So I got lucky. But then again, it took me many hundreds of rejections to manage to find that luck.
I am sure there is a lesson n that somewhere.
Someone had taken a punt and had faith in me. I wouldn’t let them down, and I would be eternally grateful to them for giving me that chance to shine.
Once DLE were on board, a few other companies joined them. It’s funny how, once one person backs you, somehow other people feel more comfortable doing the same.
I guess most people don’t like to trailblaze.
So before I knew it, suddenly, from nothing, I had the required funds for a place on the team. (In fact I was about £600 short, but Dad helped me out on that one, and refused to hear anything about ever being paid back. Great man.)
The dream of an attempt on Everest was now about to become a reality.
So many people over the years have asked me how to get sponsorship, but there is only one magic ingredient. Action. You just have to keep going.
Then keep going some more.
Our dreams are just wishes, if we never follow them through with action. And in life, you have got to be able to light your own fire.
The reality of planning big expeditions is often tedious and frustrating. There is no glamour in yet another potential sponsor’s rejection letter, and I have often felt my own internal fire flickering close to snuff point.
Action is what keeps it alight.
English adventurer, writer and television presenter (born 1974)
19. Don’t Assume
It’s good training for the rest of your life, too. If something is important, always check - never assume. You might look a little foolish if you always ask the basic questions, but better a fool than an ass!
It’s usually ego that stops us from asking the ‘silly’ questions, but I know a lot of ‘smart’ people on expeditions who have tripped over their egos and fallen flat on their faces.
When it comes to navigating on an expedition, this ability to be clear and un-‘assuming’ is especially important.
All of us have, at times, when navigating from A to B, had a few moments of doubt. ‘Are we here or here?’ we ask. The stubborn press on, ‘hoping’, ‘assuming’ all will be clearer in a mile or two. It rarely works like that.
Too many times, if you don’t act fast, a small error in judgement can become a big error with desperate consequences - and that applies to navigating through life as well as through mountains.
A good rule with navigating is that if there is doubt, then stop, reassess, ask others for help if you need to. Trust me, a stitch in time saves nine.
We would all prefer to be asked than for the leader to get us lost.
Besides, I have also learnt that people generally like to help and love to be asked for their advice. So put your ego aside and let people help you. Anyone who succeeds is really standing on many other people’s shoulders - the shoulders of those who have helped them along the way.
Assume nothing, be humble, and don’t be afraid to ask for that little bit of help when you need it.
At the end of the ridge we leaned on our ice axes and looked up.
Above us was the legendary Hillary Step, the forty-foot ice wall that formed one of the mountain’s most formidable hurdles.
Cowering from the wind, I tried to make out a route up it.
This ice face was to be our final and hardest test. The outcome would determine whether we would join those few who have touched that hallowed ground above.
If so, I would become only the thirty-first British climber ever to have done this.
The ranks were small.
I started up cautiously. It was a long way to come to fall here.
Points in. Ice axe in. Test them. Then move.
It was slow progress, but it was progress. And steadily I moved up the ice.
I had climbed steep pitches like this so many times before, but never twenty-nine thousand feet up in the sky. At this height, in this rarefied thin air, and with 40 mph of wind trying to blow us off the ice, I was struggling. Again.
I stopped and tried to steady myself.
Then I made that old familiar mistake — I looked down.
Beneath me, either side of the ridge, the mountain dropped away into abysses.
Idiot, Bear.
I tried to refocus on only what was in front of me and above.
Up. Keep moving up.
So I kept climbing.
It was the climb of my life, and nothing was going to stop me.
Whenever I got out of bed I had to wear a big metal brace that was strapped around me.
I felt like an invalid. I was an invalid. This was crazy.
I’m screwed.
You stupid, stupid idiot, Bear. You could have landed that canopy if you hadn’t panicked, or you should have cut it away and pulled that reserve early.
As it was, I had done the worst of both worlds: I had neither gone for the reserve straight away nor had I managed to land the canopy with any degree of skill.
I felt I could have avoided this accident if I had been smarter, faster, clearer-headed. I had messed up, and I knew it.
