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  The rest of our campmates were already heading up the slopes on their first ‘rotation’, or circuit, onto the mountain. Just as he had done with our two-year preparation plan for Everest, Kenton had a plan for Base Camp.

  We would have three days to acclimatise in camp. This would give our bodies a chance to get used to the higher, colder air. It would also allow us to shake off any bugs or lurgies that might be lingering since our trek to Base Camp.

  We would then begin a series of rotations onto the mountain, each of increasing height. The first rotation would last for four days and would take us to Camp 1 at 6,000 metres, then on to Camp 2 at 6,500 metres where we would spend a couple of nights before descending to Base Camp.

  We would then rest for a couple of days before beginning our second rotation. This time we would bypass Camp 1 and head straight to Camp 2, where we would rest for a few days before heading to Camp 3 at 7,000 metres and then back to Base Camp.

  Every team has a different routine and plan, and while many do a third rotation, some only do a single rotation. Kenton explained that the key was to ‘touch’ Camp 3. We didn’t stay there overnight on our second rotation. We literally reached it and then turned around for a return to Camp 2 and then Base Camp.

  The rotations require a complex equation of experience and acclimatisation versus exhaustion and wear and tear. In short, the more time you climb the mountain, the more muscle mass you lose and the more exhausted you become.

  In the past, some mountaineering disasters have been put down to sheer exhaustion from too many rotations, too high. Some teams rotate all the way to the South Col, or Camp 4, but while this was once the agreed thinking, modern approaches have changed and Kenton certainly stuck to a less is more model.

  We needed to hit the targets while maintaining enough energy for the final push to the summit.

  Interestingly, Ant and Ed opted for a single rotation before their summit bid. For our expedition, each rotation gave us a chance to get to know each leg of the mountain, from the Cwm to the Khumbu Icefall and the Lhotse Face. The familiarity was settling and reassuring in an otherwise uncertain world. It also allowed us to practise all the climbing skills we would need.

  I had always been nervous of using my crampons on sheer ice faces. It requires ‘toeing’ the blade of the crampon far enough into the ice to take your full weight. That’s 80 kilos in my case. It requires absolute confidence and efficiency. Despite plenty of practice over the years, I was still nervous, but the rotations gave me a chance to get into a routine.

  It also allowed us to practise using the jumar ascending device with various gloves and mitts. What is easy with bare hands, becomes increasingly difficult as you add layers to your hands. The summit mitts for the higher reaches of the mountain were particularly difficult to use. The temptation was always to remove the glove, but this could be fatal. Bare skin on metal can result in instant frostbite and burn; it also leaves the removed glove vulnerable to falling down the mountain.

  One lost glove could be fatal.

  We also used the rotations to deposit climbing gear for later on in the expedition. On the first rotation, we took a sleeping bag, mat, snacks, and extra thermals. Then on the second rotation we took summit suits, extra socks, mitts and gloves. We would ‘depot’ this in a tent at Camp 2, that we hoped wouldn’t blow away. Like everything on Everest, it was a gamble, as other teams lost everything when theirs did blow away.

  Apart from Ant and his team, we had the camp to ourselves. Mark and I decided to explore Base Camp a little. It really is a feat of human engineering, this temporary pop-up city. Home to up to 1,000 climbers, it has yoga studios, a hairdressing salon, an emergency hospital and even a little coffee house among the dozens of camps of varying sizes. Some of them, belonging to the Asian outfitting companies, were home to hundreds including the sherpas.

  The sherpas have lived and worked in the mountains for centuries and they have been an integral and vital part of Everest’s climbing history. They are the real heroes of the mountain. They work tirelessly, often behind the scenes. They are the silent army that help the hundreds of aspiring mountaineers to the summit each year.

  They are the ones responsible for setting up and then dismantling Base Camp each year; our camp alone had taken 20 men a whole week just to flatten out before the tents could all be pitched. They are the ones who help with the cooking and with depositing oxygen on the mountain. They are the ones who carry heavy gear up to Camps 2, 3 and 4. And most importantly, they are the ones who help ‘fix’, or ‘rope’ the mountain. It is this ‘fixed’ rope up the mountain that has attracted so much debate and criticism over the years. It is also, some might argue, the reason there have been so many deaths.

  But the fixed rope is the reason relative novices like me can even entertain the dream of climbing Everest. In the past, the attachment of this rope had been an informal, unstructured affair – the collaborative effort of everyone on the mountain. Each mountaineering company had volunteered their finest sherpa to help with the job.

  There had been problems in past years with the timings of this fixing which had led to the closure of the whole mountain. This year, however, Garrett, the climbing owner of our hosting company Madison Mountaineering, had taken the responsibility both financially and with the physical resources he had at his disposal to rope the mountain himself. A crack team of sherpas spent days scaling with heavy ropes to help ‘fix’ the mountain.

  It is a sad reality that the number of sherpas on the mountain, and the frequency with which they ascend and descend, means they are also the first to be caught up in tragedy. Many sherpas have perished on Everest, which is also cause for controversy. Critics have pointed out that if it weren’t for the wealthy climbers who try to tackle the mountain year upon year, the sherpas wouldn’t be put in harm’s way. It’s the selfishness of climbers, in other words, that causes so much death, these critics argue.

