I have seen something of this seductive evil in mountaineering. Terry Eagleton in his book On Evil writes of
the terrible non-being at the core of oneself. It is this aching absence which you seek to stuff with fetishes, moral ideals, fantasies of purity, the manic will, the absolute state, the phallic figure of the Fuhrer … The obscene enjoyment of annihilating the Other becomes the only way of convincing yourself that you still exist.4
It seems to me now that many of the Mount Everest climbers I meet are pilgrims, and the lengths some of them go to achieve summit nirvana are quite extraordinary. Just one example is 53-year-old Australian Mike Rheinberger, who died near the summit in 1994 on his seventh attempt to climb the mountain, despite his guide Mark Whetu’s best efforts to save him.
I mentioned Mark Whetu’s story in Chapter 14, and it is worth a closer look. I have worked with the New Zealander guide on Everest for a number of years and I heard from him first hand the extraordinary story of his attempts to save his client. Mark had advised Rheinberger to give up as he was climbing so slowly, but he continued and the two men reached the summit at dusk. With no chance of reversing the route in the dark they dug a snowhole just 20 metres below the summit and sat down to try to survive the night. It was the highest bivouac attempted at the time. The next morning they started climbing down, suffering appallingly. Rheinberger started to lose consciousness and Mark had to leave him to try to find more oxygen. In the end Rheinberger died, and Whetu, who had made heroic attempts to save his client, lost his toes to frostbite. It was a terrible experience for Mark, and the whole episode leaves one astounded that people can value this goal so highly.
The question for me is whether climbing a mountain is something worth risking your life for. I think it’s a question of maturity. When one is young and full of romance and pizzazz like John Hoyland, the fables are very appealing. You never imagine for a moment that you will die or be injured, or that your family will grieve for you for so long. When you are older, if you survive like me through a mixture of cowardice and luck, you might realise that you can still encourage the spirit of adventure without actually killing anyone. Rock climbing is nowadays safer than horse-riding, but it still feels stimulating. So my answer is, no, Mount Everest is not worth dying for, but I had to risk my life to understand the question.
Not only does Everest inspire spiritual thoughts, it seems to provoke supernatural experiences. Somervell felt the presence of a divine companion in the mountains, and just before his sighting of imaginary flying saucers on Everest in 1933, Frank Smythe had another paranormal experience that has been described many times before by explorers at their limits. He was climbing alone up to his high point of around 28,000ft (8,510m):
All the time I was climbing alone I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person. This feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt. It even seemed that I was tied to my ‘companion’ by a rope, and that if I slipped ‘he’ would hold me. I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder, and once, when after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try to eat some mint cake, I carefully divided it and turned round with one half in my hand. It seemed almost a shock to find no one to whom to give it. It seemed to me that this ‘presence’ was a strong, helpful and friendly one, and it was not until Camp VI was sighted that the link connecting me, as it seemed at the time, to the beyond, was snapped, and, although Shipton and the camp were but a few yards away, I suddenly felt alone.5
Another Everest man, Sandy Wollaston, was on a desperate return from his second attempt to climb Mount Carstensz in Indonesia. Again, he was at his last gasp from exhaustion and malaria when he saw a fellow European leading him safely through the jungle. But there was no other white man in the area. Afterwards, in London, he glanced at himself in a mirror while being fitted for expedition clothes. It was the mystery guide.
A climbing friend of mine, Dr Jeremy Windsor, experienced this phenomenon on Mount Everest in 2007 during our medical-research expedition. For six hours during his successful summit attempt he was accompanied by a ghostly presence who even came with a Sheffield accent, and a name: Jimmy. Windsor later wrote, ‘Without his support and guidance I don’t think I would have reached the summit.’
He became fascinated by the phenomenon and wrote a monograph on the subject.6 He discovered that over 50 per cent of climbers above 8,000m experience something along these lines. He also found an echo in Eliot’s The Waste Land:
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
But who is that on the other side of you?7
Eliot was probably referring to an account by Ernest Shackleton, written only a couple of years before the poem. It is the story of probably the most famous rescue mission in the history of exploration.
Shackleton was leading an expedition that aimed to make the first crossing of Antarctica. He obtained sponsorship partly because the British were still smarting at Scott’s failure to get to the South Pole before Amundsen, and in 1914 the party set out for the frozen continent on HMS Endurance. This was just as the First World War was breaking out, and although Shackleton offered his resources to aid the war effort, the authorities allowed him to continue (an interesting reflection of the expectation that the war would shortly be over).
In the event, Endurance became frozen in the pack ice and had to be abandoned by the expedition members in October 1915. After a hellish journey across the ice the expedition took to their small boats and eventually landed on Elephant Island.
