Death Zone

by Matt Dickinson

  Kees made it back to Toronto for his wedding with forty-eight hours to spare. On the great day his face still bore the ravages of radiation burns from the expedition and he was as thin as a strand of spaghetti. His son, Cornelius Alexander ’t Hooft, was born on 19 November. After the birth Katie went back to her work teaching political science at the University of Toronto with Kees fulfilling the duty of house-husband and shooting the occasional film. Kees still makes the odd Club Class journey back to Britain where, for some whimsical reason of his own, he has commissioned a narrow boat to be built to his own exacting specification. Being a lover of fine things, Kees has instructed his boatbuilders to install a floor of solid oak in the five-star canal barge.

  ‘It wasn’t quite right,’ he told me forlornly, ‘so I had them remove it and replace it with teak.’

  He watches my incredulous face for a moment then bursts into laughter, seeing I have fallen for it.

  Brian returned to the UK sixteen kilogrammes lighter than when he left and gave a press conference in which he told newsmen that he had torn the Japanese expedition’s flag from its pole and pissed on it – just one of numerous juicy quotes which the conscientious journalists duly reported verbatim. While the Press were taking pictures of Brian in the street outside ITN’s Headquarters, a bus driver, distracted by the clamouring hordes, pranged his double decker into a plane tree with a resounding crunch, ending the session – perhaps appropriately – on a note of high farce.

  Scarcely pausing to recover from the rigours of the expedition, Brian launched back into the frantic merry-go-round that is his working life. Voice-over sessions, a tour to promote his new Everest book, a season in pantomime in Tunbridge Wells, putting together the new feature film of Macbeth that he is to direct.

  And of Everest – how did Brian feel about our expedition?

  ‘I feel ashamed of my performance on Everest this year’, Brian told me, ‘I didn’t have the nerve to carry on. But I’ll be back in 1999 – to the southern side. Have another go.’

  The passion still burns in Brian – that is what makes him special.

  Al was not back for long before he was packing his barrels and heading out to Pakistan on a successful summer expedition to climb Gasherbrum 1 and 2 in the Karakorum. That brought his total of 8,000-metre-plus peaks to eight, a world class achievement in its own right. How he found the energy to turn around within a few weeks after the Everest expedition and tackle another mountain is beyond my comprehension. It took me and most of the other members of the expedition months to recover fully.

  After Pakistan Al then returned to his Newcastle haunts and resumed his promotional work for the outdoors equipment company Berghaus, doing the rounds of the trade shows and lectures and putting the final touches to a master plan which – if it works – will launch him into the super-elite of high-altitude mountaineering. Under the title ‘Challenge 8,000’, Al has set himself the target of climbing the remaining six of the fourteen mountains of the world which are higher than 8,000 metres. If he succeeds, he will be the first Briton to have completed the challenge and only the fifth person ever.

  The six mountains facing him are Lhotse (8,516 metres), Makalu (8,481 metres), Kanchenjunga (8,586 metres), Nanga Parbat (8,125 metres), Dhaulagiri (8,167 metres) and Annapurna (8,091 metres). As this book goes to press I have had the good news that Al summitted Lhotse on 23 May 1997.

  The project is a high risk one: mountain statisticians have calculated that to climb all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-metre peaks carries with it a 40% chance of fatality.

  Al and I have never spoken about the events of summit day on Everest and my irrational fear that he wasn’t going to make it. We don’t need to. I realise now that it was the onset of altitude sickness eating into my brain which caused me to become increasingly convinced that he had dropped out of the attempt. The delay when I waited with the three Sherpas for Al to come up the third step, which to me had seemed like an age had in reality probably been just a few minutes while he sorted out his frozen goggles which had caused him trouble all morning. My brain was operating on the paranoid assumption that something had to go wrong – and I seized on the slightest evidence to build a theory that it had gone wrong for Al. In fact Al reached the summit not much more than ten or fifteen minutes after the rest of us.

  To my surprise, a few of Al’s old rivals, scenting perhaps that a flaw had been revealed in his otherwise untouchable ‘hard man’ image, called me at home after the expedition to relish the details of how I had ‘beaten’ him to the top; but if they thought I was going to dish the dirt they were disappointed. Al arrived at the summit in immaculate style and when he was there he was lucid enough to hold a long radio conversation with Brian and then put the flag on the summit pole. He also made sure he stayed with me all the way down to camp six, when I am sure he could have moved faster if he had chosen.

  Sundeep came home to a £20,000 mountain of debts and the news that he was shortly to be sent to Bosnia with his unit. This was later called off and he went on to attempt the course which would qualify him for P Coy – the selection for British airborne forces. Sadly, a serious shin complaint – perhaps a legacy from the Everest expedition – ruled out his chances. Sundeep resumed his duties as an army medic, trying like crazy to lock away the frustration of having got so close on Everest to his dream of completing the seven summits.

  ‘I was offered a place for £10,000 on an expedition going out in spring ’97, but with all the debts from this one to pay off, I just couldn’t afford it,’ he told me.

