A Bear Grylls Adventure 1 Read online

  “Put these on. Wet pants could kill you. And this hat and dry socks.”

  Bear took off his waterproof coat and placed it down on the ground. “Stand on this and get marching fast on the spot. Good. Now, keep going!”

  Bear started to wring streams of water out of Olly’s clothes.

  “W-w-what’s the point of this marching?” Olly complained. “I’m tired.”

  “Your body is in shock and you’ve had a huge dose of adrenaline and fear to deal with.” He paused. “Marching up and down will help keep you warm.”

  So Olly kept marching.

  Bear fished the gas stove out and packed more snow into the metal saucepan. While they waited for the snow to melt, Bear stuffed another pair of socks into Olly’s boots to soak up as much water as they could. And he asked the question Olly had been dreading.

  “So, what happened back there?”

  “I didn’t follow you,” Olly admitted. Bear looked at him. “I was near the edge, and I thought it would be easy to reach it. I’m sorry.”

  “Did you see the rocks sticking up through the ice? They break up the ice and make it thin. Even near the edge of the lake.” Bear paused. “Olly, we’re a team, and we will survive together. We all make mistakes sometimes. It’s okay. Just do your best to keep focused.” Bear paused again, then said seriously. “You were on borrowed time there. The combination of cold, shock and fear numbs the body’s senses and makes it almost impossible to do even simple tasks. That’s how people drown so fast in cold water. Next time you might not be so lucky!”

  He rolled Olly’s clothes in the powdery snow to absorb more of the moisture, then beat the snow off them again. Olly’s legs were aching more than ever. More than anything he just wanted to stop and lie down. His feet stumbled.

  “I don’t think I can go on much longer,” he complained.

  Bear was spreading Olly’s clothes out flat on a rock. He didn’t look up.

  “A hundred years ago,” he said, “a man called Ernest Shackleton led an expedition to the South Pole. One of his men fell off the ice into the sea. They fished him out, but they didn’t have anything to make a fire with. So he just had to walk in circles until he was dried out. It took him twelve hours. Twelve hours of freezing cold and pain.”

  “Twelve hours!” Olly gasped.

  “Yes. Grim, eh? But guess what? He lived. That’s our goal too. Fortunately we can make a fire, so we can get some hot drink inside you.”

  Olly started to slow down.

  “Keep going, Olly. That’s your part of the deal. And remember, if it was easy, anyone could do it.”

  Olly pictured that poor man at the South Pole. Twelve hours, and nothing to warm him up at the end of it.

  “Besides,” Bear added, “I don’t think we’ve got twelve hours.” He shot a dirty look at the sky and Olly remembered the storm. He looked back the way they had come, but he couldn’t see the smudge. He was about to say so, when he realised why he couldn’t see it.

  It wasn’t a smudge any more. It had grown. When they had started to walk, Olly had been able to see the mountains miles away in the distance. Now the smudge had got much closer and it was big enough to hide the mountains completely.

  The snow melted and boiled. Bear made a cup of hot tea which Olly drank as he marched. His shivers made the rim of the mug clatter against his teeth but he felt the heat of the tea warming him from the inside out.

  “Okay, I think we’re there,” said Bear at last. Olly’s clothes had now frozen stiff in the freezing air. Bear bashed them against the ground so that bits of ice flew in all directions. He tossed Olly’s trousers over to him.

  “Here. Try those.”

  Olly put them on again and, amazingly, they were almost completely dry.

  But Olly winced when he pulled on his boots. Despite everything Bear had done, and another fresh pair of socks, they were still cold and damp inside.

  “Damp is better than wet,” Bear said directly. “Meanwhile you can stuff your wet socks down your trousers to dry them out. Okay, now we need to press on.” He gave the sky another look. “We might just be able to get out of this valley before the storm hits.” He pointed. “See that bend ahead? If the valley ends after that, then maybe we can drop down to lower ground and find some shelter.”

  So together the pair started to move again.

  Olly trudged on after Bear. For the time being his feet were dry in thick, new socks, but he could feel the cold of his wet boots soaking through. Eventually he would have to change them, but for now he knew he just had to deal with it. After all, if he had listened to Bear, he wouldn’t have fallen into the water in the first place.

  Plus the thought of finding shelter from the storm gave him new strength.

  It got darker as they walked. Back when they had started, the snow had shone so bright in the sun that Olly couldn’t see without the snow goggles. Now he had to pull the goggles down around his neck just to see clearly.

  They reached the bend in the valley. Olly’s hopes were at their highest as they came around the corner.

  Then they came tumbling down.

  The rocky sides just kept going. It wasn’t the end of the valley. There was still no way out except to go forward.

  Olly was so tired, and he couldn’t see anywhere they could shelter. He looked back at the approaching storm. It filled the valley behind them. He couldn’t see where they had been. It was all just a mass of swirling snow.

  “We’re too late,” Bear said grimly. “It’s going to hit us.”

  7

  DIGGING IN

  Olly felt his heart sink as he gazed at the storm. Clouds as high as the mountains were charging down towards them. He didn’t feel he had any more strength in his body. His legs didn’t want to take another step.

