I had initially planned to be back in the Himalaya in 2000, and during a phone call one of my American clients said he was looking forward to climbing with me because he had heard that I liked to party. I acknowledge that I am not against the odd drink, but I have never been a party animal, and I asked how the client had heard about this. He said he had read it in a book written by the Swedish climber Göran Kropp. I asked him if he could fax me a copy of what Göran had written, which he duly did.
In the book Göran had written:
I enjoyed life at Base Camp. I met old friends and made new ones, plus there were many funny characters. We lived between the Scotsman, Mike Trueman, who belonged to Mal Duff’s expedition, and a group of soldiers from Serbia and Macedonia. Base Camp gossip said the soldiers were war criminals on the run who’d taken refuge here at the end of the world. Or, they’d been declared too crazy to fight – and had been exiled to Mount Everest. In any case, they certainly knew how to party, as did Mike.
He then went on to make bizarre claims that I was a ‘wild, unkempt and slovenly drunkard’.
What Göran had done was mix up my name with another Mike who was our Base Camp manager, Mick Burns, and, to be fair, it was a fairly accurate description of Mick. I looked up ‘libel lawyers’ on the internet and contacted the first one I found. It was a very simple case and by the end of the week the publishers had admitted liability for the mistake and the book had been banned from being sold in the UK. I didn’t even have to go to court – the libel lawyer did all the work and I was awarded £45,000 in damages.
By 2001, when I returned to Everest, I was living in Midhurst in West Sussex with my partner Jacqui, who would later become my wife. Only one year away from my fiftieth birthday, I was in the process of leaving full-time mountaineering and I saw this as a final trip to the Big Hill.
I had agreed in 2001 to work with Gary Guller, who was still attempting to be the first climber with only one arm to climb Everest – a feat he was to achieve two years later. On the way into Base Camp I was also going to be working with a UK TV crew who were making a documentary about events in 1999 – I just hoped it would be a fair and balanced programme without any credence being given to conspiracy theories.
On the route to the mountain we held a moving service at Mike Matthews’ memorial chorten, which is on top of the Duglha Hill at the start of the valley leading up to Base Camp.
I won’t go in to the day-to-day progress of that season, but there were some notable events. The first was the expedition leaders conference, which I attended on 13 April 2001. It should have lasted ten minutes and had it been filmed it would have made a good ‘how not to run a meeting’ video. I just sat there amused as larger and larger egos took the floor, while at the same time the rubbish being spoken was in direct proportion to the increasing noise made by each speaker making themselves heard. To me it very much looked like a new breed of Everest leaders were vying to make their mark, and I drew some comfort from my decision to change direction after this expedition.
There had been no sightings of Mike’s body during the climbing seasons since 1999. As early as Saturday 14 April 2001 we had a very heavy snowfall at Base Camp and it already looked like the very slim chance we had of finding Mike’s body had just got much slimmer. I also had an email that day from lawyers in the UK about the recovery of the body. My stance was simple, I was there as a mountaineer to find the body if I could, so that Mike’s family could find peace. I certainly wasn’t there to investigate a crime – that was a matter for the legal profession.
Although I was the technical leader, Gary had the contracts with the clients, one of whom had over-exaggerated his climbing CV and from day one at Base Camp was clearly out of his depth. The first time we went through the Icefall he arrived at Camp 1 some eight hours after me, which was far too long to be in the Icefall as after 9 a.m. the sun hits the ice and the Icefall becomes increasingly more dangerous. I sacked him on the spot, and even though he appealed to Gary, to whom he had paid his money, I refused to change my mind. He should not have been on the mountain and I only had his best interests at heart.
The weather continued to be strange, and although I managed over a week at Camp 2 acclimatising, we had regular reports during this time that below us Base Camp was being hit by snowstorms.
I had returned to Base Camp when, on 30 April, I heard the news that the legendary Babu Sherpa had been killed at Camp 2 the day before. At 4 p.m. he left his tent at Camp 2 on his own to do some filming and shortly afterwards he fell into a crevasse. His disappearance was discovered some time later, and after a long search his body was discovered just before midnight. His body was brought down later that day and I went over to the tent where he had been laid out to offer my respects by placing a Buddhist scarf on his body and by lighting a candle. He was a national hero and this was shown a week later when tens of thousands attended his funeral in Kathmandu. Babu’s body was flown out of Base Camp on 1 May 2001, my forty-ninth birthday. As the helicopter lifted off I felt an amazing surge of sadness.
One climber who was sharing our permit, but who was not part of our team in 2001, had summited Everest in quick time the year before, but his Sherpa, who I knew well, told me the climber had used drugs to do this and his Sherpa was very worried that he was going to do the same again in 2001. Rumours that some climbers were using drugs had been circulating for some time. It probably should not have been surprising that drugs were being used, given that mountaineering is an endurance sport, but I was horrified. The climber had become particularly unwell when he had returned to the South Col the previous year after the effects of whatever he had used had worn off, and this was another concern for his Sherpa – that he may have to be rescued following further drug usage. Given the nature of the individual, who I had found to be a very unpleasant character to be around, I wasn’t surprised to hear about the drugs, but I also felt very sad that a pastime which I loved had become so tainted.
I planned to go back up to Camp 2 on 9 May, but the weather quickly deteriorated first thing in the morning. We also heard later that there had been two collapses in the Icefall. From high on the mountain we also got reports of heavy snowfall and at last I came to the conclusion that while a summit attempt up the south-east ridge might become feasible, the conditions in the area where Mike’s body was possibly located meant that any search would be far too dangerous – I called the search off. I went to Everest in the hope of finding Mike’s body and to help a family find some peace, but sadly this was not now going to be achieved. I had found in the process that Everest was changing; new egos were emerging and the use of drugs had particularly saddened me – in terms of climbing it was time to bid Everest farewell.