by Bear Grylls
That afternoon, lying on my bed, I struggled to understand why we were alive, when others weren’t. Sergei and Francys Arsentiev hadn’t been the only ones to die in the past few weeks.
Roger Buick, a New Zealand climber, had collapsed and died from a heart attack. Mark Jennings, from Britain, had reached the top but, again, died on the descent.
They’d all been experienced, fit climbers.
What a waste, what an unnecessary waste.
As I lay there, I found no real answers. But the Russians, buried in deep despair, weren’t interested in answers. They had simply lost their buddies.
Human nature hungers for adventure – and true adventure has its risks. Everyone knows Everest is dangerous, yet the reality of seeing this first-hand makes words like ‘adventure’ seem so hollow.
These were real lives, with real families, and their loss still confuses me today.
I remain loyal, though, to the belief that those brave men and women who died during those months on Everest are the true heroes. They paid the ultimate sacrifice, in pursuit of their dreams.
This must be their families’ only relief.
It is always strange looking back at a time that has had such a profound impact on one’s life. And when it comes to Everest, I see two very clear things: friendships that were forged in a tough crucible, and a faith that sustained me through the good, the bad and the ugly.
I survived and reached the top of that mountain because of the bonds I had with those beside me. Of that I am in no doubt. Without Mick and Neil, I would have been nothing.
Down that dark crevasse, I also learnt that sometimes we really need each other. And that is OK. We are not designed to be islands. We are made to be connected.
So often life teaches us that we have to achieve everything on our own. But that would be lonely.
For me, it is only by thinking about our togetherness that I can begin to make some sense of what happened on that mountain: the highs, the lows, the fatalities, the fear.
Such things have to be shared.
Looking back, it is the small moments together that I value the most. Like Neil and myself on the South Summit, holding each other’s hands so that we could both stand.
It was only because our friendships were honest that, time after time, when we were tired or cold or scared, we were able to pick ourselves up, and keep moving.
You don’t have to be strong all the time. That was a big lesson to learn.
When we show chinks it creates bonds, and where there are bonds there is strength.
This is really the heart of why I still climb and expedition today.
Simple ties are hard to break.
That is what Everest really taught me.
CHAPTER 100
It took me quite a while to begin to recover physically from Everest.
The thick, rich air of sea level, in comparison to the ultra-thin air of Everest, was intoxicating – and at times it felt like too much.
Several times I fainted and had quite bad nosebleeds. As if from oxygen overload.
Above all, I slept like a baby.
For the first time in years, I had no fear, no doubts, no sense of foreboding. It felt amazing.
Everest had taken all my heart, soul, energy and desire, and I was spent. The way I was after SAS Selection.
Funny that. Good things rarely come easy.
Maybe that is what makes them special.
I didn’t feel too guilty about taking a little time off to enjoy the British summer and catch up with my friends. It just felt so great to be safe.
I also did my first-ever newspaper interview, which carried the headline: ‘What Makes a Scruffy 23-Year-Old Want to Risk It All for a View of Tibet?’ Nice.
Before I left I would have had a far slicker reply than I did afterwards. My reasons for climbing seemed somehow more obscure. Maybe less important. I don’t know.
I just knew that it was good to be home.
The same journalist also finished up by congratulating me on having ‘conquered’ Everest. But this instinctively felt so wrong. We never conquer any mountain. Everest allowed us to reach the summit by the skin of our teeth, and let us go with our lives.
Not everyone had been so lucky.
Everest never has been, and never will be, conquered. This is part of what makes the mountain so special.
One of the other questions I often got asked when we returned home was: ‘Did you find God on the mountain?’ The real answer is you don’t have to climb a big mountain to find faith.
It’s simpler than that – thank God.
If you asked me did He help me up there, then the answer would be yes.
Every faltering step of the way.
My Everest story would be incomplete if I didn’t give final credit to the Sherpas who had risked their lives alongside us every day.
Pasang and Ang-Sering still climb together as best friends, under the direction of their Sirdar boss – Kami. The Khumba Icefall specialist, Nima, still carries out his brave task in the jumbled ice maze at the foot of the mountain: repairing and fixing the route through.
Babu Chiri, who so bravely helped Mick when he ran out of oxygen under the South Summit, was tragically killed in a crevasse in the Western Cwm several years later. He was a Sherpa of many years’ Everest experience, and was truly one of the mountain’s greats. It was a huge loss to the mountaineering fraternity.
But if you play the odds long enough you will eventually lose. That is the harsh reality of high-altitude mountaineering.
You can’t keep on top of the world for ever.
Geoffrey returned to the army, and Neil to his business. His toes never regained their feeling, but he avoided having them amputated. But as they say, Everest always charges some sort of a price, and in his own words – he got lucky.
As for Mick, he describes his time on Everest well: ‘In the three months I was away, I was both happier than ever before, and more scared than I ever hope to be again.’