Shackleton did not hesitate, and took a small crew in the most sea-worthy boat, the James Caird, aiming for the most likely source of rescue, the island of South Georgia. This was 800 nautical miles away, and if they missed it everyone would perish.
In a marvellous epic of navigation and small-boat handling, they landed on the uninhabited western shores of South Georgia. But they still had to reach a whaling station across two unmapped mountain ranges. They set off exhausted and at the absolute limit of their endurance. On the way, Shackleton, Crean and Worsley all independently experienced a fourth man in the party. Shackleton wrote:
When I look back at those days I have no doubt that providence guided us, not only across snow fields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards, Worlsey said to me, ‘Boss, I had the curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.’ Crean confessed to the same idea.8
Worsley reported:
Three or four weeks afterwards Sir Ernest and I, comparing notes, found that we each had a strange feeling that there had been a fourth in our party, and Crean afterwards confessed to the same feeling.9
Shackleton uses the word ‘providence’, and I think this is a clue. This phenomenon has been reported as a religious experience by some, and I would suggest it falls neatly into our theme of wishful thinking. When body and mind are under huge pressure, what would be more sensible than to conjure up a helpful supernatural companion who can point the way?
Windsor describes these experiences as ‘extracampine’, or hallucinations that are not sensory. They are a perception of a presence. However, they can also involve sensory hallucinations: Jimmy is audible and visible. Another Everest climber sensed the presence of a friend who had died there two years before and detected his particular smell. Stephen Venables felt Eric Shipton warming his hands – although he was long dead. And during a long bivouac near the summit Dougal Haston had a long conversation
with Dave Clarke, although he was several thousand feet below in camp.
Windsor is a medical practitioner with a bent for research, and he examines the likely causes for the ‘Third Man’, as he calls the ghostly presence. First, he points out that before the hallucinations there is usually a period of sensory deprivation. In his case both of his head torches had failed, and his vision was obscured by his hood and oxygen mask. Shackleton’s party was walking in a white-out. Second, help and comfort are desperately needed – and the Third Man is always a benign presence who provides this. Third, there is death – or the threat of death – nearby.
I would add that in the case of Mount Everest a degree of hypoxia and exhaustion seems to be a fourth factor, and I wonder if there is another clue in the out-of-body experiences of intensive-care patients near death. They often report a comforting presence.
Shackleton had no doubts: his was a religious experience. He spoke of a ‘Divine Companion’, and in an interview with a Daily Telegraph journalist said:
There are some things which can never be spoken of. Almost to hint about them comes perilously near to sacrilege. This experience was eminently one of those things …
Windsor seeks explanations from neuroscience, and explains that we have a parietal lobe that processes information about where our bodies are and what they are doing – standing, walking, running, and so on – and a temporal lobe that helps us distinguish ourselves from others. Disturbing the junction between the two lobes has been shown to cause problems similar to those seen by the Third Man. Researchers in Lausanne were treating a patient with epilepsy, probing her brain with electrodes to determine whether her symptoms could be reduced by surgery. When they stimulated the left temperoparietal junction, 2.5cm above and behind the ear, the 22-year-old woman, a student, turned her head to the side. When they did it again, she turned her head again. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she was asked. The woman replied she had experienced ‘the strange sensation that somebody was nearby’, when no one was actually present. When the researchers turned off the current, she said the presence had gone away. The electrical stimulation was repeated, and again produced a feeling of presence in the patient’s extra personal space.10
It seems that there would be an evolutionary advantage for a stressed individual to sense a comforting presence that might provide helpful advice from a more rational part of the brain.
Windsor concludes with a question that I think he is actually answering:
Perhaps in the ‘Death Zone’ the temporal and parietal lobes of healthy brains are vulnerable?
Could the combination of hypoxia, hypoglycaemia, malnutrition, anxiety, dehydration, hypothermia, exhaustion and sleep deprivation have an impact on the brain and cause the Third Man to appear?
It would seem to me with that collection of pressures, it would be a wonder if our Mount Everest climber up near the summit did not experience hallucinations. I would further suggest that the explanation for all supernatural experiences lies in the human brain, and not in some shadowy world beyond our ken. Having said that, I am sure there is more in the universe than is dreamt of, and discoveries of extra dimensions might give us future heavens to explore, and different mountains to climb.
After all this I am disappointed to admit that although I was so hypoxic that I passed out below the Second Step, I had no experience of the Third Man – and I never have.
Not only is Mount Everest an immensely desirable quest, but the Mallory myth is a dangerous and seductive fable. The dark, handsome Sir Galahad leads the blond, young acolyte up into unknown heights to do battle with the Goddess Mother of the World. They disappear into the whirling snows, perhaps touching the Holy Grail of the summit, and promptly evaporate in a cloud of stardust.
