Bear Grylls Read online

  Contents

  FACING UP

  Dedication page

  Frontispiece

  Illustrations

  Map

  Foreword

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Postscript

  Appendices

  FACING THE FROZEN OCEAN

  Dedication page

  Epigraph page

  Map

  1. Dangerous Dreams

  2. Building the Best

  3. Countdown

  4. First Blood

  5. North from Nova Scotia

  6. Surfing the Waves

  7. Unseen Crew

  8. Running on Vapour

  9. Good News, Bad News

  10. Terror

  11. Lost and Found

  12. No More Heroics

  13. Safe in Scotland

  14. Home Thoughts

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  The Charity

  List of Plates

  FACING UP

  A REMARKABLE JOURNEY TO THE

  SUMMIT OF MOUNT EVEREST

  To Pasang and Nima

  for saving my life that day in the Icefall.

  I’ll always be indebted to you.

  &

  To Shara, now my wife,

  you were the reason for

  coming home.

  Illustrations

  Frontispiece: Illustration of climbers (Charlie Mackesy)

  Plate section

  All photographs by the author unless otherwise indicated

  Mount Everest showing camps (Hedgehog House)

  Bear and Mick at Base Camp (Jokey Longworth)

  Geoffrey at Camp 4 before the second summit attempt (Geoffrey Stanford)

  Pasang, the Icefall doctor

  The complete team at Base Camp

  Yaks ferrying equipment to Base Camp (Mick Crosthwaite)

  The imposing Lhotse Face Icewall (Paul Deegan)

  Crevasse-crossing in the Icefall (Neil Laughton)

  Slowly working our way through the Icefall (Neil Laughton)

  The Western Cwm at dusk (Neil Laughton)

  One of the corpses on the mountain (Greg Child)

  Dusk at Camp 4 (Mick Crosthwaite)

  Bear on top of the world, 7:22 a.m., 26 May 1998

  Neil’s frost-bitten feet

  Bear back at Base Camp for the last time (Mick Crosthwaite)

  The four of us post-climb

  Foothills leading up to the Upper Himalaya

  Summit 29,035 ft

  Camp 4 26,000 ft

  Camp 3 24,500 ft

  Camp 2 21,200 ft

  Camp 1 19,750 ft

  Base Camp 17,450 ft

  Foreword

  Rev. Colonel David Cooper

  ‘How does it feel to have conquered Everest?’

  I was at a lecture that Bear was giving to Eton College not very long after his return to the UK, after his ascent of Everest. He was with Mick Crosthwaite, who accompanied him on the expedition, and at the end of what was without doubt the best lecture on any subject that I had heard in my time at the school, he was asked this question by a member of the audience.

  His answer was illuminating in more ways than one.

  ‘I didn’t conquer Everest – Everest allowed me to crawl up one side and stay on the peak for a few minutes.’

  In that one sentence Bear showed an insight that he had gained on the mountain that all his years of schooling and time in the Army had not given him, though they may have prepared him for it.

  In his book Captain Smith and Company, Robert Henriques uses climbing a mountain as a simile for the war he had recently fought. He was a member of a special unit during the Second World War and his simile has more truth to it than might be recognized by the casual reader who has no experience of war or mountains. It is no coincidence that so many soldiers have also spent a great deal of their time on mountains, and it is too facile to suggest that it is just for the training value.

  Both war and mountains have the capacity to radically change one’s perspective on the world and on one’s place in it.

  Without doubt it is the intimate involvement of life or death as an inevitable outcome that invests an event with such great value. When the chances are about even for each of these, it also invests it with a great capacity to change a person. Such an event is mountaineering.

  For most of us our everyday life never presents us with this situation, and for those who it does, it is usually not sought for, but comes as a result of some disaster, man-made or natural.

  This book is concerned with a person who has undergone a profound experience, at his own seeking, and we are privileged to be allowed an insight into the mind of the person who sought it. As a book it is difficult to parallel. Albeit the youngest Briton to ever climb Everest, his understanding and honesty, together with his self-awareness, is of a level that many never reach in a long life. What we his readers are privileged to share is a very personal account of his ascent, not just of the mountain, but of his humanity.

  D.C.

  Acknowledgements

  To those great men and women of the mountain: You are a credit to Nepal and I am lucky to call you friends. Sherpa Nima, Sherpa Pasang, Kami, Thengba, Ang, Pasang Dowa, Babu Chiri, Ang-Sering and Nima Lamu.

  To the team: To Henry Todd and Neil Laughton for your trust and faith in me when it really mattered. Michael Crosthwaite, my friend and brother. I hold more respect for you than I could ever say. Captain Geoffrey Stanford, Grenadier Guards. Jokey Longworth. Edward Brandt. Andy Lapkas. Allen Silva. Michael Downs. Carla Wheelock. Graham Ratcliffe MBE. Ilgvar Pauls. Ali Nasu Mahruki. Scott Markey. I could not have been with better people.

