day 14 detail

Diary by Ben Wolstenholme;

"Day 14, Summit Day. Set off on three ropes at 1.30am with a sherpa at the head of each rope. Khaji, Mymum and Mr. Walker, as we know them. I was on a rope with Khaji, Ron and myself at the back, it would have been Toby Younger but he didn't come, he wasn't up at high camp. Cold night, fairly still when we set out, the going was never easy, the three groups rotated to share 'breaking the trail' as it's called.

A few hours passed in a dreamy trek, looking down at the ropes snaking away in front, lit by the pool cast from the petzl head torch. Quite a lot of stopping, had a persistent nosebleed, that I had to let freeze on my face, felt like summit was a long way off. Either consciously or not it seemed the group was resigned to the fact that the summit was unachievable, a fact which had been told to us the previous day when the sherpas checked the trail. Ron who was in front of me, didn't seem comfortable, he had nausea and needed the toilet. Felt like mistiming for him, a lot of stopping and Ron asked Khaji the sherpa, "how long to the top?". The answer was three hours which posed too much. Ron decided to turn back with Mr. Walker at 5am, 6000m.

Guy was feeling the cold and approximately one hour later at 6100m, opted to turn back as he couldn't feel his feet and going was very slow. More discussions about who would accompany, I felt responsible as his brother, but in honesty dreaded the thought of having to turn back. Jeff offered, he seemed relatively content with his effort and fairly happy to go back with Guy as we needed to keep two sherpas with us. Difficult to read peoples intentions and motives, asked Jeff a couple more times and he still said he was fine to descend. Guy seemed all right with me staying and gave me both cameras. Kenny continued with Marcus and I, but soon after, accepted being tired and felt the remaining height too much.

By now it was light, we whistled after Jeff and Guy and Kenny followed them down. Marcus roped up with Mymum, (which is the name we have for one of he sherpas) and I stayed roped to Khaji. Just the four of us carried on. Every time we stopped I felt more angry, not because of wanting to go quicker, but just so definitely wanted to summit. Felt very exited at prospect of getting there however slowly, felt so much more focused with just four of us, didn't expect to end up in this situation. Marcus is quiet at the best of times, I didn't expect to feel so positive but made it very clear that wanted to crack it. Marcus looked tired as I'm sure I did, he agreed we should go on.

Snow was at waist height with Mymum breaking trail; he was literally leaping out of the snow each step. Despite this effort, each time we planted our boots in their footsteps we sank deeper probably through weight.

There is a bulge that could be considered a false summit around 200m below the actual summit, the Mera Peak summit. Seemed to me that once over this we were home. The sherpas had laid markers the previous day and as we passed their last one, I really felt like we were achieving something. The atmosphere was chilling, the sherpas seemed to be making a conscious effort to get us to the top.

I didn't pay much thought to yesterday's avalanche, as we neared the top of the bulge, staring at a wall of snow each step. Suddenly there was a hurried movement to my left, I looked ahead and a crack formed, bowing above me, arching down to my right. Mymum and Khaji were shouting, I think to each other in Nepalese. At first I could not believe we were involved in an avalanche, then I lost all consideration, I remember Mymum looking down at me, shouting, then trying to move across and up. I tried to move across and up, to above the crack, but couldn't get leverage. The whole ground moving under you. As the snow to our left dropped behind us, I looked up again at Mymum the sherpa and he was pointing and both sherpas were shouting "straight, 'straight!" and pointing to where I should position myself directly below them.

By now Khaji was kneeling pointing uphill, taking most, if not all of my weight. Marcus was higher than me. Khaji was pointing uphill with one hand pointing down the rope towards me, Mymum was still shouting. This was one of the most alarming factors. In the time it took to look left and then up, Khaji was running past me, shouting "down, run down!" Down seemed such a foreign idea, but as good a one as any. I turned and tried to run after Khaji, my legs were collapsing under me and kept falling in a heap. Didn't realise I was this exhausted, Khaji kept pulling me, dragging me down as much as he could, caught between sliding, standing, running and sinking even further into the snow. Just like not being able to scream in a nightmare.

Lost my Sigg bottle/water bottle which slid down into a crevasse at the bottom of the bowl we were trying to exit. Felt so disappointed that I couldn't move quicker while we descended. Eventually got to a safe point and the sherpas tried to calm us/me down. Managed a quick shot on camera and asked Mymum the sherpa to explain what happened. I was gasping for breath/hyperventilating and also hyper-alert. After that we just walked on auto pilot all the way down.

Got back to high camp at about 10.15, very pleased to see the rest of the team. I recounted the story as if I was talking about someone else, it didn't feel like I had actually experienced it. Guy waited with Marcus and I, and I felt dreadful, really exhausted and we waited half an hour or so and walked down to Khare which is base camp. We actually carried on because everyone had moved on from there to Tangnag and we got there about four o'clock in the afternoon, absolutely wiped out. We did about twelve and a half hours walking.

That evening we had some rum at this lodge, which was lovely. Felt really spaced out and talked to the sherpas to try and find out how dangerous; because they were very calm all the time. I tried to work out how dangerous the situation we were in was and talked to our guide, our manager guide. He said that basically it could have been me or the soup bottle down the crevasse and that they had saved both Marcus and my life which is still quite an odd thing to try and get your head round. That's it, that's the end of my diary."