Bear Grylls (23 page)

We tested the oxygen canisters again and again. We learnt the correct flow rates for the Russian-imported oxygen regulators. Formulas had to be learnt by heart. Up high there would be no time
for complex mathematics – the brain would be working too slowly. Simple sums become impossible. I was bad enough at these at sea-level, let alone in the Death Zone.

A flow of 2.5 litres a minute on a 1,500 litre canister would last just over ten hours. Call it ten to be safe. The orange ‘poisk’ canisters were smaller and would last five or six
hours. Different regulators attach in different ways to different canisters; we had to be able to operate these with mitts on and in the dark. It could save our lives. We endlessly practised
together in the mess tent. Watching me fumble and drop things as I tried to do it blindfolded was a source of great amusement to Mick, Geoffrey and Neil – but then it would be their turn. The
mistakes had to be made now, when it was warm and safe. We all knew this.

Initially the days passed quickly as we prepared ourselves. We watched, one morning, two Nepalese porters loading up barrels of human faeces on their backs to carry down the valley for a fistful
of rupees. They smiled away as they made the loads comfortable on their backs. It was good manure for the crops lower down in the valleys – they were over the moon.

Before leaving they laughed and joked with the Sherpas, hugged, held hands in the Sherpa fashion, and drank tea. Not once did they wash their hands. Still – easy come, easy go. This was
good old Sherpa-style. The poo-bearers, as we called them, then disappeared amongst the rocks across the glacier, heading down the valley carrying their precious cargo. I doubted somehow they would
have any problem with the Nepalese National Parks Police, rummaging through their bags for smuggled goods.

We spent that afternoon playing Neil’s ‘Great stone throwing’ competition. As the day progressed, so did the silly games. In the middle of an absurd bout of one-legged
volleyball, played with a makeshift bundle of cardboard and masking tape, Allen walked past us and glared. He could not understand us, and certainly could not correlate the risks we were about to
take with us larking about now. He dismissed it as unprofessional. For us, though, we were letting off steam from the fear of all that lay ahead. We wanted to laugh and relax – just a
bit.

That evening the radios crackled with news that was serious, deadly serious. Our joviality of the day switched in an instant. Someone was in grave trouble up the mountain.

‘I repeat, I am seeing a figure three-quarters of the way up the Lhotse Face stationary, I repeat, stationary.’ The voice of the Singaporean at Camp Two sounded worried.

‘It’s beginning to get dark up here and we don’t know who the hell it is. He’s running out of time if he doesn’t start moving.’

The radio crackled frantically for the next two hours as people tried to find out what had happened. As darkness swept through the valley, those watching from Camp Two lost sight of the figure.
It was getting cold and the wind was picking up. Nobody could survive at 24,000 feet in those conditions if they were not moving. At Base Camp as we listened, we prayed silently. There was nothing
else we could do. We had all been on the Face and knew its dangers. What the hell, though, was this climber doing up there now?

The American team, along with Nasu and Ilgvar, were the only people at Camp Three. It had to be one of them.

Nasu and Ilgvar responded to our radio call – they were safe. The Americans, though, weren’t responding. At 10.00 p.m. they at last replied.

‘We are missing Jim Manley up here. Has anyone any news?’ they asked wearily from their precariously perched tent on the Lhotse Face.

Angry voices followed. Why had they been so slow to reply? Why had they left it so late to notify anyone that one of their party was missing? The Americans had no real answer. The drug of thin
air had a hold of them. They were almost too tired to even speak.

‘Where the fuck is Manley?’ Graham asked bluntly. He had grabbed the radio in rage and now fired questions at the Americans some 7,000 feet higher up.

‘You’ve got to go and find him, and now,’ he continued.

But the Americans couldn’t. They were too tired and knew that there was nothing they could do in this weather.

‘We reckon Jim’s turned back down the Face. To start looking in these conditions would be just too risky,’ they argued. ‘None of us are in any shape to survive out there.
We’re too exhausted. Can you see anything from Camp Two?’

The mist and darkness obscured any chance of seeing the figure – the figure of Jim Manley. The attention turned to Nasu and Ilgvar. They were less tired, having been at Camp Three a night
already. They would have to start a search – themselves.

‘Nasu and Ilgvar, listen – Jim could still be out there. If he’s turned back then it’s okay, but we don’t know. There is a risk he could have severe oedema or be
unconscious on the ropes. We need you to descend and try and find him. Are you in a state to try this?’ Graham asked firmly. A long pause followed.

‘Roger that. We’ll try.’

They emerged twenty minutes later from their tents. Fighting blizzard conditions, they made their way laboriously down the frozen ropes. An hour later Nasu’s voice crackled on the radio.
We all huddled round hoping that they would have found Jim alive. Nobody spoke a word.

‘No sign, Base Camp, of Jim, I repeat, no sign,’ Nasu shouted into the radio over the noise of the wind. The radio cut dead.

As they both continued their descent towards Camp Two in the gale, the reality of what must have happened slowly began to dawn on us all listening. Jim must have fallen some time ago, as the
mist hid him from view.

By the time Nasu and Ilgvar reached Camp Two there was a soberness over the whole mountain. They had done all that had been asked of them. Their exhaustion from the descent left them weak and
drained as they sat in their tent. It was well past midnight. Nobody wanted to sleep; yet there seemed nothing to wait up for any longer.

‘Base Camp, do you copy?’ a panicked, weak voice mumbled through the radio. Click. Everyone swung round towards the sound.

‘Hello, Base Camp,’ the voice echoed again. ‘This is Jim. Do you copy?’

