Bear Grylls Read online

  Tucked into the ledge below, I found myself panting frantically; I hadn’t even started. I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to clear the lip. I dug the tips of my crampons into the ice, and leant in close to the ice wall, still breathing heavily. The ice felt cold against my face, and I looked down between my feet into the crevasse below.

  Look up, come on, never look down, I thought to myself.

  I swung my ice-axe into the wall above, stepped twice up the face and rested, hanging on my jumar. It seemed to hold my weight securely as the teeth gripped into the rope. I moved on slowly up the wall. Another swing of the axe and several more steps up, and I was lying on the snow at the top. As I squatted on the lip, undoing my jumar from the rope and recovering my breath, I looked out behind at the Icefall. It tumbled away beneath me in this jumble of giant ice blocks; I could no longer see Mick below. I flicked the rope to tell him that I was off the line. He clipped in and the rope went taut under his weight.

  I turned round slowly and stared in amazement at the sight ahead. The scale of this giant land in front mesmerized me. Walls of rock and ice, thousands of feet high, swept up from the glacier sides and the valley meandered away to the east in a haze of silver and white. Behind us and far below, the tiny speckles of orange tents showed where we had come from, five hours earlier; Base Camp now seemed an age away from this vast land we were seeing before us. Neil smiled at me.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ he said.

  ‘It’s why we climb, Neil. This is why,’ I slowly replied.

  The sun was rising as Mick scrambled safely over the ledge to join us. He grabbed our hands, and we gave him a haul to his feet. He shook the snow from his windsuit, tied off to the top rope and knelt, leaning on his ice-axe as he looked in awe at the valley ahead.

  Hidden from the telescopes that would be peering up from Base Camp, we walked tentatively around on the flat ice, feeling, as Hillary had once said, ‘like ants in a world made for giants’. The plateau we were on was eerily silent, apart from the wind blowing softly down towards us through the Cwm. In the stillness of early morning we stood breathing deeply in the thin air and surveying the destruction of the Icefall below us. My imagination had never assumed this new land to be so beautiful. Camp One had now been reached. It was 8.30 a.m. on 10 April.

  CHAPTER TEN

  EASTER ON THE ICE

  ‘No gentleman ever takes exercise.’

  Oscar Wilde

  ‘Himalayan Hotel’ was the name given to the tents we were now using – yet it was misleading. The name to me had always conjured up images of some sort of luxurious, spacious affair with a comfy en-suite bathroom and soft, fluffy towels. But I had been mistaken in these assumptions. The so-called ‘Himalayan Hotel’ was about five feet by four feet, hardly high enough to kneel up in, and full of four hairy, tired and irritated men. Camp One was . . . different.

  Neil, Mick, Andy and I shuffled all our equipment around trying to dig out enough room for our bodies to recline in some vague resemblance of comfort. It wasn’t easy. Using our rucksacks to lean on, and our weighty high-altitude boots as foot rests, we tried to get settled.

  ‘Bear and Mick, stop humming ruddy Cat Stevens and go and fill this sack with ice; we’ve got to get drinking soon, we’re all dehydrated,’ Neil said sternly.

  He was right, the headaches confirmed this. These are a discomfort that you have to endure when climbing up high; they are the first symptoms of a lack of oxygen in your body and are almost impossible to avoid at these heights. Four men squashed together in a tiny tent, recycling the same stale air, with all the flaps sealed to keep the never-abating wind out, hardly helped to relieve these headaches.

  It would be a relief to clamber out and get some fresh air. The stench inside the tent was rotten. In the day you can get out every now and then – but not for long without protection from the debilitating heat of the sun. But when night falls, bringing with it the cold, this is a luxury you cannot enjoy – you just have to grin and bear the cramped discomfort.

  Mick and I struggled into our boots. They were now steaming as the condensation and sweat was beginning to dry. We shuffled onto our knees, unzipped the flaps and crawled out. The strength of the sun suddenly hit me and I quickly put my sunglasses on. The glare of the sun reflected on the ice can leave you snowblind in a matter of minutes if you are careless. The two of us grabbed an ice-axe each and started hacking at a corner of blue ice at the edge of the plateau.

