by Bear Grylls
However many of these pathetically slow shuffles I take, this place never seems to get any closer.
But it is. Slowly the summit is looming a little nearer.
I can feel my eyes welling up with tears. I start to cry and cry inside my mask.
Emotions held in for so long. I can’t hold them back any longer.
I stagger on.
CHAPTER 96
There had always been this part of me that had never really believed that I could make it.
Ever since that hospital bed and my broken back, a little part of me, deep down, had thought it was all sheer madness.
And that part of me hadn’t always felt so little.
I guess too many people had told me it was foolish.
Too many had laughed, and called it a pipe dream. And the more times I heard them say that, the more determined I had become.
But still their words had seeped in.
So we get busy, we do things. And the noise can drown out our doubts – for a while.
But what happens when the noise stops?
My doubts have an annoying habit of hanging around, long after I think they have been stilled.
And deep down, I guess I doubted myself more than I could admit – even to myself.
Until this moment.
You see, ever since that hospital bed, I had wanted to be fixed. Physically. Emotionally.
Heck. Ever since boarding school, aged eight, all those years ago, I had wanted to be fixed.
And right here, at 29,030 feet, as I staggered those last few steps, I was mending.
The spiritual working through the physical.
Mending.
Eventually, at 7.22 a.m. on the morning of 26 May 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in.
As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world.
Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering towards us.
As he approached, the wind began to die away.
The sun was now rising over the hidden land of Tibet, and the mountains beneath us were bathed in a crimson red.
Neil knelt and crossed himself on the summit. Then, together, with our masks off, we hugged as brothers.
I got to my feet and began to look around. I swore that I could see halfway around the world.
The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. Technology can put a man on the moon but not up here.
There truly was some magic to this place.
The radio suddenly crackled to my left. Neil spoke into it excitedly.
‘Base camp. We’ve run out of earth.’
The voice on the other end exploded with jubilation. Neil passed the radio to me. For weeks I had planned what I would say if I reached the top, but all that just fell apart.
I strained into the radio and spoke without thinking.
‘I just want to get home.’
The memory of what went on then begins to fade. We took several photos with both the SAS and the DLE flag flying on the summit, as promised, and I scooped some snow into an empty Juice Plus vitamin bottle I had with me.1
It was all I would take with me from the summit.
I remember having some vague conversation on the radio – patched through from base camp via a satellite phone – with my family some three thousand miles away: the people who had given me the inspiration to climb.
But up there, the time flew by, and like all moments of magic, nothing can last for ever.
We had to get down. It was already 7.48 a.m.
Neil checked my oxygen.
‘Bear, you’re right down. You better get going, buddy, and fast.’
I had just under a fifth of a tank to get me back to the balcony.
I heaved the pack and tank on to my shoulders, fitted my mask, and turned around. The summit was gone. I knew that I would never see it again.
Within moments of leaving the summit the real exhaustion set in. It is hard to describe how much energy is required – just to go down.
Statistically the vast majority of accidents happen on the descent. It is because nothing matters any longer, the goal is attained; and the urge to make the pain go away becomes stronger.
When the mind is reduced like this, it is so easy to stumble and fall.
Stay alert, Bear. Keep it together just a little longer. You’re only going to make that cache of oxygen at the balcony if you stay focused.
But then my oxygen ran out.
I was stumbling – going from my knees to my feet, then back to my knees. The world was a blur.
I can. I can. I can.
I kept repeating this to myself. Over and over. An old habit from when I had been dead tired on SAS Selection. I was mumbling the words without knowing it.
They were coming from somewhere deep inside me.
Eventually, too tired even to feel any relief, I made it. I slumped on the ground next to the tanks we had cached at the balcony on the way up.
I feasted on the fresh oxygen. I breathed it in gulps. Both warmth and clarity flooded back into my body.
I knew we could make it now. If we went steady, we would soon be back at the col.
The distant tents began to grow as we came carefully down the ice.
1 Years later, Shara and I christened our three boys with this snow water from Everest’s summit. Life moments.
CHAPTER 97
At the col it was strange not to feel ice or snow beneath me any longer. The teeth of my crampons scraped and yawned as they slid over the stones.
I leant on my axe to steady myself for those last few metres.
For eighteen hours we had neither drunk nor eaten anything. My body and mind both felt strangely distant. Both were aching for some relief.
In the porch of our tiny single-skinned tent, I reached out to hug Neil, again. Then – unceremoniously – I collapsed.
