Mera - Himalayas

 

In 2010 I went to a course that fundamentally changed my life forever.  By the end of that 3 day course, I had decided I was going to climb Everest and raise money for a charity. I had no idea what the charity was going to be, or how I would climb Everest. I had no mountaineering experience, no clue how I would do at altitude, or even if I had the will to push through when things got tough. What I did know was that I was ready to take my life in another direction. I wanted purpose in my life, and I had a fleeting belief in myself that I wanted to strengthen, and felt this would be what would help cultivate it.

I had no idea what would come from making this decision back then, but looking back now at my life the last 10 years, I still to this day think that decision, was the second most important decision I made in my life. You see, I hate heights, I don’t like the cold, or sleeping on the side of cliffs in tents, or the idea of falling into crevasses, I hate all of it. But what climbing mountains has taught me, is that being uncomfortable is where you learn the most about yourself, and what you are truly capable of. And that’s why I keep going back. 

The first step to climbing a mountain in the Himalayas is getting there. We flew to Kathmandu, our guide Ong Chu met us at the airport, and let us know tomorrow we rest, and then we leave for a 4 hour drive to the airfield to take a small plane to Lukla. We left the next morning, got to the airfield and then lay around waiting for the weather to clear in Lukla so that we could land and not run into a mountain. This was actually the scariest part of the entire trip for me. We flew in a small propeller plan that was shaking everywhere in the clouds with the mountains around us. I was sitting behind the pilot and I can still remember seeing my first peak of the Himalayas cresting over what I thought were big mountains themselves, and I remember my palms getting sweaty and thinking to myself. What the heck are you doing here??

We landed in Lukla (take a look at the airport on Youtube, it’s terrifying and called the world’s most dangerous airport for a reason). I was finally here. All the books I had read as a kid, the shows I had watched, I was living it, and about to take on one of the biggest challenges of my life. I felt strong, I had trained hard all spring and summer, Hiking every weekend, doing the grind during the week, and having trained to do the Ride to Conquer Cancer as well (a 210 km bike ride). I had two climbing partners, Jay and Steve, both very fit, and wonderful human beings that I was excited to spend a few weeks with. 

We landed in Lukla, Ong Chu found our two porters, and within an hour we were off hiking to our first destination. Excitement was high for all of us. I was finally here. I had dreamt of being on a Himalayan expedition since I was a kid and I was finally here doing it. 

The first week of the trip was unforgettable, and probably the most enjoyable part of the trip. We stayed around 8000 – 11000 ft, hiking up and down mountains to acclimatize. There was no snow, we were in the woods, protected from the sun. We kept talking how everyone needs to do this, how great an adventure this was and how we wished we had invited more people to share this incredible experience with us. There are no roads, just hiking trails between villages and the only traffic you see are Yak and Donkey trains which bring goods to and from all the villages. There are no TV’s, no computers, or smartphones. The people here still cook over an open fire (Inside their wood homes??). What I found most interesting here is that the locals live such simple lives, and I remember thinking in the beginning, how do people live like this, it’s 2019. But every night after dinner, and we went to bed, I could hear our guides and porters drinking tea with the families at the guesthouses just talking, laughing and connecting with each other. 

Like I said, the first week was amazing, the food was good, I was feeling great, and every mountain we summited, an even more spectacular view would appear in front of us. I would wake up every morning at 5 am, and as soon as the sun came up, take my journal and go for a hike and write. Each day the hikes became increasingly harder and longer, but I still felt great. 

