by Bear Grylls
He began to hurtle down the sheer face on his back, and then made the all too easy error of trying to dig in his crampons to slow the fall. The force catapulted him into a somersault, hurtling him ever faster down the steep ice and snow face.
He resigned himself to the fact that he would die.
He bounced and twisted, over and over, and then slid to a halt on a small ledge. Then he heard voices. They were muffled and strange.
Mick tried to shout to them but nothing came out. The climbers who were now at the col then surrounded him, clipped him in and held him. He was shaking uncontrollably.
When Mick and Neil reached us at camp two, forty-eight hours later, they were utterly shattered. Different men. Mick just sat and held his head in his hands.
That said it all.
That evening, as we prepared to sleep, he prodded me. I sat up and saw a smile spread across his face.
‘Bear, next time, let me choose where we go on holiday – all right?’
I began to laugh and cry at the same time. I needed to. So much had been kept inside.
The next morning, Mick, Neil and Geoffrey left for base camp. Their attempt was over. Mick just wanted to be off this forsaken mountain – to be safe.
I watched them head out into the glacier and hoped I had made the right decision to stay up at camp two without them all.
The longer you stay at altitude, the weaker your body becomes. It is a fine balance between acclimatization and deterioration. I chose to risk the deterioration, and to wait – just in case. In case we got another shot at the summit.
Some called it brave. More called it foolish.
The typhoon was slowing and wouldn’t be here for two days. But it was still coming. Two days wasn’t long enough to reach the summit and return. So, by tomorrow, if it was still moving towards us, I promised Henry and Mick that I would come down.
My next few days revolved around the midday radio call from base camp, when they would give me the forecast. I desperately longed for news that the typhoon was moving away.
The first day it was reported to be stationary. The next was the same. So I agreed to wait even longer.
The next day’s call would be vital.
Then at 12.02 p.m., the radio came to life.
‘Bear at camp two, it’s Neil. All OK?’
I heard the voice loud and clear.
‘Hungry for news,’ I replied, smiling. He knew exactly what I meant.
‘Now listen, I’ve got a forecast and an email that’s come through for you from your family. Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first?’
‘Go on, then, let’s get the bad news over with,’ I replied.
‘Well, the weather’s still lousy. The typhoon is now on the move again, and heading this way. If it’s still on course tomorrow you’ve got to get down, and fast. Sorry.’
‘And the good news?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Your mother sent a message via the weather guys. She says all the animals at home are well.’
Click.
‘Well, go on, that can’t be it. What else?’
‘Well, they think you’re still at base camp. Probably best that way. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, buddy. Oh, and pray for change. It will be our last chance.’
‘Roger that, Bear. Don’t start talking to yourself. Out.’
I had another twenty-four hours to wait. It was hell. Knowingly feeling my body get weaker and weaker in the vain hope of a shot at the top.
I was beginning to doubt both myself and my decision to stay so high.
I crept outside long before dawn. It was 4.30 a.m. I sat huddled, waiting for the sun to rise while sitting in the porch of my tent.
My mind wandered to being up there – up higher on this unforgiving mountain of attrition.
Would I ever get a shot at climbing in that deathly land above camp three?
By 10 a.m. I was ready on the radio. This time, though, they called early.
‘Bear, your God is shining on you. It’s come!’ Henry’s voice was excited. ‘The cyclone has spun off to the east. We’ve got a break. A small break. They say the jet-stream winds are lifting again in two days. How do you think you feel? Do you have any strength left?’
‘We’re rocking, yeah, good, I mean fine. I can’t believe it.’
I leapt to my feet, tripped over the tent’s guy ropes, and let out a squeal of sheer joy.
These last five days had been the longest of my life.
CHAPTER 87
I have always loved the quote from John F. Kennedy: ‘When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.’
Looking back on my life, I can see that I have never had a crisis that didn’t make me stronger. And here was all that I loved before me: great risk, but also great opportunity.
I had never felt so excited.
Neil was already preparing to come back up. Mick, so fortunate to be alive, was staying firmly, and wisely, at base camp.
But for me, my time had come.
That evening, camp two was again full of friends. Neil and Geoffrey were there along with Michael and Graham, Karla and Alan. But the weariness of coming back up to camp two again oozed painfully from Karla’s gaunt face.
She was utterly exhausted, and you could see it.
Who wouldn’t be after three months on Everest, and having got within four hundred feet of the summit only days earlier?
Tomorrow the biggest battle of our lives would begin.
That night, the tent that I had been alone in for so long was suddenly heaving with bodies, and piles of rope and kit – with Neil, Geoffrey and Graham squeezed in beside me.
I tried to drink as much boiled water as I could get down. I knew that I would need to be as hydrated as I could possibly be to tackle what lay ahead. So I drank and I peed. But still my pee was dark brown.
It was almost impossible to hydrate at this altitude.
