14

Summit Fever

Finally, the jokes and sarcastic comments about my ambitions were beginning to quieten a little. My expeditions were gathering more and more attention on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, while an increasing number of potential investors were coming forward, but I couldn’t afford to let my guard down. Though Everest, Lhotse and Makalu felt like home territory because of my world-record climb a year previously, none of them were to be taken lightly. Every 8,000-er was a challenge and it annoyed me that people had recently become a little dismissive of the world’s tallest mountain.

No, Everest wasn’t as dangerous as Annapurna, Kanchenjunga or K2. And yes, a number of not-so-skilled climbers had made it to the top, thanks to the work of the excellent Sherpas assisting them on the way, but it wasn’t an easy ride. If the weather was clear and calm, then it was possible to reach the peak without too much stress, but if conditions deteriorated at the higher camps and the shit hit the fan? Well, then the chances of survival were slashed dramatically. People died.

The mountain was a death trap, right from the very beginning. Expedition parties had been ripped apart at Base Camp as they rested in their tents and avalanches often roared down the mountain, devastating everything along the way, as those tragedies in 2014 and 2015 had proved. Once the climbing started, the Khumbu Icefall, which divided Base Camp from Camp 1, was equally treacherous and had become notorious for its fracturing seracs that twitched and moved as the glacier shifted by three or four feet a day.

It was beautiful in there, like an alien planet from a sci-fi film, but its shimmering terrain was deceptive. A number of climbers had been killed or seriously injured having stood in the path of an ice chunk as it sheared away from the mountain, and though I loved the risk of climbing through it, the Icefall was a sketchy place to be in – it was impossible not to feel a little exposed. And that’s before a mountaineer had negotiated the challenges associated with the peak, such as the Hillary Step, and then the exhausting climb back down to safety. Everest was no joke.

Yet, despite these obvious risks, the mountain was still getting a bad reputation. By the time I attempted it again during Project Possible, people had long been complaining that it was nothing more than a playground for super-rich climbers with very little experience of operating on the high mountains. The old guard of mountaineers, those people that had scaled Everest thirty or forty years ago, argued that many individuals leant too heavily on their guides and Sherpas, and were undeserving of making it to the top.

Other critics pointed to the Nepalese government and moaned about the charges associated with climbing Everest. Mountain permits were too low, they said, and anyone was able buy their way in, regardless of skill; although the cost of gaining access was still beyond the reach of most people. A permit to climb the mountain was priced at around $10,000 in 2019 and that was before a mountaineer had bought any kit and provisions, booked flights and accommodation, or hired their guide for the expedition.

Regardless of the expenses involved, Everest had become overcrowded. The ledge leading up to the Hillary Step could sometimes resemble a city crossing as dozens and dozens of people hovered on the fixed lines, either waiting for their moment of glory on the highest point on earth, or attempting another step down as they tried to descend safely. This had become a frustrating experience for everyone. By waiting for other climbers to finish ahead of them, some mountaineers were being denied their shot at reaching the summit. Or worse, they were being delayed for so long that their descent felt increasingly precarious as the daylight faded. With all the toing and froing, a volatile mood at the peak was not uncommon.

My attitude towards the mountaineering politics swirling around Everest was to tune out any negativity as best I could. As far as I was concerned, it was still the highest point on the planet and needed to be respected, though some of the grumblings were legitimate. Overcrowding was definitely a big problem, but there were ways around it. If the line towards the summit was congested a badass climber could always pick another plan of attack, and there were plenty of old routes to be explored or reopened.

I’d noticed that whenever people failed, if they were unable to top the summit or were forced back by fatigue or altitude sickness, they had a tendency to train their excuses upon the other people climbing in that window – their guides, fellow mountaineers, or even the individuals responsible for managing Everest. That drove me crazy. In life I was always encouraged to admit to a mistake. If ever I fucked up on a military operation, I would mention it to my teammates. By shining a light on my failings, I was able to improve upon them and I would never use the excuse that a mountain was impossible to climb because of traffic. I’d plan and find another route to the top.

