Bear Grylls (21 page)

That evening, talking with Scott, he told of the years of preparation he had done for this climb. Being out here, seeing the mountain but with a weak ankle, his ambition now was just to see the
Western Cwm. That was all he wanted. I felt humbled. What was I doing aiming for the summit? Scott was training for this climb while I was still at school, yet he is only hoping to reach the
Western Cwm. Maybe I was reaching too high. This troubled me that evening as I sat alone in my tent.

But I knew that I had to stretch myself further, and reach beyond my grasp. I felt this burning urge to go higher and I longed to witness the summit. The beauty of the places on the way there
was unquestioned – what I had seen so far had stunned me in its sheer scale and beauty, but I felt there was more. My eyes and heart were for the summit, and my dream was to reach it with the
Person who had created it. I wanted this to be my journey.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was 5.00 a.m. and eerily still at Camp Two. Mick had been tossing and turning all night, cursing his inability to sleep.

Today was make or break for us. We had reached Camp Two by mid-afternoon the day before, after a seven-hour climb from Base Camp. It had been the first time that we had done the route all in one
go without a night at Camp One en route, and it had taken its toll. We had hoped our acclimatization would have lessened the pain, but the strain of climbing all the way from Base Camp showed. Our
pace had been reduced, again, to twenty small steps at a time.

One of the irritations of such slow moving and so many breaks was that it gave you too much time to reflect on the discomfort. I had hardly even looked at the Lhotse Face in the distance; it was
too big a leap. It had taken all my reserves just to get along the Western Cwm.

Fourteen hours later I was squatting in the chilly air of dawn, checking my pack was secure and adjusting my crampons for the last time, before setting off in the hope of reaching Camp Three,
some 3,300 feet higher. I felt mildly sick.

Camp Three is on the threshold of where the human body can survive. Any higher and the body begins to feed off itself and slowly shuts down; you are then on borrowed time. How the human body
reacts to this strain varies amongst people; but as I had been repeatedly told, ‘altitude adaptation grows with age’, and age was something that was working against me. I prayed that my
body would cope. It had to. This was the real tester. If I failed to cope up at Camp Three, I would return to Base Camp and never go back up again. My body would be one of the many that cannot cope
with the lack of oxygen. Looking at the vast Face before me, I tried to imagine being up there. I couldn’t.

‘Okay, let’s get going, we need to be well onto the Face by the time the sun comes up. That only leaves two hours to reach the foot of it,’ Neil announced.

We had hardly spoken that morning. We were all nervous, and lost in our own thoughts. Much rested on the next seven or so hours.

Thirty yards after setting out from Camp Two we were still on the scree and ice moraine, trying to reach the firmer glacier ice that would lead up from there. Neil was in front, and suddenly
slipped on the ice. We stopped as he got to his feet and started again. A yard later he slipped again, and fell awkwardly on the sharp stone and ice surface. He swore at the top of his voice, and
slammed his ice-axe into the glacier bed. He was pissed off.

We all felt the pressure on us now, and floundering thirty yards from Camp was bugging for Neil. It was an unnecessary irritation. I understood. We all just sat there for a bit. We didn’t
need to speak. We just needed time as a team alone, out of Camp Two. We sat there for five minutes just being together. Neil had just expressed what we all felt. We were feeding off each other now,
and gaining strength from it.

We started up again and followed our route to the Bergschrund slowly and deliberately, trying to save our energy for what was above. All was silent apart from the crunch of ice beneath our feet
as the teeth of our crampons gripped in the ice. The same methodic, high-pitched crunch that rang in my ears with every step. It felt hot already and it was only 6.30 a.m.

As we approached the start of the Face we sat for ten minutes and rested. I handed round some glucose tablets. I used to suck these continually; it was something to do as you leant on your axe
with your eyes closed breathing heavily, trying to summon up the energy to move forward. It acted as a distraction from the discomfort.

The wind was blowing gently across the ice; it was a small relief from the heat as we started up the ice. As we kicked the points of our crampons in, we would lean on them, test their grip, then
push another small step higher. A couple of these, then we would need to rest. The leap we were making in altitude of 3,300 feet was huge – considering the altitude we were at. Even on our
trek into Base Camp we had only been climbing around 900 feet a day, and that was some 10,000 feet lower down.

We knew the risks in pushing through this boundary, but because of the severity of the gradient we were forced to take it. Logistically it would be almost impossible to site two camps on the
Lhotse Face – it was too risky avalanche-wise, and would result in the human body spending too much time too high. Everything considered, it was reckoned that to reach Camp Three and then get
down quickly, was still the best way of acclimatizing to the body’s threshold. As soon as we had completed our trip to Camp Three we would then return back to Base Camp for one last time;
from then on it’s all weather driven.

For five hours we continued slowly up the blue ice, each step deliberately placed. Mistakes on here could not be rectified. We would slide our jumars along the rope, then check the teeth had
gripped, before leaning back to rest, letting the harness take the strain. The jumar is attached to your harness via a short rope known as a sling; you had to trust all these links to hold you
– you had no choice.

At the end of each rope, we would clip in with a second sling and karabiner to the next rope – make sure it was secure, then unclip the jumar and move that as well. It was routine but you
couldn’t afford to be careless. The Lhotse Face has claimed so many of the deaths on Everest that mistakes went unforgiven. The concentration drained us as much as the climb itself.

When resting, our crampons would grip the ice and we would lean back on our harness. Looking beneath us, the ice shimmered away into the distance. I could see the small chips of ice that my
crampons had dislodged, tumbling down the sheer face below. The sling holding me was as tight as a bow string under the weight of my body and heavy rucksack. We had tried to keep the weight of
these to a minimum but still it was uncomfortably heavy as it bit into our shoulders.

