Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [88]
I kicked into the walls with my crampons again.
This time they bit into the ice.
Up I pulled, kicking into the walls a few feet higher, in time with each heave from above.
Near the lip I managed to smack my ice axe into the snow lip and pull myself over.
Strong arms grabbed my wind suit and hauled me from the clutches of the crevasse. I wriggled away from the edge, out of danger, and collapsed in a heaving mess.
I lay there, my face pressed to the snow, eyes closed, holding Mick and Nima’s hands, shaking with fear.
If Nima had not heard the collapse and been so close, I doubt Mick would ever have had the strength to haul me out. Nima had saved my life and I knew it.
Mick helped escort me the two hours back down the icefall. I clutched every rope, clipping in nervously.
I now crossed the ladders like a different man – gone was the confidence. My breathing was shallow and laboured, and any vestiges of strength or adrenalin had long left me.
That thin line between life and death can make or break a man. And right now I was a mess.
Yet we hadn’t even begun on Everest proper.
Lying in my tent alone that night I wept quietly, as all the emotion seeped out of me. For the second time in recent years, I knew I should have died.
I wrote:
31 March, midnight.
The emotions of today have been crazy. And through it all, I just can’t quite fathom how the rope held my fall.
Over supper this evening, Nima spoke in rapid, dramatic gestures as he recounted the episode to the other Sherpas. I received double rations from Thengba, our hard of hearing cook, which I think was his way of reassuring me. Sweet man. He knows from experience how unforgiving this mountain can be.
My elbow is pretty darned sore where I smashed it against the crevasse, and I can feel small bits of bone floating around inside a swollen sack of fluid beneath it, which is slightly disconcerting.
The doctor says you can’t do much about an elbow apart from medicate and let time try to heal. At least it wasn’t my head!
I can’t get to sleep at the moment – I just keep having this vision of the crevasse beneath me – and it’s terrifying when I close my eyes.
Falling is such a horrible, helpless feeling. It caused me the same terror that I felt during my parachute accident.
I don’t think I have ever felt so close to being killed as I did today. Yet I survived – again.
It leaves me with this deep gratitude for all the good and beautiful things in my life, and a conviction that I really don’t want to die yet. I’ve got so much to live for.
I just pray with my whole heart never to go through such an experience again.
Tonight, alone, I put in words, thank you my Lord and my friend.
It’s been a hell of a way to start the climb of my life.
PS Today is my Shara’s birthday. Bless her, wherever she is right now.
CHAPTER 81
‘If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.’
The dude who said this was dead right.
Life is all about getting up again, dusting yourself down again, learning from the lessons and then pushing on.
And I did.
The next few days of early April, the conditions were perfect for climbing. Together we all pressed on, and apart from the constant reminder from my broken elbow, I forgot all about my close encounter with the Grim Reaper down the crevasse.
We cleared through the icefall and established our camp one at the lip. We spent a night there, and then descended back to base. Next time we would be pushing up into the mighty Western Cwm itself in an effort to reach camp two.
Our packs were heavier than before, laden down with additional kit we would need higher up the mountain. The great cwm lay before us as we made our way slowly along the vast, glaring white, ice valley – like ants on a giant ski ramp.
We tentatively shuffled into, and then climbed up and out of, yet another of the giant, snow-filled chasms that scarred the glacier’s face. As we climbed out of one particularly high lip of another false horizon we saw for the first time the face