyone made it, some vomited and went downstairs. Each person has his own height ceiling, this is physiology, characteristics of the body...
SERVICE
- Since then, it turns out that you have “registered” in the mountains?
Does not work. After college I was drafted into the army. I wanted to go to the Tuyuk-Su mountaineering camp near Almaty, I wrote out a ticket for July 11, but I didn’t have time. The day before, the police came to our house and scared my mother. After the incident with my father, she was afraid of any government officials, so she gave me my passport. I was ready to go even with a registration certificate, as long as the voucher and ticket did not disappear, but at six o’clock in the morning a local police officer showed up and escorted me to the recruiting station. That's all...
I served in the navy for four years, fulfilling my duty to my Motherland. At first, however, I was sent to the virgin lands to harvest crops, and in the fall I was assigned to the First Fleet Half-Crew in Khimki. In essence, these are courses for a young fighter, or more precisely, a sailor. After graduation, I entered the 8th radio school in Alabushevo. Then I was transferred to Severomorsk and appointed commander of the radio masters department. For the last year I served under Gorki Leninskiye. The unit commander allowed me to go to Moscow and take entrance exams to the university, so as not to waste time. At first I wanted to go to the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, the Energy Institute, where my friend studied, but I didn’t like it there, the mountaineering section was kind of weak, but at the Moscow Higher Technical School it was just right. I took the documents there.
I studied and trained at the same time. A year later, in 1961, he graduated from the school of instructors, in ’66 he received a graduate diploma from the Moscow Higher Technical School and at the same time completed the master of sports standard in mountaineering. We had excellent mentors - Anatoly Ovchinnikov, who would later become the coach of the Everest expedition, and the Pole Witold Radel. During the war, he served in special forces and committed sabotage behind enemy lines. Legendary personalities!
PREPARATION
- It seems that the first Soviet ascent of Everest was planned back in 1959?
Soon after the English expedition, in which Hillary and Tenzing reached the top, the Chinese came to our Dzhan-Tugan base in Kabardino-Balkaria. In 1954 they did not yet have masters. The idea was to prepare a common team and climb Everest together. Our four strongest climbers brought equipment to the entire group, dropped it off at the base camp, and chose the route. And then a conflict arose in Tibet, China occupied it, and the topic was closed for a while. In 1960, the Chinese went to Everest themselves, although with our equipment and equipment. A year later they climbed again and installed an aluminum tripod on the top so that no one would doubt their achievement.
There was a story that in 1954 a Soviet expedition tried to storm Everest, but its participants died. I don't believe this story. In the USSR, climbers were in abundance. Since 1948, a thick almanac was published, which listed any ascents, up to the second category of difficulty, and this is the third-class level. The disappearance of famous athletes could not go unnoticed. It is difficult to jump over several steps: to get to the first category, you need to go to mountaineering camps for at least four years.
- When did you receive “Snow Leopard”, Eduard Vikentievich?
It cannot be obtained. You can only earn money.
- Sorry...
It happens... This is an unofficial title for the conqueror of the highest mountains of the USSR. We have five peaks over seven thousand meters - the peaks of Communism (the Tajiks renamed it Ismoil Somoni), Lenin, Pobeda, Korzhenevskaya and Khan Tengri. The highest point is Communism Peak, 7495 meters. I went up there in 1968. In 1970 he was on Pobeda, becoming the champion of the Union in the traverse class. And for Khan Tengri he received a gold medal.
- When did you start preparing for Everest?
We were eager to climb eight-thousanders, which did not exist in our country. At first they planned to go to Nanga Parbat in Pakistan. 8125 meters. Training camps were already underway, but then Islamabad quarreled with Delhi, and the USSR was friends with India... We were not allowed out of the country, although Pakistan declared that it would accept the Soviet expedition. In a word, politics intervened again.
- What year is this?
Around 77th. And already in 1978 they began to take a closer look at Everest. Our turn at the Ministry of Tourism of Nepal was approaching in the spring of 1980, but the USSR Sports Committee incurred large expenses in preparing for the Olympics in Moscow, and we were told that there was no money for the expedition.
There was also this point: no one guaranteed that the ascent would be successful, without casualties. And this is an additional risk, a new scandal. And so the Games-80 were boycotted by the Americans and their supporters... In a word, they decided to temporarily abandon the assault on Everest. We started looking for someone to switch lines with. We agreed with the Spaniards: we let them go ahead, and we ourselves will go two years later. In 1980, we conducted reconnaissance, and I took part in it. Six of us chose the route under Everest along which we would attack.
Further more. Since the event was planned for union significance, the republican federations, Moscow and Leningrad sent applications to the team. Ninety-eight people were recruited for sixteen vacancies. The lists of candidates are still kept at my home.