We arrived at about 12,000 feet around Day 8. I had dinner and we all noticed it was considerably colder tonight. We sat by the fire and then I went to bed, expecting to fall asleep like I had the previous week….But that’s not what happened. I tossed and turned all night on my bed of rocks, literally, and by the morning, I was really feeling terrible, and making endless trips to the “washroom” throughout the night. I thought hopefully this is just a bug and I’ll be good to go in a few days, and recovered for the summit push. I told the guys I hadn’t slept and was sick but felt strong enough to keep going and that it was probably just a stomach bug. We left for the day, and I thought nothing of it, I was determined I was going to make it and one bad night wasn’t going to stop me from accomplishing my goal. I arrived at the next hut about 45 minutes behind Steve and Jay that day, and this became the norm for the rest of the trip. For the next 4-5 days, I hiked alone mostly, feeling weaker by the day, as we were continually climbing higher. Jay and Steve were strong and having no issues with altitude. I would watch them take off on me every day and it drove my ego nuts. I felt so weak, and I couldn’t even keep their pace if I tried. By this point, my food intake was minimal. We were getting far out enough from Lukla, that we couldn’t eat any meat, and my stomach would get irritated with anything I tried to put in it. The days started to become incredibly hard for me. I saw Mera Peak for the first time around a corner, probably 50 km away at lunch, and I remember thinking, how the heck are we going to get up there, let alone me getting up there in my condition. 

14,000 ft, 16,000 ft, back down to 12,000 ft, and back up. By this time, I was showing up to camp well behind the group. I tried to drown out the stomach pain, and weakness, remembering my good friend Paul Gleeson’s plaque he had on his row boat when he crossed the Atlantic “Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever”, and that became my mantra. When I got frustrated with how well the other two guys were doing, I would tell myself “I will be the strongest one on summit day”, even though I don’t think I actually believed it at the time, it gave me hope and motivated me to keep going.

Finally, we arrived at base camp. I was excited. Mera which stood behind us, and it was still a massive mountain!! And we were already at 16,000 ft. That night, I went out and watched the sunset on my own just outside of camp. I was proud of myself for making it this far, but incredibly frustrated and sad that I had trained so hard, and felt so weak. In 2010, I had managed to summit Kilimanjaro with severe Mountain Altitude sickness barely making it back down, which ultimately ended my dream of climbing Everest; Then in 2012, I went to climb Mt. McKinley (the tallest mountain in North America) in Alaska, and failed to make the summit due to bad weather and having been stuck in a storm in my tent for 5 days. Why was this happening to me again I thought? Each time I had trained so hard; I was raising money for Canuck’s Place and my best friend and his family who had lost their baby 2 weeks after birth. I kept thinking about all the people that had supported in me, and how I didn’t want to fail. As I sat in my frustration, thinking how unfair life can be, I looked up at the sky and started to pray. I’m not a religious person, but I was desperate, and in that moment I made a deal with God, the Universe, myself, who knows. I didn’t ask to feel better, I asked to be given enough strength to get to the top, and that if I was given that strength, I promised myself and whoever else was listening that I wouldn’t give up, no matter how bad it got. I wanted to succeed and honor my best friend’s child’s short life on this planet. The view was incredible, and I cried as the sun set, and I remember feeling a little jolt of energy flow through me, and me saying I’m not going to give up.

After a well needed rest day, and another acclimatization climb, we left at 7 am for high camp, bypassing the second camp so we didn’t have to have an additional night high up on the glacier in freezing temperatures. Steve and Jay once again took off with one of our porters, and our head guide stayed back with me. About half way up he asked if maybe it was time for me to go back down. I was really struggling and barely moving. Each step was so difficult, but I told him, I was ok, and that I just needed to move slowly but that I would get there. And eventually, I did. Jay and Steve waited for me for the last walk up over to High camp. There were loose boulders above us and a 4,000 foot cliff about 4 feet from where our tent was set up. I was happy that I had made it, but definitely remember questioning whether I would even make it through the night to go for the summit push. We got to High camp around 4 pm, we set up camp, and I remember crawling into my sleeping bag. It was already freezing and the sun was still out, and we had been warned by other climbers coming down that we were in for possibly the worst night of our lives because of the cold and altitude. We were now at 18,000 feet.

