Survivor

[Click on the pictures to see larger versions with captions.]

I saw it in his eyes the moment he staggered into the medical tent — real fear. The man had come straight off the mountain. Still dressed in his down clothes and wearing a harness, he had an oxygen mask strapped onto his wild-eyed face and connected to a tank inside a backpack carried by a Tibetan he'd met on the glacier.

Spasms of wet-sounding coughs bent the climber over at the waist. We sat him in a chair and Dr. Monica calmed him down with a few soothing words. When his explosive breathing calmed, he revealed his name and his story.

Gavin Bate, a Brit, had been well over 26,000 feet (8,000 meters) that morning on May 19, up near the Second Step, heading toward the summit on an intended traverse of Everest (as David Tait had done earlier on this trip). Then "everything went wrong" and he quickly "lost his marbles." He couldn't think straight, his breathing became tortuous and he began to lose consciousness. "I knew it right then," he said. "This was it."

He was being attacked by just about everything high altitude can toss at you without actually killing you. His lungs were filling with fluid, his brain was probably also being hit with a buildup of fluid between the cranium and the soft matter, and all of these symptoms were leading to a shutdown of his body. He still had enough of a survival instinct to pick himself up and spin around, though, and several Sherpas on the mountain who saw his plight helped him down with "a shoulder here and a push there."

"They were amazing, just amazing," Gavin said with admiration for the mostly unknown-to-him men who got him down Everest far enough that he could carry on to the glacier and into our camp.

While I watched Monica check his stats with a pulse oximeter and listen to his lungs with a stethoscope — then pronounce him largely free of edema — he went from a guy who'd stared at death to a happy survivor sipping tea. A day later he strolled into camp to thank everyone. He'd slept on oxygen last night and aside from a light cough, he was well.

Russ and Monica have seen much worse cases of mountain maladies — and so have I — but it rattled me to watch this guy stagger in looking so distressed, so afraid for his life.

When I used to habitually climb Himalayan peaks I watched pulmonary edema quickly overcome a friend and take his life. It happened 25 years ago, on a peak in Pakistan called Broad Peak, and although that was many years ago, it's something I have never forgotten.

So, after Gavin left our camp and shuffled across the black rocks and ice to his camp, a radio call came down to ABC from Mogens. He'd decided to use bottled oxygen on his climb because he'd been feeling way too physically stressed up to Camp 2, and I felt relieved.

It's great to be among the elite who can say they've climbed the highest point on Earth without a bottle of 02, but it's also good to play it safe. Twelve years ago when I climbed Everest, there were those around me who climbed it without oxygen, and lots of others, like me, who happily sucked gas from a bottle. What I remember best about that day in 1995 isn't who had better style points than me, but the view and the amazing feeling of being so high up, and the feeling of intense happiness to walk back down the mountain alive and well.

Signing off,
Greg Child

Comments

[matt hardy]

blimey glad hes ok its good that you take in a guy who you dont even know and take care of him straight away give him medicine and of course tea! must be mad to climb everest but let allown try a double traverse i think phurba is the only man who can do this anynews on him?

[Steve Blethyn]

Good people and a good cuppa, can't beat 'em!