A bigger issue, as far as I was concerned, was the Himalayas’ deteriorating environmental health. In 2015, the head of Nepal’s mountaineering association, Ang Tshering, announced that the human waste being left behind by expeditions had the potential to become a major health hazard; given the mountain had become so popular, the spreading of disease was a serious concern. Just as worrying were the impacts of climate change, which had become increasingly obvious and unsettling. Nepal was a third-world country and while it was developing, it was happening slowly, so it was still without a lot of the resources enjoyed by far wealthier countries.

The Himalayas were its greatest asset. They brought in huge amounts of money in tourist revenue. The spirit within its people, who are humble and kind, certainly added to its appeal as well, but as a community they were suffering from the effects of global warming. It didn’t take a meteorologist to spot the considerably lower levels of snowfall. The mountains now thawed much earlier in the season too, and the increased melt caused floods and mudslides throughout the region.

When I summited Ama Dablam in 2014 – it was possible to scoop up the snow from Camp 1, before melting it down for drinking and cooking. Bottled water wasn’t necessary. But when I returned in 2018, the snow was nowhere to be seen and we were forced to carry gallons and gallons to the higher camps, adding kilos to the weight on our backs. I also noticed similar changes when climbing Dhaulagiri in 2019, and when I looked to the peak, the glacier had almost faded away. The sight was heartbreaking.

A year on, as I readied myself for the final three mountains of Phase One, I realised Project Possible now presented me with the platform to speak out on climate change, a position I’d hoped to reach when I first announced my idea. People were now watching my progress. I needed to alert them about the damage that was being inflicted around the world by posting one or two comments on social media, each one outlining my fears.

At that point, though, it was as if I’d been screaming into the dark. While my social media numbers were growing and I’d gathered followers in the tens of thousands, they weren’t yet astronomical numbers – the hundreds of thousands that would show up during the mission’s latter stages were a few months off. Despite these figures, however, I was still proving that with a little imagination and some serious effort, people were capable of taking on tasks the world had deemed beyond imaginable.

I’d climbed my first mountain in 2012 and not seven years later, I was on my way to working through all fourteen 8,000-ers in seven months. I’d proven to everybody that it was never too late to make a massive change in life. And if I could pull off such a project and show the world that a positive mindset was all that was required for far-reaching results, what would that say about the potential for environmental efforts around the planet? As people responded to my comments on climate change, I felt humbled, but I also became emboldened.

Among the voices I was interacting with online were kids, teenagers, and young adults on the verge of making their first big life decisions, such as who to vote for, or what career choices to make. Some of them were individuals considering their first mountain climb – the type of people emotionally invested in the future of the Himalayas and the environment. I wanted to show them exactly what was happening to the world at high altitude, the good and the bad.

I’d already decided that my efforts should begin close to home. I insisted on our missions being as environmentally friendly as possible; I was the expedition leader, so I had it in my power to instigate change. Everything we took to the mountain, we brought back down with us, including oxygen cylinders, which seemed to litter peaks across the Himalayas. When it came to briefing my clients before climbs, I always made my position very clear.

‘Yeah, you come here for the love of the nature, but if you don’t respect it, you’ve got no place in my expedition,’ I told them. ‘If you don’t follow the rules, you can take your money and you can leave.’ Overall, most people on my climbs turned up with a passion for the environment. Getting them to follow my protocols wasn’t too tricky.

The impact of climate change, as I often told people, was universal. For too long we’ve all been guilty of regarding our houses as the only home we have, but that’s simply not true. We weren’t built for hiding indoors; we’re outdoor animals, and the wider environment around our towns and cities is where we should be investing our money and attention, because when the force of nature hits, nothing can stop it. I’ve seen Nepalese villages ripped apart by mudslides and flooding. From a distance, the carnage looked like the aftermath of a bombing raid.