The radio-net burst into conversation.

Jim had been too tired on the ropes to move. He had drifted in and out of a deep exhaustion and had just clung to the rope as night came – too tired to move or care.

Eventually he carried on past one more serac and spotted a tent to his right. It was empty, as it was one of the other teams’ tents, left now at Camp Three ready for the summit bid. He
clambered wearily in, left the radio off and lay there fully clothed and closed his eyes. At 12.30 a.m. he came to and turned on the radio to call Base Camp. People were furious; it was a call too
late.

As he had slept Nasu and Ilgvar had risked their lives on the Face to find him. They must have passed within metres of him as he lay in the lone tent. Exhausted and distraught, they had to
report the news that they had reached the bottom of the Face and Manley had not been there. We all knew what that had meant.

The next morning saw frantic apologies from the Americans who had been too tired to help, and countless apologies from Jim. Nasu and Ilgvar returned to Base Camp. The apologies were irritating
to hear. Nobody cared about apologies – it was too late. The incident was shrugged off, nobody blamed Jim – it was the nature of climbing, that things can so easily go wrong. Yet it had
sparked a fire of emotions. Emotions that had been brewing for a while. The tension of what lay ahead up there blew these feelings wide open, and Base Camp slowly turned into a huddle of nervous,
anxious people. We had been out here now for over two months, and the volatility and frustration amongst the climbers was beginning to show.

Jokey would be leaving Base Camp in two days; her time with us would soon be over. As arranged beforehand, she had to return for her sister’s wedding in mid-May. Scott
would also accompany her; the mountain, unfortunately, no longer held anything for him. It would be sad to lose him and his medical expertise. Ed Brandt, a friend of Neil’s, would be taking
over from Jokey. He was due any day now. Jokey’s last few days passed slowly. The strain on the climbers at Base Camp made it a less pleasant place to be, but Jokey had lived through it all
with us. Part of her didn’t want to leave. She had been with us from the start, and now at the key time she was having to leave. Her face said it all.

‘I so hoped to be with you when you went for it. It’s horrible packing up and seeing you still waiting for these jet-stream winds to lift. I know your frustration,’ she told
us, as we sat all together in the tent, her last evening. I knew that in under a week she would be at home in Norfolk drinking tea with her family, and Everest would be only a memory. Part of me
longed to leave as well, but our ambition seemed to hold us prisoner here – awaiting a final showdown with the mountain. I felt a little stranded.

‘You will be okay. I just know it,’ she said. But she didn’t know. She had never seen above Base Camp – that desolate land of ice far above the clouds that now hovered
over Base Camp. She didn’t know what went on up there. But I longed to believe her. She had been a friend to all of us at Base Camp, and we would miss her.

When she left, I didn’t even wave her off. I sat in my tent and tried to focus on what lay ahead up there. A new phase was now beginning.

The fact that Ed Brandt’s face wasn’t as good-looking as Jokey’s was all we thought, as he staggered into Base Camp that first week in May. As communications
officer, his job of keeping us informed and in touch on this final stage would be crucial. The comms tent at Base Camp was a bit ropey and torn, but it would be a place where he would spend many
restless nights in the coming days and weeks, as he waited for our radio calls. A few of these, and Ed’s face definitely wouldn’t be as pretty as Jokey’s – no one’s
would be by the time the mountain had dealt her last set of cards to us. A hand that, as of yet, was still our most feared unknown.

Ed had brought with him what Mick called our ‘ESLs’: our ‘Emotional Support Letters’. As he dished them out to the four of us, we grabbed them and ran off to our
respective tents. For the next two hours Base Camp was unusually quiet as we lay and reread our letters from home. Each one became thumbed a hundred times. I couldn’t help but squirm with
excitement as I read them. From my sister, Lara, my parents, my grandfather, and from Shara. A wad of sweet-smelling, ink-stained, carefully sealed reminders of all I missed so dearly.

My father talked of more practical matters:

Common practice on Everest is a period of rest before a summit attempt, down the valley below Base Camp. The thicker, more oxygen-rich air allows the body to sleep better and
recover faster than at the debilitating altitude of Base Camp. The body’s metabolism begins to work more effectively and you strengthen quickly. On returning to Base Camp the body is as
strong as it will ever be. It will need to be.

All of our team were now off the mountain. The wait was now for the weather. In the meantime people debated the merits of going down the valleys to rest. On one hand the body recovers well, but
on the other hand you risk picking up diseases that the trekkers have brought in. On top of this, you also risk being away when the crucial time comes – the time when the jet stream is
beginning to lift. Andy had been robbed of a chance of reaching the summit of Everest almost ten years earlier, when the weather came right and he was too far down the valley to be in position to
use it. He never forgot this and warned of the danger. The four of us had to make personal decisions about what to do.

Neil and Geoffrey announced that they would go down to the village of Dingboche some six hours below Base Camp. Mick and I decided to stay. We dreaded leaving and opening up the possibility of
missing our chance. If only we had known the length of time that we would have to wait, we would have gone down as well. We were to be waiting in total for over three weeks. A far cry from the hope
that Jokey and all of us had held, of an ascent by 1 May.

So we stayed. The eighteen square feet of our tents was now home to us. We had all our letters, and little reminders of our families. We felt reluctant to leave them; they comforted us. I had my
small sea-shell I had taken from the beach on the Isle of Wight that now hung from the roof of my tent; Shara had written in it my favourite quote that I had used so often in the Army: ‘Be
sure of this, that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’ St Matthew 28.20. I read it every time I went to sleep. I liked my ‘home’ at Base Camp.