by Ed Jackson
The route I had chosen was unusual, but the positives of it were that as a group we were able to experience a glimpse of Nepali life and stay away from the tourist trail. The negatives were that the further we went, the less trodden and therefore tougher the trails got.
That morning, we trekked up a path that was so narrow that it was only wide enough for one foot at a time. As I lagged farther behind the group, I started to feel frustrated that I was holding everyone up. Those narrow tracks were dangerous for me as I struggle to walk in a straight line. Thick roots snaked their way across the path, and I was constantly having to stop to figure out where best to place my foot. I fell farther behind, so I forced myself to try to catch up. For once it felt like the forests were pushing in on me, trying to hold me back. Several times I fell, crashing to the ground. I would lie there for a moment while people ran back to check on me. It was humiliating; I wanted to be at the front, not lagging behind holding everyone up. Before my accident I had been so fit and now I was a source of worry.
I crested a particularly tough ridge and faltered when I realised that the way down was a near sheer drop. I joined my friend, Arron, who was staring at the valley below.
‘I think I’m going to need the harness,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I’ll hold on to the end. Hopefully I’ll be able to stop you if you slip.’
On went the rope secured to my backpack that the Sherpas had fashioned for me. Arron took the strain and I began to pick my way down the slope, the loose gravel threatening to pull my legs from under me. The concentration required was intense and every step threatened to send me, and possibly Arron, free falling down the ridge into the valley below. If I fell, I would be responsible for risking Arron’s life as well. The pressure was mounting – it wasn’t just my safety at stake any more.
By lunchtime, I wanted to curl up in a ball and not get up again. Normally, I never let on when I am struggling. I’d had enough tough days in the hills and mountains to know that they would pass, but this one was different. I felt utterly defeated.
We all decided to break for lunch and I hobbled off by myself and sat on a fallen tree trunk. I was usually in the centre of things but I needed some time alone.
I had started to question myself; could I go on? The route that I’d picked was more treacherous than I’d ever imagined and the climbs down the mountainside pathways were bordering on dangerous. The amount of concentration required to navigate them safely meant I was holding everyone up. Our itinerary was slipping and I was the sole cause of it. We had another three days of trekking and then we’d actually have to climb the mountain. I leant my head in my hands, my curled left fist unable to straighten out and support me properly.
I squeezed my eyes closed and thought of everything I had learnt in the past two years, searching for something that could help me.
As I picked through this list, Arron walked over to me.
‘Can I sit down?’ he asked.
‘Of course, mate,’ I responded, barely lifting my head.
‘Been some pretty tough trails today,’ he continued. ‘I think we’ve all been struggling.’
I nodded, trying to form the words to tell him that I was thinking about leaving them and retracing my steps. One of the guides would have to come with me …
‘I’m holding everyone back,’ I said, unable to meet his eye. ‘If it carries on like this, I don’t think I’ll make it.’ I paused for a moment. ‘I’ve never said that to anyone before.’
‘As far as I can see,’ Arron said, kicking the dirt with his boot, ‘it’s all a mental challenge from here on.’
I looked up at him.
Arron stood and held out his hand. ‘We’ve got this far. So, we’ve got to convince ourselves that we can keep going.’
Chapter 20
Lucky
So, with the help of the group, I carried on.
What followed was the toughest day I’d had since I was discharged from hospital. The pathways we’d been following disappeared until we were traversing rocky inclines that only a local would know were there. After climbing for an hour, the trail would twist and plunge downwards and any progress we’d made felt like it was unravelling.
Bigraj was a superstar as always, leading the way while regularly checking on the rest of us.
‘How are you?’ he asked, after zipping back to the end of the line to see me. The strain in his voice was clear and he kept on glancing up at the sky where the afternoon sun was progressing overhead.
‘I’m fine. More importantly, how are you?’ I asked, pulling my left leg up a particularly high mound.
‘Fine, fine. We all be fine.’
Back he jogged to the front of the group and I looked up as he disappeared. In the time we’d known each other, I’d never once heard him come close to being stressed. ‘Calm’ was his middle name. To know that Bigraj was worried made me put my head down and crack on.
And he was right to be stressed.
Before long, the sun dipped below the horizon and we were plunged into darkness. Our head lamps came out. The lack of natural light made the way even more treacherous and it wasn’t just me at risk of falling now; we all were. The jungle was eerie at night – unfamiliar animal calls made my spine tingle as the nocturnal creatures began their hunt for food.
The temperature plunged as I scrabbled up a grassy hillock on my hands and knees, the only way I could think to get up it. Bigraj kept on flitting back and forth between us. He did all he could to help everyone and never once made any of us feel that we had to go faster. He knew it was his job to try to get us there safely and that was going to take time, not speed.
When we finally staggered into the grounds of our teahouse, it was so cold I could see my breath in the air. We had walked for nine hours and every single one of us had struggled at some point during the day. Together we’d picked each other up, both mentally and physically. An evening meal of Dahl Bat and Sherpa’s stew was gobbled down before we headed to bed in our tin shacks. It was the toughest day I’d ever had in the mountains and I was pleased to see the back of it.