‘Bear, come on, buddy. You’ve got to get inside the tent properly. Bear, can you hear me?’ Michael’s voice brought me round. He had been waiting for us at the col – hoping.
I shuffled backwards into the tent. My head was pounding. I needed to drink. I hadn’t peed for over twenty-four hours.
Neil and Alan were slowly shedding their harnesses. Neither had the energy to speak. Michael passed me a warm drink from the stove. I was so happy to see him and Geoffrey in one piece.
As the afternoon turned to evening we talked.
I hadn’t really known fully why Michael and Geoffrey had retreated. They told their story. Of the impending storm and their growing fatigue, as they struggled in the deep snow and thin air. Their retreat had been a decision based on sound mountain judgement.
A good call. Hence they were alive.
We, though, had kept going. That decision had been based on an element of recklessness. But we got lucky, and that storm never came.
Daring had won out – this time.
It doesn’t always.
Knowing when to be reckless and when to be safe is the great mountaineering game. I knew that.
Michael turned to me later as we were getting ready for our last night in the Death Zone. He told me something that I have never forgotten. It was the voice of twenty years’ climbing experience in the wild Rockies of Canada.
‘Bear, do you realize the risk you guys were taking up there? It was more recklessness than good judgement, in my opinion.’ He smiled and looked right at me.
‘My advice: from now on in your life, rein it back a fraction – and you will go far. You’ve survived this time – now go use that good fortune.’
I have never forgotten those words.
The next day, coming down the Lhotse Face seemed to take as long as going up it.
But finally, after six long, slow hours, Neil and I shuffled those last few metres into camp two, on the glacier.
That night
, I did not move an inch for twelve straight hours – until just before dawn, when Neil started shuffling around.
‘Bear, let’s just get going, eh? It’s the last leg. I can’t sleep when it’s this close,’ Neil said excitedly in the chilly air, condensation pouring from his mouth.
My eyelids felt like they were sealed shut. I had to prise them open.
We didn’t bother to eat before leaving, in anticipation of the fresh omelette we had been promised over the radio from base camp. Instead we just got ready hurriedly.
But I was still slow, and I kept the others waiting as I moved laboriously from rucksack to tent to crampon. All remnants of any strength had long since gone.
My backpack seemed to weigh a ton, now that I was bringing all my stuff off the mountain. We started moving, and together we shuffled steadily along the glacier.
An hour along the route, we were stopped suddenly in our tracks.
The mountain around us roared violently, and the sound of an echoing crack shook through the place. We crouched, looked up and watched.
Five hundred yards in front of us, on the exact route we were going, the whole side of the Nuptse Face was collapsing.
White thunder poured down the thousands of feet of mountain. It then rolled like an all-enveloping cloud across the glacier. We stood in silence as the avalanche swept by in front of us.
If we had left a few minutes earlier, it would have devoured and buried us. Game over.
Sometimes, being slow is good.
We waited until the mountain had stopped moving, before slowly beginning to cross the avalanche debris.
Strangely, it was then that I felt most terrified for my life. As if that small stroke of good fortune – missing the avalanche – had shaken me to my senses about the risks we were taking.
I guess the closer to the end we got, the more I realized we had almost done the impossible. We had cheated death – so far. But we were still within the mountain’s grasp, and we still had one last descent through the icefall to complete.
As we crossed each of the Western Cwm’s deep crevasses in turn, the mountain slowly began to feel more distant. I hadn’t descended below camp two now for over ten days, and I knew that I was leaving something extraordinary behind me.
We moved in silence, lost in our own thoughts.
Two hours later, and we sat on the lip of the icefall. The tumbling cascade of frozen water below seemed to beckon us in one last time. We had no choice but to oblige.
Fresh, deep, powder snow now covered the icefall, spectacularly. It had snowed almost continually here whilst we had climbed up high. The route through had also changed beyond all recognition. The ice was always on the move.
The new route snaked over these giant ice cubes, and led us under lethal overhanging blocks that would crush us like mice if they chose that moment to collapse.
With each mousetrap that we passed through, I felt a little bit more of the tension drain from me.
Each step was a step towards home.
We could see base camp below us, and my breathing was becoming more and more excited. I felt as though an entire lifetime had passed since I had last been here.
The tents shimmered in the sun as we hurried through the jumbled ice at the foot of the icefall.
At 12.05 p.m. we unclipped from the last rope, for the final time. I looked back at the tumbling broken glacier and shook my head in disbelief.
