A Day to Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth (37 page)

Looking back, the help Joey and others at the UCAR gave me, and the encouraging manner in which they approached the problem, kept me going when my morale was low. For Joey’s, Will’s and Leslie’s support I am most grateful.

I still have the plots Joey prepared for me. I held them back in the prospect that I might obtain further material from other sources before searching out a meteorologist to interpret them for me. In the end, I never used them. The value they had to me when I first received them was probably far greater than the information they contained. They gave me hope.

In 2006, I returned to Nepal on a major expedition for the first time in seven years. Although my adventures to the mountains had continued in the intervening years, on private trips to more modest peaks with equally majestic summits, I was greatly excited by my return to the Himalaya.

I had joined a commercial trip, organised by Henry, to climb Lhotse. At 27,940 feet, it is the world’s fourth-highest peak. Although most of Henry’s climbers were there to attempt Everest, a few of us were heading up for Lhotse instead.

By 12 April, I had arrived at the familiar site of Base Camp, the gateway to Everest and Lhotse. Both routes pass through the Khumbu Icefall and share a common line until halfway up the steep ice of the Lhotse Face. At this point, climbers attempting Everest split left across the Yellow Band towards the Geneva Spur. Those for Lhotse continue up into a 2,000-ft narrow gully that sustains steep mixed ground of snow and rock all the way to the exposed summit towering above.

Despite my enthusiastic return to this familiar ground, I was unsure as to the emotions and thoughts that would surface. My previous haunting return to the South Col in 1999 would not be repeated, as our route to Lhotse veered off to the right several hundred feet below this desolate plateau. However, the ground below the divergence was where all the crucial decisions of 1996 had been taken, ones that I suspected but could not yet prove.

I wondered if voices from the past would plague my subconscious once more, or whether I would be tormented by my lack of evidence, cruelly taunted by that which I could not find. I tried my best to block out such thoughts.

As it would turn out, the events of 2006 would have unexpected consequences for my future enquiries into the 1996 tragedy, which at this particular time appeared to be faltering. I had made no real progress since I’d last spoken to Henry.

The routine of unpacking, erecting my tent in a suitable spot and settling in to this inhospitable environment had lost none of its familiarity. Kami was still Henry’s Sirdar. A few of the Sherpas I had spent time with before, but the majority were new to me. This was also true for the entire climbing team, except for Geoffrey Stanford. We had been on Everest together back in 1998. My fellow climbers came across as a friendly gregarious bunch with a surfeit of adventurous spirit. I was looking forward to our times ahead.

That was until day three, when I was moving a large propane gas cylinder stored in our mess tent. As I leant forward to lift it out of the way, a pain tore across the lower right side of my back; my legs gave way at the knees. Cursing, I thrust my hand across to the table to support my weight.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked one of the climbers sitting nearby. I can’t remember who it was; I too busy wincing with the pain to take notice.

It took me 20 minutes to limp my way back to my tent, where I lay uncomfortably, cursing the stupidity of my mistake. I had done this before at home by casually lifting an object without making a conscious effort not to lean forward while doing so. This was the first time I had done it on an expedition. I was well aware that such injuries do not heal overnight and can take several weeks to recover enough so that normal strains can be placed on the spine once more.

With the Lhotse looming high above, I knew what the consequences might be if, partially recovered, I continued with the climb only to have the injury resurface in an equal or more serious state at altitude. It would place those around me in a difficult and dangerous position as they tried to extricate me from the mountainside.

I skipped the evening meal that day and breakfast the following morning. It was too painful to get up. I spent the night trying to find a position where my back didn’t hurt; I failed. Around lunchtime, I inched my way across camp to Henry’s tent to discuss this turn of events. He could see the pain I was in and the anguish on my face over what I had done. He had suffered a similar injury in Advanced Base Camp back in 1995, when we had been on the Tibetan side of Everest. He could see only too well the discomfort I was suffering by the way I shuffled gingerly over the ground.