I shuffled my feet to relieve the pressure of the heavy boots on them. Bent at an angle, the hard plastic dug into your shins, and the blisters I had from before were still sore. Jokey had
helped bandage them, but the plasters were rubbing off now. I tried to shuffle them again.

Neil described it later as ‘like being tortured’, which made me feel a little better, to think that someone else loathed it with the same deep vengeance. There was nothing remotely
pleasant or romantic up here now – it just hurt.

The wind picked up the higher we went. We stopped to tighten our windsuits around us. I clapped my hands together and snow shook from my fleece gloves. I didn’t even have the energy to
look down any more. I couldn’t be bothered.

As we climbed higher we lost ourselves in our own worlds. Each of us was fighting our own battle here. The danger of slipping hung in our minds continually.

After six long hours, we could just make out the seracs above us. I saw Bernardo abseiling down towards us. He had reached Camp Three the day before. He looked confident.

‘Not far now, Bear, over two more lips then see Camp Three,’ he said as he reached me. The Sherpas had reached it yesterday as well, and had spent the afternoon putting the tent in.
They were fitter than us up here, their bodies coped better. Up higher everything would level out: Western climbers and Sherpas would climb at the same frighteningly slow pace. The altitude would
ensure this; but still up to Camp Three the Sherpas were faster. They had done their job well; Camp Three was in and they were now returning with Bernardo. They smiled broadly at us as they passed
us on the ropes. They understood our pain.

As we emerged over the final lip I could see the tent wedged under the serac, 100 feet above us. It looked precariously perched, but to us it symbolized everything cosy, as we edged our way
towards it. The tent flapping in the now stronger wind looked the most alluring yet elusive sight I can remember. The cold had set in and it was now snowing hard. The wind swept the snow across the
dark ice and up into our bodies. My hands felt icily numb and I tried to shake warmth into them. The fleece gloves acted to stop the metal jumar and karabiners sticking to our hands.

Camp Three didn’t seem much closer and I had been moving now for a further twenty minutes.

Mick was a little behind Neil and I, and, as we both rolled over the ledge of Camp Three, we looked over and down at him. He was stationary. Another weary step, then a rest. He must have looked
at us with envy, so close yet so far away. Come on, Mick. He never gave in, and eventually, freezing cold, he staggered to the ledge. A cold smile swept slowly across his half obscured face. The
three of us were at Camp Three.

Andy was already in the tent, having left Camp Two a couple of hours before us. He was tired and irritated, but so were we all. The tent was tiny and four of us crammed inside,
wet, with all our equipment, and boots, was a feat that a champion ‘Twister’ player might have struggled with. We fought to find space to squat.

Sachets of dried food were scattered across the floor messily, and we crammed our sleeping bags against the tent wall that was wedged against the ice face behind us. This side of the tent seemed
a dull colour in comparison to the lighter, outer facing edge. I leant against the ice with my sleeping bag behind me, and tried to get comfortable in the limited space.

The headache that I thought I had left behind at Camp Two was with me again, stronger now. I swallowed four more aspirins.

In such close quarters, when you are tired, thirsty, with a headache, trying to melt ice continually on a tiny worn stove, and crammed into a corner against a cold wall of ice, requires a
certain degree of tolerance from everyone. If ever friendships were to be tested it was now.

We knew each other so well, and knew how we each reacted to things, that things got done relatively smoothly and quietly. We must have appeared like ‘old hands’ as I helped Neil jam
a roll-mat on the ground, as he passed me my headtorch from my pack, and as we grinned at Mick peeing in his bottle two inches from my ear. Nobody ever told us it would be a holiday; and we never
expected it to be easy. It was just good, in a bizarre sort of way, to be here all together.

Once your boots were off you didn’t leave the tent. Several lives had been lost by people putting their inner boots on, going out for a second, then because of being careless and dozy from
the altitude, slipping on the blue ice. It was their last conscious act, before finding themselves hurtling at breakneck speed down the 5,000 feet glassy face, with only a yawning crevasse at the
bottom to meet them. Being careless up here can all too easily have fatal consequences.

The Singapore team had left Camp Two at the same time as us, but hadn’t made it to Camp Three. We heard on our radio call that evening that they had turned round after four hours. The
weather had looked nasty. They would try again tomorrow. A warmth came over me; the three of us and Andy had made it. God knows how, but we were here, on the side of the Lhotse Face at some 24,500
feet above sea-level … and Mum and Dad. The thought made me smile.

The daylight was dying fast and we used our headtorches to keep watch over the stove that hissed away incessantly in the corner. I leant against my pack, wedged between Mick and Neil, and closed
my eyes.

The sporadic snorts of Mick clearing his dry throat, and the deep hacking of Neil’s cough, were the only sounds as darkness swept across the mountain. I tried to doze.

‘The tent … it is just ahead, no, it’s gone. What’s happening? There it is again, so close … now it’s moving away. Stop, please.’ I was locked in this
never-ending cycle of pain, desperately trying to grab the tent, but never being allowed to. I just kept plodding on, I begged my mind to let me give up, but it refused. There seemed no escape.
‘Stop …’

I opened my eyes and realized I was inside the tent. I tried to shake the nightmare from my head. I never wanted to see another rope or karabiner again.

At midnight I heard Andy mutter angrily to himself, ‘Oh, for fuck sake, come on!’ He wasn’t finding rest either. I took another aspirin. Maybe it would help me sleep, as well
as ease the headache. It didn’t work.