A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (29 page)

While Ray and I were settling down for the evening, the radio crackled into life. It was Henry, to inform me that someone had been killed in a fall on Makalu, slightly to the east of Everest. The name of the deceased person seemed unclear. He’d heard the name Miguel but wasn’t quite sure. The immediate worry we both had was that it might be Michael Jörgensen. Michael had been with us on Everest in 1995 and 1996. He was on Makalu this spring. He had also been with me on the South Col during the night of 10 May.

Henry said he was going to try to seek clarification and signed off. It was no time at all, probably little more than half an hour, before Henry’s distressed voice came across the radio.

‘Graham, it’s Michael. He’s been killed in a fall!’ Henry sounded close to tears.

I muttered a few words of consolation to Henry over the radio. I didn’t know quite what to say. We all knew the risks. Nevertheless, such news always caught us unawares. Probably because it was too close to home.

My words seemed lost in the ether as soon as I released the transmit button. The position I’d hoped to be in was now precariously unbalanced, the news dreadful. My mind was shell-shocked. All I could envisage was to keep climbing. Any cautions, any fateful warnings the news seemed to offer fell unheeded.

Henry and Michael had first met in 1995 and since then had become good friends. Henry had radioed me because I was the only one on our team to have climbed with Michael before, the one person who might understand the senseless loss he felt. Michael had been abseiling when an anchor point above him came out. He was 32.

It was in a sombre mood that I made my way up to the South Col the following morning. My thoughts were consumed by the price paid by those in pursuit of their chosen course. The only conclusion I could reach was that everyone held on to the thought that it wouldn’t happen to them. Why else would they be there?

When I reached the top of the Geneva Spur, the South Col came into view. Once more, the sight of this desolate place, and now the news of someone’s death, took me mercilessly back to 10 May 1996. However, on this occasion there were a number of people encamped on the South Col. There was no repeat of my shuddering experience when I’d been left on my own. As with eerie sounds on a ghostly pitch-black night, where the mind can play tricks with a lonely traveller, I had been vulnerable. Not so with the current buzz of human voices that drove away the thoughts such solitude can bring. In this situation I could pretend I had control of them.

We spent the night on the Col, patiently waiting for the right conditions. We decided we would wait another day. As the clock ticked, I could feel what was left of my energy reserves slowly ebbing away. Alongside us that first night were the team of Jon Tinker and Mike Smith. Jon had been unwell, and they’d decided to postpone their push for the top. They descended in the morning. This left the way open – my one chance.

We left the South Col at 11 p.m. on the second night. It was dark and still. The oxygen mask that muffled my face hissed gently with its precious supply. My legs seemed to lack any power. I resolved to think only about the next step. Nothing more. If I let my mind wander to the news of Michael, to the events we had both witnessed in the past, then the draw back down to my family would win the day. The effort to continue up and the possibilities of what could go wrong would grow out of all proportion. I switched my mind off to everything except where I would place my next step. Both time and my lofty surroundings were no longer part of the world in which I travelled. My spatial awareness extended little more than three feet in front. Behind me, nothing existed.

Shortly after nine o’clock on the morning of 5 May 1999, with BBC camera in hand, I reached the summit of Everest for the second time. In doing so, I became the first British climber to have climbed Everest twice, and from both north and south sides. This I’d achieved with the support and friendship of many people.

As I took the last few paces, I peered over to the familiar north side and into Tibet, to the route I’d climbed with Anatoli four years earlier, a friend who’d now been dead for more than a year. There was none of the sense of joy or achievement that I had felt on my first ascent. My emotions were melancholy, a mixture of sadness and relief. Sadness for the friends I’d lost as they pursued their dreams, relief because I’d finished what I set out to do and could now go home.

After 20 minutes, I turned and descended. Others I was with dallied to take photographs, to make radio calls and to immerse themselves in the splendour of the views, while I made steady progress back down. Around the Hillary Step, my pace slowed. I understood instantly what had happened. The large oxygen cylinder I was carrying, which was supposed to last over ten hours at the rate I’d set, had lasted less than seven. I was alone at over 28,000 feet and out of oxygen, well aware that to do anything other than remain calm would only make matters worse. I was very well acclimatised, having slept three nights on the South Col during the course of the last week, and had only used oxygen at that location and above. So I had little choice but to resign myself to a slightly slow and cold descent – and to any consequences that might bring.

