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  Over the campfire, Brad invited the young Princes and me to join them for a dive. Unsurprisingly William and Harry were ‘too busy’, but yours truly jumped at the chance and soon the opportunity had morphed into a full scientific expedition. We teamed up with Adam Britton from Australia who is widely recognised as the world’s leading expert on crocodiles, and within a few months I found myself back out in the Okavango Delta having swapped a prince for a crocodile.

  The aim of the televised expedition was simple. By understanding more about the underwater behaviour of crocodiles, we hoped to reduce the number of attacks on humans in the area. The water of the Okavango Delta is a lifeline for Botswanans who use it to wash, to drink and to clean. Attacks are unnecessarily frequent, and we hoped that by understanding how crocs behave, we could save lives. Simple really.

  The essential safety principle behind ‘crocodile diving’ is to make sure you dive in cool, clear waters and that you maintain a visual on the Nile crocodiles themselves. Dressed in full scuba gear, the team would sit in a fast, rigid inflatable speedboat as it raced along the narrow river system. When we spotted a sunbathing crocodile, we would wait for it to slide into the waters before following it in. The key to a safe dive was to get into the water before the crocodile found a place to hide underwater.

  Armed with a metal stick each for protection, we prepared to make a ‘rapid entry’ into the water – the aquatic version of freefalling. I will never forget the overwhelming feeling of fear the first time I went into the water, with all my senses telling me to stay within the safety of the rubber boat.

  Under the burning African sun, I watched as a mighty 7-metre-long killing machine slid effortlessly into the water. As I sat on the side of that boat in full scuba gear, my heart pounding, sweat dripping down my face, I have never and probably never will again experience fear on that scale.

  The fear of the unknown. The fear of vulnerability. The fear of the unpredictability. There were so many facets. My mind was torn between a natural sense of self-preservation and trying to believe the theory of those naturalists and behaviourists around me, on whose word I was relying, and on whose word my life depended.

  There is a common assumption that it is impossible to die, or even become injured, when there is a camera present. We all experience it. For some reason, the presence of a camera and a cameraman usually means wellbeing and safety and certainty. Television likes jeopardy, but it prefers manufactured jeopardy. Controllable jeopardy. The result is that we have a habit of feeling more secure when a camera is around.

  As I have learned on various occasions, this really isn’t true. Despite the prying lens in my face, I felt a vulnerability I had never experienced before. I knew it was now or never. The longer I waited, the more dangerous my circumstances.

  I held my mask to my face and fell backwards into the water.

  The world went from a sharp and cheery brightness to a green and brown aquatic murkiness. It felt like stepping into an alternate reality. What surprised me the most was how chaos and fear instantly turned to focus and awe. I got within a couple of feet of a wild Nile crocodile on that first dive, and I can honestly say it was one of the most exhilarating things I have ever done. Over the course of the following few days, we took dozens of dives, and with each one we became a little more confident and brazen.

  Then one day, we lost our focus. Our cameraman, Mike, a veteran of many risky dives, was delayed in his entry to the water. By the time Mike reached the river bed, an enormous Nile crocodile had snuck up behind him. He understandably got a bit of a shock. The crocodile sensed his fear and it went for him. Luckily for Mike, he was armed with a huge camera in a waterproof cylinder. He stuck it into the crocodile’s jaws and it soon realised that he wasn’t as tasty as a catfish and it swam off into the depths.

  It shocked all of us. The hardest part was that we were only halfway through the expedition. Should we quit and go home? We tried to understand what had gone wrong. One of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make was whether to get back in the water or not. What if it happened again?

  In the end, we decided to continue. Mike even wrote a ‘just-in-case’ note for his family. We were defiantly skirting with death on that one, but somehow we got through it unscathed, though the psychological scars remain.

  I say psychological scars, but I should probably rephrase that to psychological armour. I learned a lot about fear and its control during that African expedition. I was as far out of my comfort zone as I have ever been.

  Until now. Here on Everest.

