21

Epic

Finally, progress.

After a full month of paperwork and politicking, the right move was to press ahead with Phase Three as best I could, first by climbing Manaslu, and then by bouncing into Tibet shortly afterwards for Cho Oyu. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Tibetan authorities were apparently warming to the idea of granting me an all-important Shishapangma permit.

Seeing that nothing had been fully confirmed, I was hesitant to put too much faith in the news, so rather than taking my foot off the gas, I maintained a small campaign of public pressure, encouraging friends and social media followers to bombard both governments with emails and letters that pleaded with them to open the mountain. Until that moment arrived, I focused my attention on Manaslu, where I would need to take extra care given I was leading a party of clients. A Nepalese 8,000-er with a heavy kill rate, it was ranked highly on the world’s deadliest list.

Stressing about alarming statistics of that kind wasn’t my job, but once the first rotation cycles up to Camp 2 had started, it became hard not to feel a little overwhelmed, emotionally at least. I was so close to finishing the mission, but at the same time everything seemed off-kilter.

I’d become weighed down by the realities of Mum’s health. The strain of completing the last mountains in the time and style I’d promised was a burden, too. And then there were the financial implications of my career choices – no immediate pension, no security. Not that I was going to let on to anyone about the true depth of my hurt. Whenever the other climbers at Manaslu asked about the workload, or mentioned some of the adventures I’d experienced so far, I held back from discussing the mental obstacles. Once again, I chose not to acknowledge my pain.

That attitude, while undeniably pressurised, would stand me in good stead. After a week or so of being at Manaslu, a rumour moved through the Base Camp: apparently Cho Oyu was closing down for the season earlier than expected and, for some reason, the Chinese authorities had decided everybody should evacuate the mountain by 1 October. I checked my calendar. Shit! There were only two weeks remaining in September and I was being left with very little choice but to interrupt my Manaslu expedition.

I did some calculations. It was probably within my timeframe to climb Cho Oyu and then return to Manaslu for the summit window with my clients. There was no way I wanted to let them down – I’d given them my word that I’d be climbing with them and I wasn’t going to break the promise. The effort would be bloody huge, though; it increased the pressure and I had very little margin for error, so accompanied by Gesman, I packed up and travelled to Tibet, via helicopter and road. After a series of border checks, I was allowed in for what had suddenly become a panicked expedition.

On the ground, I worked tirelessly. My first job was to figure out how to make it to the top of Cho Oyu as quickly as possible, and I learned that the line-fixing team had reached only as high as Camp 2. Offering to chip in with setting the ropes at the higher camps, we then performed a load carry to Camp 1, dragging our oxygen cylinders, tent and rope with us, before returning to base where the real work could begin.

Because of the short window in which to climb Cho Oyu, a number of expeditions were gathering at the mountain and among them was my friend Mingma Sherpa, a mountaineer with fantastic connections, who was planning to visit the Base Camp with several high-ranking officials from the China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA). He was also planning to climb Cho Oyu around the same time that we were. I guessed he might be able to grease the wheels for my permit application on Shishapangma, and between meetings on weather systems, trailblazing efforts and workloads, I moved between tents, trying to find him, only to discover that the news of his arrival had been a little off. I eventually learned that Mingma Sherpa hadn’t yet arrived, but I left a message anyway, hoping to talk if he became available.

Elsewhere I sensed a weird mood gathering among some of the mountaineers. Jealousy was an emotion that occasionally built between expedition guiding companies. The market was quite small and competition for clients was fierce and cut-throat, especially on some of the tougher, more remote mountains. When a new presence joined the scene, their arrival sometimes created resentment among the existing organisations, especially if they were considered to be a serious player, with experienced personnel.

Thanks to my mission, Elite Himalayan Adventures – and with it the likes of Mingma, Gesman, Geljen, Dawa and the others – had begun to flash upon everyone’s radar. Our reputation was set to increase even further if I managed to climb the final three 8,000-ers on my list. We were on the verge of becoming one of the scene’s top dogs for sure, but not everyone was happy about our achievements. As I prepared myself for the summit push one afternoon, a friend from another guiding company arrived at my tent with some troubling gossip.

‘Nims, the Nepalese climbing community is so proud of what you are achieving,’ he said. ‘Your name is out there and it’s beautiful you’re highlighting our capabilities . . .’

I knew the guy well, he was a nice bloke, but he didn’t have to flatter me. Something bad was coming. I could tell.

My mate carried on. ‘But be careful, because some people are very envious of what is happening. They talk. And it takes only one push for you to disappear from the mountain for good.’

That was it. The warning.

