Dead Lucky (6 page)

MY MIND-SET CHANGED when there was a new sponsorship offer on the table. Mike hit the right chord with adventurer and author Bradley Trevor Greive, who had a strong interest in Everest and was aware of my climbing credentials. Courage is an integral part of any ascent of the mountain, and as Bradley had just delivered his latest book,
A Teaspoon of Courage,
to his publisher, the marketing tie-in was obvious. When BTG, as he is known to his friends, confirmed his sponsorship of the expedition, he was kind enough to organize a media launch at Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo, a straightforward procedure given his position as governor of the Taronga Foundation and sponsor of the Taronga Poetry Prize for young Australians.

When all the speeches had been made, Mike and I strolled up the broad path toward the café with Bradley. While we walked, he asked me a curious question.

“Do you wear special watches on these big mountains?”

I was more accustomed to questions about footwear and gloves, but the answer was simple.

“Yeah, they're marketed as ‘wrist-top computers,'” I replied. “I have a Suunto that's got a compass, a barometer, three alarms, a stopwatch, and other features I've never bothered with. The altimeter's great because it can help you work out where you are in a white-out.”

BTG nodded, then as we walked, he took his own watch off his wrist and handed it to me, asking, “Would this work up there?”

The watch and its band were of silver metal, heavier than my Suunto but not as bulky. I looked at its face: 10:15 A.M., March 14, Rolex.

I nodded. “Sure it would work.”

“Would you wear it to the summit for me?”

“I don't know . . . maybe . . .”

He could see that I was flabbergasted by the suggestion.

“Why don't you wear it for a while and see what you think?” He slipped it on my wrist and showed me how to close the clasp.

That evening I could not work out how to take the thing off.

SUDDENLY SAND WAS POURING through the hourglass; I was scrambling in too many directions at once—work, home, family, fitness, logistics, and funding. The first step was to obtain two months' leave; otherwise there would be no expedition for me. I delegated tasks to my supportive coworkers, commissioned freelance writers with the major stories for the next two issues, then sought and obtained approval from David Kettle, the publisher at Emap responsible for
Outdoor Australia.
With so much to do, I knew there was a big possibility of arriving in Kathmandu burned-out and exhausted. Already underprepared for the gargantuan task of climbing the mountain, I could not afford to let myself slip any further behind the eight ball.

To have any chance of performing well on Everest with only six weeks' notice, I had to be disciplined with my training—which meant rigorous exercise at least five days a week. When at home, I extended my standard five-mile run to eight miles, sometimes with a bike ride at the opposite end of the day. At work, one lunchtime a week, I played football—very mindful of avoiding injury; on the other days, I jogged to the nearby pool for as many laps as I could manage.

Back home in the Blue Mountains, I was lucky enough to live ten minutes' jog away from the vertical cliffs of Wentworth Falls. Steps cut into the cliff linked with steep ladders allowed a six-hundred-foot descent to the bottom of the two-tiered falls. I began with a load of thirty pounds and was soon carrying fifty. A month later I was managing five circuits to the base of the falls and back—totaling 3,500 feet of up and down, with the whole routine taking four hours.

A week before we flew to Kathmandu, I took a day out of my ridiculous schedule to walk the Royal National Park Coastal Track from Bundeena, the southern outpost of Sydney. With me was my good friend Glen Joseph, whose company, Spinifex Interactive, had taken on management of the expedition website. Our walk was seventeen miles of spectacular cliff-tops and perfect beaches of pale yellow sand. Too many months had passed since Glen and I had had a proper conversation. In our enthusiasm to share stories we got lost twice. The track is generally regarded as a two-day walk, so there was no time to spare. When we found the trail again for the second time, we were careful not to take one more wrong step. The finish was a long steep hike up to the ridge above Otford with spectacular views from the top.