This is where the pandemonium began. We were sent to the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, where they began to prepare us as if for a flight into space. Maybe even tougher. Cold resistance, work in a pressure chamber...
Pilots of stratospheric fighters and cosmonauts without an oxygen mask could withstand a rise to a height of no higher than six thousand meters, and Yura Golodov endured up to eleven kilometers, pedaling a bicycle ergometer. True, he “lived” there for only ten seconds, passed out, lost consciousness. They immediately gave him a mask...
In my opinion, the organizers of the expedition made a strategic mistake when recruiting. Instead of a team charged with solving a problem, they formed a team of leaders, bright individuals. Everyone was eager to be included, to be among the chosen ones. You can't blame the guys. We understood: maybe this is the only chance to rise to the top of the world. So they squeezed the maximum out of themselves.
But for doctors, our company was beneficial, because it tolerated any bullying. We spent a day at a temperature of minus forty degrees, in a wind speed of sixty meters per second. They even breathed pure nitrogen!
STORM
- Was it hard?
Not that word! There was a documentary film “Himalayan Training” directed by Vendelovsky, but it disappeared somewhere. And I don't have a copy left. Everything is well shown there, in detail...
- Did you lose consciousness too, Eduard Vikentyevich?
All! I’m telling you: everyone worked to the limit.
- During the selection, age restrictions were introduced, you turned out to be the oldest member of the expedition...
I'm a couple of years behind the mark. I was forty-four when I climbed Everest. There was another problem there. Doctors suspected coronary heart disease. Almost rejected. But I proved that this was a mistake. Physical and emotional stress took its toll. In parallel with training, I was preparing to defend my Ph.D. dissertation, and in addition, I was busy working in three places to help my wife, who was responsible for raising our two daughters. So fatigue made itself felt... But I didn’t have ischemia, no. Of course, when making the final decision, they took into account my experience and authority, the fact that I was the deputy chairman of the USSR Mountaineering Federation.
- When did your team arrive in Kathmandu?
I don’t remember the exact date, I’ll have to look in the diaries. I have kept detailed notes on all expeditions since 1964. By hours and minutes. Now I'm converting everything into digital...
We arrived in Nepal in March. There was enough time for acclimatization and preparation of the base camp at an altitude of 5300 meters. Something else is worse. The coaches divided us back in the Union. All my life I worked together with Valentin Ivanov, and he and I were made leaders of the first two fours. Eric Ilyinsky was appointed to the third, and Slava Onishchenko to the fourth. My team included two Vladimirs from Leningrad - Balyberdin and Shopin, plus Muscovite Kolya Cherny. The climbers are excellent, no doubt about it, but I have never worked with them in the mountains, and this is important. You don’t even have to talk to a trusted partner, just walk in silence. People learn to feel each other, to predict the next step. This is what happened with Valka Ivanov and me.
His group included Seryozha Efimov from Sverdlovsk, the leader of local climbers, and two strong Ukrainians - Misha Turkevich from the Donetsk region and Sergey Bershov from Kharkov. A hodgepodge of individuals! Of course, conflicts arose, everyone had their own climbing tactics, training methods, techniques, but everyone endured for the sake of one goal...
If it were wise, it would have been worth creating a team based on established teams, say, “Spartak” or “Burevestnik”, strengthening it with climbers from other cities, but then entire regions would have been offended. So we made a mixed drink, a cocktail, to please everyone.
- Did you also quarrel with Vladimir Balyberdin, with whom you eventually went to the top?
Without direct clashes and a public showdown, there was no time in the mountains, but tension, as they say, was in the air. By nature, Volodya is a solo climber; he does not need partners. Yes, and the difference in experience affected. He was a candidate master, I was an international master of sports with coaching experience. But Balyberdin was superior to me in athleticism. Plus - eleven years younger...
Volodya has always been extremely ambitious. And he died in July 1994 because of this. I was driving a Volga, bought for climbing Everest, and at the intersection did not let a Finnish truck pass, deciding that it would pass. It landed right under the trailer... The Volga's roof was blown off by the impact, and all four people in the cabin were killed.
- Did you go to the funeral?
Then the Goodwill Games were held in St. Petersburg, and Governor Sobchak ordered the matter to be hushed up so as not to draw attention to the tragic death of a popular athlete. The body lay in the morgue for several days as if unidentified, although Volodya had his license and passport in his jacket pocket. Lena, the wife, found her husband with difficulty a week later and did not allow him to be buried in an unmarked grave...
I knew nothing about Volodya’s death; I was informed too late.
- A sad story, but we digress, Eduard Vikentievich.
