Bear Grylls (24 page)

Tomorrow evening came and the radio buzzed into life. ‘Iñaki to Base Camp. I’m turning round. It is just too windy and I’ve hit deep snow, no way can I
go on. I’m turning home,’ came his muffled and tired voice from somewhere just above Camp Three. He had bravely tried to climb Lhotse alone, but the way was barred. He would be
exhausted. It had been a long day for him, having started his bid at 11.00 p.m. the night before.

Three days later he tried again. Once more the mountain stopped him. The fierce winds and strong sun had now left him blinded. It was the same as had happened on Everest all those years earlier.
Confused and disorientated from his effort, he staggered drunkenly down the Lhotse Face. He had to reach Camp Two and rest. He could hardly see out from his goggles. His eyes were puffy and
swollen. His visibility was reduced to a vague squint; he knew he had to get down fast.

Back at Camp Two he knew it was all over for him. He would leave Base Camp after two heroic solo attempts, to return to the warmth of Spain and the comfort of his new bride. We all admired his
efforts.

Patience on the mountain, especially on Everest, is the key to climbing successfully. It is one of the reasons that Everest climbers tend to be older. They have more of it. Ultimately it is the
mountain who says whether you can climb or not. We are but pawns in this game – the decisions all lie with the mountain. The Sherpas say that the mountain goddess reviles pride and arrogance
on her slopes. They are both killers up there. We knew that we had no option but to wait quietly for our chance, and pray it would come.

I remembered how in
Pooh Bear
, Eeyore worried, Owl contemplated, while Pooh just was. We also needed to learn this. We had to be content with just being. But sitting there was hard
– so hard.

Climbing Everest involves so much more than I ever dreamt. People on our return would only be interested in whether we reached the top. To the media and those who don’t know, that is their
only question; but there is so much more. As I waited, I thought back to all those endless days training at home, day after day; I remembered those weeks of climbing out here before the others had
arrived, pounding up and down the huge hills that surrounded the valleys lower down. I remembered the pain and jubilation of coming through the Icefall that first time unscathed, and of reaching
the heights of Camp Three. Yet no one would even mention these afterwards. Their only question would be: ‘Did you reach the top?’ It was as if the weeks of fear, discomfort and
endurance counted for nothing; when in reality, they count for as much as the summit.

Neil and Geoffrey soon returned after three days’ rest. For us nothing had changed; we still sat in our tents, me in my chef’s trousers and tweed cap, Mick in his long-johns, and
both of us lost in our own world of resting, eating and thinking. I envied the break Neil and Geoffrey had had. They were rested and healthy and had missed nothing. We should have gone as well, I
thought.

I phoned home regularly now. It was the only relief for us here. I had nothing much to say except that I missed them and that I longed to be home. Neil and Mick teased me mercilessly about my
conversations.

‘Bear, look, you don’t have to ask every time you speak to your family, how each of the animals are in turn, okay? I’m sure they would tell you if they weren’t okay. I
mean, you must use up hundreds of pounds on asking how ruddy Olly the donkey is, and how Sam and Isabella the ducks are. It’s ridiculous,’ Neil joked.

But I liked to hear. It was my link back.

I also spoke to SSAFA, one of my sponsors, who mentioned that I had received an invitation to Buckingham Palace for the Young Achievers Award. I felt honoured, but also a fraud. I hadn’t
blooming climbed it yet. Couldn’t anyone understand that a gulf the size of the Atlantic still stood between me and the top? No one seemed to realize this.

I rang some great friends who live near my family in Dorset. The father, a wonderful eccentric Colonel, loved by everyone, answered the phone.

‘Hello, Colonel, good morning, it’s Bear here,’ I mumbled.

‘Hey everyone, it’s Bear calling from the summit of Mount Everest. Quick.’

‘Uh, no, Colonel, I’m at Base Camp. We’re still waiting for these winds to lift, I’m not at the …’ I tried to tell him.

‘Marvellous, Bear, congratulations. The summit eh … boy,’ he interrupted.

He refused to believe I was at Base Camp. After all, I had been away for over two months now – I couldn’t possibly still be at Base Camp. But I was and no, I hadn’t reached the
summit. I despaired.

Six months later, after I had been back in England a while, the Colonel left me a message on my answerphone. I had given him a rock from the summit of Everest inscribed with a verse saying,
‘Be still for the Glory of the Lord is shining in this place.’ Some weeks earlier, he had been diagnosed suddenly as having terminal cancer. His voice was weak and shaky on the machine,
and he simply said, ‘Thank you, Bear, for my rock, thank you from the bottom of my heart.’ By the time I heard the message he had died. I wept at home. A true gentleman now lived in
heaven.

Mick and I decided to get out of Base Camp for a day. We wanted some exercise, having been lying around for now almost ten days. We packed up and left in search of a
‘supposed’ Italian research station in the valleys below, somewhere off the beaten track. There was rumour of pizza and pasta. We left in high spirits.

Ten hours later, nine of which had been spent walking, we returned. The Italian research station turned out to be a hut that served spaghetti and spam. We should have suspected as much. Spam. We
just couldn’t seem to avoid it. It seemed to follow us round everywhere. We were fed up with eating it for almost every meal at Base Camp, couldn’t people realize it was
‘banned’ in England. Sure as eggs are eggs, we should have known that the research station would produce the infamous tinned meat. We had two mouthfuls then left, and arrived back at
Base Camp as night fell – chuckling and well-exercised. ‘Flipping Italians,’ we announced.

