Authors: Bear Grylls
An American report came through saying that a ‘British climber had fallen’, nothing else was known. The words flashed up on Patrick’s screen. He stared in horror. It was 8.45
a.m. in the City, the heart of London.
For the next three days he heard nothing more on the incident. Why? What had happened? Couldn’t they say? Had someone died? Was it Mick? His mind raced with the possibility, the strong
possibility, that the ‘British climber’ reported to have fallen might have been Mick. Our satellite phone was switched off at Base Camp. Everyone there was too busy trying to get Neil
and Mick off the mountain safely. Patrick could get no more news.
He dared not tell his wife, Sally. He couldn’t. He describes those days and nights as the most ‘agonizing experience imaginable’. He is a man of great strength but even he was
shaken. He recounts: ‘What was so hard was not being able to share it with Sally. I couldn’t, as I didn’t know for certain. I couldn’t work, sitting there, looking at the
screen in front of me, the screen that had given me the news originally – it made me feel sick. I dreaded facing the reality. The possibility that our only son was dead.’
It was not until Mick eventually returned to Base Camp that he was able to ring his father and tell him he was safe. Mick had had no idea that Patrick knew anything about it. Relief swept across
his father’s face. A relief that only a father, I guess, can know. Mick assured him all was okay, and announced that he would not return again up the mountain. Ever. He knew only too well how
lucky he had been. He took off his Everest crampons for the very last time. He thought of me still up at Camp Two, and looked knowingly up the mountain.
Meanwhile, some 3,700 feet above Base Camp, I waited for that next and final forecast, longing with all my heart for a chance. That chance was now in the hands of the weather.
That night in my tent I could hear the deep rumble of the jet-stream winds above me. The sun had disappeared down beyond the bottom end of the Western Cwm. It left me all alone. I curled tight
inside my bag and closed my eyes. I really missed the others.
I crept out of my tent long before dawn. The glacier looked cold and hostile as it swept away to the west. I zipped my down jacket up and stumbled across the ice to have a crap.
It was 4.30 a.m. I waited for the sun to rise whilst sitting in the porch of my tent and wondered what it would bring today.
Thengba and Ang were still asleep in their tent. I wished that I was also.
I couldn’t believe that all the work we had done so far, boiled down to today. I prayed for the umpteenth time, for that answer to my prayers. The typhoon had to move or peter out. It had
to. My mind wandered to being up there; up there climbing in that deathly land above Camp Three. That land where, as I had read, only the ‘strong and lucky survive’. Please. I dozed off
dreaming about it.
By ten o’clock I was ready on the radio. I rechecked the strength of the batteries. They were nice and warm. I looked at my watch again. Come on.
This time they called early. It was 11.58 a.m. I jumped for the set.
‘Yep, Base Camp, I’ve got you,’ I said anxiously.
‘Bear, you dog. It’s come.’ The voice was excited. It was Henry speaking.
‘The forecast has said that at 11.00 p.m. last night the cyclone began revolving, and has spun off to the east. They think it will clip the Eastern Himalaya tomorrow, but nowhere near
here. We’ve got a break. They say that the jet-stream winds are lifting again in two days. How do you think you feel?’
‘We’re rocking, yep, good, I mean fine . . . I can’t believe it. Alrighty.’ I punched the air and yelped. Thengba came scurrying across to my tent and peered in
inquisitively. I howled again. Thengba grinned and climbed in. I couldn’t stop patting him violently on the back. He laughed out loud, showing all his two black teeth. He kind of understood.
It had been a long five days.
Neil was already preparing at Base Camp to come back up. Another chance had suddenly opened and he had to take it. It might be his last attempt ever. He had openly said that if he was turned
back this year as well, he would never return. Already he had climbed to 28,700 feet and now only a few days later he was preparing to go up again. It was unheard of. People said that his body
would not be able to cope. They didn’t know, though, what was going on inside him. Just one last attempt. My last one, he thought. And this time something excited him more than ever
before.
Mick was staying firmly at Base Camp. He was still in shock. He needed rest. He helped Geoffrey and Neil pack up one final time. If this failed we all knew our attempt was over. The monsoon
hovered down in the Nepalese plains, awaiting its grand entrance. In one week’s time, we knew it would all be over.