  When the sack was full, we dragged it slowly back to the tent, stopping to rest only once on the ten yard journey. Even at this height a small amount of exercise leaves you exhausted. Back at the tent, thirsty hands reached out and hauled the sack inside – it is this ice that we would melt in the small stove to make our water.

  ‘God knows where the hell they’re going to put that,’ Mick chuckled, ‘there’s not even room to swing a cat in there.’

  We enjoyed a few more deep breaths of the fresh air, then squeezed back into the tent. An elaborate system of string had been tied across the tent with socks hanging off it, drying. I clambered past and collapsed back in my slot between Andy and Neil.

  In the heat of the sun the tent was always burningly hot. Mick measured the temperature on his smart, new-fandangled watch. At regular intervals he would then announce in horror that it had gone up – again.

  ‘This is bloody ridiculous!’ Mick cursed. ‘I thought Everest was meant to be cold. If I’d wanted to be sweltering I would have gone to Mallorca. Open the flaps a bit, Neil, and sod the wind.’

  We were all stripped down to our underwear or at times even less, to try and keep cool. It didn’t really work, and the sight of us all together in this neolithic state would have qualified for some horror show, as we lay sprawled across the tent. We used our windsuits and down jackets to lean on, but they just tended to stick sweatily and annoyingly to our backs.

  Neil almost invariably chose the worst spot in the tent. Not only did he always find himself in charge of the tiny gas stove – trying to balance the huge pan of ice on it – but he also always seemed to pick the wettest patch. A puddle of condensation and spilt water was already forming under Neil’s roll-mat – causing much amusement as he madly fumbled, trying to rearrange his few square feet of sleeping bag.

  Having consumed a mugful of oxtail soup that had taken two hours of pain-staking work to prepare, a moment of relative calm would generally ensue. This would then be shattered by the gentle hissing sound of Mick, leaning to one side and urinating into his pee-bottle. If it was clear, then a satisfied sigh was heard, signalling that he was rehydrating well; if it was still dark brown, he would swear, and throw some more ice in the pan. The length of time it took to melt ice at this height was almost twice as long as at sea-level, as the gas burnt at a lower temperature – making rehydration a lengthy process.

  I started to laugh and shook my head for no apparent reason at all, apart from the absurdity of this life we were living up here. Soon everyone was smiling. It seemed so surreal. In this most extraordinary place; a place that I could never have envisaged, I somehow felt happy. Despite being crammed between Neil’s sweaty armpits and Mick’s honking feet, for some reason I loved these guys. The four of us were perched in a tiny tent, two metres from the edge of the most treacherous Icefall I had ever seen – yet all seemed strangely okay.

  That night at Camp One was colder than any before. The heat of the sun was replaced in minutes by a bitter coldness, as darkness swept along the Cwm. We fastened the zips and slid deep down into our bags. Mick’s temperature gauge had gone from 31°C to now almost –25°C. I was worried it would explode – through confusion.

  All four of us curled in close to each other for warmth, and tried to sleep. I knew that I was still dehydrated, as my pee was brown and I still had a pounding headache, but there was nothing I could do. I had drunk almost continually during the day, but it obviously hadn’t been enough. That night I couldn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t even turn as I was wedged between ruc
ksacks and bodies. I cursed my aching head and hid myself into the depths of my sleeping bag.

  At 9.00 a.m. the next day, we unclipped off the last rope at the bottom of the Icefall. We sat and breathed deeply in the thicker oxygen of Base Camp, trying to recover some energy before staggering the tiresome fifteen minutes over the glacial rocks back to our tents. We had left Camp One early at 5.30 a.m. and had come through the Icefall as swiftly as we could. Charles, from the American team, had reminded us some days before that the ‘more times you climbed in the Icefall, the greater the likelihood was of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ This offhand comment of his had annoyingly lingered in my mind for the entire journey back down, and I vowed not to listen to the ‘scare-talk’ again that seemed to fly around Base Camp – I felt it was unnecessary.

