Bear Grylls (28 page)

Tomas, Tina and Babu, by lending oxygen to Mick, undoubtedly saved his life up there; and without Neil and Pasang’s help, Allen’s story might have been very
different. They had all showed the sort of courage that the mountains demand. Without their help, history might have claimed another two victims to Everest’s toll.

From the Balcony they staggered down together slowly. It would soon be over; Camp Four appeared again briefly in the mist. The tents looked like specks below.

Slow and tired, his mind wandering in and out of a haze of consciousness, Mick maintains that he remembers little about this part. He descended deliriously, his feet shuffling like those of an
old man, down the icy slopes. Mistakes were too expensive up here, but he no longer cared. He stumbled on. He had to get back to Camp Four.

They were so close, yet were still in such dangerous terrain. Descending sheet blue ice without any ropes is hazardous at sea-level, up there it was lethal. To the east of the Col lies the
treacherous Kanshung Face; to the west, the Lhotse Face. Each at least 5,000 feet in height. A careless slip would kill. Mick staggered down, the drug of thin air overwhelming him.

Neil could do nothing as it all happened so suddenly; he could only watch on in horror. It was all so quick.

Mick describes the next few minutes:

They escorted Mick, shaking and in tears, back to the camp only 200 metres away. Others found Pasang also shaken. Somehow they had become disconnected in the fall. No one could
understand how. No one cared. They were safe. That was all that mattered. Neither, miraculously, were seriously injured. Luck or fate, who knows? An hour later they both sat cramped and shaken in
the tent. Mick passed his mug to Pasang, his hands still shaking. He managed a small smile.

When they reached us at Camp Two, forty-eight hours later, they were shattered and shaken. They looked like different men. Mick moved in a daze, slowly across the glacier. He didn’t even
seem to have the energy to look up, to look at us. He was lost in his world of fatigue; deep fatigue. They collapsed by the tents. Neil smiled; he had done all that had been required of him, and
they were safe. Mick just sat and held his head in his hands. It said it all. It had been a long three days.

The Lhotse team were also now back at Camp Two; they also were weak and drained. They had fought for some twenty-two hours from Camp Three, up towards the gulley that would lead to the summit of
Lhotse. Deep snow had forced these giants of men back with the summit only a few hundred feet above. They also had been plagued by problems with their oxygen sets. It is the nature of the
conditions. However robust and well tested everything is, nothing is guaranteed up there.

They talked little back at Camp Two. They had given their all, but still had been turned away empty handed. I felt shocked at how resilient these vast mountains were, and I felt humbled at how
little all these efforts had come to. I don’t think that I had ever realized just how truly hostile these mountains can be.

That night Mick and I talked together, quietly and slowly. I admired Mick more than ever. I longed to have seen all he had seen up there, even with the price he had paid. He was
still shaken and wore the scars of a man who has survived a different place all together. Even his clothes told the story. His windsuit was ripped in eight places, huge gashes appeared where the
material lay open. His down trousers oozed feathers from rips all along them, and he had lost every bit of spare kit he had – gloves, waterbottles, photographic equipment, fleece hoodover and
head-torch – all gone. He had returned from his attempt, robbed of everything. The mountain had claimed it. But he is a survivor and late that evening as we prepared to sleep he prodded me. I
sat up and saw a small smile spread across his face.

‘Bear, next time let me choose where to go on holiday, okay? Your choice was lousy.’ As he spoke, I began to laugh with all my being. I needed to, so much had been kept inside. We
hugged. Thank God he’s alive, I thought.

The next morning they slowly left for Base Camp. They desperately needed rest. Their attempt was over. Mick just wanted to be safe. That was all he wanted. I watched them head
out into the glacier, and hoped that I had made the right decision to stay at Camp Two.

We had received a forecast at dawn. Henry had announced that the typhoon was slowing and that it wouldn’t be here for two days. By tomorrow if it was still moving towards us I assured him
I would come down. But while there was a hope that in the next few days it might move away, I insisted on staying up here – ready. It was a difficult decision, but somehow it felt right. I
sat and watched as they slowly became blurs on the ice.

Geoffrey disagreed with my decision and had left to go down with the others. I was the only one of the team to stay. It was risky being up here with the likelihood of a typhoon at any moment. I
knew that I wouldn’t be able to go up until we knew exactly what was happening with it, and that wouldn’t be for a few days. On top of this, the longer you stay at Camp Two, the weaker
your body becomes. It is a fine balance between acclimatizing and deteriorating. Too long up here and I might find myself without the strength to go higher. For a place of convalescence, Camp Two,
at 21,200 feet, was a miserable choice. But I stayed and I was never quite sure why.