‘Your call,’ said Henry.

His words were generous considering the problems I could cause him and others on the team if I continued up the mountain.

In bygone days I would have pressed on, but this wasn’t wise. After much soul searching, I decided to throw in the towel on this year’s climb and informed Henry of my decision. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage the three-day trek back to Lukla, other than one step at a time.

I made a satellite phone call to my insurance company, which I’d organised through my membership of the British Mountaineering Council, to inform them of the incident, in case matters deteriorated on my walk out. To my amazement, they were insistent that a helicopter be sent to airlift me out. An appointment would be arranged at a medical clinic in Kathmandu for when I arrived. In hindsight, I wish that helicopter had not been sent.

Visiting Henry in Base Camp was his nineteen-year-old nephew Oscar, accompanied by another teenager, Tom, who was four or five years his junior. Tom was the son of Dr Mike Brennan, a general practitioner from the Lake District who was attempting Everest this year. They were now due to depart for their walk out. However, the imminent arrival of the helicopter would provide these two with an exciting and rapid transfer back to the capital.

The day before our transport was due, I hobbled my way down to Gorak Shep, from where I had been airlifted out in 1999 by Lt Col Maden K.C. in one of the army’s Squirrel helicopters. On that occasion, I had been suffering with frostbite.

We woke the next morning to find a heavy sky and a one-foot layer of dense snow covering the ground. There was no chance of a landing. Twenty-four hours later, nothing had changed.

After a radio call to Henry, we moved further down the valley to Lobuche, in the hope the weather might clear lower down. Mike, who had originally come down to wave Tom off at Gorak Shep, continued down with us, as little climbing could be achieved in these poor conditions. In fact, it would not be until the fifth day that conditions would allow the airlift to happen, by which time we had descended to the village of Pangboche.

Expecting to be boarding a helicopter the next day, I had left Base Camp carrying little more than my wallet, a toothbrush and the clothes I stood in. Clean attire and everything else I needed was waiting for me in a holdall I had deposited in the hotel baggage room back in Kathmandu. Now, several days on, I had taken on a dishevelled appearance: coarse stubble covered my face, my hair was unbrushed and my clothes were beginning to smell from the perspiration of walking and of shivering in the cold night air. I had started to notice my less than fragrant smell. I was desperate for a shower and clean garments.

My back was showing considerable signs of improvement; the walking over uneven ground had gently massaged the injury. It gave me little discomfort unless I stood still for too long. This indicated that muscle damage rather than vertebrae had caused the problem. There was a strong possibility I could have turned around and gone back up to rejoin the expedition. Several factors weighed heavily against this. First, I had two extra passengers expecting a ride. Second, there had been several aborted attempts to fly in, for which there might well be a considerable bill if I chose to cancel at this late stage. And last, but certainly not least, I did not know how fragile this apparent recovery might be. In simple terms, I was too far down the line.

It was seven o’clock in the morning when we heard the approaching Mi 17 helicopter, visible against a background of soaring Himalayan summits with snow-fluted ridges. Large snowflakes were floating downwards from a sky filled with white billowing clouds, between which dazzling sunshine was breaking through. The morning was bitterly cold.

The landing spot for this colossal Russian machine was a small, dry-stone-walled field on the outskirts of the village. With the nose of the aircraft slightly raised, this gargantuan machine came in to land. The air just beyond the tips of the 70-ft blades sent vortexes of snow swirling upwards. Below, the downdraft ripped freshly fallen snow off the ground, blasting it across the surface in all directions away from the precise spot the pilot had chosen. As the wheels sank through the crusted snow, they touched down on the solid ground below. The small side door was flung open; a dozen local Sherpa people emerged from inside. All flights from Kathmandu to this region had been cancelled because of the weather, and had been for several days. With the incoming helicopter, paid for by my insurance, these few had managed, either through persuasion or personal contacts, to hitch a ride.