Our ascent is described in great detail, I don’t want to chew on it. A lot went wrong from the start. The four of us were supposed to go, but Shopin and Cherny were supplying oxygen to the upper camps and could not participate in the assault in the first shift; they needed rest and recovery. As a result, we ourselves carried additional cargo with a tent for the fifth and final camp, ropes, and cylinders. At first, Volodya and I were accompanied by a Sherpa, a local guide, but Nawang did not reach the fourth camp at 8250 meters, burned his eyes and turned back. In all honesty, Balyberdin and I should have gone down and shared Navang’s load, but Volodya said: “I won’t go down, I’m not a porter.” And he climbed up. Process the route alone.
What to do? I tried to carry everything myself. Did not work out. At such a deadly height, twenty kilograms is almost unbearable. At some point, the backpack overturned me, and I hung on the rope. Neither here nor there. Soon the oxygen in the tank ran out, I almost lost consciousness and died. I would stay hanging out there forever. I had to get out. Hit or miss. I climbed out, but was unable to hold up the heavy backpack and my hands were severely frozen. I took off my mittens to grab small hooks in the vertical wall with my fingers, and my spare mittens flew away along with my backpack...
On the second, Bershov and Turkevich, guys from Ivanov’s group, came up to us and brought new ropes. We worked the next section, hauled in some of the cargo, left the fixed rope and returned for a short rest to the fourth camp. On May 3, we spent the night at 8500. There were less than four hundred meters left to the target. We left early in the morning and reached the summit in the afternoon. We spent five days with Volodya at an altitude of more than eight thousand meters. It's a lot. Very! All the time at the limit, with a minimum of oxygen. There wasn't any left for the return trip...
- Balyberdin later wrote in his diary that it was a wrong climb.
Is there a lot of right things in our lives? Often the main thing happens not because of, but in spite of. Everything is a collection of accidents. You just need to adjust them in the right direction so that there isn’t a very severe puncture...
Everyone who eventually climbed Everest had to act through “I can’t.” If a person began to feel even a little sorry for himself, gave in to slack, he left the race. Specific example. Eduard Shevardnadze, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, put pressure on the head of the USSR Sports Committee Sergei Pavlov, and Khuta Khergiani was included in the team. And what? After the first exit from the base camp, he refused to work at altitude, and then helped filmmakers film a chronicle about the expedition. Although Khergiani is an experienced climber...
- Did he also receive the title of Honored Master of Sports?
Like all. After all, in Moscow they won’t measure who has risen to what point, right? There is no management at the top...
- Could you and Balyberdin wait until Shopin and Cherny get better, so as not to go together?
If no one works on the route for several days, the already hung ropes break, and the wind can throw the installed tents into the abyss. It's like a house where no one lives. Everything quickly falls into disrepair.
In addition, we would have stood at the back of the queue, letting the other four pass ahead. Some never got their chance. Eleven out of sixteen people reached the summit. Khomutov, Puchkov and Golodov rose up on May 9, essentially violating the order and cheating. Moscow ordered the lifting of new groups to be canceled to eliminate the risk. What if someone dies at the last minute and ruins the picture?
The expedition was behind schedule.
- By time?
According to the work completed. Each camp should have been equipped in advance with everything necessary - sleeping bags, burners, food, oxygen cylinders... Why? During an assault, backpacks must have minimal weight. But it turned out that we didn’t have time to equip the fifth camp, and we carried everything ourselves. A tent, ropes to mark the route for the others. Each bay weighed three to four kilograms. But the powers are not unlimited...
- How long is the rope?
40-45 meters. It’s easy to calculate: we placed them from 6000 meters to 8600. Two and a half kilometers of mountain entangled in ropes. Solid thread! And yet, Balyberdin and I didn’t have enough ropes to finish. There is a sheer belt at the top, but we have nothing left. They cut off a piece of railing rope that had survived from previous expeditions and used it.
DESCENT
- Was there a big risk?
And what do you think? You slip on the asphalt and you can break your neck, but we walked a route that no one had taken.
Hooks jumped out of the wall, people fell into cracks... Lesha Moskaltsov fell on the glacier, flew about fifteen meters, hit himself, lost consciousness, suffered a concussion, and injured his leg. Yura Golodov pulled him out.
- At what altitude does it become nauseous?
Above six thousand meters a normal organism cannot exist. Due to a lack of oxygen, cold and solar radiation, apathy begins, motor activity decreases, in acute cases of mountain sickness, swelling of the brain and lungs develops, coma and death occur. A person burns out from the inside, there is no strength to either storm or descend. The roof is coming. There are known cases when people jumped into the abyss, tore off their oxygen masks...
- Have you ever thought about returning before it’s too late?
