Guarding the upper slopes of Mount Everest is an enormous tumbling glacier that grinds down in perpetual motion by about 3ft a day. It crunches ice cliffs until they collapse and rips open bottomless crevasses as it goes, and is considered by many to be the most dangerous section of the whole Everest climb. As there is no alternative route if you are to scale the mountain from its southern side in Nepal, the only option is to take a deep breath, say a few prayers and go for it.
Once inside the Khumbu icefall, as it is known, you can hear the ice groan and must move quickly. This doesn’t make it any safer, as you may well be rushing towards a block that’s just about to collapse. As if this is not enough, the gigantic walls that flank the icefall are loaded with hanging seracs — huge ice blocks — ready to blow their colossal load at any moment.
On any other mountain a feature like this would be avoided at all costs. But this is Everest, and things are a little different here. It is considered a risk worth taking as, once through, the route above becomes more straightforward. If you are strong and lucky enough, the summit is then yours for the taking.
Each year, a team of Sherpas known as the Icefall Doctors scout the best route through the glacier. They use cheap nylon ropes to lash aluminium ladders together over the gaping crevasses and up ice towers, sometimes five ladders high. This effectively opens the mountain for business.
Above the icefall, another Sherpa team secures ropes that lead to the summit. Climbers can then clip in and follow them all the way.
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Just below the icefall is base camp, a tented city on a glacier at 5,364m (17,598ft), where expeditions gather to acclimatise to the altitude before attempting to summit. About 800 climbers now try to climb Everest every year and a vast, lucrative expedition industry exists around it. But in many ways Everest will never fully be conquered. I have been a film-maker specialising in extreme environments for 15 years. The events I have witnessed at Everest have left me with an overload of stress and anguish, which has sent me on a process of recovery that I am still on today.
IT’S 2014 AND THIS IS MY FIRST TIME HERE, in a team making a documentary about the first man to jump from Everest in a wingsuit. As part of the story I am due to film with a group of Sherpas who are to go through the icefall to set up camp above it. On April 17, the night before we are to set off, our team gathers for a puja ceremony, a Buddhist ritual to ask the gods for safe passage on the mountain. Little do we know that many of the men we are drinking and dancing with will be dead within hours.
The next morning I wake with a start at 6.45am. A last-minute change of plans means the Sherpas have left without me, but morning has broken with a supersonic boom from the direction of the icefall and its reverberations are bouncing off the steep mountain walls all around. A gigantic ice block, we soon learn, has calved off the western shoulder of Everest destroying everything in its path, including this year’s route up the icefall where the Sherpas had stopped to fix some damaged ladders.
Lakpa Rita, our lead climbing Sherpa, takes just 90 minutes to race up to the disaster zone and is faced with a horrific scene: legs of friends sticking out of the snow; bodies entombed in ice; half-buried men, some conscious and some not. Soon rescuers are being flown up by helicopter while corpses are being flown down. The battered bodies of our team soar through the sky in blood-soaked bags as we watch helplessly. I am haunted by the thought of the group of Sherpas working hard to fix the ladders for us, unaware that these were their last moments. And I was supposed to have been with them.
Sixteen Sherpas are killed, many from the same village. Twenty-eight children made fatherless. For us cameramen, the decision is clear. There is no way we can carry on. Our team has been blown apart. We return home deeply upset and emotionally exhausted.
EXACTLY A YEAR LATER I RETURN to base camp to make a film about the mountain’s unsung heroes: expedition guides and climbing Sherpas who work tirelessly to keep the mountain industry going.
On the morning of April 25, 2015, I interview Lakpa Rita, whose tent is at the top end of base camp, right beneath the icefall. His eyes glisten with emotion as he tells me about those dreadful hours a year ago.
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“I found 11 bodies all in the same spot,” he starts, then pauses. “And pretty much dug them all out.” I wonder if it is wrong of me to have asked the question, but he seems OK to talk about it. “Since seeing all this,” he continues, “I decided not to climb… Something doesn’t feel right inside and whatever you feel inside, you have to listen to yourself.” Tears are now burning my own cheeks. After the accident, he had made a promise to his wife to stay behind as base camp manager this year.
Having been involved in 36 expeditions and 17 summits, Lakpa Rita tells me he has seen massive changes at base camp since he started as a climbing Sherpa in 1984. Back then there were usually just a few teams, nothing like what Everest has become today. After the disaster of 1996, when eight people died on the mountain, Lakpa Rita had thought this growing industry might have diminished, but the opposite had happened. Things got even busier. Now it was common to have more than 1,000 people at base camp, many of whom are novice climbers.
At the end of our interview, we drink tea quietly together. Then, on my way back to my camp, I pause to sit on a rock to think about this humble, legendary man. Suddenly my skin prickles. The ice beneath my feet judders, then cracks and hisses. I sway as if I’m at sea. Then it stops.
