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It is these variables that make any attempt to summit Everest so vulnerable and volatile. There are a multitude of factors that have to work in your favour before you can even begin. Just as the 100-metre sprinter spends four hard years before he or she even reaches the start line at the Olympics, so we had worked tirelessly and cleared a number of hurdles just to get to the starting point of our journey.
Under moonlight, we gathered outside the mess tent and once again performed our little Puja ceremony. The juniper was already burning in the little fire for Ant and Ed, and I was relieved that they placed another small pile among the flames for us. I picked up a couple of handfuls of rice and threw them towards the mountain before putting a few grains in my pocket for good measure.
Then we began the long trek up towards the Pinnacles, back up through the by now familiar, but always scary Khumbu Icefall. Within seven hours we made it to Camp 2. Shattered and exhausted, I collapsed on the little tent’s floor. Ant and Ed had been holed up here by the powerful winds that had damaged much of the camp, as tents had been stripped and blown away. Kit had been lost and scattered across the valley. Some climbers had watched in horror as their dreams were blown away in front of their very eyes. Many were forced to retreat down the mountain without gear, heading home with their hopes in tatters.
Ed and Ant had climbed through the biblical electric storm and endured such powerful winds that they had been forced to retreat into a tent at Camp 1 until the winds abated slightly. I wondered why they hadn’t simply deferred their summit bid by a day to climb in better, safer conditions. After all, we were now all in the same place, ready for a perfect summit bid in just two days.
The winds still howled and swirled high above us. A conical grey cloud clung to the summit in an otherworldly vision of menace – a necromancer’s cap. Within that cloud was a whirling vortex of hurricane-force winds, the likes of which had killed better mountaineers than us.
Camp 2 was still being buffeted but there was word from the meteorological office that the winds would abate within 12 hours. We would need to acclimatise at Camp 2 for at least another 24 hours before heading higher, to stand any chance of reaching the summit.
Having already spent a day holed up at Camp 2, Ant and Ed decided to soldier on into the eye of the storm. By the time we awoke early the next day, they had gone.
The wind snapped at our tent all day. The predicted break in the weather hadn’t come, but Kenton was sure that things would improve by the time we set off for Camp 3 the following morning. While most people don’t use oxygen until above 7,000 metres at Camp 3, Kenton suggested I use some supplementary oxygen to help me with my fear of the Lhotse Face. I declined the early oxygen. I wanted to embrace and feel the mountain unaided.
Although I had been up to Camp 3 before, the wall still horrified me. I had only ascended a short part of it previously. I knew that I had a further two-thirds of the wall to climb before I even reached the Geneva Spur and Yellow Band ahead of Camp 4 at 8,000 metres. The ascent to Camp 3 was tougher than I remembered. Five weeks on the mountain had taken its toll. I had lost muscle mass from my whole body, but it was my legs in particular that burned with the exertion.
I felt like my energy had been blown away with the wind. The steep wall of ice meant there was nowhere to stop and rest. The most I could do was rest my knees and scrunch up my eyes in pain.
We finally reached Camp 3 and I clambered into the tent with Sherpa Ang Thindu. Broken and exhausted, I could barely think. I lay in the tent as the little stove burned brightly, melting the snow and ice.
Before starting the climb, I had spent 10 days on a remote island in the Arctic Circle with Randi Skaug, a Norwegian explorer and veteran of Everest. ‘Smile,’ had been Randi’s advice to me before I left. ‘Don’t let the mountain strip you of your smile.’
A broad grin broke across my face. I was here. I was at Camp 3 on my final bid to reach the summit. The smile flooded me with happiness and confidence. I felt a wave of contentment. Gone was the exhaustion and the fear, the worry and the anxiety.
I was here. I was really here, looking out of the little tent, perched precariously on a ledge cut into the icy slope. I had made it this far. ‘Look Up,’ I heard a voice in my head. The heavy, menacing clouds had started to clear. A gap had appeared through which the sun projected long tentacles of light, through which the wind-blown snow was illuminated like confetti. It was so beautiful and ethereal. I felt a sense of belonging. They say that mountains have a way of capturing your soul and spirit, that once you are within their bosom you will be forever lost within their towering snowy peaks. I felt such a deep connection. It was like a peaceful resolution, like a battle had ended in a truce. I wasn’t there yet, but it felt empowering nonetheless.
