Bear Grylls (33 page)

The final ridge is only about 400 feet long, but it snakes precariously along the most exposed stretch of climb on this planet. On either side, down sheer faces, lie Tibet to the east and Nepal
to the west. Steep granite rock lines the Nepalese side, and snow cornices protrude over the other. Shuffling carefully along the knife-edge ridge, over the tops of intimidating snow ledges, we
began to make our way towards the Hillary Step; this was all that barred our way from the top. The strength seemed to be staying with me as we moved slowly along. I was feeling it like I had never
done before.

I knew exactly where I would see him, I had read the accounts of Rob’s tragic death up here many times. They proved right. Slumped and half hidden by the passing of two
years, his frozen body sat in its immortal grave. Since that final appeal from his wife over the radio, where Rob had tried with all his being to stand up and climb these ten feet over the South
Summit, he had sat here. Time up here stands still. The cold ensures this. All he had to do was manage those meagre ten feet over the lip in front of him; he knew that from then on it was all
downhill. The exhaustion and fatigue at this altitude had robbed him, though, of his ability to do this. He had died where he now sat, only ten feet to my left. I let my gaze return to the ridge
under me. I didn’t know what to think.

I knew that we would see various corpses up here, yet somehow nothing had prepared me for the sight. Everyone knows the risks involved: it’s big boys’ games that demand you play by
big boys’ rules; I knew this, yet the stark reality shook me. It is hard to describe. Rob’s death had been only one of many that day, yet the proximity at which I now climbed by him cut
right into me. The sight lingered in my mind as we carried on along. Concentrate now, come on, Bear, concentrate. Strangely, though, I noticed that I wasn’t scared by the sight of him.
Instead, I felt a quiet determination to be different – to stay alive.

The rope was being whipped by the wind in front of me as I shuffled along. I thrust my ice-axe into the cornice to my right to steady myself. Suddenly the snow just gave way
beneath it. My ice-axe just shot through the cornice. I stumbled to regain my balance; it should have been solid. I slowly realized that we were walking literally on the lip of a ledge of frozen
water – with Tibet 8,000 feet directly below. I could see the rocky plains through the hole where the snow had been. I placed my ice-axe tentatively a little lower down and tugged on my sling
that secured me to the rope. It held firm.

At the end of the ridge we leant over our axes and rested. The Hillary Step now stood above us. This forty-feet ice wall was all that hid the summit from view. At sea-level this would be a
relatively pleasant ice-climb that you would happily do on a sunny midwinter’s day in the Lake District; but where we were now, cowering from the wind, at almost 29,000 feet above the Lake
District, it was becoming our final and hardest test. A test that would result in whether we would join the ranks of those who have seen in awe what lies over the lip ahead. If so, we would become
only the 31st and 32nd Britons to have ever done this. The ranks were small but exclusive. My heart burned more than ever to be one of them.

I remembered the last lip in the Icefall where I had felt my legs turn to jelly. It had worried me at the time, in case the same thing happened up here. If my legs failed me under the narcosis
of high altitude, I would be powerless to fight it. I tried to dispel the thought as we rested for a few more seconds. We had to start up it soon. It was the same vertical gradient as the lip on
the Icefall, only now so much higher. I struggled to stand and clipped on to the first rope. I looked weakly up above me.

As I moved laboriously and clumsily up the ice and found the first small ledge, I leant in close and tried to rest. My goggles were plastered against my face as the mask pushed into me. Ahead
and to my right, I could see a cluster of ropes protruding from the ice. They were old ones from past years. They were bunched in a tangled mess. I tried to focus my mind on which was the correct
rope. My brain was working so slowly.

You believe that your mind is sharp and alert until you have to actually test it. The ropes confused me. I couldn’t understand why my mind couldn’t discern and operate normally. I
shut and opened my eyes in an attempt to focus.

Only a year previously the slumped and frozen body of a climber was found hanging by his abseiling device from these ropes. It was the body of Bruce Herrod, the British climber with the South
African team who had never returned from the summit in 1996. Nobody knew what had happened. The truth was not known until a year later, when he was found here in the ropes. He had been descending
down but had clipped into the wrong rope. As they began to bunch up and become entangled, he lacked the energy or mental capacity to do anything. He died as he was – swinging with the wind
from his harness, trapped in a jumble of ropes. He had been cut loose as they found him. The ropes now bunched in front of me were the only reminder of him. I reached for a clear line.

As I heaved myself over the final lip, I strained to pull myself clear of the edge. I unclipped whilst still crouching, looking down at the snow around me. The line was now clear for Neil to
come up. I lifted my head forward and stared.

Only 200 metres away, along a gentle, easing slope, lay the crest of the summit that I had dreamt of for so long. A wave of adrenalin flooded through my veins. I could feel this surge of
strength. I had never felt so strong and yet so weak all at the same time. I got to my feet without meaning to and started staggering towards the tiny, distant cluster of prayer flags. Gently
flapping in the breeze, on the crest of a snow cornice, these flags marked the true summit – the place of dreams.

I found it ironic that the last part of this immense climb should also be the flattest. Beneath here were thousands and thousands of feet of treacherous ice and snow, yet here it was a gentle
slope almost beckoning us up to the top.

However many of these pathetic, desperate shuffles I made, the summit never seemed to arrive. It never appeared to get any closer. I tried to count the steps as I moved. Come on, just do four, I
would feebly tell myself, yet by two I always seemed to lose track of where I was. My counting became lost in this haze of weariness. I now breathed in gulps like a wild animal, in an attempt to
literally devour the oxygen that trickled from my mask. Slowly the summit loomed a little nearer.

