Dead Lucky

by Lincoln Hall

  Dylan asked if he could tell Ped, his friend of a dozen years, and his girlfriend Tanya. Barbara nodded, so Dylan headed to his room with his mobile. Dorje went to his room—ashen-faced.

  Barbara rang Julia and could do nothing but blurt it out: “Lincoln is dead!”

  Julia gasped. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking up as she spoke, my father listening in the background. “I’ll come straight up in the morning.”

  Barbara had left a message for Greg and Margaret and was waiting to hear from them. Already she had had enough of talking to people, so she preempted the call by ringing them again. Greg answered the phone, so she told him upfront: “Lincoln has just died.”

  “No, no, no, no,” he kept repeating. As he did so, Barbara could hear Margaret starting to cry in the background. Greg could not believe it and asked Barbara how she knew. When she told him the news was directly from Mike, the shock was beyond terrible. They said that they would come up in the morning.

  Even though she felt she should ring Trish and Iain, Barbara could not handle any more phone calls. How could she tell people something that she couldn’t believe herself?

  I had explained to Barbara many times how easy it is to die this kind of death. Whether from hypothermia or cerebral edema, it is pitifully, inevitably easy for mountaineers to drift off into unconsciousness, never to wake up. She thought this was what was happening to me—that I was not yet dead but was completely powerless to do anything to save myself. She thought that soon I would be dead and that there was absolutely no way she could prevent it.

  She walked down the hall to check on the boys. Dylan had rung Tanya and was lying facedown on his bed, his mobile to his ear, sobbing. Dorje was lying on his bed, facing the wall, quietly racked by emotions he never knew existed.

  Barbara went to bed. She usually turned off her electric blanket before she went to sleep, but tonight she felt so cold she left it switched on. She tossed and turned all night, not really sleeping, worrying things through. What she had to do, who she should tell, what needed to be done, in a practical sense, the next morning—all of these thoughts surfaced between fitful bouts of sleep. Despite the electric blanket, she remained cold for the entire night—just as I did, high on the mountain, on the other side of the world.

  BY DAYBREAK Barbara was sleeping soundly, but she was woken up by a dream which gave her a strong feeling that I was alive. I was walking toward her slowly, wearing an ancient fleece jacket that I had worn on my first trip to Antarctica, and smiling at her as I approached. The moment of joy as she woke from the dream was instantly replaced by a moment of despair, which faded to deep sadness, because Barbara would not allow herself to feel despair. She got up, made a cup of coffee, and forced herself to have a piece of toast. She knew she needed some kind of sustenance to give her strength for the day.

  One of the plans she had made during the night was to send two e-mails. She sat at her computer watching the screen come up. The first e-mail was to Jenny Reeves at SCEGGS, telling her how I had died, and that she would not be in to work next week. The second was to Blue Mountains Grammar School, informing the principal that Dylan and Dorje would not be at school. These were the first small steps toward dealing with what had happened.

  Dorje got up soon afterward, and Barbara told him how she had been woken up by a dream.

  “I dreamed Dad is alive,” she said. “And I’ve got this sort of hope that it’s all a mistake.”

  At 8:30 A.M. she rang Marion Walker, Dorje’s violin teacher, because that day he was to have had a music exam in Penrith, the city on the plain at the base of the Blue Mountains. Marion assured her that arrangements could be made for another time.

  Barbara tried to encourage Dorje to eat something, but suddenly our two dogs were barking at the gate. Barbara expected it was Julia, but in fact it was our friends Ken Beatty and his wife, Alison Lockwood, who had dropped their two boys at school after hearing the news from Marion, Alison’s close friend. Barbara met them at the gate, and as she spoke, she became aware of how hollow she felt when she said anything about what had happened to me.

  They gave her big hugs, and Ken shoved a scrap of paper at her and said, “This is my mobile number—if there’s absolutely anything at all we can do, please ring.”

  It was an awkward moment, an unsatisfactory parting, but everything about the encounter was unsatisfactory, except for the love. Barbara shut the gate behind them, the feeling of hollowness and emptiness only increasing. Alison and Ken’s arrival showed how quickly the news was spreading through the Blue Mountains community.

  Despite her dream, Barbara was beginning to accept that I was dead. If I had been left for dead the night before, there was very little chance that I would be alive after twelve more hours had passed.

  Barbara had been dreading ringing Trish and Iain after having given them the good news the evening before. Iain answered the phone, but his voice was unrecognizable, as though someone was strangling him. Only a few minutes earlier he and Trish had heard about my death from Jan Cristaudo, who had been told by Margie Hamilton, manager of the Australian Himalayan Foundation. Barbara could hear Trish sobbing uncontrollably in the background. They were obviously too upset to talk, so they agreed to speak again later.

  Margaret and Greg arrived, and Julia soon after. It was good to have them there, partly because they knew Barbara and me better than anyone else but also because they provided distractions.

  Greg did not believe it either, that I was dead—Barbara could see that in him. But the facts were too real to be denied. Greg certainly understood that a night in the open at 28,000 feet without oxygen was a death sentence, especially as I had been declared dead before the onset of night.