  To those we were alongside on the mountain: Tomas and Tina Sjogren for saving Mick’s life. Bernardo Guarachi. Iñaki Ochoa. Bruce Niven. David Lim. The Singaporean Everest Expedition. Pascuale Scaturro. Captain Sundeep Dhillon RAMC. Tomi Heinrich. The Iranian 1998 Everest Team. You all epitomize the qualities that bring a mountain to life – strength, dignity and humour.

  To those who loved and supported us: Mum and Dad and Lara for loving when it hurt. You’re my best friends. Thank you. Grandpa Neville for your love and smiles. You are the best example of a man I could ever have. James and Mungo. Shara, my angel, for your love, patience and kindness. You were with me all the way. Patrick and Sally Crosthwaite, Mrs Ronnie Laughton. This is your book as well.

  To those who believed in us: To all at Davis, Langdon and Everest for putting your faith in me. Your willingness to reach out is why you have made DLE such a success. You are pioneers. Eve Theron. SSAFA Forces Help for all your support towards a messy-haired lout. You have made it all such fun and your work for the British Services is remarkable. Rev. Colonel D. Cooper, Richard and Sue Quibell for untold inspiration. Jay Martin and NSA, for your ‘Juice Plus’ support. Lewis McNaught. Stephen Day. Ginnie Bond and Becky Lindsay for your great patience and help.

  For help in my research: Elizabeth Hawley. Paul Deegan. Royal Geographical Society.

  To the best: Brunel Team – for always being there. Rev. Hugh Maddox, Ethel Bell and Nan for your prayers. Charlie Mack for your friendship. Sam Sykes for your time and energy in this entire project. Emma McK. Green Island. Tash. The Brigadier. Fozza. Ant . . . brrr. Annabel. Tom. Wal
ter Scott, for all your editorial help. The late Colonel Anthony Witheridge. Judy Sutherland. Hugo M-S. Woggie. Brian and Vinnie. Dom S-B. Mike Town for showing me the hills when I was younger. The Big ‘E’ Squadron for your encouragement and humour. I’ll always remember my time with you. Corporal Bob W. for your faith in me.

  Bear

  1999

  CHAPTER ONE

  DESERT PLUNGE

  The sky was beginning to fade, and the brilliance of the African sun was being replaced by the warm glow of dusk. We huddled together in the small plane and my feet began to get cramp; I tried to tense them and get the blood flowing again. The parachute made a comfortable backrest, but you always felt nervous leaning on it in case you damaged anything or accidentally deployed it. I shuffled again. As often is the case, there was no eye contact with the others in the little plane as we climbed up to now nearly 16,000 feet. People were engaged in their own little worlds – the air felt electric with silent tension.

  As the plane banked to make another steep ascent, I glanced out of the little window down to the African basin far below; at that height you begin to see the curvature of the earth at the edges of the horizon. I felt a warm peace come over me.

  Squatting there, cramped and nervous, I sensed a part of the magic that is found in edgy situations – a certain calm, a sharpening of one’s senses.

  The plane levelled out, people began to shuffle and become alert again, checking and rechecking equipment. We were all now crouching and someone reached for the door. As it slid back on its rails, the ferocious noise of the engine and 70 m.p.h. slipstream broke the silence.

  ‘RED ON’. All seemed strangely still as we stared at the bulb flashing at us. ‘GO’. It flicked to green. Andy reached out, looked far below, and then quickly fell away. Soon all the others had followed, and I was alone in the cargo area of the plane. I looked down, took that familiar deep breath then slid off the step. As the wind moulded my body into an arch, I could feel it respond to my movements. As I dropped a shoulder, the wind would begin to spin me and the horizon would move before my eyes. This feeling is known simply as ‘the freedom of the sky’.

  I could just make out the small dots of the others in freefall below me, then I lost them in the clouds. Seconds later I was falling through the clouds as well; they felt damp on my face.

  I should come out of these soon, I thought, but instead I just kept falling through the whiteout. I looked to check my altimeter but it was hard to read.

  ‘I’ve got to pull now and deploy; I’m too alone here.’

  I reached to my right hip and gripped the ripcord. I pulled strongly and it responded as normal. The canopy opened with a crack that shattered the noise of the 120 m.p.h. freefall, as I slowed down to 15 m.p.h. As the buffeting ceased, I realized I should now be safely under canopy. I glanced up to check the symmetry of the chute as I’d often done before, to confirm that all its cells were open and working. They weren’t.

  I just stared for two or three seconds before realizing what had happened. Instead of the smooth regular symmetry of the nine or so cells above me, I had a chaotic jumble of silk. The force of the opening had torn part of the canopy in two. It flapped nervously and irregularly like two badly reined chariot horses tugging in different directions. I pulled hard on both my steering toggles to see if that would help. It didn’t.

  I tried to steer, but it responded slowly and noisily as if straining to stay inflated. I watched the desert floor getting closer and objects becoming clearer and more distinct. My descent was fast, far too fast. Desperately trying to predict where the wind was, I realized I was too low to use my reserve chute – I’d have to land like this. I was getting close now and was coming in at speed; I flared the chute too high and too hard, out of panic. This jerked my body up horizontal, then I dropped away and crashed into the desert floor.