Somebody had made a comment, either as a joke, or as part of a more sinister plan to end me, and my friend was relaying the information. I wouldn’t describe myself as a paranoid person, but I wasn’t naive either. People had fatal accidents at high altitude all the time, even highly experienced mountaineers. If a stranger or two from the line-fixing party, rival guides, wanted to push Gesman and myself from the mountain while we weren’t looking, what was to stop them from saying we’d slipped and fallen? The alibi was perfectly plausible. There would be very little evidence to support any suspicions it had been deliberate. The conspiracy was particularly watertight if a group working together executed the plan, rather than a couple of rogue individuals.

Emotionally, the news didn’t dent me. So, a couple of people had become jealous and were shooting their mouths off around the camp. Who really cared? But it was a hard reminder that not everyone could be trusted. In situations where faith between climbers was vital – such as a crew fixing lines in sketchy conditions – that was troubling. I asked my friend to act as an extra pair of eyes and ears for me during the expedition and when our work later began from Camp 2, I scooped up a long loop of rope and trailblazed for four hundred metres in one push.

Boom! Boom! Boom! I strode forward. I wasn’t hoping to prove a point or wear the others out. But if people were feeling a little sore about the successes of Elite Himalayan Adventures, it felt important to show them why our reputation was strengthening. With Gesman, I headed to the top on 23 September. Our hard graft and speed would do the talking for us.

* * *

Having ticked Cho Oyu off the list unscathed, there was no time to celebrate. Returning to Manaslu as quickly as possible was imperative. My weather window was closing and so I packed up and left. If the mission as a whole was a marathon, I’d found myself at the tricky 22-mile mark, where the remaining distance seemed as daunting as anything that had gone before, but only because the diplomatic hurdles were so huge. I knew that once I’d climbed Manaslu, around four days after scaling Cho Oyu, I’d have ticked off thirteen of the fourteen 8,000-ers, but Shishapangma still seemed so out of reach, despite my lobbying efforts.

Could I finish what I’d started?

So many people were watching now. Many of them had initially dismissed my chances of making it this far. A lot of expert climbers had doubted I’d even last through Pakistan, so my efforts throughout 2019, even without Shishapangma, could still be regarded as considerable. The work of the Nepalese climbers alongside me had also gathered plenty of attention, so in that respect, the work had already been a success. I had to do only three things from then on.

The first required me to finish Manaslu and the final mountain, hopefully Shishapangma, possibly Dhaulagiri and Everest, before bringing Mum and Dad together under the same roof once more as the second. The third was to make the world pay attention to some of the damage we’d been inflicting upon the environment. And with the eyes of the climbing community upon me, I decided that Manaslu wasn’t simply a peak to be crossed off the list; it felt like a platform.

I climbed to the very top and made my point.

‘Today is the 27th of September,’ I said, as Gesman filmed me. ‘Here I am on the summit of Manaslu. We’re not going to talk about Project Possible, but what I am going to talk about from the summit [is the environment]. For the last decade, it’s pretty obvious there has been a huge, significant change in terms of global warming. There is a huge change in the melting of the ice. The Khumbu Icefall on Everest: every day the glacier is melting, it’s getting thinner, and smaller and smaller. The earth is our home. We should be more serious about it, more cautious, more focused about how we look after our planet. At the end of the day, if this one doesn’t exist, we don’t exist.’

Nothing about my speech was really considered in advance. The words came from the heart, but they were the purest reflection of what I felt for the world. As far as I was concerned, the biggest challenge faced by humankind in the coming decade or two had to be the problem of climate change, but fixing it required a course correction of massive proportions. All of us were insignificant specks on a huge planet, but in truth, the actions of an individual carried the potential to overcome the most insurmountable of problems.

If I could climb the Death Zone mountains in seven months – give or take the final peak – then what was to stop another individual from finding, and climbing, their personal Everest in the field of environmental science, alternative energy, or climate action? My efforts had proved that everyone had the potential to go way beyond what was considered humanly achievable. It was meant to stand as a glimmer of hope. Now I wanted others to use it for their own challenges and projects in a show of positive action. If my work created a spark for change, however small, I’d be happy.

* * *

And then Shishapangma was on.

The why and when of how it came to be were a dizzying blur of phone calls, emails and meetings, which are tricky to recall in full, but in the end it took just one effort to tip the balance in my favour. Mingma Sherpa. The man I’d so nearly liaised with at Cho Oyu’s base camp had learned of my efforts and was impressed by my keenness to explore every available avenue to the final peak. In Tibet and Nepal, humility went a long way.

Seeing as I’d previously been rejected by the mountain-climbing authorities such as the Chinese Mountaineering Association (CMA), and they were yet to officially backtrack on their decision, it would have been in my rights to sulk and complain. Instead, I’d sought to reconnect with them via Mingma Sherpa, in a humble way, because I was a firm believer in the equality of friendship: I reckoned that everyone should be treated the same unless they behaved in a manner that suggested otherwise. When people took the piss out of me, I put them back in their shoes; if somebody showed kindness, I returned the gesture and everybody had the chance for redemption. Holding grudges against figures of authority because of a group decision didn’t fit with my ideals.

