Page 31 - 2020 AMA Winter

you don’t realise the onset of exhaustion, it will quickly get the better of you.
Stood outside my tent at nightfall I was ready to go. Under mandated Government rules, we would have to finish the ascent with a Sherpa partner. Having agreed our departure time, I was incredibly frustrated to find JS still in his sleeping bag, resting. What followed was the worst start possible, stood at 8000m in -30 degrees Celsius, waiting for nearly an hour. Brilliant I thought, that’s the toes cold before we even bloody start!
It is hard to condense the next four hours into a paragraph; it was utter chaos. As we ascended the steep snow, we started encountering climbers distressed and dis- orientated, still descending. With only my headlamp illuminating the route, a harness flashed into view, screaming down the fixed line. How is this possible I thought, who does it belong to and where the heck are they? Then, stumbling through the darkness a figure appeared, delirious and shouting. Without any protection and severely frostbitten, he had been above camp four for nearly 24 hours. He was incredibly lucky because a friend of ours, a Sherpa from another team, cancelled his summit plan and escorted him down. He survived but went on to lose his nose and both hands.
With cloud cover and light snowfall, our summit night was a lonely, demor- alising journey. Without ambient light, the ten-hour push was a mental and physical battle, one step at a time. Your pace at this height is unbelievably slow and what seems like a stone’s throw can take a number of hours. I spent my time cocooned in my down suit picturing the summit, dreaming about the suns warmth and looking forward to getting home. Every time I’ve operated through the night on expeditions, races and at work I always tell myself that it will end, and day will follow. It’s hard to elaborate on the dark hours further, it was blinking freezing and pretty miserable. My cold toes worried me, I’d lost the feeling in the tips early and had to wriggle them repeatedly after every single step.
At just past four we crested the last major snow slope onto the south summit. The last few hundred metres would take another hour or so, but it felt within reach.
It was here, at 8700m that I needed a pee more than I’ve ever done before. Stopping on the plateau I quickly took off my outer mitt, mitt, loosened my harness, unzipped my suit, moved my thermals and ahhhh! What must be a world record for the highest ever wee, also became the longest bloody one. I have never been so concerned about frostbite, especially in that delicate area! Hastily tucking everything away, I turned to the summit for the final push.
Stepping out onto the summit ridge, it was still dark and eerily quiet. Slowly I delicately traversed the razor-sharp edge. On one side, the Western Cwm, 2500m below, on the other Tibet, 3000m below. Internally I was screaming, stare at your feet, don’t look down, concentrate on your footing. You may have noticed that Sherpa JS hasn’t been mentioned in hours, he was way behind and disinter- ested in climbing as a partnership. This isn’t political, or a dig, so I will leave it at that - Sherpas are just human, some are incredible, and some aren’t. My summit push was largely spent alone, something that I was quite content with.
Fuelled by fear and adrenalin, I was soon up and over the Hillary Step. I had made it; I was stood on the summit. The team arriving behind increased my emotion with every embrace. We spent our time on top very simply, taking in the view and leaving photographs of our loved ones behind.
Famously the most dangerous part of a trip, the descent was incredibly difficult on Everest. The illness I had tried to cast
aside had fought through and was biting at my chest. This crackly pneumonia made it physically exhausting to stomp down the mountain and I took a lot longer than I thought or liked to do so. The next 14 hours would prove to be the hardest of my life. I was frustrated, but my body had been haemorrhaging energy, both on the climb and trying to fight the fluid build-up. Here though, the strength of the team prevailed. We descended slowly relying on one another, arriving back at the shelter and warmth of camp two in the early evening. Crawling into the mess tent, we were utterly spent.
Everest had been everything I’d hoped for, an adventurous expedition in a wild place, with incredible people. It was tough, really tough, both physically and morally. Physically, the degradation of six weeks on the mountain really wore me down. Morally, I was frustrated by the lack of care teams had for their people, regardless of their experience levels; it was in this space that I thought we shone, helping whoever we could, including our own. It still saddens me that in the endeavour, of those that attempted to summit, twelve people didn’t return.
Summiting Everest gave me a newfound perspective on life and contentment. I don’t profess to know any more about life than anyone else, I just believe we should chase our dreams, regardless of what they are.
Now, time to start planning the next expedition...
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 31