by Bear Grylls
Climbing with attitude, though, is dangerous. (I try to be way safer nowadays, for the record.) But I got away with it, and was ascending fast and efficiently.
After three hard weeks, I found myself huddled on the summit of Ama Dablam.
I was beat. It had taken a lot to make that final summit pitch. I knelt there, cowering from the wind, and glanced left through my goggles.
Through the swirling clouds I watched the distant summit of Everest reveal herself.
Like a restless giant. Snow pouring off the peak.
Strong, detached and still six thousand five hundred feet above where I was now, I realized Everest was going to be a whole different beast.
I wondered what on earth had I let myself in for.
CHAPTER 75
I made it home in one piece, aware that however fit I was, I needed to be fitter still.
Everest would demand it and reward it.
Every moment I had was spent training and climbing in the mountains: Wales, the Lake District and the Highlands of Scotland.
That New Year I was invited to stay with one of my old school buddies, Sam Sykes, at his house on the far north-western coast of Sutherland, in Scotland.
It is as wild and rugged a place as anywhere on earth, and I love it there.
It also happens to boast one of my favourite mountains in the world, Ben Loyal, a pinnacle of rock and steep heather that overlooks a spectacular estuary. So I did not need much encouraging to go up to Sam’s and climb.
This time up there, I was to meet the lady who would change my life for ever; and I was woefully ill-prepared for the occasion.
I headed up north primarily to train and climb. Sam told me he had some other friends coming up for New Year. I would like them, he assured me.
Great. As long as they don’t distract me from training, I thought to myself. I had never felt more distant from falling in love. I was a man on a mission. Everest was only two months away.
Falling in love was way off my radar.
One of Sam’s friends was this young girl called Shara. As gentle as a lamb, beautiful and funny – and she seemed to look at me so warmly.
There was something about this girl. She just seemed to shine in all she did. And I was totally smitten, at once.
All I seemed to want to do was hang out with her, drink tea, chat and go for nice walks.
I tried to fight the feeling by loading up my backpack with rocks and heavy books, then going off climbing on my own. But all I could think about was this beautiful, blonde girl who laughed, in the most adorable way, at how ridiculous it was to carry Shakespeare up a mountain.
I could sense already that this was going to be a massive distraction, but somehow, at the same time, nothing else seemed to matter. I found myself wanting to be with this girl all the time.
On the third day, I asked if she would like to climb Ben Loyal with me – with anyone else who fancied coming along. None of the guys wanted to join me and I ended up with a group of three girls, including Shara. Hmm.
We spent two hours crossing the marshy moon-grass to reach the foot of the mountain, before starting up the steep slope towards the summit ridge. It was fairly sheer, but essentially we were still going the ‘easy’ way.
Within two hundred feet, half of the girls were looking pretty beat.
I figured that having slogged across the marsh for so long, we should definitely do some of the climb. After all, that was the fun bit.
They all agreed and we continued up steadily.
Before the slope eases at the top, though, there is a section where the heather becomes quite exposed. It is only a short, few hundred feet, and I wrongly figured the girls would enjoy a safe, steep scramble which didn’t require any ropes. Plus the views were amazing out to sea.
But things didn’t quite go to plan.
The first panicked whimper seemed to set off a cacophony of cheeps, as, one by one, the girls began to voice their fears. It is funny how quickly everyone can go from being totally fine to totally not-fine, very fast, once one person starts to panic.
Then the tears started.
Nightmare.
I ended up literally having to shadow the three girls who were worst struck by this fear, one by one down the slope. I had to stand behind them, hands on top of their hands, and help them move one step at a time, planting their feet exactly where I did, to shield them from the drop.
The point of this story is that the only girl who was super-cool through the whole mission was Shara, who steadily plodded up, and then just as steadily plodded down beside me, as I tried to help the others.
Now I was really smitten.
A cool head under pressure is truly irresistible to me, and if I hadn’t been totally besotted before, then our mountain experience together tipped the balance.
I had a sneaking feeling that I had met the girl of my dreams.
CHAPTER 76
The next night was New Year’s Eve, and I made a secret plan with Shara to meet her outside the back door on the stroke of midnight.
‘Let’s take a walk,’ I suggested.
‘Sure. It’s midnight, minus five degrees, and pitch black, but hey, let’s walk.’ She paused. ‘But not up Loyal,’ she added, smiling.
And so we walked together along a moonlit track.
Twenty yards and then I will make the move to kiss her, I told myself.
But plucking up the courage with a girl this special was harder than I had thought.
Twenty yards became two hundred yards. Then two thousand.
Forty-five minutes later, she suggested that maybe we should turn around and head back to the house.
‘Yes. Good idea.’ I replied.
Do it, Bear, you old woman. Do it now!
And so I did.
A quick kiss on the lips, then a longer lingering one, and then I had to stop. It was sensory overload.
Wow. That was worth the walk, I thought to myself, smiling from ear to ear.
‘Let’s head back,’ I confirmed, still smiling.
