Amid a soundscape of falling rock and ice, Alison Hargreaves settled down for a second sleepless night on the 6,000-foot north face of Switzerland’s Eiger, at the Death Bivouac. Two men had frozen to death here during the first attempt to climb the face in 1935. Fatigued and nauseous, she rested her aching body on a coffin-sized ledge. Alison wasn’t suffering from altitude sickness: she was six months pregnant.
High on the imposing Mordwand – ‘murderous wall’ – which had claimed the lives of so many men, Alison carried a new life, which kicked and jostled against the squeeze of her harness. On reaching the summit, she became the first British woman to ascend the mountain’s north face.
Alison’s unborn child entered the world as Tom Ballard and lived as his mother had lived, following in her hand-and-footholds, becoming a world-class alpinist and intermittently catching the public eye over 30 years.
At the centre of the family is the husband and father, Jim Ballard. Their story involves a complex interplay of control, escape, freedom, choice, expectation and blame. There’s also the question of how it has been told – and by whom.
‘There are,’ Alison once remarked, ‘far more mountains out there to climb than just the physical ones.’
Long before Alison wrote history on the Eiger’s north face, she dreamt of climbing it. Born in 1962 to middle-class, outdoor-loving parents, Alison documented her childhood hillwalks in her diary.
Growing up in the Peak District, the heart of the UK climbing scene, Alison progressed quickly. At 16, she craved independence from her parents. They found her a job at a climbing shop owned by an acquaintance: Jim Ballard. The shop was a hub for famous climbers and the counterculture lifestyle of this male-dominated clique – who lived on the dole and prioritised climbing – thrilled Alison. She swapped homework for climbing.
Jim styled himself as a straight-talking, working-class Yorkshireman. His blunt jokes made Alison laugh. He was his own boss with the money and freedom to climb, which appealed to Alison. Weeks after Alison started work, Jim took her climbing, ending in late nights at the pub. Alison was 16, Jim twice her age.