The wind gradually disappeared overnight so that in the morning all was still. Under a bright sun, I connected my oxygen mask and bottle for the first time and we began the slow climb up the upper section of the Lhotse Face. The slope became steeper and more exposed as we reached the higher flanks.
By now, angry clouds had once again started to gather in the skies above us. Powerful gusts of wind streamed across the slopes threatening to blow us off the mountain. A couple of teams had already begun to retreat, but Kenton suggested we hold our nerve and carry on towards Camp 4. We were already more than halfway and returning through the gathering storm would be even more hazardous; the best solution was to carry on upwards in the hope that the promised clear weather would finally arrive.
I had been looking forward to crossing the Geneva Spur, which had sounded so much easier and less scary than the steep climb up the Lhotse Face. How wrong I was. The traverse was agonisingly difficult. With the fresh snow, it was impossible to get a good step in. The result was that I slipped several feet every other step. It slowed me down even more and the biting wind was gathering in speed.
The wind chill was now minus 25 ˚C. Kenton had warned me to cover up the little area of skin left unprotected between my oxygen mask and goggles, but I had failed to do so, and now I could feel the wind stinging the exposed skin. Head down, I battled on into the raging storm. Visibility was down to just 20 metres and at times it felt like walking in a snow globe. White. White. White. I began to feel alone and vulnerable for the first time.
We were heading up to 8,000 metres, well into the death zone where you very quickly mentally and physically decline towards death, which is why it is the stage for so many losses of life, tragedies and disasters on the mountain. I wondered whether Kenton had made the right call. So many other teams with much better climbers than myself had already turned back and yet we were soldiering on. At that altitude, the air pressure is about a third of that at sea-level. Everything becomes strenuous, exhausting.
I started to worry about Ant and Ed. We knew that they had made a summit bid the previous evening. The winds higher up the mountain would be even more intense. It was already noon. If they had successfully summited, then they would be well on their way down heading towards Camp 3. If they were on schedule, they really should pass us at some point before we reached Camp 4.
Onwards we climbed in the powerful wintry conditions of the blizzard. Occasionally, I would be blown off my feet as I struggled to maintain my balance. The final spur before Camp 4 involved a difficult climb up a narrow rocky face. Even in the limited visibility, its exposure to the long drop below was scary. My vertigo began to resurface as I struggled to haul myself up the icy, wind-buffeted face.
It seemed to take an eternity before I finally emerged onto a moonlike landscape of rubble and boulders. It was just a short walk to Camp 4 from here along a comparatively flat route, but like everything on Everest, nothing is easy. Hurricane-force winds now ripped across the plateau.
‘It’s too windy to put any tents up,’ hollered Kenton over the deafening din of the wind as we approached camp. Camp 4, which is also known as the South Col, is arguably as famous as the mountain itself. It has been the scene of so many Everest tales. At 8
,000 metres, it is, to be honest, a pretty wretched place. The ground was littered with destroyed and tattered tents, their pegs and poles protruding from the snow and ice like the stripped trees after a tornado. A dozen tents sat among the detritus and the remains of previous expeditions that were strewn across the site.
In my exhaustion and oxygen-deprived mind, it was difficult to make out what I was seeing. I couldn’t tell if this had been a fully functioning, bustling camp that had been destroyed overnight, or whether this was the build-up of discarded kit from 65 years of summit attempts. I stepped over enamel mugs and plates; there were stoves and spoons, old boots and chocolate bars still in their wrappers. Most of it looked fresh. I could have picked up the packets of noodles and tins of food and eaten them.
I bent my body into the gusting wind. I was desperate to lie down. Over the din of the wind, I spotted a familiar face. It was Ed, Ant’s cameraman. He looked beaten. His face was weathered and gaunt. I was shocked at how thin and pale he looked. I took off my pack and oxygen mask and slowly wandered over to him to congratulate them on their summit.
