As the lone figure approached the summit of Mount Everest buffeted by winds zipping around its dizzyingly steep and treacherous slopes, the sense of achievement was palpable.
Here she was, the first woman to stand on top of the world after scaling Earth’s highest mountain unaided and without oxygen.
It was a remarkable, record-breaking effort and Alison Hargreaves could no longer contain her emotions. ‘This is the most fantastic day of my life,’ she declared breathlessly, as she radioed down to basecamp that spring day in May 1995.
Wheezing from the thin air at the 29,031ft peak, Hargreaves asked that an important message be faxed to her family in Scotland: ‘To Tom and Kate, my dear children,’ she gasped, ‘I am on the highest point of the world, and I love you dearly.’
At the time, the feat received almost universal acclaim with newspaper front pages declaring it ‘One of the greatest climbs in history’ and a media frenzy greeted the mother-of-two’s return to the UK.
Yet, it would prove the high point of a stellar career as, just three months later, her ambitious quest to become the first woman to climb the world’s three tallest mountains without oxygen would be brought to an abrupt and tragic halt.
On August 13, 1995, Hargreaves had already reached the top of K2, the world’s second highest peak – known as the ‘Savage Mountain’.
But as she and the five climbers she was with circumvented the vertiginous summit ridge, they were caught up in the 260mph winds of a sudden, unexpected tempest and blown to oblivion. A bloodstained jacket, harness and her climbing boot were found, though her body was never recovered. She was just 33.
Alison Hargraves became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest without oxygen or the assistance of sherpas in 1995
Hailed a hero after Everest, Hargreaves suffered a posthumous backlash for supposedly putting her love for the mountains before her responsibilities as a mother.
Those fathers who died on the mountain alongside her escaped similar censure.
Back home in Fort William, in the shadow of Ben Nevis and in the eye of a growing media storm, it was left to her husband, Jim Ballard, to fend off the press and explain to their children, Tom, then six, and four-year-old Kate, that Mummy was never coming back.
It was, Ballard later recalled, ‘the hardest thing that any parent will have to do’. There can be few things more upsetting and confusing for a six-year-old child to grasp than their mother’s untimely death.
Kate ‘cried and shouted’ but having digested the news, Tom is said to have looked up at his father and announced: ‘I want to see Mum’s last mountain.’
His words might easily be dismissed as a heartbroken boy struggling to express the grief of losing a parent.
He could not have known the difficulties involved in trekking to Pakistan’s distant Karakoram range to glimpse a peak so remote that when it was first measured in the 19th century no local name for it could be found and it has kept its bureaucratic Survey of India tag.
Nevertheless, young Tom did travel with his father and sister to base camp in Pakistan with a BBC documentary team to pay their last respects, although the trip was dismissed as a stunt in some quarters and Jim Ballard faced accusations he was trading on his wife’s death for financial gain.
Ms Hargreaves with her children Kate and Tom at base camp at the south side of Everest
Given all of that and all the grief visited upon him as a youngster by mountaineering, one might have expected Tom to steer well clear of a career in climbing.
But the Ballards, it would seem, are wired differently to the rest of us.
His mother’s burning desire to push the boundaries appeared to light a fire in her son, drawing him inexorably towards the same danger for which he, too, would pay the ultimate price.
Tom Ballard, became a climber as gifted and committed as his mother and died at almost the same age as she did on a mountain, Nanga Parbat, 100 miles from where her body lies forever encased in ice. His body was never recovered either.
The unspoken question on so many lips must be – was it always destined to end like that? That the fate of the son rested on that of his mother?
It would have come as no surprise to Alison Hargreaves had her critics tried to lay the blame for her son’s death at her door – a lost child forever trying to reconnect with his mother in the mountains which claimed her.
Certainly, Hargreaves felt herself open to a scrutiny not applied to her male colleagues.
In her last interview, with fellow climber Matt Comeskey at K2’s base camp just a fortnight before her final, fatal climb, she addressed the challenges and inequalities faced by female mountaineers.
One of the last photos taken of Alison Hargreaves with Tom and Kate
‘I think women climb before they get married, before they have boyfriends and babies, then they lose interest,’ Hargreaves told Comeskey, who would survive the storm after turning back early. ‘Having children is very fulfilling, and a lot of people don’t feel the need for anything else. For me, that was a conscious decision. I actually wanted children, and I also wanted to carry on with the climbing.’
Asked if a female climber needed to be tougher than a man, she said: ‘I think that women in general have to work harder in a man’s world to achieve recognition.’ Recalling an exchange with a well-known climber at a dinner, she was shocked when he asked, “Are you a roadie?”. ‘For me, that was the worst thing he could have said,’ she added. ‘I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder, I’m sure.’
Perhaps it was that chip which prompted her to dedicate her life to the macho world of mountaineering.
f so, it began early in her life. Born on a stormy February day in 1962 into a comfortably middle-class family in Derbyshire, her father John, a senior scientific officer at British Rail Derby, took her scrambling, hillwalking and climbing and she was quickly hooked by the lure of outdoor adventure.
The walls of her teenage bedroom were covered in images of mountains and climbers and school expeditions and a family holiday to the Austrian Alps only boosted her enthusiasm for the hills.
She was only 18, and still a schoolgirl, when she shocked her parents by moving in with Ballard, who was 16 years her senior.
The couple met at his outdoor equipment shop in the Peak District where she had a Saturday job, and their relationship was always founded on, and complicated by, climbing. He offered her a way into this male-dominated scene in which they both believed she could excel.