  But he would have to. He would force himself to keep up.

  To Olly’s surprise, Bear didn’t keep on going. Instead he went to the side of the valley, where the ground started to slope and the snow was much deeper. He dropped his rucksack on the ground, thrust both gloved hands into the snow and scooped out a handful.

  “Give me a hand?” he asked as he threw it to one side.

  Olly blinked. What was Bear doing? How would digging a hole in the snow help?

  Olly didn’t understand, but Bear was asking for his help and that was enough for him. He hurried to Bear’s side and they started to dig out a hole together. Olly copied the way Bear did it and put his hands together like a spade to scoop out chunks of snow the size of footballs.

  “I reckon the snow here’s about four metres deep,” Bear said as they dug. “It’s perfect for what we want. Frozen solid on top, powdery underneath.”

  “Why are we making a hole?” Olly asked.

  “It’s going to be more than just a hole. We’re going to spend the night here.”

  “What?” Olly stopped digging and stared at him. “In the snow?”

  “Best place.” Bear didn’t stop. After a moment, Olly went back to digging as well. He had thought the tent back at Camp was uncomfortable. But spending a night under snow?

  “We’ll freeze to death!” he argued as he dug. “Snow’s so cold.”

  “It is,” Bear agreed, “but it’s also one of the best insulators in nature. Snow has millions of air bubbles trapped in it, which hold the warmth amazingly. This shelter will keep the cold air out and trap our warmth in. Clever, huh?”

  Olly nodded. “Kind of like the Inuit in the Arctic when they use snow to make igloos?”

  “Exactly.” Bear smiled. “Although we’ll be under the snow, not on top of it.”

  Olly’s arms ached. He couldn’t dig any longer.

  “I don’t think I can go on,” Olly said. “It hurts so much.”

  Bear stopped digging. “I never promised that this journey would be easy,” he calmly replied, “but if you can find the strength inside you, you can overcome all things. Keep going, buddy.”

  Olly kept digging.

  The pair quietly worked together as a team. Bear didn’t need to tell Olly what to do. It just sort of happened.

  The longer the tunnel got, the harder it was to throw the loose snow out at the end. So Olly would scoop it up behind him into lumps and throw it out into the open.

  Olly found he had a strange feeling. It was a feeling he wasn’t used to.

  He was enjoying this.

  He wasn’t sure whether it was the teamwork he liked, or maybe the danger. Perhaps it was simply the fact that he was doing something that would help keep him alive. Whatever it was, he liked it.

  Olly kept going.

  He knew they were still in danger, but he believed that together they could handle it. His feet were still cold, but he would soon change his socks. At first his arms ached more and more as they dug, but then suddenly they felt fine. Tired, but fine. His body had got used to it.

  And for the first time in his life, Olly felt proud of what he was making. Really proud. He smiled to himself.

  Bear crawled back out of the tunnel when it was nearly two metres long.

  “Now we need a wall across the entrance,” he said. “Like this.”

  There were piles of freshly dug snow all around the entrance to the tunnel. Bear used his hands to work some of it into a block. Olly found that making blocks was like making square snowballs. He could press the white powder into small lumps, and then press them together to make bigger lumps. Bear showed him how to lay the first blocks in a line on the ground about half a metre from the hole. Then he put more blocks down on top of them.

  “What’s this for?” Olly asked as he worked.

  “The tunnel faces into the wind. We need the wall to keep the wind out. It’s the wind that will kill you fastest up in these mountains.”

  Olly carr
ied on making blocks while Bear crawled back into the tunnel.

  “Good work, Olly,” he shouted back. “We’re really getting there now. But there’s still a bit more to do.”

  “More?” Olly asked.

  “Well, we’ve dug in. Now we need to dig up.”

  8

  SNUG

  Bear started to dig so that the tunnel sloped upwards. Outside, the first snowflakes began to fall.

  When Olly looked up from building his wall, he could see millions of them whirling about in the middle of the approaching storm.

  It was only a matter of time until they would be engulfed in the blizzard.

  Olly made the wall higher as the flakes whipped around him in the growing wind. Each block took a bit of time, but he made himself keep working and doing the job well. He knew now why everything they had done that day had taken a bit more time than he liked. Testing each step, not walking in a straight line, choosing the harder place to dig.

  It had been so they could do it properly. And do it only once.

  Now he knew what the wall was for, Olly realised he couldn’t afford to go so fast that the blocks weren’t any good or the wall fell down.

  He was learning that in the wild you don’t always get second chances.

  When it was the same height as Olly, Bear told him it was big enough. Olly happily crawled back into the tunnel.

  As soon as he was back in, he was surprised by how warm he felt. Well, warmer. It was because his wall blocked out the wind. But when he breathed out a puff of air, he could see it whirling in front of him.

  “It’s still pretty cold,” he pointed out.

  “Sure,” Bear agreed with a laugh. He had dug the tunnel upwards for about a metre, then started to dig sideways. “It’s still freezing! If it wasn’t then all this snow would melt and the cave would collapse. But it won’t get any colder. Outside, we’d freeze to death in that wind. In here it’s a steady temperature, around zero degrees, and our clothes can keep us warm.”