Ha. That’s also high-altitude mountaineering for you.
Thengba, my friend, with whom I spent so much time alone at camp two, was finally given a hearing aid by Henry. Now, for the first time, he can hear properly.
Despite our different worlds, we shared a common bond with these wonderful Sherpa men – a friendship that was forged by an extraordinary mountain.
Once, when the climber Julius Kugy was asked what sort of person a mountaineer should be, he replied: ‘Truthful, distinguished and modest.’
All these Sherpas epitomize this. I made the top with them, and because of their help, I owe them more than I can say.
The great Everest writer Walt Unsworth, in his book Everest: the mountaineering history, gives a vivid description of the characters of the men and women who pit their all on the mountain.
I think it is bang on the money:
But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction.
Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have.
Determination and faith are their strongest weapons.
At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad …
Three things they all had in common: faith in themselves, great determination and endurance.
If I had to sum up what happened on that journey for me, from the hospital bed to the summit of the world, I tend to think of it as a stumbling journey.
Of losing my confidence and my strength – then re-finding it. Of seeing my hope and my faith slip away – and then having them rekindled.
Ultimately, if I had to pass on one message to my children it would be this: ‘fortune favours the brave’.
Most of the time.
CHAPTER 101
Shara met me at the airport in London, dressed in her old familiar blue woollen overcoat that I loved so much. She was bouncing like a little girl with excitement.
Everest was nothing compared
to seeing her.
I was skinny, long-haired and wearing some very suspect flowery, Nepalese trousers. In short, I looked a mess, but I was so happy.
I had been warned by Henry at base camp not to rush into anything ‘silly’ when I saw Shara again. He had told me it was a classic mountaineers’ error to propose as soon as you get home. High altitude apparently clouds people’s good judgement, he had said.
In the end, I waited twelve months. But during this time I knew that this was the girl I wanted to marry.
We had so much fun together that year. I persuaded Shara, almost daily, to skip off work early from her publishing job (she needed little persuading, mind), and we would go on endless, fun adventures.
I remember taking her roller-skating through a park in central London and going too fast down a hill. I ended up head first in the lake, fully clothed. She thought it funny.
Another time, I lost a wheel whilst roller-skating down a steep, busy London street. (Cursed skates!) I found myself screeching along at breakneck speed on only one skate. She thought that one scary.
We drank tea, had afternoon snoozes and drove around in ‘Dolly’, my old London black cab that I had bought for a song.
Shara was the only girl I knew who would be willing to sit with me for hours on the motorway – broken down – waiting for roadside recovery to tow me to yet another garage to fix Dolly. Again.
We were (are!) in love.
I put a wooden board and mattress in the back seat so I could sleep in the taxi, and Charlie Mackesy painted funny cartoons inside. (Ironically, these are now the most valuable part of Dolly, which sits majestically outside our home.)
Our boys love playing in Dolly nowadays. Shara says I should get rid of her, as the taxi is rusting away, but Dolly was the car that I will for ever associate with our early days together. How could I send her to the scrapyard?
In fact, this spring, we are going to paint Dolly in the colours of the rainbow, put decent seat belts in the back seat, and go on a road trip as a family. Heaven. We must never stop doing these sorts of things. They are what brought us together, and what will keep us having fun.
Spontaneity has to be exercised every day, or we lose it.
Shara, lovingly, rolls her eyes.
The summer of 1999, we went on holiday to Spain to visit my cousin Penny, who runs a horse farm in Andalucia. It is a beautiful, wild part of the country.
Shara would ride out early each day in the hilly pine forests and along the miles of huge, deserted Atlantic beaches. I was told I was too tall for the small Andalucian ponies. Hmm.
But I didn’t want to be deterred.
Instead I ran alongside Shara and tried to keep up with the horse. (Good training, that one.)
Eventually, on the Monday morning we were to leave, I took her down to the beach and persuaded her to come skinny-dipping with me. She agreed. (With some more eye-rolling.)
As we started to get out after swimming for some time, I pulled her towards me, held her in my arms, and prepared to ask for her hand in marriage.
I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and as I was about to open my mouth, a huge Atlantic roller pounded in, picked us both up, and rolled us like rag dolls along the beach.
Laughing, I went for take two. She still had no idea what was coming.
Finally, I got the words out. She didn’t believe me.
She made me kneel on the sand (naked) and ask her again.
She laughed – then burst into tears and said yes.
(Ironically, on our return, Brian, Shara’s father, also burst into tears when I asked him for his blessing. For that one, though, I was dressed in a jacket, tie and … board shorts.)
I was unsure whether his were tears of joy or despair.
What really mattered was that Shara and I were going to get married.
That same day we drove to Seville to celebrate. I asked someone for the name of the smartest hotel in Seville. Alfonso XIII, came the reply. It is where the King of Spain always stays.