Throughout 2018, California was ravaged by a series of wildfires that scorched nearly two million acres of land; the same environmental catastrophe struck Australia a year later. What was it going to take for people to pay attention? The biggest problem facing humanity at this moment in history is our inability to think long-term. Ours is an overcrowded planet, and we worry about the days, weeks and months ahead, but when it comes to the contemplation of our environmental health in twenty or thirty years’ time, we tend to switch off. Maybe the process is too scary to contemplate; it is certainly sobering.

I realised that the best way to draw attention to our global health throughout Project Possible was to shout about it from the mountaintops. And then an opportunity to highlight some of the conflicts between nature and man arrived much sooner than expected.

* * *

I was keen to break my speed world record for climbing Everest, Lhotse and Makalu. In 2017, I’d gone from the peak of Everest to Lhotse in ten hours and fifteen minutes. By the end of my trip with the G200E team, all three mountains had been climbed in five days. But on my way to Everest Base Camp for the Project Possible expedition, I decided that it was probably within my capabilities to cut that time by 50 per cent. I believed in my mental and physical strengths and while those mountains were beasts, they were ones I’d become fairly familiar with, though I respected their dangers.

Accompanied by Lakpa Dendi – one of the guides that had helped out the Gurkhas during the G200E in 2017 – I pushed off a little later on Everest than some of the other expeditions climbing on 22 May. As we moved over the Hillary Step, dawn cracking the sky above us, I noticed the flash of cameras going off and the flicker of head torches ahead. There were a few groups in front and they were moving slowly, tired with the effort of having climbed so far, but we soon stepped past them to hit the summit. The view, when we got there after three hours of climbing from Camp 4, was mindbending.

The morning sun was rising above the Himalayas and as one or two other climbers joined us on the top, everybody seemed energised again; the guys who had looked spent on the line up only moments earlier were immediately full of life. It was as if the new sun had delivered us all a fresh burst of purpose and optimism, even in the freezing cold. If only I could soak up the light all day. Then I felt somebody tugging at my summit suit. It was Lakpa.

‘Brother, we should go,’ he said. ‘If you want to break that record, we need to turn around now.’

I nodded, grabbing a few photographs before stepping off the peak, but a few metres on, I was greeted with a chaotic scene. A long line was snaking around the thin crest that led away from the Hillary Step and at first there looked to be a few dozen people edging towards us. Then I realised the crowd was bigger, much bigger, and there were probably around one hundred and fifty climbers squeezed onto the fixed line, with the group moving slowly in both directions. We tried to edge down the rope carefully, checking in with each person we passed, but I quickly sensed a growing mood of panic.

Some people, I could see, were angry. They had invested a lot of money, time and effort to scale Everest and their progress had been stopped dead, like traffic behind a motorway pile-up. I feared that some climbers were taking serious risks with their lives, plus the safety of those around them, by not making the call to descend before their oxygen had become perilously low.

Others were worried at what was fast becoming a dangerous situation: I overheard one bloke complaining that his toes and fingers were starting to become frostbitten, and the ledge leading away from the Hillary Step was an intimidating place for any expedition party to cling on to, especially if they were being exposed to the kind of high winds that often whipped across the mountain above the high camps. Anyone moving along the ridge was presented with dangers on either side: there was a 2,400-metre drop to the left and a 3,000-metre drop to the right. A climber falling from that height wasn’t coming back.

The people I worried for the most were those climbers lost in the chaos; they were in fear and emotionally spiralling. I’d often thought that anxiety at high altitude wasn’t too dissimilar to a drowning event. In the middle of the ocean, somebody who thinks they’re about to go under will grab at anything, or anyone, for buoyancy, even their loved ones. They thrash and panic, often yanking the nearest person down with them in a desperate attempt to survive. Mental freak-outs above 8,000 metres weren’t that dissimilar, and people flapped and made reckless decisions, which often impacted the safety of the climbers around them.

With summit fever and anxiety growing among the different groups, I felt the mood on Everest was approaching boiling point. People were arguing around me; somebody was about to freak out, or act recklessly. Because several lives had been lost on Everest already that year, I recognised something drastic needed to happen if the body count wasn’t to increase further.