I vowed that I would never fall short in those areas again.
I would learn from this, and go on to become the fastest, clearest-thinking dude on the planet.
But for now, the tears kept coming.
Among the dead was Rob Hall, one of the most highly acclaimed mountaineers in the world. He ran out of oxygen attempting to rescue a stricken climber. He collapsed from a lethal combination of exhaustion, oxygen deprivation, and the cold.
Somehow, as night fell and the thermostat plummeted, he managed to hold on.
Rob endured a night at 28,700 feet with temperatures as low as minus fifty degrees centigrade. Then at dawn he spoke to his wife, Jan, from his radio, patched through to a satellite phone at base camp.
She was pregnant with their first child, and those on the mountain sat motionless as he spoke to her. “I love you. Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much.”
They were his last ever words.
The lessons were clear: Respect the mountain — and understand what altitude and bad weather can do to even the strongest of climbers. In addition, never tempt the wild, and know that money guarantees you nothing — least of all safety — when you climb a mountain as big as Everest.
Many times I have been grateful for the simple, military skill of being able to live with people in confined spaces. It has helped me so much over the years on expeditions and beyond. And I was especially glad to be with Neil.
When we hang with good people, some of their goodness rubs off. I like that in life.
The other thing the army had taught me was how, and when, to go that extra mile. And the time to do it is when it is tough — when all around you are slowing and quitting and complaining.
It is about understanding that the moment to shine brightest is when all about you is dark.
It is a simple lesson, but it is one of the keys to doing well in life. I see it in friends often. On Everest that quality is everything.
50. Keep Grounded
When was the last time you ventured into the great outdoors? I mean really ventured, where you set out into the unknown with just a map and compass, backpack and sleeping bag - the sort of venturing that makes your heart beat faster.
Have you experienced the hypnotic patter of rain on your tent, the clear call of an owl or the rustling of the wind through the leaves at night? It’s a feeling of absolute freedom and belonging - a chance to reconnect with both ourselves and planet Earth.
At night in the outdoors is also a reminder that the best things in life aren’t things.
Money can’t buy the quiet calm that comes from sitting beside a mountain stream as it ‘tinkles’ through the rock and heather.
Money can’t buy the inspiration that you feel sat on a clifftop above the pounding of the ocean surf as it hits the rocks far below.
You can’t bottle feelings like that.
And sitting around a campfire under a sky of stars is the most ancient and wonderful of human activities. It reminds us of our place in the world, and in history - and it’s hard not to be humbled.
These sorts of simple activities cost so little yet they give us precious time to be ‘still- - time to reconnect, to clear our heads of the dross, to remind ourselves of our dreams and to see things in the perspective they often require.
We all need that regularly in our lives - more than you might imagine.
The summer of 1999, we went on holiday to Spain to visit my cousin Penny, who runs a horse farm in Andalucia. It is a beautiful, wild part of the country.
Shara would ride out early each day in the hilly pine forests and along the miles of huge, deserted Atlantic beaches. I was told I was too tall for the small Andalucian ponies.
But I didn’t want to be deterred.
Instead I ran alongside Shara and tried to keep up with the horse. (Good training, that one.)
Eventually, on the Monday morning we were to leave, I took her down to the beach and persuaded her to come skinny-dipping with me. She agreed. (With some more eye-rolling.)
As we started to get out after swimming for some time, I pulled her toward me, held her in my arms, and prepared to ask for her hand in marriage.
I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and as I was about to open my mouth, a huge Atlantic roller pounded in, picked us both up, and rolled us like rag dolls along the beach.
Laughing, I went for take two. She still had no idea what was coming.
Finally, I got the words out. She didn’t believe me.
She made me kneel on the sand (naked) and ask her again.
She laughed — then burst into tears and said yes.
(Ironically, on our return, Brian, Shara’s father, also burst into tears when I asked him for his blessing. For that one, though, I was dressed in a jacket, tie, and…board shorts.)
I was unsure whether his were tears of joy or despair.
What really mattered was that Shara and I were going to get married.