We found the hotel and wandered in. It was amazing. Shara was a little embarrassed as I was dressed in shorts and an old holey jersey, but I sought out a friendly looking receptionist and told her our story.
‘Could you help us out? I have hardly any money.’
She looked us up and down, paused – then smiled.
‘Just don’t tell my manager,’ she whispered.
So we stayed in a $1,000 a night room for $100 and celebrated – like the King of Spain.
The next morning we went on a hunt for a ring.
I asked the concierge in my best university Spanish where I would find a good (aka well-priced) jeweller.
He looked a little surprised.
I tried speaking slower. Eventually I realized that I had actually been asking him where I might find a good ‘moustache’ shop.
I apologized that my Spanish was a little rusty. Shara rolled her eyes again, smiling.
When we eventually found a small local jeweller, I had to do some nifty sub-counter mathematics, swiftly converting Spanish pesetas into British pounds, to work out whether or not I could afford each ring Shara tried on.
We eventually settled on one that was simple, beautiful – and affordable. Just.
Love doesn’t require expensive jewellery. And Shara has always been able to make the simple look exquisite.
Luckily.
CHAPTER 102
Pretty soon after returning from Everest, I was asked to give a lecture on the Everest expedition to my local sailing club in the Isle of Wight.
It would be the first of many lectures that I would eventually give, and would soon become my main source of income after returning from the mountain.
Those early talks were pretty ropey, though, by anyone’s standards.
That first one went OK, mainly due to the heavy number of family members in the audience. Dad cried, Mum cried, Lara cried. Everyone was proud and happy.
The next talk was to a group of soldiers on a course with the SAS. I took one of my old buddies along with me for moral support.
Hugo Mackenzie-Smith always jokes to this day how, by the time I finished, the entire room had fallen asleep. (They had been up all night on an exercise, I hasten to add – but still – it wasn’t my finest hour.)
We had to wake them – one by one.
I had a lot to learn about communicating a story if I was to earn any sort of a living by giving talks.
My worst ever speech was one I did for a pharmaceuticals company in South Africa. They were paying me $1,000 and my airfare. It was a fortune to me at the time, and I couldn’t believe my luck.
That would last Shara and me for months.
I soon found myself at a hotel in the Drakensberg Mountains, waiting for six hundred sales staff to arrive at the conference centre.
Their coach journey up had been a long one and they had been supplied with beer, non-stop, for the previous five hours. By the time they rolled off the coaches, many of them were tripping over their bags – laughing and roaring drunk.
Nightmare.
I had been asked to speak after dinner – and for a minimum of an hour. Even I knew that an hour after dinner was suicide. But they were insistent. They wanted their $1,000’s worth.
After a long, booze-filled dinner that never seemed to end, the delegates really were totally paralytic. I was holding my head in my hands backstage. Sweet Jesus.
Then, just as I walked out on stage, the lights went out and there was a power cut.
You have got to be joking.
The organizers found candles to light the room (which also meant no slides), and then I was on. It was well after midnight by now.
Oh, and did I mention that all the delegates were Afrikaans-speaking, so English was their second language, at best?
Sure enough, the heckling started before I even opened my mouth.
‘We don’t want an after-dinner speaker,’ one drunk man shouted, almost falling off his chair.
Li
sten, nor do I, big fella, I thought.
I suspect it was just as painful an hour for him as it was for me.
But I persevered, and endeavoured to learn how to tell a story well. After all, it was my only source of work, and my only way of trying to find new sponsors for any other expeditions that I hoped to lead.
The best advice came from the legendary actor, the late Sir John Mills, who I sat next to backstage at a lecture we were doing together. He told me he considered the key to public speaking to be this: ‘Be sincere, be brief, be seated.’
Inspired words. And it changed the way I spoke publicly from then on. Keep it short. Keep it from the heart.
Men tend to think that they have to be funny, witty, or incisive on stage. You don’t. You just have to be honest. If you can be intimate and give the inside story – emotions, doubts, struggles, fears, the lot – then people will respond.
I went on to give talks all around the world to some of the biggest corporations in business – and I always tried to live by that. Make it personal, and people will stand beside you.
As I started to do bigger and bigger events for companies, I wrongly assumed that I should, in turn, start to look much smarter and speak more ‘corporately’. I was dead wrong – and I learnt that fast. When we pretend, people get bored.
But stay yourself, talk intimately, and keep the message simple, and it doesn’t matter what the hell you wear.
It does, though, take courage, in front of five thousand people, to open yourself up and say you really struggle with self-doubt. Especially when you are meant to be there as a motivational speaker.
But if you keep it real, then you give people something real to take away.
‘If he can, then so can I’ is always going to be a powerful message. For kids, for businessmen – and for aspiring adventurers.
I really am pretty average. I promise you. Ask Shara … ask Hugo.
I am ordinary, but I am determined.
