Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [62]
Look at yourself, Bear, I thought. Today is Endurance. Yet you can hardly walk to the cookhouse.
I tried to put the thought aside.
The parade that night in the dark was deathly quiet. No one spoke. We were now but a tiny fraction of those who had started out only a week ago. Trucker was still there. He had been stubbornly, quietly, doing the distances, making the time. No fuss. Good lad.
‘We can do this, buddy,’ I muttered to him as we stood waiting. ‘Just one more march and we can nail this, Trux.’
He smiled wearily back.
He looked like the walking wounded. We all did. Strong men, shuffling on hurting feet.
Just let me get moving, I thought, and the pumping blood will shake the stiffness and pain from my back and feet.
No one talked on that last truck journey out to the mountains. We all sat huddled, heads covered by hats or hands, in our own worlds.
It was freezing cold in the middle of that February night.
The hiss of brakes and the jolt of the dying engine shook us into life. I looked outside.
It was dark, and the snow was thick on the ground. Time to dismount.
Our packs now weighed 55 lb plus belt kit, water, food, and weapon. Too bloody heavy.
They weighed our packs on the old meat-hook scales slung roughly off the back of one of the trucks.
The scale read that Trucker’s pack was underweight by a pound.
The DS tossed a ten-pound rock at him to add to his pack. Endurance was Endurance. None of us could expect any favours here.
Trux and I helped each other saddle up and heave the packs on to our backs, then, one by one we lined up, waiting to be set off at the customary two-minute intervals.
It was bitingly cold, and the wind was quite strong even down here at the foot of the mountains. We all turned our backs to the wind as we waited in line.
Finally – my name.
‘Grylls. The clock’s ticking. Go.’
CHAPTER 56
I headed off across the track into the darkness.
I set my bearing to the first trig point on the summit ridge, put my head down and started to move as fast as my feet would carry me.
The first checkpoint was some two thousand feet above, and I reckoned I could cut the corner off by heading up the bowl of the valley instead of following the ridgeline.
I knew early on that this was a mistake.
I had grossly underestimated how deep the snow pack would be, but by then I was committed to this route and couldn’t afford to go back.
The snow pile in the bowl was this horrible waist-deep drift snow. I was reduced to a snail’s pace.
I could see this trail of figures above me, silhouetted against the full moon skyline. It was all the other recruits moving steadily up.
Meanwhile I was floundering in this hellhole of deep snow, going nowhere.
I had hardly even started Endurance.
I cursed myself.
What a crap decision, Bear.
I was pouring with sweat already.
It took me over an hour to clear the ridgeline, and by then there was no sign of any other recruits. I was on my own and behind.
The wind was horrendous as I crested the ridge, and it was truly a case of moving two paces forward, then stumbling back one.
I worked my way cautiously along the ridge’s narrow sheep track, with a sheer drop of some eight hundred feet just yards to my right.
Suddenly a small icy pool under me cracked, and I dropped up to my thighs in freezing cold, black, oozing mud.
I was now wet, and covered in this heavy, black clay that clung like glue to my legs.
Cracking start.
I just put my head down and carried on.
As the first flicker of dawn began to rise, I ascended, for one last symbolic time, the east ridge of that one high peak we had got to know so well.
I had been strong on this mountain so many times, but this time, I was reduced to a slow plod up its steep face – head bowed, legs straining under the weight, breathing hard.
It felt like a final submission to the mountain’s enduring ability to make mere humans buckle.
As we descended, and then started to climb up into the next valley, I found myself ascending towards a spectacular winter sunrise, peeping over the distant