Up

by Ben Fogle

  At home I just get on with it, but here it felt empowering. It was uplifting. It brought familiarity to an unfamiliar landscape. There was something rather reassuring about people stopping to wish us luck and to take a photo with us along the trail. Since we had left Namche Bazaar, the wave of support had grown. In places, we would pass people across the valley who somehow recognised us from a great distance and they would holler, ‘Good luck, Ben and Vic!’ It always put a smile on my face.

  At one of the stupas, a young girl from Yorkshire was busy tying some prayer flags to a metal bar. ‘I’ve left these for you with a prayer,’ she smiled before giving each of us a hug. It was deeply powerful to feel such warmth as the ambient air cooled.

  Each evening we would stop in one of the ‘teahouse’ hotels along the route. Every small village or hamlet had a dozen tearooms all offering much the same: a basic bed in an unheated room with access to ‘a loo’ (also known as ‘a hole in the ground’) and a little dining room heated by a yak-dung stove.

  They were very basic but also very comfortable. Having spent a lifetime roughing it in jungles, deserts and on the ocean, the small comfortable beds were a nice break from the hard ground of camping.

  Still wearing my shorts and shirt, I was beginning to feel the effects of the diurnal change of temperature. Where the daytime temperatures often hovered around 20 ˚C, at night it plunged to way below zero. Each morning I would wake to find my water bottle frozen.

  Before dinner, the trail-weary trekkers would huddle around the stove, warming their frozen fingers before a dinner of Nepalese curry was served. Locally called Dal Bhat, it’s a very standard curry from the Indian subcontinent that consists of steamed rice and cooked lentil soup, sometimes served with a little extra chicken.

  Every morning we would pack up early and head back out onto the trail. Kenton was always keen to leave early and arrive early, to give our bodies time to acclimatise before the next ascent.

  There is a very important Puja (blessing) ceremony for every Everest expedition. It is held at Base Camp on a date decided by a local Lama. In the ceremony, the Lama asks the mountain gods’ permission for the climbers to climb, forgiveness for any damage caused by the climbing and for the safety of everyone involved. Due to our slightly later departure from Kathmandu, we would miss the Puja ceremony. The sherpas take it very seriously indeed. So, Kenton had decided to make a slight detour to the monastery in Pangboche where the local Lama, Nawang Pal, had agreed to hold an intimate Puja ceremony for us.

  For the first time, my lack of extra clothes became an issue as no one was allowed into the monastery in shorts. Once again I had to call on Mark to borrow a pair of thermal leggings to cover my increasingly chilled legs.

  Slowly and quietly, we filed into the monastery. Compared to the brilliantly bright sunshine outside, it was gloomy and cool. My eyes struggled to adapt to the low light. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could make out the dozens of flags and tapestries that hung from the walls and the ceiling. In front was a huge, ornate gold carving.

  But it was something in the little cupboard on the right as I entered the room that really caught my eye. At a glance, it looked like a hairy cloth. I peered into the cabinet and was astonished to read a little inscription that simply said, ‘Yeti Scalp’. One of the holy men who had joined us looked at me approvingly and repeated, ‘Yeti, Yeti’. Of all the things I was expecting to encounter on our way to Base Camp, a Yeti scalp was probably the last thing on the list, particularly in this holiest of holy sites. As a child I was obsessed with the idea of the Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman, and this discovery excited me. Later in the expedition, it also put me in huge danger.

  Before I had time to dwell on this astonishing discovery, we were all ushered to the floor before Lama Nawang Pal began the hour-long ceremony. Dressed in his brown robes with a red North Face woolly hat, he sat cross-legged and began to chant, beating a single drum with a long, curved stick.

  He held little cards as he intoned at a dizzying speed. I would be unable to read words at anywhere near the rate he was singing them. Very occasionally, he would trip over a word or lose his place on the tiny cards from which he was reading, but somehow he always picked himself up and continued. The stumble was barely perceptible.

  I sat there on the cold floor, staring around the room. The ceremony had a tremendous power. I could feel the beat of the drum reverberating inside my body. It was powerfully hypnotic. I found my mind drawn to another place. I could feel myself high on the mountain. I could feel the bite of the wind and the chill of the ice.