As I drew now closer, my eyes welled up with tears. As I staggered those last few feet, I felt as if I was pulling all my emotions of the last year in a sledge behind me. Weary and broken I was
slowly getting closer to the small place that had captured my imagination since I was a boy. Those last 100 metres were undoubtedly the longest of my life as they crept slowly by beneath me. Yet
eventually at 7.22 a.m. on the morning of 26 May, with tears creeping down my cheeks inside my goggles, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me. It was as if she now considered
me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced; and in a vacant haze, I suddenly found myself standing on top of the world.

Allen embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. We stood there, all our differences seemed to have vanished; we were here together. It was all that mattered. I turned and could see Neil
staggering towards me, stumbling with exhaustion. I beckoned him on as he drew nearer and nearer.

As he approached, the wind mysteriously began to die away as the sun rose slowly over the hidden land of Tibet. The mountains below were being bathed in a crimson red. A magic was in the
air.

As Neil arrived, he knelt down and crossed himself. He had never shown a faith before, but I had always seen it in him; it inexplicably just somehow showed. Here at 29,035 feet above sea-level,
with our masks off to save our precious oxygen, Neil and I hugged as brothers. This early dawn was now the anniversary of his father’s death and I kind of knew that this moment was meant to
be.

I got to my feet and slowly began to look around. My eyes were ablaze. I swore that I could see halfway round the world.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The entire land of Tibet lay sprawled below us. I wondered if any binoculars would be strong enough to see us from down there. I didn’t feel at all remote; instead I felt
strangely at home. The summit was only about six square feet. I stood on it and couldn’t stop smiling.

For twenty minutes we sat and just gazed. The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. I stared in utter amazement. I wanted the moment to last for ever. I
wondered, with a small grin, what Shara or my family would be doing at this precise moment. They would be asleep. They have more sense than me, I thought, and smiled. How I wished they could be
here; I wanted everyone to be able to see what the horizon had laid before us. There truly was a magic to this place. It was sacred ground.

I had often gazed at pictures of the summit, taken by famous Everest climbers of past years – pictures showing the greatest mountain range in the world – the Himalaya, sprawled like
a table cloth below and all around. The amazement of now standing on this precariously small summit myself and seeing the vast peaks of the world, poking like contorted limbs through the blanket
cloud across the horizon, held me captive. I had always feared that I would be too tired to care – too nervous of where I was. But I was wrong. For the first time in three months I
wasn’t tired. Instead adrenalin and energy pounded through my veins. I hardly dared blink.

The wind gently caressed the summit under me – the roof of the world was silent. It was as if the mountain was somehow allowing us to be here.

Technology is now so advanced, so precise – yet crouching here, it amazed me to think that no amount of science could put a man on the summit of Everest. Only the dangerously slow process
of actually climbing the mountain could do that. We can put a man on the moon but not up here. It made me feel a little proud.

My mask now hung beneath me – I had turned my regulator off in a bid to conserve oxygen. I lifted my head and breathed deeply. The air at 29,035 feet felt scarce and cool as it filled my
lungs. I smiled.

The radio crackled suddenly to my left. Neil spoke into it excitedly.

‘Base Camp, we need advice . . . We’ve run out of earth.’

The voice on the other end exploded with jubilation. It was uncontainable joy.

Neil passed the radio to me. For weeks I had planned what I would say if I reached the top, the message that I would want to give. All that just fell apart. I strained into the radio and spoke
without thinking. ‘I just want to get home now,’ was all that came out. Not quite the speech that I had hoped for. The words wouldn’t exactly change mankind, but they were all I
could manage.

The two Sherpas soon arrived. Pasang and Ang-Sering appeared like spacemen on the moon. Entirely hidden by down suit, goggles and mask, they staggered together to the top of the world. They had
grown up in the same village as kids and had dreamt of becoming climbing Sherpas. Today, some four years on, as they reached the summit of Sagarmatha, their lives would change for ever. They would
return to their village not only now as men, but also as true Sherpas. They would join the ranks of their Sherpa heroes, the Everest summiteers, revered throughout their land. We took a picture of
them arm in arm and then hugged like children astride the roof of the world. I had never seen such joy in anyone’s eyes before.

The memory of what went on then begins to fade. Neil still assures me that for my reputation’s sake it would be best not to say too much about my delirious state of being
up there. I don’t believe him, but I do remember having some vague conversation on the radio. Funnily enough it was with my family, some three thousand miles away – the people who had
given me the inspiration to climb.

At Base Camp they had managed to set up a ‘patch through’ via our satellite phone. By them holding the radio next to the receiver I suddenly found that, from the pinnacle of the
world, my mother’s voice was booming loud. I couldn’t believe it. I quickly lost the reception.

My mother still maintains that I cut her off, as she was ruining the moment; I still profess that I don’t know what she is on about. ‘Cut my own mother off? Please.’

Up there, the time flew by and quickly passed. Like all moments of magic – nothing can last for ever. We had to get down. It was 7.48 a.m.

Neil checked my oxygen; I knew it would be dangerously low.

‘Bear, you’re right down. It’s on 4 out of 25. You better get going fast,’ he mumbled frantically.

I had just under a fifth of a tank to get me back to the Balcony. I doubted that I could make it; I had to leave now if I was to have any chance. I heaved the pack and tank onto my shoulders,
fitted my mask and turned round. I never looked back. The summit was gone. I knew that I would never see it again.