how to climb everest

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible
T E Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

January 2005

Sand crunches between our teeth as a restless wind stirs the Sharqiya Sands. Barry Roberts squints in the unfamiliar environment and the late evening sun. Just months earlier, he was 8848m high, on top of Everest and most others. Now, as camels dawdle in the distance, he talks of how to get over life’s biggest challenges. And when you have a person who’s climbed to the highest point on Earth, in temperatures that can dip to -25ºC and air a third as dense as at sea level, you listen.

In the rarefied atmosphere of Everest, things might seem a little clearer. It is, in a way, quite like life itself: the challenge, the mental drive, the relationships you forge and the sacrifices you make to get to the top. Even the decision you might take to turn back. For Barry, it was the fulfilment of a childhood dream, and emphatic validation of his abilities.

Things weren’t always like that. It took an emotional low point to spur him on. And while others would have moped around, or cracked, Barry threw himself out of an airplane 50 times. And when you skydive 4000m in a minute, it tends to wake you up – Barry never looked back. The problem, he says, is that most people need something intensely negative to spur them on. Worse, they might not be able to use such a negative force to their advantage, and that’s when you have someone who life got the better of. Instead, he bought a house in the French Alps, right under Mont Blanc. Within a couple of weeks of moving, he’d met his future wife, who shares a mutual love of skiing. They now live in a 130 year old house in England’s Lake District, a patch of land so beautiful it has inspired generations of poets, among them Wordsworth himself. Not bad for someone who wasn’t feeling too good about himself.

But Barry doesn’t give sermons. He tells stories. And for the people around the world who he’s talked to, the conclusions that are to be drawn – if any – have to be theirs. As someone once said, you can be shown the door, but you have to open it yourself. If you have to be spoon fed, you’ve missed the point.

Going the distance, and climbing mountains, is an intensely personal activity. As Barry himself admits, “Everest was for myself.” But he reaches out to many, and goes beyond himself. This is at the end of the day a business, and Barry markets his experiences, and inspiration, to big corporate names. “The difference between me and others who do the lecture circuit is that I’m an entrepreneur who went up Everest, while others turn businessmen after they come down.” Hard sell from the man who admits he gets most things he wants.

You’d have to agree. Two weeks before his summit, Barry broke his back – in two places – while skiing. Against medical advice, he resumed training and made the ascent over a six-day period, making it faster than the rest of his team. That day, says Barry, “Is emblazoned on my brain as one of the finest days of mountaineering I’ve ever experienced, and one of the happiest days of my life.” After summitting, he came across a one-armed climber who was in trouble. “I took complete control of him,” he says, and guided him down safely to Advanced Base Camp, at 6400m.

To give you an idea of just how high Everest is, do know that Oman’s Jebel Shams is 3000m, while the Himalayan peak is almost 6000m higher! Once you cross the 8000m mark you’re in the so-called death zone, where you’re so high the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is not enough to keep you alive. The human body is designed to function at its best at sea level, because haemoglobin (the red pigment in red blood cells) is saturated with oxygen at that air pressure. As you climb higher, air pressure drops, and so does the amount of oxygen. At Everest Base Camp (5200m), there is only half as much oxygen as there is at sea level, while at the summit you have to make do with a third. Your body tries to compensate by a process called altitude acclimatisation. More red blood cells are manufactured, the heart beats faster, non-essential body functions shut down and you breathe deeper and more frequently. This can take weeks, which is why climbers spend a lot of time at base camps, making their way from one to the other, and sometimes back and forth. In the death zone, the human body cannot acclimatise, and it will deteriorate, lose consciousness and eventually die.

You’re running on borrowed time, but Barry Roberts cheated death, and life. Now, as we drive out of the sands towards Muscat, the end of the day isn’t about him at all. It’s about the rest of us, and what we will do tomorrow.

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