  It was the night before our first rotation onto the mountain. I couldn’t sleep. We would be up early to try and climb to Camp 1 before the heat of the day.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Risk

  It was 3 am. I hadn’t slept a wink. I lay awake as the chilled air froze my beard. Huge avalanches cascaded down the mountains above, and tumbled into the valley with terrifying booms that reverberated through the air. I could feel the powerful bass notes penetrating deep down into my very core. Sometimes it sounded like thunder. At other times, it was like the mountain was roaring. A beast growling, reminding us who was boss.

  I had watched countless avalanches during the daytime, but they always sounded so much worse at night, perhaps due to their invisibility. My imagination would run wild. What if it reached my tent? What if it buried us? What if it fell onto the Khumbu Icefall? The icefall loomed large in my thoughts. It dominated my hopes, my dreams; my fears and my nightmares.

  For four long days, I had stared at her. Like so much of the landscape, she looked beautifully wretched. I would spend hours watching and wondering. Wondering how anyone could navigate through her broken, cracked, icy bosom. Occasionally, I could make out the tiny silhouettes of climbers as they worked their way through the icy labyrinth. They would appear and disappear as they climbed and ascended the maze-like landscape. Like tiny ants, they looked so vulnerable.

  Marina – The icefall

  The biggest problem is not the altitude, or the mountain itself, but the fact that the most dangerous part of the whole mountain lies just above Base Camp, meaning that every time they ascended, they’d have to negotiate the notorious Khumbu Icefall. Essentially a frozen waterfall, the icefall consists of gigantic slabs of ice, or seracs, over, under or around which climbers creep. The danger is that this icefall is constantly moving, with crevasses opening up and seracs collapsing. No one can predict when or where this will happen.

  A team of highly experienced sherpas, the Icefall Doctors, lay a route of ropes along which climbers navigate their way through this treacherous maze of ice. Each day, this is revisited, with climbers crossing themselves before they leave, knowing that they’d be foolish to think that luck won’t play a part in getting them through safely.

  The fragility of human life in the icefall was illustrated grimly in 2014, when on Everest’s most fatal day 16 sherpas were killed when a towering serac collapsed.

  I wish I didn’t know as much as I did about the icefall. Ben tried to play it down, but on the day I knew he was risking his life, chancing his way through Everest’s pearly gates, I instinctively reached for the only supposedly lucky charm I have. Ben rarely returns from his travels bearing gifts for me – he’s away far too frequently for gestures like that, and I’m far too pragmatic to want my house filled up with knick knacks when we’re paying off a mortgage.

  But back in May 2017, he’d come home with a necklace. It wasn’t from him, he insisted, but from a man called Mike with whom he’d been staying while filming New Lives in the Wild. A world renowned Canadian artist who had once sold a sculpture for a million dollars, he’d swapped his glitzy life of success, fortune and adoration for the simple life in a remote part of western Canada where he’d created a floating island, a paradise where majestic cliffs fell into azure sea, eagles fed on fish carcasses from his hands and he lived hand-to-mouth with his wife in utopian bliss.

  Ben had loved his time with this couple, marvelli
ng at their way of life and their inherent wisdom. As Ben prepared to leave, Mike had thrust a necklace into his hand, telling him that he’d made it for me, a talisman to bring me luck while Ben ventured where few people dared. I’m not a big jewellery wearer, I have my engagement ring and a simple necklace that I rarely take off, but other than that, I never wear anything else. I remember opening a black pouch to find a piece of white-veined granite, shrouded in silver behind which was hidden a spider. As Ben told me how unique its maker was, I realised how extraordinary this piece of jewellery was. Every time Ben crossed the notorious icefall, I reached for this necklace. During idle moments I found myself touching that piece of transparent granite, feeling its weight in my hands. I felt it was oddly reminiscent of the ice which held my husband’s life so precariously in its hands and prayed that my talisman would bring me the luck Ben so desperately needed.