  Hearing that Sundeep had found this opportunity, Roger quietly offered to lend Sundeep the money; an act of extraordinary generosity which touched me greatly when I heard of it. But other commitments made it impossible for Sundeep to go. At the time of my finishing this book he is with a British Army non-combatant evacuation force in Zaire.

  Sundeep can still be the youngest person to complete the challenge of standing on the highest points of each continent – but only if he summits Everest in 1998.

  ‘I will go back,’ he told me, ‘if I can find the money!’

  Roger Portch shaved off his beard, and climbed back into the hot seat of a British Airways 747 ferrying passengers around the world. Madras … Muscat … Johannesburg … Mexico City – his average working month contains a lifetime of travel, but the memories of the Everest expedition will never be eclipsed for Roger no matter how many take-offs and landings he performs.

  ‘I’m learning to live with it – the fact that I didn’t make it to the summit – but coming to terms with it is going to take a long time,’ he told me. ‘But I won’t go back. That was my one and only chance. I’m too old to have another try and it really wouldn’t be fair on Muriel and the girls. I can’t put them through that again.’

  There is one particular moment for Roger when thoughts of what might have been are almost too much to bear, and unfortunately it is a moment he goes through every day of his working life. It comes when he is flying, as the digital read-out on the cockpit facia of his Boeing 747 reaches 8,848 metres … 29,029 feet. That is when he looks out into the deep lapis blue of the earth’s upper atmosphere, savouring the elevation, enjoying the curvature of the earth, wondering … dreaming … imagining what it might have been like to have taken those final few steps on to the very summit of the world. It is the infinite sadness of a dream that was never quite realised.

  Roger still wears the red thread around his neck from our pujah ceremony.

  As for me? I returned with my two frostbitten fingers to be told that I was the twenty-seventh Briton to have climbed Everest, and the fifth to have climbed it via the North Face. Quite a few curious friends asked me, ‘What happens when you climb Everest?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know – invitations to Buckingham Palace for a quiet sherry – toasted tea and crumpets with Lord Hunt at the Royal Geographical Society mulling over the finer points of the route. Medals … that sort of thing.’

&n
bsp; In fact nothing happens at all, which I find extremely refreshing. The nearest I got to a fanfare was a poster my son Alistair painted in crayon daubed with the legend ‘Ruddy Well Done Dad!’. That was tribute enough.

  For some weeks I paraded my fingers in front of various specialists. Between them they decided the best thing to do was wait, so I did. After two weeks the blistered skin went green, then black, then as hard as cardboard. Then the frostbitten caps fell off completely revealing, eight weeks later, two more or less perfect fingers underneath. The ends of those fingers will always be ultra-sensitive to heat and cold – and more susceptible to frostbite – but I am lucky to have them at all.

  ‘Another three to four minutes of exposure,’ one of the specialists told me, ‘and you would have lost both fingers. Another ten minutes and you would have lost a lot more.’

  Compared to the frostbite of ‘Makalu’ Gau and Beck Weathers (both of whom had major amputations) it was nothing at all.

  During June and July, I worked on the film, reliving the expedition all over again in a cutting-room at ITN, and finishing the production in just six weeks. It was broadcast on Channel 4 on 26 August. Since then I have made films in Malaysia, Thailand, Yemen, Malawi and Oman, in addition to writing this book. The fact that I have filmed on the summit of Everest does not seem to have made much difference so far to my career. I am still writing movies in my spare time hoping to break out of adventure films.

  As a person, I don’t think that Everest really changed me at all – a fact which irritates Fiona somewhat as I think she was hoping a perfect butterfly of a husband would somehow emerge from the skeletal, frostbitten pupa that she picked up at Heathrow after the expedition. In fact I am still the same selfish, stubbornly nomadic creature I ever was. I still can’t last more than a few days at home before I am pacing the floor thinking about where I am going next. I still lie awake in the early hours of the morning tracing journeys in my mind through the places I haven’t yet been. We still share a great many dreams – but the ones we don’t share haven’t magically disappeared just because I climbed a mountain.

  Whether I will ever climb another big mountain is a question I often wonder about. Several people have been kind enough to tell me that the determination I showed on Everest could get me to the top of other peaks. But I am not so sure. The reasons I climbed Everest are, I am now convinced, rooted as much in my mind and my heart as in the pump action of muscle and sinew. I climbed Everest in a moment of my life when a whole internal geyser of frustrations was building up to a pressure-blast of energy. If the chance had come to me some years earlier or some years later, I am not so sure I would have reached the top.

  So the conclusion? It’s all the same. Everything is the same. Everest is big but it wasn’t big enough to change the patterns of a lifetime. The red final-demand bills are still stacked up against the telephone. The mortgage company is still calling to get the back payments we owe them. Our marriage is still locked into the same pattern it ever was … of the joy of being together and the pain of being apart. Luckily we can still laugh together, and neither of us can see any way the relationship is really going to change now it has survived Everest.

  A part of me is still waiting for the bolt from the blue, the great celestial neon arrow that I didn’t see on the summit. Perhaps it is Fiona who should go out and climb a mountain – maybe she would see the great celestial arrow when she dragged herself to the top. Perhaps I should suggest it.

