Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [91]
I just stared in awe as I waited for the others to get ready. I felt like I was looking down on half the world.
Those few minutes that I sat there, as Mick and Neil got ready, I experienced a stillness that I did not think existed.
Time seemed to stand still, and I did not want the moment to end.
The ice face dropped away before me to the vast valley of white beneath, and the whole range of Himalayan peaks stretched away in the distance to our west.
This really was a land apart.
We were now almost two vertical miles above base camp. Mountains that had once towered above us were now level or below. What a sight – what a privilege – to enjoy and soak in!
But today we would undo all that slog once more, as we descended back down to lower altitudes again.
As I looked back down the valley, I registered the severity of the face we had climbed up in the wind and snow only twelve hours earlier. I re-checked my harness as I sat there.
Soon we were ready and we started down.
The rope ran through my rappelling device and buzzed as I picked up speed. It was intoxicating bouncing down the ice face. My figure of eight rappelling device was warm to the touch as the rope raced through it.
This was the mountain at her best.
I tried not to think of the thousands of feet of sweat and toil that were flying through my hands. I did not want to remind myself that I would have to do it again on the way up to camp four and the summit.
The prospect hurt too much.
For now, I was content to have survived camp three; to have proved that my body could cope above twenty-four thousand feet, and to be on my way back to base in good weather.
Back at camp two the tension fell away. We were ecstatic.
The next day we left for base camp, crossing the crevasses with renewed confidence.
Our final acclimatization climb was over.
We were now receiving daily very accurate weather reports from the Bracknell Weather Centre in the UK. These gave us the most advanced precision forecast available anywhere in the world. The meteorologists were able to determine wind strengths to within five knots accuracy at every thousand foot of altitude.
Our lives would depend on these forecasts back up the mountain.
Each morning, the entire team would crowd eagerly around the laptop to see what the skies were bringing – but it did not look good.
Those early signs of the monsoon arriving in the Himalayas, the time when the strong winds over Everest’s summit begin to rise, didn’t seem to be coming.
All we could do was wait.
Our tents were very much now home to us at base camp. We had all our letters and little reminders from our families.
I had a seashell I had taken from a beach on the Isle of Wight, in which Shara had written my favourite verse – one I had depended on so much through the military.
‘Be sure of this, that I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.’ Matthew 28:20.
I reread it every night at base camp before I went to sleep.
There was no shame in needing any help up here.
CHAPTER 84
I woke up very suddenly, feeling violently sick. I crawled to the door of my tent and threw up all over the ice and rock outside.
I felt like death and my head was throbbing.
Shit. This didn’t bode well, and I knew it.
I lay curled in a ball in my tent throughout the heat of the day at base camp. I didn’t know what to feel.
Andy, our team doctor, told me I was run down and had also got a chronic chest infection. He gave me a course of antibiotics and said I needed to rest.
I just needed some time to recover. Time that we didn’t have.
Later that day, my greatest fear came to pass when Henry entered the mess tent with the latest forecast.
‘Good news, the wind’s beginning to rise. Looks as though we’re going to get the break around the nineteenth. Right, that gives us five days to get up to camp four at the col and be ready in position for a summit bid. We need to start working towards this at once – and that means now.’
The moment I had longed for was suddenly the moment I most dreaded.
Finally it had come,