BackStephen Venables: Battling phantoms on Everest
On Mount Everest, it's possible to survive avalanches, frostbite, hunger, loneliness and fear. But what if you start thinking you're going crazy?
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I never had any real worries about reaching the summit of Everest without supplementary oxygen. Getting up was not the problem. My only fear was that I would arrive on top and find myself too weak to get back down. Sure enough, when I stood up on the summit, at 3.50 in the afternoon, and started back down the ridge, I realized that my worst fears might be coming true.
My legs were weak and I had to stop frequently to kneel and rest. Clouds blurred my vision, obscuring the lethal, fragile cornices hanging from the great precipice of the Kangshung Face. Wind-driven snow was filling the tracks I had made on the way up only half an hour before. This was going to be a fight.
As I reached the foot of the Hillary Step, I almost lost the fight. My fingers went numb as I fumbled with my mittens off, frantically trying to change my frosted sunglasses. I only just got my mittens back on in time to avoid having my fingers frozen and lopped off. Then suddenly I realized I had forgotten to breathe, and found myself clutching at the thin air in anguished, sobbing gasps.
I forced myself on, over the South Summit, then down, down, down. I slid down to save time, until the snow began to descend in an avalanche. I leant back on my ice axe, braking to a gasping halt. After that shock I just sat for a while, leaning back in the snow, until the cold, seeping insidiously through my clothes, forced me to continue. But it was now getting dark, and at around 8,600m, I was still 700m above my team’s tents on the South Col.
I stopped to consider my options. I could either continue in the dark and risk getting lost, or I could stop and wait for the dawn. The wind had dropped and stars were appearing. I decided to wait.
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All along, I knew there was no old man out there. I never saw this man—the hallucination wasn’t visual. I had no idea what he looked like: He was just an internalized companion, but when he was there, I felt his presence intensely. That bizarre schizophrenic detachment is a common experience of people under huge physical and mental stress, but it seems to be exacerbated when the brain is starved of oxygen at extreme altitudes.
I found myself drifting in and out of reality. During lucid spells I was quite rational. The decision to stop in the open—without a tent, sleeping bag or stove to melt snow for drinks—was based on the knowledge that others had survived similar situations high on Everest (albeit not alone).
I was well insulated beneath five layers of clothing, and I calculated that an open bivouac at around minus 30 degrees Celsius was less risky than continuing down in the dark. I made it a point to lie down horizontally to maximize circulation. I took care to pad my hip and head with spare mittens. At intervals during the night, I forced myself to sit up and reach into an inner pocket to take out a chocolate bar and water bottle, which still had a trickle of half-frozen juice. I did everything possible to maximize my chances of survival.
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At some point during that long, confused, shivering limbo of a night, I became irritated by all the people crowding around my feet and told them to go away. They left me in peace, but then returned about an hour later, to taunt me with tales of sitting around a warm fire with the local Tibetan yak herders. There was even a mention of hot baths. That was when I felt most forlorn, but again my rational mind regained control and reminded me that no Tibetans brought their yaks up to 8,600m. And they certainly didn’t have hot baths!
At some point, I actually drifted off to sleep. I became aware quite suddenly that it was no longer dark. Soft wreaths of misty cloud drifted far below in the Kama valley. Then the sun appeared far out to the east, over Kanchenjunga. The long, lonely shiver was over and I was still alive.
No longer a passive victim, I took charge again, overjoyed to be continuing my journey back down to earth. Now that it was light, I could easily find the route, and soon I was taking steps back down the gully which led to the South Col. And then I noticed them—two figures standing beside an abandoned tent we had passed on the way up, over 30 hours earlier. I wondered for a moment as to who these phantoms were. George Mallory and Andrew Irvine perhaps? But then I realized, of course, they were my friends, Ed and Robert, who hadn’t quite made it to the summit, and had also spent the night shivering without sleeping bags. As I wobbled groggily down towards them, I realized dimly that this was one of the happiest moments of my life. I had climbed Everest, I had survived a night out in the open, and now I could go home.
In 1988, Stephen Venables ascended the east face of Everest without supplementary oxygen. This is his first-hand recollection of his experience.
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