As we carried on down into the valley, the wind dropped, and it turned into a beautiful day. The sun was beating down on us as we trudged on, sweating in our climbing clothes.
Below us, highlighted by sunlight, we could see the vast crevasses. Each one, a potential tomb.
We rounded a corner and stopped, shielding our eyes as we looked up the valley. Ahead of us, we could see it at last; our final destination.
The abandoned hut, close to the newer Refuge des Cosmiques, sitting atop a tiny outcrop, small and insignificant against the backdrop of the Mont Blanc massif.
* * * * *
I was in the Alps for the Ski Club of Great Britain – as a Leader, which meant I flew out to France every couple of months and acted as a ski guide for the club members. In the evenings, I would go to the Office bar, which was run by a lively New Zealander called Dave.
On this particular evening, I found myself chatting with Dave and a friend of his, whom I immediately recognised. He was well known in the area, and in the climbing world generally. Soon the conversation turned to climbing.
“What have you done?” he asked me.
An odd question, slightly forward, I thought. He was a straight-to-the-point kind of guy.
“I’ve climbed Mont Blanc,” I said. “I’ve done a few other things, but I wouldn’t say I’m a great mountaineer or anything.”
He pondered this for a while. He seemed to be assessing me, and he knew I was a ski club guide.
“I’ve got a space on an expedition in a couple of months,” he said, matter-of-factly.
My interest was piqued. This could be a good adventure, I thought – would it be the Eiger, Matterhorn, Jungfrau?
“Where?”
“Everest.”
“Everest?”
That moment was intensely exhilarating. Everest… Actual Everest, the actual Everest. The real thing. I’m in the pub in Chamonix having a few beers, this guy walks in and all of a sudden…I have a chance to go to Everest! Blow me over with another pint of beer!
He explained that the expedition was leaving in late March, so I would have only three weeks to prepare. He seemed so casual about the whole thing – about Everest.
My thrill at the opportunity was laced with nervousness, a tingling apprehension.
I could have walked away at that point, thanked him for the opportunity and found an excuse not to go. “It’s too soon,” I could have said. “My kids...the equipment…the expenses…the training...”
Here it was, though, laid out for me on a plate; an opportunity to do something I’d always wanted to do. An opportunity I might never see again. Could I refuse? Did I even have a choice?
Essentially, there are two types of people in the world – those who make excuses, and those who throw caution to the wind and go for it. Every time a crazy opportunity like this turns up I remind myself of this, and it’s got me into trouble on a number of occasions.
I knew in my heart that I wanted to go, but my kids? We agreed to meet in London two weeks later, once I had had a chance to think things through. And that was that.
In five or six weeks, I thought, I could be heading off for the adventure of a lifetime – little realising at the time what kind of adventure it would actually be.
It took two days of soul-searching to come to a conclusion. Two days of mulling the whole thing over and thinking of all the reasons why I shouldn’t go.
I didn’t mention it to anyone during that time; I didn’t want anyone else’s opinions or negativity influencing my decision. I wanted to get the whole thing straight in my own mind and to be able to rationalise it in my own head before talking it over with anyone else.
Two days later, I’d committed.
Everest.
* * * * *
It was three weeks later and I was back in the Alps. The ski clubbers had left on the Sunday and I had a free day on Monday before I flew home.
I had convinced Fred to help me practise for Everest; we were going to try out all the techniques I would need up there. We would do ice axe arrests (falling down a steep slope and jumping on your axe to stop yourself – crazy, really, because you can puncture yourself with the axe, but very useful if you do fall, and get it right, and manage to stop), and climbing with a jumar. (This is a device you attach to a static rope that has been put into the rock face in advance and the jumar will slide forwards but not backwards down the rope. The jumar is then attached via a cord to your harness so if you fall you don’t slide down the slope – a rather clever piece of kit.)
I also wanted to try out my new Everest summit boots. These are specially made for Everest and manufactured as three boots in one – the waterproof outer liner, the middle foil lining to keep the heat from evaporating from my feet, and the inner layer to keep my feet comfortable, padded and warm. They are built to withstand -40°C at the summit of Everest.
I’d visited Snell Sports in Chamonix, one of the few places in Europe to sell these boots. It had been a pretty big deal for me, buying them; it made the whole thing seem more real, and symbolised my commitment to the project.
They were hefty things, reaching up almost to my knees. They had a bright red strip from the toe to the top, flanked by yellow on either side. ‘Everest Summit’ was written on the side.
When Sir Edmund Hillary first conquered Everest in 1953, 31 companies were involved in the manufacture of his summit boots. Mine were made by just one – Millet – but developments in mountain clothing in the past 60 years have been considerable. I would likely be carrying half the weight in equipment, but have twice the protection.
The weather in the Alps was absolutely perfect for what I wanted to do; it was blowing a gale, dark clouds dotted the sky; visibility was minimal. Exactly what I needed to try out my new equipment, and to prove to myself that if things turned nasty on Everest, I could take it.