The next morning, I woke up early and found another member of our group already sitting outside. James had been very quiet at the beginning of the trip and I’d half expected to wake up one morning and find that he’d gone. But, as the days passed, he had begun to open up more. It was his dad who had contacted me and arranged for James to join us on the trek. James had been an officer in the army. He’d completed a few tours of Afghanistan and seen some harrowing sights that I couldn’t even begin to imagine. He had been discharged from the army and had spent the last six years trying to get back on his feet.
‘How did you sleep?’ I asked, as I sat on the bench next to him.
‘Really well,’ he said, looking directly at me. ‘For the first time in six years, I slept long enough to dream.’
His response floored me. I wondered how he’d coped all those years without proper sleep. We sat quietly together, sipping our tea from metal mugs and watching the sunrise.
It wasn’t too long until the rest of the group joined us and we set off for another day of trekking. At 4,000m, our views for the day had dramatically changed when we rejoined the main trail following the banks of a river. Gone were the swathes of forests and jungle. In their place was low-level scrub and a rocky terrain bleached of colour.
After three hours we reached the village of Kote where an afternoon of much-needed recuperation and washing commenced. We all had strict limits on the weight of our bags as the Sherpas were carrying them as they climbed ahead. This meant limited clothing and we’d all begun to smell. Up to this point we’d had no means of drying anything due to being on the move all day.
We were in luck that day as the sun was out, as was the wash trough and soap. A few of the group paid an extra 300 rupees (£2) for a warm bucket of water to pour over their heads, whilst others relied on trusty baby wipes. Either way, there was a chance that by the end of the day we wouldn’t create such
a collective pong.
It was not only our surroundings that had dramatically changed at the 4,000m line; the temperature had as well. That night was so cold that I kept my down jacket on inside my sleeping bag, and I could see my breath as I talked quietly to Rich. In four days’ time, we would be attempting to sleep 2,000m higher in a tent, so this was still relative luxury.
The following day, we made a gradual ascent above the treeline, and it felt like a completely different world. We followed a cascading glacial river upstream towards the looming snowy peaks that seemed to have snuck up closer overnight. The path was wider and, apart from a few boulders, much easier for me to walk on than the forest trails.
It may have been easier underfoot, but we were so far above sea level that you could feel the air thinning. The idea was to slowly increase the heights we were reaching each day so that we could acclimatise, which was not something to be ignored. If you ascend a mountain like Mera too quickly, you increase your chances of altitude sickness, which is the body’s reaction to a lack of oxygen at high altitude. It causes headaches, vomiting, dizziness and shortness of breath. If the symptoms are ignored, they can lead to huge complications with your heart and lungs, even death – it’s certainly not something to ‘struggle through’.
A couple of hours into our next day of trekking, we passed a couple of English guys who were making their way down from the peak.
As they passed, one of them said without stopping, ‘It’s cold up there!’
I stopped and shouted after him. ‘How cold?’
He turned and gave me a big grin. ‘Fucking cold!’
Suitably forewarned, we prepared ourselves for the drop in temperature that was coming our way.
As we settled down for another day in a teahouse, I reflected on my progress that day. I had finished with a completely different outlook to the day before. The new terrain suited me and I was no longer flagging at the back. I wouldn’t be racing anyone to the top, but it was nice not to be the person everyone was waiting for. I felt strong, motivated and full of hope.
But mostly I was glad I hadn’t given up – that’s the difference a single day can make.
We spent the next couple of days acclimatising in the village of Thangnak. Every morning, Bigraj would lead us off for an acclimatisation hike where we would go higher, test our reaction to the altitude and then go back to the village. I’d begun to notice the huge difference in temperature between the sun and shade. During the day, it was quite easy to burn if you didn’t put sunscreen on; but as soon as the sun dropped behind the mountains, it felt as though your nose could drop off. Wind chill also played a big factor, so our corrugated sleeping sheds actually looked quite inviting.
Two days later, we headed up to Khare village, which was around the 5,000m mark where we would spend another couple of days acclimatising.
The air was becoming noticeably thinner and sometimes it was difficult to even think straight. That’s probably why I was left speechless when we rounded a giant boulder and Mera came into full view. The sky was heavy with grey cloud but every so often a sharp ray of light broke through to touch its snowy mountain peak. Before I knew it, silent tears were streaming down my face that I couldn’t blame on the altitude.
We spent five hours slowly ascending to Khare, each going at our own pace as we stopped to wonder at the views we were presented with.
We were all beginning to suffer from altitude headaches but the chance of a two-day break to acclimatise kept us going. I found the best way for me to cope was to count a hundred steps and then stop to let my heart rate drop below 130bpm. It also gave me the chance to soak in the views of the soaring peaks that now surrounded us.
Now that we were starting to get back to the main trails, we had passed a few people on their return journey. Some successful and some not. Everyone who stopped to talk informed us that it was even more beautiful at the top but that summit day was particularly difficult. Bigraj was happy with the way we were progressing, but we all knew that the real challenge was yet to come.