The ritual of peeing into a water-bottle had become second nature to us all, even in the dark, and even with someone’s head inches away from the bottle. We each had two bottles: one for pee, one for water. It was worth having a good system to remember which was which.
At 10 p.m. I needed to pee – again. I grabbed my bottle, crouched over and filled it. I screwed it shut – or so I thought – then settled back into my bag to try and find some elusive sleep.
Soon I felt the dampness creeping through my clothes.
You have got to be joking. I swore to myself, as I scrambled to the crouch position again.
I looked down. The cap was hanging loosely off the pee-bottle.
Dark, stinking brown pee had soaked through all my clothes and sleeping bag. I obviously hadn’t done it up properly. Brute of a mistake. Maybe an omen for what lay ahead.
On that note I fell asleep.
At 5.45 a.m. we all sat huddled on the ice outside our camp, as we put on our crampons.
In silence we started up towards camp three. I hoped it wouldn’t take as long as last time.
By 10 a.m. we were well into the climb. We were climbing methodically up the steep blue ice. I leant back in my harness and swigged at the water-bottle that hung around my neck. I was moving OK. Not fast, but I was moving.
And I was stronger than last time I’d gone up to camp three. That boded well.
Five and a half hours of climbing, and the tents were just a hundred feet away. It still took me twenty minutes to cover that minuscule distance.
Just keep patient and keep moving. Ignore the heaving lungs, the numb feet and toes, and the drop beneath you. Keep focused on the step in front of you. Nothing else matters.
The laws of physics dictate that if you keep moving up, however slowly that might be, you will eventually reach the top. It’s just that on Everest the process hurts so much.
I had had no real idea beforehand, how a mountain could so powerfully make you want to give up �
� to quit.
I had never been a quitter – but I would have given anything to make the pain and exhaustion go away. I tried to push the feeling aside.
So began the battle that would rage inside me for the next forty-eight hours, without respite.
We collapsed into the tent, now half-buried under the snow that had fallen over the previous week. We were four scared climbers in that one tent – perched on a small precarious ledge – cold, migrainous, thirsty and cramped.
Many times I have been grateful for the simple, military skill of being able to live with people in confined spaces. It has helped me so much over the years on expeditions and beyond. And I was especially glad to be with Neil.
When we hang with good people, some of their goodness rubs off. I like that in life.
The other thing the army had taught me was how, and when, to go that extra mile. And the time to do it is when it is tough – when all around you are slowing and quitting and complaining.
It is about understanding that the moment to shine brightest is when all about you is dark.
It is a simple lesson, but it is one of the keys to doing well in life. I see it in friends often. On Everest that quality is everything.
Karla had given her word to Henry that she would only continue if the winds died down. Henry knew that in anything but perfect conditions Karla, in her exhausted state, would not survive.
At 6 p.m. the radio crackled with his voice from base camp.
‘The winds are going to be rising, guys. I’m sorry, Karla, but you are going to have to come down. I can’t risk you up there.’ There was a long pause.
Karla replied angrily, ‘No way. I’m going up. I don’t care what you say, I’m going up.’
Henry erupted down the radio. ‘Karla, listen, we had a deal. I didn’t even want you up there, but you insisted – now the ride ends. I am doing this to save your life.’
Henry was right.
It had taken Karla three hours longer than us to reach camp three. If she was slow like that higher up, she would probably die.
CHAPTER 88
At dawn, Karla started down.
We continued up – ever higher.
Only minutes out of camp three, I felt as if I was choking on my oxygen mask. I didn’t seem to be getting any air from it. I ripped it from my face, gasping.
This is crazy, I thought.
I checked the air-bubble gauge that told me the oxygen was flowing. It read positive. I refitted the mask and carried on.
Five minutes later it hadn’t got any easier and I was struggling. I felt stifled by the mask. I stopped again and tore it from my face, gulping in the outside air.
Geoffrey stooped behind me, leaning over his axe. He didn’t even look up.
I replaced my mask, determined to trust it. It read that it was working. That meant it would be giving me a meagre trickle of about two litres of oxygen a minute. A small, steady, regulated flow that would last some six hours.
But two litres a minute is a fraction of what we were gasping down every minute in the thin air – working hard with a heavy load up a sheer face.
Yet this steady trickle of oxygen was just enough to take the edge off the hypoxia, and therefore justified the extra weight. Just.
I told myself that a sore back and shoulders mattered less than low oxygen saturation and death.
The rope stretched above me, straight up the face.
Away to my right the ice soared away, up towards the summit of Lhotse. To my left the ice fell at an alarming angle straight down towards the Western Cwm, some four thousand feet below.
Any mistakes would be punished by death up here now.
I tried to stop myself from looking down, and instead to focus on the ice in front of me.
Slowly I began to cross the ice towards the band of steep rock that divided the face in two.
The ‘Yellow Band’, as it is known, is a stretch of sandstone rock that was once a seabed of the ancient Tethys Sea, before tectonic shifting over many millennia sent it vertically up into the sky.