The news of my approved permit first filtered back to me having returned to Manaslu’s base camp. A well-connected climber claimed to have heard that my application to climb Shishapangma was in the bag. ‘Nimsdai, it’s happening,’ he said, excitedly. The other lads from the team began talking about a celebration beer, but I struggled to share in their enthusiasm. I couldn’t shake the fear that this was a false dawn.

‘I need to see the paperwork before I get too excited,’ I thought.

I didn’t have to wait too long. The CTMA got in touch; they wanted to chat and the conversation was positive. Having taken into account the scale of my ambitious project, it was decided to open up Shishapangma for a brief time so I could finish the mission. I puffed out a sigh of relief. After all the stressing, a finish line was in sight.

There was one catch, however. Mingma Sherpa explained that in order to access the mountain, he would have to travel with me to Base Camp – it was a condition from the CTMA. At first, I felt unsure. I worried it might be an attempt to muscle in on my hard work, or perhaps a way for the CTMA to grab a slice of the limelight for themselves. In the end, I parked my concerns and remembered the potentially positive impact of a successfully executed mission.

If Mingma Sherpa coming with us to Base Camp was the difference between completing the fourteen mountains and missing out at the very end, then I was happy to have an extra body in the camp. He would, at the very least, provide some additional manpower for the team, though in hindsight, I needn’t have fretted too much about his involvement. Mingma Sherpa quickly proved himself an asset. He acted as a drinking buddy, an expedition resource, and a fixer for some of the more complicated aspects of the project. It turned out that Mingma Sherpa was about the most connected individual in Tibet.

Despite his arrival, pressure still arrived from all angles. Sponsors called, wanting to know why I hadn’t posted more photographs to my social media accounts, or attached a certain hashtag. My wisdom tooth was pounding yet again. But the most pressing issue seemed to be the mountain’s officious liaison manager. As we checked the weather and figured out the best date to climb, he stepped in with an ominous warning.

‘The mountain is too dangerous,’ he said. ‘The weather is so bad.’

He was right; the snow was coming down hard, but I’d climbed in worse conditions. At first, I tried to make a joke. ‘No worries, brother,’ I said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘I am the guru of risk assessment!’

The liaison manager shook his head. ‘Sorry, but no,’ he said. ‘If anything happens to you, it will be my responsibility. And there’s an avalanche problem.’

‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘This dude is proving to be hard work.’

In the end, I bent him with sheer force. I explained how I’d fixed the lines at K2 when nobody else had been willing to climb. There was a mention of my efforts for the G200E in 2017, when the entire project had hung in the balance. Added to that, I had conducted nineteen successful 8,000-metre expeditions in total; thirteen of them had been undertaken in 2019 and nobody had died on the mountain under my leadership, let alone lost any fingers or toes.

As I explained my position, it felt hard to keep my frustrations under control, but I knew that to shout was to lose, and to relinquish control of my emotions at such a pivotal time might prove costly further down the line. Eventually, the liaison officer backed down; the final hurdle was in sight. On the eve of the summit push, I sat at the foot of Shishapangma and gathered my thoughts.

‘Nims, take it easy,’ I said to myself. ‘You are here now; you only have to stay alive. Don’t take any unnecessary risks unless you have to. Control everything. Stay calm; stay cool. The mission isn’t done unless you come back home alive.’

I looked to Shishapangma’s peak. Cloud had swept in, an ominous rumble of thunder was echoing through the valley below, and as I watched, it was impossible not to be awed by the size and scale of what lay ahead. No matter the weather raging around it, a mountain like Shishapangma always stayed solid. It never buckled or broke, and instead seemed impervious to the harsh elements swirling around its mass. I wanted to be like that.

I knew it was useless to judge Shishapangma’s strengths and weaknesses at that point, because the giant peak ahead wasn’t going to judge me. Instead there was a rush of inspiration. If I could channel the mountain’s spirit, becoming bulletproof to pain, stress and fear, then nothing could stop me. Before I rested up for the night, I asked Shishapangma a final question, or two.

OK, will you let me do this?

Can I? Or can I not?

The answer blew in with the snow.

