Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [84]
So the team was finalized.
Our planned departure date was 27 February 1998.
Because our team was small we arranged to link up with a larger expedition, headed by Henry Todd, who had organized logistics for the Ama Dablam team.
The plan was that we would be climbing on the Nepalese side, the south-east ridge. This was the original face that Hillary and Tenzing had climbed – and one of the most dangerous routes – a fact not missed by Mum.
At the time, out of the total 161 deaths on Everest, 101 had occurred on this face. Mick and I decided to travel out some four weeks before Neil and Geoffrey Stanford (the final member of the team). The idea was to get as much time training at altitude as we could, before the climb itself would start.
I said the first of what has proved to be many tearful goodbyes to Shara at the airport, and flew out from the UK to Nepal.
For Mick and me, our strict acclimatization programme was about to begin.
Acclimatization is all about allowing the body to adjust to having less oxygen to function with, and the key is being patient about how fast you ascend. Once you start getting up high, the effects of altitude sickness can kill very quickly. If you get this process wrong, swelling of the brain, loss of consciousness and haemorrhaging from the eyes are some of the pleasant symptoms that can strike at any time. It is why playing at high altitude is just like playing with fire: unpredictable and dangerous.
From the peak of Everest, the land of Tibet lies sprawled out across the horizon to the north, as far as the eye can see. To the south, the summit looks over the vast range of the Himalayas, all the way down to the Nepalese plains.
No other bit of land stands above this point on the entire planet.
But what lies beneath the peak, for the ambitious climber, is a treacherous mix of thousands of feet of rock, snow and ice that has claimed a disproportionate number of top mountaineers.
Here is why.
Under the summit, the descent off the south-east ridge is lined by faces of sheer rock and blue ice. These lead to a narrow couloir of deep powder snow, then eventually down to a col some three thousand feet beneath the peak.
This col, the site of where our camp four would be, sits beneath the two huge peaks of Lhotse to the south and Everest to the north.
It would take us the best part of six weeks’ climbing just to reach this col.
Beneath the South Col, the gradient drops sharply away, down a five-thousand-foot ice wall known as the Lhotse Face. Our camp three would be carved into the ice, halfway up this.
At the foot of this wall starts the highest and most startling ice valley in the world. Halfway along this glacier would be our camp two, and at the lower end, our camp one. This vast tongue of ice is known simply as the Western Cwm – or the Valley of Silence.
From the lip of the glacier, the ice is funnelled through the steep valley mouth where it begins to rupture violently, breaking up into a tumbling cascade of ice.
It is similar to when a flowing river narrows through a ravine, turning the water into frothing rapids. But here the water is frozen solid. The blocks of ice, often the size of houses, grumble as they slowly shift down the face.
This gushing frozen river, some five hundred yards wide, is called the Khumbu Icefall, and is one of the most dangerous parts of the ascent.
Finally, at its feet lies Everest’s base camp.
Mick and I spent those early weeks together climbing in the lower foothills of the Himalayas, acclimatizing ourselves, and starting to get a sense of the scale of the task that lay ahead.
We hiked our way higher and higher into the heart of the mountains, until eventually we found ourselves at 17,450 feet, at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall and the start of the Everest climb in earnest.
We pitched our tents at the base of the big mountain and waited for the rest of the team to arrive in two days’ time.
Sitting, waiting – staring up above – neck craned at Everest, I felt a sickness in the pit of my stomach.