  A single shaft of light pierced through a small window and illuminated Nawang Pal. It was one of the most astonishing ceremonies I have ever encountered. It was both puzzling and powerful.

  At the end of the service, he threw rice, something that would become a common theme in the weeks and months to come. As we walked back into the dazzling sunshine, I felt a wave of optimism. I can’t really explain it, but I felt I saw myself looking from the summit of Everest.

  Both Victoria and I were becoming increasingly in tune with the spirituality of the mountain. Before we left, we made one final clockwise rotation of the monastery, turning every one of the 100 prayer wheels as we went. In the corner was one giant wheel, more than ten feet high and almost six feet wide, I hauled on a single piece of rope, until it had built up enough momentum to begin spinning. I stared, mesmerised, at the multi-coloured wheel chiming the small hidden bells as it turned.

  From Pangboche we began the increasingly steep ascent upwards towards Pheriche at 4,370 metres. Once again, Kenton had scheduled an acclimatisation day. But this ‘rest’ day would be slightly different. In order to speed up our acclimatisation, Kenton wanted to climb to the top of the peak that towers above the small sleepy settlement. At 5,000 metres, it would be the first real test of our expedition.

  The four-hour climb was not technical, but it was certainly a good test for our lungs which were still struggling to adjust to the increasingly thin air. Against a backdrop of vast snowy peaks, we scrambled up through the rocky terrain until we reached the first snow. Onwards we trudged until we finally reached the flag-strewn summit.

  There was something about those flags, crusted with snow and ice, sun bleached and wind damaged, their vibrant colours in contrast to the browns and whites of the landscape all around. I’m not sure why I found them so profoundly moving, but I did. Perhaps it was the manifestation of other people’s dreams? Others who have made it here, to leave a prayer flag perhaps in memory of someone they have lost, or perhaps in the pursuit of their own dream.

  It didn’t take us long to descend to Pheriche. From there, it was a relatively short trek to Louche, but before we reached the tiny settlement, we passed perhaps the most poignant place on the mountain: the memorial to those who have perished.

  High on top of Thukla Pass is a windswept valley. It is as beautiful as it is bleak. Scattered across the valley ridge are dozens, perhaps hundreds of memorials to those who have lost their lives on Everest. The backdrop of the mountains made clear the reason for the 287 tragedies that have happened on the mountain since the first true mountaineering expedition in 1922.

  I was completely overwhelmed, not just by the sheer number of memorials, but by the poignancy of the place. Some of the memorials were little more than a small pile of stones, others were vast stone cairns, while others were simple carved wooden posts in the ground.

  The wind ripped across the plateau, freezing our exposed skin. I wandered slowly from memorial to memorial. Occasionally, I would see a name I recognised from the many books I have read about Everest: Scott Fischer, Rob Hall, to name but two.

  The tributes stretched across the plateau as far as the eye could see. Each of them was strewn with flags that had been left by loved ones or sherpas who had made the journey to tend to the memorials.

  It was profoundly moving to walk among the dead. All of these brave, hopeful souls had come here with the same dream. All there is to
remember them by is a small pile of rocks on a windswept mountainside.

  It felt like walking in a church. I felt deeply respectful of this strange place. There can be few memorial sites in the world as affecting as this one high in the Himalayas.

  I sat down next to one of the cairns and stared at the Nepalese writing that marked a sherpa who had lost his life on the mountain. This one, in particular, seemed especially unfair. The sherpas, after all, would probably not be on Everest were it not for the steady stream of dreamers and hopefuls like myself that were drawn to the romance of summiting the world’s highest mountain.

  I thought about the families who had mourned those close to them. The families that had waved goodbye to their loved ones, just as I had mine. Each and every one of these memorials had a powerful story to tell, some of them well documented in print and even in Hollywood films, others lost forever to the mountain.

  Victoria and I sat next to one of the memorials with Kenton who had tears in his eyes as he recalled some of his friends. ‘That one is Mark Fischer’s,’ he said.

