Bear Grylls by Bear Grylls

Author:Bear Grylls [Grylls, Bear]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780230768604
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

At 9.00 a.m., a little later than we had hoped, we moved out from the South Col. The wind still blew and snow whipped over the rocks; nothing seemed any different from when we had arrived forty-eight hours earlier. Yet so much had happened. I clipped into the rope and began to abseil off the lip, down the Geneva Spur. The Col was hidden once more.

Neil and I climbed together. He was moving faster than me, but I no longer cared. I had nothing to keep up for any more. We had done it, I could be slow now if I wanted. The tiredness had started before we had even left the Col. My body had been unable to recover at all up at Camp Four that last night. Instead I had just lain there awake – surviving.

The fatigue of almost sixty hours without sleep showed. On the Lhotse Face as I rested and swigged from my bottle, I lost my grip and it slipped through my fingers. I didn’t know how I had done this, but one moment I was drinking, and the next it was scuttling down the Face to the glacier, some 4,000 feet below. I winced; it was Ed Brandt’s favourite waterbottle that I had borrowed. It had gone to the summit with me and I knew he would treasure it even more now. I just sat and watched it hurtling away like a speck below me. Sorry, Ed, I thought. He’ll murder me. I grinned. At least it had gone out in glory.

Coming down the Lhotse Face seemed to take as long as going up it. Camp Two awaited us at the bottom, across the glacier, and Neil swore at me for being so slow, but he waited patiently. We were still a team. It showed. Three hours later, staggering slowly side by side, we shuffled those last few metres into the camp. Thengba was jumping on the spot with happiness. We were alive, that was all that he cared about. We embraced, and for the first time I relished his smell of diesel oil and yak meat. It was good to be with him. We had spent a lot of time together beforehand at Camp Two.

Andy and Ilgvar were also now at Camp Two. They looked tired. Andy could hardly speak from his sore throat caused by the dry air. But they had succeeded. Together they had reached the summit of Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain on our earth. The strain of the climb was written all over them. Andy smiled at me. It was as if since our climb on Ama Dablam together he had suspected that I would reach the top of Everest. I had never shared his suspicions; for me they had been only hopes. Maybe that is what makes him a friend. We shook hands like two gentlemen in a London club, then started to laugh. We had both seen that special place.

That night I slept like the dead. I drank a final litre of water, squeezed into my sleeping-bag and forgot everything.

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