  Margaret sat on the exposed sandstone slab outside the front entrance with Dorje, talking with him quietly. She had been at the births of both Dorje and Dylan and had witnessed the most significant milestones in their lives, but this was a milestone that she felt no young son should have to endure.

  Dylan had been in the shower, but when he came outside, he and Margaret immediately hugged each other.

  “I’m a chip off the old block,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion. “I’m the man of the house now.” He hugged Margaret again, then repeated his declarations.

  Inside, in the living room, Julia and Barbara hugged and cried. Both women were strong in a crisis, but with this one, only Julia could talk about what needed to be done. She asked Barbara to find our life insurance papers so that she could lodge a claim. Soon Julia was sitting by the phone talking to the insurers, finding out what kind of proof of death was necessary and dealing with other practical issues.

  Late in the morning, Peter Horton-James, Joey Clarke, Camilla Rickards, and Clinton Boys arrived in school uniform, having just attended a memorial service held for me at Blue Mountains Grammar School. The four friends sat on the lookout rock on our western boundary. Dorje’s friend Cameron Boys arrived later.

  Roley Clarke rolled up, as did Ben Maddison. Roley could stay only a short time, but Ben stayed longer. Neither had much to say. Barbara sat inside for a while by the fire with Ben.

  Julia spent most of the day dealing with the many phone calls, relaying messages from friends and family, making herself Barbara’s buffer against contact with the outside world. No one could know what Barbara and the boys were going through. As the day opened up, Barbara’s hollow, empty feeling grew stronger and stronger.

  THE PREVIOUS DAY Greg had been alerted by longtime climbing mate Zac Zaharias that I was in trouble on the mountain—the product of some kind of rumor mill. Greg and I had been declared dead together in the past, so he would need solid evidence before he took any notice of the claims. Barbara’s call during the night brought evidence enough.

  That night Greg had rung other members of the 1984 expedition— Howard Whelan and Colin Monteath, who had worked with Mike Dillon filming our climb, and Geof Bartram, who was hit by cerebral edema at 24,000 feet but had been
strong and bold enough to descend alone. By the time Greg came to ring Andy, it had been late at night, so he’d left the call until the morning.

  The other person whom Greg had rung early on May 26 was Simon Balderstone, who lived less than a mile away. Simon had received the awful news from Mike at Base Camp at 10:20 P.M. the previous day, Sydney time. Mike had been in tears, having just spoken to Barbara. Greg and Margaret had hardly slept at all that night; nor had Simon. Greg’s early morning call to Simon was to determine strategy; they decided that Greg and Margaret would drive up to our Blue Mountains home, while Simon stayed at Manly to handle the media. He was well aware of how ruthless the press could be when there was a story involving dramatic death and a grieving family.

  And while Simon’s main focus was on protecting Barbara from the media, he was also trying to find out the source of the rumors that were beginning to emerge suggesting that I might still be alive.

  The press believed that we lived at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, so that was where they headed, arriving four years too late. Their next move was to besiege Glen Nash, who ran the Katoomba-based Australian School of Mountaineering. With a name like that, they assumed Glen must know about me. Sure enough, for a year or two I had worked as a rock-climbing instructor for ASM, but that was many years ago. Glen could tell them very little about my misadventures, but as he had climbed Everest’s subpeak Changtse, he could give them accurate background information. He also knew who would know, and soon he was out of the hot seat.

  ON THE MORNING OF May 26, Glen Joseph was sitting at his desk at Spinifex Interactive when Martyn Pot came down to speak to him.

  “Glen, I need to show you something.”

  “Can’t it wait? I have to make a phone call.”

  Martyn knew that Glen’s life consisted of phone calls.

  Glen ran the company, and most of his work was tying up deals, then finding the creative knowhow to make the projects work.

  “No,” said Martyn. “I really think you should see it now.”

  With those words, he reached across to Glen’s computer and began typing a Web address. Martyn had been receiving Richard Harris’s e-mails from Base Camp, and he uploaded the news to the Christopher’s Climb website. In the process Martyn had discovered other Everest websites, and it was one of these that he was showing Glen. The page he opened stated that I had been left for dead after failing to climb down from the summit of Mount Everest.

  Glen was shattered. He and I had talked through a program of walks we would do in different parts of Australia over the coming year. Much of the time his company ran on autopilot, so Glen was able to get away, and when we completed each walk, I would write it up for Outdoor Australia. It was a set of adventures that both of us had been looking forward to very much.

  Glen sat at his desk for half an hour, saying and doing nothing. Then he rang Annabel, his wife, who was out and about, with the news that he was going home, despite the fact it was only nine thirty in the morning.

  Back at his rambling house at Coogee, Glen returned to the Internet. He was amazed at how full it was with Everest stories. Every time he refreshed a page, more people would be adding to forums. David Sharp’s tragic death remained a hot topic, and now I was a subject for speculation and ill-informed judgment. Glen had seen enough. It was then that he remembered the piece of paper I had given him at the finish of our Royal National Park walk on March 31, a week before I flew to Kathmandu. On that piece of paper I had typed my wish list of the six walks we would do. We had both decided we needed to spend more time together, and my list was my commitment to the program. Suddenly, Glen realized that the well-folded piece of paper was the only memento he had of our times together, and he had thrown it out of his wallet the day before.