  ‘Dude, not cool,’ replied our Mark (Fisher) from behind the camera.

  ‘I mean Scott Fischer. Scott Fischer,’ Kenton repeated.

  It was a Freudian slip that hit a little too close to home.

  The wind had picked up and was beating across the plateau, snapping at the prayer flags and stinging our faces. I wanted to explore each and every memorial. I wondered how many may never have been visited by friends and family – after all, this wasn’t an easy place to get to. Mixed among the handmade cairns were huge boulders, many of which looked like gravestones themselves. Some of the memorials had ornate metal carvings and were adorned with beads and offerings, while others were little more than a small pile of rocks.

  It was sobering. Not for the first time, a small wave of doubt washed over me.

  Why was I doing this? Who’s to say I wouldn’t join these romantics who had lost their lives in the pursuit of their dreams? What made me any different?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Collaboration

  Walking into Base Camp was like stepping into a parallel universe.

  At the entrance to the camp is a large monument marking the end of the route for those trekking to Base Camp and the beginning of the expedition for those going higher. I walked past dozens of emotional trekkers all hugging one another and taking photographs next to the large boulder strewn with hundreds of prayer flags.

  For most of those here, this was the culmination of their ambitions. Reaching Base Camp was their ultimate goal. I realised what a huge thing this was for so many people, to reach this remote, once lonely spot, deep in the Khumbu Valley.

  ‘That was the hardest thing I have ever done,’ I overheard one American trekker saying to her friend who was on her hands and knees, almost praying to the monument.

  It was surprisingly moving to see the raw emotion from those who had made it to Base Camp. There were tears of joy at the culmination of what for many had been a tough 10-day journey through one of the most remote corners of the planet. For us of course, it had simply been a means to an end. We had to do the trek to Base Camp to acclimatise, like the bus journey to the start of a marathon.

  It was here, at this monument, that our worlds would separate. The Base Camp trekkers would begin their long journey back down the valley towards Lukla, while Base Camp and beyond would become our home for the next couple of months.

  A tiny trail led down through a maze of twisting rock and ice into the camp itself. The huge glacier is largely covered in grey and brown rock that gives the impression of a solid valley. The sound of rushing water from the glacial melt had carved a river along the south side of the camp.

  Stretching as far as the eye could see were hundreds of multi-coloured tents, all balanced precariously along the rubble-strewn glacier. Yellow and orange dome tents nestled alongside and among dozens of larger tents. Dotted along the mile-long camp were handmade Puja furnaces from which great fans of prayer flags spun out like a spider’s web. I marvelled at such an astonishing feat of engineering as I wandered along the main ‘path’ that transects the camp.

  Each expedition team creates their own camp within Base Camp. Sometimes teams are consolidated by larger climbing companies, to share the mountain infrastructure.

  The first camp was a team from the Indian Border Patrol. I knew this because they had a large banner across their camp proudly displaying this. Dozens of men in blue tracksuits were busy moving bags and equipment around their sprawling camp.

  For 30 minutes we trekked past a spread of mountaineers from across the world, all of whom would be living here over the next few months in preparation for their summit bids.

  We would be ‘hosted’ by Madison Mountaineering, a company set up by American mountaineering legend Garrett Madison. His company was responsible for hiring the local sherpas, they would source all the food for the expedition and supply the tents. From Base Camp onwards, Garrett and his team would organise the logistics of our operation.

  We found our camp halfway up the main site. Twenty orange and white Mountain Hardwear tents were scattered across the site, that included a large blue ‘mess’ tent and another kitchen tent.

  In the centre of our camp, large slabs of rock had been carefully stacked to make a central Puja. It had been draped with a yellow cloth, and from the top of it, a pole had been erected from which fanned out long stretches of prayer flags that radiated out across the whole of Base Camp.

  We would be sharing the camp with an assortment of other ‘climbers’ from across the world. Kenton, Mark, Victoria and I each had our own tent at the far end of our camp, up a little hill of ice which gave us beautiful views over our camp and beyond.