At the base of the South Summit, bright-orange Poisk bottles stood upright, embedded into the soft snow. These were the fresh supplies awaiting the return of climbers from other teams who were a few hundred feet above me on the summit ridge. This was their ticket back down, not mine. The ones we had stashed were much lower. I pressed on. Some way further down, I passed a Sherpa from another expedition moving up. He was immediately concerned to see my oxygen mask hanging below my chin. Instinctively, he asked if I was OK. I explained in a rather disgruntled fashion that my bottle had run out but that I was fine, that having summited I was on my way back. Before moving on, I thanked him for his concern. In response to this courteous reply, he asked me to wait. Rummaging in his rucksack, he handed me a used bottle that had a small amount of gas left in it. I gratefully fitted my regulator to this fresh supply. Strapping my mask back on, I raised my hand in appreciation and continued down. Within 15 minutes my mask was once again dangling. That bottle too had given up the last remnants of its precious gas.

Relief came at the Balcony several hundred feet lower down, where, as planned, I picked up the half-empty oxygen cylinder I’d deposited there on the way up. Unfortunately, by then the damage had been done. Frostbite had set in to my hands and right foot. I’m sure that my earlier filming on the summit ridge would not have helped in this regard, neither would the dehydration I suffered from my first visit to the South Col.

Two days later, I took my final steps off the mountain to walk the short distance from the bottom of the Khumbu Icefall through various other encampments to reach our own. One of these happened to belong to an American expedition where news of our summiting had already reached. On my arrival there, I was handed a plateful of hot chips and a bottle of whisky with about two inches in the bottom. After eating a few chips, I downed the whisky in one go, an action that brought cheers from my American friends. Aware that I’d suffered frostbite, and showing concern, one of them asked if I was taking anything for it. Full of bravado and the joy of success, I paused for a moment and then replied, ‘I’m considering a helicopter.’ My response received a huge roar of laughter.

The next day, after careful inspection by the American doctor from this same team, it was decided that I should be helicoptered out, rather than risking further damage to my foot on the long walk back to Lukla.

Three days later, on a bright sunny morning, I was standing alone in the middle of the large, flat sandy area at Gorak Shep: a small outpost a few miles down from Everest Base Camp. In the distance, I could hear the sound of the rotor blades of an approaching helicopter as they sliced through the thin air in the search for some upward lift. It appeared as a small shape high in the distance. Within a matter of minutes, it was hovering overhead, olive green in colour and bearing the large red star of the Nepalese armed forces, the pilot looking for his passenger. No sooner had I waved my arms than the helicopter was brought skilfully to ground level. Looking through the bubble-shaped windscreen, I could see the pilot was wearing a mask. He was breathing bottled oxygen due to his rapid ascent in altitude from Kathmandu, 12,000 feet lower down, less than an hour before. With the beckoning of his left hand, he instructed me to get in. The pilot was none other than Lt Col Maden K.C., the same pilot who had courageously rescued Beck Weathers and Makalu Gau from the Western Cwm some three years earlier.

Apart from this final jolt to my memory brought about by the presence of Lt Col Maden K.C. and the sight of the olive-green helicopter bearing the red star of the Nepalese armed forces, the time had come to make a conscious effort to place 1996 firmly in the past. It had been a dark episode in my Everest adventures, which, despite recent reminders, now seemed long ago. I no longer wanted to look back, rather to look positively to the future.

Back in Kathmandu, Elizabeth Hawley had caught wind that some of the early summiteers had begun to arrive back from their respective expeditions. I received a message from the hotel reception that she would be dropping in the following day at 10 a.m.