He looked at me. There was nothing behind his eyes. It was like he was looking through me. I went to give him a hug and he collapsed against my shoulders, his body shaking violently while he sobbed uncontrollably. ‘We can’t find Ant, he’s somewhere on the mountain.’
My stomach lurched. It was 4 pm. They had summited at 7 am and Ed had last seen Ant an hour later before they became separated. Ed had already been back at Camp 4 for nearly four hours. It didn’t add up. I struggled to comprehend what I was hearing. Ant, the Special Forces super-hero, was missing on the mountain and the weather was worsening.
A huge dark, ominous cloud had built up to the east of the mountain. The sky looked menacing and angry. My breathing became short. I needed oxygen. I slowly walked to my rucksack and sat next to it in the ice amid the wreckage of previous expeditions. It looked like an airplane had crashed and its contents had been strewn across the ice field.
I pulled the mask to my face and tried to compute what was happening. We couldn’t put up a tent, the storm was worsening, and Ant was missing. It was like stepping into my worst Everest nightmare. I thought back to all the unfolding tragedies that had happened here on this very spot, and now I was in the midst of my own.
I sat there. Dazed. Numb. The wind was building again. We had no shelter and I didn’t have the strength to descend. Even if we did, I knew it would take many hours to get back down to Camp 3 which wouldn’t do us much good anyway. We were at a crossroads and didn’t know where any of the roads ended. I was cold, hungry, tired and thirsty, but all I could think about was Ant. Missing. Somewhere on the summit of Everest. What had happened? I had seen both Ant and Ed climbing together. They were equally matched. In some ways, they were the perfect partnership. Ed’s superior climbing was slightly handicapped by the burden of his camera, which meant he and Ant had an equal pace.
I could understand a 30-minute difference in their descent times, but four hours seemed incomprehensible. In my numb stupor, Kenton and the sherpas had battled against the wind to erect one of the tents. Ed, Kenton and I clambered inside. The fabric of the door flap snapped violently in the ever-increasing wind.
I lay in the tent and sobbed. I had never in my life felt so helpless and vulnerable. Suddenly, the threat of Everest seemed very real. I felt a surge of panic as I watched the sides of the tent warp alarmingly. I had seen tents withstand some pretty major storms, but never on an exposed col at 8,000 metres. One tiny tear in the tent fabric and the wind would rip it to shreds. One loose guy-line or one sun-damaged section of the tent and it could be stripped from its poles like the dozens of other tents that littered the camp.
I peered out at the looming black cloud. My mind went as dark and foggy as the horizon. My breathing became short. I grabbed my mask again and took a few deep breaths.
‘Pull yourself together,’ I berated myself. I had to control my mind which was beginning to wander. I was losing control. Panic was welling up at the wretchedness of the situation.
I looked at Mark and Kenton. They were both staring up at the top of the tent. Violent gusts of wind were pressing the tent down towards our faces, the pressure bowing the poles. If I hadn’t had the experience of life-threatening storms in Antarctica, I would have convinced myself that the tents couldn’t possibly withstand such a battering.
How had Ed and Ant separated? Did they mean to split up? Where was Ant? Was he with a sherpa? I had so many questions. I could hear Ed’s voice booming over the sound of the wind as he zipped down our tent and crouched down, his face crusted in ice.
He explained that Ant was with two sherpas, and that although they all had radios he couldn’t get through to any of them. Kenton jumped to attention and became very methodical. He pulled out the booster antenna and attached it to our radio. ‘Kenton to Ant, Kenton to Ant, do you copy?’ He repeated it several times. ‘Kenton to Ant, if you can hear this, press your button once.’ Still no reply.
Garrett Madison was way down the mountain at Camp 2 with his climbing group, but he was already aware of a problem on the summit. His voice crackled over the radio. ‘Can you confirm if everyone is back at Camp 4, over?’
‘Ant and two sherpas, total three persons, are unaccounted for, over,’ replied Kenton.
There was a short pause. ‘To confirm, Ant and two sherpas are at Camp 4, that’s great news, over.’
