Mick Burke (Photo by Rob Wood)

Extract from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Burke_(mountaineer) )

Mick Burke (1941 – 1975) was an English mountaineer and climbing cameraman, who covered many British-led mountaineering expeditions during the 1960s and 1970s. Together with Rob Wood they did the first British ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite on the Nose route in 1968.

His expeditions includes those led by Chris Bonington to Annapurna and an unsuccessful attempt on Mount Everest’s south-west face in 1972.

Burke was part of Bonington’s 1975 Everest expedition, again to climb the south-west face. Burke’s role was primarily as a climber, but he also provided high altitude film coverage for the BBC film crew accompanying the expedition. Following Dougal Haston and Doug Scott‘s first ascent of the face and successful climb to the summit, Burke was part of a second summit push, from which he did not return. He was last seen alive “heading upwards, a few hundred metres from the summit”, but it is not known for sure that he reached the highest point. The weather began to deteriorate rapidly just after he was last seen, and within hours storms had set in which lasted for two days, precluding any rescue attempt by his companions who were themselves marooned in the top camp until the storms abated. His body was never recovered.

In Burke’s memory the BBC created the Mick Burke Award, which was jointly run by the BBC and the Royal Geographical Society.

Post script of chapter three of Rob Wood’s book “Towards the unknown mountains”:

“Mick Burke disapeared from the summit of Everest in 1975 while attempting to film the culmination of the British Everest the Hard Way Expedition. His partner, Martin Boyson, had equiment failure and had to go back. At the South Summit, just short distance from the top, Peter Boardman and Sherpa Pertemba, shortly after summiting themselves, had met Mick coming up on his own. He had tried to persuade them to return to the summit so he could film them on the top. They declined in view of their own tiredness, concern for the lateness of the day and the deteriorating weather conditions. They agreed, however, to wait for him there. They waited over an hour. Then they had to get down themselves and only just made it back to the high camp (Camp 6) Mick never showed up.”