Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [93]
Geoffrey and I were steadily approaching the lip at the top of the icefall. I clipped my karabiner into the last rope between us and camp one. It was 7.20 a.m.
We took most of the day to reach camp two in the distance, eventually arriving at 3.30 p.m.
I felt drained and dizzy.
Fifty per cent fit is hard to climb on, especially at this altitude, but I wasn’t going to share that feeling with anyone. There was too much at stake now.
Geoffrey and I sat and drank with our backpacks at our feet, our wind suits open to the waist to let the cool breeze dry our sweat. The two Sherpas up at camp two, Ang-Sering and my friend, Thengba, plied us with hot lemon.
It was good to have made it up here.
I knew that Mick and Neil and the others would be somewhere between camp three and camp four by now. They would be breaking into new territory, going higher than at any point so far on the expedition.
We had studied the route in detail.
It was a treacherous traverse across the Lhotse Face, and a long haul up what is known as the Geneva Spur – a steep band of jutted rock that pokes out from the blue ice. This spur then leads to the windswept, desolate saddle known as the South Col, the site of our high camp – camp four.
The Sherpas pointed out the climbers through binoculars. They were dots on a vast canvas of white far above us.
Go, Mick – go, buddy. I smiled to myself.
It was 11 p.m. Mick and Neil would be leaving camp four any minute now. They would be going through the ritual of getting rebooted, checking gear, checking oxygen, and tightening crampons.
Not an easy task for four people in a tiny tent at twenty-six thousand feet – in the dark.
The full moon had been on the 11 May, the ideal summit time. By now, though, over a week later, that moon was fading.
It meant they would need the light from their head torches on all the time – but batteries don’t last long in those sub-zero conditions. Extra batteries mean extra weight. And changing batteries in minus thirty-five degrees, with thick down mittens on, is harder than you think.
I had never wanted to be beside my best buddy Mick so much as I did right now.
The jet-stream winds were silent; the night was still, and they left camp in good time, ahead of the two other teams up there. It was a good decision.
Mick describes feeling unsure about his oxygen supply from early on after leaving the col. It was a hunch. It was almost prophetic.
Five hours later the trail of climbers was snaking its way un-roped up the ice and deep snow towards what is nonchalantly known as the ‘balcony’ ledge at twenty-seven and a half thousand feet.
The team were moving slower than expected. Mick’s head torch had failed. Changing batteries had proved too hard in the darkness and deep snow.
The weather that had looked so promising was now turning.
Mick and Neil still pushed on. Karla and Alan were behind them, moving slowly – but continuing.
Eventually, at 10.05 a.m., Neil and Pasang reached the South Summit. Neil could see the final ridge that led to the infamous snow and ice couloir called the ‘Hillary Step’ – and above this the gentle slope that ran four hundred feet to the true summit.
In 1996 the disasters on the mountain had robbed Neil of the chance to go above camp four. Two years on he was here again – only this time the summit was within his reach.
He felt strong, and waited anxiously for Mick to arrive. They would need to be together to manage the last ridge and the Hillary Step.
Something told Neil that things were not going right.
As the precious minutes slipped by, as he waited for Mick and the others to reach him, he sensed that the dream that had eluded him once was going to do so again.
Somewhere along the way, there had been a misunderstanding between the climbers over who had what rope. It happens at high altitude. It is a simple mistake.
But mistakes have consequences.
Suddenly, here, at four hundred feet beneath the summit of Mount Everest, it dawned on them all that they had run out of rope. They would have no choice now but to retreat. Continuing was not