  But, thinking about it, I’m not so sure that is a good idea. The logistics of hauling all that gin and tonic up the mountain would defeat even the most brilliant leader.

  Meanwhile, I am still making adventure films. I have to, to make a living, but my heart has already moved on. I see myself in ten years’ time writing and directing movies in Hollywood … a noble vision until you realise that everyone who works in television has the same desire. So, I’m doing the only thing I can, letting my imagination fly and writing stories that come from some strange corner of my mind, hoping against hope that I can sell one of my movie scripts and launch myself into a new career before someone calls me up and asks me if I am interested in making a film about an expedition to K2.

  Expedition base camp on the Rongbuk Glacier. Everest, seen centre frame, dominates the horizon with its famous ‘plume’ of blowing ice crystals.

  Brian Blessed decked with a garland at the Summit Hotel in Kathmandu. The expedition was Brian’s third attempt at Everest.

  Team members trekking up the Rongbuk Glacier with Everest’s North Face behind. The three-day walk up the glacier is the first of the challenges when coming from the north.

  The yak herders set out for advance base camp with Everest in midframe. Several tons of equipment were portaged up the East Rongbuk in this way.

  Members of the Sherpa team en route for base camp.

  The North Face of Mount Everest 8,848 metres (29,029 feet).

  The camp on the North Col showing the North Ridge behind.

  Matt Dickinson with Changtse seen behind.

  The Himalayan Kingdom team climbing up the North Col. This avalanche-prone wall of ice has been the scene of many tragedies. In the distance is the North Ridge.

  Alan Hinkes at camp five with oxygen bottles.

  Camp six on the North Face of Everest at 8,300 metres, the highest mountain camp in the world. The remains of the previous storm-destroyed tents, and abandoned oxygen cylinders, can be seen.

  The famous ‘Second Step’ of Everest’s North East Ridge with Matt Dickinson shown half-way up. The ‘Second Step’ is one of the most difficult of the challenges on summit day when ascending from the north.

  Matt Dickinson on the summit of Mount Everest at approximately 10 a.m. on 19 May 1996.

  Alan Hinkes pictured on the summit of Mount Everest with a photograph of his grandmother and daughter. In the background are Mingma and Gyaltsen.

  Matt Dickinson on the cluttered summit of Mount Everest, striking a ‘Hillary’ pose!

  First degree frostbite on two middle fingers of Matt Dickinson’s hand, as sustained during his ascent. The blisters later healed completely.

  Matt Dickinson (left) and Alan Hinkes (right) at the Summit Hotel in Kathmandu having returned from Tibet.

  Matt Dickinson (left) and Brian Blessed (right) at base camp just prior to the first acclimatisation trip up the Rongbuk.

  Expedition doctor Sundeep Dhillon operates on a dental problem suffered by cameraman Kees’t Hooft. In the extreme cold, fillings are liable to crack and fall out.

  The North Face of Everest seen from the Tibetan Plateau – with its famous ‘plume’ of ice crystals clearly visible.

  The North Face of Everest seen from the Rongbuk Monastery. The mountain dominates the valley even though it is still twenty miles distant.

  Film cameraman Ned Johnston shooting with his 16mm camera on the Rongbuk Glacier.

  Members of the Sherpa team pictured at the Pujah ceremony held prior to leaving for the mountain.

  Advance base camp at the head of the East Rongbuk Glacier at an altitude of 6,450 metres. In the background can be seen the intimidating ice cliffs of the North Col.

  Members of the Himalayan Kingdoms team climbing on the North Col.

  The North Face of Everest as the storm clouds rolled in on 10 May.

  The ‘B’ team pictured at base camp. From right to left; Sundeep Dhillon, Simon Lowe (expedition leader), Richard Cowper, Tore Rasmussen, Roger Portch.

  The North Ridge of Everest leading to the North-East Ridge (seen on skyline). The summit is top right. The First and Second Steps can be seen as bumps on the Ridge.

  Sherpa Lama, AngTsering and Rob Hall at Pujah ceremony on the southern side of Everest.

  Beck Weathers, member of the Adventure Consultants Everest expedition on the southern side of the mountain. Weathers’ miraculous recovery – and rescue from the mountains – is one of the most extraordinary stories ever to emerge from Everest.

  The helicopter evacuati
on of ‘Makalu’ Gau from base camp on the southern side of the mountain – one of the highest helicopter rescues ever performed.

  Rob Hall’s team at Everest base camp on the southern side of the mountain (April 1996).

  Brian Blessed (seen at rear) and team proceed up the North Ridge. High winds are blowing ice crystals off the skyline above. The attempt failed several hours later when it was realised the group was travelling too slowly.

  The final summit ridge with the summit seen mid-frame. Lhakpa leads the last one hundred metres of the climb. (Photo taken with throwaway ‘fun camera’.)

  Mingma, Gyaltsen and Matt Dickinson on the summit of Mount Everest. (Photo taken with ‘fun camera’.)

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