The adventure was not yet over—the ticket machine at Otford Railway Station was out of order, so when we boarded the train we were threatened with fines for not having tickets. Timing stayed tight until the end. Glen's car was parked at Bundeena, across the wide expanse of Port Hacking, and it was only because I ran ahead to the wharf that we caught the last ferry back from Cronulla. As the old wooden boat chugged across the bay, we congratulated each other on a great day out. The excitement of spending two months in the mountains was building up, and I could scarcely wait to be on my way.

ALWAYS IN MY MIND were the steps that I needed to take to help Barbara through the times ahead. Both Greg Mortimer and his partner, Margaret Werner, understood the implications of my decision to return to Everest, and when I spoke to them about looking after Barbara, they knew exactly what I meant. In 1988 Greg and I had sailed to Antarctica to climb Mount Minto, with Margaret in the galley as the expedition cook. Barbara, who was in the early months of her first pregnancy at the time, had looked after Margaret's three daughters. Upon our return, Margaret attended the home birth of Dylan, and Dorje a few years later. The bonds between our families remained very strong.

The highs and lows of parenthood had led to lasting friendships with Lois and David Horton-James and Tina Boys, the parents of Dylan's and Dorje's closest friends. All five boys attended the same schools, and we formed a natural support group for each other during some of the most interesting and challenging passages of life.

Before Dylan and Dorje reached school age Barbara and I had spent a lot of time at “Happy Daze,” a magnificent secluded property where Richard Neville and Julie Clarke lived with their two young daughters. Julie had invited us to participate in a private play group at their spacious home. Among the other children were the son and daughter of Julie's brother Roley and his wife, Robbie. Barbara and Julie shared another parallel path—both were married to writers, so they needed that extra degree of tolerance while Richard and I were locked away with our manuscripts for months at a time.

As our children grew up and went to high school, they drew us down different paths, and then, of course, we went to Singapore. But in March 2006, Richard and Julie heard the call before we made it. Our friends invited us to dinner during those last weeks, but in the final days all that Barbara and I could manage was coffee and cake at Happy Daze on the Saturday morning before I left for Kathmandu. As can only be felt among friends, there was an unvoiced acceptance that we were in this together—a nebulous sense of a destiny yet to be realized. But on the surface it was all fun and witticisms as I battled Richard's eloquence with nonsensical interpretations of his words.

He photographed all of us constantly with his new digital camera.

“Don't delete any of those photos, Richard,” I joked. “They could be the last ever to be taken of me in Australia.”

KATHMANDU

H
IS HOLINESS THE DALAILAMA told me once that Tibet has the purest air in the world. “As you have seen,” he added, knowing that I had been there in 1981 and 1984.

I was not about to dispute it. Certainly in 1984 I had thought Tibet to be the wildest place I had encountered. The years I had spent traveling from one mountainous place to the next gave me some yardsticks to judge it by. We sat in the meeting room of the great man's residence at Dharamsala, perched on a forested ridge-top in the foothills of the Indian Himalaya. To the distant south was the haze of heat and dust that hovered above the vast plains of India.

Two decades had passed since that meeting, and during that time I became domesticated, like a wild dog which stumbles into a backyard, finds someone who loves him, discovers the joys of loving, and decides never to leave. But from time to time I did get restless, as does a dog under a full moon, and at those times my wife left the gate open.

When I flew to Kathmandu in 2006, the gate was opened wider than it had ever been. An expedition to Mount Everest is no ordinary leave of absence. One of my close friends, Narayan Shresta, had been taken by an avalanche on Everest eighteen years ago, and I had nearly died there myself a few years before that. I was older and wiser now—or at least more cautious—and committed to coming home from every mountain that called me away.

As cameraman, my role was to record our climb of Everest, a far safer motivation than an obsession with the summit. My own dream of summiting remained a shadow in the wings, but if Christopher Harris succeeded in his attempt to be the youngest person to climb to the peak, I hoped to be beside him, filming history.