Surrender? Run a marathon and quit in the last meters of the race? Then you won’t forgive yourself for the rest of your life! There were many cases at the Olympics when athletes fell from exhaustion, got up and, in a semi-fainting state, continued to move towards the finish line. Due to oxygen starvation, the brain turns off, but the will works. Yes, I could crawl onto these 8848 by my teeth!
- What does a person experience at the top?
I won’t lie, there are no special emotions. You get so exhausted that there are no feelings left. One thought: I'm exhausted. And when you go down, disappointment sets in. There was a dream, like a guiding star, you climbed to the top and extinguished it. It is always important to know why you endure and suffer. You won’t go to torment without a goal...
Of course, the first time after the assault it seems: I will never climb up again for anything in the world, not for any reason. And six months later you start dreaming of mountains, and again you catch yourself thinking: what team should I join to go on an expedition?
- Was it more difficult to climb Everest or descend from it?
Most often, climbers die on the way back. On the way up, tragedies happen because of mistakes, and on the way down, they happen because of exhaustion. A person gives all his strength to victory, but the top is only halfway. After finishing a marathon, a marathon runner can fall onto the treadmill and lie down, recovering his breathing. And if a climber falls, he will never get up again...
This is not a sport. We compete not with each other, but with nature.
- Could you save your fingers?
If on May 1st I had immediately turned down - yes, but on the 4th, after the summit, it was already too late. Valera Khrishchaty, who was walking towards us, gave us a pair of spare woolen socks, and I pulled them on my hands. But each hook had to be refastened. First, click the zhumar (climbing clip) onto the lower rope, then click the carabiner. And so - hundreds of times. Nobody helped me, I did everything myself. And the icy iron sticks to your frost-scorched hands... Or try unzipping your fly to catch your “siskin” in your pants and pee...
Any movement through pain!
- Where did you have the operation?
I was taken away incognito. The guys were also at a reception with the King of Nepal, they met with Indira Gandhi in Delhi, and on May 25 I flew to Moscow. Everyone returned to their homeland on June 10, and I was led through the back door into the Sheremetyevo arrival hall to leave with everyone else. Although in reality I had already been in the burn center on Serpukhovka for two weeks, where several damaged phalanges of my fingers were amputated...
So you asked: “A smart person won’t get ahead?” So I’ll answer: fools don’t go there. At least I didn't meet them there. After all, when does a person feel the highest pleasure? At the moment of overcoming, victory. It will be remembered forever. You begin to love and respect yourself not in the process of completing a difficult task, but after. The great climber Kuzmin climbed Lenin Peak without acclimatization; the journalist asked him during a live communication session, expecting to hear an enthusiastic answer: “What do you feel now?” And Kirill Konstantinovich, who was called high altitude man No. 1 of the Soviet Union, said: “I want to leave as soon as possible. It’s cold and windy here.”
It’s a real thrill when you go down, look at the mountain and think: I climbed onto you, although I could have turned down! Probably, in some ways this is comparable to childbirth: a woman suffers, suffers during contractions, but immediately forgets everything, experiencing happiness at the moment a new person is born.
- I noticed that in your diary you write the word “Mountain” with a capital letter.
As a sign of respect. They say: we defeated it. But I think differently: you defeated yourself, and she allowed you to rise to the top...
MOTIVATION
- Were you well paid for the Nepalese expedition?
Stupid question! Today, the first thing they ask is about their salary, and football players who can’t really hit the ball are willing to pay five hundred thousand rubles an hour so that they can then bathe in champagne. Why do they need to train and break their legs? In our time, priorities were different. Of course, we are not unmercenary, but at first we thought about the prestige of the country, the honor of the flag. And then about the rest. Mikhail Turkevich once spoke in prison, showed a film about the ascent, slides, and one of the prisoners asked how you were. About money. Well, Misha got angry and blurted out: “A ruble is a meter!” The prisoners immediately began to calculate: 8848 rubles! Wow! A large sum for 1982.
In fact, for the duration of the expedition, they kept our salary at our place of main duty, and after the ascent the sports committee wrote out a bonus of two thousand rubles and gave postcards for the purchase of cars. Everyone was awarded the title of Honored Master of Sports, Balyberdin and I were awarded the Order of Lenin. But bonuses were given only to team members who climbed Everest, and nothing to the rest of the guys, coaches, and Dr. Orlovsky. So we chipped in and divided the money equally among everyone.
I was able to buy a Zhiguli, model 13, only because I insured my life for five thousand rubles. And the leader of the expedition, Evgeniy Igorevich Tamm, will give me another ten. When I had trouble with my fingers, part of the insurance paid out. Forty percent of the amount. I paid seven thousand two hundred rubles for the car, and I even had two hundred left for drinks. Then a bottle of cognac cost 4.12, and half a liter of vodka - 3.62...