I climbed to a small rock ledge that overlooked the queue. The scene below me was ugly and when I made some early stabs at guiding people as they moved up and down the line, very few people in the scrum seemed to be listening. Both lanes of traffic had claimed right of way and neither side wanted to give ground. Collisions were taking place every couple of minutes; a succession of frantic overtaking manoeuvres threatened to wobble somebody from the safety rope at any moment. Every now and then, the quicker climbers that were descending shouted aggressively at the slower individuals ahead.

‘It takes you half an hour to cover five metres,’ one climber yelled to a dude ahead of him who was clearly struggling at the top of the line. ‘If you let us pass, everything will be clear.’ I noticed a Sherpa, conscious of the anarchy, begging his clients to turn around, fearful for their health. Some agreed reluctantly. Others ignored him. Everything was madness.

I had to present authority.

With nobody else stepping up to help, I started organising the congestion, though the biggest problem with adopting such a bold position was the mountain-climbing community: it was packed with alpha males and females, exactly the type of people that turned up in the Special Forces. I’d learned during service that the best way to work with personalities of that kind was to pretend to be bigger and better than all of them. But I also knew that in life-or-death situations, where the management of interconnected groups and individuals was the key to success, the people involved tended to listen if control was exerted. Nobody wanted to die.

At first, I ushered through the climbers that had been waiting the longest. In many ways, my role wasn’t too dissimilar to that of a traffic policeman, but instead of cars I was waving through mountaineers. Some of them were so fatigued, they seemed to have forgotten the basic skills required for high-altitude climbing. Altitude sickness had them gripped. On other occasions, I’d check in with the Sherpas who were guiding clients that were visibly struggling, to see if they could continue. If they couldn’t, I suggested the guides should send them down.

In the end, I remained below the Hillary Step for close to two hours. With every assessment, I knew any chance of breaking my own world record was diminishing, but once the logjam had cleared, around 90 per cent of the crowd had either summited with enough time to turn around, or were already winding their way along the ridge and down to Camp 4. It was time to make the same move and heading across to Lhotse was now my primary objective.

If I wanted to break my world record for climbing Everest and Lhotse, I estimated I was at least three hours behind schedule and yet I wasn’t overly concerned. If I could shave an hour or so off my previous time, I’d still have fulfilled my promise, though fatigue would undoubtedly come into play. Lhotse was a steep incline and pulling myself along the fixed line was a challenge – for long periods my quads and calves burned as I put one foot in front of the other. To prevent my muscles from burning out, I switched techniques, sidestepping up the mountain, like a crab, so that my efforts were focused on the iliotibial bands in my legs.

The climb across Lhotse was lined by both beauty and brutality. The couloir, a narrow gully that led to the peak, was lined with black rocks that sparkled in the sunlight. Ahead was the massive presence of Everest, standing tall, dressed in cloud, a line of people still visible as they descended towards Camp 4. But there were also a number of unpleasant reminders that life at high altitude could be harsh and unforgiving. I passed at least three corpses along the way, the most unsettling being a dude in a bright yellow summit suit, his jaw set askew in a rictus grin. Apparently, he’d been stuck there for years.

When I topped out and turned around in a time of ten hours and fifteen minutes, matching my time from 2017, I used the image as a cue to switch on. That might be you if you don’t take care, brother. There was still plenty of hard work to be done.

I was able to climb Makalu quickly, helicoptering to Base Camp and then resting up for a few hours before moving to the peak with Geljen. The lines had been fixed, the snow covering was shallow and we moved fast and light, in eighteen hours, reaching the summit on 24 May. Phase One of the mission had been executed as promised. And I’d broken one of the two promised world records: I’d climbed from the summit of Everest to the summits of Lhotse and then Makalu in forty-eight hours and thirty minutes, smashing my time from 2017.

Annoyingly, my hold-up on Everest had stopped me from improving upon the time taken from the summit of Everest to the summit of Lhotse. But the bigger objective was still in play. Phase One of Project Possible had been smashed in thirty-one days and I buzzed at the effort.

Could anybody doubt me now?