The headache that I had hoped I had left behind at camp two was with me again—but stronger now.
I swallowed an aspirin without letting anyone see. For the first time I didn’t want the others to think I might be suffering. Not at this decision-point stage.
The tent we were in was better suited to one man with a minimum of kit, rather than three bodies, booted and spurred against the coldest, windiest place on earth.
Such close quarters require a huge degree of tolerance when you are tired and thirsty, with a splitting headache—either huddled over a stove melting ice, or cramped against the cold ice wall next to the tent.
It was at this sort of time that having good friends with you really mattered.
Good friends who you can rely on—the sort of people who smile when it is grim.
If ever friendships were to be tested and forged, it was now.
Quietly, we got on and did all the necessary chores that living at such extreme altitude entails.
Once your outer boots were off you didn’t leave the tent. Several lives had been lost because climbers had gone outside their tents wearing only their inner boots.
One small, altitude-induced slip on the blue ice had been their last conscious act before finding themselves hurtling down the five-thousand-foot glassy face to their deaths.
Instead, you peed in your pee bottle, which you then held tight against your chest for warmth.
And as for pooing—always a nightmare—that involved half an hour of getting everyone to move over so you could get redressed before putting your crampons and boots back on to venture outside.
Then you would squat, butt out from the face, hold on to a sling and ice screw, pull your trousers down, lean out, and aim.
Oh, and make sure there were no other climbers coming up from below.
When dawn finally arrived and I maneuvered myself from the tent, the fresh crisp air filled my nostrils. The heavy snow and driving wind of the previous day had been replaced by this beautiful stillness.
I just stared in awe as I waited for the others to get ready. I felt like I was looking down on half the world.
Those few minutes that I sat there, as Mick and Neil got ready, I experienced a stillness that I did not think existed.
Time seemed to stand still, and I did not want the moment to end.
The ice face dropped away before me to the vast valley of white beneath, and the whole range of Himalayan peaks stretched away in the distance to our west.
This really was a land apart.
We were now almost two vertical miles above base camp. Mountains that had once towered above us were now level or below. What a sight—what a privilege—to enjoy and soak in!
But today we would undo all that slog once more, as we descended back down to lower altitudes again.
As I looked back down the valley, I registered the severity of the face we had climbed up in the wind and snow only twelve hours earlier. I rechecked my harness as I sat there.
Soon we were ready and we started down.
The rope ran through my rappelling device and buzzed as I picked up speed. It was intoxicating bouncing down the ice face. My figure of eight rappelling device was warm to the touch as the rope raced through it.
This was the mountain at her best.
I tried not to think of the thousands of feet of sweat and toil that were flying through my hands. I did not want to remind myself that I would have to do it again on the way up to camp four and the summit.
The prospect hurt too much.
For now, I was content to have survived camp three; to have proved that my body could cope above twenty-four thousand feet, and to be on my way back to base in good weather.
Back at camp two the tension fell away. We were ecstatic.
The next day we left for base camp, crossing the crevasses with renewed confidence.
Our final acclimatization climb was over.
We were now receiving daily very accurate weather reports from the Bracknell Weather Centre in the UK. These gave us the most advanced precision forecast available anywhere in the world. The meteorologists were able to determine wind strengths to within five knots accuracy at every thousand feet of altitude.
Our lives would depend on these forecasts back up the mountain.
Each morning, the entire team would crowd eagerly around the laptop to see what the skies were bringing—but it did not look good.
Those early signs of the monsoon arriving in the Himalayas, the time when the strong winds over Everest’s summit begin to rise, didn’t seem to be coming.
All we could do was wait.
Our tents were very much now home to us at base camp. We had all our letters and little reminders from our families.
I had a seashell I had taken from a beach on the Isle of Wight, in which Shara had written my favorite verse—one I had depended on so much through the military.
“Be sure of this, that I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.” Matthew 28:20.
I reread it every night at base camp before I went to sleep.
There was no shame in needing any help up here.