Beyond the Edge Page #7

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a very difficult knife-edged ridge,

It's serrated,

it's got these just horrifying drops

on both sides,

They must've had concerns about

whether or not they could climb it,

On the left you've got

the immense Southwest Face

of Everest,

and if you fell down that,

you'd probably fall all the way

back down to the Western Cwm,

8,000 feet below,

And then to your right

is the even bigger precipice

of the Kangshung Face,

and that really concentrates

the mind,

For the mountaineer,

the thought of the process of dying

is more unpleasant

than the actual fact that

you may be dead at the end of it,

In the meantime,

watching from below down at Camp 4,

we were all waiting most anxiously,

Obviously we'd hoped

to have our little walkie-talkies going

right up to at least the South Col,

but the one that was taken

to the South Col didn't work,

So in fact we realised

we wouldn't actually know

whether Hillary and Tenzing

had been successful

until they actually came down

and told us,

No-one had any idea

where they were, how they were going,

would they be successful,

or, indeed, would they come back?

Our oxygen equipment

was not all that sophisticated,

It only had a pressure gauge on it,

so I never really knew

just how much oxygen still remained,

My brain was working

fairly energetically

working out

just how much time we had left,

One of the problems

with extreme altitude climbing

is failure of oxygen systems,

And people die on a regular basis

when their oxygen packs up,

And then

there's a bit of a problem,

Tenzing is really struggling,

where before he was

following Hillary quite nicely,

I suddenly noticed

that Tenzing seemed to be

in some distress,

And when I looked at him closely,

I saw that he was breathing

very quickly indeed,

I immediately examined

his oxygen set

and found that the outlet

from his oxygen mask

was almost completely

blocked up with ice,

Fortunately I was able

to release this ice,

Because

you're suddenly hypoxic

and you're not

thinking straight,

you may not immediately think,

"Oh, this is because my oxygen

equipment isn't working right,"

You just think, "Oh, my God,

I'm incredibly tired all of a sudden,"

You have this strange,

slightly surreal blur

of images and thoughts and ideas

going through your head,

So you have to watch yourself

and watch each other very closely,

Well, after about an hour

we had made quite a distance

along the ridge,

and then we came to a rock bluff

which barred the way

along the ridge,

Now, I really thought that perhaps

this was as far as we were going,

I took photographs

because the actual rock itself

was very steep

and we knew that it could stop us,

Was that step even climbable?

And was it climbable

at 29,000 feet?

No-one had ever gone there before,

It's a hell of a step,

You look at that and you think,

"Oh, my God, What a decision,"

But Sir Ed took the gamble

and thought,

"What the hell,

I'm gonna go for it,"

The only way

to climb it seemed to me a crack

where the ice was

sticking to the rock,

and I wasn't at all sure

that the ice would remain in place

when I was wriggling my way up,

I was scared stiff,

He just set forth

up this nearly vertical step

and wedged himself in this chimney

more or less with his feet,

his cramponed feet pressing

against the rocks on the left

and his back pushing out

against the snow on the right,

and just hoping

the snow wouldn't give way

and catapult him 11,000 feet

down the Kangshung Face,

Because it's doubtful whether

Norgay could've held him on the rope

if he'd come off,

Little slabs were breaking off

and Dad was not really

enjoying the conditions,

You know, if he was back

in the Southern Alps,

he'd probably turn around

and try it another day,

And then, um, that little

internal voice going,

"Ed, my boy, this is Everest,

"You've got to go

the extra distance,"

By jamming back

on the ice with my crampons,

or ice spikes on my boots,

and scrambling on the rock in front,

I was able to wriggle and push my way

up the crack and onto the top,

After recovering my breath,

I took the rope in

and, with many a heave,

and old Tenzing wriggling

and scrambling the same,

got him onto the top

of the rock too,

There are times in life,

you know,

when you have to be

bold and decisive,

So much hung on Hillary's ability

to pull out all the stops,

and he was able to give it

that little extra,

When Hunt had to

go down from the South Col

he turned to Ed and he said,

"Look, you know,

this is our last chance,

"You 're carrying a lot

of people's hopes on your back,"

What would we do

if they failed?

Because that was a feeling,

particularly in John Hunt's mind,

I don't think anybody dared

express an opinion,

We continued on

and we were getting distinctly tired

and rather desperate,

for the summit seemed to be

continually eluding us,

Beyond the Hillary Step,

it's still a fair distance horizontally

to the summit

and you're going over

three or four broad hummocks,

And as you get to the crest

of one of these hummocks,

there's another one beyond,

and you think, "Is this ridge

ever gonna end?"

There's just

certain human beings

able to put one foot

in front of the other,

you know, relentlessly,

psychologically able to do it,

whereas other people would fail,

We cut steps

along the top, round bump after bump,

keeping looking for the top,

And finally we actually reached

the summit itself,

I looked at Tenzing,

and even underneath his oxygen mask

and balaclava

I could see his infectious grin

of sheer pleasure,

We shook hands,

To Tenzing this was not enough,

And we thumped each other

on the back

until we had no breath left,

I glanced at my watch,

It was 11:
30,

On top we only spent

quarter of an hour,

We were conscious all the time

that our oxygen was running short

and that we had no time to waste

and we must get down again,

I took my oxygen off

in order to take photographs,

Tenzing dug a little hole

in the snow

and in that he put

a gift to the gods,

Had a good look round at the view,

and also I took photographs

down all the main ridges

of the mountain

just to have some proof

that we'd been on top,

And photographed Tenzing waving his

ice axe with four flags tied to it,

It was a tremendous moment

for both of us,

Only to be

I live in expectancy

No wonder it feels

Like this wasn't meant for me

But, girl, my mind is

so confined

That there ain't no point

in reasoning

Now that it's clear to see

It was all in front of me

And I'm right where

I'm supposed to be

Yeah, yeah

I'm left just turning pages

Mmm

Yeah

Well, I know

that it's worth the ride

Ain't it good to be alive?

So what will it be?

My dreams or my company

To lose what is me

Or follow the path I see

Boy, my mind is so confined

That I don't even know

where to begin

But it took me so long to find

That I could leave it all behind

'Cause I've got

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