10

The Normality of the Extreme

After hours and hours of heavy work, having trailblazed through kilometre after kilometre of knee-deep snow, the Project Possible team walked into Camp 2. We’d tackled steep ribs and buttresses, negotiating a series of crevasses along the way. Bloody hell, the effort had been grinding, but with the fixed lines in place, we were someway closer to being primed for our eventual summit push – whenever that might happen. We still had so much to climb, but despite the fatigue, everybody seemed to be in high spirits, mainly because the strong winds had died down and the mountain felt much calmer. The sun was drooping; the group danced and joked, while the smell of fried chicken and rice wafted over the camp.

Then there was a crack, like thunder, from somewhere above us.

Oh no . . .

The all-too-familiar rush of adrenaline kicked in, a sensory call-to-action I’d previously only associated with incoming gunfire, or an exploding IED, but this time the adversary was bigger and potentially more destructive. Avalanche! And it was a big one. A large chunk of Annapurna’s north face had sheared away and an eruption of white was billowing down the mountain at an unstoppable speed. For a split second I seemed unable to react, paralysed, as the magnitude of what was about to happen shorted my nervous system. Everything in the avalanche’s path was in danger of being crushed. And we were very much in the avalanche’s path. There was no way of escaping it.

Move!

As I looked around for a point of cover, I realised that Mingma and Sonam were rigid too, frozen by fear. The scene wasn’t unlike one of those CCTV clips that were sometimes shown in the aftermath of a tsunami, when shocked passers-by stare at the oncoming tidal wave on the horizon, seemingly incapable of running away. By the time their fight-or-flight mechanisms have kicked in, it’s usually too late – they’re unable to escape. Now an equally terrifying fate was powering towards us.

‘Fuck, we’re going to go!’ I shouted. ‘Everybody into the shelters!’

I’d often been told that it was always best to seek some form of protection in the event of an avalanche, even something as flimsy as a tent would do. Well, it was better than nothing. Acting on instinct, I ran for the nearest one and dived inside. Sonam and Mingma bundled in behind me, zipping up the door. Readying ourselves for impact, we huddled together, shoulder-to-shoulder, the avalanche’s roar growing ever louder as the ground trembled around us. Escaping the chaos seemed unlikely. Sensing we might have to cut our way quickly out of the tent once we’d been smothered, I shouted instructions to the others.

‘Mingma, get your knife. Sonam, back yourself against the tent poles and brace.’

But Sonam looked broken. He was mumbling a prayer to the mountain gods. I felt another shiver of fear. Fuck, this is bad.

There was a moment of wishful thinking. I hope that prayer works, Sonam. And then god-knows how much snow smashed over us at full force, hammering and tearing at the tent. For several seconds the fabric and fibreglass seemed to buck and wrench without breaking. I expected to be swept down the mountain at any second, all of us tumbling over one another, until suddenly, unexpectedly, everything became still again. There was a silence; then I heard the sound of panicked breathing. We’d survived.

‘Sonam, are you cool?’ I asked, pulling him closer, shaking him gently.

He nodded, mumbling a thank-you to whichever one of the benevolent deities had spared our lives. Around us, the mountain felt eerily calm and when I left the tent to survey the wreckage of Camp 2, checking on our kit and equipment, it was clear we’d been lucky. Only the tail-end of what was a violent event had caught us and nobody was hurt, nothing had been destroyed, but the mood was very uneasy among the local Sherpas, in place to assist with our line-fixing efforts. As far as they were concerned, our Puja from a few days back hadn’t worked and their gods were in a foul mood.

With the last of the daylight fading, they trudged back to Base Camp fearfully and our goal of fixing the lines to Camps 3 and 4 was immediately more daunting than before, but at least we were still alive. Picking apart our options in the darkness, I sensed the usual route, the one first climbed by Herzog, was now too sketchy. Every footfall was an avalanche waiting to happen and the entire team could be sucked to their deaths if one of us slipped, or triggered another collapse.

People are going to blame me if something goes wrong during the summit push up there, or if it later turns out to be unsafe . . . There must be an alternative line.

I stared up at Annapurna’s peak and asked the question yet again.

OK, can I? Or can I not?

Then I joined the others for dinner, hoping the mountain might behave more mercifully from then on.

* * *

I woke with the sunrise – and a plan.

