Everest Post-Script

Little did I imagine when I left Calgary to go and climb Mt. Everest, the kurfuffle I would land myself in, and the unbelievable media coverage that would ensue. Before any expedition to a high and dangerous mountain there is a great sense of the unknown and a gnawing impatience to go and see how things will unfold. I know that many outcomes are possible, including my own death. But what happened this year I never would have imagined.

Counting back through previous trips, I believe that Mt. Everest was my 9th Himalayan expedition. I have only received minimal attention in the past for my climbs (and never expected to), despite the fact that some of those expeditions happened to take place in some very remote and interesting places and were either rare ascents or even first ascents, at least on the occasions when we were successful.

But Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and despite the large number of ascents it has received, and the unsavoury reputation it has developed in recent years, it continues to fascinate and attract people in hoards - me being no exception. I wanted to test my mettle against Everest, to simply see what it was like up there. Many of my climbing friends say they wouldn't touch the mountain even if I was paying, never mind having to go through years of mounting garage sales and dipping into their RRSPs in order to raise the funds. But then again, how many climbers have an RRSP? Most climbers on Everest these days are relatively wealthy professionals, ambitious people who have spent their lives developing careers, but not necessarily climbing skills. Obviously there are many exceptions to this (there are some exceptional people on Everest), but this is a general observation I made while there. Regardless of who is there however, Everest attracts attention, and almost every year there is some occurrence on the mountain that generates a big story. The events of this season clearly resonated with a public tired of continually depressing and violent news coming at them everyday from their television sets and newspapers.

I remember the night of our climb quite well. I can distinctly remember the silence and the dark we climbed through, the only sound one's own breathing, and the styrofoam squeaking of our boots in the very cold snow. This silence between us was eerily interrupted at one point by Dan, when his words "may God bless your soul" came very deliberately out of the darkness ahead. He had just passed the body of David Sharp. I felt a pang flow through my stomach as I prepared to pass by. His boots sit almost on the trail and I gave a quick glance his way, his ghostly figure illuminated by my headlamp. Immediately afterwards lies another climber, face down, snow covering his head. I felt a great sorrow in seeing these people lying in such a cold, awful place. It was a nightmarish scene, and it took me sometime afterwards to recover and try to put it behind me. We continued up the ridge and finally came to the first step. The climbing at this point was sufficiently interesting to demand our full attention, and by then the bodies were a distant memory. Phil Crampton decided to turn around at this point due to very cold hands and feet, feeling the mountain was not worth losing any digits for. A half an hour later we would make a discovery that would surprise not only ourselves, but many others as well.

That we were there and met Lincoln Hall when we did was pure chance, or fate, or luck - call it what you like. Interestingly to me, I have read in several media reports that our decision to help Lincoln must have come in part due to climbers decisions to leave David Sharp when he clearly needed a helping hand, the previous week. We were only aware that David had died, and knew absolutely nothing about the controversy. At the time our satellite phone was down to about 10 minutes of time and the battery had probably even less power left in its frozen self. We certainly were not surfing the net up there. Other climbers, inhabiting their fortress like Advanced Base Camps, shared no information with us. Besides, how many people are going to admit that "hey, yes, I summited, but it's really too bad about that guy we saw dying up on the ridge…" People were very quiet about it. Our decision to stop with Lincoln, if I may say so, came without discussion and was free from external influence. I will admit though, that sitting with Lincoln on the ridge and looking up toward the summit on a beautiful, windless morning - it looking so close - created a heavy and bleak feeling in me. It was a crushing disappointment, made worse by the fact that it was our second attempt in a week, and that our minds were weakened by nights of insomnia and our 24 hours without sleep since camp 2. Emotions were raw and directly on the surface, although we were very calm at the time. Coming back down was tough though. If you ever want to see grown men cry, Everest is a great place to go.

Coming home from trips like these is always a little bit difficult. It can take some time to readjust to regular life, and I believe it might be fair to say some climbers go through a form of postpartum depression afterwards. This time around I feel differently, despite not reaching the summit. I've had time to reflect on what happened up there, and I feel like we reached the best conclusion with the situation we were presented with. Knowing that we had helped to save Lincoln's life, and having Lincoln give his sincere thanks was all I needed to feel that everything was ok. I also felt extremely grateful to be having the opportunity to go home to be with my family and friends, when so many climbers this season would not. There was no summit, but at least I could (and can) say that life is interesting, if not completely strange. And for me, that is a good thing.