No sooner had they alighted than Oscar, Tom and I clambered in. The pilot lifted off without delay. Below I could see Tom’s father waving frantically as his son departed. He covered his eyes to shield them from the painful rush of ice particles thrown up by the rising machine.

Passing above the clouds, Oscar and Tom sat on one side of the voluminous cargo hold, myself on the other. All three of us looked out of the round windows that ran down either side of the fuselage, relieved to be on our way. I understood that the last few days had been stressful for everyone, as each day had brought yet another delay.

Within an hour, the pilot had us back in Kathmandu. We landed on the far side of the airstrip, well away from the terminal building. Kathmandu was under military curfew. The country’s problems had erupted into violence on the streets. Explosions and deaths had occurred; demonstrations had taken place. In an attempt to bring the escalating troubles under control, King Gyanendra, the absolute monarch, had ordered a clampdown; a series of curfews from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. had been imposed.

Nepal’s unrest had first erupted in February of 1996, when the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) declared its intentions to establish a People’s Republic of Nepal. In the intervening time, tens of thousands had been killed and a far greater number been internally displaced. For several years, those fighting for the cause – the Maoist rebels – had been seen as violent extremists. They demanded money by extortion and took young boys from villages to swell their ranks; they were feared and outside the democratic process. They struck in small groups causing maximum damage; remote police outposts were often the sites of appalling carnage, vehicles were set alight, Buddhist monks and prostitutes had also been targeted, large numbers had been killed.

King Gyanendra had taken the throne in 2001, upon the death of his nephew Dipendra, who had been king for three days while in a coma. Dipendra had suffered what would later be claimed as self-inflicted gunshot wounds following the massacre of the preceding king, Birendra (Gyanendra’s brother), and other members of the royal family. In all, ten people had died in the shooting. Prince Dipendra had been blamed for the massacre. An internal family wrangle over whom the prince should marry was cited as the cause. However, there was a very large number in Nepal who believed the present King Gyanendra, who had been in Pokhara in western Nepal at the time of the shooting, had been behind this wholesale slaughter.

In February 2005, Gyanendra took complete control. He dismissed the elected parliament and declared himself the absolute monarch. This move caused the formation of an unlikely alliance between the Maoist insurgency and the moderate democratic political parties. They united in opposition to his absolute rule. Recent food and fuel shortages had raised the temperature further; civil unrest had dramatically spilled onto the streets of Kathmandu. The stakes could have not been higher – the control of the whole country – and we had landed right in the middle of it.

We sat silently in the helicopter for the best part of an hour awaiting a military inspection. Only then would we be allowed to disembark. They were searching for potential terrorists, weapons and explosives. The airport was eerily quiet. Most aircraft were grounded. Our flight had required special permission from the army hierarchy.

As we exited the domestic arrivals building, a distraught-looking Iswari met us. ‘Graham, what has happened in the Icefall? We hear people, Sherpas, have been killed this morning,’ he asked, his face wrought with anguish.

These were his friends, the people he worked with. I apologised repeatedly for not being able to give him more information. In truth, we knew nothing of the accident. In May 1996, the teams at Base Camp tried to maintain a news blackout of 24 hours after the tragedy. Now such information spread freely via satellite phones and their Internet connections across the globe, often while rescue attempts were still taking place. The rush to be the first to break bad news brought about speculation and rumours rather than a considered report. No one was quite sure what had happened.

‘Big problems in Kathmandu, the army is everywhere, the situation is bad,’ Iswari continued. ‘The only place you are safe is in Thamel. You will be OK there.’

However, Oscar had been given instructions by his uncle Henry to stay in the Summit Hotel some miles away from Thamel, in more or less the opposite direction from which Iswari wanted to take us. Barbed wire and machine-gun posts barricaded the airport’s entrance road; beyond this the streets were deserted.

‘My uncle has told me I have to stay at the Summit Hotel,’ Oscar told him. Tom stood silently nearby.