Bear Grylls (30 page)

It slowly dawned on her that she would go no further. Her dream was ending here and it hurt. She was one of the most determined women I had ever met, and the grief now showed all over her face.
She sobbed quietly to herself in front of us. She knew secretly that it was the right decision.

We sat for the best part of an hour in silence. I noticed that my headache had now returned for the first time in ten days. I cursed it and tried to drink some more of the disgusting, lukewarm
water in my bottle. I longed for something cool to drink; I swallowed an aspirin.

Geoffrey and I were the first to leave Camp Three. We wanted to leave at different intervals to avoid any delays on the ropes. At 5.45 a.m. the two of us climbed out of the tent
and began fixing our oxygen masks. It would be our first time on the mountain breathing supplementary oxygen. We had experimented in breathing the oxygen at Base Camp, but never under extreme
exertion and never so high up; I wondered what difference it would make.

We squeezed a large tank into our rucksacks, fitted the regulator and made sure the lead was free and the gauge not caught up in any straps. I hoisted the rucksack onto my back and tried to make
it comfortable. It weighed me down and sat awkwardly on my shoulders. It felt four times as heavy as it had when we were testing it at Base Camp; and even then it had been an effort to lift. I
shuffled again. It felt a little better.

The balance between the effort needed to carry the heavy tanks and the benefit the oxygen gives, is a constant debate. The conclusion generally is that the benefit of the oxygen outweighs the
weight, but not by much. The air above this height now becomes so thin that it is almost impossible to live. Only a very few exceptional and physiologically different people can climb free of
supplementary oxygen above here. Even the majority of Sherpas use oxygen high on Everest.

The tanks form what is known as an ‘open system’, where the regulator allows a small trickle of oxygen to flow through the mask. This amount can be adjusted to give between 1 and 4
litres of oxygen a minute. This combines with the normal air you are breathing to marginally boost the level of oxygen inhaled. But not by much. The body needs to breathe about thirty litres of air
a minute during extreme exertion; if you used a closed system, of breathing compressed air, the tank would last minutes. It would be impossible to do, as you can only realistically carry one or two
tanks at the most. The ‘open system’ therefore is the only real method of using supplementary oxygen up high. A trickle of oxygen mixed with normal air is all this provides.

Generally we would climb on 2.5 litres a minute. This was deemed the most efficient rate. But even this, at these extreme heights, was hardly enough to stay alive, let alone moving at any pace.
But as they say, ‘it is just enough to do the stuff.’ But there was no scope for mistakes in this. The majority of the bodies we would encounter up above Camp Four had died because of
one thing: not enough oxygen. Their bodies had slowly suffocated to death, and the lack of oxygen in their brains made them hardly even aware of what was happening.

I double-checked that the tubes were free and not snagged up. I checked the tubes were soft and that no condensation had frozen inside them. I checked my mask was tight around my face, then
carried out the same procedure with Geoffrey. Our eyes caught each other through our goggles and we knew it was time to start across to the first rope that would lead on and up the Lhotse Face,
towards Camp Four, somewhere far above us.

Within ten yards though I felt as if I was choking on my mask. I didn’t seem to be getting any air from it. It was suffocating me. I ripped it from my face gasping frantically. I hung on
my harness from the Face, tubes and connections wrapped round me in a chaotic jumble. This is crazy, I thought. I tried to untangle myself. My mask swung freely beneath me. I found that I had to
remove my entire pack to free everything before trying again. I checked the air-bubble gauge that told me that oxygen was flowing. It read positive. I refitted the mask and carried on.

Five minutes later, nothing seemed to have changed. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I swore in a muffled cry, as I tried to gulp air through my mask once more. I could hardly breathe with
it on. I found myself throwing my head back to get a deeper breath, but still I felt stifled by the mask. I tried to keep going but couldn’t. I stopped again and tore it from my face, gulping
in the outside air.

It was working; everything said that it was working. I couldn’t understand it. It felt as if I was trying to run a marathon uphill, with a pair of rugby socks stuck in my mouth. I was
gasping without getting relief. Geoffrey stooped behind me, leaning over his axe. He was also struggling. He didn’t even look up. We were both lost in our own worlds; trying desperately to
breathe.

I replaced my mask, determined to get used to it. I knew I had to trust it. I had been told over and over to trust it. The only place that I would get life from up here was the Russian fighter
pilot’s mask that covered my face. I had no choice but to keep it on.

I continued on up, slowly but methodically, I was not going to take my mask off again. I tried to ignore the pain. The rope stretched away above me, straight up the Face.

An hour later Geoffrey was some way behind, but I kept plodding on, three steps at a time. The ice crunched away beneath me.

Eventually the route started to traverse across the Face. Away to my right it soared upwards to the summit of Lhotse far above. To my left the ice fell at an alarming angle straight down to the
Western Cwm, 4,000 feet below. It shimmered menacingly as the sun that was now rising glistened on its blue veneer. I couldn’t afford a mistake up here now. I tried to stop my eyes looking
down, and focused on the ice in front of my feet. Slowly I began to cross the Face towards the rock band that divided the Face in two.

The Yellow Band, as it is known, is a 150-feet high stretch of sedimentary sandstone rock that was once the sea-bed of the ancient Tethys sea. As Gondwanaland and Asia had collided, the rock was
driven up into the sky. Millions of years later here I was traversing towards it, now only some 4,000 feet beneath the highest point on our planet. It seemed somehow surreal, as the Band loomed
closer to my left.

At its foot, I clipped on securely to the rope that the Sherpas had fixed only two weeks earlier. I hoped it was secure; it was all the protection that I had up here now.