As part of the expedition inventory I’d packed a few pieces of camera equipment, and for a long while I’d wanted to film a lot of Project Possible as we moved from mountain to mountain. My aim was to film as much as I could while I was climbing, directing the other guys in my team for the camera, and when that wasn’t possible, I’d have one of them film me. Even though I had next to no movie-making experience, I was confident I could capture plenty of exciting material. Eventually, I hoped to show my expeditions to the world by making a documentary, or maybe presenting a live theatre talk or two – but I also wanted to silence any doubters that would inevitably pop up once the operation was done. Whenever somebody executed an effort of the kind we were attempting, it was all too easy for trolls to pick apart the results, unless those results were backed up with an exhaustive collection of footage.

Even then it was tricky. Some people still reckoned the 1969 moon landings were faked; the internet was swamped with all sorts of conspiracy theories and ‘evidence’, so I certainly wasn’t going to expose myself to accusations of exaggeration, or falsifying my achievements. I intended to make it home with as much film as I could and brought along two dudes to help with the editing and social media output – Sagar and Alit Gurung. They had shown so much faith in Project Possible that the pair of them had resigned from their jobs in the UK to join us.

During my fund-raising drive, I’d even approached a number of production companies about buying up the rights to the content. I floated the idea of a camera crew joining us for the entire mission, but nobody seemed that keen and the overwhelming attitude was negative. The general consensus? This man doesn’t have funding for his own project. He’s not going to finish. So why should we find a budget for filming him? Like so many people I encountered in those stressful months prior to reaching Annapurna, there was a reluctance to believe that what I was attempting was humanly possible.

‘Well, if they’re not interested, I’ll do it myself,’ I thought.

Before starting our climb from Base Camp on day one, I’d distributed head cams to everyone in the team. There was a handheld digital camera on standby, too. But the most exciting tool in my filming inventory was a drone and having checked it out at home, I’d been struck by its tactical potential. Of course, it would be great for filming aerial shots as we climbed while capturing the impressive scale of our surroundings – we’d look like ants against the vast expanses of rock and ice. But it was also a handy reconnaissance tool and as we planned our best route up Annapurna’s avalanche-ravaged terrain, I was struck by an idea.

In the same way that the British military used drones to improve the tactical understanding of a battle space, so I’d be able to fly one across Annapurna, working out the safest route towards Camp 3. With Mingma and Sonam, we hovered the drone over a series of icy ridges, assessing the captured footage on a phone for a new line up. And there it was!

A long vertical ridge that ran for a few hundred metres directly above us had come into view. Dusted in snow, from a distance it resembled the bridge of a sharp, angular nose and I recognised it as the notorious Dutch Rib, a knife-edge of powder and ice, so-called because it had originally been scaled in 1977 by a team of climbers from Holland, plus nine Sherpas. Very few people had attempted it since, probably because the line looked so daunting, but by the looks of things, there was just enough width on the nose’s bridge to advance upwards.

The work would be challenging, mainly because anyone scaling it was bound to be very exposed, and if a climber slipped on the compacted rock and ice there would be nothing to break their long, and painful, ride to the bottom.

That wasn’t the only risk, though. As I scanned the drone footage, I realised that to get across to the Dutch Rib, we’d need to first trailblaze through a no-man’s-land of snow – another avalanche landing zone. But once we were on the ridge we’d be protected from the fallout to any seracs that might collapse higher up the mountain, and my guess was that the Dutch Rib was so thin and angled that any rushing debris from above would fall away on either side before it reached us. Our only problem was that the climb was set to be a beast.

When I returned to Base Camp later that day and announced my plan to the waiting expeditions, I was told that the Dutch Rib was a no-go zone. One Sherpa, an Annapurna guide with years of experience, instantly knocked back the idea. ‘Nobody’s climbed that route for years,’ he said. ‘It’s too hard.’

The reaction unsettled me a little bit.

‘Fuck, maybe this is going to be a massive risk?’ I thought. ‘But what other option do I have?’

My military training had instilled a sense of inner positivity, where it was often my job to find creative solutions to sketchy problems without whinging or making bullshit excuses. I assessed the Dutch Rib drone footage once more, and decided to put that theory into practice, figuring, ‘What the hell?’ Then I pressed ahead regardless. Besides, I wasn’t telling anyone they had to follow my plan. As the leader of the line-fixing team, I was merely giving them an option and it was up to them whether they took it, or not. But days later, having edged my way slowly up the ridge with Geljen – my legs buckling as we dug into the ice, while fixing lines and holding firm – I wondered if my Sherpa friend hadn’t been right after all.

