Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [89]
The mighty summit loomed over us, still some eight thousand vertical feet higher. It took my breath away.
As the sun rose over the top of Everest, its rays filtering between the wind and snow of the summit, we sat on our packs in silence. My heart rate soared with excitement and trepidation.
The summit seemed truly unconquerable, still so far away, aloof and unobtainable.
I decided not to look up too much, but instead to concentrate on my feet, and commit to keep them moving.
I suspected that this would be the key to climbing this mountain.
We were getting more and more drained by the altitude and the scale of the glacier, and camp two never seemed to get any closer.
Finally we made it to camp two, but considering the effort it had taken to reach, it wasn’t much to look at. Tucked into the shadow of the vast wall of Everest, it was grey, cold and unwelcoming.
Shingly rock covered the dark-blue ice that ran into melt-water pools in the midday heat. Everything was wet, sliding and slushy.
I tripped trying to scramble over a small ledge of ice. I was tired and needed to rest, but I was excited that another stage in the climb was reached – albeit the easy part.
On our next return to base camp, and after the best night’s sleep I had had since arriving in Nepal, I decided that I would call home on the satellite phone.
At $3 a minute, I had not yet used the phone. I had enough debts already at this point. I’d originally intended to save my phone call for when and if I had a summit bid.
‘Mum, it’s me.’
‘Bear? It’s BEAR!’ she shouted excitedly.
It was so good just to hear the voices of those I loved.
I asked for all their news.
Then I told them about my narrow escape in the crevasse.
‘You fell in what? A crevice?’ Mum questioned.
‘No, in a crevasse,’ I enunciated.
‘Speak up. I can hardly hear you, darling.’ She tried to quieten everyone around her, and then resumed the conversation. ‘Now … what was that about your crevice?’
‘Mum, it really doesn’t matter,’ I said, laughing. ‘I love you.’
Families are always great levellers.
CHAPTER 82
Four days later we were back up again at camp two, on the moraine edge of the vast Western Cwm glacier.
It was 5 a.m. and eerily still in the pre-dawn light, as I sat huddled in the porch of my tent looking out across the ice.
It was cold. Very cold.
Mick had been tossing and turning all night. Altitude does that. It robs you of sleep, furnishes you with a permanent migraine, and sucks the air and your lungs of all moisture – ensuring everyone coughs and splutters twenty-four seven.
Add the freezing cold, a constant urge to vomit, and an indescribable ability for even the most mundane physical task to become a labour of Herculean proportions – and you can see why high-altitude climbing is a limited market.
The reality of life up high, in the sub-zero, could not be less romantic.
But today was make or break for us.
We had reached camp two after a seven-hour climb up from base camp. It was the first time we had done the route all in one go without a night at camp one, and it had taken its toll.
Today we had to push on up higher – and this was where it would start to get much steeper and much more dangerous.
Camp three is on the threshold of what the human body can survive, and as I had been repeatedly told by doubting journalists, the body’s ability to adapt to high altitude improves as you get out of your twenties and into your thirties.
Well, at twenty-three, age wasn’t in my favour, but I tried not to think about that, and the doubters.
Yes, I was young, but I was hungry, and the next few weeks would reveal all, as I pushed into territory that was higher than I had ever gone before.
In front of me was now the real tester. If I failed to cope with the altitude at camp three I would return to base camp and never go back up again.
Looking at the vast face ahead I tried to imagine being up there.
I couldn’t.
Thirty minutes after setting out we were still on the scree and ice moraine. It felt like we had hardly moved at all. But