I am not sure Shara was quite as impressed by the ‘effort to reward’ ratio – long cold walk to short, hot kiss – but as far as I was concerned the sky and clouds had parted, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Over the next few days we spent every waking moment together. We made up silly dances, did puzzles in the evening, and she stood smiling on the beach waiting for me as I took my customary New Year’s dip in the freezing cold North Atlantic.
I just had a sense that we were meant to be.
I even found out she lived in the next-door road along from where I was renting a room from a friend in London. What were the chances of that?
As the week drew to a close we both got ready to head back south to London. She was flying. I was driving.
‘I’ll beat you to London,’ I challenged her.
She smiled knowingly. ‘No, you won’t.’ (But I love your spirit.)
She, of course, won. It took me ten hours to drive. But at 10 p.m. that same night I turned up at her door and knocked.
She answered in her pyjamas.
‘Damn, you were right,’ I said, laughing. ‘Shall we go for some supper together?’
‘I’m in my pyjamas, Bear.’
‘I know, and you look amazing. Put a coat on. Come on.’
And so she did.
Our first date, and Shara in her pyjamas. Now here was a cool girl.
From then on we were rarely apart. I delivered love letters to her office by day and persuaded her to take endless afternoons off.
We roller-skated in the parks, and I took her down to the Isle of Wight for the weekends.
Mum and Dad had since moved to my grandfather’s old house in Dorset, and had rented out our cottage on the island. But we still had an old caravan parked down the side of the house, hidden under a load of bushes, so any of the family could sneak into it when they wanted.
The floors were rotten and the bath full of bugs, but neither Shara nor
I cared.
It was heaven just to be together.
Within a week I knew she was the one for me and within a fortnight we had told each other that we loved each other, heart and soul.
Deep down I knew that this was going to make having to go away to Everest for three and a half months very hard.
But if I survived, I promised myself that I would marry this girl.
CHAPTER 77
Meanwhile, by day, the craziness of all the preparation that a three-month-long Everest expedition involves continued.
Mick Crosthwaite, my old Isle of Wight and school buddy, had joined Neil and myself as part of our British Everest team. I had grown up with Mick all through prep school, Eton and the Isle of Wight, and climbed a lot with him over the years.
Physically and mentally, ever since I could remember, Mick had always been superhumanly strong.
Aged nine, he would single-handedly carry and drive the entire rugby scrum, making our prep school team totally unbeatable. After university, he breezed through some of the toughest military courses and hardly broke into a sweat.
Mick has always been a great man to have fighting in your corner, and I was so happy to have the company of a soulmate with me now on Everest.
So the team was finalized.
Our planned departure date was 27 February 1998.
Because our team was small we arranged to link up with a larger expedition, headed by Henry Todd, who had organized logistics for the Ama Dablam team.
The plan was that we would be climbing on the Nepalese side, the south-east ridge. This was the original face that Hillary and Tenzing had climbed – and one of the most dangerous routes – a fact not missed by Mum.
At the time, out of the total 161 deaths on Everest, 101 had occurred on this face. Mick and I decided to travel out some four weeks before Neil and Geoffrey Stanford (the final member of the team). The idea was to get as much time training at altitude as we could, before the climb itself would start.
I said the first of what has proved to be many tearful goodbyes to Shara at the airport, and flew out from the UK to Nepal.
For Mick and me, our strict acclimatization programme was about to begin.
Acclimatization is all about allowing the body to adjust to having less oxygen to function with, and the key is being patient about how fast you ascend. Once you start getting up high, the effects of altitude sickness can kill very quickly. If you get this process wrong, swelling of the brain, loss of consciousness and haemorrhaging from the eyes are some of the pleasant symptoms that can strike at any time. It is why playing at high altitude is just like playing with fire: unpredictable and dangerous.
From the peak of Everest, the land of Tibet lies sprawled out across the horizon to the north, as far as the eye can see. To the south, the summit looks over the vast range of the Himalayas, all the way down to the Nepalese plains.
No other bit of land stands above this point on the entire planet.
But what lies beneath the peak, for the ambitious climber, is a treacherous mix of thousands of feet of rock, snow and ice that has claimed a disproportionate number of top mountaineers.
Here is why.
Under the summit, the descent off the south-east ridge is lined by faces of sheer rock and blue ice. These lead to a narrow couloir of deep powder snow, then eventually down to a col some three thousand feet beneath the peak.
This col, the site of where our camp four would be, sits beneath the two huge peaks of Lhotse to the south and Everest to the north.
It would take us the best part of six weeks’ climbing just to reach this col.
Beneath the South Col, the gradient drops sharply away, down a five-thousand-foot ice wall known as the Lhotse Face. Our camp three would be carved into the ice, halfway up this.
At the foot of this wall starts the highest and most startling ice valley in the world. Halfway along this glacier would be our camp two, and at the lower end, our camp one. This vast tongue of ice is known simply as the Western Cwm – or the Valley of Silence.
From the lip of the glacier, the ice is funnelled through the steep valley mouth where it begins to rupture violently, breaking up into a tumbling cascade of ice.
