Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [102]
We kept moving. A step at a time.
Steadily. Slowly.
Ever closer.
Ever further away.
CHAPTER 94
Just under the South Summit I could make out the shape where Rob Hall lay. He had died up here some twenty-four months earlier.
His body, half covered in drift-snow, remained unchanged. Frozen in time. A stark reminder that those who survive the mountain do so because she allows you to.
But when she turns, she really turns.
And the further into her grasp you are, the greater the danger.
Right now, we were about as far into her grasp as it was possible to venture.
And I knew it.
Rob’s last words to his wife Jan had been: ‘Please don’t worry too much.’
They are desperate words from a mountaineer who bravely understood he was going to die.
I tried to shake his memory from my oxygen-starved brain. But I couldn’t.
Just get going, Bear. Get this done, then get down.
At the end of the ridge we leant on our ice axes and looked up.
Above us was the legendary Hillary Step, the forty-foot ice wall that formed one of the mountain’s most formidable hurdles.
Cowering from the wind, I tried to make out a route up it.
This ice face was to be our final and hardest test. The outcome would determine whether we would join those few who have touched that hallowed ground above.
If so, I would become only the thirty-first British climber ever to have done this.
The ranks were small.
I started up cautiously. It was a long way to come to fall here.
Points in. Ice axe in. Test them. Then move.
It was slow progress, but it was progress. And steadily I moved up the ice.
I had climbed steep pitches like this so many times before, but never twenty-nine thousand feet up in the sky. At this height, in this rarefied thin air, and with 40 m.p.h. of wind trying to blow us off the ice, I was struggling. Again.
I stopped and tried to steady myself.
Then I made that old familiar mistake – I looked down.
Beneath me, either side of the ridge, the mountain dropped away into abysses.
Idiot, Bear.
I tried to refocus on only what was in front of me and above.
Up. Keep moving up.
So I kept climbing.
It was the climb of my life, and nothing was going to stop me.
CHAPTER 95
Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause.
It is unending.
I heave myself over the final lip, and strain to pull myself clear of the edge.
I clear the deep powder snow from in front of my face. I lie there hyperventilating.
Then I clear my mask of the ice that my breath has formed in the freezing air.
I unclip off the rope whilst still crouching. The line is now clear for Neil to follow up.
I get to my feet and start staggering onwards.
I can see this distant cluster of prayer flags, semi-submerged in the snow. Gently flapping in the wind, I know that these flags mark the true summit – the place of dreams.
I feel this sudden surge of energy beginning to rise within me.
It is adrenalin coursing around my veins and muscles.
I have never felt so strong – and yet so weak – all at the same time.
Intermittent waves of adrenalin and fatigue come and go, as my body struggles to sustain the intensity of these final moments.
I find it strangely ironic that the very last part of this immense climb is so gentle a slope.
A sweeping curve – curling along the crest of the ridge towards the summit.
Thank God.
It feels like the mountain is beckoning me up. For the first time, willing me to climb up on to the roof of the world.
I try to count the steps as I move, but my counting becomes confused.
I am now breathing and gasping like a wild animal in an attempt to devour the oxygen that seeps into my mask.
However many of these pathetically slow shuffles I take, this place never seems to get any closer.
But it is. Slowly the summit is looming a little nearer.
I can feel my eyes welling up with tears. I start to cry and cry inside my mask.
Emotions held in for so long. I can’t hold them back any longer.