Our expedition of 1999 torpedoed that myth; instead, we found a broken corpse and evidence of a commonplace accident. More Icarus Fallen than Sir Galahad. I attracted criticism from some quarters for helping to destroy a perfect legend.
It is worth disentangling the elements of this story that grips us so tightly. Mallory was an attractive, admirable character. We do not know exactly what happened to him, so we can put our own construction on events. The virgin mountain is clearly a symbol of aspiration and success, an objective correlative. There is a small cast of characters in exotic surroundings. Add in storms, heroism and drama, and the whole mix becomes utterly compelling to anyone with an imagination. Everyone has a theory about what happened to Mallory and Irvine, and why not? If they can argue their case with accuracy and passion it all adds to the rich culture of mountaineering.
Mount Everest attracts the ambitious. It also attracts the unbalanced. Maurice Wilson knew that his odd philosophy would gain credence if he could only climb the mountain solo using his system of faith and fasting. It attracts the fanciful. Psychics – even recently – have been pressed into service to solve the mystery of Mallory’s disappearance. And it attracts dreamers. Jochen Hemmleb explained the latter well in the document he sent to me.
He explained that dreams often come in three stages, with a decreasing degree of realism and an increasing degree of audacity. First is the Realist, which is what you can reasonably achieve within your capabilities:
Standing on top of the North Col, in full view of Everest’s North Face, watching the lads – Graham, David, or whoever – pressing on towards Camp Six.
Second is the Idealist, which is what you might achieve if things work out exceptionally well:
Walking upwards in the footsteps of mountaineering’s past, passing through the remnants of the 1924 high camp and on to the Snow Terrace, with the Mystery in our minds and the ghost of Andrew Irvine in the winds around us.
The third – and most dangerous – phase is the Dreamer, which is beyond the realms of possibility and is what you might lie in your bed thinking of at night:
Stepping onto the ledge at the First Step and, after a long, hard look at the ground beyond, forsaking everything in an all-out effort – until you finally plod up those last few feet, grab the tripod and yell like Leonardo DiCaprio in James Cameron’s Titanic, ‘I am king of the world!’ (or like a male version of Kate Winslet, standing on the bulbous cornice overlooking the Kangshung Face, spreading your arms and crying ‘I am flying!’ with the spindrift banner streaming miles back from your feet).
But dreams can become like avalanches. First you marvel at the force slowly building up, almost enjoying it, until there is the frightful realisation that it might carry you away and you have to give in – which is often the point at which you learn to play the game anew, riding the tide rather than swimming against it.
I am afraid of getting carried away by this game, that this time my obsession might drive me over the edge.11
This is insightful and honest, and is an explanation of how one can go beyond normal, rational behaviour if you think obsessively about your fantasies.
T. E. Lawrence in his epigraph to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom warns us to beware of dreamers who dream during the day with their eyes open. It is all very well suspending our disbelief during a film such as Titanic – and indulging in a fantasy – as long as we know how to stop when we leave the cinema.
The Mallory myth has also attracted a coterie of experts who talk endlessly and anonymously on internet forums. They hold strong opinions, and change them regularly. They pick over the minutiae and are vicious towards anyone who disagrees with them. They generally don’t know what they are talking about and thankfully they rarely appear on the mountain itself. I try not to get involved. Pope had it right:
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.12
What is interesting is that the Mallory myth attracts a certain type of obsessive personality. It also seems to attract men who had weak or non-existent relationships with their fathers. This may be a coincidence, or it may be that
concentrating on a perfect man helps to satisfy a need within such men. Most boys start by idealising their father, develop through a stage of rebellion against him and his values, and then perhaps come to an adult acceptance of him. If this process is interrupted, then perhaps the adult boy has to find an alternative father figure to worship. Mallory fits the bill to perfection.
I also detect something in the Mallory myth of the Elvis Presley cult that is almost becoming a religion in parts of the world.
Between 2008 and 2009 I worked on a series for the BBC Religion and Ethics department during which we studied 80 religions all around the world. We filmed voodoo in Benin and found elements of Catholicism in it. I noticed that Tibetan Buddhism and Catholicism contained extraordinary parallels: a celibate priesthood speaking a language the laity couldn’t understand, with idols, bells, music and swinging clouds of incense. Then there were inbred Samaritans in Israel who thought they were the chosen few, and an extraordinary religion in Iraq that was so mystical that even the practitioners didn’t seem to understand it. What struck me forcibly is that man is indeed a religious animal, and wherever there is a mystery there is fertile ground for a religion to grow. Howard Somervell, the medical missionary, was pretty clear-eyed about this:
Last Hours on Everest Page 21