I have a photo in my house, grainy and faded after many years of sitting in its wooden frame in an overlooked corner of the living room. Its of me in the Himalayas, reclining on a backpack at the top of a short ice climb, our guide Tshering smiling at the camera. It was taken two hours before I should have died. I still live that day as if it was today. Moments that put life and its problems into perspective. Memories that often run quietly through my mind in the middle of the night…
We leave Advance Base Camp in the dark, our head torches cutting thin tunnels through the cold. The night presses in close, a hard, breath-stealing cold that makes every movement deliberate. Somewhere above us, far beyond what my torch can reach, is the summit of Mera Peak. Right now, though, it feels impossibly far away.
There are four of us. Two climbing sherpas, with Tshering in front and Pemba behind, then my friend Mick and me in the middle. We are roped together, a single fragile line moving slowly upward. I can hear Mick’s breathing ahead of me, a steady rasp that mirrors my own. We don’t talk. At this altitude, words feel extravagant. Oxygen is precious.
The rhythm establishes itself quickly: kick, step, breathe. Kick, step, breathe. It is exhausting almost immediately. The glacier above Khare is broken and contorted, pushed up into frozen waves where pressure has forced the ice to rear and buckle. Short ice walls interrupt the climb, only a few metres high but steep enough to set calves screaming and make your arms weak as you fight your way up.
Tshering moves ahead with quiet authority, cutting steps with precise kicks, testing each placement before committing his weight. Pemba keeps the rope taut behind us, watchful and calm. I focus on my boots, my breathing, the crunch of crampons biting into snow. Hour follows hour.
The night is perfectly clear. The stars feel close enough to touch. Sharp, brilliant, merciless. There is no wind, but the cold is savage, creeping through gloves and boots, stiffening fingers, numbing toes. It feels as though the mountain is draining warmth directly from my bones and we crawl endlessly upwards.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the sky lightens. Black fades to indigo. Stars retreat. Dawn approaches. Silhouettes of the mountains appear all around.
And then, almost without ceremony, we arrive.
The summit is a gentle rise marked by prayer flags hanging limply in the thin air. We stand there, swaying slightly, exhausted beyond language. To the north, the Himalaya sweep across the horizon. Makalu’s broad black bulk dominating one horizon, Everest unmistakable in the distance, dancing with Lhotse as its summit stands sharp, commanding, catching the early sun.
From Mera’s summit, on a clear day, you can see five of the world’s fourteen 8,000-metre peaks. The scale is overwhelming, a frozen ocean of mountains stretching endlessly in every direction. For a brief moment, exhaustion lifts. Pride replaces it. We grin at one another, clumsy in our down suits, hands shaking as we force ourselves to take photos. The effort is immense. We hug. We’ve done it.
Just below the summit, we stop briefly, sheltered as much as anywhere can be at this height. I reach into my pack, suddenly desperate for food, for something normal and grounding after the thin, unreal triumph of the summit.
Everything is frozen solid.
The sandwich is a brick. The chocolate snaps like glass. Even the boiled egg, wrapped so carefully the night before in foil, is rock hard. I try to peel it and fail. In the end, driven by the need for energy, I crack the shell with my axe and lick what I can from the surface, scraping with my teeth. I’s absurd. Somewhere between laughter and despair, my throat tightens and my eyes sting. Funny now but in that moment, perched high in the Himalaya, I very nearly cry over my boiled egg.
We don’t linger. The sun is climbing fast, and with it comes danger.
As we begin our descent, the snow softens rapidly. What was firm and reliable on the way up now collapses slightly beneath each step. An hour later and we are sinking every step deeper than our knees. We stumble. The effort is overwhelming. Our snow googles constantly fog up as we perspire in the sun. We’re gasping the thin air to breathe, never able to get enough into our lungs. The rope tightens and slackens unpredictably. A slip ahead pulls you forward; a misstep behind tugs you back. It is exhausting in a new way, mentally as much as physically.
I make the suggestion. We should come off the rope briefly to spread out and make the descent easier and quicker. I know it’s foolish but in that moment I didn’t think I can make it down the mountain otherwise. Tshering turns and shakes his head. Calm. Absolute. No discussion. We stay roped.