  Funnily enough the one person apart from me who got most worried by the unpredictability and danger of the Icefall was Bernardo. He would stomp around counting on his fingers, as if working out detailed probabilities of having a block of ice the size of the Taj Mahal fall on him. Whoever was nearest would always rapidly reassure him, and soon his smile would spread eagerly across his face again. Everyone loved Bernardo.

  That morning, as we wandered back across the glacier, the happy face of Jokey standing in her fleece hat outside the comms tent beckoned us home. We dropped our packs – which were now much lighter as we had stashed some of our equipment at Camp One – and had mugs of hot lemon thrust into our hands by the smiling Sherpa-cooks.

  Base Camp no longer seemed the hostile place that I remembered it to be only weeks earlier, but instead now had the full appeal of ‘home’, as I dried my kit in the sun and lay safe in my tent listening to my tape of the Gypsy Kings. All was much better, and what was more, I noted that tomorrow would be my favourite day – Easter Sunday, 12 April.

  ‘Jokey, listen, tomorrow’s Easter Sunday, and I thought we could hold a service. We could have a reading in Spanish from my Spanish New Testament for Bernardo and Iñaki, then maybe you could sing a solo, how about “Amazing Grace”?’

  ‘No way, Bear, I . . .’ Jokey retorted.

  ‘Wonderful – thanks, Jokey, I’ll write out the words for you later. In E major okay? Great.’

  Jokey laughed; she knew she wasn’t going to get out of it. Besides, far more people would come if they knew a stunning girl was singing – and we needed all the support we could muster; already Graham was grumbling in his Geordie way about having a ‘sodding religious service’.

  Neil and Mick rallied round, announcing the news to the other teams. Most thought we were stark raving bonkers and some thought it was a piss-take, but the four of us felt determined to pull it off – come hell or high avalanche.

  A surprising number of people turned up that crisp Easter Sunday morning, squashed in the stone mess tent. I felt as happy as I had ever been. I decided to call home later to wish them a Happy Easter, as well. It had been a while now since I had spoken to home, and I wondered how my family and all the animals were – all those thousands of miles away, and thousands of feet lower down. Easter always does that to me; evokes all those homely thoughts.

  Neil brought everyone to silence with a firm clap. The room fell silent.

  ‘Over to Friar Bear,’ he said grinning away.

  We prayed for protection on the mountain, and I read in faltering Spanish from St John. Jokey sang ‘Amazing Grace’ beautifully, even if all the words did get a little muddled. Bernardo chuckled like never before.

  The highlight though was saved for the end. As I produced the bottle of Glenfiddich whisky, I saw Henry’s eyes light up with delight, as if saying, ‘about bloody time.’ We had stuck firmly as a team to our rule of only ever drinking for medicinal or religious purposes, and this was a religious one, so we would enjoy it.

  Communion that morning on the ice at 17,450 feet was magical. Easter eggs and the bottle of Glenfiddich circled the congregation not once, not twice but three times before it came back to me. Bernardo thought it must have been Christmas as well as Easter as he swigged eagerly from the bottle. The service then ended and the tent turned into cheery laughter for the rest of the morning. It hadn’t quite been High Church but it would do.

  As I sat on the rock outside my tent with my feet brushing the ice of the glacier beneath me, I reread the words of ‘Amazing Grace’ that Jokey had sung. They rang so true.

  Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come,

  ’tis grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will bring me home.

  I never got to make that Easter day phone call home as the Danish climber Michael refused to let us use his set any more. Tension was building amongst the climbers at Base Camp, and Michael had lost his temper with us over how we had rigged the satellite-phone up to the batteries. It all seemed a bit absurd to us, as Michael shouted at everyone about misusing his property. We seemed to be the brunt of his frustration for no logical reason. He was feeling the pressures of the climb and looked tired. No one held it against him – we all needed to let off steam occasionally, and no one really took it personally.

  We were to head back up the next day again to Camp One and, from there, on to Camp Two. We spent most of these rest days sleeping – or rather just lying there, dozing in our tents with very little on. I would reread letters that Shara and my family had given me before leaving. I never got bored with them.