- Can I ask another stupid question?
Where there is one, there is another... Go ahead!
How do you feel about commercial mountaineering, the era of which began in the mid-90s after the abolition of quotas for climbing Everest? If in 1983 eight people reached the summit, in 1990 - about forty, then in 2012 234 tourists climbed there in just one day. The total number of Everest conquerors has exceeded four thousand; in different years, a blind American, an eighty-year-old Japanese and a thirteen-year-old boy visited there...
This is a business, not mountaineering. Now you can fly into space for money. Pay the cashier twenty million dollars and go ahead. But none of these star passengers will become the new Gagarin or Titov. Like a mountain tourist - a real climber. Do you understand the difference? Americans estimate the climb to Everest to cost 65 thousand dollars. For lovers of extreme recreation, the safest routes have been laid out; they carry a backpack for them, change oxygen cylinders, which are in abundance... If desired, in the camp at 7000 meters you can even order a cocktail and dinner from the menu. Sherpa will cook!
However, this does not diminish what we have done. The 1982 expedition paved a new, previously unexplored route. Balyberdin and I became the first Soviet climbers on Everest. Bershov and Turkevich made a night ascent... This is history that cannot be rewritten.
You can only add a page. Let’s say I received my last gold medal recently, in 2014. Climbed Belukha in Altai in honor of the centenary of the first ascent of it in 1914. The height is not the most outstanding, 4500 meters and a penny. But it turned out that I am the oldest conqueror. At that time I was 77 years old. Became the champion of Russia in the veteran class, which took into account age, route difficulty and altitude.
It's a small thing, but it's nice...
In the fall of 1991, I was lucky enough to participate in the International Expedition to the highest mountain in the World - Mount Everest (8848m). One day, Vladimir Balyberdin, a famous high-altitude climber, called me, who was the first Soviet climber to set foot on the Earth’s high-altitude pole in 1982. He organized the Everest-91 expedition, the main goal of which was to set a record for high-speed ascent from base camp to the summit. The plan was to reach the summit in less than 20 hours. (Previous achievement - Mark Batard, without the use of oxygen cylinders, 10/5/1990 - 22 hours 29 minutes)
By this time, I had already established myself as a strong athlete during high-altitude ascents to Mount Lhotse (8156m) and Mount Manaslu (8163m). In addition, as a high-altitude videographer, he shot good materials about these expeditions. And after the Lhotse-90 expedition, I, together with Sergei Bershov and Mikhail Turkevich, participated in the most famous program in the USSR on central television, “The Film Travelers Club,” and the legendary presenter Yuri Sinkevich himself admired the panorama of the Himalayan peaks, which I shot at an altitude above 8000 meters.
Therefore, Vladimir invited me to lead an auxiliary group, the main task of which is to help set up intermediate camps, provide support for high-speed ascents and shoot a video about the expedition. If the outcome was successful, of course, it was planned that all participants would ascend to the top.
Without a moment's hesitation, I agreed! Everest!!!
Vladimir Balyberdin and Anatoly Boukreev, both outstanding high-altitude climbers with unprecedented endurance and extraordinary stubbornness in achieving their goals, were vying to set a new record for speed climbing Mount Everest. Due to a lack of funds, the expedition was not numerous - 9 athletes and a doctor, namely Vladimir Balyberdin, Alexey Klimin, Elena Kuleshova and Doctor Vladimir Gorbunov from St. Petersburg, a Georgian - Roman Giutashvili, three Americans and me - a representative of independent Ukraine.
The chaos and adventurism of the perestroika times of the 90s affected, of course, mountaineering. True, what we could not take away from us was excellent sports training, tempered and grown under the continuous restrictions of the harmonious bureaucratic system of Soviet mountaineering. Previously, in order to obtain permission to climb the highest category of difficulty, it was necessary to show great perseverance and determination, train a lot and have organizational talent, earning money through industrial mountaineering for almost continuous trips to the mountains. Now there is complete freedom of action and the only limitation is finances. The era of commercial International Himalayan expeditions began, when we, “strong but poor climbers from the CIS” cooperated with “rich” climbers of the West. We resolved all organizational issues, bought some inexpensive Soviet equipment (our oxygen equipment was especially valuable) and worked on the route - in fact, we were “guides”. Foreign partners in the expedition paid for our joint stay in the Himalayas. The Everest-91 expedition also worked on this principle.
The 9th member of our expedition, an American of Ukrainian origin, Dan Mazur, appeared by chance. He found us in Kathmandu. In August, Dan climbed Lenin Peak (Pamir) in a group of Crimean climbers. Inspired by success, he declared that he dreamed of climbing Everest. To which the head of the training camp, Gennady Vasilenko, advised him to immediately fly to Kathmandu and join Balyberdin’s expedition. So he did...