I sat and watched until they were all gone from sight. It was now just Thengba and Ang in one tent, and me in another. We had one radio, one pack of cards, a few torn pages from my Spanish New
Testament, and a sack of dehydrated food. It was already my fourth day at Camp Two. I had no idea how long my body would keep what little strength it still had.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I threw the playing cards across the floor of my tent in frustration. It was a stupid game anyway; I hated Patience. Two days ago I decided that if I got all my cards
‘out’, then the weather would give me a chance – if I didn’t then the typhoon would move in. I had lost, so made the contest the best of three. Two days later it was
37–38 to me in the lead, but victory still just eluded me. I lay back down and just stared at the roof of the tent. My socks swayed gently as they dried on the string, slung across the poles.
I flicked them impatiently.

These past few days had been the longest days I had known. My watch seemed to have slowed down, and the monsoon drew ever closer to the mountain, beckoning in the time when Everest would be
buried again under five feet of snow.

My days revolved around the midday radio call from Base Camp, when they would give me the forecast. The call was scheduled daily for 12 noon. Keeping it to certain times saved battery power, and
batteries were crucial. I always slept with them down my sleeping bag. It was the warmest place for them and where they would last the longest. I waited anxiously for the forecast today. It was
only 9.15 a.m. and already I was fiddling with the radio; checking the squelch just in case.

I desperately longed for news that the typhoon would move away. Yesterday it was reported to be stationary. Today would be vital. I waited anxiously. I knew that we were running out of that
precious commodity: time. I checked my watch again.

At 12.02 p.m. the radio came to life.

‘Bear at Camp Two, it’s Neil. All okay?’ I heard the voice loud and clear; the reception was good today.

‘Yeah, in the loosest sense of the word,’ I replied, smiling.

‘I’m worried you may be going slowly insane up there, am I right?’ Neil joked.

‘Insane? Me? What do you mean?’ I replied. Neil chuckled into the radio.

‘Daft,’ he replied. ‘Now listen, I’ve got a forecast and an e-mail that has come through for you – from your family. Do you want to hear the good or the bad news
first?’

‘Go on, let’s get the bad news over with,’ I replied.

‘Right, the bad news. Well, the weather’s still shit. The typhoon is on the move and heading this way. If it is still on course tomorrow you’ve got to get down. I’m
sorry. We all hate it.’

He had said it straight. I paused before replying. I knew he would say something like that. I had prayed so hard, yet it hadn’t worked. I shook my head.

‘. . . and the good news?’ I asked dismissively.

‘Your Mum has sent a message. Says all the animals are well.’ Click.

‘Well, go on, that can’t be it. What else?’

‘Well, they think you’re still at Base Camp. Probably best that way, you know. Otherwise your mother may just suddenly turn up,’ Neil chuckled.

‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow,’ I replied. ‘Pray for some change. It will be our last chance, eh?’

‘Roger that, Bear . . . oh, and don’t start talking to yourself. Out.’

‘How’s Miguel getting along . . . Hello, Neil.’ He hadn’t heard me.

I dismantled the radio and put the batteries down my bag again. I had another twenty-four hours to wait. It was these moments just after the radio call which felt the longest. I lay back down
and shuffled the cards once more.

That afternoon I walked for twenty minutes up the glacier to the Singaporean Camp Two. I wanted to see if I could borrow some cough medicine. I had finished all mine but still I
was being kept up most of the night heaving and spluttering. I wondered who would be in their camp.

Only a few Singaporeans remained now at Camp Two. The rest had returned to Base Camp some days ago, after their summit bid had failed that fateful night that Mick had fallen. The two who were
still here undid their tent flap. One of them was the leader of the team. We sat and chatted for a while. It was good to have company.

‘No, Bear, I’m not going any higher, it’s my ribs. They’re screwed,’ the leader said. ‘It’s all this coughing. I’ve managed to actually crack two
ribs, I’ve been coughing so hard. It hurts to breathe. It won’t let me go any higher.’

I sympathized with him as I coughed hard into my jacket sleeve. My own ribs were taking their own pounding up here. I asked if they had any extra cough medicine.

They produced a vat, the size of about four waterbottles. Across the front in felt-tip was written ‘cough medicine’. My eyes lit up. I had been swilling my cough medicine from a tiny
pot, the size of a shot-glass. It had made no difference. I filled a big mug full, chatted a bit more then shuffled carefully back down to my own tent. This should cure me, I thought, I mean, just
look at the colour of it. It reminded me of diesel oil, but it should do. I took a giant swig and smiled as it soothed the inflamed back of my throat.

As I wrestled with life and solitude at 21,200 feet up the mountain, back in England at Mick’s parents’ home all was very different.

Mick’s father had been following the team’s progress closely on the internet, from his office. Various other teams were keeping their web-sites updated daily, and by the time of the
summit attempt a few days earlier they were updating almost hourly. Such was the advance of the Americans’ communication that during the confusion everyone had encountered at the South Summit
(at 10.00 a.m. on 19 May), Mick’s father, Patrick, was receiving live reports on their progress. He knew his son was up there at the same time and shared in the disappointment when he heard
they were being forced back, having got so close. Nothing, though, prepared him for what he heard next.