Bear Grylls (37 page)

Geoffrey left the Army, and found himself a job in the City. It had been a shame that for so much of the expedition we had been apart, but it just turned out like that. The main part of the
climb, though, we had done together, and my respect for his decision to turn around above Camp Four remains immense. It showed a certain wisdom to be able to make rational decisions like that, well
into the Death Zone. He remains a close friend.

Mick seemed profoundly changed by his time on Everest. He became gentler than I had ever known him to be and his gratitude for life seems to shine from him. He came all too close to losing it.
He sums his thoughts up like this:

He has since launched a network marketing arm of Tiscali. I know he will be successful.

Henry Todd, our expedition manager, returns to the great Himalayan peaks twice a year – organizing expeditions. Almost half of his time is spent in these hills. They are his home. He still
swears and shouts ferociously, grinning away from behind his matted beard, but the bottom line is that his expertise keeps people alive up there. We all couldn’t help but like him; and the
faith and trust he placed in me made all the difference.

Graham returned to his family and the good Brown Ale of Newcastle. A month later he was awarded an MBE by the Queen, for services to mountaineering and charity. It had been given to the nicest
of men. Having been forced to abandon his summit attempt with us because of the illness he had, he has subsequently agreed to return to Everest in the spring of 1999 – to try again. It would
be his fourth time on the mountain.
⁶

The other climbers with us returned to their homes. As is the nature of adventure, you return home having trodden some fine lines, and nothing ever seems to have changed. Buses smell, newspaper
men blurt out the headlines and people get in a panic if the milk is a day old – but it is this continuity of life that makes it so good to return to.

As for the Sherpas – they continue their extraordinary work. Pasang and Ang-Sering still climb together as best friends, under the direction of their ‘sirdar’ – Kami. The
two Icefall doctors, Nima and Pasang, still carry out their brave task in the glacier; they remain a law unto themselves, playing poker in their tents by candlelight until the early hours and
laughing out loud across Base Camp. They both still smoke incessantly. I did get the dog that I said I would buy, and called her Nima; though my dog is rather less brave than him – as she
lies on her back, asleep by the fire.

Thengba, my friend with whom I spent so much time alone at Camp Two, has been given a hearing-aid by Henry. Now, for the first time, he can hear properly. I never believed that his grin could
get any wider – but Henry assures me it has. Thengba’s days are now spent laughing along with his Sherpa friends’ banter. I am returning to Nepal next year to see him.

Despite our different worlds, we share a common bond with these wonderful men; a bond of friendship that was forged by an extraordinary mountain.

Once, when the climber Julius Kugy was asked what sort of person a mountaineer should be, he replied: ‘Truthful, distinguished and modest.’

All these men epitomize this. I made the top with them, and because of them. I owe them more than I can say.

The great Everest writer, Walt Unsworth, writes a vivid description of the characters of the men and women who pit their all on the mountain. I think it is accurate.

8 J
UNE
1998. D
ORSET
, E
NGLAND
. The day after my twenty-fourth birthday.

I looked at my watch sleepily, it was 3.20 p.m. Damn, I thought, – the pigs. I had dozed off in my bedroom, fully clothed on my bed, and time had floated by in a blissful, summery haze.
The animals would be going berserk with hunger. ‘I’ve got to stop these afternoon naps – they’ll become a habit,’ I mumbled to myself, as I sat upright.

Since returning, my body had slowly begun to unwind from the exhaustion of our time on the mountain. The months had drained me more than I could have imagined. I think that it was the constant
worry and strain of not knowing what lay ahead that had plagued my waking hours the most. I had found that even on rest days at Base Camp where, on the face of it there was nothing to do but wait
and sleep, the gentle nagging fear never really left the recesses of my mind. The fear of what the next day would bring, that intolerable waiting for the unknown, and the fear, I guess, of possibly
not seeing my family again.

The relief that I now felt was immense; for the first time the pressure had fallen away, and rest came easily. Nothing but feeding the animals at home disturbed my rest those first few weeks
after getting back, and oh . . . how I now loved my duvet.

My back had held up amazingly well. During the build-up to the climb I had experienced only the mildest of twinges – on the climb itself, it had never failed me. Despite the constant
strain and hard discomfort of lying on the ground, I never felt any recurring pain. It had amazed me.

Now lying at home in bed, my back mildly ached for the first time. I smiled. So much had happened. It’s this flipping soft-living, I’m sure, I thought.

I slowly clambered off my bed and sat wearily looking around my room. My eyes rested on a bag in the corner. On our return, all my kit had been piled into a mass of different hold-alls and I was
only now beginning to sort them out. This was one of the last ones that remained untouched, since my return four days ago.

I knelt down and began rummaging lazily through the kitbag. It was full of stinking clothes and equipment, which I had hurriedly packed that last night at Base Camp, before getting the chopper
out the next morning. Socks that I had worn for months were festering in the bottom. They must have smelt like I had, when I stood proudly before the beautiful receptionist in the hotel in
Kathmandu – they stank. I threw them in my pile for ‘immediate’ washing, and carried on sifting through the bag. Books, Walkman, tapes, medicines. They were all just as they were
when I had stuffed them excitedly in at Base Camp.

As I pulled a pair of thermal long johns out, I noticed my sea-shell fall out with them. It clinked to the floor and lay on its side. I reached over and picked it up carefully. It had been my
most treasured item in my tent for all that time on the mountain. I had found it with Shara on the beach in the Isle of Wight. I rolled it over in my hand and my mind wandered.

I remembered the number of times I had read the inscription on the inside of it. That lonely time, when all the others left Base Camp without me because I was ill; that fearful moment of leaving
Camp Two for the final time, when I didn’t know what the future held. The words in the shell were as true now as they had been then. I read them slowly. They meant the world to me.

‘Be sure of this, that I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.’ Matthew 28:20.

I gripped the shell tight in the palm of my hand and remembered. It had come a long way with me.

Suddenly the voice of my mother broke the silence, as she warbled from downstairs in her high-pitched tone. I turned towards the sound.

‘Bear, Beeeeaaarr. You may have climbed Everest, but whilst you are at home you jolly well pull your weight. Now hurry up and go and feed those pigs. That’s your job. Beeeaarr, did
you hear me?’

I smiled, got slowly to my feet, and put the shell in my pocket. I scuttled down the stairs two at a time, muttering under my breath, ‘Blasted porkies.’

In the year following Bear’s ascent, Michael Matthews, a twenty-two-year-old British climber, reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming the youngest Briton to climb
the mountain. Tragically, he died of exhaustion during a storm on his descent.

Before Bear’s climb, the youngest British climber to have reached the summit was Peter Boardman. In 1975 he reached the summit aged twenty-four; sadly, he later died on Everest whilst
climbing with Joe Tasker in 1982. The only other British climber under the age of twenty-five to have possibly reached the summit was Andrew Irvine. Irvine died with George Mallory on their famous
1924 expedition and the mystery surrounding their ascent of Everest has still not been solved. This book is a tribute to those brave men who never came home.

British Everest Expedition 1998 – Official Sponsors

The Expedition was raising money for Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and SSAFA Forces Help – the national charity, helping both serving and ex-service men
and women and their families in need.

Many individuals and companies generously contributed to the fund-raising efforts, for which we are very grateful. The following is a list of some of the major corporate contributors:

A total of £52,000 has been raised for Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, £13,000 for SSAFA Forces Help and £30,000 for the Rainbow Trust (a
charity supporting terminally ill children and their families).