Here it was, this yellow rock stretching above me into the mist.
I leant against the cold rock, hyperventilating in my effort to get more oxygen into my lungs. I tried to recover some strength to start up the rock face.
I knew that once we were over this band, then camp four was only a few hours away.
My crampons grated eerily as they met the rock for the first time. They had no grip, and they skidded across the surface awkwardly. I dug my points into any small crevices I could find and carried on up.
As I cleared the steep yellow band of rock, the route levelled out into a gentle snow traverse across the face. At the end of this was the Geneva Spur, a steep, rocky outcrop that led up to camp four.
There was a mesmerizing simplicity to what we were doing. My mind was uncluttered, clear, entirely focused on every move. I love that feeling.
As I started up the Geneva Spur I could see Geoffrey some way below me – and behind him, the figures of Graham, Alan, Neil and Michael.
I climbed steadily up the spur, and an hour later found myself resting just beneath a small lip. The infamous South Col awaited me over the top.
I longed to see this place I had heard and read so much about. The highest camp in the world at twenty-six thousand feet – deep in Everest’s Death Zone.
I had always winced at the term Death Zone. Mountaineers are renowned for playing things down, yet mountaineers had coined the phrase – I didn’t like that.
I put the thought aside, pulled the last few steps over the spur, and the gradient eased. I turned around, and swore that I could see halfway around the world.
A thick blanket of cloud was moving in beneath me, obscuring the lower faces of the mountain. But above these, I could see a vast horizon of dark blue panned out before me.
Adrenalin filled my tired limbs and I started to move once more.
I knew I was entering another world.
The South Col is a vast rocky area, maybe the size of four football pitches, strewn with the remnants of old expeditions.
It was here in 1996, in the fury of the storm, that men and women had struggled for their lives to find their tents. Few had managed it. Their bodies still lay here, as cold as marble, many now partially buried beneath snow and ice.
It was a sombre place: a grave that their families could never visit.
There was an eeriness to it all – a place of utter isolation; a place unvisited by all but those strong enough to reach it. Helicopters can barely land at base camp, let alone up here.
No amount of money can put a man up here. Only a man’s spirit can do that.
I liked that.
The wind now blew in strong gusts over the lip of the col and ruffled the torn material of the wrecked tents.
It felt as if the mountain was daring me to proceed.
PART 4
‘Both faith and fear may sail into your harbour, but allow only faith to drop anchor.’
CHAPTER 89
The last four thousand feet on Everest is a deathly place, where humans are not meant to survive. Once inside the mountain’s jaws, at this height, your body is now literally dying.
Every hour is borrowed time.
Two tents, one from the Singapore expedition and the other belonging to our Bolivian friend, Bernardo, stood in the middle of the col. Both teams had come up the day before us.
The tents now stood empty.
I wondered what those climbers were going through right now, somewhere above us. The whole of Singapore awaited news of their attempt.
I hoped they had succeeded.
We’d also agreed with Bernardo beforehand to share resources and use his camp as he made his own summit bid. So I crawled awkwardly inside his now vacant tent.
At this height the effect of thin air makes people move like spacemen. Slow, laboured and clumsy. On autopilot, I removed my oxygen tank and pack, and then slumped into the corner.
My head ached
painfully. I just had to close my eyes – just for a second.
The next thing I heard was the sound of Bernardo, and I sat up wearily as he peered into his tent.
He smiled straight at me. His face looked tired, with dark bags under his panda-eyes, from where he had been wearing goggles in the high-altitude sun for so many weeks.
Yet his face was radiant.
I didn’t have to ask if he had reached the summit. His eyes said it all.
‘It is beautiful, Bear. Truly beautiful.’
Bernardo repeated the words again in a dreamy voice. He had done it. We huddled together in the tent, and I helped to get a stove going to melt some ice for him to drink.
It would have been many, many hours since his last swig of any liquid.
Yet, despite his fatigue, he seemed so alive. For him, all the pain was now gone.
The two Singapore climbers also returned. They, too, had been successful. All of Singapore would be celebrating.
Two hours later, Neil and Alan reached the col. They had overtaken Geoffrey and Michael. Neil shook my arm excitedly as he poked his head into Bernardo’s tent.
We were here together, and that togetherness gave me strength.
It was time to leave Bernardo and help Neil get a tent up.
Now Geoffrey and Michael were also staggering slowly across the col. They told us that Graham, an Everest summiteer in his own right, had turned around, some three hundred feet above camp three.
He had felt too weakened by the illness we had both had. He knew he would not survive any higher up.
What did he know about the next stage that I didn’t?
I pushed the thought aside.
The weather was worsening – we needed shelter fast.
The wind ripped a corner of our tent from Neil’s hands, and the material flapped wildly as we both fought to control it.
What should have taken us minutes actually took almost an hour. But finally we had it erected.