In one of the cramped shops in Kathmandu, he heard Russian speech - we met. Having agreed with Volodya on a “reasonable” price for his participation in the expedition, he joined us. As a result, he climbed Everest, and the next year he helped Balyberdin organize our next expedition - to peak K-2 (8611m). Now Dan Mazur is one of the most famous American mountaineering guides and has already climbed 7 eight-thousanders. We are still friends and correspond with him to this day.
But let's return to the course of the expedition: the first difficulty arose in overcoming the notorious Khumbu glacier. This is a labyrinth, among a chaotic accumulation of huge ice blocks, with an almost kilometer-long difference in height. Nepalese climbers (high-altitude Sherpas) annually organize a route through the icefall using ropes and aluminum ladders, and then maintain and update the path throughout the season. The icefall lives its own life, and ice movements occur daily. I observed one of these collapses:
Having passed the next section of the path, we sat down on our backpacks to rest, enjoying the beautiful sunny weather in the majestic, harsh silence of the mountains. Suddenly, the “ground” began to shake beneath us, immediately below us a huge snow cloud began to rise up the slope, and only after that a dull, growing roar was heard. We jumped to our feet with a panicky desire to run away, but there was nowhere to go - there were bottomless cracks all around!.. When everything calmed down and the snow dust settled, a completely different landscape opened up before us: fifty meters down the slope, instead of the ten-meter seracs and deep cracks through which 15 minutes ago we made our way along suspended ropes and fixed ladders, a huge glacier failure 300 meters wide and about a hundred meters long could be seen. Here the level of the glacier dropped ten meters down and, like a pool, was evenly filled with an ice mess of relatively small (meter-long) pieces of ice. In some places, pieces of rope and twisted aluminum ladders stuck out from under the rubble. Fortunately, there was no one in this area at that moment! This is how we met the famous Khumbu!
But that is not all! The Sherpas, who paved the way through the Khumba and constantly updated it, demanded a fee from each climber for the use of this “road of life”. Our budget was not designed for this, and stubborn Bel said that we would make our way through the icefall. We had few ropes, but Balyberdin prudently took several kilometers of fishing 5mm rope for the expedition. For serious insurance when passing bottomless cracks, it was too thin, but for marking the route and safety net... well, in fact, there were no other options.
We began to implement the plan. If several dozen Sherpas prepare a passage through the Khumba within a month, then “six desperate Russians” crossed the icefall in 2 days! Since we did not have ropes to cross the countless deep cracks, we made a path along the left side of the icefall, where avalanches constantly falling from the slope filled up the ice cracks. Everything would be fine if it weren’t for the “snow trains” constantly sliding down the slope.
A large multinational audience (inhabitants of the base camp) watched with interest when Russian clowns came out to Khumbu... It was very clearly visible how we maneuvered between avalanches that often fell from the slope - it was possible to play a bet on whether the Russians would get through...
We walked a couple of times, but later almost all the rope we hung was swallowed up by voracious avalanches, and we began to walk along the Sherpa path at night (so that no one would see). Over time, the Sherpas became more accommodating and gave us “tickets” to walk along their trail, accepting payment in kind - we gave them the remaining ropes, rope cord and some other equipment. Now we could calmly move along the route without thinking about technical problems.
Having made several acclimatization trips and established intermediate camps, we reached the South Col - a huge snow bridge of the ridge, where the last fourth assault camp is usually set up, from where climbers manage to go to the top and descend back to the tent during daylight hours. The first group (Balyberdin, Boukreev and two Americans) was so imbued with the sports spirit and the desire to set a record that during the acclimatization trip, after spending the night on the saddle, they decided to climb even higher up the slope towards the top.
Anatoly Boukreev, possessing incredible health and endurance, could not restrain his impulse and broke away from the group. The Americans followed him. Bel, who was not going to climb high during acclimatization, walked behind. When Buka seriously broke away from the group, Bel began to bring everyone back with gestures and shouts. One of the American climbers turned down, and the leading two began to move away uncontrollably... As a result: Bukreev climbed to the top, the American who followed him returned from a height of about 8500m, and Balyberdin, whose pride awoke, began to catch up with Buka and a couple of hours later also reached the top top.
At the base camp, Nepalese liaison officers and foreign climbers did not believe them - in such a short time, without good acclimatization, in bad weather - it is impossible to reach the top!