* * *

The weather on the way up was horrific. It was as if the mountain had hoped to deny me the final climb, or at least discover if I was truly worthy of finishing off the job. Winds of 90 kilometres per hour blasted Mingma David, Geljen, and myself as we trudged up the mountain, through the lower camps, fixing the lines and anchors along the way, but nothing could hold me back, though an avalanche came bloody close. We had been working our way to Camp 1 and for a few moments, as the team rested, I took the drone from my rucksack. Climbing Shishapangma was undeniably a big deal. As an ending to the mission it promised to be emotional and I hoped to capture as much of the final expedition on film as possible. When the winds settled down a little, I sent the drone into the air, filming the team as they stepped up the mountain in a short line.

Unexpectedly, the ground seemed to tremble. I was probably around five or ten minutes behind the others, and when I looked up, I saw a slab of snow had cracked below their position on the line. Slowly it was shearing away from the mountain. What had triggered the avalanche was unclear, but as it jolted and began its collapse down Shishapangma’s side, I became an accidental passenger. In effect, I was surfing the snow and there was no point in fighting its power.

I looked up, allowing the mountain gods to decide my fate as I glided across the slope, the ground breaking up around me. In an instant, the powder had swallowed my body whole and then puked me up, and as I prepared to be pulled under and smothered for good, the world came to a standstill. I looked down. The avalanche was billowing away below me, dissipating on the rocks and puffing up a white mushroom cloud. But the snow I’d been standing on had somehow come to a stop. The deities had spared my life.

‘I can’t believe it, brother,’ I laughed. ‘You’ve come all this way and nearly died on the last expedition.’

The drone stayed in the bag from then on.

Ever since my fall in Pakistan, my confidence had returned in increments. After wobbling at the top of Gasherbrum I, surviving the night lower down the mountain in grisly conditions had helped. Fixing the last of the lines on K2, when nearly two hundred other climbers had given up on the idea, was a psychological boost too. The pain of scaling Broad Peak while feeling physically destroyed only underlined my fortitude when handling sketchy circumstances.

There was no doubt I’d suffered a mental blow on Nanga Parbat, but I’d managed to heal and grow from it, and as I worked my way back to the line where Mingma and Geljen were waiting, I felt surprised that the emotional aftershocks of yet another near-death experience were not impacting upon me. But by that point, having climbed nearly fourteen 8,000-ers in such a short time, my crampons seemed fused to my body; my ice axe was an extra limb. By that stage in the mission, I often felt a little exposed whenever I was separated from those pieces of kit, as I had done on the very rare occasions I’d been without my weapon in a war.

For the push to Shishapangma’s summit, we took a new line to the top, feeling confident enough to climb alpine-style. The gradient was fairly mellow and the weather seemed so much calmer as we moved past Camp 2. When the clouds cleared around us, the winds seemed to die away and everything became peaceful. I was calm, too. The last half of the climb on Shishapangma turned into a slow and steady trek, and though there was little in the way of technical climbing required, emotionally the effort felt heavy as I stepped to the peak. It was done.

Everything I had achieved up until that moment started to dawn on me. I’d silenced the doubters by climbing the fourteen highest mountains in the world in six months and six days. I’d shown what was achievable with imagination and a determined spirit, while shining a light on some of the challenges being faced by the planet and its people.

I’d made the impossible possible.

In the distance I could see Everest, the place where it all began, and the feelings I’d bottled up for so long rushed at me at once: pride, happiness and love. I thought of Suchi, and my friends and family. Most of all I thought of Mum and Dad. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

In a way, the mission had been a process of discovery – not only on the mountains I’d been exploring, but personally too. By climbing the fourteen 8,000-ers, I was trying to figure out who the hell I was; I wanted to know how far in the distance my physical and emotional limits had been set.

I’d long known that I possessed an unusual drive. When I was a kid at school, I worked hard to be the best runner in my district. Later, having realised it was regarded as the honourable thing to become a Gurkha soldier, I put everything into joining their ranks. But then came the realisation that simply serving wasn’t enough and I had to go even higher. Once I learned about the work carried out by the British Special Forces, and the gruelling effort required when joining their ranks, I didn’t rest until I’d been accepted.

Where that desire actually came from, I’m not sure, but it was apparent from an early age. As a small boy in Chitwan, I’d turn over rocks for hours at a time in a stream, in search of crabs and prawns, and I wouldn’t quit until I’d peeked under every single one, no matter the time or effort required to finish the job. Fast-forward thirty years and nothing much had changed. My spirit was still the same, only the parameters had altered, and rather than exploring the local river, I was climbing across the Death Zone. With that achievement almost nailed, I was already starting to imagine past it.

I wanted more. But where could I go next?

Standing on the peak of Shishapangma, I took in the view, feeling the bitter cold on my face. Then I called home and told Mum of what I’d achieved, and where I planned to go next.

‘I’ve done it!’ I shouted into the phone. ‘And I’m OK.’

The line was crackling, but I could just make out her laughter.

‘Get home safe, son,’ she said. ‘I love you.’