  Friday morning was garbage collection time, so Glen quickly called Michael Clay at the office and asked him to retrieve the paper from the bin under Glen’s desk.

  Clay rang back. “Sorry, Glen,” he said. “Your bin’s empty.”

  “Must be in the skip. Clay, please, could you . . . ?”

  “You want me to look in the skip!”

  “Please. It’s important.”

  So the luckless Clay went through the big metal bin out on the street, thinking he was looking for a needle in a haystack.

  Ten minutes later he leaped out of the skip, rang Glen, and triumphantly announced, “Lincoln’s memory is alive but with a few extra food stains!” Glen vowed to complete the walks in my memory.

  SOUTH OF OUR HOME, the wilderness extends as far as the eye can see. It is a very different kind of wilderness from that of the Himalaya but with the same uplifting quality. Usually we welcome the solitude, but that morning Barbara had been pleased to have our closest friends gathered around, their presence making her feel less empty. But now, later in the day, she was able to be alone. With just our two big dogs for company, she followed the track toward the lookout. As soon as she was far enough away from the house, she began to talk to me.

  “I don’t know whether you can hear me, Lincoln,” she began, “but this wasn’t how it was meant to be. We were going to grow old together, and we’ve got so much to live for, and so much to do here, and I just don’t know if I can do it on my own.”

  She was voicing some of the thoughts that had been troubling her during the night. Would she be able to keep our wonderful thirty-seven acres? Could she make the effort to do so in my memory? Or should she give up and move on? “I had hoped that eventually, when we were old enough to die, that I would go first so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the loss of you.”

  She had to tell me these things, even though her rational mind was telling her it was too late.

  Seventeen

  CLOAK OF DARKNESS

  THE WHITENESS was so pervasive that I could not determine the time of day. It must be morning, I decided, because I had no memories of what had come before. Often I awake from a night’s sleep disoriented after dreaming of being somewhere else. This time I was definitely somewhere else, but I did not know where. All I could tell was that my world consisted of mountains. Fresh snow covered the ground. Five hundred feet below my ridge-top vantage point the valley leveled out, indicating to me that I was a long way from the deep valleys and high peaks of the Himalaya. White mist limited my view to a few hundred yards, but what I could see fitted the characteristics of an exposed ridge in the Snowy Mountains of southeastern Australia, gentle ranges that are the domain of hikers and cross-country skiers, not mountaineers.

  It did not occur to me that what I perceived as the valley floor might in fact be a layer of clouds sitting more than a mile above the Kangshung Glacier and stretching from Everest’s Northeast Ridge all the way across to Makalu. Instead, I had firmly placed myself in the Snowy Mountains, where I felt with some degree of confidence that everything would work out fine for me. On the rolling hills around Mount Kosciuszko, I had taught myself to ski, and on the nearby slopes above Blue Lake, I had learned to climb the short, steep ice gullies between cliffs that offer good summertime rock climbing.

  As soon as I thought about hikers and skiers, I became aware that other people were nearby. The precipice immediately in front of me was frighteningly steep, impossible for me to descend, but I could see people as dark shapes against the snow where the angle eased. Rows of rock walls lay across the slope. Some of these I interpreted as being the backs of low stone cottages—otherwise, where could the people that I saw take shelter? I could see them in groups, busy with small tasks and chatting to each other, but I could not hear a word. Although the nearest group was a hundred yards away, sometimes the face of a figure would come into focus. As soon as I attempted to put a name to the face, it dissolved into formless anonymity.

  There was no shelter and nowhere to sit, so I brushed a small rock clean of its snow. I sat there, hunched up to stay warm, and watched the people below me. One of the faces, small and distant, recurred enough times for me to recognize it as belonging to Michael Dillon. Mike and I ha
d spent a lot of time together as we traveled toward the mountain, sharing hotel rooms in Bangkok and Kathmandu and a string of lodges and dormitories across Tibet. At Base Camp, Mike’s tent was immediately in front of mine. All of these points of intersection may have helped me see his face. I took heart from his alert eyes and broad smile. If I could locate Mike, I would be able to escape from the cold as well as the silence and the solitude. Mike would be able to show me around because it was his habit to get up early, head out with his camera, then appear at breakfast and tell me where he had been. He would know the lay of the land.

  I watched the figures moving, a few of them walking by with some kind of purpose. I sensed that my sister Julia was here as well. I could not glimpse her face—she was farther away than that—but I had to find her and tell her that by tomorrow morning she must locate a hut where we could have a fire. Then I would go down to her and bring Mike with me, and the warmth of the fire would be so much better than sitting on rocks in the snow.

  I decided to look around for firewood. There are trees in the Snowy Mountains—stunted, twisted snow gums with multiple trunks shading summer flowers—but I could not see a single one. I thought that the heavy snowfalls of the winter must have buried them in deep drifts. My ridge-top must have been above the treeline, but I kicked at shapes in the snow anyway, hoping to reveal some firewood in the form of fallen branches. All I found were more rocks. I sat down again and let myself doze off to sleep.