  Olly kept on clearing out the fresh piles of snow behind him. Every time he stuck his head outside, the snowflakes had grown thicker. The wind was starting to howl like some kind of animal. He couldn’t see more than a couple of metres in any direction. Everything was just white. Even though he had his hood up, the cold turned his face numb.

  It was a relief to pull his head back into the tunnel.

  Eventually they had carved out a small snow cave at the end of the tunnel. It was big enough to lie down in, but not stand up. Even Olly only had room to kneel.

  “We’re higher than the end of the tunnel,” Olly observed, as they brushed the floor smooth.

  “Exactly. Cold air sinks, and warm air rises, so the cold air will go down the tunnel while the air up here stays warm. Now help me smooth down the ceiling, so it doesn’t start to drip on us when the snow warms up with our body heat.”

  Together they brushed at the ceiling with their gloved hands until it was as smooth as it could be.

  By the end, they were both covered in loose white powder.

  “And the very last job,” Bear said, “is to brush yourself off. Snow on your clothes will melt and make them damp.”

  “Which makes you cold,” Olly said with a smile.

  Bear grinned at him. “You’re learning.”

  They took turns to knock the loose snow off their clothes at the entrance to the tunnel. By now there was a full storm raging outside. Back in their little snow cave, the air barely moved.

  It was very dim because the only light came from the tunnel entrance. Bear used his rucksack to block it off, and then there was no light at all, so he flicked a torch on. He pulled a tarpaulin from his pack and laid it down on the floor.

  “We sit and lie on this, for insulation,” he explained. “Otherwise the snow will suck the heat right out of our bodies.” He pulled a couple of ration bars out of his rucksack. “This is dinner. Have you got the water?”

  Olly had refilled the flasks full of snow several times during the day. The freezing mountain air was bone dry and they had to drink a lot. Now he pulled them out of his coat for the last time that day.

  They tucked into their bars and washed them down with melted snow water. Olly was just knocking back the last drops when he had a thought. What goes in comes out – eventually.

  “Uh, so …” he began. “What do I do if I need to, uh … go?”

  “Down there.” Bear pointed at the bottom of the slope in the tunnel. “Let it soak into the snow, then cover it up with loose powder. We can’t go outside now until the storm has passed. But it will pass. Storms always do.”

  Olly looked where Bear was pointing and grimaced.

  After that, the only thing to do was wait out the storm. It was howling outside, but in here it sounded like it was a long way off. Olly lay down and pulled the padded hood of his coat up to act like a pillow.

  He had never felt happier in his life. Which was strange considering the danger and discomfort he was in.

  He looked around at what they had made together.

  “You know, this is actually pretty cool,” he said drowsily.

  Bear smiled.

  “A strong team, good preparation and a bit of effort, and you can manage almost anything.”

  As Bear talked, Olly could feel sleep creeping up on him. He was bone tired. He had been walking all day, and then he hadn’t stopped for even a moment in the rush to dig the shelter out. He blushed to think how he had lied to duck out of building the den with Jack and Omar. He had thought that was too much effort! It seemed such a long time ago.

  Then his heavy eyes closed – asleep.

  9

  TWO HANDS, TWO FEET

  Olly woke up after the best night’s sleep he had ever had. He snuggled into his pillow and wondered what time it was. A stab of hunger answered his question.

  Breakfast time! He was looking forward to some more of that porridge before the adventure ahead.

  He opened his eyes … and found himself looking at Jack.

  Olly sat bolt upright in surprise. He looked around him in confusion. Jack was on one side of him in his sleeping bag. Omar was on the other.

  “What are you doing here?” Olly exclaimed.

  Jack propped himself up on his elbow.

  “What do you mean?” he asked sleepily. “This is our tent, too.”

  Olly looked around wide-eyed. Where was the snow cave?

  He felt something hard on the ground next to him. It was the compass. Olly stared at it.

  What had happened? How had he got back here?

  Then Omar groaned as he sat up.

  “Man, that ground is well hard. I don’t reckon I can do another night like that.”

  Olly remembered what Bear had told him.

  “If you can find the strength inside you, you can overcome all things,” he said under his breath. “All you need is to keep going.”

  Omar stared at him. “What are you on about?” He paused. “Keep going! That’s funny coming from the guy who gave up altogether and left his mates to do all the hard work yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” Olly said in surprise.

  If the den-building had been yesterday … that meant everything with Bear had happened all in one night. Without the other two noticing.

  Had it just been a really vivid dream?

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember,” Omar sneered.

  “No,” Olly said quietly. “I remember.”

  Jack tried to break up the tension. He clambered out of his bag.

  “We should get moving,” he said. “What’s up today, after breakfast?”

  Omar was still glaring at Olly. A good night’s sleep clearly hadn’t done anything to change Omar’s opinion of him.

  “You think I’ll let you down again, don’t you?” Olly said quietly.

  Omar just shrugged.

  “Whatever.”