  I had asked our team of fresh-faced, keen sherpas what they thought about the criticism and whether they thought it was well founded.

  ‘We are mountain people, we love the mountains,’ explained Sherpa Ang Thindu. ‘The climbers give us the opportunity to do what we love.’

  Nepal is second only to Bangladesh as the poorest country in Asia, with an average family income of about $500 per year. The average sherpa can earn many thousands of dollars each season, while the coveted role of working with the summiting climbers on the final rotation can earn each accompanying sherpa a bonus of thousands of dollars per client. Of course, the most famous sherpa of all, Sherpa Tenzing, was, with Hillary, the first to summit Everest. Tenzing, long since passed, is still a national hero in Nepal.

  The dangers are obvious, but no one forces them to do it. There is plenty of low-risk work with the 100,000 trekkers and hikers who walk to Base Camp each year, but the comparative low pay and monotony draws plenty of sherpas higher up the mountain.

  There is no doubt there was a period of exploitation when sherpas were underpaid and underinsured for their work, but the watershed came after the avalanche at the icefall in 2014 and the loss of more than a dozen lives.

  There was outrage at the tragedy. How had it happened and who would help their grieving families financially? Things have quite rightly changed since then, and sherpas now have access to all the same equipment, food and facilities as the paying climbers, as well as life insurance and primary health care.

  I loved being with the sherpas. While they often spent time in our mess tent, they preferred to gather in their own mess tent complete with burning incense and a Puja where they would sit and gossip over herbal teas.

  Their tent had a beautiful, spiritual, soothing karma. I used to feel calmer just walking in. There was always a reassuring warmth when you entered. With their constant smiles and their glowing eyes, the Nepalese have a happy way about them. If we Brits are Down, they are defiantly Up. They have a gentleness that is infectious and uplifting.

  I used to spend hours just s
itting. Being, absorbing. It was like recharging my batteries. Our Base Camp was made up of three worlds: the mountain itself, the mess tent which was the world, and the sherpa tent which was Nepal. I would drift and migrate between the three of them depending on my mood.

  The food at Base Camp was pretty incredible. I have no idea how the cook was able to rustle up such amazing fare each day. From freshly baked bread, pastries and pancakes each morning to fresh fillets of beef and even chips for dinner. The important factor that the mess tent catered for was in the variety of foods on offer. Altitude has the effect of stripping you of your appetite. I was never sure from one minute to the next what I craved or what would make me feel sick. But there was always enough of a variety of options that something would look attractive to eat. The winner was usually the Nepalese classic, Dal Bhat curry, which is white rice, lentil soup and a little chicken.

  There is a lot of hanging around in Base Camp, and we would spend much of the day sipping tea and chatting about our lives and our loved ones.

  In the weeks that I would spend at Base Camp, we didn’t socialise a great deal outside of our camp. There is a collective phobia about germs and illness that dominates the whole site. We became obsessive about disinfecting with hand gels. A lurgy could ruin all hopes before we had even begun. Some camps insist on a sort of quarantine, not allowing anyone in or out. The result is a fear of anyone who sneezes or coughs.

  ‘Make sure you sneeze into your elbow, not onto your hand,’ we had been told by Garrett on arrival. ‘And if you have to cough, try and go outside; and if you have a bad tummy, try and quarantine yourself until you’re better.’

  Victoria said it reminded her of the Olympics where athletes are terrified of illness before competition. The fear and anxiety over ill health was overwhelming. A single sneeze or cough was met with suspicious scowls.

  Our loo consisted of a large, blue plastic barrel with some wooden steps up to a wooden loo seat on the top. Once filled, the barrel would be sealed and carried down the mountain to be emptied at a sewage treatment plant.

  This meant that the barrel could only take solid matter, as any liquid would leak during the journey off the mountain. So ablutions had to be carefully planned. You had to pee into a hole in the snow and ice first and then sit down to do a number 2 afterward. It takes a bit of control over muscles, but it didn’t take long to master.

  Incredibly, there was even a shower. Another blue plastic barrel was filled with glacial meltwater and was elevated on a hill above a little tent. The gravity-fed pipe was connected to a simple shower head that was connected to a propane burner which heated the water.

  You had to plan and book a shower way in advance, and it was only ever advisable in the middle of the day when the sun was high in the sky and the water wasn’t frozen, but it was heavenly. I only had two showers the whole time I was there, but both of them were highlights of an otherwise uncomfortable experience.

  To wash clothes meant walking to the little glacial meltwater stream and using a non-toxic biodegradable soap. We would wash the dirty clothes in chilly waters, before hanging them on the washing line to dry. The side of the clothes facing the sun would dry instantly, while the opposite side in the shade would almost instantly freeze solid with ice. You would simply rotate the line and let the ice melt before the clothes would dry.

  Despite the isolation and remoteness of Base Camp, we had access to pretty good mobile and internet services. It was always weather dependent, highly unreliable and expensive, but when it worked it was incredible.

  It meant that I could post updates on my Instagram account and file copy for the various newspapers that were covering our climb. But by far my favourite connection was calling in to my children’s school for a live assembly.

