After surviving the incident in the Icefall recounted below, Grylls went on to become – at 23 – the youngest Briton to reach the summit of Everest.
We set off alone. I led the way, feeling still relatively strong. It was wonderful and freeing to be alone here with Mick, climbing together, communicating silently, and working our way up the Icefall, where only the Sherpas had been before.
It was good to have that focus of concentration where your mind is uncluttered and thinks only of the job in hand. Our minds felt sharp as we kicked into the ice and secured ourselves to the next rope. The air felt fresh as it filled our lungs. Your body needed all the oxygen it could get from each breath and it seemed to savour the moment as the air rushed in. It felt good.
The route now steepened and a series of ladders strapped together leant against huge forty-feet vertical ice blocks. The overhangs became bigger and more sinister. We were careful to be precise in what we did, and became acutely aware of our surroundings. We didn’t talk. At 1.45 p.m. we could go no further. The route ahead had collapsed the night before, and a jumble of vast ice blocks lay strewn across the face. The rope shot vertically down below us, drawn as tight as a cable, as it stretched under the weight of the ice around it. I looked at Mick behind and he pointed at his watch. We were at our time limit and needed to turn around.
I was just ahead, and noticed that I was standing in a particularly vulnerable part of the Icefall. I felt suddenly very unsafe and started down towards Mick. Suddenly, 200 metres to my right, I heard a large section of ice break off. The block tumbled, like a dice across a board, down the Icefall. I crouched, just staring. As the snow settled behind it, I got to my feet, then hurried my pace down towards Mick. I wanted to get out of here now, I felt too exposed.
The colour of the ice where we were was dark blue, and pinnacles reached over us, 100 feet high. It seemed unstable and flaky, and was beginning to drip from the heat of the sun. It is at this time, in the mid-afternoon, that the Icefall is most dangerous, as it melts, and parts begin to collapse.
Racing all in one go under these overhangs that cast menacing shadows was impossible; the body wouldn’t allow it. Repeatedly we would be halfway through, then would be forced to stop and recover our breath, still deep within the jaws of the overhang. But there was nothing we could do; the body had to stop and get more oxygen.
Once safely out the other side we would sit and recover and encourage the other to follow quickly. We were new to the Icefall and were trying to learn its tricks.
Soon we were out of the nasty section and back among more familiar territory; ahead we could see the plateau where we had left the Sherpas. We passed through the part that they had been repairing. We could be no more than 100 metres from the Icefall doctors now. I was looking forward to seeing them, and then getting down. We had been in the ice for almost nine hours now and were tired. Little did I know that the day was far from over.
As I came round the corner of a cornice, I could hear the whispered voices of Nima and Pasang nearby. Energy flooded back and I leapt from ice block to ice block down towards them. Ten yards later I needed to stop and rest; they were close now. I smiled at the sound of their hushed and tentative tones.
I unclipped, and clipped into the next rope down, and leant against the ice, recovering. Suddenly the ground just opened up beneath me.
The ice cracked for that transient second, then just collapsed. My legs buckled beneath me, and I was falling. I tumbled down, bouncing against the grey walls of the crevasse that before had been hidden beneath a thin veneer of ice.
The tips of my crampons caught the edge of the crevasse walls and the force threw me across to the other side, smashing my shoulder and arm against the ice. I carried on falling, then suddenly was jerked to a violent halt, as the rope held me firm. The falling ice crashed into my skull, jerking my neck backwards. I lost consciousness for a precious few seconds. I came to, to see the ice falling away below me into the darkness, as my body gently swung round on the end of the rope. It was eerily silent.
Adrenalin soared round my body, and I shook in waves of convulsions. I screamed, but can’t remember what. My voice echoed round the walls. I looked up to the ray of light above, then down to abyss below. Panic overwhelmed me and I clutched frantically for the walls. They were glassy smooth. I swung my ice axe at it madly, but it wouldn’t hold, and my crampons just scraped along the ice. I had nothing to lean against, no momentum to be able to kick them in. Instead the flimsy stabs with my feet hardly even brushed the surface of the ice. I clutched in desperation to the rope above me, and looked up. “Hold, damn you. Hold.”
I grabbed a spare jumar device from my harness. (This is a climbing tool that allows you to ascend a rope but won’t allow you to slip down.) I slapped it on to the rope as added security. Suddenly I felt strong pulls tugging on the rope above. They wouldn’t be able to pull me out without my help. I knew I had to get out of here fast. The rope wasn’t designed for an impact fall like this. It was a miracle that it had held at all, and I knew it could break at any point. The pulls on the rope above gave me the momentum I needed to kick into the walls with my crampons. This time they bit into the ice firmly.
Up I pulled, kicking into the walls, a few feet higher every time. I scrambled up, helped by the momentum from the rope. Near the lip, I managed to smack my axe into the ice and pull myself over. Strong arms grabbed my windsuit and hauled me with great power from the clutches of the crevasse. They dragged me to the side, out of danger, and we all collapsed in a heaving mess. I lay with my face pressed into the snow, eyes closed, and shook with fear.