We’ve all heard of someone achieving or confronting ‘their Everest’, as a way of illustrating a challenge or achievement that may well be viewed as a lifetime achievement. In keeping with my general fascination with challenges and the developmental opportunities they bring, in 2010 I
unwittingly conducted a study into what happens when we commit to a challenge but fail to achieve our ‘Everest’. In a quest for journalistic accuracy and to ensure that I didn’t have to overextend an analogy, I managed to ‘fail’ to climb the actual Mt Everest.
My focus here is not to give a blow by blow account of either the 6 months of training, including weeks in Bavaria and an ascent of Aconcagua in Argentina, or what ended up being a remarkable 8 week expedition to Nepal and Tibet in the pursuit of standing on the summit of Everest. In keeping with the purpose of this blog, it is the period of post expedition reflection that I believe holds the key to growth. What have I learned about myself and the human condition from this challenge, and what advice could I give others based upon my experiences?
Just by way of putting this reflection into context it’s important to have a quick overview of the expedition and its consequences.
In 2009 my good friend, Josh Lewsey, was in the process of retiring from professional rugby. A World Cup winner in 2003, he had a reasonable media profile which we thought could generate a bit of sponsorship for us to do an interesting challenge; but it had to be something that didn’t need a lifetime’s worth of technical ability, and it had to be well known enough to attract the public imagination. Everest fitted the bill. We weren’t climbers or mountaineers but for the two main routes up Everest you don’t need to be, and we had enough time to train and get ourselves physically and mentally up for the challenge. We found a reputable company with years of experience of running commercial expeditions on Everest, paid our deposits, got some advice on kit and a few months later turned up at Heathrow for the flight to Kathmandu. We’d actually chosen to attempt the northern route up Everest from Tibet, as opposed to the more common route from Nepal, mainly because we were intrigued by re-tracing the route that Mallory had taken in 1923, but also because it is less busy and retains a degree of remoteness which doesn’t seem to be the case from the south. We were among a group of paying clients of varying ages, levels of experience and fitness, and the acclimatisation walks up to and from Base Camp were increasingly challenging and absolutely stunning. Morale was high and Base Camp became home, with the ‘mess tent’ being the social hub where people ate, chatted, read and played Risk. Each time we ventured higher, into the rarified, oxygen depleted upper levels of the mountain, it felt like the most difficult day of our lives, only to come back down hours later to allow our bodies to adapt to what it had just
been exposed to. Retracing the same route again a few days later seemed considerably easier, before the challenge started again as we edged higher still. The body ceases to acclimatize beyond the camp at 7,800m so once we’d shown our bodies what it was like at that height, we descended all the way down to Base Camp at 5,300m to wait for the anticipated ‘weather window’, where the hurricane force jet streams are pushed from the summit by the incoming monsoons. A week or so later we got the nod. Satellite imagery suggested that we’d have enough time to get to the top and back down. I can barely describe how difficult and uncomfortable high altitude mountaineering is. Sometimes slowing to 10 breaths per step, a constant nagging headache, difficult to sleep, loss of appetite and therefore energy, the cold – all combine to make it one of the most physically demanding of environments. But we had coped and everyone was in position at 8,300m, well inside the ‘death zone’, and in reasonable shape for our summit bid. And from then on it all went a bit pear shaped. Each individual had their own journey over the next 24 hours, with only 4 from our group of 20 making it to the summit. Some were let down by poor admin and logistical support, some just had a bad day, and some probably shouldn’t have been allowed to attempt to summit due to prior evidence of poor decision making. Fortunately everyone made it back down, but for some it was due to exactly that, fortune rather than skill and judgement. For me, a combination of fatigue, a broken
headtorch, a Sherpa with altitude sickness and an issue with my eyes led me to the disappointing but straightforward decision to turn around 300m short (vertically) from the summit. Each of these obstacles had delayed my ascent so I was late to get to the second step (a key feature when climbing from the north). I knew from reading the books and from my own military experiences, that pushing a bad position following a sequence of things going wrong increases the risk exponentially. When my vision began to go at 8,300m it was a no-brainer. I turned around, on my own, and gave up on that particular dream, focusing instead on getting myself out of the death zone in one piece. Josh was going strong until about the same altitude, reaching it in good time, but somehow his oxygen mask became damaged and ceased to function, leaving him with a race for his life,
descending out of the death zone as quickly as he could without supplementary oxygen. So by the measures that we would have judged ourselves against prior to the expedition, we had failed. We had not stood on top of the world. We cannot refer to ourselves as Everest summiteers
and every time my 8 year old son asks whether I’ve climbed Everest, I have to reply, ‘nearly’. Which is annoying.
Confronting failure
From the minute we realized our quest had ended in failure you could sense that we were both battling internally to find a narrative to explain our experiences, both to ourselves and to others. As with most people, over the course of our lives I’d say that we were both defined by our successes, with Josh in particular having a very strong self identity of someone who succeeds having conquered adversity. How did this new evidence fit into that narrative? Over the next few days and even weeks we sat and discussed, reflected, counselled, and debated as to what happened, who was to blame, did we have a message to others, how could we move on with self respect and not now have that nagging doubt that we were ‘failures’? We all like to think we are growing and developing as individuals so what happens when you have a high profile failure as your most recent diary entry, especially one that you worked so hard to achieve? It is easy to blame others and without a doubt, our expedition leaders did not have the best of days during the summit bid, but we knew that blaming others looks like sour grapes. To a certain extent
though, it does help to retain your pride: “We would have summitted if it wasn’t for ….” But we both felt that that was an inadequate message given the scale of our experiences. It felt like it must haveall amounted to more than just saying it was someone else’s fault. I remember having a very strong urge to make it all worthwhile by having learned something that cannot be learned in a more sanitized, safe or less challenging environment. If I couldn’t identify some lessons to help me grow then it really would have felt like an unmitigated failure. What had I learned about myself in the most challenging of circumstances? What had I learned about others? The human condition? Could it make me better at my job or at dealing with others in similarly complex and dynamic situations? The very deliberate, focused, honest reflection that this motivation prompted became a cathartic, therapeutic experience in its own right. In true Army fashion (we initially met at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst), we first analysed
every step of the expedition as a commercial venture, and presented our feedback at the Royal Geographical Society. What can and should commercial mountaineering companies have in place to mitigate the lack of experience of their clients? What should clients be able to consent to given that they very often have no experience of the environment or their likely reactions to the incumbent challenges and stresses? And then it was onto the self analysis: “How had I reacted to strain and stress? What would others have seen in me? How could I have been a better team-mate?
Did I display leadership? If so, when and how? If not, why not and how could I? What did I need from others? When did I need a psychological boost and what did/could help to achieve this? What was different about those that seemed to cope better with certain elements? Could I learn
from them? Could I do anything different to mentally prepare myself for challenges in the future?” Over time I felt that I was able to re-frame ‘failure’. I was beginning to see that I could think of myself as ‘stronger’ than before; more self aware as a consequence of lessons hewn from hardship. It is easy to say that ‘failure makes us stronger’ or other such glib phrases, but in my experience, it takes very real, conscious effort. It takes honesty, self analysis, discussion and a conscious desire to find those little nuggets of insight that increase self awareness. I also found solace in reading extensively about others, far more capable than I, having also ‘failed’ in their initial objectives, but going on to view these as necessary steps to growth. And as is so often the case with me, an unapologetic lover of sound bites and killer quotes, the final justification for our experience came from someone much wiser than I. The legendary alpinist Walter Bonatti once said:
“Mountains are the means, the man is the end. The goal is not to reach the tops of
mountains, but to improve the man”