After a full day on the Dutch Rib, the work had been rough and with the light fading I found myself caught between Camps 2 and 3. Moving up in the darkness on such a precarious slope seemed risky, but heading all the way down to Camp 2 to reset felt like a cop out – we’d only have to repeat the same process the next day without making any significant progress. In order to push higher, we had to stay put for the night, and so we fixed our tent to the nose’s bridge with around thirty anchors, Geljen and myself resting above a sheer drop that would have meant certain death had either one of us rolled over during our sleep.

That wasn’t our most pressing issue, though. When we’d decided to set out for Camp 3 that morning, I’d originally expected us to make it all the way there, and back to Camp 2, in one push. At the time it hadn’t made sense to pack any overnight equipment, such as sleeping bags, or food; it felt smarter to travel light and so our meals and Jetboil stove were stuck at Camp 2. Worse, a supply run wasn’t scheduled to reach us until the following day. Pitched on the Dutch Rib’s exposed surface, we soon began to freeze. Both of us were starving hungry and rapidly dehydrating, and Project Possible was now at risk.

I realised that by not being able to make my way up to Camp 3, there was every chance the mission could be abandoned. Without immediate progress, we’d find ourselves stuck in a perpetual loop for days, where returning to Camp 2 and climbing to the Dutch Rib’s midway point, over and over, would eventually force us to give up. I was also pinned to my position by pride – for both the Gurkhas and the British military elite – and I had no right to dent either reputation by turning back and losing face.

I radioed everybody on the mountain for assistance.

‘Hey guys, we can’t go any further than this,’ I explained. ‘If we come back down to Camp 2 now, we cannot progress, and we won’t be able to summit at all, so I’m going to stay here and commit. But . . . we don’t have food. Can someone bring up a stove and some noodles.’

My calls went unanswered. But I still wasn’t in the mood for retreating. Besides, I was used to periods of discomfort in war, where I’d had to function in conflict with nothing in the way of food and very little water.

‘We’ll hold tight here,’ I told Geljen, defiantly.

But as we settled into our uncomfortable surroundings, fearful that a strong blast of wind might rip us away from the ridgeline, the radio crackled. A voice then cut through the static.

‘Nimsdai, if nobody brings food and water from Camp 2, I’ll bring you some from Base Camp.’

Who’s this?

‘It’s Gesman.’

Gesman?

Geljen smiled. Gesman had arrived on Mingma’s recommendation as the least qualified mountaineer of the team. Despite having climbed only a few Death Zone peaks, he was now offering to scale the Dutch Rib with supplies, when other considerably more experienced Annapurna guides and climbers had ignored my calls for assistance. That was a huge response.

‘No, brother,’ I said. ‘We’re good, but thank you. We can hang on.’

I felt happy. Gesman’s offer was both reassuring and inspiring. I instantly understood that if the least qualified climber on Project Possible could be as fearless and as dedicated in the face of adversity as the most experienced, then I’d found my new Special Forces. We were already the extreme altitude elite.

As far as I was concerned, Selection was done.

* * *

Having eventually progressed along the Dutch Rib and set the fixed lines to Camp 3, we returned to Base, readying the expedition team and accompanying Sherpas for our summit push. A plan was set: I would lead the way with Mingma, climbing a full day ahead of our paying clients, who would be steered through the camps by Sonam, all of them following our deep footfalls in the snow. The fixing team intended to push to Camp 2 and sleep overnight. A day later, we’d scale the Dutch Rib, resting at Camp 3 before setting the lines to Camp 4, from where we could expect to spend a full day trailblazing through the deep snow while anchoring lines to the mountain.

If everything went according to plan, our expedition team, plus the other parties climbing Annapurna that day, would probably meet us at Camp 4 shortly after the last of the lines had been set. Then we’d be able to climb to the very top as a group.

This was the first summit push of the mission; I was ready for the effort, but fixing lines meant that I had to travel with a lot of weight on my back. I generally carried around twenty or thirty kilos in my rucksack, though a lot of this weight was rope. I’d also be trailblazing through deep snow, so the exertion was set to be huge, but as we moved upwards and fixed the lines, the load became lighter, until I was usually left with around ten kilos. I also carried very little in the way of food or water.