Ms Hargreaves prepares for her ascent of K2 in August 1995
They would later move to Fort William and the marriage produced two children on whom they doted but the relationship proved stormy.
Hargreaves’ letters and diaries revealed posthumously in a controversial 2010 biography show that, before her last trip to K2, she had considered leaving her husband amid dark claims of Ballard’s controlling behaviour.
Partly, it is said, she climbed to provide for her family as her husband’s mountaineering shop fell victim to recession in the Nineties, but also to seek refuge in the mountains from an unhappy home life.
Her biographers claimed she had stayed with Jim Ballard because she needed security, but the fame and respect which would follow her exploits on Everest and K2 could now provide that.
She would come down from the summit a changed woman and begin a new life without her husband.
Ballard has previously acknowledged that the marriage was in trouble at the time of the attempt on K2 but has always refused to entertain the more serious allegations about what went on behind closed doors, saying: ‘They were her personal diaries, and they were not to be read by outsiders.’
However estranged they were by the time of her death, her husband expressed disappointment in how women and mothers are judged for succeeding in their careers, particularly dangerous ones.
Tom Ballard, whose mother Alison Hargreaves died on K2. Mr Ballard and fellow climber Damiele Nardi went missing on an ascent of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.
‘How could I have stopped her?’ he said of his wife in a 2002 interview. ‘I loved Alison because she wanted to climb the highest peak her skills would allow her to.
That’s who she was.’ He added: ‘I just hope that there was a point to Alison’s death and that, in the long term, what she achieved will help shift attitudes.’
Many now see Hargreaves as a trailblazer – a woman who pushed at the limits, climbing fearlessly because she loved it, and because she was good at it.
She made several great climbs in the Alps, but always felt she had to drag the baggage of motherhood up behind her.
In 1988, she climbed the North Face of the Eiger while six months pregnant with Tom. After the climb, she received criticism. ‘I was pregnant, not sick,’ Hargreaves responded.
In a way, Tom’s first Alpine ascent was with his mother, roped together umbilically.
Perhaps it was inevitable Tom would follow his mother into the mountains.
Despite their disintegrating relationship, both parents were agreed that Tom and Kate should be raised in an ‘adventurous way’.
Alison Hargreaves with her children and husband Jim Ballard
When his wife died, Ballard kept that promise and took the children canoeing, mountain biking and walking in the hills.
He baulked at climbing until a new climbing wall in Fort William became a favourite for children’s birthday parties and Tom asked his father why they never went climbing. ‘I couldn’t think of a good enough reason,’ said Ballard. ‘So I took them out one day. And that was it for Tom.’
His son was a natural and soon began to scale difficult routes with apparent ease.
Aged about 11, waiting to go into school, Tom suddenly realised he had found his calling. ‘That was it. I was sorted,’ he said. ‘I’ve wavered a few times since then, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.’
His sister, now 34, an occasional climber, would stick to the relatively safe career of a professional ski instructor and extreme snowboarder, but Tom was melded to the rock. ‘It’s like a drug,’ he once said. ‘The more we do, the more we want.’
He dedicated himself to the climber’s nomadic life, touring Europe in a campervan in search of the next challenge with his retired father in tow as cook, guide and mentor.
In 2015, Ballard was crowned the ‘King of the Alps’ after he became the first person to solo-climb the six major north faces in one winter.
Describing how it felt to be among mountains, he reflected: ‘I just feel that she’s there somewhere, not necessarily present, but just always there.’
Tellingly, he entrusted his life to his mother’s old ice axes and stowed his gear in the same barrels she used on her ill-fated K2 expedition.
Moreover, he never blamed Hargreaves for leaving him motherless. On the contrary, he said: ‘I would have been disappointed with her if she hadn’t gone out to live her dreams.’
Climbing was ‘always pushing yourself to a point of no return, to see how far to the edge you can get without falling off’.
Tragically, for all his prodigious talent, Tom Ballard – like his mother before him – eventually got too close.
He had plans for his own expedition to K2 but efforts to raise the necessary £150,000 war chest had stalled – despite the family connection, no-one was biting.
Instead, in 2019, Tom set out to conquer a previously unclimbed route to the summit of the world’s ninth highest mountain, Nanga Parbat, on the western fringe of the Himalayas, just over 100 miles away from his mother’s final resting place on K2.
Along with an Italian climber, Daniele Nardi, he attempted a steep ridge called the Mummery Spur towards the 26,600ft summit, described by some experts as ‘suicidal’ due the risks of avalanche.
As they pushed for the summit, radio contact was lost. An ominous silence stretched into weeks and, after an exhaustive search, their bodies were spotted in an area so remote they could not be recovered.
The unhappy symmetry was complete – a mother and son lying in their icy tombs on separate mountains, lost while reaching for their dreams.
And just as before, when his mother perished, a BBC documentary team followed a pilgrimage, this time by an adult Kate to the spot where her brother had fallen.
Their father, now aged 79 and living in France, decided it was a journey too far and declined to go. The resulting film, ‘The Last Mountain’, remains a hard watch, haunted by ghosts.
Her mother would have been 63 now and her brother 36 and although the mountains robbed Kate of both, in death their legacy as great climbers remains steadfast.
‘I’m happy Tom and my mum are here,’ she tells the filmmakers. ‘It’s the most beautiful place in the world and it’s where they wanted to be.’
She adds: ‘It’s almost like mum is cradling him and they will be together forever now.’
A mother and son – trailblazers. Immortals.