Sitting in the base tent in the evening, we sadly digested the current situation: firstly, Bel had a serious quarrel with Buka due to violation of discipline and unauthorized access to the summit and even forbade him from sports speed climbing, secondly, the mountain was not counted... Anatoly suddenly sharply got up and ran out of the tent. Returning after some time, he brought proof of conquering the summit. It turns out that on the summit metal tripod he removed his pectoral cross, which the English climber had brought and left there the day before. Justice triumphed - the mountain was “credited” to them!
My group (Alexey Klimin, Elena Kuleshova, Roman Giutashvili, Dan Mazur) performed auxiliary functions. After acclimatization, working on the route, setting up Assault Camp 4 on the South Col, descending and resting at the base camp, we had to climb to the top and, with a successful combination of circumstances. I also had to film the finish of Vladimir Balyberdin’s speed race at the top.
As always, difficulties arose. During the previous trip, Lena Kuleshova caught a cold, and during the three days of rest at the base camp she did not have time to recover. In addition, in each intermediate camp there was only one of our tents, and it was inconvenient for five of us to spend the night in one small tent. Therefore, it was decided to go up in two groups: first Giutashvili and Mazur took the route, and the next day - me, Klimin and Kuleshova. When we climbed to the second camp, Lena’s cough intensified, she was unable to continue the ascent and returned to the base camp from an altitude of 7000 m.
...The sun was setting when we (with Alexey Klimin) climbed the South Col (8000m) for the second time during the expedition. We did not have radio contact with the Giutashvili-Mazur team, but from the things left in the tent we understood that they had taken the entire supply of oxygen and left to storm the summit in the morning. It was already starting to get dark, we began to prepare for the “morning” (at 2-3 a.m.) climb to the top, but our friends did not return from the top.
At 22.00 we calmed down a little when we saw the light of a lantern high on the slope. However, only at about 23.30 Den Mazur burst into the tent and began to mutter indistinctly that Roma (Giutashvili) remained at the top of the slope, he had run out of oxygen and needed help. Alexey was wearing boots at that moment (putting on boots and getting ready to go out at an altitude of 8000 meters takes about half an hour), so without hesitation, he took a flashlight and, without waiting for me to get dressed, went to meet Roma.
At this altitude at night the temperature drops rapidly and reaches more than 40 degrees below zero. If there is wind, sometimes hurricane-force, these are Arctic conditions! Therefore, moving along the route at night requires especially careful preparation. I understood that Alexey would not be able to look for Roma for a long time. A rare case for Everest, but on the South Col that day there was not a single climber except us, so we could only rely on our own strength. Having given Dan some hot tea, I began to thoroughly prepare for the night search. Alexey returned to the tent an hour later, without finding Roma. His feet began to freeze, and he needed to dress warmer. Taking several sets of batteries for the flashlight so that it would last until the morning, I went in search.
The ascent from the South Col towards the summit is a very wide snow slope. To find Roman, I decided to go in a zigzag, combing the entire slope with a gradual increase in height. I peered into the darkness with tension, but could not see anything. At about 3 o'clock in the morning, I saw a black dot on a snowy slope. As he began to get closer, the silhouette began to move. It was Roma. He sat on the slope, hugging an empty oxygen tank, half asleep and could not move on his own. He didn't have a lantern. I pushed him aside, took him by the arm, and he, leaning on me, was able to walk to the tent.
After drinking tea and warming up, Roma came to his senses. But his condition was difficult, and Dan wasn’t feeling well either, so Alexei and I couldn’t go out to storm the summit that night. Our fears were confirmed in the morning. We spent half a day getting Roman into a state where he could move around on his own. He turned 54 that year; at that age, reaching the highest point on the planet, without having sufficient high-altitude experience, is a heroic act. This was also Dan’s first peak above 8000m and he was also pretty exhausted. Only around noon did Dan and Roman get together. I had to accompany Roma below the saddle to the beginning of the vertical railings, almost to camp 3. There he felt much more confident and was able to continue walking on his own.
Alexey and I spent the second night on the South Col, but at the same time we were full of strength and confidence in tomorrow’s ascent. There was no one else in the assault camp except us. The season was ending - it was October 11th, all expeditions had completed their work. The panorama of the camp had a sad look: a cold hurricane wind ruffled the torn remains of abandoned tents. This was our only chance to get to the top of Everest if the weather didn't turn bad. At the same time, we could not count on anyone’s help, which means that we could go up only with full confidence in success...
At night the wind increased, the monsoon season began. We launched the assault at 3 am. It was impossible to stand at full height. A hurricane wind tore off frozen pieces of firn and hit them painfully on our bodies, crawling upward on all fours. Very soon, my hands and feet began to freeze. Sometimes we lost our balance and, barely clinging to the slope with ice axes, fell onto the snow. After an hour of fighting the elements, I began to give signals with gestures (we could not hear each other) that we needed to return to the tent...