Fred and I made our way to that ridge again, but this time, the gale felt strong enough to blow us away. I remembered a story I’d heard of a skier and a snowboarder, from the previous season. They came up on the Aiguille du Midi cable car to Mont Blanc, to 3,800m at the end of the day, to ski the Vallée Blanche back down to Chamonix. This is a common off-piste ski route, but treacherous, because it is full of crevasses.
As they crossed the thin ridge to the small plateau, the weather turned, the fog came in – it can turn very quickly up there – so they sensibly decided to make their way back along the ridge to the cable car station.
The skier made it back to the station and turned to welcome his friend, and to laugh about what fools they had been to come out in the first place…only, his friend wasn’t there.
He must have just slowed up for some reason, the skier assumed, preparing himself to bunk down for the night. The cable car would not be running in that weather; they would have to rough it.
Five minutes passed.
The skier started to become worried.
Ten minutes passed.
He looked out over the ridge and tried to pick out any shapes, but all he could see was snow blasting across his face. All he could hear was the howling of the wind.
Thirty minutes passed.
He contacted the emergency services, who informed him there was nothing they could do. He would have to wait, the wind was too strong to run the cable car, the helicopters couldn’t fly in such weather. He said his friend was missing, but they said he’d have to wait.
He resigned himself for what would be an uncomfortable night’s sleep, in more ways than one.
The emergency services arrived at dawn.
It wasn’t long before they found the snowboarder, 300 metres below the Aiguille du Midi, smashed to pieces on sharp rocks. His snowboard, acting like a sail, must have pulled him off the ridge and dropped him down below, his shrieks of fear lost in the howling wind.
A horrible way to die – and
he would have been very aware that he was going to die. He would have known what was happening; he would have had time to consider his imminent and gruesome death, going like a rocket before he hit the rocks at the bottom of the mountain.
I didn’t want to become another horror story like that.
I’d had skiing accidents, of course – every skier pays for his passion with a few cuts and bruises. Mine included broken ribs on three occasions, a broken leg, two broken arms, a broken thumb and a dislocated arm (excruciatingly painful). The bunch of mates I ski with annually always try to guess whose turn it is to get injured each year. I’ve had more than my fair share of hits.
I was bent double, almost on my hands and knees, Fred just a blurry silhouette ahead of me. I clutched my ice axe, stabbing the tip into the snow with every step. My whole focus was keeping myself on the ridge, taking the next step.
We arrived at the end of the ridge, exhausted, struggling for breath in the thin air.
I heard Fred shout at me from what seemed a million miles away.
“Jules!” he shouted. “We don’t want to do this – I think we should go down!”
But this was what I wanted; I wanted to practise in the most terribly adverse conditions. I wanted the mountain to chuck everything it had at me.
I stood, arms out to the heavens, the elements doing their best to sweep me off the mountain.
“Come on!” I shouted. “Come on you mother! Come and get me! Give me your best shot!”
I screamed like some crazy guy (doing Everest is crazy), my yells whipped away by the thrashing wind. Fred must have thought I was bonkers, standing on a mountaintop, screaming for more. The extreme nature of the situation made me feel all the more alive, all the more invigorated.
We made it to the hut, pushed the heavy door closed and stopped for a drink and some chocolate. The hut was a ramshackle affair, no more than three metres square, with the wind ripping through the gaps in its wooden planking like something from an old Western movie. Its high-pitched whistling dizzied the senses.
On either side of the small room were rudimentary bunks, barely more than planks of wood. The building was basically a wooden shack, perched precariously on the mountain.
I wondered with amazement at the effort it would have taken to get the building materials up there in the first place. The wood was heavy-duty timber – it would survive hundreds of winters – but it would have been lugged up by hand. There were no cable cars in those days.
“Jules,” Fred said, wringing water from his sodden gloves, “it’s not safe.”
I knew that – of course it wasn’t safe, but I wasn’t going to be safe on Everest either. I wanted to be prepared; I wanted to know how I was going to react if the situation became desperate.
While Fred was under-prepared for this kind of weather, I was feeling more than toasty. The new equipment I’d purchased for Everest was working a treat – I could have stayed up there all day.
I convinced Fred that we’d be fine, that I needed the practice in these conditions. Begrudgingly, he agreed to carry on, pulling his gloves back on and sighing. Of course, for me, the adrenalin was pumping like mad – for Fred, the whole thing was probably totally miserable.
I think he thought I was an absolute nutter.
We left the hut, struggling with the heavy door against the wind, and made our way towards the bottom of the Cosmique Arrêt. We climbed a short way up the Arrêt, and attached a rope for me to practise with my jumar and descender.
Fred sheltered behind an old stone hut – the remnants of an old cable car hut – he curled himself up in a ball, not talking much, focusing on keeping warm. The wind and snow sailed around us viciously.
The incline was at about 50 degrees. Again and again, I gripped the fixed rope and slid my jumar, hauling myself up afterwards. My thick gloves made it hard to operate the equipment, and of course you never remove your gloves, as frostbite quickly sets in. An army friend of mine told me it was a court-martial offence to remove your gloves in snowy conditions without first attaching them to a safety cord – seems a bit severe, but I get it.