  Dominating Base Camp is the infamous Khumbu Icefall, nestled between two huge mountains that guard it like sentries. It ‘flows’ down the middle of the valley like a river of jagged ice. In the sunlight, it reflects the blue to create the most surreal landscape. Sometimes it looks like blue lava flowing off the mountain, while at other times it’s like a violent ocean that has been whipped into a frenzy of white-capped waves.

  In front of the icefall is what is known as the Pinnacles, a large area of jagged ice that protects the entrance. Together, the Pinnacles and the icefall make a formidable gateway to the mountain. Over the coming weeks, I would sometimes sit for hours staring at the icefall, trying to work out how people navigated through the twisted contours and shards of ice. It makes the Wall in Game of Thrones look relatively benign.

  To be honest, I was very grateful for my own tent. After nearly a week of sharing rooms, it was a relief to get some peace and solitude. More significantly, my bags had made it to Base Camp. They came in on one of the supply-runs by helicopter that regularly touch down at Base Camp. For the first time in 10 days, I could change my underwear.

  The heart of the Base Camp was the mess tent where we would have our meals. A communal space, it was where we could escape the intensity of the weather or the claustrophobia of our little tents. In the middle was a table that stretched the length of the tent with camping chairs to seat up to 20. Down the middle of the table was an assortment of herbs, spices, and condiments to help liven up our food.

  As I walked in for the first time, I noticed sitting at the table, clutching a steaming mug of tea, the familiar bearded face of former SBS soldier and now TV presenter, Ant Middleton.

  I had heard rumours that he was going to be on the mountain and I had contacted him on social media to say hello. It wasn’t a surprise to see him here, but I hadn’t fully anticipated that we would be living with one another in our little camp. Of all the different climbing logistic companies and camps at Base Camp, it did seem incredible that we were both at the same one.

  Ant had been sponsored by Berocca and had a Channel 4 TV crew accompanying him. His cameraman was our other candidate, Ed Wardle. Now I knew why he was ‘busy’ when I emailed him about his availability.

  Although I knew of
Ant, we had never met before. I had watched a little of Who Dares Wins, his SAS series on C4, and had greatly admired his re-creation of the open water HMS Bounty journey in which he and his crew spent nearly two months sailing across the South Pacific.

  Joining Ant and Ed was Matt, their Assistant Producer (AP) who would be located at Base Camp to help organise gear, charge batteries and be an extra cameraman.

  ‘Couldn’t you find a smaller T-shirt?’ smiled Kenton a little sarcastically, pointing to Ant’s skin-tight top through which his Popeye-esque muscles bulged.

  Luckily, Ant has a friendly manner. His presence, although expected, would have an impact on our expedition that I hadn’t anticipated. In more than 20 years of film-making, I had never been in such close proximity to another film crew making exactly the same film. Our filming models were almost identical. We were both using single cameraman operators to record our own journeys up Mount Everest. We were sharing the same camp, eating the same food, using the same tents and oxygen up the mountain and even the same sherpas.

  The only difference was the people involved. In many ways, it became Ant versus Ben & Victoria. There was no race or winner. After all, both sides had the same objective, we were both facing the same adversity and challenge, but the fact we were both making TV shows added an extra pressure that was unexpected and unhelpful.

  I had made a promise to Marina that my full focus would be on the mountain. I wouldn’t be distracted by anything else, but the arrival of Ant into the picture created a new testing dynamic. Our film teams had little kit tents next door to one another, and each time something happened in camp, both Mark and Ed were on the scene to document the action.

  It was slightly comical. The big difference was that Ant’s was a ‘secret’ climb. He had a social media and news blackout. I was never really sure of his reasons, but I respected his privacy and kept his presence a secret to those following my climb.

  We were also sharing our camp with half a dozen other climbers from the USA. Two would-be summiteers had already abandoned Base Camp by the time we arrived. One, a South African, had been here several years before when he was caught up in the tragic avalanche that killed so many. He had returned to exorcise his demons, but just a few paces into the icefall had been enough to overwhelm him with flashbacks, and within the hour a helicopter was speeding him back to Kathmandu.