  I woke and sat bolt upright in bed, sweating and breathing heavily. It was the third time I’d had this recurring dream of what happened those moments just before my accident. I tried each time to shake it from my mind; but the memories lingered. The fall itself had broken two, and seriously chipped a third, vertebrae. The Scottish doctor who had first assessed me said that I had come within a whisker of severing my spinal cord, and paralysing myself for life.

  My back ached worse at night; the doctors had warned me of this, but still I winced each time the pain soared through my body. I held my head in my hands, then lay back down.

  As I lay in bed for those initial months recovering, friends would come and visit me. I would struggle to get up to greet them. I’d put on my back brace, strap myself in and try so hard. It wasn’t in my nature to be like this. I felt embarrassed. Part of me didn’t even want them to see me in this way. I even remember trying to throw a rugby ball with a friend – until the pain stabbed again. My parents then encouraged me back to bed.

  They had lived through hell after they initially heard of my accident.

  During the week in the local hospital in Africa, I had managed to speak to my mother on the telephone. I took off the oxygen mask that I was breathing through, and tried to reassure her. Her voice sounded fragile, all those thousands of miles away. I hated myself for the grief I was causing. Since the moment I had returned, she had nursed and ferried me around all the doctors and hospitals like a saint. She knew that she had almost lost me.

  For three months I lay in bed. My plans, my dreams of the future, hung in shreds. Nothing any longer was certain; I didn’t know if I would be able to stay with the Army. I didn’t even know if I would recover at all. It seemed as if in an instant my world had been turned inside out. I feared that this stinging pain in the middle of my back, of the nerves rubbing bone, would never leave me. I didn’t want it to be like this.

  Part of me feared that I would never recover well enough to be able to do all those things I loved. To be able to climb, to sail, even just sit in my favourite tree at home, high above the village and just think. It was this not knowing that worried me; nobody seemed to know – not even the doctors.

  I was eight years old when my father gave me a mesmerising picture of Mount Everest. From that moment onwards I was captivated. I would sit there trying to work out the scale of the huge ice fields I saw in the foreground, and to judge how steep those summit slopes would really be. My mind would begin to wander, and soon I would actually be on those slopes – feeling the wind whip across my face. From these times, the dream was being born within me.

  As a child, the tedium of the weeks at school was relieved by the thought of days ahead at home: climbing on the chalk cliffs in the Isle of Wight with my father. I was never back for more than a minute before I would be hassling him to come out with me.

  I would clamber into my old hiking boots that were sizes too big for me; we would load up the car and the two of us would head for the hills. We would always take our two dogs with us, a Shetland sheepdog and a dachshund. The Shetland loved the scrambling on the slopes, but the little dachshund used to get thrown in a rucksack and carried along, viewing the world from out of the top buckles. And in such a manner were spent endless dreamy afternoons.

  Winter was always my favourite time for these adventures, with the wind tearing across our faces as we strode out together through the fields. We would scramble up the cliffs with me fighting to stay close to my father. From a distance the cliffs looked foreboding and treacherous and my mother would refuse to allow my father to take me up them. It made the climbs even more exciting – they were forbidden.

  ‘You can never tell how steep something is until you rub noses with it,’ dad would say. He was right. Up close the cliffs were only steep walks. Small sheep tracks laced their way in tiers up the face, giving us the chance to sit and rest every ten feet. My father would reach down with his hand and heave me the last few feet to each ledge. We would tuck in close to the cliff and gaze at the views across the island. They were beautiful.

  Eventually we would come out over the top onto the grass and lie there
, often to the bewilderment of some old couple on a cliff-top walk. They would gawp in bemused amazement – then totter off, shaking their heads with disapproval. It made the adventure even more real.

  During these times my father would tell me stories of his climbing experiences in the Royal Marines; he would teach me all he knew.

  ‘Always keep three points of contact on the face at any one time. Move slowly and always, always keep calm – however scared you are.’

  When I see these cliffs now, the same feelings come flooding back. They make me smile. The cliffs look small and hardly very dangerous, but as an eight-year-old I always felt as if I was climbing the steepest face in the world. It made me feel different from the others when I got back to school. I had done something that I thought was really hard, and survived – and that made me feel special.

  I remembered those days and managed a smile from my bed.

  Lying, unable to move, inside all day and sweating with frustration, my way of escaping was in my mind. I felt I still had so much that I longed to do, and so many things left to see.

  Suddenly all my dreams plagued me. I had taken my health so much for granted, but when faced with the reality of having it taken from me, those dreams, that before were neglected, came racing forward.

  Lying in bed, strapped in my brace, gave me almost too much time to reflect on these things. I would rather not think about them. Forget them. Look at you, I thought, you’ve been in bed for months.

  Time seemed to stand still.

  I looked around my bedroom, and the old picture I had of Mount Everest seemed to peer down. I couldn’t decide whether it was looking with pity or whether it was sneering. I struggled over to it and took it down. There was no longer any point in having it up.