On reaching the top, I would change to my descender (it looks like a figure of eight, and you loop the rope through it to create friction to slow your descent) and lower myself back down again, and then I would do it all over again. All of it in the howling, freezing wind. Of course, on Everest I would be wearing three pairs of gloves – but it was hard enough operating the equipment with just one pair.
“Have you had enough yet?” Fred yelled from his sheltered position each time I returned to the bottom.
“No, no!” I shouted above the wind, “I want to do more!”
The wind was howling around my face, whipping up the loose snow; I could feel my nose getting colder and colder.
I gripped the jumar, pulling myself up the rope again. I reached the top, took a few seconds to recover, then went back down again.
“Have you had enough yet?”
There was desperation in Fred’s voice. I felt sorry for him, under-prepared, having been dragged up a freezing cold mountain to watch some crazed Englishman pull himself up and down a cliff.
“Not yet!”
I had my hood up and goggles on, all my layers on, all the protective gear I was going to need for Everest. Still, white dots began forming on my nose from the cold – the start of frostbite.
I pulled myself up the rope again.
After the fifth time, I was entirely exhausted and out of breath. I was panting like a dog on a hot summer’s day – the tank was nearly empty. In spite of the freezing cold, I was hot – the insulating layers of my clothing were doing a great job at keeping the heat in, to the point that I was very cosy.
Fred was not so warm.
I looked at him, huddled for warmth behind the derelict remains of a cable car station. He cut a very lonely figure there, waiting for me to finish.
“I need to practise ice axe arrests,” I yelled at Fred, struggling to make myself heard against the wind.
He nodded, screwing up his face like a schoolboy being forced to do something he doesn’t want to.
We headed back along the treacherous ridge, towards the top of the Aiguille du Midi, the perfect location to practise.
“Ok, Jules, now you jump off,” said Fred. Was that a twang of sick glee masked within his French accent?
We’re at nearly 4,000m, at the top of a steep incline, and Fred is telling me to jump off!
I sat down on the edge, ice axe clutched at the ready. I gently pushed myself off the side, like a timorous child on a slide.
I soon gained speed on the icy snow. I turned on my side, dug my axe into the snow, praying that it would bite, that I wouldn’t continue my descent to whatever lay below
The axe bit, I stopped moving with a jerk.
I let out a relieved sigh and used my crampons to make my way back up to Fred.
“That was rubbish!” he yelled, laughing through frozen cheeks. “You must jump!”
I was starting to think Fred might be getting his own back. I prepped myself to go again, steadying myself to jump off the mountainside.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I received a sharp shove in the back, causing me to fly off the side of the mountain.
I tumbled, turning in the cascading snow as I plummeted downwards.
I remembered the axe – the axe!
Instinct took over; I jerked myself onto my side, smashing the axe into the snow to my left.
The axe bit, I gripped with all that I had – if it slipped, I was toast.
As suddenly as I had started, I stopped dead. Everything instantly felt very quiet and still as I clung to the axe, hanging over the edge of the ridge.
Meanwhile, safely on the ridge, Fred was laughing. He was getting his own back.
In a sick way, Fred had done me a favour. On Evere
st, if the shit hit the fan, I wouldn’t be expecting it – there would be no time for me to prepare myself mentally. The sharp push was what I needed to know that I could cope.
I got back up to Fred. “Let’s head back and I’ll buy you dinner,” I shouted. I’d had enough close shaves for one day.
I think he would have smiled if his face hadn’t been so cold.
It had been good practice. I felt better prepared for Everest, more ready for what the beast would throw at me. I knew the conditions weren’t going to be exactly the same. For one thing, there wouldn’t be emergency help so close at hand, or as much oxygen, but I felt slightly more confident that I could do it.
I thought of myself on the summit of Everest, looking out across the world. I would be, for one brief moment, the highest ‘Mountain’ on the planet.
Leaving loved ones
I woke with a jolt, struggling to focus my eyes in the darkness – where was I? What was that noise?
“You fell asleep!” said a soft voice.
My eyes finally adjusted and brought the room into focus. In front of me, the television was playing the American cartoon we had been watching when I nodded off.
I looked down at the two faces beaming up at me from either side. Steph (12), and Lizzie (9) – my girls. We were snuggled up on the sofa together, wrapped in a thick duvet.
They giggled. I smiled down at them, pulling them closer. I wanted to remember that moment.
Whenever I had time with my girls it was special – I was always acutely aware of that. They had to share their time between my house and their mother’s, which must be tough on them. Every day that I woke up without them nearby, my heart broke ever so slightly; it was far from the perfect situation, but we had to make it work, as many families do.
The previous evening I had sat the girls down and told them I was going to try to climb Everest. I had practised what I was going to say a million times, but the real thing is always harder.
“Girls, Dad’s got something to tell you.”
This piqued their curiosity – they looked up quizzically, with narrowed eyes. They always seemed to know when something was serious.
Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest Page 2