  There’s a lot of waiting around when you’re preparing to summit Everest. In a world where there is so much instant gratification, where there is no waiting to receive a letter when you can send an e-mail, where a movie is instantly downloaded onto your iPad, where holiday photos can not only be instantly viewed but edited, filtered and shared with the rest of the world, this is something 21st-century climbers struggle with. This is one of the few instances where you really are at nature’s mercy. You’ll climb Everest when nature allows and those who dare to challenge her mostly end up regretting it.

  I wanted Ben to be away for as short a time as possible, but I also wanted him to give this expedition the time it needed to give it a good chance of success. At the end of May, it was Iona’s birthday, a date he’d tentatively promised he’d try and get back for. I could sense his frustration as he rode out the days at Base Camp, oscillating between baking in the high-altitude sun and freezing at night, eking out sleep in a cramped tent, perched uncomfortably on the scree below the icefall, waiting for a weather window.

  The Khumbu Icefall became, in my mind, a kind of gatekeeper to the mountain. In some ways, it felt like it was the mountain’s first test: are you brave, strong and determined enough to take me on, she seemed to be saying. It was Everest’s way of separating the wheat from the chaff.

  Shortly after we had arrived at Base Camp, we had watched as a helicopter full of climbers departed. Overwhelmed by the icefall, they had already capitulated. As I lay there in my tent, she became an ogre. A monster I had to pass before I could even begin my mountain ascent. The ice creaked and groaned as the glacier on which Base Camp is settled moved imperceptibly forward.

  That night was the first of many experiences of self-doubt, as I lay in my sleeping bag picking icicles from my beard. Part of the fear and self-doubt lay in the unknown. I had no reference point. I had no idea what to expect. Was this the icy, slightly more challenging ‘Go Ape’ that many critics would have you believe? With the fixed line up the mountain, many have argued that Everest is little more than an adventure playground for grown-ups.

  On the other hand, many described it as one of the most dangerous places in the world. Without first-hand experience, I didn’t have any way of really knowing, and as is so often the case, my mind had painted the worst-case scenario. It wouldn’t be long before I found out. Within the hour, we would be in the midst of the icefall. I didn’t need to set an alarm. I hadn’t slept a wink.

  It was 4 am. The inside of the tent was covered in a thin veneer of ice formed from the condensation of my breath. You soon learned to move around the tent very gently. One bash on the side of the tent and you were showered in a blizzard of snow and ice as it sheared off the fabric and down your neck. It’s not a pleasant way to get up in the mornings.

  Despite instinct, I had learned over the years to sleep in as little as possible. It was always rather painful to strip off in the freezing cold and get into a cold sleeping bag. You then had to be organised enough to stuff all your clothes into your sleeping bag to keep them from freezing solid in the night.

  I would often have more ‘stuff’ inside my sleeping bag than there was ‘me’. Anything that was likely to freeze would need to be kept warm overnight. Anything left outside would be frozen solid like cardboard in the morning. It only takes one experience of frozen socks and inner boots to remember not to leave them out.

  The diurnal temperature changes were truly extraordinary. By day it could be 30 °C plus, while at night it would sometimes drop to minus 15 °C. I would sit up and pull on the layers that had been scrunched down into the bottom of my sleeping bag and warmed by my body heat.

  This morning, I pulled my headtorch over my woolly hat and slowly gathered everything I would need for four days up on the mountain. My breath was making such a dense heavy fog that at times I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

  I pulled my heavy boots onto my feet. My fingers were already numb with cold as I pulled a heavy down jacket over my shaking body. In the darkness, I slowly walked down to the mess tent. It felt colder in the still air of the tent than outside. Under the tiny pool of light cast by my headtorch, I pulled on my harness as I paced up and down.

  I felt sick with fear and nervousness. The anxiety knotted in my stomach. It twisted and turned and made me feel physically sick. Kenton and Mark both came into the tent. Mark was fixing cameras and microphones while Kenton was uncoiling rope and fixing jumars and figures of eight. Victoria was last to arrive. Quietly, we all shuffled around in our own thoughts.