I look up to see a figure running from the icefall and grab my camera.
A deep, thunderous roar begins to echo all around, impossible to locate but growing louder, as if the mountains are collapsing above me. As I find my camera frame I notice the same figure turning and running back the way he came. The low grey cloud begins to expand violently. What the hell am I filming? Explosions of snow, ice, rock and debris are all churning together into one enormous blast right over our camp. I’m so mesmerised by my shot through the camera lens that for a moment it doesn’t seem real. Then it bursts out of my frame into reality. I start to run, though it is pointless. There is nowhere to hide.
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I hear myself cry out as base camp begins to disappear under a dark shroud. Within seconds the shock wave hits me and I am blown off my feet. Something screams past my head and I brace myself for impact. This is it, I think. Breathe, focus, breathe. I am now gasping and choking amid howling waves of snow, ice and grit. I am swallowing the mountain and it is expanding into my lungs, throat and nose.
Beginning to suffocate, I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed. All I can see are white and grey fuzzy dots everywhere and in everything. My mind is ablaze with a million thoughts. I’m not ready to die. But I have to be brave. My girls, my girls. How can this be happening?
I learn later that an earthquake of 7.8 magnitude triggered a huge avalanche from a high ridge south of the mountain. An estimated 10,400 cubic metres of snow and ice have dropped 1,000m before exploding like a shrapnel bomb on the centre of base camp. It has sent mountain debris smashing through the air, turned tent poles into deadly spears and kitchen knives into missiles.
Now, suddenly, silence. I gasp for a thin sliver of breath. I’m alive. I think. I hack and splutter and peel open my frozen eyelids, only to be blinded by bright grey stillness. I pull myself out of my shallow grave, trying to find centre and sense. Around me is devastation. I stagger a few steps towards camp and fall over again. Rags of canvas hang still in post-catastrophic silence.
Fifty feet or so away, two figures lie in front of me twitching violently, eyes rolling back and groaning, dying, their naked torsos smearing the ice in blood. They look as if they have been picked up and thrown down a bank through a cheese grater of rocks and ice that has ripped off their clothes and smashed their heads. “Put some clothes on,” I instruct, unable to process what I’m seeing. I feel quite cross with them for being so poorly dressed. “You will be OK, but please try to be still and you must put some clothes on.”
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They continue to spasm. “Don’t worry, I will get help.” I take a few steps away. “Please help me someone,” I shout, unnerved by the unfamiliar tone in my voice. Why is no one coming? “We’ve got two dying here. I need help!” Crying and still annoyed with them, I say I’ll be back and then leave them there convulsing. Two bleeding bodies burning on the ice.
I head back towards my camp, calling for help. As I draw closer, I realise why no one has come. I am walking into an apocalypse. Zombies are staggering, some made unrecognisable by blood and injury.
The earthquake caused devastation across Nepal and a national emergency is declared while we are cut off from the world, bodies piling up around us. In total 22 people are killed at base camp, with at least 100 more injured. The survivors, many highly skilled doctors and guides with experience of dealing with remote trauma, including Lakpa Rita, come together to save upwards of 70 lives.
THESE TERRIBLE EVENTS are still pumping through my system weeks after my return to the Scottish Highlands where I live with my wife, Julie, and young daughters. Their love and support are unlimited but I still find myself feeling somewhat alone, just as I was when I struggled to gasp what I thought was my last breath.
I don’t know whether to talk about it or not, and almost feel under pressure to have the breakdown I sense those around me are expecting. At first I try to numb myself with alcohol, but that doesn’t work. It takes the edge off things, but in the middle of the night my demons sober up and plague me as I sleep. Weed doesn’t help either. It just makes me think more.
I find myself standing in a supermarket, locked in a silent battle, unable to decide which snacks to buy for my girls. Anyone passing might think I am just taking my time choosing between Oreos or Hobnobs. But in my mind, I am seeing blood and biscuits mashed together in an icy pulp.
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I am offered counselling by the film company but I decline. I am afraid to admit my struggles to myself, let alone anyone else. I don’t think anyone else can possibly understand how I am feeling. I’ve heard about post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At first, I don’t understand what the difference is. I am scared of finding out, fearful of the label. Disorder implies so much. I don’t want that to be me. I still don’t. I tell myself I am a father and a husband and a successful TV producer/director. I have to get on with it.
My GP explains it is likely that I am experiencing post-traumatic stress — expected in the short term. If symptoms persist and begin to interfere with everyday life, post-traumatic stress would become post-traumatic stress disorder. Had my stress become a disorder? If so, why wasn’t it affecting me all the time?
To cope, I begin to go for runs in the forest next to my house near Fort William. Hidden in the heart of the forest is a small loch. On calm, clear days it is a mirror of forest green and sky blue. Each day I strip down and ease myself into its freezing waters. Slowly, over many months, I feel myself beginning to heal mentally.
