Bear Grylls (16 page)

Scott was a doctor from Canada, who had been hoping to be part of the Lhotse team. Tall and friendly, he had managed to twist his ankle severely whilst being chased by a yak on the way up to
Base Camp. Although he saw the funny side of this and went along with the inevitable jokes, it was a great disappointment to him. He had spent a lot of time and energy training for this climb, not
to mention the financial cost, and it now looked over before it had begun. Such is the nature of climbing. Luck holds a big hand in any ascent and for Scott, luck had dealt him a bad card. He would
try to rest his ankle and climb later on in the expedition, though realistically he held out little hope. For now, he was to stay at Base Camp as our doctor. We would need him.

Also on the Everest team was Carla, a Mexican lady trying to be the first Mexican female to the summit. She had given her all for the chance to climb here, having taken three years to raise the
funds. Quiet and friendly, she hid a fierce determination to make it to the top at almost any expense.

Allen Silva was an Australian climber who was part of the Everest team. Blond and wiry, he had climbed all his life in the Himalaya. Allen didn’t say much, and seemed cold towards us.
Perhaps seeing me in chef’s trousers and tweed cap, with a wispy beard that only grew under my chin, he maybe thought that I was out of place and unserious. I may not have looked as sensible
as possible, but my heart burned with desire to climb high on this mountain. The more he doubted, the greater my determination was to prove him wrong in my strength and reliability.

Allen’s coldness upset me. We needed trust up here between us, trust in who we were, and in what we had done; but he wasn’t giving it. If he wanted to see us work before he gave his,
then we would show him we were trustworthy. Henry sensed Allen’s coldness and reassured me.

‘I know your background and we’ve climbed together before – take no notice of Allen and just do what you did on Ama Dablam, okay?’

The faith Henry and Neil had in me was what counted, and in this they never wavered. I was the young one. But they trusted me and I wasn’t going to let them down. They gave me something to
live up to.

Another climber on the team was an Englishman called Graham, who had climbed Everest a few years beforehand, on his second attempt from the north. He was hoping to be the first Englishman to
climb Everest from both sides. Easy-going and competent, he was an asset to any team. A true Newcastle man, he professed to doing his training ‘in the pub with a glass of ale and a
cigarette’. His strong eyes and prior achievement, though, told a deeper story. Here was a man who could climb with the strength of ten men. We had heard it from others, and could see it
behind his Geordie grin.

Michael was from Canada, and a friend of Scott. One of the most celebrated rock climbers in Canada, Michael had spent his life in the mountains of his native land. Sponsored to the hilt by North
Face equipment, Michael was trying to reach the summit of the ‘Big One’, as he would say. Cheerful and kind, with a vulnerable streak that lay hidden under his ‘outdoor
image’, Michael already looked apprehensive. Seven weeks later, I was to spend one of the most nerve-wracking nights of my life, squashed alongside him at Camp Two. All our experience
suddenly seemed to count for nothing; we were both just scared. Michael was a good man, and I sensed it within hours of meeting him.

As part of the team we also had a communications officer, who was to be running the radios for us from Base Camp. Her job was to keep us in touch and informed on the mountain. Jokey was already
a friend and when I offered her the job in London she leapt at it. Jokey was due to finish her contract as a producer with Carlton TV, and when Neil agreed to it, she joined us.

She was used to working with loads of technical equipment, and on arriving at Base Camp with Neil, she took to her job like a duck to water. People had had their doubts that she could even reach
Base Camp, and feared that she had too little mountain experience to run the radios. But like so much in life, and especially in the mountains, determination wins through. Jokey showed all those
doubters up as she threw herself courageously into the job; she did it well and for us to have a lovely smiling face to come back down the mountain to was a joy. No one could have done the job of
communications officer better.

She would have to leave us at the start of May, and was due to be replaced by Ed Brandt.

Now that everyone had arrived, Base Camp was busy. People went quietly about their things – whether it was rummaging through hold-alls of kit or shaving in a bowl of warm water. We were
getting ready. Ahead would lie two months of living and working in very close quarters – and for the time being, we were slowly getting to know each other.

The process of the climb meant that we would have to ascend then descend the mountain continually. This would allow our bodies to acclimatize to a high point, before coming back to Base Camp to
recover. It is how you climb a high mountain. You reach the threshold of altitude that your body can cope with, then come back down to rest. Then up a bit higher to acclimatize to a greater height
and then down again. The whole time you are fighting the danger of illness, altitude sickness, avalanche and bad weather. Luck has to come into it. We all knew that to be successful here so many
factors would have to come right, and that inevitably included luck. Every day I prayed for it – for the Good Lord’s luck.

They say that to climb Everest successfully, you actually climb the mountain five times over – in the process of going up and down. It is a giant game of snakes and ladders, and like in
the game, the higher you go, the further you have to fall.

The highest that our bodies would be able to acclimatize to would be Camp Three – at about 24,500 feet. Beyond that we would be into what is called the Death Zone where the human body
cannot survive for long. You cannot digest food and you weaken rapidly, due to the body’s starvation of its vital fuel – oxygen. From then on, we knew we would be on borrowed time
– even if our bodies allowed us to reach that height. Our aim had to be to try to acclimatize to Camp Three as soon as possible. We hoped this would be some time around the last few days of
April.

Our fight would then be against the weather. The fierce jet stream winds that pound the upper slopes of Everest make the mountain completely unclimbable – their strength would literally
blow a man off the face. But twice a year, for a matter of only a few days, the winds abate.

