Thread: Bear Grylls, Facing Up

This is Bear's account of climbing Mt Everest in 1998. It includes how he nearly died when he fell down a crevasse and was only saved by a thin rope, not designed to carry the weight of a person.
It made me realize just how tremendously dangerous such climbing is and how they have to go waaaay beyond anything a normal person would regard as reasonable. I also appreciated the very generous comments Bear made about other climbers.
Exhausted, breathing oxygen to stay alive, he finally managed 25 minutes on the two metre square peak 8848m above sea level, before having to begin the descent, which is actually more dangerous than the climb. He was briefly the youngest British person ever to climb Everest, before someone even younger made it up.
This is a very enjoyable book.

Originally Posted by Toxic_Avenger

Do a search on the corpses of Mount Everest.
The climbers that don't make it (and there is a number of them) cannot be removed from the mountain- mainly due to limitations of human strength at altitude, and the inability to carry enough oxygen to recover the bodies.
Many of them are considered landmarks / road signs for the path (like 'green boots', the body of an Indian climber on the north face).

Some incredible stories come off the mountain. Some stories never come off at all.

Yes, it's a graveyard up there, too high for helicopters to fly, so everyone who died is still there frozen. There's a picture of one of them in the book.

Sent from my GT-P5210 using AULRO mobile app