A few weeks ago, hundreds of climbers hoping to summit Everest were stranded at the mountain’s South Base Camp in Nepal, waiting for a massive block of ice to finally break away and clear the route to Camp I through the Khumbu Icefall. If the climbers were anxious, local agencies were nearly in panic: so much money is at stake that a closed Mount Everest means ruin. But the profits from mountain tourism do not improve the quality of life in a country that, a few months ago, repressed young people protesting in Kathmandu and that in recent days has demolished a vast shantytown sheltering nearly 1.5 million workers, who have been forcibly relocated to places that are equally unfit and even more dangerous. The sun shines on Everest, however, and the sherpas who rig the maze of ice and crevasses in the Khumbu have finally found a safe route that avoids the threatening ice mass.
None of these workers know who Henry Todd was, but the older owners of Nepalese tour agencies remember him: he funded the first metal ladders to cross the huge crevasses of the Khumbu and to clamber comfortably up the higher ice blocks. It is very likely Todd would have suggested blowing up that infernal ice block so the Everest show — and the flow of money — could go on.
Born in Scotland in 1945, he died at his Kathmandu home on November 3 last year aged 80 after suffering a heart attack. He was one of the main promoters of tourism on Nepal’s highest peaks, and of Everest in particular — a summit he never set foot on. It’s not that Todd loved the mountain irrationally, but he loved money, especially when it didn’t come from conventional work. He was nicknamed “The Toddfather,” a nod to his taste for mafia-style dealings. He created the first low-cost agency offering cheaper trips to Everest, and later to several other eight-thousanders for climbers who lacked pedigree or deep bank accounts, but with enough determination to save up and buy a dream.
In fact, it can be said that the idea came to him in prison, where he served a seven-year sentence as the mastermind of one of the largest LSD production and distribution rings in UK history. Todd’s parents served in the Royal Air Force, but he quickly chose a different path: in the early 1970s he led a drug-trafficking gang that was dismantled in 1977 after police, in Operation Julie, found those responsible for producing and selling millions of LSD tablets. Legend has it that when officers knocked on his door he greeted them with a smile: “I fear, gentlemen, you are not here to check whether my television license is up to date.” Police found more than a million tablets in his makeshift lab, with a black-market value of £6.5 million ($8.7 million).
Todd was sentenced to 13 years, served seven, and upon release headed for the mountains. He soon discovered that the Everest business could yield handsome profits and decided to cut costs, dispense with the luxuries demanded by wealthy clients and, simply, to pave the way to the roof of the world for the people. More clients, less exclusivity. He then expanded the formula to eight-thousanders such as Cho Oyu, Manaslu and even K2. He did not make as much as he did with LSD, but he did well. He also quickly dominated the bottled-oxygen business, inventing a system to refill empty cylinders.
Todd won the sherpas’ affection — he looked after them — and the enmity of many climbers, whom he despised when they dared contradict him. The latter often said Todd could be either deeply humane or a true sadist, depending on the role he chose to play or the mood he woke up in. When leading his expeditions, his style again echoed his prison experience: an iron fist and few challenges allowed, and little matter that his own climbing skills were modest: he liked to command from his chair at base camp, even when he was wrong.
In 2015 he experienced the tragic earthquake that shook Nepal while at Everest base camp, where many people died, especially workers of Sherpa ethnicity. Todd spent days digging, searching for the remains of his men, and was the last to leave base camp, alongside the bodies of three of his sherpas. Those who earned his trust could hear astounding stories from his past: he liked to remind people that it was not white-collar entrepreneurs who invented the Everest tourism business, but people like him — rebels and outlaws. Today, there are hardly any people like him left: it is the Sherpa people who call the shots in the business of the high mountains, making a living just as Todd did — even on the fringes of the law, as evidenced by the mountain accident insurance fraud scandal that came to light just a few weeks ago.
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