WHEN THE CALL COMES IN 2016 asking me if I will return to Everest to film a series about helicopter rescues around the mountain, I am crippled by procrastination. Though the ghosts are still there, my PTSD has died down. So would this seemingly great opportunity undo all the progress that I have made? I need to find out.
My trek back to base camp is an emotional one. A little after Gorak Shep, a small village on the route where the last teahouses are, the trail finds a ridge that runs alongside the glacier. As I round a corner my body becomes instantaneously frozen and heavy, as if I am under the tremendous weight of an invisible force. I hit the dirt wailing. I get up and stagger a few more steps before the same thing happens again. I am walking into my nightmare. But there is no sign of any avalanche coming. Just a thickness to the thin air that I almost have to push my way through. A few more steps, then I collapse in tears again. I realise a volcano has been simmering inside me for months. Now it had erupted, could I leave it all behind?
I make the film and return home feeling relieved. I’d even climbed through the icefall for the first time. No disasters this time. But when I’m approached to film again at Everest the following year, I don’t want to go back. Instead, I start to write, just to understand my thoughts. Meanwhile, I take other jobs. I go to the Gobi Desert, Belize, Vietnam. Years pass, but I still have questions. Do I still have PTSD? How could I know? So in April this year, I decide I have to go back. Just 72 hours later, I land in Kathmandu.
Even eight years later, everybody has a terrible earthquake story to tell and it’s immediately reassuring to talk to other people about their experiences: trek leaders stuck in valleys with panicking clients; owners of guesthouses whose businesses were ruined. Until now it had been my story going round and round in my head. Now the sharing of traumatic memories gives me a sense of connection. I hear of one westerner who’d been on a suspension bridge when the earthquake struck. His Sherpa yelled at him to run. They both managed to get off the bridge just as it collapsed, killing the other three people on it. The westerner has returned to Nepal every year since. I can understand why.
I dip in the cold water of the Dudh Koshi river, close to the trail to base camp. And this time the emotions I’d experienced as I trekked in 2016 are nowhere to be felt. Am I healed? Then it hits me again. Two days’ walk from base camp, tears start to flow. I cry all the rest of the way and I wonder how much emotion about this event I can possibly still hold.
I am only at base camp for one night and am struck to see how the place has changed. The tears stop as I find myself among old friends, among them Phurba Tashi, a legend with 21 Everest summits to his name, who was our lead Sherpa in 2016. It is hard to hear how, on top of the earthquake, Nepal had suffered greatly again during Covid, which had cut off a vital source of tourism income for millions.
If base camp is a circus, it is an important one for Nepal. The work it brings each year is on a different scale here. The Everest industry continues to grow with new companies and camps popping up around base camp. I am struck by the number of large geodesic dome tents everywhere, their hexagonal structures providing ultimate camping luxury with thick carpet inside. There are espresso machines. I hear that one camp has porcelain toilets and four-poster beds.
• Kenton Cool – king of the mountains
But no amount of luxury can make the mountain safe. The long, dangerous queues in the “death zone” over 8,000m will no doubt continue next spring. You may well encounter a dead person on the way to the summit, but that’s the deal with climbing Everest.
Seventy years on from their first ascent, I wonder what Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary would make of all this. As I leave for home, I feel thankful for all the hospitality and friendship I’ve experienced at base camp over the years and, as I look back at the path of the avalanche one last time, thankful that I am alive at all. I have learnt that recovering from trauma is not a case of getting a certificate, ticking a box and saying that I’m healed. It’s about learning to accept what has happened and allowing it to become part of who I am.
12 things to know about Everest
1. In Everest’s “death zone”, oxygen is so limited the body’s cells start to die. Temperatures can go below minus 30C.
2. Add in wind chill and it can feel like minus 83C in winter at the summit. Frostbite occurs in less than a minute
3. The bodies of an estimated 200 climbers and Sherpas still dot the mountain’s slopes.
4. Bringing a corpse down from the “death zone” can cost $70,000 (£58,000) and requires 6 to 10 Sherpas.
5. Between 5 and 10 people die on Everest every year on average.
6. This year, 12 people have been killed and another 5 are missing.
7. At least 4 of the 11 deaths in 2019 were blamed on overcrowding.
8. A permit to attempt the climb costs $11,000. Nepalese climbers are charged 75,000 rupees (£465).
9. Nepal plans to increase Everest permit fees to $15,000 from 2025.
10. British mountaineer Kenton Cool charges $200,000 or more to climb Everest with him. He has completed the most climbs by a non-Sherpa: 16.
11. Nepal issued a record 478 foreign permits to climb Everest this spring.
12. Chinese climbers received the most permits this year, with 96. American climbers secured 87.
Out of Mind by Joe French (Sandstone Press, £19.99). To order, go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