I never took energy gels, supplements or snacks; everything I ate on the mountain depended on my mood and I often worked off egg-fried rice and dried chicken. I couldn’t be dealing with pre-packed meals – it was too awkward. When it came to hydration, I didn’t need a lot to get me through a summit push and I often conserved my water for other climbers. As a soldier, my body had become accustomed to working with very little, but on the mountain I always kept a one-litre Thermos with me. My trick was to pack a cup with snow, melting it down with a small splash of hot water from my flask. That was usually enough to get me through a summit push.

All of this kit had the potential to slow me down, but not by much, and after two days of solid work, we were able to rest at Camp 4 for a few hours as the other parties caught up to our position. I was tired, but there was plenty of energy left in the tank and as I kicked back in my tent, I was suddenly struck with an idea. I wanted to climb without oxygen. To scale the 8,000-ers without gas had long been considered the purest form of mountaineering.

When Reinhold Messner and his climbing partner, Peter Habeler, topped the world’s highest peak in 1978 without oxygen, it was rightly hailed as an incredible achievement, so much so that a number of people made claims that it hadn’t happened at all. In their opinion there was no way a climber could have topped the world’s highest peak without oxygen. To silence the doubters, Messner repeated the feat, this time climbing from the Tibetan side of Everest, alone. By all accounts, his ascent was agonising, but at least he managed it.

In 2016, I had made a promise to myself: that I was going to climb the 8,000-ers with oxygen, without fail. That first trip to Everest had shown me how essential a supplemental air supply was when helping a stricken individual on the mountain, and there was every chance I might encounter at least one other incapacitated mountaineer while working through Project Possible. I’d never be able to forgive myself if I couldn’t then administer assistance. But there were other responsibilities to consider, namely the fact I was about to help lead a team of clients to the top. Had one of them fallen seriously ill, or been injured, my chances of getting that climber back to Base Camp alive would have been severely reduced without oxygen.

And yet, despite all of this, I felt tempted to take the personal risk. (I still had oxygen with me should anyone else require it). With hindsight, I reckon the high altitude had fucked with my mind. I wasn’t thinking straight and the lack of oxygen in my blood had caused me to lean into my competitive spirit. The same drive that had once inspired me to take those middle-of-the-night training runs as a teenager in Chitwan, or those gruelling load carries to Maidstone while I prepared for UK Special Forces Selection, was now goading me into taking a risk on Annapurna, and all because my reputation had been challenged by one other climber.

It had started a week or so earlier. As I rested between line-fixing efforts, Stephen – a European mountaineer from another expedition team – had made a comment or two about my use of air on the 8,000-metre peaks. He was a seriously fit guy, an ultra-marathon runner, and proud of it. ‘With this body I can climb the big mountains without oxygen,’ he announced when we were first introduced.

‘That’s cool, brother,’ I said. ‘We all have our own reasons for climbing the way we do.’

I soon forgot the comment, but it quickly became apparent that Stephen wasn’t a team player. He hadn’t offered to help with the line-fixing work like the Sherpa guides from his expedition. Resting, drinking tea and chatting was more his vibe. A few days later, as I partied with Mingma, Sonam, Geljen and Gesman, Stephen walked by once more. Trying to unify the different groups on the mountain, I shouted out to him, offering him a bottle of beer. But Stephen turned it down.

‘Nah, man, I’m climbing a mountain,’ he said, stiffly.

‘Yeah, we’re all climbing the mountain.’

‘But you’re using oxygen.’

There it was – the challenge. A big deal was being made by the mountain-climbing community about the Project Possible team’s use of air at high altitude and it had annoyed me a little bit.

‘Yeah, but not until after Camp 4,’ I said. ‘And you haven’t had to trailblaze up to Camp 3 like us, so calm your ego down.’

Nothing more was said about it, but once the summit push began, my competitive streak took over. There had been a brief catch-up period when all the mountaineers had congregated at Camp 3. My team was about to spend the day fixing lines to Camp 4. Everybody else was taking a rest and by the looks of it, a lot of them were in dire need of it, especially Stephen. Hours earlier, I’d watched as his expedition team, small dots on the landscape below, fought hard to scale the Dutch Rib and when they eventually staggered towards our shelters, Stephen had vomited blood. His body was blowing out; I felt sorry for him.

Had he been a client of mine, one of us would have been forced to take him down for medical treatment. There’s every chance we’d have used oxygen to maximise Stephen’s chances of a swift recovery. But the dude wasn’t quitting; he announced he was still fit enough to climb.

Twenty-four hours later, at Camp 4, I was struck with my idea. One climb, no oxygen: the critics silenced.