The warm, moist air of the monsoon, after crossing the Bay of Bengal, then carries on further north. As it meets with the mountains of the Himalaya, it is forced upwards. This wave of warmer air
creates a small bulge in the jet stream, raising the height of the winds by a few thousand feet – leaving Everest strangely silent. At Base Camp, lying in your tent, you can hear the deep
rumble of the jet stream far above you, as it licks across Everest’s summit. It is a constant roar that serves to set the boundary that man can reach. When the winds lift for those precious
few days as the monsoon passes over, the mountain is climbable. When, and for how long this period lasts, is the gamble you take.

This break may only be a matter of days, maybe two, maybe three. If you are not in position high up at the right time you miss it, and all has been in vain. After the period of calm, when the
winds have been lifted, come the storms. The mountain is then smothered in these monsoon snows.

The whole art of high-altitude climbing is as scientific as it is artistic and passionate. All going to plan, we reckoned on the chance of a summit bid in early May. All that was ahead was
unknown. If we could be sure of one thing, though, as we prepared ourselves those last few days before starting, it was that the mountain would never act as we hoped or expected. We never assumed
it would.

Various journalists and sponsors had come out with Neil to cover the start of the expedition. Most of them made it all the way to Base Camp, but a few were hampered from making
the last few miles because of illness or altitude sickness. Those that made it arrived laden with rucksacks, blue in the face and grinning ferociously. They were trying hard not to look too tired;
after all this was only Base Camp! I tried to reassure them that there was no disgrace in being tired, and that when we had first arrived we looked like ageing cart-horses on our final delivery
round. I’m not sure quite how much this helped them but still . . . it was good to see them.

Patrick was a journalist from a London financial magazine who was out here scribbling profiles on the team, but I couldn’t help feeling he was in the wrong place for a big financial story.
He had kindly remembered that when we were having our sponsors’ send-off party in London, I had expressed a certain regret at not being able to have the odd smoke for three months whilst
away. I smiled when, over a cup of tea, he tossed me a packet of cigarettes, saying that he thought they could be handy – post-climb. He was right and I hurriedly put them on the stone ledge
of the mess tent, along with various other ‘sacred’ items we had, that provided us with some light at the end of this Everest tunnel.

At the end of these long months, we would have sat for countless hours in the tent drooling over the contents of this ‘shelf’: a bottle of Moët et Chandon large enough to sink
the
Bismarck
, a box of Belgian chocs, and the now infamous pack of Benson and Hedges. Hope keeps spirits alive higher up, and every little bit, I reckoned, would help.

One of the other journalists’ questions to me was again on the issue of my age, and the disadvantages of being so young and hoping to climb so high. Again I had no real answer. It annoyed
me that he had raised the issue; it was okay in London, but not out here, not now. It was all too close. The answer to his question was something that time alone would tell.

Those few days with the ‘journos’ and sponsors at Base Camp were a relief. Many of these guys had become good friends, and seeing them was a welcome break from the tension that was
already beginning to emerge. Their departure, though, came all too soon. The Camp, which had been brimming with people for two days, was suddenly reduced to just the team; it was still busy but was
now noticeably quieter. The focus returned to the mountain.

The ‘journos’ had looked in horror at the Icefall in front of us, and we had laughed at the time. Now they had left, we looked differently at the ice 200 metres away looming up into
the mist. It had that dangerous beckoning look that it is infamous for. I ignored it and busied myself in our final preparations.

I wandered round to have a chat with Bernardo, the Bolivian, and carefully stepped over the ice and rocks in my moon boots towards his tent. He was sitting on a large stone chatting with someone
else – both facing out towards the Icefall.

‘
Hola Oso!
’ Bernardo grinned. ‘Come and have tea, and meet my friend Iñaki.’

Iñaki was a Spanish Basque climber, who was hoping to climb Lhotse this season. He smiled from behind his sun glasses. His Spanish was harder to understand than Bernardo’s clear
South American accent, but we got by – more or less.

‘Qué?
Once more, Iñaki. Sorry?’ I said, apologizing my way through the conversation.

Iñaki was a friendly and experienced climber who had just got married to a beautiful Spanish girl. He missed her already. It was hard not to like Inaki. He told Mick and I later that day
of what happened when he had tried several years earlier to climb Everest. We listened eagerly.

I knew that golden rule, but I reminded myself of it once again. Mick looked uneasily at me and smiled. I didn’t want to be sitting around endlessly discussing any longer – I wanted
to be doing it.

Charles, one of the American climbers who had tried to climb Everest four times, also came and joined us. He was English but now lived in the States. He seemed polished and smooth, and seemed to
have got Base-Camp living down to a fine art. I felt jealous of all his gadgetry; he even had a mini dustpan and brush to clean out all the rock sand that got blown into his tent during the day. I
could use one of those, I thought. My tent is like lying on the beach in Bournemouth it’s so dusty and sandy.

Charles was friendly enough, despite reminding us of all the risks, and the likelihood of failure – none of which exactly helped my waning confidence.

‘Don’t even bother coming to this mountain unless you’re prepared to come back, again, and again. It’s almost unheard of to achieve it first time. I mean, I’ve been
here on this hill four times now; Edmund Hillary took, I think, three attempts to climb it before he reached the top in 1953.’

I didn’t have the resources, though, to try it three or four times. For me it was now or never. If the mountain didn’t allow it, if it was out of condition and the weather never
broke, then so be it, but if it gave me the chance I swore that I would be there. It made me boil inside. Neil felt the same. When I told him of Charles’ views, he had a twinkle in his
eyes.