Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [101]
I steadily moved past Neil to help blaze a trail through the snow. The pace was keeping me warm. Neil’s head was low and his body seemed to ooze exhaustion – but I knew he wouldn’t stop.
After an hour on the ridge, we hit even more of this deep drift snow – again. The energy that I had felt before began to trickle from my limbs with every laboured breath and step.
I could see Alan up ahead, also floundering in the powder. He seemed to be making no progress. The face still soared away above – drift snow as far as I could see.
I hardly even noticed the views up here – of the entire Himalayas stretched below us, bathed in the pre-dawn glow.
My mind and focus were entirely directed on what my legs and arms were doing. Summoning up the resolve to heave each thigh out of the deep powder and throw it another step forward was all that mattered.
Keep moving. Fight. Just one more step.
Yet the South Summit never seemed to arrive.
I could steadily feel every ounce of energy being sucked from my body.
It was like climbing a mountain of waist-deep treacle, whilst giving someone a fireman’s carry, who, for good measure, was also trying to force a pair of frozen socks into your mouth. Nice.
Each time I forced myself to stand, I felt weaker. I knew that my strength was finite. And was diminishing fast.
My body desperately needed more oxygen, but all it had was the meagre two litres that trickled past my nostrils every minute.
It wasn’t enough – and my tank was getting lower by the second.
CHAPTER 93
Why is it that the finish line always tends to appear just after the point at which we most want to give up? Is it the universe’s way of reserving the best for those who can give the most?
What I do know, from nature, is that the dawn only appears after the darkest hour.
Finally, and still far above me, the South Summit was now discernible in the dawn light.
For the first time, I could almost taste the end.
Power began to build inside me: raw, irrefutable and overflowing.
My old friend, a fierce, deep-rooted resolve, that I had only known a few times in my life – mainly from key moments on SAS Selection – was flooding back with each step that I took in the deep snow.
I would beat this damned snow and mountain.
My old friend overcame all pain and cold and fear – and persevered.
A few hundred feet beneath the South Summit we found the ropes that had been put in during the team’s first summit attempt. They gave me a vague sense of comfort as I stooped and clipped in.
The South Summit is still some four hundred feet beneath the true summit, but it is a huge milestone in the pursuit of the top. I knew that if I could reach here, then for the first time, the roof of the world would be within my grasp.
Neil was soon close behind me again. Alan had already staggered over the lip and was hunched over, cowering from the wind, as he took a few minutes to regain some energy.
Ahead I could see the infamous final ridge stretching away towards the Hillary Step – the sheer ice wall that was the final gatekeeper to the true summit.
Sir Edmund Hillary, Everest’s first conqueror, once said that the mountains gave him strength. I’d never really understood this until now. But it was intoxicating.
Something deep inside me knew that I could do this.
The final ridge is only about four hundred feet along, but it snakes precariously along one of the most exposed stretches of mountain on this planet. On either side, down sheer faces, lies Tibet to the east, and Nepal to the west.
Shuffling along the knife-edge ridge, we moved ever onward, towards the Hillary Step.
This was all that then barred our way to the top.
The rope was being whipped out in a loop by the wind as I shuffled along.
I leant on my ice axe, against the low bank of snow down to my right, to steady myself.
Suddenly my ice axe shot straight through the white veneer, as part of the snow bank gave way beneath me.
I stumbled to regain my balance and move away from the collapse.
We were effectively shuffling along a ledge