My summit bid started at about 5pm with de-hydrated sweet and sour chicken. Not properly re-hydrated in the cool boiling water at 8,000m on the South Col it soon started to disagree with me and Kenton. Well, by the time I reached the balcony at 8,500m at about 4am Tori and the others were long gone and I was left with my Sherpa Topjen watching in horror as I started vomiting – nice. This was a relief as it took my mind off the stomach cramps and terrible amounts of flatulence and the nagging suspicion that it might not all be dry farts….
After another hour or so the sun rose and I stopped asking Topjen for somewhere out of the howling wind for me to go to the loo. I stopped because I could finally see that I was on one side of a ridge and there were no rocks for miles – just banks of snow! By now I had caught some of the other members of the Himalayan Guides group and decided to follow in their wake and try to forget about the horrible night which had just past and climb the rocks up to the South Summit, which was pretty good fun really! I also past Kenton coming down who looked really ill and who confirmed that he had also had some food poisoning and was getting down ASAP having made it a second summit in a week.
After another hour (it feels like minutes) I was at the South Summit and knew I was going to make it! In front of me was the Hilary Step and above it the summit ridge which all looked just snowy and benign. That was really worrying as you knew that if the wind got any stronger things would turn deadly in an instant. After all Rob Hall had died just next to where I was standing in the 1996 storm.
Having grunted up the Hilary Step and climbing onto the summit ridge I slowly made my way up the last 100 vertical metres to the top of the world, passing Tori, Rob and Anna on their way back down about 500m from the summit. That last stretch was horrible. It took 45mins with every step a massive massive effort and all I could think about was whether the wind was getting stronger and could I get back down again if I needed to in a hurry. Fortunately my hands and feet stayed warm in my down mitts and big boots so that was a plus.
When I got to the top at about 9:15am I climbed right to the summit covered in prayer flags and found to my total surprise a gold Buddha in Perspex! Well I hugged it and turned round with it at my back to sit and admire the view. Which got better and better the less hypoxic I became! After 5 mins I got back to the business of getting out of there as the wind continued to howl. I couldn’t use my digital camera because of the cold freezing my hands if I took them out of my mitts so I resorted to my Boots disposable and Topjen got some shots before it too froze and stopped working. That is why I have no summit photos, hopefully they’ll come out ok when we get back to London.
After trying to film Mike Davy as he proposed to his girlfriend of 20 years, I decided caution was the better side of valour and headed down after less than 15 mins on the top of the world. I wasn’t upset to be leaving I can tell you. I was fine all the way down to just above the South Summit where there is a small rise. I climbed it a bit quick and was totally out of breath and feeling very hypoxic (I get very agitated and light headed it seems). That made me very scared as it brought home the horrible recollection that you are still at 8,750m and help is a long long way off. Not the place to loose it and I didn’t. I made the journey down in 2.5 hours stopping only at the balcony while Topjen collected empty oxygen bottles. What a legend, he too had been up twice in a season!
I caught up Tori at the South Col and was greeted by a bug hug from Chris from the Extreme Everest Team and Tori’s sherpa Thundu who had made hot grape tang (like hot Ribbena). I was very glad when I didn’t vomit it back up and headed for our tent as fast as I could. The wind on the South Col was still blowing so fast that the spindrift was being blown in lines on the floor and the tents were close to being shredded.
Two litres of fluid later and I was unconscious in my tent and having panic attacks whenever I removed my oxygen for too long. It was a long night until we went down and I spent most of it in total disbelief about what I had just been through and achieved. I had to keep pinching my self to prove that I was indeed alive and that I had done it. I had been to the top of the world and come back in one piece to tell the tale. All I now had to do was spend two days getting to base camp and safety!