During the course of the day, both the depleted Singapore team and Bernardo had left Camp Two towards Camp Three. It meant that they would be a day ahead of us in the attempt. This was good.
They would have valuable information on the conditions above the South Col. I prayed that they would be safe. Those of us still on the mountain were a small group now.
By 7.00 p.m. that evening, Camp Two was again full of friends. Neil and Geoffrey were there along with Michael and Graham, both now recovered from their illness. Carla and Allen
had also come back up for a second attempt. The weariness of trying again showed dreadfully in Carla. Her body was crying out for relief. She looked understandably gaunt and frail. Allen took two
hours longer than everyone else to arrive. The fatigue was showing in him as well.
The Lhotse team were also back. Andy and Ilgvar would try once more. Nasu, alternatively, had decided to leave Base Camp the day before to return to Kathmandu. I wouldn’t see him again
now. He believed he had actually reached the summit of Lhotse on the first ascent, as he was ahead of the other two. Andy didn’t really believe this. He knew that the summit had been still
too far away. An air of doubt hung around it all; but no one would ever really know.
I was so relieved to see Neil arrive at Camp Two. He smiled and we hugged. We both knew the chance that was ahead of us – words weren’t needed. I had missed him especially.
Darkness came quickly or maybe time just seemed to race by, now that others were here. It was funny how the minutes had crept by so slowly for almost nine weeks in total. Nine weeks I had waited
for this chance. And now that it was here, the minutes didn’t seem to be able to go slowly enough. Despite the excitement, part of me dreaded what lay before us. In less than ten hours, the
struggle would begin. I knew the next four days, God willing, to the summit and back to Camp Two, would be undoubtedly the hardest of my life. But there was a purpose to it. At its end was my dream
that I had held on to for so long. The summit of Everest, I felt, was waiting for us.
I shared my tent that had been all mine for so long with Michael, the Canadian. As I had got to know him over the past two months I had come to like him a lot. He had a tenderness under his
outdoor rugged image that I couldn’t help but warm to. He was as scared as I was. I could tell.
He busied himself nervously in the tent; sorting out his kit, rechecking each item meticulously. Counting glucose tablets, checking the length of straps for waterbottles that would hang round
our necks (the best place to stop them freezing), checking the simple things which are always the first to go wrong: spare gloves, spare goggles, tape, blister kit, ready-tied prussik knots for
emergency rope work, you name it, it all came out and was checked. It took our minds off things.
We shifted around tentatively, trying to give each other some room. I knew Michael needed space to be alone before it all started, we all needed it, but we had to try and cope with what we had.
I understood. I tried to quietly rest as he sorted his things out. I lay back on my rucksack and closed my eyes. I felt that mixture of fierce excitement and deep trepidation. I couldn’t
quite believe what now lay before us.
The words that my grandfather had written to me in one of the letters that Ed had brought when he arrived, rang in my head. They were powerful words to me. At ninety-two years old, he had a
wisdom that cut right to my core.
‘Keep on in there, your struggles are a triumph for guts and Godliness.’
The words guts and Godliness struck me hard. It was all that I aspired to. I knew somehow my grandfather understood me.
That night we tried desperately to sleep. From 5.00 a.m. the next day, the biggest battle of my life would begin. I found it hard to even pray.
Michael and I shuffled nervously all night. I peed at least four times. Michael chuckled as I rolled over with my pee-bottle and filled it again.
At 4.45 a.m. I started to get ready. It was invariably always the worst time; the time when you felt warm and cosy and were trying to shake the heaviness from your eyes. By 5.15 a.m. I crawled
out of our tent and breathed deeply in the morning chill. It would allow Michael some space to get ready.
We tried to eat some porridge oats with hot water. I added masses of sugar to try and make it taste a bit better, but still I could only manage a few gulps. My mind was elsewhere. I was worried
that so long up here would have made me weak, that my body would be drained from living at Camp Two, and would have used up my vital reserves. But I had to be strong enough now; I knew that I would
soon find out.
At 5.45 a.m. we all met on the ice and sat in silence as we put our crampons on. I had done this so many times in the last two months, yet this morning it felt like my first time. As we started
off, leaving Ang and Thengba watching from their tent, I hoped with all my heart to see them safely again four days later. Much would have happened for better or for worse by then. The glacier
ahead of us leading up to the Bergschrund and the Lhotse Face seemed eerily still. I felt a mild sickness inside. It was nerves.
