On July 29th, Bear Grylls talked with fans during a live, personal chat via WebEx. This is part of our on-going event series promoting our new beta,WebEx Meet - which you can get and use absolutely free.
The recording from the event is here. Below, you can read part two from the transcript of his talk (read part one and part two). We have lightly edited it to make it an easy read.
Bear Grylls: We'd been climbing for over 12 hours in a hike above Camp Four, which is the highest camp in the world at the South Pole at 26,000 feet. They say at above 26,000 feet you enter into what's called The Death Zone.
The Brits would have never called it The Death Zone. The Brits would have called it something like the Oops, Not Particularly Pleasant Zone, I reckon. But the reason it's called The Death Zone is the simple fact that the human body can't survive up here and your body begins to eat muscle and its own bone in the struggle for precious energy.
To give you an idea, we haven't had a pee up here at this stage properly for over 24 hours. Your body's just not working and everything just gets reduced now to base level of what feeds you. The only real strength you get comes from these two oxygen scuba-style tanks on your back that come around to this mask in front of your face. That really is your lifeblood out there.
Air. I Just Need Air.
I remember lying on the South Summit with this wind screaming about 40-50 miles an hour above us, feeling myself desperately hyperventilating, needing more oxygen, but all you have is what you carry. I remember reaching out and grabbing each other's hands and helping each other stand up, and then helping each other move just a step at a time along this famous final ridge, and moving probably like three or four paces a minute.
It really is kind of crazy - crazy slow where it feels like you're trying to climb a mountain in waist-deep tree roots whilst giving somebody a piggyback on your back who then for good measure is trying to stick a couple of socks in your mouth as well.
Finding the Body of Rob Hall
You're sucking this stuff, but nothing's filling your lungs and I remember about a quarter of the way along this ridge coming across the body of Rob Hall, who died up here. Robert was involved very bravely in this high altitude rescue but he'd made a fatal mistake - he ran out of oxygen, sat down and just collapsed, and from where he sat he just didn't have the strength to stand up again.
He managed to get on his radio, radio back to base camp, but from base camp all they could do was patch him through on a satellite phone to his wife, Jan, in New Zealand. Jan was pregnant with their first child at the time and people on the mountain just listened to this extraordinary pleading and pleading of Jan to Rob to stand up and to move.
Unfortunately, in those sort of conditions and during that storm, Rob couldn't do that. Slowly Jan (a climber herself) realized this and then I guess began this love story of her saying goodbye. They named their unborn child together and Rob managed to hold on for over 12 hours in temperatures as low as -60 degrees (read more on Rob's story here).
By the next day, he'd frozen to death and I just remember coming near to Rob still nearly perfect – hair blowing. It seemed, if you could just nudge him, he'd stand and he'd climb with you.
It sounds strange, but I desperately needed something that would give me strength up there and he'd been such a hero of mine - I just remember this panic coming over me in a way I'd never really felt before. There are a lot of bodies on Everest; there are over 180 up there now, but this was different.
9,000 Feet of Air Below Me
We were so close but also so far away - from anybody or anything. I had no real way to understand all this. I just remember my hands and my knees wanting to move away from Rob and crawling along the last part of this ridge. It's an extraordinary ridge where you can kind of see in the shadow there, it drops straight down pretty vertically for about 9,000 feet down to the plains of Tibet below.
It's the highest, most exposed ridge in the world. You're climbing on top of this frozen water with nothing under your feet, no –at one point I was resting an ice axe between my boots and it just went [makes ripping sound] and pulling it out and seeing this hole of air - 9,000 feet between my toes and thinking, "This is a bad place to be climbing right now."
Eventually, the end of this ridge coming down the bottom edge of what they call the Hillary Step is a 35-, 40-foot almost vertical ice wall that leads on to the final gentle summit slope. It's one of those obstacles that if you can get over, nothing's gonna stop you from the top. You'd do it on your belly if you have to, it has that feel about it.
The Top of the World
I remember starting out this thing having this real fear that I'd get so close but this would be the one thing that would stop me. It was like things I had climbed so many times at sea level, but at this height there's nothing working and just having no strength.
Eventually after about 40 minutes of seeing the lip above me, throwing an ice axe over and over, wriggling and lying in this deep powder snow and clearing it away from in front of my mask, and then just looking out and not being able to comprehend the gentle, gentle slope that for the first time, indicated the roof of the world.
I remember this adrenaline beginning to fire in and feeling it very busily pumping around my body - it's like filling your veins and your muscles and it gives you this sudden strength. But then also that weakness that it leaves you with. You just can't sustain that sort of intensity. I remember crying inside my mask. Crying because for me that little, well not entirely little, part of me ever since the hospital I'd never really believed that I could actually be here right now.
That part of me was slowly being silenced.
At 7:22 that morning, two of us from our team arrived on the summit of Everest.
I remember collapsing to my knees, I think out of exhaustion more than anything. The view was truly extraordinary. It's hard to stand and describe the emotions of the place. It is a world apart. You see the curvature of the Earth at the edges. I was very aware I was somewhere special - in the best sense of the word.
[Spectacular image from http://www.photosfan.com/mt-everest/ - click through to see it in full view.]
My Worst Hair Day. Seriously.
Yet it was also my worst hair day. I remember when I got home I showed this to my mum, I showed her this picture and she looked it and said, "Wouldn't have been nice if you could have combed your hair for the summit?"
I was trying to explain to her it wasn't entirely like that at the time, but mums will be mums. And my dad was alive to see us reach the top of Everest. He died soon after but not before I said to him that he'd climbed that mountain with me along side every faltering step of the way.
The only thing I took from the summit was a little scoop of snow water that obviously became water. I've christened my three kids with it and my dad used to come and take swigs of it. I used to have swigs of it - it's like a secret magic potion. But the thing is it wasn't ever about the water. It was about knowing and believing that dreams are worth taking a risk for. Dreams come at a cost. And the rewards don't always go to the strongest or the bravest or the fittest or the cleverest.
The rewards go very simply to those who can understand it means: never, ever quit.
Really, that is what my dad taught me. It's held me well for a lot of things. Before Everest, during Everest and my journey since. In shooting "Man vs. Wild."
If I had to sum it up, I'd say that's it. Just be bold and never, ever quit.