The odds were certainly in my favour. This was our first expedition on the schedule. I was feeling strong and because Annapurna’s promontory was only just in the Death Zone at 8,091 metres, the thought of climbing without air was very appealing. But when I mentioned my plan to Mingma in our tent, he shook his head. He worried the mission might lose its momentum if I wasn’t able to power forward at my usual speed.

‘We need your aggression, Nimsdai,’ he said.

I tried using reason. ‘I’ve been leading from the front the whole expedition. I know I can climb any mountain without oxygen.’

The chances of him backing down, I knew, were slim, but I pressed ahead anyway. ‘Mate, just for the sake of these fucking people and their opinions, let me climb without air.’

He laughed. ‘No, Nimsdai!’

Mingma’s opinion was important to me. His uncle, Dorje, was regarded as a totemic figure in Nepalese climbing and had shared his knowledge with the mountaineers in his family. Mingma had since become a hugely knowledgeable guide in his own right and a Sherpa of the Year in-the-making – the highest accolade anyone could expect to receive in what was a very noble profession.

I knew Mingma was right, too, and his strong opinion forced me to recall an ideal I’d once held as a kid hoping to make it into the Gurkhas: You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Then there was the promise I’d made to myself about always carrying gas on the 8,000-ers. Breaking it might lead to bad habits. Bad habits might result in failure.

And so I backed down.

I didn’t have the time to lose focus. In order to function effectively during combat, it was important to shut out any pain such as the heat, discomfort, hunger, dehydration and emotional upset, and I applied the same attitude to Annapurna. I understood the final push to the top would be brutally hard, even with air. There was around 1,000 metres to go and some of the route required me to trailblaze through another blanket of waist-high snow, though the slope was gentle enough for us not to need fixed lines. I’d also have to scale a steep climb through an ice cliff before negotiating a final section of tricky, slippery rock shortly before the peak. Once the team had departed from Camp 4 at 9 p.m., I realised that most of my route fixing team were now guiding their private clients, one-on-one, and that the work to come would be hard going and intense. By the looks of things, only Mingma and myself were available to power through the snow. Realising that we didn’t have enough manpower, I pulled my guides in close.

‘Guys, everyone does ten minutes of trailblazing,’ I said. ‘Twenty minutes if you can. Whatever you have in the tank, use it. When the person leading the team gets too tired, he should stop and move to the side, waiting to join the end of the line. The second guy then becomes point man for his ten minutes or so. This will keep our momentum going.’

With a clear operational brief in place, we set the rope and trailblazed most of the route, each of us taking turns to lead the way, one by one, until Annapurna’s peak was finally in sight. We understood there were other expeditions following up behind and they were relying on us to lead them to the top, but I was confident of nailing the job.

Since Dhaulagiri, I’d come to realise that my comfort zone generally opened up at around 8,000 metres – where other people began to fail, I came alive. I owned the ground; the self-doubt and fear that sometimes dragged an individual down tended to pass me by. I rarely asked, ‘Can I really do this?’ And if ever the tiniest sliver of doubt seeped into my self-belief, I remembered my new God: proving to the world that imagination was the greatest power of all.

During previous expeditions, the buzz of achievement usually kicked in a few metres before the peak, in those minutes when every climber sensed that the hardest yards were done, and the final steps were within reach. But at the top of Annapurna, weirdly, there was no rush, no feeling of overwhelming emotion. Well, apart from the realisation I was fortunate to be alive – our close call with that powerful avalanche had been a little too close. But any mountaineer taking on a climb as high-risk as Annapurna needed a heavy slice of luck to match the other attributes required above 8,000 metres – strength, resilience, a sense of team and an optimistic mindset. The environment had been uncontrollable and savage, but at 3.30 p.m., we were perched above it.

I took a little while to soak in the view below, the jagged teeth of the Himalayas, swaddled in cloud, laid out ahead of us. From my position, Dhaulagiri was clearly visible. Dana was somewhere in its shadow – I’d succeeded on home ground.

Maybe the charge of euphoria I’d previously experienced on other expeditions was being dampened by the massive challenges that seemed scattered around me on the landscape. I knew my workload was going to be huge.

And how the hell was I going to get all that money?

But the first peak on the list was done, and I remained unbroken. I recorded a quick thank-you message to my sponsors at home and made another appeal for funding. There was no harm in asking – and I was bloody desperate.

The date was 23 April 2019. A clock was ticking and the world was watching. My race was on.