The forecasts were still bad and were now accompanied by a warning that they would get worse. We shook our heads. It was ridiculous. We began to suspect that this season could be like the last
one – in the autumn of 1997, when not one single climber reached the summit of Everest. The weather hadn’t allowed it. This was fast becoming a possibility now as well. Mick and I
agreed to see what the next day would bring and then decide whether we also should go down for a proper rest. But the next day brought tragic news. Things weren’t going right.

The Sherpa bustled into Camp. He looked scared and nervous. He spoke quickly.

‘Man dead. Altitude sickness. He dead,’ the Sherpa muttered. We listened to what had happened.

The trekker was Japanese. He was one of a party getting close to the crescendo of their trip – approaching Base Camp. They had all failed to recognize the symptoms of altitude sickness in
this man. He had carried on up, when he should have gone down. It was his last and worst mistake. By late afternoon he was in the late stages of pulmonary oedema. His lungs began to fill up with
fluid, and his breathing became more and more laboured as he choked in his own blood-filled lungs. By evening he had died of a heart attack, induced by pulmonary suffocation. At 17,000 feet the
altitude had claimed its latest victim.

Rigor mortis soon set in. They needed to get the body into a basket, in order to carry it back down the valleys to where a helicopter could collect it. The body, though, was now rigid and those
around him were unable to bend it. Left with only one option they twisted the body and leant on the back until it gave way and broke. With a shrill crack the spine split in two and the body could
be squeezed into a basket and carried down.

It came as a deep shock to us all at Base Camp. We hadn’t known the man but he would have a family somewhere. It was such a tragic waste of life. A waste that could have been avoided if
the symptoms had been recognized earlier.

At the small village of Dingboche, halfway along the trek to Base Camp, is a small hut called the ‘Himalayan Rescue Association’. Resident Western doctors work here, researching the
effects of high altitude on the body. They are all volunteers and do three-month stints in the mountains as part of their research. They lecture daily to trekkers on the effects of mountain
sickness, predominantly pulmonary and cerebral oedema. These Japanese had obviously opted not to hear the lecture. It was a fatal decision.

We had visited the doctors en route up to Base Camp and had chatted endlessly about the climb ahead. They offered fresh and new advice to us. We listened carefully. They measured the oxygen
saturation levels in our blood and monitored pulse and blood pressures.

The danger they warn trekkers about is going too high too fast. The body reacts differently with different people, but the symptoms are pretty universal. Severe dizziness, headache, vomiting,
and laboured breathing; these all mean one thing – go down. It’s as simple as that. A descent of some 1,000 feet can make the difference between life and death. We all had to have an
expert knowledge about all this.

Pulmonary oedema affects the lungs; the capillaries dilate under the lack of oxygen and the lung-cavities begin to fill up with blood. Eventually the climber suffocates in a frothy mixture of
mucus and blood. Cerebral oedema affects the brain. The lack of oxygen to the head makes the person severely drowsy, with searing migraines. This causes the brain to seek oxygen by absorbing more
blood. If this continues the brain eventually swells and then dies.

Both these conditions can kill in hours, if not recognized. Even more so with the heights we were to be going to. We took this deadly seriously, as we had witnessed it at first hand.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

As we snaked our way back down the valley leading away from Base Camp, I felt a deep pain in my shins. Each step I took, sent this pain shooting through my leg. I winced. I
didn’t mention it to any of the others – I didn’t want them to know.

Mick, Neil, Geoffrey and Ed were with me. We had all decided to go down to Dingboche at 14,000 feet to spend our precious few rest days – it was our recovery time before the summit bid.
For Neil and Geoffrey it was their second time down below Base Camp. Dingboche was low enough to ensure that the thicker air would replenish our bodies, and the prospect of cheese omelettes
provided an added incentive to get there.

I couldn’t shake the pain from my shins. Each time I stood on the hard rocks of the glacier, they stung viciously. I knew what it was, I had seen enough people in the Army suffer from it.
Invariably it had hindered them continuing any exercise. I almost refused to acknowledge it was what I thought.

Shin splints is the severe bruising of the muscles at the front of the lower leg. It comes from excessive pounding on hard ground. It makes walking agony. I turned up the volume of my Walkman
and tried to ignore the pain and just enjoy the richer air. It didn’t work.

As we tumbled into the lodge at Dingboche and threw our packs into two double cubicles, I sat and rubbed them hard. I had to rest them or I would never be able to climb up high. This was an
added burden that I could do without.

I told Mick about it that evening as we sat alone on our tiny wooden beds in the lodge. There wasn’t much he could do.

‘Brufen, Bear. That’s what you need, and masses of it,’ he suggested, in between writing his diary.

The old Army favourite for numbing pain. Technically designed as an anti-inflammatory, it takes the swelling away. I swallowed three of Mick’s small supply.

‘Thanks, Miguel.’

For three days we sat in the lodge, eating and relaxing in the fresh air. It was the break I had wanted. I tried not to think about the mountain. Every night, after taking several Brufen, I
would sleep soundly. I hadn’t slept like this in seven weeks. It was wonderful. As I rubbed my shins every night for half an hour, Mick and I chatted in our room. Our minds invariably drew us
back to the mountain.

Our second day there, the weather turned. The winds far above us were now blowing fiercely. We could see the clouds licking across the wall of Lhotse above us. It meant that Everest would be
taking a severe punishing behind. These were the storms we had expected. Dingboche was cold and blowy; Everest, though, 15,000 feet above, would be atrocious as the cold front pounded into her. At
least everyone was now safely off the mountain, I thought. I wondered what damage the storm would cause to our camps up there.