Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [103]
I stagger on.
CHAPTER 96
There had always been this part of me that had never really believed that I could make it.
Ever since that hospital bed and my broken back, a little part of me, deep down, had thought it was all sheer madness.
And that part of me hadn’t always felt so little.
I guess too many people had told me it was foolish.
Too many had laughed, and called it a pipe dream. And the more times I heard them say that, the more determined I had become.
But still their words had seeped in.
So we get busy, we do things. And the noise can drown out our doubts – for a while.
But what happens when the noise stops?
My doubts have an annoying habit of hanging around, long after I think they have been stilled.
And deep down, I guess I doubted myself more than I could admit – even to myself.
Until this moment.
You see, ever since that hospital bed, I had wanted to be fixed. Physically. Emotionally.
Heck. Ever since boarding school, aged eight, all those years ago, I had wanted to be fixed.
And right here, at 29,030 feet, as I staggered those last few steps, I was mending.
The spiritual working through the physical.
Mending.
Eventually, at 7.22 a.m. on the morning of 26 May 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in.
As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world.
Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering towards us.
As he approached, the wind began to die away.
The sun was now rising over the hidden land of Tibet, and the mountains beneath us were bathed in a crimson red.
Neil knelt and crossed himself on the summit. Then, together, with our masks off, we hugged as brothers.
I got to my feet and began to look around. I swore that I could see halfway around the world.
The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. Technology can put a man on the moon but not up here.
There truly was some magic to this place.
The radio suddenly crackled to my left. Neil spoke into it excitedly.
‘Base camp. We’ve run out of earth.’
The voice on the other end exploded with jubilation. Neil passed the radio to me. For weeks I had planned what I would say if I reached the top, but all that just fell apart.
I strained into the radio and spoke without thinking.
‘I just want to get home.’
The memory of what went on then begins to fade. We took several photos with both the SAS and the DLE flag flying on the summit, as promised, and I scooped some snow into an empty Juice Plus vitamin bottle I had with me.1
It was all I would take with me from the summit.
I remember having some vague conversation on the radio – patched through from base camp via a satellite phone – with my family some three thousand miles away: the people who had given me the inspiration to climb.
But up there, the time flew by, and like all moments of magic, nothing can last for ever.
We had to get down. It was already 7.48 a.m.
Neil checked my oxygen.
‘Bear, you’re right down. You better get going, buddy, and fast.’
I had just under a fifth of a tank to get me back to the balcony.
I heaved the pack and tank on to my shoulders, fitted my mask, and turned around. The summit was gone. I knew that I would never see it again.
Within moments of leaving the summit the real exhaustion set in. It is hard to describe how much energy is required – just to go down.
Statistically the vast majority of accidents happen on the descent. It is because nothing matters any longer, the goal is attained; and the urge to make the pain go away becomes stronger.
When the mind is reduced like this, it is so easy to stumble and fall.
Stay alert, Bear. Keep it together just a little longer. You’re only going to make that cache of oxygen at the balcony if you stay focused.
But then my oxygen ran out.
I was stumbling – going from my knees to my feet, then back to my knees. The world was a blur.
I can. I can. I can.
I kept repeating