I glanced up and could see the sandy, yellow rock rising into the wispy clouds that were now hovering over the Face. I knew that once over this, Camp Four was only a few hours away.

My crampons grated eerily as they met rock for the first time on the climb. They made a screeching noise as they scraped across it. They found it hard to grip, and would only hold when they
snagged on a lip in the rock. Leaning back and out from the rock, I rested on my harness. The rock and ice seemed to sweep away below as the Face above steepened.

I turned outwards and tried to sit against the rock, with my crampons jammed into a small crevice beneath me. I leant back, desperately trying to get oxygen into my body, sucking violently into
the mask. As my breathing calmed down I looked at where I had crossed. Camp Two was now but a tiny speck in the hazy distance below. I remembered how I had sat there and watched Mick and Neil
climbing up where I was now. I checked my karabiner once again on the rope.

As I cleared the steep Yellow Band, the route levelled out into a gentle traverse for 500 metres. At the end of that was the Geneva Spur that would lead up to Camp Four. My body began to feel
the excitement again.

The Geneva Spur was named by the Swiss expedition in 1952, the year preceding Hillary and Tensing’s epic first ascent. It is an anvil-shaped black rib of rock that lunges out from the ice.
It rises steeply up to the edge of the South Col, the small saddle that sits between the two great peaks of Lhotse and Everest. The Geneva Spur forms the last major hurdle before the Col, the place
of our final camp.

There was a raw simplicity in what I was doing. My mind was entirely focused on every move I made; nothing else clogged my thoughts. It is this straight simplicity that I knew drew men and women
to climb. Man is living to his utmost, straining everything towards one single purpose. It made me feel alive.

I would aim to reach a point in the ice just in front of me with every few steps I took, but invariably I would be forced to stop short; my body needed to rest and get oxygen. I would lean on my
axe and stare at the point a few yards in front that had eluded me, then start moving again, determined to reach it in the next bound. In this manner I slowly approached the Geneva Spur.

I passed the point where the Lhotse route led. Up above I could see the tent where Andy and Ilgvar had rested yesterday afternoon, before their summit attempt. Far above that, I could see the
tiny specks which were them struggling up for the summit. They still had a long climb ahead of them. I prayed that they would make it, and kept shuffling along.

As I started up the Geneva Spur I could see Geoffrey below and far behind me. He seemed to be moving better now. I wanted to keep in front and pushed on. Behind him I could see the figures of
the others below, Neil, Allen and Michael, moving slowly across to the Yellow Band. Carla would be on her descent now. I didn’t know whether I envied her or felt sorry for her. I pushed the
thought from my mind.

I climbed steadily up the Spur and an hour later found myself resting just beneath the lip. The Col awaited me over the top. I knew this, and longed to see the place I had heard and read so much
about. The highest camp in the world at 26,000 feet, deep in the Death Zone.

I hated the term ‘Death Zone’, it conjured up images that I knew were all too real up here. Mountaineers are renowned for playing things down, yet it had been mountaineers who had
coined the phrase. I didn’t like that.

It would be my first time in the infamous Death Zone. I wouldn’t have time now to worry about how my body would cope. For me, this was my chance.

As I pulled the last few steps over the top of the Spur, the gradient fell away to reveal a dark shingly rock plateau. As I swivelled slowly on my crampons, they grated against the slate under
them. I swore I could see all of Nepal below. I sat, stunned and alone. Slowly, blanket cloud began moving in beneath me, obscuring the lower faces of the mountain. Above these, a horizon of dark
blue sky lay panned out before me. I knew I had entered another world.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Adrenalin filled my tired limbs, I just longed now to see the Col. Two hundred metres of clambering over the shingly, black rocks and the saddle appeared. I knew at once that
this was it.

The South Col is a vast rocky area, the size of four rugby pitches, strewn with the remnants of old expeditions that had been here. Empty oxygen canisters lay scattered about randomly; they told
a hundred tales. It was here that in 1996, in the fury of the storm, men and women had struggled to find their tents. Few had managed. Their bodies lay within metres of the flat area, many of them
now partially buried beneath ice and rock. It was a sombre place; a place where many now rested eternally. A grave that many of their families could never visit.

People talk of rubbish dumped at the Col; it is a false image. The vastness and desolation of this wild, windswept place dwarfs the few items left here. The fragments of old tents and canisters
were never left intentionally, they were left in desperation. They were the only marks of men and women who had struggled frantically to save their own lives. There was an eeriness to it all.

My impression of the Col was one of isolation. It was a place unvisited by all but those strong enough to reach it. No helicopters can reach above Camp One at the highest, let alone up here. No
amount of money or technology can put a man here; only a man’s spirit could do that. I stood motionless as I surveyed the place. The wind blew in gusts over the lip of the Col and ruffled the
torn canvas of the wrecked tents. A sense of excitement swept over me. I gazed in disbelief.

Two tents, one from the Singapore expedition and the other belonging to Bernardo, stood alone in the middle of the Col. Both groups had come up the day before. The tents were now empty. The two
Singapore climbers and Bernardo were somewhere above us. I wondered what they were going through right now. I thought of the Singaporean leader still at Camp Two. He would be willing his team-mates
on. The whole of Singapore awaited news of this attempt. I hoped they had succeeded.

We had agreed beforehand to share Bernardo’s tent. I found it and climbed in slowly. At this height everything happens in a strange form of slow motion. The effect of the thin air makes
people move like spacemen. Slowly and deliberately I shifted inside and removed my pack and oxygen tank. I’ll lie down for a second, I thought. I fell back in a heap.