Another thing had changed for me in the last couple of days. Because of my injuries, my hands had seized up in the cold so Rich had become my mum. First thing in the morning, I couldn’t do anything for myself so he patiently helped me get dressed, zipped and buttoned me up and put my shoes on. He’d even open up my fly for me during the daytime when I’d lost all dexterity in my hands. I insisted on dealing with the rest myself when I needed to pee as I thought that might be crossing the line of friendship.
Our evening at a teahouse in base camp was a much livelier affair than I’d anticipated. It was a melting pot of different nationalities with teams either on their way up or back down again. Stories of success and failure reverberated around the dining room as Italian and Russian groups compared notes. Listening in, I found out that high camp had nearly blown away the previous day, a couple of people had returned badly frostbitten and had to be helicoptered out, whilst another group summited successfully and had returned to the teahouse triumphant.
I suppose the message was that you have to respect Mother Nature. She was largely in control of whether you summited or not.
The next day, we made our way from base camp and began the seven-hour climb to high camp. Smatterings of snow began to appear underfoot and, as we pressed on, the temperature dropped far into the minus figures. Sunglasses were essential even at these temperatures as the glare off the snow was blinding. Mid-afternoon, one of the group had to turn around due to exhaustion, so we were down to thirteen. As we climbed higher, the relatively smooth surfaces of the compacted snow suited me – it was like walking on tarmac and I was able to pick up my pace.
That afternoon we inspected our two-man tents on a rocky outcrop that was clear of snow. Rich and I sat at the edge of our tent. We were above the cloud line where the grey jagged rock contrasted with the white of the snow line. Below us were plump clouds nestling around the mountains. It felt like we were sitting with the gods.
‘I wish Tom could see this,’ Rich said, hugging himself.
I turned to him. ‘He would’ve loved it.’
I’d been thinking about Tom a lot recently, what he’d missed out on and how much I missed him. I’d never got over his death, just through it. He was the one who had always pushed me forwards and I had done the same for him. In my lowest moments I had always thought of him and how he would have told me keep going, that everything was there for me to take, if I just dared to try for it.
‘He’d still say you were playing a risky game by coming up here,’ I said to Rich, raising an eyebrow.
‘Nah,’ he responded. ‘He’d know someone would have to help you get your boots on in the morning.’
I grinned at him. ‘Come on, let’s find out what’s going on with the food. We’ll need all the energy we can get for summit day tomorrow.’
The temperature dropped to minus twenty as we clasped our bowls of Sherpa stew and watched the sunlight touch the peaks of Everest and five of the highest mountains in the world. Before long, the last of the orange flames slipped away and left us in darkness.
At 5,800m, we were so high that the oxygen levels had dropped to almost half of what they would be at sea level. On the way up, you account for this by breathing harder or walking slower. But when you sleep, your body falls into its normal breathing pattern and as a result you wake gasping for air every thirty minutes.
We bunked down at about 7 p.m. as we knew that we had an early start for summit day. Every half an hour or so, one of us would gasp for air and often wake the other one up. It was like being back in hospital in Bristol with the blood pressure alarm going off all the time.
At 9 p.m. we heard a commotion in the tent behind us. The guides were talking loudly amongst themselves and we could hear someone retching. The fittest member of our group had succumbed to altitude sickness and had to be taken back to base camp by one of the guides. It was becoming more and more obvious that we were at the mercy of Mother Nature and I began to th
ink, What the hell am I doing?
I’d probably snuck a couple of hours sleep when a rustle outside of our tent let us know it was time to get up. It was 2 a.m. but with a rush of adrenaline I was wide awake.
Rich sat bolt upright next to me. ‘But it was my cheese grater!’
‘Ah, nothing,’ he said, looking around him. ‘I was dreaming that someone nicked my chee— oh, it doesn’t matter.’
‘What?’ I said, turning to him.
He scrabbled around in the dark for our head lamps and fitted mine over my forehead. Switching it on, I could see that the interior of our tent was completely covered in frost. It glistened in the light of the torch like spider webs in the morning dew.
Rich helped me dress, my clawed hands curled up and refusing to perform even the simplest of tasks. Fortunately, they were perfectly positioned to grip my walking poles, which I, and everyone else, would need that day. I was hoping a bit of life would come back to my hands once the sun came up.
Next on were our harnesses. We would be crossing glaciers that morning so we all had to be harnessed and roped to each other. We weren’t actually secured to the mountain as the idea was that if one of us slipped and fell down one of the many crevasses, our combined weight would stop them from falling any further. Part of me wondered if this theory depended on who fell first … surely Arron would just pull everyone down with him.
With little light pollution, the night sky was alive with stars watching over us. The head lamps were essential for picking out detail, but the moonlight illuminated our way so that I could at least see the peaks in the distance. As we began our journey upwards, my hands and feet began to burn from the cold and I was starting to get frostbite in my big toe. It penetrated deep inside me and threatened to make my body seize up. I had never felt cold like it and dealt with it in the only way I could – I retreated inside of myself where there were no thoughts. Just one foot in front of the other. I’d only managed this before when I was in hospital and wanted to try to cut myself off from what I was facing. To be able to access this place of respite again was comforting.