Quietly, and to myself, I thanked the mountain for letting us through. Waves of worry and tension flooded from me and I couldn’t stop crying. Again.
All I could think of was Dad. I wished he could be here right now. Beside me.
But he was.
Just like he had been all the way.
CHAPTER 98
The sun was warm on my face. I knew we were safe at last.
The vast bottle of champagne, that had sat like some Buddha at base camp for three months, was ceremoniously produced. It took four of us almost ten minutes, hacking away with ice axes, finally to get the cork out.
The party had begun.
I felt like drinking a gallon of this beautiful bubbly stuff, but my body just couldn’t. Sipping slowly was all I could manage without sneezing, and even like that I was soon feeling decidedly wobbly.
I closed my eyes and flopped against the rock wall of the mess tent – a huge smile plastered across my face.
Later on in my tent, I put on the fresh socks and thermal underwear that I had kept especially for this moment.
First change in ninety days. Heaven.
I sealed the underpants in a ziplock bag, and reminded myself to be very cautious when it came to opening the bag again back home.
Neil’s feet were still numb from the frostbite. Long exposure up high, sat waiting in the snow for all those hours at the balcony, had taken their toll. At base camp, we bandaged them up, kept them warm, and purposefully didn’t discuss the very real prospect of him losing his toes.
He didn’t need to be told that he was unlikely ever to feel them again properly.
Either way, we realized that the best option for them was to get him proper medical attention and soon.
There was no way he was going to be walking anywhere with his feet bandaged up like two white balloons. We needed an air-evacuation. Not the easiest of things in the thin air of Everest’s base camp.
The insurance company said that at dawn the next day they would attempt to get him out of there. Weather permitting. But at 17,450 feet we really were on the outer limits of where helicopters could fly.
True to their word, at dawn we heard the distant rotors of a helicopter, far beneath us in the valley. A tiny speck against the vast rock walls on either side.
In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm.
My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect.
Somehow, I had to get on that chopper with him.
I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross on to my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting.
One chance.
What the heck.
Neil shook his head at me, smiling.
‘God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?’ he shouted over the noise of the rotors.
‘You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,’ I replied, with a smile. ‘And I’m your man.’ (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy – and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.)
The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy.
‘I have to accompany him at all times,’ I shouted back over the engine noise. ‘His feet might fall off at any moment,’ I added quietly.
The pilot looked at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve.
He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me.
‘Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.’ I shook his hand firmly.
Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself.
And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view.
Mick and Henry were laughing.
‘If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?’ Mick said, smiling.
‘Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,’ Henry added.
Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong.
The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air.
The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier.
I was out of there – and Mick was busy taking his socks off.
As we descended, I spotted, far beneath us, this lone figure sat on a rock in the middle of a giant
boulder field. Neil’s two white ‘beacons’ shining bright.
I love it. I smiled.
We picked Neil up, and in an instant we were flying together through the huge Himalayan valleys like an eagle freed.
Neil and I sat back in the helicopter, faces pressed against the glass, and watched our life for the past three months become a shimmer in the distance.
The great mountain faded into a haze, hidden from sight. I leant against Neil’s shoulder and closed my eyes.
Everest was gone.
CHAPTER 99
Once back in Kathmandu, Neil and I kind of let it all go – and it felt great. We had worked hard for this, and sometimes it is good to let your hair down. Totally.
The next morning, slightly the worse for wear, I remember wandering lazily along the rickety balcony of our small, backstreet Kathmandu hostel.
I found several members of the Russian Everest team, who had been on the north side of the mountain, sat on the corridor floor, talking in low voices. They glanced up at me wearily. To a man they looked mentally exhausted.
Then I noticed that they had been crying; big Russian, bearded men, crying.
Sergei and Francys Arsentiev were recently married. They had loved to climb. Everest had been their dream together. But it had gone horribly wrong.
Francys had been on her way down from the summit when she had collapsed. Nobody knew why: maybe cerebral oedema, or the cold – maybe just that killer Everest exhaustion. She simply had not been able to find the energy to carry on. She had died where she sat.
Sergei, her husband, had stumbled down to find help for her. Dazed, fatigued, and desperate, he then fell to his death.
The Russians asked me if we had seen a body, or just … anything.
Their voices were weak. They knew that it was unlikely, but they had to try. Their eyes looked dead. I felt a numbness well up inside as I thought of Sergei and his wife both dead on the mountain – and us somehow strangely alive.
That fine line between survival and disaster can be so slender.