On the day we were to leave Australia, and in case history was in the making, the media showed up at Sydney Airport to interview Christopher and film him with his family. This interlude gave me the opportunity to discuss with Barbara a problem that I had created. I had forgotten to wear my favorite Scarpa ZG10 walking boots to the airport, despite placing them squarely in the front doorway so that I had to step over them to get out of the house. I loved those boots almost as much as I loved Barbara. I would be in Kathmandu for a few days, so we talked about the possibility of using World Expeditions to deliver the boots to Kathmandu, as I had worked with the company for twenty years. However, it was a Saturday and their office was closed. My good friend Sue Fear had the home number of the general manager, but Sue had already left for Kathmandu with the goal of climbing Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest peak.

“If all else fails, I'll buy a second-hand pair from a trekking shop in Kathmandu.” I pondered the option. “In fact, let's just do that.”

But Barbara knew that because one of my feet had been shortened by frostbite, it was hard for me to find comfortable footwear.

“I'll find a way,” she said. “Leave it to me.”

Conversations such as these followed one after another and left no time for private moments of intimacy, especially with our families and friends forming one large amorphous group. My sister Julia's three young sons circulated actively, with my father and their father keeping watch. We had our customary coffee. Because it was the last possible opportunity before I left, I called Dick Smith and thanked him personally for believing in Christopher and making the expedition possible. It was a call I had been intending to make from the time my position on the team was confirmed.

Although everything I wanted to say to Barbara and the boys I had already said at home, I needed to say it again before I boarded the plane. But the opportunities were taken up by simple things, such as Dylan and Dorje joking with their young cousins, too many camera flashes, and Mike on the job, filming us. Our last words were to the camera, not to our loved ones.

And while I was filled with an unexpected sense of dissatisfaction, I felt that Barbara was already prepared for it. She had told me that she did not want to know when I was on the summit—only when I was safely back down. For her there loomed the two-month void of my absence, which meant no dirty socks discarded on the floor, no whiskers in the sink, but also no watching the sunset together at the end of the day, no magic glances across the room, and only her in our bed.

AS WITH ALL EXPEDITIONS, there was a mental switch that took place when the plane left the ground. The all-important last-minute tasks no longer mattered because they were out of our hands. Mike and I had spent years of our lives in the Himalaya, but it was the first trip to Nepal for Christopher and Richard. However, there were new horizons for all of us because rather than the small private group that we had planned to be, we were about to enter the arena of large commercial expeditions.

When we landed in Kathmandu, the sky was thinly overcast, creating a drab and silent ambience. We were met by Harry Kikstra of 7Summits and two filmmakers, Kevin Augello and Milan Collin, who immediately began filming us. Harry quickly explained that he was also making a documentary, but of a German climber, Thomas Weber, who became visually impaired at high altitudes.

Harry had brought with him a sizable minibus, but its back door did not open, so our big bags and barrels had to be squeezed over the backseat. As we drove off, we introduced ourselves and chatted to one another. The streets were empty except for truckloads of soldiers. Harry told us that an all-day curfew had been declared by King Gyanendra in a desperate attempt to balance his authority against the growing power of the Maoist guerrillas. On some days the strikes were imposed by the Maoists and enforced with bomb threats—as we had learned from Ang Karma in 2004 when we came here for our Everest Base Camp trek. On other days the king called for curfews. Only tourist vehicles were allowed on the road. I fell silent, stunned and depressed by the troops at every corner and the roads barricaded by sandbags. All the shops had their shutters drawn and locked. We arrived at the Vaishali Hotel in the Thamel district of Kathmandu, where I had stayed seven years ago during the Australian-American Makalu Expedition. It had been a much cheerier place then.

I decided to call Ang Karma. While I waited for the receptionist, I glanced at the Nepali language newspaper on the counter with its stark photos of bloody rioting. Two of the staff hovered around the television at the end of the lobby, watching for updates. It was the worst day I had ever spent in Kathmandu.

Ang Karma was unavailable, but the receptionist kept trying. At last he picked up the phone.

“Karma Daai, it is Lincoln. I am in Kathmandu.”