It is similar to when a flowing river narrows through a ravine, turning the water into frothing rapids. But here the water is frozen solid. The blocks of ice, often the size of houses, grumble as they slowly shift down the face.
This gushing frozen river, some five hundred yards wide, is called the Khumbu Icefall, and is one of the most dangerous parts of the ascent.
Finally, at its feet lies Everest’s base camp.
Mick and I spent those early weeks together climbing in the lower foothills of the Himalayas, acclimatizing ourselves, and starting to get a sense of the scale of the task that lay ahead.
We hiked our way higher and higher into the heart of the mountains, until eventually we found ourselves at 17,450 feet, at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall and the start of the Everest climb in earnest.
We pitched our tents at the base of the big mountain and waited for the rest of the team to arrive in two days’ time.
Sitting, waiting – staring up above – neck craned at Everest, I felt a sickness in the pit of my stomach. I just wanted whatever was going to unfold, to begin. The waiting is always the hard part.
I had never felt so terrified, excited, anxious – and out of breath – in all my life.
But this wasn’t even the beginning. It was both before and below the beginning.
I decided to stop thinking ahead, and to start this expedition the way I wanted it to go on.
I would give this mission my everything. I would commit to slogging my guts out twenty-four hours of every day, until my eyes bled. I would consider anything short of this to be a bonus.
At least that should manage my expectations.
CHAPTER 78
Finally, Neil and Henry arrived over the horizon – the expedition itself had begun.
Base camp was now filling up with a whole multitude of climbers: teams from Singapore to Mexico to Russia. Maybe forty climbers in total – including a strong, cheerful Bolivian mountaineer, Bernardo Guarachi.
All were intent on risking everything for a shot at the top.
Not everyone would return alive.
The energy that a group of ambitious, highly driven climbers created was palpable. There was a purpose to everything. The camp was a hustle of tanned, wiry athletes, all busily organizing equipment and discussing strategies for the climb.
The other climbers under the logistical control of Henry Todd included Andy Lapkass, our team doctor, and Karla Wheelock, a quiet, friendly, but fiercely determined girl, trying to be the first Mexican female to the summit.
Also joining us was an Australian climber, Alan Silva. Blond and fit-looking, he didn’t say much and seemed quite detached. It was clear he wasn’t there for fun. He was a man on a mission, and you could tell it.
Then there was a Brit called Graham Ratcliffe, who had already climbed Everest from the north side. Straight-talking and good-humoured, he was hoping to be the first Brit to climb the mountain from both sides.
Geoffrey Stanford was a military Guards officer who, like Neil, Mick and me, was from the UK. An experienced Alpine climber, this was to be his first attempt on Everest.
And finally there was Michael Down, one of the most celebrated rock climbers in Canada. Cheerful, clearly competent, his outdoor look was complete – yet Michael already looked apprehensive.
Everest has a habit of making that happen to even the bravest of climbers.
He was a good man, though, and I sensed it within hours of meeting him.
In addition to these international climbers, we were supported by a climbing team of Nepalese Sherpas, led by their Sirdar boss, Kami.
Raised in the lower Himalayan foothills, these Sherpas know Everest better than anyone. Many had climbed on the mountain for years, assisting expeditions by carrying food, oxygen, extra tents and supp
lies to stock the higher camps.
As climbers, we would each carry substantial-sized packs every day on Everest, laden with food, water, cooker, gas canisters, sleeping bag, roll mat, head torch, batteries, mittens, gloves, hat, down jacket, crampons, multi-tool, rope, and ice axes.
The Sherpas would then add an extra sack of rice, or two oxygen tanks to that standard load.
Their strength was extraordinary, and their pride was in their ability to help transport those life-giving necessities that normal climbers could not carry for themselves.
It is why the Sherpas are, without doubt, the real heroes on Everest.
Born and brought up at around twelve thousand feet, altitude is literally in their blood. Yet up high, above twenty-five thousand feet, even the Sherpas start to slow, the way everyone, gradually and inevitably, does.
Reduced to a slow, agonizing, lung-splitting crawl. Two paces, then a rest. Two paces, then a rest.
It is known as the Everest ‘shuffle’.
They say that to climb Everest successfully you actually climb the mountain five times over. This is because of having to ascend then descend her continually, in an attempt to allow your body to adjust slowly to the extreme altitude.
Each time we reached a new high point, we would have to turn around the next morning and descend towards base camp in order to let our bodies recover from the beating.
The long hours of slow ascent would be gone in a hour or two of rappelling back down the same icy faces. ‘Climb high, sleep low’ was the principle, and it was morale-sapping.
Ten hours to climb up, one hour to rap back down.
The highest that our bodies would be able to acclimatize to would be camp three at about twenty-four and a half thousand feet.
Above that and your body is effectively ‘dying’, as you enter what is grimly known as the ‘Death Zone’. Here, you can no longer digest food effectively, and your body weakens exponentially in the thin air and lack of oxygen.