Ten minutes later, there is no warning. No dramatic crack. One moment I am walking; the next, I’ve sunk to my groin in the snow, my legs kicking at nothing. There is no time to work out what’s happening. The snow bridge collapses beneath me and I drop straight down, plunging into darkness.
The rope snaps tight and I am jerked violently upside down. My world becomes narrow and vertical: ice walls inches from my face, the sky an oval of vivid blue beneath my feet. Blood rushes to my head. My helmet bangs against ice. For a heartbeat, there is only confusion.
Then realisation strikes, as cold as the surrounding ice.
I am hanging upside down in a crevasse.
The rope bites into my harness as my full weight pulls downward. Snow and ice rain over me, rattling against my jacket. I shout, though I don’t remember choosing to. I grasp my ice axe which had been hanging beneath me on its wrist cord and, swinging round, drive it into the ice wall on one side. Using this as an anchor I kicked my crampons into the ice wall opposite.
Above me, the rope twitches as my friends work on their anchors.
Time distorts. Seconds stretch into something elastic and unreal. I hold my ice axe in both hands against my chest, its head in the ice by my head, my body stretched so I can keep my crampons in the ice wall opposite, breath coming thin and shallow as the effort exhausts me.
I can see the line of the snow bridge above me, the sunlight above shining through and making it as a slash of dazzling white, punctured by the blue hole I’d created, cutting across my world. Far below in the inky depths I can hear the sound of running water, its movement driving up freezing air that makes me think of oblivion.
I suddenly feel calm. I can see heads silhouetted against the blue. I can feel movement on the rope. I know my friends are working for me. I wonder if all people feel this calmness before they die. I look around and realise that its beautiful. My whole world is glowing a luminous turquoise as sunlight filters through the ice walls around me. The slash of white above me looks inviting and attainable and wonderful. Its like being in the heart of a huge sapphire of shimmering blue. Peaceful. Calm.
Then voices. Tshering gives instructions. Pemba moves methodically, a rope with a loop tied in the end enters my world and comes down to me. It takes me several attempts to grasp it with my frozen, numb hands. I get a foot inside it, grabbing the rope a few feet higher up and close my eyes. It’s not easy to let go of an anchor point when beneath you is a black abyss and death. I let go. The rope drops slightly but holds and I swing gently from side to side, desperately handing on to the thin cord that supports my existence.
Another loop is lowered and my other foot pushes me up a few centimetres. Their composure is extraordinary. Slowly, painfully, I climb up the rope hoops, centimetre by centimetre.
When my head finally breaks the surface, I gasp like a swimmer surfacing too late. Strong hands grab my jacket and drag me back onto solid snow. I collapse there, gasping for air, staring at the vast, beautiful, beautiful sky. The heat of the sun feels like the ultimate embrace.
There is no drama afterward. Tshering checks me over, asks if I am hurt. Apart from bruises and some developing frost nip, I am intact. Lucky doesn’t begin to describe it. We need to get going.
The rest of the descent passes in a blur of exhaustion. Focus becomes absolute. Every step is deliberate, cautious. The glacier feels alive now, riddled with hidden threats. When we finally reach Base Camp three hours later, I climb into my tent, lie in my sleeping bag with hot water bottles and close my eyes, exhaustion swallowing everything else.
The image replays again and again: the sudden drop, the darkness, the helpless suspension. My hands shake, not from cold this time, but from the delayed arrival of shock. I think about how close it was, how easily it could have ended differently.
Outside, Mera Peak stands silent in the afternoon light, neither hostile nor kind. It gave us the summit, the views, the triumph and then reminded me, brutally, who is really in control.
That night, wrapped deep in my sleeping bag, I sleep deeply. I don’t dream of falling. I dream of the beauty of the mountain that few see, suspended between sky and ice, between life and death. I’m feeling improbably and overwhelmingly alive, almost reborn.
30 years of life later, that crevasse is still with me and I thank it. I’ve lived my life, understanding the fragility of life and how it could all change in an instant. Last time I heard, Tshering was driving a taxi in New York. Whenever I’m there I always, ridiculously, look out for him. I’d like the opportunity to thank him for saving my life that day. He’s in the photo. I look at him there, staring back out at me, and always say thank you.