As the sun set, we started feeling the cold creep in. We were told to keep all of the gear and water that we were going to need for the summit in our sleeping bag otherwise it would freeze. So I sat in my sleeping bag, with my climbing boots, water bottles, and gear, all in my sleeping bag. I could barely move but I was feeling relatively good considering. I didn’t have a big headache which is often a good gauge for the start of bad altitude sickness. Steve and I were sharing a tent together, and unfortunately for him, his head started to pound really badly. I could tell he was incredibly uncomfortable and moving around, constantly sitting up in pain and complete discomfort. Around 7 pm it had gotten so bad him and I started having the honest conversation about him going back down. I told him that I had experienced severe altitude sickness before and the only way to get better is to go down, not up. He took Diamox (High altitude medicine) in the hopes that this would help, it didn’t. Around 9 pm, Steve sat up and told me he had to go down, his altitude sickness had gotten too bad and he could not continue. It was probably one of the hardest decisions he had to make, but we both knew it was the right one. I got our head guide, I gave him a hug, he wished me luck and asked me to take a picture of me with a water bottle he had brought and had told his staff and kids would make it to the top of the mountain. I jokingly said something along the lines of, “I’ll give it to Jay, cause lets be serious, we both know I’m probably not making it either”.  We laughed in our delirium of being at high altitude, and he climbed back down the mountain with one of our porters. 

Now I was left alone in a freezing tent, and for the next 5 hours I lay in my sleeping bag, praying for Ong Chu to come to my tent to tell me it was time to go. It was so cold that night; the outside of my sleeping bag had frost on it. I wanted to give up so badly, the idea of getting through the night, climbing for 9 more hours in the freezing cold and going any higher felt so overwhelmingly impossible to me. It was misery.  I started to break things down, and just focus on the next step I had to overcome. I said, just get through the night and then see how you feel, so I did. I didn’t sleep one minute that night, but I made it. Then around 1-2 am, our guide came and gave me a bowl of porage, and I told myself, if you eat this porage, you can try to go up, if not you will be too weak (I had barely eaten anything for the past 4 days). I kept throwing it back up in my mouth, but forced myself to keep swallowing until it eventually it stayed down. I finished that bowl of porage.  I suited up and got ready to go. It was so bitterly cold, I was excited to start moving in the hopes I would warm up, and be able to get off this mountain as quickly as possible. Countless years of dreaming, 2 years of planning, 6 months of training, and two and half weeks of hiking and climbing, I had to muster up the strength for just one more day. I wouldn’t let myself give up.

About 1 minute into our climb, my headlamp went out. My batteries had frozen overnight and I was left to climb with no light. I remember not being able to feel my hands, and then my feet.  If a human is dropped off at 20,000 feet and is coming from sea level, they would faint almost instantly because of the lack of oxygen, and possibly die. It’s not a place for humans. We would take 20-30 steps and need to break to catch our breath. I would slouch over on my climbing poles trying to garner enough energy to take the next 20-30 steps. I was not a good time while climbing either. I was complaining a lot and was so angry. I kept telling Ong Chu I needed more breaks, but he drowned me out and kept moving forward (which I thanked him for doing later). At one point Jay turned back to me as we were all tied to each other on Rope and said  “Mark, you aren’t going to lose your feet and we’re going to make it”. He was nicely telling me to shut up and stop complaining, which was the biggest gift he could have given me. I never complained again after that moment and decided to put my focus and energy back towards accomplishing what I had set out to do years before. The sun came up around 6-7 am which was a welcomed site as it would soon get a little warmer. I’ll never forget seeing the entire sky being fire red as the sun came up behind the entire Himalayan range. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, I can’t even explain it. The memory of that sunrise will stay with me for as long as I live. I was sick, weak, cold but I remember looking around and thinking, I’m so blessed to be alive, look at how beautiful this world is.

Around maybe 20,500 ft, Jay, the super human, actually started to feel the altitude. He had been the strongest of the 3 of us the whole tirip by a mile, and he had literally been carrying me up the mountain all night. And then the weirdest thing happened to me, something I’ll never be able to explain. As Jay got weaker, I got stronger. My symptoms started to go away, and I felt better in that moment, than at any point over the last week. I took the lead on the rope, and led for the last 1,000 ft. I started telling Jay words of encouragement, telling him we were close and that we were going to make it. I don’t think I would have made it without Jay’s help for most of the climb, so it felt good to be able to give a little something back at the end to thank him. Every time I think of this moment, I get chills and tears appear in my eyes, something incredible happened to me there in that moment.