My cough was still there but irritated me less now, or maybe I was just used to it; resigned to the discomfort. The angle steepened as we neared the ropes of the ice above us. The Lhotse Face
loomed away far above.
In silence we started up towards Camp Three. I hoped it wouldn’t take as long as last time. I hoped to be able to reach it in around five hours.
By 10.00 a.m. we were well into the climb. We moved methodically and carefully up the blue ice. It crunched, then splintered beneath our crampons as they gripped firmly with each step we took. I
leant back on my harness and reached into my windsuit. I pulled out several glucose tablets. They tasted sweet in my dry mouth. I swigged at the waterbottle that hung around my neck and looked
around.
Five and a half hours of climbing, and the tents were only 100 feet away. It still took twenty-five minutes to reach them. I climbed with Graham. We were both slow and tired. It showed with him
especially. He swore under his breath. It was all taking so long. I tried to keep patient and just keep moving slowly. The principle was that if you were moving up, however slowly, you would
eventually reach your destination. It is just that the process hurt so much.
We collapsed into two tents. Neil, Graham, Michael and I in one, Geoffrey, Carla and Allen in the other. We settled down to the odious task of trying to melt ice. The gas stove had blocked
again; frozen solid. I undid it, rubbed it, and put it back together. The flame flickered and then lit.
I thought of my ice-axe buried under the ice outside the tent. I had known that it would be impossible to retrieve; Mick had told me so. I had borrowed an axe instead from Pascuale,
3
an American climber on the mountain. I had picked up his spare axe the day before from Camp Two, assuring him jokingly over the radio that I would stay alive to
return it. He made me promise. He was a friend and knew the risks up there. ‘Be careful’ had been his last words to me.
Up in the tents at Camp Three we tried to get on with things quietly. Living in these close quarters, under pressure, when you are scared, tired and thirsty, is a sensitive business. My time in
the Army had helped me in learning how to live with people in confined spaces like this. I had spent enough cold nights in a patrol huddled together waiting for dawn. This was much the same –
only a little higher! I needed this training now as we settled down for the night, squeezed in the tent, tucked into the ledge in the ice here at 24,500 feet. The other thing the Army had taught me
was about going that extra mile. About pushing yourself that little bit more, and how the finish is always just after the point at which you most want to give up. I reminded myself of this as I lay
cramped between all the kit and stinking bodies. I would need that discipline more than ever before now. That extra mile; that little bit further.
Carla, despite our advice to the contrary, had insisted on coming up with us to Camp Three. Henry at Base Camp had refused to allow her up. He knew that she was too tired. She had given her word
that she would only go up with us from Camp Three if the winds died down. Henry knew that in anything but perfect conditions she would not survive. Her body was completely drained after her first
attempt. The forecast would be given to us at 6.00 p.m. at Camp Three; it would decide Carla’s fate. If the winds higher up were above 40 knots, she would have to turn back.
The radio crackled with the voice of Henry from Base Camp.
‘The winds are going to be rising, guys. You’ve still got a window, but the conditions are far, far from ideal. I’m sorry, Carla, but you are going to have to come down. I
can’t risk you up there. It’s too dangerous,’ Henry announced. There was a long pause.
‘No way, no way. I’m going up. I don’t care. I’m going up,’ Carla retorted angrily. ‘You can’t make me come down. Not after I’ve come so
far.’
Henry erupted down the radio. ‘Carla, listen, we had a deal. If the winds were strong you would come down. I didn’t even want you up there but you insisted, but now the ride ends. We
had a deal and you come down. That’s the end of it.’ He was worried having her loose up there.
She burst into tears, shouting in Spanish at him. I felt for her like never before. She had given so much for this chance. And now, this close, she was being forced back. I knew what she must be
feeling. I would be the same. But Henry was right, she wouldn’t make it in the winds up there. It wasn’t her fault; she had used her strength on the first attempt. She didn’t have
that same strength now. It had taken her three hours more than us to reach Camp Three. If she was slow like that higher up, she would die. We all knew this and tried to comfort her in the tent.