  Outside the sherpas had lit the little juniper fire. I stared at the orange glow of the flame as it danced around. I scooped up a couple of handfuls of rice and threw them over the Puja. I placed some of the rice in my pocket, and, I’ve no idea why, some in my hair.

  On the tiny stone plinth was an assortment of offerings to the mountain gods. I pulled a little packet of Jelly Babies from my bag and added it to the collection. Carefully, Kenton checked our harnesses and checked the rope. Kenton would lead followed by Victoria and then me at the back. Mark would be on his own, giving him more chance to get around to film. We wouldn’t use our crampons until we reached the solid icy section of the icefall. I strapped my crampons to my rucksack, and before we knew it, we were heading off into the ice.

  Base Camp is surprisingly large, and for more than 30 minutes our boots crunched over rock and ice as we passed sleeping tents. In the distance, I could make out the tiny headlamps of climbers already in the icefall. They sometimes looked like fairy lights strung together across the blackness.

  Soon we crossed the little river of meltwater and we were at the base of the icefall in the Pinnacles. For what seemed like an eternity, we clambered across a mix of ice and rock as we worked our way towards the beginning of the roped icefall. An hour after leaving our Base Camp, we reached the little ‘crampon area’.

  Half a dozen climbers were already attaching metal spikes to their boots. By now we had also warmed up and we all shed layers. Just like the discipline of not going to bed wearing too much, we had mastered the art of dressing in the mountains, where it’s a constant battle against hot and cold. Invariably, it’s always too cold when you are hanging around, but as soon as you start climbing, body heat builds up, and before you know it, you are overheating. By the time you have stopped to remove layers, you are cold again.

  Hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold.

  It takes tremendous discipline to take layers off and put them back on. I sometimes found myself doing it every couple of minutes. As boring and time consuming as it was, it prevented me from either sweating or shivering to death.

  I worked out the art of taking layers on and off without even stopping. I would slip one arm out of my rucksack and then pull an arm from my jacket or fleece, before slipping my arm back into the rucksack. I would then repeat it on the other side, before tying whatever I had removed around my waist. I sometimes found myself walking with up to three garments tied around my waist.

  Scarf on. Scarf off. Hat on. Hat off.

  A single rope stretched across the icy path ahead. One by one, we each
clipped our carabiner onto the fixed line. Sheer cliffs of ice towered above us as we worked our way up a thin path. It was like walking up a narrow street. Our crampons gripped into the snow and ice. The path zig-zagged up a shallow gradient which soon began to increase. Steps became bigger and the going was harder. My torch could only make out the immediate area, but it was difficult to work out where we were or what we were heading into.

  It was probably a good thing, as it was about to get a whole lot harder. The rope soon soared up a sheer cliff of ice, perhaps 20 metres high. By now there was a small queue of climbers ahead of us. I had, of course, heard about the mountain queues that built up at these bottlenecks, but this was my first experience of it, along with the realisation that I would soon be one of those climbers holding up everyone behind me.

  I watched as all those around me tut-tutted and criticised the technique or lack of ability of those ahead of us and had the sudden dawning realisation that I was about to be observed myself. It wasn’t hard, or even high, but this little ice wall was about to test my own technical abilities; after all, even with two years of preparation, I was still a relative novice compared to many.

  I clipped my jumar to the rope and dug the toes of my crampons into the ice. With all my strength, I hauled the jumar as high as it would go and then lifted my legs higher. I was terrified of failing to get the crampons into the ice properly and slipping.

  Surprisingly, it wasn’t the fear of falling that worried me but the fear of humiliating myself in front of my peers. These were climbers with whom I would be sharing the mountain for the next couple of weeks.

  ‘Focus,’ I berated myself as I hauled the jumar up the rope. I wasn’t kicking hard enough and I could feel the weakness of my foothold. It wouldn’t be able to hold my weight. Panic surged through me and I struggled to catch my breath. For the first time in the whole journey from Lukla, I lost my breath, and the more I panicked the worse it became.