Right on time, the dulcet tones of her VW Beetle could be heard as her driver pulled the vehicle up at the hotel entrance. She’d given up driving herself and had employed a chauffeur to whisk her around this bustling city. The manic chaos of motorcycles, lorries, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, cars and pedestrians had eventually become too tiresome for her to deal with. She was held in such high esteem that it seemed fitting for her to be chauffeured around Kathmandu’s network of overrun streets in her well-maintained older vehicle.

Before we commenced, I asked Liz if she would mind if I filmed our conversation.

‘Of course you may,’ she said with a smile.

Manners and politeness went along with Liz, as did a helpful nature.

Initially, Liz wanted to know when I’d arrived at Base Camp and when each camp on the South Col route had been established. Camp 1 was slightly problematic, as I wasn’t quite sure which team had slept there first. However, Camp 2 and 3 were easier, as pushing ahead I’d been one of the first to overnight there, and Iñaki and I had been the first to stay on the South Col. Liz looked rather pleased at the accuracy of the information she was receiving, which gave her a head start on the current season. Not quite believing her luck, she then glanced up hopefully and asked about the summits.

‘Pete Athans was first, Bill Crouse second and me third. We were minutes apart and the first three to get to the top this year. The date: 5 May,’ I replied.

‘Well,’ said Liz, ‘I certainly seem to be talking to the right person here.’

Studying her notes, she continued, ‘Your second ascent?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and the first British climber to summit Everest twice.’

‘And the first by two different routes,’ she quickly responded.

Her reply took me by surprise. She’d already known the answer before the question had been asked. These facts and figures were at her fingertips, her mind so incredibly sharp.

We sat for quite some time after the official business was completed, discussing the recent find of George Mallory’s body on the north side of the mountain, neither of us particularly happy with the photographs that had appeared in the press of Mallory’s body frozen face down on Everest’s northern flanks. Little thought appeared to have been given to the feelings of Mallory’s surviving family. Her compassion and understanding during this conversation came as no surprise from a lady whose home seconds as the headquarters for the Himalayan Trust. Her brusque and forthright reputation belied a much more private and caring person beneath. For Elizabeth Hawley, her meticulous recording of Himalayan expeditions for nearly 40 years had transcended from being a vocation into a lifetime’s work, perfectly captured by a book published about her in 2005 titled
I’ll Call You in Kathmandu
.

No sooner had I arrived home than I was out on location filming a BBC documentary called
Mountain High: Twice To the Summit of Everest
. Keith Partridge, who had taught me how to film, was on this occasion behind the camera and Alastair Leithead was interviewing me about my Everest expeditions as we strolled on the rather less challenging but equally beautiful slopes of the English Lake District. The scenes we shot in the Lakeland fells were mixed with the footage I’d taken in Nepal during 1998 and 1999. This encompassing documentary, produced by Mark Batey, with Olwyn Hocking as executive producer, seemed to complete my Everest journey. Articles appeared in both the local and national press. It was a story that was topical for a few weeks, and then it was old news.

However, my return from Everest was to produce ripples, with a most unexpected result. The boarding school I had attended between the ages of 11 and 18, Barnard Castle School, created a display of recent newspaper clippings about my second ascent of Everest. This was prepared for the summer gathering in north-east England of the former pupils’ association, the Old Barnardians’ Club. My two ascents were seen as a continuation of the school’s historical links with Everest, which dated back to the 1924 expedition.

A member of that team was Bentley Beetham, a former pupil and subsequently natural history master at the North Eastern County School, later renamed Barnard Castle School. Organised by the Mount Everest Committee, chaired by Sir Francis Younghusband, this expedition was a joint undertaking of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club. On this ill-fated trip, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were last seen high on Everest as they disappeared into the clouds, still going strong for the top.

It was a warm summer’s morning when I set out from our apartment in Tynemouth to make the 50-mile journey back to my old school. The date was Sunday, 27 June 1999, six weeks after my return from Everest. I bore the physical scars of my recent adventure. The tips of my fingers on my left hand were hard and black with a thick layer of dead skin. I was wearing sandals. Frostbite had caused the outer flesh surrounding the big toe on my right foot to decay and the toenail to drop off. With bandage wrappings to stave off infection, the return to normal shoes was still several months away.