‘No, Ant and two sherpas are still on the mountain. I repeat, Ant and two sherpas are not at Camp 4, over.’
The words hung around like a bad smell. Tears welled up in my eyes again as reality began to set in. They had now been missing for almost eight hours.
‘It was chaos up there,’ explained Ed. ‘I saw a sherpa fall off the cornice, there was a Chinese girl, eyes wide like a f***ing rabbit, unable to move.’
‘A sherpa fall off the cornice,’ I repeated in my head, ‘a sherpa fall off the cornice.’ It took a while for me to comprehend what he was telling me. To fall off the cornice surely meant death. Had people died up there?
I buried my face in my sleeping bag. This was a living nightmare. What had gone wrong? Where had this storm come from? We had been assured of relatively benign weather in the forecast. Of course, there had been plenty of times when weather forecasts were wrong in the past, but things had changed. Everest weather prediction is now big business. Climbers rely on it for their ascents.
But here we were riding out a massive storm in the death zone with what now sounded like 10 climbers missing and presumed dead on the mountain. I felt sick. What had happened to them? Were they lost? Had they slipped? My imagination ran wild once again as images from the many tragic Everest stories raced through my mind. I pictured those climbers from that ill-fated 1996 expedition in their huddle just a short distance from Camp 4. So close and yet so far.
Marina – Summit fever
While risk can be calculated for the expedition overall, my biggest fear was that Ben might succumb to something called ‘summit fever’. Infamous in the mountaineering world, summit fever is when climbers are consumed by a mad, all-consuming desire to keep on going regardless of whether that quest will end in death. Peter Hillary, son of Edmund Hillary, described seeing this in the British climber, Alison Hargreaves while climbing K2, Everest’s slightly smaller but even more deadly sister, in 1995. In the final push, Hillary had noticed sinister weather fronts building as darkness was falling and made the seemingly obvious decision to return to camp while Hargreaves and her team made the disastrous decision to continue. ‘They had all become blinkered by the summit. They had become obsessed by that, but I had become obsessed by the huge cloud banks that were building in the north.’ Hargreaves and seven other climbers perished that night in the storm that they could all clearly see building.
Summit fever was what killed Rob Hall, whose death from exposure on the south summit of Everest in 1996 was one of the stories that haunted me while Ben was climbing. He’d insiste
d that his great friend and client, Doug Hansen continue to the summit rather than turn around and admit defeat, in spite of storm clouds brewing and the fact that it was far later in the day than was safe. This was Hansen’s final attempt; he’d given everything to Everest, all his money and all his energy. If he didn’t make it up this time, he never would. No one can understand Rob’s reasoning, it was uncharacteristic of his great and much-admired expertise. His reputation belied his sense and was built on making decisions that were often tough to make but ended up being the right ones.
Ben had promised me that he wouldn’t succumb to summit fever; he had too much to lose, he insisted. But then so did Rob. The transcripts of his final phone call to his heavily pregnant wife, as he lay dying on the side of the mountain he knew so well, still bring tears to my eyes, with his final words, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.’
I kept on telling myself that Ben was too sensible to let anything like this happen. It was this I clutched to as I thought of him high up on that perilous mountain.
But in the dark days, when I didn’t know where he was and why it was taking so long, my mind played cruel tricks. In spite of his resolve, I had a creeping unease that summit fever was a lot easier to succumb to than I’d initially thought. Hot on the heels of Ant Middleton, a film crew in tow, the Daily Telegraph poised to publish a summit shot and 150,000 Instagram followers waiting with bated breath, I realised with horror that turning around, admitting defeat, however obvious the decision, would be nigh on impossible.
I peered out of the tent again. The wind was raging, whipping up the thin layer of snow cover. The angry cloud now enveloped the top of the mountain. We could see the route ahead, marked with a single rope on a near-vertical white slope. There was no sign of any climbers as far as the eye could see. There were just a few hours of daylight left.
I sat in the tent with my face buried in my sleeping bag. My oxygen mask strapped to my face. The tent snapped in the ever-increasing wind as we waited for news from the mountain.