  That loathful time in the pre-dawn chill before leaving Base Camp was as bad as ever. The alarm sounded but I didn’t need it, I was awake anyway. With frost from inside my tent falling all over me, I struggled for the umpteenth time into my boots. They were looking worn now, and carried the scars of the Icefall – being covered in stitching and masking tape. These very expensive and tough-wearing, high-altitude boots were made theoretically to go on and on, but all the climbers out here had said that they never really lasted more than a season. I was beginning to understand why.

  All through the night I had heard Neil coughing. The dry air of the high altitude causes this – the Sherpas call it simply the ‘Khumbu cough’, after the valley that we were in. Neil was suffering worst of all, and it bugged him; he knew all too well that it was weakening him. He shrugged it off if we mentioned it. I knew he was secretly taking eurythromycin, a chest antibiotic, but he refused to admit this. It was something he could do without, and our suggestions were unwelcome. He felt it was his problem. We knew Neil’s mentality and just left him alone, but his deep hacking preyed on him, and wouldn’t leave him alone. That early morning it was worse than usual.

  Together in the mess tent I tried to stuff some porridge down, but it wouldn’t go. I nibbled on a Mars bar instead. It was 5.30 a.m.

  At the foot of the Icefall we met the Iranian team, and shared some boiled sweets amongst each other, as we put on our crampons. The Iranians seemed in good spirits. They started into the ice before us, and soon we were close behind them, moving a little faster. As we progressed through the Icefall, higher and further into its depths, the overhanging, fragile ice walls seemed to loom all around. The route had changed quite a lot, as large sections had collapsed. Vast blocks of ice hung as if on threads above us. As we reached the shadow of one of these, the Iranian team suddenly broke into loud chanting.

  The golden and unspoken rule of never speaking whilst amongst these pinnacles was being breached. The four of us had only ever communicated in whispers or hand-signals, and we stood there shocked as their fervent prayers grew in volume.

  The noise was lethal in these surroundings. We didn’t know whether to shout at them to be quiet or whether to keep silent and not add to the noise. Part of me felt this anger and part of me wanted to laugh. It was so surreal to be in this position with these Iranians singing away as the walls of ice cast huge shadows over us. They had surely picked the worst part of the Icefall to start this.

  We were suddenly driven by this urge to get past. Without saying a word, we skirted quickly round the Iranians, unclipping and then clipping on
the other side of them. We weren’t going to hang around here – even if it was prayer time. When we reached what we thought was a safe ledge, we sat and rested after the sudden burst of energy. We chuckled to ourselves at the situation as they began to catch up. At least this ledge was relatively safe.

  As the Iranians caught up they suddenly sped up and raced past us. We had hoped to keep in front but they gave us no chance.

  ‘Dangerous here,’ they said as they went by.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ we replied, ‘the Icefall’s lethal.’

  ‘Not the Icefall in general,’ they replied, ‘I mean, the part you are sitting in now is dangerous. Look, big crack in ice below.’

  We looked around and suddenly noticed the crack. What we had taken for a safe ledge, out of danger, was actually a cornice. Through the centre of this ran a thin crack. We leapt up and shuffled off it towards the now laughing Iranians. Looking back at where we had perched, we couldn’t even understand how the ice hadn’t collapsed, it was so delicate. It looked ready to go at any moment. We had been lucky and had been helped by them. As the saying goes, ‘he who laughs last, laughs loudest’, and they had won this one. We sat all together for a few minutes resting. From then on we were happy to follow, but at our insistence, their chanting stopped until we were out of the Icefall.

  Neil’s cough had been a persistent noise alongside me through the ice. Every five seconds he would hack this deep, dry cough. He now swore openly at it. It was slowing him down considerably and we were happy to go at the Iranians’ slower pace, to help Neil. The cough was obviously debilitating him.

  One of the strengths of a small team lies in its ability to help each other and to know everyone well enough to be able to do this. Many times ahead Neil would help me, but for now it was he who needed it. We encouraged him and took more rests than we would have normally done. Secretly though, we longed to get out of here. Time spent playing this Russian roulette with the Icefall was time too long. As Andy would say, ‘just get through it as quick as you can, as each step in it is a gamble.’ It was 9.00 a.m. when we all eventually stood aloft the tumbling ice below.