p15 Outdoor Baz:SGBGolf_NEW_template 27/07/2009 14:20 Page 15
Baz Roberts
The Everest
Barry Roberts
explains why there's
Circus
all the fuss about
Everest, still one of
the planet's greatest
challenges – if not
the greatest
credit: Barry Roberts
A
nyone with even a vague interest in the media would have kind weather and ever increasingly sophisticated logistics and equipment.
noticed that our very own Sir Ranulph Fiennes climbed One web report stated there were 500 people on the Nepalese side of the
Everest in May, finally, after three attempts in four years. This mountain poised to ascend. Correspondingly, the number of blogs of
news is just the tip of the Everest Circus iceberg. I heard about Ran’s climbers on Everest now is mind boggling. Go to Russell Brice’s
achievement on May 20th on the early BBC TV news (he didn’t make www.hixex.com site and the team list. Most of his climbers have blogs. They
it on Channel 4). Background video of him huffing and puffing are plainly eager to make their hopes, dreams and fears – and perhaps
through the icefall with a journalist, who was puffing even harder, successes – accessible to the outside world. Yet few of them are really
was interlaced with still images from the summit. The footage was effective in conveying what it’s all about. I understand that now.
accompanied by Ran’s taped crackly voice that was beamed from the During Fiennes’s summit week it was reported that Sherpa Apa climbed
top a few hours earlier in the freezing dawn of the Himalaya. Everest for the 19th time, 200 had summited already and three people died,
Moving stuff. including sadly a Chamonix friend, German Frank Ziebarth, who reached the
My eyes welled up as Fiennes’ story was recounted. I have a good idea top from Tibet without oxygen and sat down and died on the descent. These
what he’s experienced, and suffered, in his persistence to add Everest to a numbers sound plausible but I know not to believe everything I read on the
long list of fantastic achievements. I reached the summit from the Tibetan net about Everest, especially on personal blogs. One news website describes
north ridge route in 2004 and earn part of my living telling the story of that this traffic as a “tsunami” though surely an avalanche would have been a
climb to varied audiences. I still get very better metaphor? Do we read into this that
emotional when I relive the pain of the
Five years on I still haven’t
Everest is now easy? If the number of
eight week experience – and it’s mostly people doing Ironman triathlons trebled
pain – and the single day of absolute pure
figured out what triggers this
would that automatically make this
joy of summit day. Video clips from the
emotional meltdown.
punishing event any easier?
summit and back at camp one help me For me Everest was hard. Very, very hard.
vividly recall and convey this experience. But It still is for those that try. Just because
I don’t really need these visual prompts because the experience is so deeply people are queuing 10 or 20 deep to climb the Hillary Step on summit day
engrained in my psyche, even though the details are incomplete due to the doesn’t make it any easier. Remember, it took Fiennes three goes.
hypoxic haze I was in most of the time, with a blood oxygen saturation level Discovery Channel, Imax and other media have glorified and 'gory’-fide
of just 64% (close to 100% at sea level is normal). Everest and brought it into people’s homes. But all the huffing and puffing
Five years on I still haven’t figured out what triggers this emotional cannot easily convey the allure of mountain climbing and the magnetism of
meltdown. Maybe it has something to do with beating the odds against Everest in particular. With like-minded climbers I don’t need to explain the
succeeding when most thought I would drop out having failed to acclimatise. emotional legacy of my Everest experience, even if I could articulate it.
Maybe deep down I’m thinking “I’ve done it. What's left to do in life on such Perhaps it’s the sheer depth and scale of adventures like Everest that must
a scale?” Had this experience taken me to the edge of my psychological remain the domain of great poets to analyse. I accept this because I won’t
envelope? So many maybes. Everest was a high school ambition and I have be going back to Everest to figure it out. Mark Twain said “I did it, partly
never come so close to failing to achieve something that I so desperately because I enjoyed it but mostly because I will never have to do it again”.
wanted to. Rest in peace Frank.
In the days that followed Fiennes’ ascent there were many more due to Visit www.bazroberts.com for YouTube Everest video links
JULY 2009 SGB OUTDOOR 15
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