After catching our breath in the tent, we discussed our plans for a long time. The weather is getting worse and the wind is getting stronger. We crawled almost on all fours along the wide slope of the South Col, but what would happen on the sharp ridge near the summit? (There was a case when the wind tore off and carried a group of four climbers into the abyss.) We have no oxygen, it is useless to hope for help. But we are so close to the highest point on the planet! It's a shame to miss this opportunity! So much effort wasted! Will such an opportunity ever present itself again?..
At about 8 o'clock in the morning we made another attempt to climb. But the wind became even stronger, the firn cakes whistled like bullets, and it was impossible to stand on your feet! We crawled to an altitude of 8400m and turned down...
The fall of 1991 was not the best time for climbers on Everest. Only 8 people reached the summit. For example, in the spring of 2007, 472 climbers climbed the mountain along different routes.
Vladimir Balyberdin nevertheless attempted a high-speed ascent. A day later, at 22.00 he left the base camp and after 16 hours reached an altitude of 8400-8500m. Due to the hurricane wind, he, like us, failed to reach the top.
Anatoly Boukreev, despite Bel’s ban, left the base camp a couple of hours later than Balyberdin and, approximately on the same schedule and with the same negative result, returned back.
Although it was not possible to set a speed record for technical reasons, the Everest-91 expedition was generally successful, and most importantly, it became a preparatory stage for the first ascent of climbers from the post-Soviet space (the USSR had already collapsed by that time) to Peak K-2 (8611m) - the second highest peak in the world.
Kopeyka Gennady Vasilievich - President of the Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing of the Kharkov Region since 2007.
Born on December 16, 1960 in the village. Krasny Oskol, Izyum district (Kharkov region). Graduated from the Kyiv School of Physics and Mathematics at Kiev State University.
MSMC in mountaineering, CMS in rock climbing, instructor-methodologist of the 3rd category, awarded the Honorary title “Snow Leopard” (No. 358), holder of the “Rescue Squad” badge (No. 3648). Champion of the USSR and Ukraine.
Knight of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. Deputy of the Kyiv District Council in Kharkov.
Graduated from the Kharkov Aviation Institute with a degree in Radioelectronic Equipment. Currently, he is the General Director of ARKO Company.
He started mountaineering in the KhAI section in 1978, the first alpine camp was “Baksan”, the first peak was Via-tau. A total of 114 ascents were made, of which 5 and 6 grades. - 33. In 1986-1992. - Member of the national team of the USSR and Ukraine.
Best climbs:
Ushba South. (Mt. Myshlyaeva) - champion of the USSR (1986); p. "4810", S.-W. wall, 6 k.s., p/p, hand. (1988). Multiple champion and prize-winner of the USSR and Ukrainian championships.
Participant of 4 Himalayan expeditions: 1990 - c. Lhotse (up to an altitude of 8350 m, expedition of the “Profsport of the USSR”, led by A. Shevchenko); 1991 - c. Everest (up to a height of 8300 m, international expedition, leader V. Balyberdin); V. Manaslu (up to an altitude of 7500 m, 1st Ukrainian Himalayan expedition, leader V. Shumikhin); 1992 - item K-2 (Chogori, 8616 m), Mt Abruzi - 74th conqueror of the most difficult mountain in terms of weather conditions and the most severe in terms of the number of climbers killed, in a team with V. Balyberdin in an international expedition.
Conqueror of the highest points: Europe - c. Elbrus (5633 m), America - c. Aconcagua (6959 m), Africa - c. Kilimanjaro (5896 m). For services in sports and heroism in the Himalayan ascents, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
In 1987-1993 worked as a videographer at the Kharkov Regional Film and Video Center, filming many exciting reports about the Himalayan expeditions.
The most difficult rescue operations:
1987 - search and transportation of dead climbers: S. Bondarenko, V. Khalik, B. Polyakovsky at Klara Zetkin village;
1990 - c. Lhotse (8516 m) - descent of V. Karataev, who received serious frostbite, from a height of 8350 m together with M. Turkevich;
1991—c. Everest (8848 m) - search at night and provide assistance at an altitude of 8200 m above the South Col to R. Giutashvili descending from the peak.
He worked in the industrial area painting radio relay towers of the Urengoy - Pomary - Uzhgorod gas pipeline.
Chairman of the alpsection of the KhAI in 1981-1983, member of the board and board of trustees of the Kharkov regional mountaineering club.
Since 2007 - President of the Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing of the Kharkov Region.
Since 2009 - Chairman of the Board of the Kharkov Regional Mountaineering Club.
Since 2007, member of the Presidium of the Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing of Ukraine.
Since 2013 - senior coach of the Ukrainian national mountaineering team.