Brother in mission to lay past to rest

By GRACE EDWARDS

The brother of New Zealand mountaineer Gary Ball leaves for Nepal next month to rebury his body, found after 10 years in ice.

Ball, who climbed Mt Everest with Peter Hillary and Rob Hall in 1990, died of altitude sickness on Mt Dhaulagiri in the Himalayas three years later and his body was wrapped in a sleeping bag and lowered into a crevasse.

Now Kevin Ball, a Pakuranga electrician with little climbing experience, is preparing to go to the mountain to retrieve the body, which was rediscovered in November by French environmentalists.

"We will find somewhere we can bury him, where there's some soil, I guess," said Mr Ball.

With his son, Ricardo Ball, and a friend, Dave Walker, Mr Ball has been climbing summits such as Rangitoto Island in the Hauraki Gulf, to get fit for the trek. They are climbing Mt Ruapehu today.

Kevin Ball said the Himalayas trip was "putting Gary to rest, but it's also a bit of an adventure for us, a bit of a challenge".

Gary Ball came to public attention in 1990 when he climbed the highest summit on all seven continents in seven months.

He climbed Aoraki/Mt Cook a then-record 26 times.

The mountaineer died on October 6, 1993, after turning back from the summit of Mt Dhaulagiri with companion Rob Hall.

His body was brought some way down the mountain and lowered down a crevasse in a glacier by Mr Hall and his partner, Jan Arnold, and climber Helen Wood.

"Hall and Ball", as the climbers were know, had made a pact that if one of them died in the mountains, the other would bury him there.

Rob Hall died on Mt Everest in May 1996 after staying with a stricken climber during a storm.

French environmentalists found Gary Ball's body while cleaning up the base camp. The constant rise and fall of the glacier had pushed the corpse to the surface.

"They didn't know who it was," said Kevin Ball. "They just knew it was a male, reasonably tall.

"They couldn't tell the age or how long it had been in the ice."

The French team sent photographs of the remains to be identified. Jan Arnold recognised the remains of Rob Hall's distinctive violet-coloured jacket they had dressed Gary in before he was buried. "We're probably 95 per cent sure it's him," said Mr Ball.

"We'll have to see. When they buried him they put a couple of his favourite tapes in his pockets, so whether they're still there or not, we don't know."

Mr Ball and his expedition leave for Kathmandu on April 17.

The 20-day trek, organised through expedition company Wilderness Experience, allows for a seven-day stay at base camp in case of bad weather or altitude sickness.

A plaque is being made to mark Gary Ball's eventual burial site.

"That's wonderful closure for us as a family," said Rosanna Ball, Kevin's wife. "It's very hard when someone dies and you're not physically there to bury them."