  I sat on a pile of rocks overlooking the Khumbu Icefall and called in to the school in Notting Hill where three hundred 5–12-year-olds were all sitting cross-legged in the hall. Mr Borthwick, Ludo’s head of year, had connected the phone to speakers and my voice reverberated around the room. Among those little children were Ludo and Iona, listening to their Daddy capture the essence of the mountain in a monologue to the children.

  ‘I am living in a little tent on a moving glacier. At night I can hear the groaning, creaking of the ice as it contorts under me, followed by the loud boom of an avalanche as it tumbles off the mountain in a great cloud of rubble and dust. We poo in a bucket and wash our clothes in an icy little stream. We are already at 5,500 metres where the air is thin enough to steal your breath, while all around me are the snowy peaks that soar thousands of metres into the sky. Look up and imagine them disappearing miles into the sky. Well, that is my world. It is a world of whites and greys. There is no colour here, apart from the prayer flags that flutter and flap in the ever-present wind. I have a little tent to myself in which I have my worldly belongings. I have a little mattress and a thick sleeping bag to protect me from the bitter temperatures that freeze my water bottle solid. At night, I pee in a bottle that I then use as a hot water bottle in my sleeping bag. I have some photographs of my family and a big bag of chocolate that I no longer want to eat, as the thought of it makes me sick. Altitude makes you lose your appetite. I never thought I would say no to a Cadbury Twirl.’

  I then opened the assembly to questions: ‘Is it dangerous?’, ‘Are there any animals?’, ‘What will you do when you reach the summit?’

  I loved doing that assembly. I could picture Ludo and Iona sitting among all those little children. I had sent them some videos I had made on my iPhone around camp that they played after I ended the phone call.

  Part of the draw of the climb was to not only inspire my own children, but all children. I tried to imagine their little faces as I told them about avalanches and peeing in bottles.

  A couple of hours later, Marina sent me a short video of 300 screaming children shouting in unison, ‘GOOD LUCK, BEN’, and at the front were Ludo and Iona, confused as to whether they should say Ben or Daddy. It still makes me cry just thinking about it. I must have watched it a hundred times, I could make out Iona mouthing the word ‘Daddy’. It was the most beautiful video I ever received.

  Let me tell you something about emotion. Altitude has a very strange effect on it. Have you ever been on an airplane and found yourself weeping at a relatively unemotional film? There is scientific proof that altitude makes people more emotional and, boy, was I suffering on Everest. The smallest thing could set me off. Over the next six weeks, I would be surprised by how easily the smallest of things could set me off crying. Marina had packed me off with 50 envelopes, inside each of which was a photograph. She had got the children to scribble a message on each one. She had packed enough for one per day. I was always torn between happiness at the memory and the sadness of the separation.

  I had noticed throughout our two years of climbing together, that Kenton was often emotionally fragile. He would often become teary while recounting stories. I think it was partly the skeletons of loss in his cupboard, of those friends he has lost to mountaineering accidents over the years, but I also now know it is the effect of altitude. Victoria, too, had become more emotional. We all felt the effects.

  As comfortable as it was, camping at such altitude still took its toll on the weak, the elderly and the infirm. My father-in-law had astonished all of us with the speed and strength of his trek to Base Camp, but the thin air and the cold were starting to affect him. The altitude had rendered him nauseous and I head-held him as he vomited. Each night I had tucked him into his sleeping bag which I had doubled up with my own high-altitude bag that would eventually come up to Camp 4 with me. Even with two sleeping bags, he was struggling with the freezing night-time temperatures. We had also given him a bottle of oxygen to recharge his weakened body during the night.

  Marina had suggested he stay for the duration of the expedition, but just two nights was enough to realise he was ready to leave.

  We had spent three days at Base Camp and Kenton had planned that we would beg
in our first summit rotation onto the mountain the following day. It seemed an appropriate moment for Jonathan to head home. I organised for a helicopter to take him and some sick sherpas back to Kathmandu.

  It was surprisingly emotional to say goodbye to Jonathan. Despite knowing him for nearly 12 years, I had got to know a very different side of him. For a start, I got to call him by his real name.

  ‘You know, I’m not actually called Jon,’ he had told me after I’d introduced him to some fellow trekkers in a teahouse one day.

  I felt slightly embarrassed that it had taken him 12 years to correct me. I had heard his family call him by both names, but had always known him as Jon. During this journey, I had come to know not Jon, but Jonathan. I had felt a great familial instinct to look after him and to make sure he had the best experience possible. As worried as I often was for his health and wellbeing, it was always an overreaction on my part. He had been a picture of health throughout and had kept everyone’s spirits up with his endless stories.

  Not only had he gone to Charterhouse, the same school as one of the first mountaineers on Everest, George Mallory, but he shared a name with John Hunt, the leader of the famous 1953 expedition that first climbed Everest, who also happened to have lived in the same village as him. Jonathan had become a part of our strange, eclectic team. He had also been an inspiration to all of us. So many people see retirement as the beginning of the end, but he had started his retirement as he wanted to live it: brightly, with ambition and fortitude.