By this point, we could see the summit, it was so close, and I knew at that moment that we were going to get there no matter what. I started to cry uncontrollably, I couldn’t believe I had pushed through it all and was actually going to make it. I was about to accomplish a goal that I had set out almost 10 years earlier in that course. It wasn’t Everest, but it was my Everest (which was right in front of us at the summit). After a very short but incredibly steep pitch, we finally got to the top. We all hugged, and I yelled at the top of my lungs. It’s a feeling that can’t be explained, only experienced. Jay turned to me and said, “that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life”, and I agreed. I cry all the time so that’s not a big deal, but Jay doesn’t cry. He didn’t even cry at his wedding, but he had tears in his eyes at the summit. We took some photos, and turns out I was able to get Steve that photo I know he wanted so badly to take himself. It was bittersweet, I really wished all 3 of us could have experienced that moment together.

After about 15-20 minutes at the summit, sitting and looking at the most stunning views I had ever seen, we started to head down. What’s so ironic about the way down, is that Jay became the machine he had been the whole trip and started to take off again (we didn’t need to be roped up for most of the way down), all of my symptoms started to come back and I started to get weak and feel horrible again. Jay got down to High camp probably at least an hour or two ahead of me, but this time, I didn’t care. I sat down several times on the glacier, exhausted and weak, with a huge smile on my face, more tears of joy, just taking it all in. I knew I would never be here again, I didn’t need to be. It was done.

When I arrived back to High Camp, I passed out instantly in my tent. I didn’t even have the energy to take off my climbing boots and crampons, I just kept my feet out the door of the tent and disappeared into a coma. Until of course our guide woke me up 3 hours later, telling me we needed to pack up and go back down to base camp. Jay, “the Canadian sherpa” was gone again, and I once again struggled to get off the mountain. To give you an idea of the kind of guys I was climbing with, Jay waited for me for a long time at the bottom, about 500 feet from Base Camp because he wanted us to finish together, as a team. I got in to camp, relieved and beyond exhausted. I was alive!!! Steve greeted us and congratulated us on making it to the top. He was elated for us, but shocked that I had made it (as was I). We had a little laugh and I went straight to bed, no food, no nothing, I couldn’t eat and I passed out for 14 hours. It was well below freezing, but I can’t remember even waking up once during that sleep.

I know this story may sound a little dramatic, but let me provide you with some context. We hiked and climbed over a 145 km’s over mountain tops, and back down into the valleys to get to the summit of Mera. There were 10 groups of climbers that left that night for the summit. Only 4 made it to the top, and of those 4 groups, about half of their team members had turned around before they had reached the summit. When I left for Nepal, I weighed 186 pounds. 2.5 weeks later when I returned to Kathmandu, I weighed 167 pounds. So the moral of this story, Mountain climbing is the best diet on the planet 

I wanted to share this story with you because so many of you, even many of my clients donated generously to my climb for Canuck Place, and my best friend who lost his daughter. I want you to know that I suffered for those donations, and I thought about all of you, and my friend and his family when things got really hard. I am incredibly grateful to be in a position to have so many wonderful people in my life. Almost all of the donations came from Nicola Staff and clients, and I think that says something about all of you and how much we care about each other, that goes way beyond just showing up to work and having transactional relationships with our colleagues and clients. It’s different here.

And really, I just want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. Not just for the climb, but for all of you who have supported and helped me accomplish goals, that 10 years ago I never thought possible. People often call me crazy and ask me why I put myself through this misery of climbing big mountains. I think part of it is definitely the adventure, and comradery that is built with the people you climb with. But really, I do it because a challenge like this isn’t that far from “real life” in my opinion. When we face obstacles that seem insurmountable in our lives, we all have a choice to turn around, or decide to take that next step forward even though everything in your mind and body tells you differently. When I failed at summiting Denali, it was exactly what I needed in my life, I wasn’t ready. I learned more from that “failure” than this success, and I view everything else I do in my life through that same lens.  The hardest and scariest things in life reap the greatest rewards if you take them on. And sometimes you might even surprise yourself as to what you are actually capable of.

Thanks again.

Mark

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